O! South Africa

CHAPTER I

A COUNTRY OF SPECTACULAR VARIETY AND BEAUTY

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein (Ps. 24:1).

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, [there is neither white nor black, neither Zulu nor Xhosa, neither Sotho nor Swazi, there is neither Afrikaner, nor Englishman], there is neither male nor female. . . (Galatians 3:28).

Down near the southern tip, some six thousand miles from the northernmost boundaries of the vast continent of Africa, dangles a small and nondescript cape into the stormy Atlantic ocean. It was named Cape of Storms by the intrepid, Portuguese explorer, Bartolomeu Dias, when he discovered it in 1488. But it is said that King John II of Portugal with different ideas and aspirations, changed its name to Cape of Good Hope in anticipation that its discovery would eventually lead to finding a sea route around the African continent to India.

King John II’s hope was fulfilled nine years later in l497 when Vasco da Gama, also a Portuguese explorer, did indeed sail around the Cape of Good Hope and realized the hoped for a route to India.

The boast of being the southernmost tip of the vast African continent does not belong to The Cape of Good Hope as many erroneously think. This honor belongs to Cape Agulhas, about a hundred miles to the east, reaching about thirty miles farther south into the ocean. Here begins South Africa and stretches northeast for almost a thousand miles to the muddy Limpopo River. East/west, at its widest, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, it measures a little less.

Large as it might seem, South Africa is only about six percent of the land mass of Africa!

It is a country of unusual variety and of unexpected and simply spectacular beauty in some places. Slightly north of the Cape of Good Hope, Table Mountain rises suddenly and majestically to three thousand feet above the sea that plays at its foot — so named because of its flat top, frequently covered by a white cloth of clouds that appears mysteriously from the cold Atlantic Ocean in the west and evaporates as it rolls off on its warmer, western slope, influenced by the warmer Indian Oceaan. It towers over the ocean and surroundings like a giant sentinel, watching over the vast continent of Africa.

The Sentinel

Table Mountain

Table Mountain is part of a mountain cluster with Devil’s Peak, Lion’s Head, and the short twelve pointed range, called the Twelve Apostles. If South Africa would be compared to a symphony, the beauty of this area would clearly be the majestic opening chords of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

From a low lying plain around the southeastern coast the terrain rises dramatically through steps of mountain ranges. In some places these mountains, along the eastern parts, silhouette up to 11,000 feet against clear blue skies. In between the traveler traverses high, undulating plains that stretch for hundreds of miles at an altitude of between four to six thousand feet above sea level! This is the famous high veld (high pasture). Northward the high veld tapers off to a lower altitude into the warmer middle veld, and into the subtropical low veld. This is not pasture anymore, but the bush veld. Part of it stretches into the tropical zone north of the Tropic of Capricorn which cuts through the country’s northernmost part.

Rainfall is varied as are the landscape and vegetation. The southern tip of South Africa enjoys Mediterranean climate with winter rain brought on by the band of western passage winds that circles the globe. This rain producing band shifts northward and touches the Cape area in the winter. The warm gulf stream that flows southward from the tropics skirts the east coast and renders it quite mild. Palm trees grow in Cape town.

The rest of the country depends on the northeast passage winds to bring it summer precipitation. Much of the rainfall is spilled east of and on the high mountain ranges as clouds negotiate their ridges, spaced from one hundred to several hundred miles from the east coast. The rest of the country has to share what is left over of the moisture, and what is left over decreases significantly the further the weather systems blow westward.

Not much more than halfway across the country the Kalahari Desert begins already, and rainfall diminishes even more to the west coast. It is livestock country with incredibly large farms to subsist.

Yet, if heavy rains should by chance fall in these parts, especially in a section of the northwestern Cape Province, the Karroo and Namakwa Land, within a few weeks, it is literally transformed into an unbelievable fairyland garden as far as the eye can see, painted in the vibrant colors of portulaca, daisies, and many other wild flowers.

