Drakensberger

The Drakensberger is indigenous to South Africa and was developed over a period of several centuries. After Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape in 1497 he briefly went ashore to acquire a black ox from the local native people in exchange for three bracelets. Da Gama subsequently paid tribute to the excellent quality of its meat. This is history's first recording of the black cattle of the Cape.

Nearly four hundred years later, at the time of the Great Trek, several voortrekker families left the Cape to travel north with teams of the same black oxen then known by the name of Vaderland cattle. Most of these trekkers settled along the Drakensberg range, among them the Uys family who began farming in the present-day Volksrust area. The latter's dedicated contribution to the improvement and maintenance of the breed's purity was universally acknowledged, and in due course the name of the breed was changed to Uys cattle.

This name remained unchanged until 1947 when the Drakensberger Cattle Breeders Society of South Africa was formed to receive immediate official recognition. By that time the black cattle had become known as Drakensbergers because of their widespread concentration in the mainly sourveld Drakensberg region, beginning at Dordrecht in the Cape and stretching east and north over a distance of more than a thousand kilometres.    more...