Roman Catholic clergyman battled the British Empire with his pen

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Marthinus


Friedrich Carl Kolbe, Roman Catholic clergyman and editor of The South African Catholic Magazine.

Friedrich Carl Kolbe, Roman Catholic clergyman and editor of The South African Catholic Magazine.


By MARTHINUS VAN BART

A remarkable Anglo-Boer War anthology, Songs of the Veld and Other Poems, which was published in 1902 in London and subsequently banned in South Africa, was conceptualized in Cape Town, South Africa, during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) when martial law prohibited any public protest against the war and the atrocities committed by the British troops on the citizens.

No mass meetings of protest  were allowed, and articles in newspapers and magazines, even ordinary letters in the ordinary citizen’s mail service, were sensored by the military.

Six intellectuals, eduactionists and journalists, based in Cape Town then in defiance wrote anti-war poetry and sent it to The New Age, an important literary magazine in London with a worldwide circulation to all countries where the English language was read. The New Age published these poems anonymously from time to time, and the readers world wide reacted in the same vein by submitting their own anti-war poems condemning  Britain and its immoral war.

In 1902 the best poems were selected and published in the anthology  Songs of the Veld and Other Poems.

The copies sent to Cape Town by ship were seized by the British authorities in Cape Town dockyard and destroyed.

In 2008 it was reprinted and published for the first time in 106 years in South Africa.

Songs of the Veld and Other Poems, left, and the six intellectuals who battled Britain with the pen. On the left from top to bottom is C. Louis Leipoldt, journalist, Elizabeth Molteno, educationist, and Anna Purcell, journalist. On the right from top to bottom is Friedrich Carl Kolbe, clergyman, educationist and journalist, Albert Cartwright, journalist, and Alice Greene, educationalist.

Songs of the Veld and Other Poems, left, and the six intellectuals who battled Britain with the pen. On the left from top to bottom is C. Louis Leipoldt, journalist, Elizabeth Molteno, educationist, and Anna Purcell, journalist. On the right from top to bottom is Friedrich Carl Kolbe, clergyman, educationist and journalist, Albert Cartwright, journalist, and Alice Greene, educationalist.

One of these Cape Town poets was a Roman Catholic clergyman, Monsignor Friedrich Carl Kolbe, editor of The South African Catholic Magazine.

In 1876 he joined the Roman Catholic Church  and studied theology at the Vatican for five years. On graduation he was awarded a gold medal for his outstanding academic achievements. In 1882 he was ordained a priest.

In The South African Catholic Magazine his editorials were very outspoken. He repudiated the British Empire for its “unrighteous capitalistic war”.

He was subsequently removed from his position by the Church authorities, who were pro-British. It was only after the war that he was allowed to resumed his work at the The South African Catholic Magazine. He then dedicated himself to the arts, literature and education.

Friedrich Carl Kolbe was through his struggle against evil an outstanding and remarkable person, indeed a Christian in the strictest sense of the word. It is truly strange that the Roman Catholic Church has not yet honoured him for his humanitarian work in South Africa and his stance for civilization as a true Soldier for the Faith.

St. Mary's Cathedral in Cape Town where Friedrich Carl Kolbe was the editor of the South African Roman Catholic Magazine. Photo: Marthinus van Bart

St. Mary's Cathedral in Cape Town where Friedrich Carl Kolbe was the editor of the South African Roman Catholic Magazine. Photo: Marthinus van Bart

Biographics:

FRIEDRICH CARL KOLBE (1854-1936) was a Roman Catholic priest (Monsignor), theologian, lawyer, philosopher, journalist, critic, botanist, educationalist, poet and writer. His father, Friedrich Wilhelm, was a missionary of the Rhenish Missionary Society and rector of the Congregationalist Missionary Church at Paarl. Kolbe’s mother, Isabella Elliott, was a granddaughter of the well known magistrate H.L. Bletterman of Stellenbosch. The Reverend Abraham Faure, an uncle of Anna (Faure) Purcell, was married to a sister of Kolbe’s maternal grandmother.

Kolbe could read from the Bible at the age of four and from his sixth year he was taught Latin by his father. In 1862 he left for Blackheath, London, for his formal education. He came first in his class for five consecutive years. By his twelfth year he had read all Shakespeare’s works and studied Greek. In 1869 he returned to Cape Town.

The Lion Gate of SA Collage School (SACS) where Friedrich Carl Kolbe lectured private lessons in Latin and arithmetic.

The Lion Gate of SA Collage School (SACS) where Friedrich Carl Kolbe lectured private lessons in Latin and arithmetic.

The Reverend Andrew Murray jr. endeavoured to enlist Kolbe as student in theology at the Stellenbosch Seminary of the Dutch Reformed Church, but the young man preferred to study at the SA College. To pay for his studies, he gave private lessons in Latin and arithmetic at the SA College School (SACS). In 1874 he became the first graduate at the SA College as well as the first BA graduate registered on the graduandi roll of the newly established University of the Cape of Good Hope.

The South African College, later University of the Cape of Good Hope, where Kolbe in 1874 became the first graduate as well as the first BA graduate registered on the graduandi roll of the newly established University of the Cape of Good Hope.

The South African College, later University of the Cape of Good Hope, where Kolbe in 1874 became the first graduate as well as the first BA graduate registered on the graduandi roll of the newly established University of the Cape of Good Hope.

Shortly hereafter he received a bursary to study at the London University College where he obtained his B.A. and LL.B. degrees cum laude and was admitted to the Inner Temple. In 1876 he joined the Roman Catholic Church  and studied theology at the Vatican for five years. On graduation he was awarded a gold medal for his outstanding academic achievements. In 1882 he was ordained a priest. In his 28th year he was offered a professorship in philosophy at St. Edmund’s College in England, but he declined as he wanted to return to Cape Town.

In Cape Town he lectured at the teachers’ training institute for Roman Catholic schools. For 20 years he was an external examiner for Literature and Philosophy at the University of Cape Town. In later life this remarkable man was awarded two honorary doctorates by, respectively, the University of Cape Town and the University of South Africa. He was co-founder of the Michaelis Art School at UCT.

The University of the Cape of Good Hope Administration Centre, now the Centre of the Book, a satellite of the SA National Library. Photo: Marthinus van Bart

The University of the Cape of Good Hope Administration Centre, now the Centre of the Book, a satellite of the SA National Library. Photo: Marthinus van Bart

In 1886 Kolbe became editor of The South African Catholic Magazine, organ of the Roman Catholic Church in Cape Town. He also began to devote more time to his interest in die sciences, such as botany and geology. He befriended the well known botanists drr. W.F. Purcell (Anna Purcell’s husband)  Rudolph Marloth and Harry Bolus, as well as Leipoldt, with whom he also shared an interest in literature and journalism.

In 1887 Kolbe wrote the anthem of the University of the Cape of Good Hope, later renamed the University of Cape Town. His cousin dr. J.H. Meiring Beck set it to music.

One of Kolbe’s poems, “Two June Pictures”, dated June 18, 1901, was published in The New Age and included in Songs of the Veld.

The Doornkop Monument of 1898, designed by Anton van Wouw, scultor of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. It was never built, as the Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1899. The Boers lost the war and the British never erected it to commemorate the victory in 1897 of the Boers over the Jameson and Rhodes Raiders.

The Doornkop Monument of 1898, designed by Anton van Wouw, scultor of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. It was never built, as the Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1899. The Boers lost the war and the British never erected it to commemorate the victory in 1897 of the Boers over the Jameson and Rhodes Raiders.

Shortly before the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War, Kolbe noted how the disconcerting capitalist scenario was unfolding around the person of Cecil John Rhodes. Although he admired Rhodes as an interesting person of wide reading, the Jameson Raid filled him with horror. With the appearance of Lord Alfred Milner on the scene, he realised that the Empire-builders had set their sights on the gold of the Transvaal Republic and would do anything in their power to get hold of it. Kolbe wrote cautionary articles in The South African Catholic Magazine, sharpening his tone as the war clouds were gathering around the Boer republic, later around the whole of South Africa. He took a strong stance against the war and pointed out the evil of capitalist greed and lust for power which threatened to completely divide the different South African communities. It would be a “unjust war” of “hipocracy and greed”, causing a terrible loss of lives and property. He particularly singled out Lord Alfred Milner and Joseph Chamberlain as warmongering exploiters and accused Chamberlain of conspiring with Rhodes and Jameson in the failed Jameson Raid.
A Boer farmstead being burnt down by the British military.

A Boer farmstead being burnt down by the British military.

“It is not the first time that England has used a lofty moral cry to hide the purposes of a monstrous injustice”, he wrote in the June 1899 edition of The South African Catholic Magazine, IX, no 102. He concluded his editorial, “The Transvaal Crisis”, with: “Mine may be only a voice in the wilderness, but I earnestly protest against this threat of an unrighteous war, and if the war is actually entered upon, I for one have no desire to see the imperial arms successful. I will not wish God-speed to my country in an unjust cause.” (Hale 2003:[9])

Kolbe was initially sharply attacked in the Cape pro-British press, especially in the Eastern Cape newspaper The Cape Mercury. When he persevered in his single-handed campaign, he was forced by the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church to resign. He was immediately replaced by an accommodating editor who delivered pure pro-Empire and anti-Boer propoganda for this journal.

The South African News in Keerom Street, Cape Town, which Kolbe joined after he was dismissed by the Roman Catholic Church as editor of the Sout African Catholic Magazine.

The South African News in Keerom Street, Cape Town, which Kolbe joined after he was dismissed by the Roman Catholic Church as editor of the Sout African Catholic Magazine.

When the editor of the Cape Town pro-Boer newspaper South African News, Albert Cartwright, was imprisoned at the Tokai jail under martial law from April 1901 to the end of March 1902,  Kolbe wrote editorials for the paper from June to October 1901 and gave his renumeration to Cartwright’s family.

Albert Cartwright, editor-in-chief of the South African News. He was jailed for writing about the war crimes of the British military in South Africa.

Albert Cartwright, editor-in-chief of the South African News. He was jailed for writing about the war crimes of the British military in South Africa.

