Jan Lion Cachet (29 November 1838 – 21 September 1912) was a minister and professor in the Reformed Church and an early Afrikaans writer and poet.https://www.litnet.co.za/jan-lion-cachet-1838-1912/ Cachet was born to Jewish-Portuguese parents as the younger brother of Frans Lion Cachet.K. ter Laan, Letterkundig woordenboek voor Noord en Zuid (1941) In 1849 the family converted to Christianity.http://www.litnet.co.za/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&news_id=35711&cause_id=1270 LITNET. Die Afrikaanse taal: ’n liefdesgeskiedenis Daniel Hugo In 1861 Cachet emigrated to South Africa as a teacher. He qualified as a minister and later became a professor at the Theological School in Burgersdorp, of which Prof. Dirk Postma was the rector. In 1905 he moved with the theological school to Potchefstroom and a few years later he died.https://weet.co.za/taal/jan-lion-cachet/
Dr. B. Spoelstra describes Cachet in the South African Biographical Dictionary as a preacher of the gospel; he was called by the State President Paul Kruger, also a member of the Reformed Church, to lead a prayer meeting in Pretoria on 27 August 1899 with a view to the impending war. As a professor, he helped train ministers for service to church and people, instead of theologians. Spoelstra also described him as identifying as Jewish, Dutch, and Afrikaner, and as active in church, political, educational, and cultural fields.
In February 1909, he received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau from Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. He is particularly remembered for his poem, "Di Afrikaans Taal", which appeared in Ons Klyntji in 1896, and later in his prose work Sewe duiwels en wad hulle dogen het.HAT Taal-en-feitegids, Pearson, Desember 2013, ISBN 978-1-77578-243-8
Early life
Jan Lion Cachet was born on 29 November 1838 at Krom Boomssloot 3, Amsterdam, one of five children and the third son. In 1849, the entire family, like the Dutch poet Isaac da Costa, converted to Christianity under the influence of the Dutch Réveil movementEsaach: http://www.esaach.org.za/index.php?title=Cachet,_Jan_Lion and were baptized on 30 September 1849 in the Noorderkerk in Amsterdam. Jan attended Isaac da Costa's school and then received missionary training at the seminary of the Free Scottish Church in Amsterdam. He qualified as a religious teacher in 1857 and taught in the Havenlooze school in Amsterdam until 1860.LitNet: http://www.litnet.co.za/jan-lion-cachet-1838-1912/
To South Africa Cachet came to South Africa in January 1861 in response to a call by Dr. William Robertson for teachers and catechists from Europe for the Dutch Reformed Church. His eldest brother and study partner, Frans Lion Cachet, was already working in South Africa at that time. He taught for about two months in the Cape at the school Tot Nut van het Algemeen and then until March 1862 at a small church school (the Dutch Reformed Seminary) in Breëstraat. However, the Cape was at this time largely under the influence of the liberal movement in the church, where he felt at home. So in April 1862 he went to Ladysmith in Natal and taught at a farm school here and then private teaching in the district. On his own he studied various languages and thus became fluent in French, German and English. In Ladysmith he transferred from the Dutch Reformed Church to the Reformed Church and decided in 1865 to qualify as a minister. After private study under the Rev. Dirk Postma (then still minister of Rustenburg) was allowed to be confirmed as minister of the Reformed Church in Rustenburg on 27 July 1868.
To the Reformed Church
In 1869 he was appointed minister of Burgersdorp and served here until the end of 1874. During this time, he became a lecturer at the newly founded Burgersdorp Theological School, which began with five students in 1869. In 1873 he started De Maandebode as an unofficial newspaper of the church, a predecessor of the Church's official organ, Die Kerkblad. His regular contributions, especially aimed at children, appeared in this. After this, he served as minister of Philipstown (1875–1883) and Steynsburg (1883–1891). While in the Cape Colony, he also exerted his influence in the political sphere and was, among other things, a co-founder of the Afrikanerbond and contributed to the drafting of the constitution of this union. He was repeatedly asked to stand for election to the Cape Parliament, but refused because he did not want to submit to the British government. He was a fervent advocate of an Afrikaans translation of the Bible and had been instrumental in its planning since 1886. At his suggestion, the State Bible was taken as the basis.Gereformeerde Kerk Bet-El: http://www.gereformeerd.org/af/geskiedenis/17-jan-lion-cachet
After the death of Postma in 1890, he returned to Burgersdorp as acting professor of Theology until he received his permanent appointment as professor of the Reformed Synod of Reddersburg in 1894. At the Theological School, Totius was one of his students. As the only professor, it was his task to cover the entire field of theology and to teach in all subjects. During this time, he also edited the newspaper De Stem op die dorp. At the first Afrikaans Language Congress held in Paarl on 15 and 16 January 1896, he delivered a lecture on the nature of Afrikaans. Here he also provided valuable input on the translation of the Bible, the establishment of his own magazine (Ons Klyntji) and his own dictionary. According to the first edition of Ons Klyntji in March 1896, the name of this magazine was suggested by him.