Namakwaland Daisies, by favor of Mac and Maria van der Merwe, author’s late Brother-in-law and sister

South Africa constantly struggles with a water problem. There never seems to be enough of it.

CHAPTER II

ACCIDENTAL, UNINTENTIONAL SETTLEMENT

South Africa’s history of settlement began sooner than it would have been due to a shipwreck in l647. A Dutch vessel, the Haerlem, foundered in Table Bay in a fierce storm near present-day Cape Town. The ship would cast unwitting, temporary colonists on Southern Africa soil, and began a whole new era.

The shipwrecked sailors were able to salvage some seed from their vessel, and in the interest of self-preservation, and practical as the Dutch usually are, they began to garden. They found to their surprise that the area was most suitable for raising vegetables. When, about a year later, they were picked up by a passing ship and returned to Holland, a report was made to the directors of the Dutch East India Company, The Gentlemen Seventeen. It recommended that a halfway station be started where they had struggled a year or more. Its purpose would be to grow vegetables and to provide their ships’ crews with sorely needed fresh produce.

On these long voyages to India that took a year, scurvy was a plague, caused by salt fish and lack of fresh vegetables or fruit. It killed many a sailor. The experiment caused by a shipwreck bore fruit. The idea found great favor with the Heeren Sewentien — Gentlemen Seventeen, but it was not until April l652 that three ships landed under Commander Jan van Riebeeck to start a midway station. It was a business enterprise for profit of a private company, and not a colonization planned by the Dutch Government at all.

Reports have it that the earliest whites who set foot on soil at the southern tip of Africa found some beech combers who were of lighter skin and not Negroid.

Planned or not, the midway station in due time became a colony as some company employees moved away to be on their own as free burghers.

The colony expanded slowly. Some Bushmen of small stature, and not negroid, were encountered as the colonists moved inland. Finally, it is reported that in l779, more than a century after the midway station was founded, black people were seen, probably Xhosas, most likely some four hundred miles east of Cape town.

The unintentional Dutch colony thrived and more and more colonists from Holland immigrated to increase the numbers.

Beginning in l688 an influx of new, and different colonists began — French Huguenots who had fled France and taken refuge in Protestant Holland. Some Therons, as far as I can determine, arrived early and some as late as 1714. Nevertheless, in 2000 there are bout 24,000 Therons in the Republic of South Africa, far outnumbering the 6000 still found in France!

Many of the Huguenots settled in what became known as Franshoek (French Corner). True to their origin in southern France they were skilled in raising grapes and making wine. Tradition has it that most of the new arrivals were purposely settled among the colonists of Dutch origin to prevent cliques and a separate nationality, a little France, from developing. They spoke the same Calvinistic, religious language as the Dutch settlers, which no doubt aided greatly in their eventual, complete assimilation into the population. Subsequent generations lost the French language completely and only a few remnants of its influence remained in the local Dutch tongue which in due time developed away from Dutch as it was spoken in the mother country during the seventeenth century, becoming the Afrikaans language. Today this language has grown to the mother tongue of the largest single nationalistic group of South African citizens.

The Huguenot settlers gave up their language, but family names were retained which explains why the surnames of many South Africans are of French origin.

In addition to exquisite wine, cuisine, and surnames, they also left a lasting legacy of a much more evangelical type of Calvinism than came from Holland.

Subsequent to the French Huguenots, there also came a group of German settlers under Baron von Stutterheim. Their language corresponded sufficiently enough to Dutch and they were more easily assimilated as far as language went. Many German surnames also remain. My first teacher in grammar school, a Mr. Anamann, was of German descent, although it is not certain that his origins go back to the von Stutterheim settlers.

Donkeys Don’t mind the Namakwaland Flower Landscape, by favor of Willem and Delina Strydom, the author’s late brother-in-law and sister.

It did not take long for the colonists to discover what a spectacular world they were living in.

The Dutch colony of the Cape of Good Hope, under governors appointed from Holland, flourished doing a lively trade with ships to and from the Far East. The colonists were evidently very happy. Some became quite wealthy.