Kolbe now changed his strategy of direct confrontational attacks in The South African Catholic Magazine to that of a more cautious, satirical style. Using sophisticated metaphors based on the characters and situations in Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) he launched attacks on the Empire-builders, the Cape government and British martial law.[1] Because of this, as well as sharply critical editorials by Leipoldt, at the youthful age of 19 acting editor in the absence of Cartwright, the directors of The South African News were eventually forced to close down their paper from October 15, 1901 till after the Peace of Vereeniging, reopening on August 2, 1902.

In March and April 1901 Australian soldiers attacked the newspaper building, destroying the printing equipment and wrecking the offices.

Kolbe, who associated himself with the Cape Liberals before the outbreak of the war, in 1900 participated in protest gatherings across the Cape Colony. In a speech at the National Congress (Volkskongres) of December 6, 1900 at Worcester, he launched an attack on Britain’s war against the Boer republics, the concentration camps and the banishing of Boer prisoners of war to camps abroad. Kolbe pointed out that Britain ignored the national aspirations of the Afrikaners. He also said South Africa must constitutionally develop in such a way that the country is governed by South Africans and not by Britain.

Richard Caton-Woodville, British war artist, made this painting of an actual incident in the Anglo-Boer War. British soldiers burnt down the homestead of a Boer officer and put his daughter and mother in a concentration camp. His wife had died before the war. The horses were put in their stable and the stable put alight, burning the animals to death.

Richard Caton-Woodville, British war artist, made this painting of an actual incident in the Anglo-Boer War. British soldiers burnt down the homestead of a Boer officer and put his daughter and mother in a concentration camp. His wife had died before the war. The horses were put in their stable and the stable put alight, burning the animals to death.

After the war he resumed his work at the The South African Catholic Magazine and dedicated himself to the arts, literature and education. Only during the First World War (1914-1918) and the Rebellion against the South African Party-government of Louis Botha and Jan Smuts (1914), he ventured into the political arena again. In a pamphlet in Afrikaans and English, “The national crisis: an appeal to the Afrikaner nation”, he appealed to the Afrikaners to stand united.

In 1926 the Hertzog-government requested Kolbe to serve on the Flag Committee for the design of a National Flag, which served as the South African flag till 1994.

In Kolbe’s only (identified) poem in Songs of the Veld, “Two June Pictures”, dated June 18, 1901, he contrasts the beauty of spring in England with war-torn South Africa with its burned down houses, the scorched, dry earth, the cold rain and the whimpering of the hungry and diseased children in the heavily guarded concentration camps – innocent blood which rests on the head of a proud England.

The journalist, poet and medical doctor C. Louis Leipoldt hailed Friedrich Carl Kolbe as a national Afrikaner hero of South Africa. He was truly a Soldier of God, going off to war for righteousness and the common good of mankind.

The journalist, poet and medical doctor C. Louis Leipoldt hailed Friedrich Carl Kolbe as a national Afrikaner hero of South Africa. He was truly a Soldier of God, going off to war for righteousness and the common good of mankind.

Was it not for the post-war Afrikaners’ Protestant prejudice against Kolbe’s Roman Catholic beliefs, he probably would have been hailed an Afrikaner hero. At Kolbe’s death in 1941 Leipoldt in an orbituary said: “We must hail him as our greatest, culturally most powerful Afrikaner we have brought forth so far. In the cultural field he possesses the same importance as does (pres. Paul) Kruger for our national conciousness.” Leipoldt strongly dissaproved of the “prejudice against one of our own people who became a Roman Catholic.” Especially some Afrikaans (Protestant) clergymen resented Leipoldt’s sentiments.

* Songs of the Veld and Other Poems can be ordered from the publisher, Cederberg Publishers of Cape Town. The website address is: www.cederbergpublishers.co.za.

[1] Kolbe wrote the editorials for The South African News every Wednesday and Saturday. Leipoldt said of him: “(He was) a first-class journalist who could immediately grasp the crux of a matter and possessed the talent to defend his standpoint calmly but emphatically in an immaculate grammar and style. He particularly excelled in fine satire and irony, athough he at times… in an editorial could reach the pinnacle of loftiness by using simple, mostly monosyllabic, words. (Kannemeyer 1999: 135-140)

Friedrich Carl Kolbe, Roman Catholic clergyman with a mission. Friedrich Carl Kolbe, Roman Catholic clergyman with a mission.
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Luthern block significant and precious national heritage

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Marthinus
The Luthern Church, Sexton's Dwelling, Parsonage (Martin Melck House) and on the corner die VOC Grainary, all dating from the late 1700's. The picture was taken by Arthur Elliott ca. 1880.

The Luthern Church, Sexton's Dwelling, Parsonage (Martin Melck House) and on the corner die VOC Grainary, all dating from the late 1700's. The picture was taken by Arthur Elliott ca. 1880.

By PENNY PISTORIUS

The root of concern about the historical Luthern heritage site in Central Cape Town  -  including the Luthern Church, Parsonage, Sexton’s Dwelling and VOC Grainary, all dating from the late 18th Century -  is the significance of the heritage resource.

This urban block – bordered by Strand Street, Bree Street, Waterkant Street and Buitengracht Street – is redolent with it: historical, spiritual, social, cultural, spatial, archaeological, etc, etc.

All 18th Century built fabric is, due to the processes of history – decay, destruction and development – rare in South Africa. A concentration of 18th Century urban fabric such exists on this block, which includes the iconic Lutheran Church, is so very rare as to be PRECIOUS.

Gawie Fagan's achitects model of the proposed development of the Luthern heritage site. Picture: Marthinus van Bart

Gawie Fagan's achitects model of the proposed development of the Luthern heritage site. Picture: Marthinus van Bart

It is a surviving – and so far, intact, and authentic – part of an increasingly tenuous (but tough and significant) underlying web of our “ancient” (in SA terms) cultural landscape. It links to the Castle, Koopmans de Wet House, Heritage Square, the old City cemeteries in Greenpoint, the Company’s Gardens, the Slave Lodge and Groote Kerk, the old urban grid and its spaces – the Parade, Kerkplein, Greenmarket Square, Riebeeckplein & St. Stephen’s Church.

These are contextualised by the setting: the mountain, Table Bay as a harbour, the perennial streams; and by the displacement of people who used these resources before. This historical web extends around the mountain to Groote Schuur and Rustenburg. It represents the origins of “modern” settlement in South Africa.

This 18th Century urban complex is a bronzed shoe from the infanthood of the Mother City.

The Luthern Church, centre, with the Sexton's Dwelling, left, Parsonage (Martin Melck House), right, and the VOC Grainary, far right. Picture: Marthinus van Bart

The Luthern Church, centre, with the Sexton's Dwelling, left, Parsonage (Martin Melck House), right, and the VOC Grainary, far right. Picture: Marthinus van Bart

In my considered opinion (short of doing the work) it could be part of an sequential Grade I (national) heritage site to include many of the sites mentioned above (and others) to do with the theme of “origins” – of settlement, and as a modern nation/people” – for lack of a better term.

During my time at BELCom I pleaded for a policy at province that would set in place at least a very rough series of ”sieves” based on date (and thus rarity), and which would give some initial guidance as to how to deal with the “catch-all” applications. Had that policy come into place, this urban block would surely have been a very big lump, and caught in the first sieve. That should have meant that public participation would be broad – a matter for “us-all”, the public. But it never came to be, and participation appears to have been too limited.

Unfortunately, the proactive part of the intended new heritage system has not developed as hoped. Systematic identification and grading is not occurring adequately within any sphere of government (local, provincial or national), nor at the unintentionally disempowered “community” level. We are all aware of critical resource constraints, and lukewarm (at best) political commitment.

Lady Anne Barnard's sketch of the original facade of the Luthern complex when Anton Anreith, German master sculptor, had just finished his decoration of the Church gable. It was later changed.

Lady Anne Barnard's sketch of the original facade of the Luthern complex when Anton Anreith, German master sculptor, had just finished his decoration of the Church gable. It was later changed.

The aim of heritage resources management is to ensure that (necessary) development and change does not destroy or damage the historical/cultural foundations on which “we-all” build our future.

To my mind, this WHOLE Luthern block is so significant (“precious”) that it should be recognised, identified, protected and developed as a heritage resource. It is one of those which is so rare that it should be removed from the pressures of “commercial” development. Whether or not this is the case should be the core of the debate. Arguments about architectural appropriateness are secondary to the primary question of whether a radical intervention into such ancient fabric is appropriate at all. It is not really productive to focus on the secondary issue until we have settled the primary issue of significance.

This is what Gawie Fagan proposes to do with the precious and important heritage site.

This is what Gawie Fagan proposes to do with the precious and important heritage site.

Given the paucity of proactive identification and prior assessment of significance, ”we-all” have no option but to react when confronted with development that threatens an important part of “our” heritage foundations.

It is heartening that there IS a reaction, and a debate. Even at the height of Modernism, didn’t Solly Morris recognize the significance of this ancient urban complex and curve the proposed overhead highways to avoid it? That there is now a groundswell of resistance to ANY development on this block (however considered and sensitive that development attempts to be) indicates that “people” care, that they recognize its significance, and feel that that significance is threatened.

This is not a time to quibble about processes and procedures of participation, qualifications and registrations, or time frames, as Len seems to be doing. The general public has only become aware of the proposed development recently, and there has been an outcry. One hopes that the authorities will respond to the public concern positively and openly, in the spirit of the preamble to the National Heritage Resources Act.

* Penny Pistorius is an experienced heritage expert of Swellendam.

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CHARLES VAN ONSELEN: Transport

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Sarietha

What Paul Kruger learned about toll roads the hard way

BACK in 1886, the discovery of huge reefs of gold on the Witwatersrand caught state president SJP (Paul) Kruger by surprise. The fiercely nationalist but extremely poorly educated Boers of the South African Republic (ZAR) had only just regained their independence from Britain. The earlier, modest mineral discoveries around Barberton scarcely prepared him or his political constituency — made up largely of farmers — for the dramatic influx of foreigners into the country or for the transition from an agrarian to a more industrialised economy. The spectacular growth of Johannesburg, in particular, demanded an infrastructure capable of servicing a modern economy and an urbanising society. A poorly equipped administration, supported by a coterie of handpicked Dutch experts, managed as best it could.

