Tribe honours a Voortrekker

In 2003, the Baphiring tribe in the North West province honoured a Voortrekker, alongside his descendants, amongst them the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pik Botha. Thomas Frederik Dreyer was honoured with a memorial stone on the farm Rietfontein, which he owned in 1840. The farm was part of appropriated land in 1960 for homelands and was later given to the Baphiring tribe. Botha's research of his Dreyer ancestors helped solve a mystery in northern Germany. According to the church records of Grube near Kiel, Johannes Augustus Dreyer, one of the Dreyer progenitor’s 4 sons, disappeared in 1713. When Botha visited the town in 1962, he told them that this son had settled in Africa. In 1717 he married Sara van Wyk at the Cape, and they had 6 children. Thomas was married in 1834 to Susanna Jacoba Hendrina Adriana Janse van Rensburg, according to Gereformeerde Kerk records. They had 13 children, including Christiaan Lourens, father of Maria Elizabeth, Botha's mother.