The anniversary of the Battle of Blood River, celebrated every December 16, is one of the most sacred events on the boer calendar. In 1838, a boer voortrekker (pioneer) leader, Piet Retief, was slain in the kraal of the Zulu king, Dingaan. In retaliation, vastly outnumbered voortrekkers inflicted a massive and bloody defeat on the Zulus. Today the Zulus and right-wing descendants of the voortrekkers have formed an extraordinary alliance to fight transition to black majority rule under Nelson Mandela's ANC. Will December 16 1993 be the flashpoint that sends South Africa into its bloodiest war? THE 19-year-old blonde gets up at dawn to milk her father's precious Holstein cows and read the Bible. She studies for her black belt in karate, practises shooting and reads survival magazines. Despite losing a leg to cancer nine months ago, she climbs the peaks around her family's dairy farm.
But Jackie von Maltitz's weekends are reserved for her most important work: helping to prepare her people for the war she is sure is coming to South Africa.
With her father, she runs a military training camp on farmland in the shadows of the Maluti mountains, close to the Lesotho border.
The Orange Free State, where evolution came to a standstill a century ago, is the home of the boerevolk, the tough tribe of white farmers who broke away from their Afrikaner brothers in the 1830s to escape British rule, and trekked to the north.
Generation after generation has learned to have faith in God, guns, hard work and the white man. That lesson was rarely more eagerly grasped than by Jackie von Maltitz, child of the Maluti Mountains.
The weekend training conducted by the Von Maltitz's is deeply religious and serious affair.
With their khaki clothes, bush hats, determined expressions and guns, they eerily resemble faded photographs of their forefathers who fought the British in the Boer War nearly a century ago.