Complex regional politics militated against the rapid development of an integrated railway system capable of delivering mining machinery to the Rand cheaply or efficiently. It was not until 1895 that the ZAR was fully connected to the emerging, regional rail network. A reliance on Afrikaner transport riders using ox wagons to bring in building materials, clothing and food supplies from the coast or the countryside contributed to Johannesburg’s high cost of living. Long-haul transport riders encountered increasing difficulty in obtaining grazing for oxen on overnight stops, while the condition of the roads, scandalously neglected, deteriorated.

Throughout 1886- 95, the Kruger administration remained under pressure from the mining industry and organised commerce to facilitate the arrival of the railways on the Rand. By the time the president got around to dealing with the problem, however, the mining industry was already in a short-lived recession caused by technical problems encountered in the gold-recovery process. He nevertheless persisted with plans for a nation- wide system of road tolls, primarily to raise revenue for the always hard-pressed treasury and, secondarily, to secure an improvement in the quality of the rutted highways. In late 1891, it was announced in the Government Gazette that, from December 1, ox wagons carrying loads of up to 6000lbs (about 2700kg) would be liable to a toll of 30 shillings on all main routes.

Lacking the administrative competence or expertise to run the system, the state looked instead to the market and private enterprise to manage the tolls. The right to collect tolls at stipulated points was put out to tender, with winning bidders being left to manage the risk of making a profit or sustaining a loss. Despite it being a hazardous business, scores of tenders were awarded and toll collectors appointed. The tolls, for some time, produced a handsome return. In just four months in 1894, for example, the state benefited to the tune of more than £9000 — the equivalent of between £4m and £5m (R46m-R58m) a year in current terms.

Right from the outset, however, tolls proved to be deeply unpopular. In urban areas, tolls were objected to because, it was claimed, they increased the cost of capital goods as well as food. They no doubt did; but Pretoria was always inclined to view Johannesburg as more of a cash cow than a city entitled to independent management. The mayor was appointed from the centre, by the government, not elected by the citizens.

Farmers and transport riders, too, objected for equally obvious reasons and, despite their cause being championed by a faction within the Volksraad that was increasingly opposed to Kruger, the president and his cabinet remained obdurately opposed to the abolition of the tolls or a meaningful reduction in charges. In practice, the system proved difficult to manage. It was the subject of endless complaints. Requests for exemption necessitated the appointment of additional clerks, thus swelling a public service not renowned for its efficiency, honesty, literacy or responsiveness. Some toll collectors let friends through without levying charges while others pocketed part of the proceeds. In some quarters, deep suspicions were aroused about where precisely the fees were going and few users seemed convinced the system benefited them. It was not clear the huge returns from tolls were producing a startling improvement in the quality of the existing roads, or funding new ones.

It was in the countryside, or on the outskirts of the city itself, however, where the system ran into its greatest opposition from the sons of the soil. Many farmers and transport riders would have nothing to do with them. They opened up new, often circuitous tracks and minor roads, circumventing existing drifts and highways, thereby giving rise to new problems of grazing, right of way and environmental degradation. Others drove directly through the gates, refusing to render payment for a system they deemed to be in conflict with natural justice. Landdrosts — the magistrates — were kept busy corresponding with their superiors and it proved difficult to estimate what secondary, indirect costs amounted to.

Two of the most hated tolls, however, could not easily be avoided. One of them lay on the road connecting the rich farming district from which Kruger hailed — Rustenburg — to the market at Pretoria, via the intervening Magaliesberg. A formidable toll house stood astride the natural constriction in the pass at Daspoort. The other was at Ferreira’s Battery, on the Kimberley Road exit from Johannesburg. They were the subject of endless complaints but the Kruger administration refused relief to regular users.

In April 1894, amidst an economic upswing, a party of masked Boers set out from the Rustenburg district for Daspoort, using a road that had previously been favoured by Irish highwaymen who had, some months earlier, held up and robbed a post cart of an enormous sum of cash. At the toll, the Boers overpowered the collector and dynamited the toll house. About 12 months later, the toll gate at Ferreira’s was also burnt to the ground under mysterious circumstances. The police, patriotic to the core, had no success in tracking down the perpetrators who, chances were, were all burghers. The ZAR tolling system — attacked, cheated, circumvented and sabotaged — did not collapse in the face of political objections from voters or popular resistance from road users. It may, however, have cost Kruger the votes of several farmers and transport riders in the 1893 presidential elections, which he won by the slimmest of margins.

The eclipse of the tolls was occasioned instead by technological advance in the shape of an integrated national railway system in 1895. With the switch from road to rail transport, tolls became less profitable and, in the end, economically unviable. In 1896, the government, acknowledging the advent of a new era, abandoned road tolls.

All of this prompts a few questions besides the fundamental one about “who owns the roads” and, can they bought and sold and, if so, who bears the profit or the loss?

Can states that lack administrative competence and easy access to an educated workforce ever manage tolling systems without the assistance of private enterprise and state- of-the-art technology? Are most of the funds raised from tolls ever fully employed to underwrite the maintenance or extension of the national road network? How are road and rail systems best integrated, and in what order are they best developed? Is the introduction of a system of road tolls an acknowledgment of failure, or a sign of success — is the economic tide rising or falling? Are tolling systems ever abandoned and, if so, when and why? What constitutes a fair toll and what are the estimates of attrition of revenue as a result of theft — either directly by the private operators, or from treasuries plundering funds for other projects? Or is the system foolproof? Is a state that introduces road tolls succeeding or failing?

These are enduring questions; most of them have been around since tolls were introduced at bridges in medieval times.

Governments come and go, ox wagon or pantechnicon, the game seems to remains the same. Answers — on postcards only please — to Pretoria, and then go out and vote as you see fit.

- Van Onselen is a research professor at the University of Pretoria.

*This article was first published in Business Day, 23 February 2011

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FLIP BUYS: Equality

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Sarietha

SA voted for democracy and ended up with a revolution

TRANSFORMATION is the overarching political project of the African National Congress (ANC) government, and it determines the political context of everything that happens in the country. After 16 years of ANC rule it is, therefore, essential to ask how successful this project has been, and what the chances are of future success.

The ANC’s transformation policy is the main reason for what author Brian Pottinger called the demodernisation of SA under the Mbeki administration. Under former president Thabo Mbeki ’s rule, a country with big problems was transformed into a failing state with almost irresolvable crises. However, the problem is not just that the country now has bigger problems, but also that the state’s ability to resolve the crises is also now smaller due to the same transformation policy.

According to the Dinokeng Scenarios, projections of potential futures for SA, our country is a failing state, and the state’s efficiency has to be improved urgently to tackle the enormous challenges. President Jacob Zuma ’s government inherited a weakened public service from the Mbeki government, but there aren’t many signs of the demodernisation of SA being reversed.

The ANC repeated one of the central mistakes of the postcolonial states — overestimating the state’s ability to realise the government’s (praiseworthy) goals. Consequently, the state was overloaded and could not do w hat the policy makers wanted.

The reason for this is simple. The most important thing is that, after 1994, the ANC took over a country with massive inequalities and poverty, and it was understandably determined to eradicate the legacy of apartheid. Second, the party historically comes from a left-wing background, which believes in a large and active role for the state to develop the country and relieve poverty. Third, the ANC underestimated the demands of governing a modern state, and got rid of experts at all levels on a large scale.

The world-renowned political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, said after 1994 that the biggest threat to SA was that the new government would adopt policies that would lead to an exodus of skilled whites. Prof Lawrence Schlemmer also warned years ago that the ANC’s overwhelming political dominance should not tempt it into adopting policies that would alienate skilled minorities. Both these scientists stressed that the ANC needed these skilled minorities to fulfil its promises to the masses. However, the government did not heed this advice.

A further problem is that — in Frederi k Van Zyl Slabbert’s words — politics created expectations that the economy could not fulfil. The ANC, deeply aware of the enormous challenges, made promises to voters that the government would radically improve their quality of life. Unfortunately, the reality is that the country’s tax base is simply not large enough to afford some of the ambitious government programmes. Second, the state does not have the capacity to render the expected services.

This capacity problem is not limited to the state. Hasty and sometimes ill-considered transformation has also been implemented in public enterprises, which has hampered their executive capacity. All of these factors culminate in growing dissatisfaction because of a lack of service delivery at ground level that now frequently breaks through to the surface.

The enormous cost of transformation is starting to filter through everywhere in the form of lack of service delivery and the crises at Eskom, municipalities, state hospitals and, in particular, the sky-high crime rate caused by the state’s inability to ensure the safety of SA’s inhabitants, which is the core function of a state. At the same time there is growing concern about the future of the country’s water supply and sustainable food security.

But whereas the cost of transformation has thus far been limited to the state, it is now finding its way to the private sector, which could lead to even more unemployment and a smaller income for the state if the policy further jeopardises competitiveness in the economy. Without economic growth, there cannot be job creation and the social grant system cannot be financially sustainable. That is why the priority should now be, first, to get the education and training system to an optimal functional level and, second, to improve the country’s infrastructure. Third, the government should create the democratic spaces and minimum conditions for skilled minorities to be successful so they can stay in SA and help the country and all of its people to become successful.

This negative outcome was not inevitable. There have been cases in which sensible and balanced transformation improved state institutions, such as the South African Revenue Service, the Reserve Bank and a few others. But the sustainable transformation models followed in these cases were the exception, not the rule.

SA is a constitutional democracy, and transformation should take place within the framework of the c onstitution. However, things started going wrong when the constitutional provisions were interpreted and implemented by a powerful party within the framework of transformation. In so doing, SA began to look like a transformation state instead of a constitutional state.

