^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Stellaland (South Africa)

Stellaland: introduction
Stellaland 1882 flag (Carr)
Stellaland 1882 CoA
Stellaland 1882 flag (Burgers)
Stellaland 1883 flag
Stellaland second 1883 flag

See also:

Stellaland

David Massouw ruled over the Koranna, a semi Griqua tribe of Hottentots at "Mamusa" on the Harts river within the claimed limits of the Transvaal. For years there had been trouble with Mankoroane, Chief of the Batlapin of Taungs. In October 1881 Mankoroane, assisted by some Europeans, attacked Mamusa. David Massouw raised a force of 400 Transvaal Boers, promising each volunteer a farm (and half the loot). Mankoroane sued for peace in July 1882. The volunteers formed camp on the Losasa and the town of Vryburg was decided upon. A commission (Bosman, van der Berg and Dennison) marked out the town and farm plots, and the plots were allocated by lottery. Plots were 4000 by 6000 yards. One bright fresh evening, after the start of the rainy season, a group of a dozen Boers were lounging around in blankets. When the question of picking a name for the country arose, one of the party, gazing at the stars, suggested Stellaland, and this was unanimously adopted.
Olivier Touzeau, 10 Mar 2001

Olivier Touzeau refers to the Korana (mis-spelled as Koranna, an old colonial variation) as being "semi Griqua". They were a distinct horde or tribe of the Khoikhoi nation, previously referred to as Hottentots, and quite separate from the Griquas. However, like the Griqua they were by this time largely Christian, spoke Afrikaans (or kitchen Dutch, as it was known then), wore similar clothing to the Boer people, and had firearms, horses and ox-wagons.
The word Khoikhoi (also written as Khoekhoe, Khoekhoen or Kwekwena) is a re-duplication: khoi means "man" or "human"; Khoikhoi means "men of men" or "true human beings". They regarded themselves as being (as Westerners would put it) civilised because they kept cattle, whereas the Bushmen (who sprang from the same ethnic stock as themselves) were hunter-gatherers.
The "-n" at the end of Khoekhoen is an adjective-forming suffix. The "-na" in Korana is a suffix indicating the name of a people, and has the same meaning as the suffix "-qua", as in Griqua and Namaqua (these people are also called Nama).
"Taungs" is a colonial form of the place name: its correct Setswana form is Taung, meaning "lion". During Bophuthatswana's "independence" this town was part of that state; it is now the southernmost settlement in North West Province.

It seems that the variations in the Stellaland flag arose because the president's wife ran off a fresh one on her sewing machine each time one was needed.

Stellaland survives in the form of the district of Vryburg, which was part of the colony of British Bechuanaland from 1885 to 1895, the Cape Colony until 1910 and the Cape Province until 1994, and is now part of North West Province. During Bophuthatswana's "independence", Vryburg was an island of Cape territory inside the Tswana state, adjoining the