Then the French Revolution shook up Europe and much of the world, followed by the Napoleonic Wars. These events in Europe would affect South Africa radically and change its history for ever. Real threat, or not, in 1795 England occupied the Cape of Good Hope Colony under the pretense to protect it for Holland against a possible French invasion. In l803 the colony was dutifully returned to Holland.

But in 1806 English ships returned, soldiers landed, and after a few minor skirmishes, the colony was taken by force from Holland, in spite of having been a staunch ally against France. Such is colonial expansion.

The American Revolutionary War ensued, and on July 4th 1776 one of the world history’s most important events was registered with the declaration of independence of thirteen of England’s American colonies. It had robbed England of valuable expansion in the new world, and expansion in Africa was a welcome compensation, even at the expense of a friend. This was highhanded and open robbery for all to see and politicians in England must have been somewhat conscience smitten, so little so, that they eventually paid Holland the magnanimous sum of £50,000 for the loss of its colony.

Occupying, or grabbing a neighbor’s colony, usually had some noble pretenses paraded in the press to camouflage greed. Small wonder that subsequent to the takeover of the Cape, these shams did not lag far behind. To demonstrate to the world that the occupation was morally justified, because of Dutch maladministration, all sorts of accusations were collected against colonists. An extensive docket of cases was drawn up and a circuit court was set up to hear and adjudicate complaints brought by nonwhites against whites. Of course, all this was duly disseminated worldwide.

The colonists were stern people who believed in the saying, spare the rod and spoil the child. Corporeal punishment was common for their own children and they disciplined their servants and slaves the same way. In some cases there were no doubt accesses in dealing with servants.

The proceedings of the court began in l8l2 and droned on for several years to the dismay and gross aggravation of the colonists. The court was derisively dubbed The Black Circuit. Although some accusations, no doubt, had some foundation, it was to a large extent a much ado about nothing. Little was proved, but in the process many innocent people were falsely accused and smeared. Last, but by no means least, antagonism and ill will were irretrievably and most foolishly sown by the new regime against itself.

It would not have been so bad, had it not been that conditions in other British colonies, e. g. India, and even in Britain itself, were deplorable and treatment of servants the world over at that time were most likely not much different from what obtained in the Cape Colony. The Black Circuit would live in infamy in South African history.

Instead of making friends and promoting goodwill, the stage was soon set for irreversible antagonism, and confrontation that would snowball as more political and social blunders were committed. Related to the infamous Black Circuit, a minor rebellion with loss of life was staged in l815.

A certain farmer, F. C. Bezuidenhout, had failed to answer a summons to appear in court on mistreatment charges. When an arresting party arrived, he opened fire and he himself was killed in the ensuing shootout. Other burghers were ready and joined in the uprising. Eventually, about sixty of them were arrested. Five of them were hanged. This unfortunate event had struck the colonists to the heart. It was not only symbolic and symptomatic of an ever growing rift and festering antagonism, but it also widened the gap of growing enmity against their new British masters.

With all this, sensational news was made abroad. The raw accusations of the Black Circuit became news of the day. Alleged charges of cruelty and mistreatment were broadcast loudly from rooftops, but eventual disproof and dismissal of such charges, perhaps not until years later, merely merited a whisper. It seems that once bleeding hearts, sensationalists, and muck rakers get hold of a theme that they cherish, especially bad news, they will beat it to death for decades, if not for centuries, hammering people to believe it without proof.

One case served before the black Circuit was about a white woman who allegedly had scoured the feet of a black woman with hot water for punishment. The truth did come out in court. The black woman was intoxicated and had fallen asleep outside during the night where her feet got frost bitten. To help her, her employer had put her feet in warm water!

So it seems a perception about the colonists was set in motion that could not easily be expunged. Perhaps it is not too far fetched that the attitude against present day South African whites had its origins in the beginning of the nineteenth century already. As the South African saying goes: If you want to beat a dog, you can always find a stick.