The underlying reason for the political shift among white people is the increasing sense that the ANC has broken the historic 1994 pact and replaced it with a winner-takes- all approach. While the ANC was professing constitutional values, it was using its overwhelming power under the guise of transformation to disempower minorities and take over their institutions. What is happening to our Afrikaans universities and schools is enough to alienate even the staunchest moderates. I’m afraid that many people feel they voted for a democracy, but still ended up getting a revolution — a negotiated revolution instead of a democratic settlement. Many feel misled and wonder whether the ANC merely embraced democracy because demographically it was the easiest way to get to power and to remain in power.

The ANC initially sold the transformation project as a policy to right past wrongs. That is why it initially received widespread support, even among most white people. Solidarity also supported affirmative action as it was regarded as essential in addressing the inequalities in the labour market.

Unfortunately it soon became clear that it was about much more than redressing inequalities, and that demographic representivity was the eventual aim, with African hegemony being the ultimate goal. Equal opportunities and the equalisation of opportunities quickly turned into equal outcomes. It is illuminating that former president FW de Klerk later declared that it had never been the intention of the c onstitution.

While we still support fair input-based affirmative action, we will fight the unfair and unconstitutional application of affirmative action. If everyone had equal opportunities plus extra help for disadvantaged people to level the playing fields, black South Africans would naturally occupy the majority of jobs in the public and private sectors. But it would have been a natural process, without a racial or political goal of African hegemony.

If transformation means bona fide changes to improve lives and address poverty and inequality, all reasonable people will support it. But if it is used simply as a strategy of power — grabbing and rent-seeking by political factions dressed in the rhetoric of social justice — it must be rejected.

National interest is much larger than the interest of one party. Our country and its people deserve better.

- Buys is General Secretary of Solidarity. This article forms part of a series on transformation supplied by the Centre for Development and Enterprise

* This article was published by Business Day on 25 February 2011

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Deneys Reitz on commando, on Madagascar, in the Great Wars and in Parliament

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Marthinus

Deneys Reitz as a youngster on commando with general J.C. (Jan) Smuts.

Deneys Reitz as a youngster on commando with general J.C. (Jan) Smuts.

 

Deneys Reitz on commando with Jan Smuts in Namakwaland.

Deneys Reitz on commando with Jan Smuts in Namakwaland.

By TREVOR EMSLIE 

In his poem Little Gidding, T S Eliot said the following: “What we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning. / The end is where we start from.” 

So let me begin, as it were, at the end. Deneys Reitz wrote the original journal – from which Commando was in the late 1920s, when he was a Member of Parliament in opposition, extracted and re-written in English – in Madagascar in 1903, after the end of the Anglo-Boer War. 

At the end of the war, Deneys’s father, F W Reitz, who had been Secretary of State of the Transvaal Republic, and before that Chief Justice and then President of the Orange Free State Republic, signed the Peace Treaty in his official capacity, but refused to sign an undertaking to abide by the peace terms in his personal capacity. Of this Deneys, who was with his father at the time, having accompanied General Smuts to the peace talks at Vereeniging, says: 

“I had no very strong convictions on the subject, but I had to stand by him, so I also refused to sign, and was told that I would be put across the border, which troubled me little, as I was eager to see more of the world.” 

They were given two weeks to wind up their affairs in Pretoria, although they were unable even to enter their own house, which was occupied by a British officer and had sentries posted outside. Then they were obliged to leave the country. 

Commando ends as follows: 

“As we were waiting on the border at Komati Poort, before passing into Portuguese territory, my father wrote on a piece of paper a verse which he gave me. 

It ran: 

South Africa 

Whatever foreign shores my feet must tread, 

My hopes for thee are not yet dead. 

Thy freedom’s sun may for awhile be set, 

But not for ever, God does not forget. 

And he said that until liberty came to his country he would not return. 

He is now in America and my brother and I are under the French Flag in Madagascar. 

We have heard of my other two brothers. The eldest has reached Holland from his prison camp in India, and the other is still in Bermuda awaiting release. 

Maritz and Robert de Kersauson are with us in Madagascar. We have been on an expedition far down into the Sakalave country, to see whether we could settle there. 

General Gallieni provided us with riding-mules and a contingent of Senegalese soldiers, as those parts are still in a state of unrest. It was like going to war again, but all went quietly, and we saw much that was of interest – lakes and forests, swamps teeming with crocodiles, and great open plains grazed by herds of wild cattle. But for all its beauty the island repels one in some intangible manner, and in the end we shall not stay. 

At present we are eking out a living convoying goods by ox-transport between Mahatsara on the East Coast and Antananarive, hard work in dank fever-stricken forests, and across mountains sodden with eternal rain; and in my spare time I have written this book.” 

While he was in Madagascar, Deneys Reitz received a letter from General Smuts’s wife in which she said that her husband, together with Generals Botha and Hertzog and other Boer leaders, were at work rebuilding their country from the ruins of war, and that if South Africa under British rule was good enough for them, it was good enough for him. 

Stricken with malaria, this letter turned his thoughts strongly homeward, and after an adventurous trip home he managed to make his way back to Pretoria.  He says the following in his second book, Trekking On: 

“I reached Pretoria at sunrise with a fresh bout of fever upon me, which left me so weak that I had only strength to crawl to the Burgher Park, where I lay in a stupor for some hours. Later on I found myself back on the platform of the railway station with a knot of people gathered around me. Then a man recognised me. He must have set to work at once, for soon a Cape cart drove up, into which I was lifted, and I woke to find myself in bed, in the home of my former chief, General Smuts.” 

Adrift on the Open Veld is a compendium of Reitz's three works: Commando, Trekking On, and No Outspan.

Adrift on the Open Veld is a compendium of Reitz's three works: Commando, Trekking On, and No Outspan.

 

In No Outspan he says: 

“For the next three years he and Mrs Smuts kept me in their own home and for their help and understanding in those dark days I have not sufficient words of gratitude.” 

He continues in Trekking On: 

“For nearly three years General Smuts and his wife kept me by them, nursing me back to health of mind and body. During that time I slowly shook free of malaria, and entered an office to study law. Our family seemed in a bad way. My father lay ill far off in America, and his wife and seven small children were in straitened circumstances. My eldest brother, Hjalmar, having returned from his prison, was now in Holland, struggling in poverty to complete his studies, and my brother Joubert was on a fever-stricken plantation on the west coast of Madagascar. My younger brother Arend had after many vicissitudes reached Table Bay, where he was working as a dock hand. Thus, in common with thousands of others, we experienced the aftermath of war.” 

Small wonder that he was a follower of Smuts for the rest of his life. 

Finally, as far as “the end” is concerned, he states: 

“In 1908 I convinced General Smuts that I could at last fend for myself again, so I said goodbye to him and to his wife, the two people to whom I owe most in the world, and with a few law books and the political idealisms which he and General Botha had taught me for my chief possessions, I set out to earn a living.” 

Deneys Reitz went on to become the commander of a Scottish regiment in the First World War; then he became a cabinet minister, first under Botha, and later under Smuts; he was Deputy-Prime Minister during the Second World War; and when he died in London he was South Africa’s High Commissioner in London. His father became President of the Union Senate after 1910; soon after he came home from the First World War, Deneys married Leila Wright, who became South Africa’s first woman Member of Parliament and a leading campaigner for women’s rights; and thus the Reitz family returned to political prominence, rising from the aftermath of war as the phoenix from the ashes. 

I referred a moment ago to Deneys Reitz’s return to Pretoria, where he fainted from malarial fever and woke in bed in the home of General and Mrs Smuts on their farm at Irene, outside Pretoria. 

What to me is remarkable about this episode is that, contained in his knapsack, was the original Dutch manuscript from which Commando was eventually written and published. How fortunate we are that it did not get lost along the way, as might so easily have happened. 

What is also remarkable is the fact that Deneys Reitz was not only an incredibly fearless, brave and daredevil fighter on commando, one who seemed to court danger, yet survived against all the odds, but that he was also a gifted writer who was able to write about his experiences so wonderfully and so skilfully. For, in my opinion, Commando is an incredibly skilfully written book. The skill lies in its apparent simplicity and in its understatement. As many who have tried will know, it is very difficult to write with such compelling simplicity that the reader is spurred on and finds it difficult to put down a book that reads more like an adventure story than a catalogue of war. 

No only does he write so well, but his eye seems to have taken in more than one would expect from the average seventeen-year-old school-leaver. For Deneys was seventeen when he went on commando, four months after having matriculated at Grey College in Bloemfontein in June 1899. He was officially too young to go to war, but President Kruger personally arranged for Commandant-General Joubert to issue Reitz with a mauser rifle – the very one we have here today – because, as he said, “I started fighting when I was younger than that”. 

What Kruger in fact said to Deneys Reitz was the following: 

“Piet Joubert says the English are three to one – Sal jij mij drie rooi-nekke lever?” (In English, will you deliver me three rooineks?) 

A precocious young Deneys answered boldly: “President, if I get close enough, I’m good for three with one shot.” 

Deneys Reitz, marked by an arrow, wit the Malherbe-corporalship at Ladysmith in Natal at the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War.

Deneys Reitz, marked by an arrow, wit the Malherbe-corporalship at Ladysmith in Natal at the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War.

 

If you read Commando, you will see that President Kruger got a good return on his investment in Deneys Reitz, who probably accounted for thirty times three rooinekke. 

Be that as it may, Deneys was twenty-one years old when he wrote the Dutch original of Commando. He had not been to university, nor had he done a course in creative writing, such as is now offered at many universities. But he was well-schooled in literature, for he says of his upbringing in Bloemfontein that: 

“Both my grandfather and my father had returned to South Africa with a deep love of Scotland and Scotch literature, and at our home scarcely a night passed without a reading from Burns or Scott, so that [when he was in Scotland with his family as a young boy] we felt as if we were among our own people.” 

Thus it was that he writes of an incident after a skirmish in the Magaliesberg during the guerrilla phase of the war: 

“On my way down the gorge I found two wounded officers beside the track, one with his thumb shot away and the other with a broken arm. As I came up I heard one of them remark: ‘Here comes a typical young Boer for you,’ and they asked me whether I understood English. I told them ‘Yes’, and the man with the thumb said: ‘Then will you tell me why you fellows are continuing the war, because you are bound to lose?’ I replied: ‘Oh, well, you see, we’re like Mr Micawber, we are waiting for something to turn up.’ They burst out laughing and the one said: ‘Didn’t I tell you this is a funny country, and now here’s your typical young Boer quoting Dickens.’ 

