Gert Andries Jacobus Alberts (born 3 January 1836 in

Swellendam Swellendam () is the third oldest town in South Africa (after Cape Town and Stellenbosch), a town with 17,537 inhabitants situated in the Western Cape province. The town has over 50 provincial heritage sites, most of them buildings of Cape D ...

– died 29 March 1927 in

Humpata Humpata is a town and municipality in the province of Huíla, Angola. The municipality had a population of 89,144 in 2014. Humpata was the primary destination of the Trekboers on the Dorsland Trek in the 1870s. These Afrikaners formed the major ...

) was the leader of the First

Dorsland Trek Dorsland Trek (''Thirstland Trek'') is the collective name of a series of explorations undertaken by Boer settlers from South Africa from 1874 to 1881, in search of political independence and better living conditions. The participants, '' Trek ...

. He was a member of the Gereformeerde Kerk (or 'Dopper' church) and served as a church elder (‘kerkraadslid’). Elected leader of the trekkers, he left

Pretoria Pretoria ( ; ) is the Capital of South Africa, administrative capital of South Africa, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to the country. Pretoria strad ...

on 27 May 1874. Alberts led ten families across the

Kalahari The Kalahari Desert is a large semiarid sandy savanna in Southern Africa covering including much of Botswana as well as parts of Namibia and South Africa. It is not to be confused with the Angolan, Namibian, and South African Namib coastal d ...

, taking 50 oxwagons and 1,400 cattle with them. He split the trek in three groups, with a two-day interval between them, to avoid overcrowding the rare waterholes along the path. Three families turned back before they crossed the Kgalagadi Desert, where a handful of cattle were lost during the waterless journey. Reaching

Lake Ngami Lake Ngami is an endorheic lake in Botswana, north of the Kalahari Desert. It is seasonally filled by the Taughe River, an effluent of the Okavango River system flowing out of the western side of the Okavango Delta. It is one of the fragmented re ...

on 29 April 1875, they demanded

Hendrik van Zyl Hendrik Matthys van Zyl (van Zijl), the "Laird of Ghanzi" (19 October 1828 – June 1880) was the first Afrikaner settler in Ghanzi, Botswana. A former politician in Transvaal, he crossed the Kalahari several times and set up a small trading ente ...

, a trader based in

Ghanzi Ghanzi is a town in the middle of the Kalahari Desert the western part of the Republic of Botswana in southern Africa. The region is the country's pride in contributing a large portion towards the beef industry. In fact, Ghanzi farmers provide a ...

with a reputation for ruthlessness, access to his wells, but he initially refused. He ultimately agreed to let them have water, and the trekkers continued to Rietfontein, on the border with

German Southwest Africa German South West Africa () was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 until 1915, though Germany did not officially recognise its loss of this territory until the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. German rule over this territory was punctuated by ...

. The group arrived in Rietfontein in January 1876, and

Andries Lambert Andreas Lambert, also known as Andries Lambert (Khoekhoe language, Nama name: ǃNanib), (c. 1844 – 8 March 1894) was the second Tribal chief, Kaptein of the Kaiǀkhauan (Khauas Nama), a subtribe of the Oorlam people, Orlam, in the eastern are ...

, the

Oorlams The Oorlam or Orlam people (also known as Orlaam, Oorlammers, Oerlams, or Orlamse Hottentots) are a subtribe of the Nama people, largely assimilated after their migration from the Cape Colony (today, part of South Africa) to Namaqualand and Dam ...

captain at

Gobabis Gobabis (, ) is a town in eastern Namibia. It is the regional capital of the Omaheke Region, and the district capital of the Gobabis electoral constituency. Gobabis is in the heart of the cattle farming area. It had a population of 33,418 peop ...

, granted them permission to stay. They remained for a year, leaving only when they received a call for help from the second party of Dorsland Trekkers; they had attempted to cross the Kgalagadi with 500 people in 128 wagons, more than could be supported by the desert environment. Alberts and his group managed to rescue some of them, and they continued their trek, reaching Okavango, where they were struck by

malaria Malaria is a Mosquito-borne disease, mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects vertebrates and ''Anopheles'' mosquitoes. Human malaria causes Signs and symptoms, symptoms that typically include fever, Fatigue (medical), fatigue, vomitin ...

. Over a period of five years, the survivors arrived in the

Highlands, in present-day

Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...

; where Alberts died in 1927.

References

External links

Photo and coordinates of his grave
on Panoramio {{DEFAULTSORT:Alberts, Gert 1836 births 1927 deaths Afrikaner people People from Swellendam Angolan people of Afrikaner descent Cape Colony explorers People from Portuguese Angola