Johan Izak Jacobus Fick born on  at Kruisfontein, Olifantshoek, Grahamstown dist., 22.9.1816 – † Ficksburg, 22.9.1892), Orange Free State Commandant-General, was five generations removed from the German founder of the family, Anton Fick, of Lichtenau, near Paderborn, and the second of the four sons born to Paul Hendrik Fick (bapt. 4.8.1776) and his wife Elsie Meyer (bapt. 3.12.1780).

His youth was spent, during an eventful pioneering period, on the eastern Cape frontier. There was little regular schooling, and such education as he received was mainly at the hands of his strict parents and an itinerant schoolmaster. In later life he had a most facile pen but was never able to understand English. While he was still young the death of his father made it necessary for him to assist his eldest brother with the farming. At the age of eighteen he served in the Sixth Frontier War (1834-35) and was twice superficially wounded. Though opposed to the eastern frontier policy of Lord Glenelg,* he adopted a ‘wait and see’ attitude, and remained in the Colony for some years after his mother, two younger brothers and their neighbours had joined Piet Uys’s* party on the Great Trek to the interior. On 5.5.1837 he married Susanna Christina Johanna Fourie (1820-1894), of Uitenhage, who bore him five daughters and six sons, among them being the later Orange Free State commandant, Paul Hendrik Fick, of Ficksburg.

At the end of 1839, after the birth of his eldest son, F. also left the Cape Colony and, after a brief sojourn just beyond the Orange, in what is now the district of Senekal, followed the trail of the Voortrekkers to the Natal Republic. Farming near Umkomaas, he became friendly with Andries Pretorius,* whom he followed when Pretorius quitted Natal late in 1847. For some weeks his trek party halted on the Vaal River while he and his brother, Coenraad Fick, reconnoitred the Transvaal as far as the Marico River, after which he turned back to the Transorangia, and eventually settled in the Caledon River valley.

In 1848, when Pretorius, at the request of the people of Winburg, moved south from the Magaliesberg in an attempt to reverse the annexation of the Transorangia, he appointed a very unwilling F. field-cornet of his district, near present Rosendal. Alarmed by Pretorius’s threats against ‘loyalists’, F. accompanied the commando which engaged Sir Harry Smith’s* force at Boomplaats. In the chaos following the Boer defeat he fled the field on foot, only to be fined 200 rixdollars for his part in the campaign against the British. This experience led him to accept British authority and remain loyal to the new government. Consequently Maj. H. D. Warden* soon made him a field-cornet and, despite his district’s aversion to British rule, F. did his best to carry out his instructions. Before the battle of Viervoet, when the Boers would not help Warden against the Basuto, F. made the mistake of attempting to force the Boers to turn out on commando. The majority, led by Comdt Frederik P. Senekal,* refused, and it was with the merest handful that Fick experienced the humiliation of the defeat at Viervoet in June 1851. After this his pleas on behalf of the ‘Senekal rebels’ induced the British authorities to commute all death sentences to fines. But his continued loyalty to the British regime made him unpopular among his own people.

Initially F. opposed Britain’s intended abandonment of the Orange River Sovereignty but later, having changed his views, he served as one of the Winburg delegates of the Council of Representatives, the members of which negotiated with Sir George Russell Clerk* and signed the Bloemfontein Convention in February 1854.

Before the O.F.S. was a year old he was again prominent, entering Bloemfontein with a commando at the behest of the Volksraad to demand the keys of the residency from deposed President J. P. Hoffman.* The following year F. served as a field-cornet under Senekal during the campaign against Witsi.* In 1857 he led the Winburg commando at the time of the Renoster River incident, when civil war between the Transvaal and the Orange Free State was averted at the last moment.

F. opposed the O.F.S. declaration of war on Moshweshwe* in 1858, partly because of disease among his cattle, but more particularly because he did not regard the O.F.S. as being equal to such an undertaking. So as to be out of reach of the Basuto he trekked, with his cattle, to the neighbourhood of Kroonstad. He returned to public life in June 1858 when he accompanied a Transvaal deputation under S. J. P. Kruger* to Moshweshwe, with whom an agreement was concluded. Thereafter F. again retired to the background until October 1864, when he accompanied the Cape Governor, Sir Philip Wodehouse,* while the O.F.S. – Basuto-land border was being demarcated.

On the outbreak of the second war with the Basuto in 1865, F. was elected Commandant-General. With the aid of Comdt C. J. de Villiers,* he took Paulus Moperi’s* kraal, Mabolela, and breached the defensive line round the mountain stronghold of Thaba Bosigo with successive victories at Leeuwspruit and at Berea, and over Masupha.*

On 8.8.1865 an unsuccessful attack was made on Thaba Bosigo, after which dissension arose, as the southern commandos, which had not been present at F.’s election, would not recognize him as Commandant-General. Comdts Louw Wepener* and De Villiers also held F. responsible for the failure of the first attack on Thaba Bosigo, the result of incorrect information about the precise point of attack. During this quarrelling the military council decided to mount a second attack on the mountain fastness with volunteers under Wepener, who died a hero’s death when the assault proved a fiasco.

F. was, in consequence, accused of incompetence, of having opposed the storming of Thaba Bosigo, and of having vacillated before withdrawing, at the time when he should have been hastening to the aid of Wepener on the mountain slope. Several memorials demanding his dismissal were received by the Volksraad, especially from the southern Free State. But he was given an opportunity to defend himself and retained his post.

After a fruitless siege of twenty-seven days F. left Thaba Bosigo, joined a Transvaal commando under Kruger, overran Malapo’s* kraal, and systematically destroyed the Basutos’ crops prior to annexing the Conquered Territory to the Free State.

Shortly after this the Transvaal commando left for home as a result of a quarrel about the division of captured cattle, while the O.F.S. half-heartedly continued the war. F. failed to maintain discipline and the burghers granted them-selves leave at Christmas, so giving the Basuto the opportunity to invade the O.F.S. and threaten various villages such as Winburg. Early in 1866 F. renewed his attack, driving back the Basuto almost to the Drakensberg range. Malapo surrendered and decided that he and his followers would become subjects of the O.F.S., while Moshweshwe was also compelled to make peace and undertake to guarantee that the Conquered Territory would remain part of the O.F.S.

Subsequently F. assisted in the demarcation and occupation of the Conquered Territory. He did not play a prominent part in the third Basuto War (1867-68) but helped, as an ordinary burgher, to clear infiltrators out of the Conquered Territory. The peace of Aliwal North brought his military career to an end in 1869. He settled on the farm Paul Ficksberg in the Conquered Territory, from where he was occasionally heard of when, for example, he advocated a frontier guard and the establishment of communities, villages and districts in the Conquered Territory, and when he powerfully supported the movement for closer union with the Transvaal. In 1869 Ficksburg was named after him in his honour by the burghers of his district.

Well-built, with a military bearing, and experienced in war on the Cape frontier, F. was an ideal choice as leader against the Basuto. But he employed over-cautious negative tactics, was not always diplomatic, and tended to be indecisive at moments of crisis. The latter weakness led to the justifiable accusation that he had failed to render timely aid on the slopes of Thaba Bosigo to Louw Wepener, whose impulsive nature differed so radically from F.’s.

Shortly before the commemorative ox-wagon journeys in 1938, the centenary year of the Great Trek, the mortal remains of F. and his wife were re interred at the foot of the Fick monument in Ficksburg by their grandsons, Mathhys Daniel Fick and Izak Fick.

There are portraits of F. (infra), in De Volkstem, in Conradie and in Viljoen.