Thomas Packenham, in an introduction to an earlier edition of Commando, which he said had sold more copies that all other books on the Anglo-Boer War put together, said the following: 

“Reitz had the uncanny knack of living through the war as though leafing through the pages of an adventure story.” 

We can add that he also had an uncanny recall, and the uncanny knack of writing about his experiences as though he were telling an adventure story with amazing skill. 

Deneys Reitz, bottom left and marker by an arrow, in Namakwaland with the commando of general J.C. (Jan) Smuts.

Deneys Reitz, bottom left and marker by an arrow, in Namakwaland with the commando of general J.C. (Jan) Smuts.

 

One might ask what the differences are between Commando and the original journal, apart from the language in which they were written. Michael Reitz, Deneys’s grandson, who is busy with a translation of the original journal, said the following in an introduction to a recent re-publication of an Afrikaans version of Commando: 

“Both Commando and Reitz’s original journal show little ill-will towards the British soldier, but the journal contains a number of stinging comments on the suffering and destruction caused by the war. These remarks are always subsidiary to the main narrative, but they contain a note of angry contempt and were omitted from the text of Commando. When the manuscript of Commando was prepared, the author was a Member of Parliament and former cabinet minister. While wanting to give a true account of his experiences during the war and of the nature and courage of the men beside whom he fought, he would have seen no purpose in reviving recent hurts.” 

The fact that Deneys was the son of the Transvaal State Secretary did, on occasion, present him with special incidents to relate, such as when – in Pretoria for a few days to give evidence at a trial – he came across Winston Churchill in the company of his father. Churchill, who was a prisoner in Pretoria, asked Reitz senior to read some articles he had written and, if there was nothing wrong with them, to send them on to the newspaper for which he was a war correspondent. At home that night Reitz senior pronounced the prisoner to be a clever young man, and Deneys – writing in 1903 – declared that this was not far off the mark in the light of Churchill’s subsequent escape. Of course they met several times in later years, when both had become prominent politicians, but this was written when Reitz was a twenty-one year old in exile and could have had no inkling of what lay ahead. 

In his third book, No Outspan, Reitz does however relate the following incident in 1935: 

“We attended the House of Commons and we were taken to a hundred and one places of interest. I was twice summoned to Buckingham Palace and twice I donned a top hat and a morning coat, in which unaccustomed garb I had audience of His Majesty King George V. 

He told me he kept both my books [Commando and Trekking On] at his bedside in Windsor Castle and he offered to confer on me the Distinguished Service Order. I was unable to accept this owing to a law the Nationalist Government had passed in 1926 prohibiting Union subjects from receiving decorations. I saw the Prince of Wales at St James’s Palace once or twice. He seemed more highly-strung than ever and I little dreamed that, in a measure, I was to sit in judgment on him in time to come.” 

Deneys Reitz in the Smuts Cabinet in 1939. He sits in the front row third from the right. Smuts also sits in the front row, second from the left.

Deneys Reitz in the Smuts Cabinet in 1939. He sits in the front row third from the right. Smuts also sits in the front row, second from the left.

 

By virtue of his parentage, Deneys grew up at the centre of the affairs of both Boer republics. Moreover, his father’s sister was married to W P Schreiner, who was Prime Minister of the Cape Colony during the first part of the war and was the brother of the renowned writer, Olive Schreiner, who was ardently pro-Boer and was placed under house arrest by the British in Hanover in the Karoo. F W Reitz himself was an early writer of popular Afrikaans poetry and, as already mentioned, there was an enjoyment and an appreciation of literature in the family home. 

Part of Commando’s charm, if that is the right word, is the fact that it is written so entirely without rancour. Early in the book, Deneys writes: 

“Looking back, I think that war was inevitable. I have no doubt that the British Government had made up its mind to force the issue, and was the chief culprit, but the Transvalers were also spoiling for a fight, and, from what I saw in Pretoria during the few weeks that preceded the ultimatum, I feel sure that the Boers would in any case have insisted on a rupture. 

I myself had no hatred of the British people; from my father’s side I come of Dutch and French Huguenot blood, whilst my mother (dead for many years) was a pure-bred Norwegian from the North Cape, so one race was much like another to me. Yet, as a South African, one had to fight for one’s country, and for the rest I did not concern myself overmuch with the merits and demerits of the quarrel. I looked on the prospect of war and adventure with the eyes of youth, seeing only the glamour, but knowing nothing of the horror and the misery.” 

While Commando deals in the main with the hardships and adventures of the young Reitz, he adverts skilfully and unobtrusively to the tragic quality of the war. He describes the scene in Natal on the morning after war had been declared: 

“As far as the eye could see the plain was alive with horsemen, guns and cattle, all steadily going forward to the frontier. The scene was a stirring one, and I shall never forget riding to war with that great host.” 

But he adds: 

“It has all ended in disaster, and I am writing this in a strange country, but the memory of those first days will ever remain.” 

Describing events a little later in the Natal campaign, he writes: 

“I joined Isaac Malherbe and others sitting round the fires cooking their supper, and, watching the light fade away over the distant Darkensbergen, I chatted for a quiet hour with men who were mostly dead next morning.” 

His tone is almost nonchalant, but the tragedy of war was certainly not lost on him. He refers in passing to the herding of Boer women and children into concentration camps, and states that this, the burning of farmsteads and the killing of livestock, only stiffened the resolve of the fighting men to continue the guerrilla phase of the war. But the pace of the action carries the reader past that aspect of the war, and it is mostly on reflection that the extent of the destruction becomes manifest. 

Probably the most riveting story in Commando is Reitz’s account of his chance meeting with Smuts’s commando, and their incursion into the Cape Colony in the dead of winter, harried by British troops trying to head them off and stop them in their tracks. Reitz himself was at one stage wearing only a gain bag with holes made for his arms, and leather sandals, his clothes having rotted away, and they trekked for days and nights on end, without sleep, through freezing rain, across the mountains of the eastern Cape, until, at their last gasp, they managed to overpower a group of the 17th Lancers and thereby obtained fresh weapons, ammunition, food, horses and clothes, and were able to continue their journey into the Cape Province to within sight of Port Elizabeth, and thence to the north-west Cape, which they controlled virtually unopposed by the end of the war. 

During this incursion, Reitz at one stage became separated from his comrades, had his horse shot from under him, and made a run for it under fire from British troops. Through great skill and great good luck, reminiscent of the escape of Rob Roy from the English (for those who have seen the film Rob Roy), he managed to hide in a rivulet until dark, and limped away on foot, alone, into the night. He writes of this as follows: 

“I felt proud of my successful ruse, but there was little else pleasant to contemplate. I lay in the bracken like a hunted rabbit; my foot throbbed painfully; my companions were gone, and so was the commando; my horse was dead and my saddle and belongings were in the hands of the enemy. 

As thinking did not mend matters, I rose at length, and limped off in the dark. 

After about an hour, I heard the sound of a hymn and the wheeze of a harmonium, such as stands in almost every Dutch farmhouse, and knew that I was nearing friends. When I knocked at the door there was a hush at first, for in these disturbed times a visit late at night mean military requisition, but then I heard a shuffle of feet and the door opened. 

A whole family was peering from within. When I told them who I was, they almost dragged me into the house, so eager were they to help. I must have looked very dishevelled, for the women wept with pity while removing the boot from my sore foot, and during the more painful process of extracting a thorn, nearly an inch long, that had run into the palm of my hand when I was thrown from my horse that afternoon. They fetched hot water and tore up clean linen for bandages; a meal was laid, with coffee, and the kindly people almost quarrelled for the right to serve me, so keen was their sympathy, although they knew that it might mean for them fines and imprisonment. Having attended to my wants, they took further counsel. It was agreed that I could not remain here, for even if the continuous patrols did not ferret me out for themselves, my presence was certain to be reported by the coloured farm labourers, who all over the Cape sided with the British. As I assured them that I was well able to walk, it was decided that I must continue westward on the off chance of coming up with General Smuts, who might be held up somewhere. It seemed a forlorn hope, but as there was the risk of an enemy detachment coming by at any moment, I made ready to start as soon as my boot had been sufficiently repaired. 

The head of the family, a patriarch of seventy, insisted on acting as my guide during the first stage of the journey and firmly refused to waive the right in favour of his sons, who offered themselves. A grain-bag was packed with food, and after an affecting leave-taking, the old man and I set out. We trudged along, hour after hour, until his strength gave out and I made him turn back, his voice shaking with emotion as he wished me God-speed.” 

As luck would have it, he met up with his companions lying asleep in a kloof before dawn, having recognised the hoof marks of one of their horses in the moonlight, and was able to continue with them on foot. 

At different times of the war, Reitz encountered or served under Generals Botha, de la Rey, de Wet, Hertzog and Smuts, amongst many others. 

Koos de la Rey is widely regarded, together with Christian de Wet, as the greatest guerrilla leader of them all, and Reitz relates the following incident: 

“By this time my clothes had fallen from my body, owing to the rains, and my entire wardrobe consisted of a blanket and a pair of sandals, so that, as it was towards the end of March by now, with winter coming on, I felt the cold pretty severely. General de la Rey had noticed my scanty attire, and one morning he walked over to our wagon with a pair of breeches and a coat, a gift I much appreciated, for he could have been none too well supplied himself, but it was of a piece with his natural kindliness and consideration towards all.” 

Deneys Reitz, enjoying a pipe of tobacco, relaxing at home. A fine picture from the family album.

Deneys Reitz, enjoying a pipe of tobacco, relaxing at home. A fine picture from the family album.

