Winning a continent (Voortrekkers)

White version of the Great Trek of the Boer people across South Africa - actually, the invasion of Zulu land. This silent film shows the villainy and treachery of the Zulus and the heroism of the whites.
In 1837, the Dutch settlers in Cape Colony decide to establish a Free Dutch Republic in Natal. Among the settlers who prepare to make the journey are Jan Faber, a Boer youth, and Sabuzu, a Zulu warrior converted to Christianity. An advance party, led by Piet Retief, the newly designated President of the Dutch Republic, goes to the kraal of the Zulu chief, Dingaan, in an attempt to make a treaty, but they have been preceded by two renegade traders, Jenke and Janos, who have turned the black leader against them. Dingaan sends out a band of warriors, who attack the settlers, only to be turned back by the superior firepower of the Boer rifles. Sabuzu kills Dingaan, and the settlers are free to realize their dream of a new nation. // ZONK: In the early 1950's, at the beginning of apartheid, this film was produced by Africans with an all Black African cast. It is a series of musical numbers, relying heavily on American Hollywood stereotypes of the black entertainer. The music ranges from 'Dixie' presentations to Harlem dance-hall, to Broadway top-hat and tie. In imitation of Al Jolson from the American minstrel tradition, one performance presents a black man imitating a white man in blackface.
"Zonk!" confirms that despite the poverty and degradation of township life, the human spirit could triumph through music, producing groups and individual performers of astonishing sophistication and polish, many of them closely modelled on African-American performers.