The British were set on a definite course to Anglicize their Cape Colony, as the original, mouthful name was later abbreviated. (It might be symbolic that the name was deprived of its high ideal of Good Hope, because from now on good hope would be tossed to the winds.)

In striving to achieve this goal of Anglicizing the colony as fast as possible, another, serious blunder was made in a decree that abolished Dutch as the official language. It was the only language that the colonists knew and could use. They were at a total loss now at such simple things as going to a post office, let alone have an intelligent participation in court proceedings, official contracts, and politics.

The colonists who had moved out to the eastern frontier were more and more running into the Xhosa tribe that had moved southward and now made their home in the eastern part of the Cape Colony. They seemed to have had a philosophy of what is yours is mine. So, stealing life stock became common. The frontier had soon become a dangerous place to live.

The British seemed at first to have had a cavalier attitude in dealing with the problems of the colonists on the border and thought they could easily settle matters with the stroke of a pen in a treaty. Well, as the South African saying went, these treaties they might as well have written on their stomachs, and wiped off with their shirts. They availed nothing and the pioneers felt neglected and unprotected against plundering, and in danger of life and limb.

Eventually, the colonial government tried to solve the problem by declaring a section between two rivers, running north to south, as a no man’s land. But such an arrangement, decreed apartheid, impressed the Xhosas as little as a treaty and the situation remained a thorn in the flesh for both government and colonists alike.

With the British occupation had also arrived the British missionaries. Some of them were of a liberal ilk who espoused the philosophy of the natural goodness of man in sharp contrast to the colonists’ concept of the human being. The colonists were predominantly Calvinists who believed in original sin and the depravity of man, including themselves. If the uncivilized of the world were so good, why evangelize them at all? It might have been better had they been driven back into the bush, and not been contaminated with the Gospel.

In keeping with the policy of Anglicizing the colony, British families were recruited to emigrate and to settle there. Many of them were dazzled by the thought of owning what by their standards were inordinately large estates.

In l820 about four thousand English settlers came. They were settled in the eastern part of the colony, close to rampant Xhosa trouble.

The Cape government commandeered the colonists and their wagons to transport the immigrants to their new estates. They had no choice but to do so and unloaded the families on these estates in the wide open with their belongings and waved them goodbye. The plots were too small for the type of farming in the area where they were settled and many of them knew little or nothing about farming anyway, especially in an entirely different climate and country. But they spoke English only.

Many of the settlers soon found out that they had been sold a bill of goods and left for towns where they could practise a trade, or earn a living by doing something other than farming a plot of raw land.

In the course of the nineteenth century the inhumanity of slavery had finally and irretrievably caught up with the conscience of western civilization.

Slavery was still practised in the Cape Colony, as it was in other parts of the world, including the southern states of the United States of America. In the Cape Colony the majority of slaves were concentrated in areas closer to Cape town. The further into the interior, the fewer slaves were found, probably because slave labor was more needed in intensive farming of land to cultivate grapes and to make wine, and to grow wheat, fruit, and other crops, rather than in husbandry. People in the older, more settled areas also were most likely wealthier and could afford a slave or two.

Agitation in England to abolish slavery in the Cape Colony fell in line quite well with how justified England had been in annexing the Dutch colony.

In l833 the British Parliament passed the emancipation act by which slaves in the colonies would be set free. There would be a period of apprenticeship and full liberty would come in l838.

The slave owners, some of whom had large amounts invested in their slaves, were to be compensated by the British government, although at a rather small fraction of their original cost. A large sum was voted for the redemption of slaves from their owners for the Empire. But there was a catch. The colonists found out that the fraction that they would get, could not be collected in the Cape Colony. A slave owner had to travel six thousand miles to London to collect and then back again! It would have been better, if no compensation had been promised and decreed at all.

Abolition of slavery did not seem to have been a problem with most of the colonists, as statements by some of them at that time indicate (of course, there would be exceptions), but the manner in which it was botched up spelled real trouble. The five years of apprenticeship was a pipe dream.