 

Decades after the war, Deneys Reitz received a letter from Christian de Wet requesting Reitz to visit him. Reitz was a Cabinet Minister in the Smuts government, de Wet a Nationalist, and they had opposed one another during the 1914 Rebellion occasioned by South Africa’s decision to enter the First World War on the side of the allies. De Wet was captured, arrested and convicted of treason, but sent on parole to his farm in the Free State. Reitz writes of this encounter in Trekking On as follows: 

“I was shocked at his appearance. Instead of the square virile figure I had known, there stood before me a haggard, shrunken man. His beard was ungroomed, his laces dragged on the ground and his clothes hung loosely on an emaciated body. His hands were swollen with some disease and he tottered in his gait as he came to greet me. I placed him in a chair and asked why he had summoned me, but he was unable to say. He sat with his hands pressed against his forehead trying vainly to remember and I had to go off with the question unsolved. 

I like to think that knowing his end to be near, in his darkened mind had come the wish to say a last word for remembrance and friendship before he trod the common road. He died shortly after and we decreed him a State funeral. He is buried at the foot of the National Monument at Bloemfontein.” 

Thus fierce loyalties were forged during the Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, and there is no finer account of hardship, loyalty, love of horses, commando campfires and comradeship than is to be found in Commando. 

But Deneys Reitz had no part in the leadership and the strategy of the war. His tale is one of the immediacy of commando life, the hiss of bullets, ambush, and desperate escape in the company of brave and determined men. It is a personal story of danger, survival and guerrilla war. 

In his introduction to Commando, General Smuts says inter alia the following: 

“Colonel Reitz entered the war as a stripling of seventeen years, fought right through it to the end, and immediately after its conclusion wrote down these memories. Of military adventures there is of course full measure. He passed through as varied a record of exciting adventures as have ever fallen to the lot of a young man. Indeed much of what is written in this book with such boyish simplicity may appear to the reader well-nigh incredible. But it is a true story, and the facts are often understated rather than exaggerated. The exciting incidents, the hairbreadth escapes, the daredevilry are literally true, and the dangers he passed through and courted are such as to make his unvarnished record read like one of pure romance.” 

He adds: 

“This book is a romance of truth; but behind it is a greater personal romance, and behind that again is the even more wonderful romance of South Africa, to whom much should be forgiven for the splendour of her record during a period as difficult as any young nation has ever passed through.” 

After Reitz’s death in London in 1944, General Smuts paid tribute to him as follows: 

“The passing of Reitz comes as a shattering blow to me. His loss is a national one and will be mourned all over this country which he knew and loved as no other. In him passes one of the greatest South Africans of our generation and he leaves a record of achievement of which South Africa will remain justly proud. But, above all, I remember him as a dear friend and a comrade, the faithful companion through vicissitudes such as few have passed through. He was true, straight, upright, every inch of him, and he leaves a personal memory which I shall treasure all my days.” 

Reitz literally saved Smuts’s life during one particular episode during their incursion into the Cape, and these heartfelt remarks of one whose life was saved by a young comrade on commando echo Reitz’s own that General and Mrs Smuts were the two people to whom he owed most in the world. 

Let me end at the beginning of Commando. 

In the preliminary pages of the book, Reitz gives the following inscription: “A lamentable tale of things done long ago – and ill done”. The book, which was first published by Faber & Faber in London in 1929, and was a huge success in the midst of the Great Depression, bears the following inscription: “This book is dedicated to my father Francis William Reitz, the only living President of the Old South African Republics.” 

There then follows some Latin:  “Victrix causa / Diis placuit / Sed victa Catoni.” I don’t know if there are any Latin scholars in our midst, but my classical skills were utterly unequal to the task of attributing anything meaningful to this small piece of Latin verse. I consulted a colleague at the Bar who had done an honours degree in Latin, and he too was baffled. How then can the ordinary reader be expected to attach any significance to these words? 

Eventually my friend Jane Watson, who did Latin for matric about six years ago, consulted her extra-mural teacher, Ray Suttle – Herschel, like many another secondary school, gave up teaching Latin many years ago – and he gave the following explanation: 

“This is a line of poetry which Deneys Reitz, a learned man, has quoted from the Roman poet Lucan, who lived from AD 39 to AD 65. The poem is called Pharsalia and is about the civil war fought between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. In it Lucan portrays Caesar as a bloodthirsty ogre, Pompey as a pure patriot, and Cato as the abstract ideal of virtue. 

As Reitz was himself involved in a civil war, it is an appropriate source for quotation. 

The line from Book I:128 means: ‘If the victor had the gods on his side, the vanquished had Cato [or morality] on his’.” 

I know that Paul Murray has spoken to you about Stormwrack, Leipoldt’s Anglo-Boer War historical novel. We worked on Stormwrack together. In Stormwrack, the main characters are critical of the Boers who adventured into the western Cape and persuaded Colonial youngsters into rebellion, knowing that Cape Rebels could be executed for treason, whereas the Transvalers and Freestaters could not as they were not Cape subjects. Leipoldt was, of course, a well-known contrarian, and has been referred to as the apostle of the opposite view. Deneys Reitz makes it clear that the help they received from the Cape Dutch was given spontaneously and willingly, and that there was no need to force the locals into Rebellion. He tells in Commando of how he tried to persuade one of his comrades, Jacobus Bosman, not to enter the Cape for precisely this reason. Deneys writes about this as follows: 

“When we told him that we were going to the Cape he said he would come too. As he was one of the Cape rebels who had joined the Boers during their temporary occupation of Colesberg in the beginning of the war, I advised him to stay where he was, for if he were captured on British territory, it would go hard with him. He said he would take the risk, so we enlisted him, but my warning was justified, for he was taken and hanged, as will be seen later on.” 

However that may be, even Leipoldt’s characters agree that martial law, or Martjie Louw, declared by the British, was the most effective source of recruitment of Cape Rebels. 

It is not my intention to juxtapose Stormwrack and Commando, but I do think that the following should be borne in mind. Stormwrack was written in the early 1930s, when Leipoldt was in his fifties, whereas the original from which Commando was extracted was written in 1903. If one wants to compare the attitudes implicit in Leipoldt’s and Deneys Reitz’s writing, one should read Leipoldt’s contemporaneous poems, such as Vrede-aand and Oom Gert Vertel. When one does this, Leipoldt’s views are probably more strident than those of Reitz; and it can be observed that both would probably have been classed as “Hans-khakis” by the 1930s when they had probably both tired of those who were still beating the Anglo-Boer War drum for political advantage in the SAP versus Nat political warfare. 

As I have encountered from veterans of the Second World War, including my late father, Denis, old soldiers often prefer not to speak about the war, and are mostly mindful – as both Reitz and Leipoldt undoubtedly were – of the utter tragedy and calamity that is war. 

Yet nearly 110 years after the event, with the passage of time that – as Leipoldt remarks in Stormwrack – does not always heal the scars of civil war, it is nevertheless riveting to read Commando, the account of one who was there, present in the heat of battle, and who was able to write about his hardships, dangers and adventures as no other has ever been able to do. 

Commando is truly precious Africana, and its author is a South African of whom we can all be justly proud. 

* This essay was delivered by Advocate T.S. (Trevor) Emslie on 19th August 2008. 

Adrift on the Open Veld, the Anglo-Boer War and its Aftermath, 1899 to 1943: Commando, Trekking On, and No Outspan. Published by Cederberg Publishers, publisher of books expressing the soul of South Africa.

Adrift on the Open Veld, the Anglo-Boer War and its Aftermath, 1899 to 1943: Commando, Trekking On, and No Outspan. Published by Cederberg Publishers, publisher of books expressing the soul of South Africa.

 

  cemslie@taxpayer.co.za   www.cederbergpublishers.co.za

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Leipoldt, the Dostoevsky of South Africa

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Marthinus
 
 

 

C. Louis Leipoldt on Graduation Day at Guy's Hospital Medical School when he was awarded two gold medals on qualifying as medical doctor.

C. Louis Leipoldt on Graduation Day at Guy's Hospital Medical School in London when he was awarded two gold medals on qualifying as medical doctor.

 

By TREVOR EMSLIE

A few weeks ago, at a rather grand garden party in Bishopscourt, I fleetingly bumped into an acquaintance who is an attorney. Seeing me, he stopped and told me, fairly abruptly, how he had recently discovered Leipoldt’s trilogy of historical novels set here in Clanwilliam and the Cederberg, how wonderful he thought it was, how he thought Leipoldt was South Africa’s Dostoevsky, who had said it all, and how fascinating it was to be living in this interesting time in South Africa’s history.

One of the few things I am proud of is having published, for the first time ever, Leipoldt’s trilogy of novels entitled The Valley. Leipoldt tried but failed to get The Valley published during his lifetime, his friends again failed to achieve this after his death, and it was only in 2000 – after it was brought to my attention by Paul Murray, a history teacher at Bishops – that The Valley saw the light of day, with Paul and me as editors. It is long, and it is not easy reading, which is no doubt why it wasn’t published before, but it is incredibly rewarding for those who make the effort, and you can imagine that to hear my attorney friend call Leipoldt South Africa’s Dostoevsky was music to my ears.

When just one person connects with The Valley, as my attorney friend obviously had, it makes the long hours of editing and proofreading worthwhile; and I hope I can encourage those of you who have not yet done so to discover more about this man Leipoldt, who captures so quintessentially the problems and the poetry of our beloved country.

In August 2003, I flew from Cape Town to London, arriving at the flat of friends at about eight or nine o’clock on a Saturday morning. The purpose of my trip was to meet with Dr Peter Shields, one of the two youngsters who had lived with Dr C Louis Leipoldt in his house in Kenilworth in the 1930s, at exactly the time when Leipoldt wrote The Valley.

The Shields family had sailed from England to South Africa, but tragedy struck during the voyage and Peter’s father, also a medical doctor, died on board ship in 1925. His mother arrived in South Africa a widow, with five young children to care for. After first settling in the Transvaal, as it then was, she moved with her children to Stellenbosch, where she struggled to make ends meet. It was for this reason that her son Peter came to live with Leipoldt, and spent his teenage years in Leipoldt’s home.

