Klein Vrystaat

Klein Vrystaat (Afrikaans: Little Free State) was a short-lived Boer republic in what is now South Africa.

From around 1876, a group of Boers lived on land bought from the Swazi king Mbandzeni. In 1886, a formal government was formed, following the adoption of a constitution.

King Mbandzeni sold the land, but kept his kingdom. He was another son of Mswati II, ruling from 1875 to 1889.

This state existed until 1891, when it was incorporated into the South African Republic. The flag of the Klein Vrystaat has identical relations to the Transvaal 'Vierkleur' which is the four colors of; a horizontal red-white-blue with a vertical green stripe near the hoist. The width of the green stripe was equal to the height of the horizontal stripes in the Klein Vrystaat flag and 1.25 times this height in the Vierkleur flag.

Little Free State was mainly a European (largely Afrikaner) community located on Swazi-owned land along the kingdom's southwestern border with the Transvaal, which was granted in 1877 by iNgwenyama Mbandzeni Dlamini to two hunters, Joachim Johannes Ferreira and Frans Ignatius Maritz. The land consisted of 36,000 acres (14,580 hectares) northeast of the present town of Piet Retief. What Mbandzeni thought he had granted was in the nature of a permanent grazing concession, but Ferreira and Maritz opened up the territory to Afrikaner settlement and subdivided into small farms. Mbandzeni finally gave them the permission to form their own labndla (council), which led to their establishment of a local government, consisting of a president and council, with its own constitution and laws.

In 1886, the settlers declared their independence as the Little Free State and were able to rebuff Mbandzeni's halfhearted attempts to evict them on the grounds that they had exceeded his mandate. In 1888, Ferreira and Maritz requested that the South African Republic (ZAR) incorporate them into the Transvaal, claiming that Mbandzeni had renounced his authority over them. At that point, Mbandzeni reasserted his sovereignty over the territory and demanded an annual rental payment of £21, but, by then, it was too late. By the terms of the first Swaziland Convention (1890), the Little Free State was incorporated into the ZAR, with the accord of the British, as part of the Piet Retief, Mpumalanga district.

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