Transvaal, former province of
South Africa. It occupied the northeastern part of the country. The
Limpopo River marked its border with
Botswana and
Zimbabwe to the north, while the
Vaal River marked its boundary with
Orange Free State province to the south. It was bounded by
Mozambique and
Swaziland to the east and by
Cape Province to the west. The Transvaal’s name, which means “across the Vaal,” originated with the Afrikaners who in the 1830s migrated to the region after crossing the Vaal River.
The land between the Limpopo and Vaal rivers was originally inhabited by the
Sotho,
Venda, and other Bantu-speaking peoples. In the 1820s and ’30s they were unsettled by invasions of the
Ndebele and other Bantu tribes fleeing from the warring
Zulu. Another migration was that of seminomadic pastoral Afrikaner farmers called
Voortrekkers, or
Boers, who in the mid-1830s began to probe northward beyond the borders of the
Cape Colony with the aim of organizing an exodus from British-controlled territory. Some 12,000 of these Boer emigrants moving northward from the Cape crossed the Vaal River and entered the area, where they settled in isolated farms. After driving the Ndebele north of the Limpopo River in November 1837, the Voortrekker leader
Hendrik Potgieter was able to claim all of the land between it and the Vaal River.