And so it was that some seventy-five years later, I arrived in London on a mission to meet with Dr Shields in order to hear from him his stories about Leipoldt. Having exchanged post-flight Saturday morning pleasantries with my London friends, I phoned Dr Shields to inquire when it would be convenient for me to come and see him. He replied, “What about this afternoon?” And so I cast about unsuccessfully for a tape recorder, succeeded in borrowing only a video camera which also recorded sound, caught a train from London to Berkhamsted, not far north of where I was, and phoned Dr Shields from the Berkhamsted station. The sprightly eighty-something year old came to fetch me in his car, and we set off for his home not far away.

Thus at about two-thirty on that Saturday afternoon I found myself, weary after a sleepless night on the aeroplane, clumsily trying to point a video-camera not too obtrusively so that I could record our discussion, and enjoying a welcome cup of tea with Dr and Mrs Shields. Dr Shields pointed out a Hugo Naude portrait of a French woman hanging on his wall, which used to hang on Leipoldt’s wall. Leipoldt always referred to the subject of the painting as “the lady of the house”, he told me, and he said that he truly cherished this painting. After showing me the two gold medals that Leipoldt had won while a medical student at Guy’s Hospital in London, the two of us settled down to discuss Leipoldt.

I am not an experienced interviewer, except perhaps in preparation for litigation, and I had no list of questions or prompts to assist me. My only strategy, if you can call it that, was to say as little as possible and let Dr Shields do the talking.

The time flashed by, and after about three hours Dr Shields kindly took me back to the station, and I entrained for London. It was such a lovely long summer’s evening, with the sun still shining, that I decided to walk from King’s Cross Station back to my friends’ flat rather than take the tube, and I dawdled at such a leisurely pace, drinking in the late English summer air and thinking about our discussion of matters Leipoldtian, that I must have sent out mixed signals – for I was propositioned by a lady of the night on an early shift, and was also offered drugs for own consumption. This had never happened to me before, and it has never happened since. Undeterred, I dawdled on, lost my way, and eventually arrived at my destination, able to relax at last.

Over the next few days I typed up Dr Shields’s comments, laboriously winding and re-winding the tape in the video camera, until I had down what I considered to be a reasonable version of what he had said. Dr Shields had told me that he was not a writer, and could not put pen to paper about Leipoldt, and this is why I typed up the contents of his share of our conversation. I then sent him my transcript of what he had said, he confirmed that it was accurate enough and that I could use it as an introduction to Leipoldt’s Food & Wine, and thus I am able to relate what he told me about this amazing South African, Christian Frederik Louis Leipoldt.

Before I quote Dr Peter Shields, let me say three things about Leipoldt.

C. Louis Leipoldt as young journalist working with the Cape Town newspaper The South African News. At his side were the fearless editor Albert Cartwright and the brilliant scholar Friedrich Carl Kolbe. Other journalists and Leipoldt's confindante were Elizabeth (Betty) Molteno, eldest daughter of sir John Molteno, Alice Greene, aunt of Graham Greene the novelist, and Anna (Faure) Purcell, wife of William Purcell, founder of the SA Museum. These rebel-poets fought the British Empire with verse published in London by The New Age in an anthology, Songs of the Veld and Other Poems. Cederberg Publications re-published this rare gem, banned in South Africa in 1902, in Cape Town in 2008.

C. Louis Leipoldt as young journalist working with the Cape Town newspaper The South African News. At his side were the fearless editor Albert Cartwright and the brilliant scholar Friedrich Carl Kolbe. Other journalists and Leipoldt's confindante were Elizabeth (Betty) Molteno, eldest daughter of sir John Molteno, Alice Greene, aunt of Graham Greene the novelist, and Anna (Faure) Purcell, wife of William Purcell, founder of the SA Museum. These rebel-poets fought the British Empire with verse published in London by The New Age in an anthology, Songs of the Veld and Other Poems. Cederberg Publications re-published this rare gem, banned in South Africa in 1902, in Cape Town in 2008.

First, Leipoldt was a man of the world in the sense that after he left Cape Town in the closing stages of the Anglo-Boer War, he lived overseas for about twelve years, travelled widely, and acquired a wide international experience that he was able to bring to bear in his writing, and his life generally, on his return to South Africa in 1914.

Secondly, Leipoldt was quintessentially South African. Given his status as one of the major early Afrikaans poets, no one is likely to quarrel with this statement. Indeed, it almost goes without saying, but not everybody appreciates how broad his South Africanism was.

Thirdly, Leipoldt was, to the depths of his soul, a man of Clanwilliam and the Cederberg, until the end of his life.

Let me turn now to what Dr Peter Shields authorised me to say, in his words, about the man he called “Doc”.

“I was twelve years of age when, in 1930, I went to live with Leipoldt at his house, Arbury, in the Cape Town suburb of Kenilworth. ‘Doc’, as we called him, had an adopted son, Jeff, a few years younger than me, and the three of us lived together until Jeff and I went off to fight as volunteers in World War II.

Although I have now lived for the past twenty-five years in England, where I was born, my impression is that most South Africans think of Leipoldt as an Afrikaans poet, but do not know enough to appreciate the many other sides of this versatile man.

Doc was very liberal for his time. He was also great fun and was very, very mischievous. You never quite knew whether he was pulling your leg – it was always a problem to know whether or not to take him seriously. For instance, I remember him telling us that in China it was considered a delicacy to take a live baby mouse by the tail, dip it in honey, put it in your mouth, and let it scamper down your throat!

Doc claimed to be a Buddhist. I think he needed to break free of the dictates of his strict Protestant upbringing, remembering that his father had been the dominee of the Dutch Reformed Church in Clanwilliam and that he never went to school – he was taught by his father and could recite long extracts from the Bible. We didn’t go to church. Doc wasn’t against organised religion – he just wasn’t interested in it.

Doc played a lot of tennis. I remember that Mr Justice van Zyl often came to tennis on Sundays (we had a court at Arbury) and that his daughter was a very good tennis player. Doc did no running on court, but was nevertheless an effective and dangerous player: he would stand there and place his lobs with great skill.

He was a brilliant billiards player; and played a great deal of bridge, often with Mrs Bolus – I think the Boluses were like family to him. He must have been a very good bridge player as he had a formidable memory.

Doc had no dress-sense whatsoever. I remember going swimming with him at St James pool, and his swimwear was so ghastly that Jeff and I didn’t want to be seen near him. He probably didn’t care. One Saturday evening he ventured forth in a dinner jacket with his bowtie so unbelievably skew that I instinctively went up to him to straighten it. He stopped me, saying: ‘Don’t. They won’t recognise me if you do that.’

For many years we didn’t have a wireless at Arbury – Doc wouldn’t allow it. But in 1937 he suddenly went out and bought a very large one. He would sit and listen to Adolf Hitler’s speeches, getting very angry. Of course, he could understand German, whereas the rest of us couldn’t.

We spoke mainly English at home, and Doc actually did a lot of his writing in English. He wrote several poems in English that were published under the pseudonym “Pheidippides”. I would say that about half of Doc’s friends who visited the house were English-speaking, and the other half Afrikaans.

We used to go for wonderful trips in the countryside, and one always met lots of interesting people in his company. I remember visiting General Smuts on his farm at Irene, outside Pretoria, and thinking that his wife, Ouma Smuts, was the maid, so unpretentious was she. We often visited General Smuts.

C. Louis Leipoldt, the man of the veld, botanising, as he used to call his excursions into nature, especially at Clanwilliam with its rich variety of flora.

C. Louis Leipoldt, the man of the veld, botanising, as he used to call his excursions into nature, especially at Clanwilliam with its rich variety of flora.

Doc loved Clanwilliam and the Cederberg, and went there fairly often. They were his spiritual home. He knew a teriffic number of people in that part of the world, and wherever he went he would call on friends.

Doc would always sing while he drove. He would tease me about the Irish Republican song, the one about hanging men and women for wearing the green, and he would often sing this song while driving. He wasn’t really musical, but he loved church music and would go to church to listen to musical performances.

After the war Doc didn’t drive much, and he gave me his car when I was demobilised and returned to Cape Town. Occasionally he would borrow it to go off botanising, and it was always filthy when he returned it.

Doc used to tell wonderful ghost stories, especially when we were out camping. Of course he would tell them at night, just before we went to bed. They were always made up on the spot. I particularly remember one about people being poisoned by mushrooms, and about the horrible deaths they died. (Needless to say, Doc used to collect mushrooms himself when the opportunity arose.)

Doc did not cook on an everyday basis. He employed a cook for this purpose. One cook he employed just before the war was a German woman, and I remember that we gave her quite a hard time. I didn’t then give much thought to the food we ate; and while I can say that we always ate extremely well, I cannot say that it was particularly exotic.

Doc himself cooked when he gave a dinner party, which he did fairly often. There were always interesting people at his dinner parties, and Jeff and I were always included.

Doc loved arguing. He would have made a great lawyer. He was also a great talker, continually asking questions – usually pulling your leg. He would suddenly decide to give you a hard time, and then the temporary verbal assault would begin. He loved to present you with an alternative view of whatever point you were making, even if you were merely stating a fact.

There were rules in the house, but Jeff and I were never afraid of Doc. He instituted a sort of ‘prefect’ system with older boys, usually medical students, looking after us, as he was often away lecturing at the University of Cape Town Medical School in the evenings. He instituted a ‘black book’ system, something I think he had picked up at Rugby School in England. Five black marks meant a hiding – but Doc wasn’t really a disciplinarian and the hiding never materialised. Where he was strict was on one’s attitudes to people. If Jeff or I commented disparagingly on other people, he would always say: ‘Don’t be such a snob.’

Doc had worked as a medical inspector of schools in England and he held a high opinion of English public schools. He approved of them. He would say to Jeff and me that we really ought to be at school at Rugby in England.

He did get fed up with us at times, for instance if one of us trod on one of his best flowers. Then he would storm off in anger, but generally he was very even tempered.

Doc would set Jeff and I ‘exams’ approximately once a month. He didn’t test what we knew, but set us tasks to find out and discover things before the next ‘exam’. In retrospect I think this was very worthwhile.

I think Doc was reasonably comfortably off, but not wealthy. He left cash of about £20 000 in his estate, and Jeff and I each inherited some £10 000. (I was the executor of his literary estate, and in this capacity I assigned the copyrights owned by his estate to the University of Cape Town when I left South African in 1978.)