Slaves, who had nothing of their own, and who did not arrange to stay employed by their former masters, were virtually forced to steal in order to live. Many of them congregated at the mission stations that were already a thorn in the flesh with their liberalism and with large numbers of freeloaders.

Three decades of arrogant British rule had done nothing but create a yawning chasm between Dutch speaking colonists and their foreign, English speaking government. Each was sitting on its own mountain of irreconcilable philosophies of life, attitudes, practices, and aspirations.

CHAPTER III

THE GREAT TREK — LIBERTY AND INDEPENDENT REPUBLICS

The Anguish of Change, by favor of Keith Joubert

Keith Joubert did not name this painting. It clearly depicts the change of mankind in the course of its long, long history. On the far left is the primitive with the bushmen hunting depending on the praying mantis to point out where game would be by wagging its head in one direction or another, and since game was still plentiful, the praying mantis was always right. The snakes with horns (and there are indeed snakes with horns) could well symbolize the story of the fall of Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden. On the far right is a much later development, the cow, the sheep, two people tumbling down a mineshaft, and the cog representing industry. But below there still remains the snake, now without horns, symbolizing evil, and naked bushmen, in confusion running in opposite directions. Somehow, despite civilization, the human being remains primitive. And in the middle is poor man, between the past and the future, with anguish carved out in his face. He still dreams of the past with faint images of an elephant the a giraffe over him, and behind him are his bow and arrow.

The author named the painting The Anguish of Change, for in it Joubert most masterfully depicts without too many brush strokes what this trek would mean to southern Africa in the long run.

Disenchantment, utter dissatisfaction, and growing animosity in the hearts of many of the colonists finally climaxed in a massive migration. It began with a small trek in the early l830s. It had disappeared in the uncharted hinterland without leaving a trace. But the exodus took on formidable proportions between l835 and l838 when about l2,000 men, women, and children packed their covered wagons, left the jurisdiction of a hated government and a beautiful colony, and lumbered northwestward into the uncharted, wild interior of southern Africa with their small covered oxwagons in search of independence and self-determination.

"Full many a flower is born to blush, unsee,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air," Thomas Gray

It is of no small significance that among these trekkers were some of the l820, English settlers themselves. Within less than two decades they could not take their own government any longer.

Each covered wagon was equipped with a box up front on which the driver could sit and in which they stored valuables. It was the pride of these pioneers that in these wagon boxes, was one of their most cherished possessions — the Bible.

They were deeply religious people and gathered frequently around their wagons for devotions at eventide. While they believed in the sinfulness of the human being, they also regarded the human being as created in the image of God. This applied, regardless of color. As a consequence, they could never subscribe to the philosophy that the only good, black man was a dead, black man. Extermination was never their policy, although they had plenty of opportunity and the means to wipe out native tribes.

It is hard to imagine the anguish to leave a beautiful land, eventually to confront what they rightly called the Dragon Mountains.

Even after l838 a small trickle of trekkers would follow. My own great-grandfather, Dawid de Villiers, with his wife, Magdalena de Villiers, nee Louw, and their children trekked by ox wagon in the early l860s to what had by then become the Oranje Frei Staat. The Therons, my father’s side of our family, stuck it out in the Cape Colony.

Eventually, with the influx of white culture, the anguish of change, so masterfully depicted by Joubert on the face of the black man, had to come to the black people who had lived contently for millennia with the status quo.

Crossing the Dragon Mountains with Jawbone Ox Wagons,

by favor of Jacques Malan, Rytuie van Weleer

It is sad, if not reprehensible, that these pioneers were immediately accused of trekking from the Cape Colony because they were in favor of slavery and would reinstate it. Some English speaking people, even in South Africa, hold to this belief to this day. Truth of the matter is that most of the pioneers had left the eastern part of the colony where there were few slaves; and fewer pioneers came from areas around Cape Town where most of the slaves had been concentrated and freed. But when people want to beat a dog, they usually find a stick, and if they can not find a stick, by golly, they dream one up and fabricate it.

The pioneers crossed the