The esteem in which his ministry was held is reflected, among other things, in the fact that President Kruger specially invited him to lead a prayer service in Pretoria on 27 August 1899 about the impending war with England. During the Second Boer War, he was arrested in 1901 for high treason and imprisoned in Burgersdorp because he would support the rebellion and make unauthorized contact with the Transvaalers. The reality was that he considered himself called to preach the Word to remote Boer commandos. Well-meaning Englishmen then petitioned for his release and due to a lack of evidence against him, he was released after six weeks. During the war, the continued existence of the Theological School was constantly in the balance. In addition to his own arrest, two curators were also arrested for high treason. His own son Calman Efraim (also a former student of his), three students, including Japie Maré, and another former student died in the Three Years' War. After Calman's death in 1901 at Poortjie near Steynsburg, Cachet wrote the touching poem Leg hem neder naast zijn moeder.
The Theological School was moved to Potchefstroom in 1905, mainly through Totius's efforts, and he and his family then moved to this town, where he was succeeded as professor by Totius in May 1911. Although he was repeatedly invited to stand for election to parliament during this time, he refused to serve in this office under the British crown. However, he made important contributions in the field of education, where he was a strong advocate of Christian-national education and attacked the Smuts Act of 1907 in this regard with his writing Niet om te twisten, maar om wecetens wil. In 1909 he was a founding member of the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns in Bloemfontein.
The Dorsland Trek
The Dorslandtrekkers to South West Africa and Angola, with whom he shared the aversion to the modernist president T.F. Burgers of the South African Republic, appealed to him in 1877 for the "trekende gemeente der Gereformeerde Kerk van Zuid-Afrika". He resigned, but tried in vain while he was still a minister in Philipstown, to reach the trekkers in the Kaokoveld in South West Africa on behalf of a Cape relief committee led by Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr and Rev. Willem Petrus de Villiers and others (1879–80). He succeeded in a second attempt (1881), even visiting them at their residence on St. Januario, Humpata, in Angola, and thereafter served as a church and national informant and liaised for assistance to the Thirstland trekkers.
African national figure Dr. B. Spoelstra writes: "This remarkable converted Jew from the Netherlands rises to become an Afrikaans national figure because of his identification with church and people, his broad spiritual outlook and his prophetic vision for the future of an immature Afrikaans people and language." As a fervent supporter of and collaborator with the Afrikanerbond of Rev. S.J. du Toit, during the 1880s he wrote the column "Black Pills" in Die Afrikaanse Patriot (according to Spoelstra the "first mouthpiece of deliberate national Afrikaans politics") in which he prescribed medicine for national diseases.
He was the political advisor of the Albert district (of which Burgersdorp is the seat) where at that time the national consciousness among Afrikaners was characteristic, and a regular collaborator and even editor of the local newspaper, De Stem. He was a deliberate campaigner in the First Afrikaans Language Movement to elevate Afrikaans from spoken to written language. He writes and composes under various pseudonyms: Ou oom Jan, Pastor, Junior, Neef Jan, Neef Jan who writes verses, Jan the verse-maker, N.N., and others.
In May 1886 he advised the action committee for an Afrikaans Bible translation to translate the authorized Dutch text to prevent church unrest, and advocated at the First Afrikaans Language Congress in Paarl (15 and 16 January 1896) that the Bible translation should come from the churches themselves. Cachet also took a leading part in this congress, which also founded the Afrikaans magazine Ons Klyntji.
In the Second Afrikaans Language Movement he became a founding member of the Zuid-Afrikaanse Akademie voor Taal, Letteren en Kunst in 1909.Koersjournal: http://www.koersjournal.org.za/index.php/koers/article/viewFile/2094/2210
Poetry and writing Under the pseudonym “Neef Jan wat versies maak” he wrote a number of (especially Dacostian-religious) poems in Dutch and Afrikaans and he was one of the first contributors to Di Patriot. His most important poem is probably the allegorical “Di Afrikaanse taal”, which was first published in Ons Klyntji in 1896 and was subsequently regularly included in anthologies. In this, the relationship between Afrikaans, Dutch and English is allegorically indicated by the Boerenooi, her Dutch sister and English niece. Die lewe van prof. Jan Lion Cachet, deur Erika Terblanche. URL besoek op 12 Oktober 2016.
Other well-known poems are Op, op met die Vierkleur (which was later set to music by Professor J. de Villiers and became known and popular as a flag song after the First War of Independence), Die Vierkleur in gevaar! (written when it was clear that the Anglo-Boer War was threatening to break out), Jesus’ Hemelvaart and Jesus is umhool gevaar. Totius se preek op Sondag 22 September 1912 ná prof. Cachet se afsterwe. URL besoek op 12 Oktober 2016.
He also wrote poems in English, including the long, moralizing poem Vita Christi about the life of Christ.
As can be deduced from the titles, the main themes of his poems are nationality, language and religion. Apart from Di Afrikaans taal (which is included in various anthologies, including Groot verseboek, Die Afrikaans poësie in ’n kuisied en enkele gedigte, Afrikaans letterkunde, Eerste stemme, Digters en digkuns, Uit ons letterkunde, Patriot-digters and Die junior digbundel), his poetry, however, fell into oblivion quite quickly. Die Afrikaans liettegessinger first appeared in Ons Klyntji of June 1896 and was later included in Die junior digbundel.