The legend of Buiskop

Buiskop, situated approximately six kilometres north of Bela Bela, is a well known landmark in the area. It was used as a halfway house during the Republican days for the mail coach that travelled between Pretoria and the former Pietersburg.

View from the summit of Buiskop. Bela Bela can be seen in the distance

The mountain was also found to contain a sandstone formation and this stone was used for the erection of a portion of Pretoria's Union Buildings.

Buiskop owes it's name to Coenraad De Buys.


Coenraad de Buys

Coenraad De Buys (1761 – 1821) was described as "a remarkable figure on the frontier of the Cape Colony", presently the Eastern Cape. He was described in tones of awe. Accounts mentioned that he was an impressive figure, over two meters tall and with enormous self-confidence.

De Buys was born on the farm Wagenboomrivier in 1761. He had his own farm, De Opkomst, near Kareedouw in the Eastern Cape.

In the early 1780s De Buys moved to a farm near the Bushmans River in the Zuurveld where he lived with a Baster-Khoikhoi woman, Maria van der Horst, with whom he had seven children. Maria was of slave descent. He was said to have fathered 315 children by the end of his life! 

He often crossed the Fish River and raided cattle from the Xhosa. Langa, a Zuurveld chief, charged that De Buys had seized his wife and used her as a concubine, and two other chiefs said that De Buys had stolen their wives and cattle. Small wonder he was forced to flee the Cape Colony at the beginning of the 19th Century.

He travelled north, accompanied by his two sons Machiel and Gabriel and a number of Blacks as bodyguards. He eventually settled in the Bela Bela area for a while.

According to local legend the family incurred the wrath of a number of tribesmen in the area, were driven up a mountain (later named Buiskop), a few kilometers north of Bela Bela. Here they were encircled. The tribesman hoped they would succumb to thirst.

However, eight days later De Buys made his appearance and dumbfounded the tribesmen who were expecting surrender. They saw him swinging a skin of water over the top of the mountain and declaring that he had certain higher powers on his side that enabled him to get water on the dry mountain top. Terrified by this state of affairs the tribesmen decided to cease hostilities and put an end to the siege of Buiskop.

De Buys and his extended family later moved to the foothills of the Soutpansberg of the far northern Limpopo Province where the town of Buysdorp was founded and named after him. He died here in 1821, possibly of yellow fever. 

Buysdorp

A hybrid community - mostly descendants of this remarkable man - still lives in Buysdorp. Some of his offspring became Limpopo guides for the newly arrived Voortrekkers in later decades.

Descendants of Coenraad de Buys

Click HERE, HERE and HERE to read more.