Doc Leipoldt at Arbury, his home in Claremont, with his cook Tito, discussing the cullinary secrets of the kitchen.

Doc Leipoldt at Arbury, his home in Claremont, with his cook Tito, discussing the cullinary secrets of the kitchen.

Doc always had wine with his meals, and Jeff and I were also always given wine. Doc used to make us describe it, something I wasn’t much good at. He considered wine to be a good thing, and we all enjoyed it. My recollection is that Doc’s preference was for red wine. He was never snobbish about wine, or about anything else for that matter. I never saw him ‘tight’. He seldom had more than two glasses of wine.

Doc would have loved to see the current state of development of South African wine, which was still very ordinary in the 1940s, and he would no doubt be pleased to know that in the twenty-first century I remain very fond of wine.

Doc used to come home with his medical bags stuffed full of books, having stopped off at the library on his way. He was a very fast reader and would borrow about five books at a time, often reading all five in one night. Sometimes he would toss one at me, saying as it flew through the air: ‘Here, this might interest you.’

He had many books. One wall of his study was lined with them. These he bequeathed to the South African Library.

Many people seem to think that Doc was, or might have been, homosexual. I must say that I cannot see that it matters; but if he was, we never saw anything of it at all. Not a hint. Of course one didn’t discuss such things in those days, at any rate not in the way people do nowadays, but quite frankly the possibility never crossed our minds, and I am absolutely certain that there was nothing like that at all in our household. There is no question of it being otherwise.

It is true that he didn’t have much to do with women, except women friends of long standing. And he didn’t have women in the house, except our German cook. I remember him kicking up a fuss when her daughter came to stay, but I imagine that that had more to do with us – he was afraid one of us might get her into trouble.

Doc had a Hugo Naude portrait of a French woman hanging on his wall at Arbury. He found it stuffed behind a couch at Naude’s house, said to Naude: ‘Don’t you want this?’ and Naude asked him whether he would like it. It now hands on my wall, and I love it.

On the subject of the Anglo-Boer War, my impression is that towards the end of the war Doc had blotted his copybook, so to speak, in the eyes of the British. He was reporting on the war from the Boer side, and he had annoyed the military authorities. I think it was important for him to leave Cape Town when he did, or he would have landed in trouble.

Oom Gert Vertel and other poems dealing with the war were, I think, based on real incidents.

Leipold at the back, left, smelling a bottle of medicine, at Guy's Hospital Medical School.

Medical student C. Louis Leipold at the back, left, smelling a bottle of medicine, at Guy's Hospital Medical School.

I imagine that living in England must have changed Doc’s attitude to the English, whom, until then, during the war, he had had every reason for regarding as the enemy.

A lot of things Doc said were taken up the wrong way, for example the controversy over his statement that it would be better for schoolchildren to be given wine than milk. At that time milk was dished out to schoolchildren in mugs, and it was often contaminated. This was the context of his remarks about wine being better for schoolchildren than milk.

I was at Medical School after my return from the war, when they called me out of a lecture with the news that Doc had had a heart attack. I went straight to see him, and visited him every day until his death about five days later. I used to take him books. I think he sensed that the end was nigh for he said to me: ‘I see the little goblins. They’ve come to get me.’ (He always used to joke about goblins or little something-or-others.)

‘Oh nonsense,’ I replied, but he died during the night.

I greatly enjoyed living in Doc’s home, and I learned an immense amount from him. Thinking back, I was exceedingly fortunate – I had lost my own father, also a doctor, who died in 1925, and whom I adored; but Doc stepped in and provided me with a good, wholesome, easy childhood.

And yes, I loved him. He was like a big bear, with a somewhat gruff voice. I always think of him as a big bear.

Doc was happiest, I think, when he was out on the veld botanising.”

Christian Frederik Louis Leipoldt, who was born in 1880 and died in 1947, was an amazingly versatile man. It is no exaggeration to call him a poet, playwright, paediatrician, botanist, journalist, novelist, cook and connoisseur of food and wine. The evidence is manifest: there is a Louis Leipoldt Medi-Clinic in Belville, there is a restaurant called Leipoldt’s in Pretoria, there are botanical plants that bear his name, and there is a body of published work – in both English and Afrikaans – that establishes him as a seminal writer and poet.

In 1829 Leipoldt’s paternal grandfather founded the Rhenish mission station at Wupperthal, about 75 kilometres from here in the Cederberg mountains. Leipoldt’s father, who was sent to Germany at a tender age to be educated there, also became a Rhenish missionary and served, with his wife, in Sumatra, returning to the Cape Colony about a year before Leipoldt was born in Worcester on 28 December 1880. After a few years of service in Worcester, Leipoldt’s father joined the Dutch Reformed Church and became the dominee here in Clanwilliam, where the family moved in June 1884, when Leipoldt was three years of age.

Leipoldt’s father was a talented and accomplished violinist, and when he first came to the village he used to play the music of Mozart, Beethoven and other composers on his violin in the twilight of evening. After a while he received a deputation from his congregation requesting him to stop playing godless music on the fiddle. He listened to their complaints, gave the members of the deputation coffee and cake, and with almost unbelievable acquiescence locked his violin case and never opened it again until the day he died. Years later, as he lay on his deathbed, he called for his violin and actually died holding the instrument that was so dear to him.

Leipoldt’s father had been educated in Germany and had wanted to pursue a musical career, but bowed to the wishes of his father and became a missionary instead. One imagines that the entire Leipoldt family must have experienced the psychological consequences of the repressive silencing of the talented violinist – who first sacrificed a musical career in favour of becoming a missionary, then sacrificed his instrument altogether for the sake of harmony in his congregation.

Leipoldt never attended school – a fate he shared with Olive Schreiner, South Africa’s first writer to achieve international acclaim. Mrs Leipoldt took the somewhat haughty attitude that her children would not be educated at the local school here, and so the Leipoldt children were educated at home, principally by their father, a learned and sophisticated man who spoke German, English, Dutch, French and Batak, and was in addition something of a classical scholar. Thus from an early age the young Leipoldt learned the classics as well as French and German, and by the age of twelve he was fluent in Dutch, German, English and French, and knew Latin and some Greek. He later said that he could not have told you which of German, Dutch or English was his home language – they spoke all three interchangeably. Needless to say, the quality of his education was uneven – his maths, for example, was never what it might otherwise have been, a shortcoming that manifested itself in his matric exam results and again when he studied medicine. But he was widely read and his linguistic ability was outstanding.

When he was eleven years old Christie – as he was known to his family – entered a competition for a ‘Story Needing Words’ in The Boy’s Own Paper, sending his entry to England from here, and about three months later he received a postal order for ten shillings and six pence, and a certificate stating that he had won first prize in the age group twelve to sixteen years. When his mother discovered that he had won a money prize, for his parents had not known that he had entered the competition, she insisted that he donate his prize to the missionary fund. This experience, the brutal silencing of the violinist in his father, and his strict Protestant upbringing help explain Leipoldt’s lack of interest in conventional religion.

What Leipoldt, who experienced a lonely childhood, was interested in was the whole world of nature that surrounded him in the Cederberg. His botanical expertise was evident when as a youth he accompanied the German botanist Rudolph Schlechter on an expedition into the veld, and he conversed with Dr Daniel Hahn, Professor Peter MacOwan and Dr Harry Bolus, bringing samples with him when he accompanied his father to synod meetings of the Dutch Reformed Church in Cape Town. His love of natural beauty captivated him as a child and brought him refuge as an adolescent. It embodied both practical knowledge and poetic love of the world around him, and throughout his life it was an important example of what one might call the Leipoldtian duality – ars practica et ars poetica.

Leipoldt submitted articles which were published in Cape Town newspapers while he was still a young boy in Clanwilliam, and years later when he was in Cape Town the journalists concerned expressed astonishment when they discovered how young he had been when his articles were first published in the press.

Having matriculated, Leipoldt left Clanwilliam at the age of 17 years, worked in Cape Town as a full-time journalist for first De Kolonist and then for The South African News, in addition freelancing for several overseas publications on the subject of the Anglo-Boer War, writing in particular about conditions under martial law in the Cape Colony. He was, for example, present at the court martial of Gideon Scheepers, who was sentenced to death, in Graaff-Reinet. He later acted as editor of his pro-Boer English newspaper, The South African News, when his predecessor, Albert Cartwright, was arrested and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, serving as such until the newspaper was closed down by the Cape Colonial authorities.

Thereafter he wisely departed for London in January 1902, four months before the end of the Anglo-Boer War, or his fate might have resembled that of Albert Cartwright. He enrolled as a medical student at Guy’s Hospital, and continued with part-time journalism for many varied publications while he was a student at Guy’s.

Songs of the Veld and Other Poems with Leipoldt and his rebel friends Albert Cartwright, Friedrich Carl Kolbe, Betty Molteno, Alice Greene and Anna Purcell.

Songs of the Veld and Other Poems with Leipoldt and his rebel friends Albert Cartwright, Friedrich Carl Kolbe, Betty Molteno, Alice Greene and Anna Purcell.

Leipoldt did not have a good relationship with his mother, and I think it is correct that he did not see her again after he left Clanwilliam for Cape Town. She died not long after he moved to London. His father also died while he was still in London, but he certainly did see his father again.

Leipoldt’s medical studies were financed by Dr Bolus, the Cape Town botanist, which says a great deal about the friendship that blossomed between this young boy growing into manhood, and his intellect, which was obviously advanced for his age. Dr Bolus saw the potential in Leipoldt, knew that he wanted to study medicine, and so he offered to finance Leipoldt’s sojourn at Guy’s Hospital. Leipoldt repaid what had been advanced to him, and also worked part-time as a free-lance journalist and washed dishes in London’s top hotels – where he met the famous chef August Escoffier, not by coincidence but because his lifelong interest in food had already been kindled way back in Clanwilliam – to keep himself afloat in London.

Leipoldt’s letters to Dr Bolus are published in the book entitled Dear Dr Bolus.

During the Anglo-Boer War, opposition to the war had been expressed in The New Age, a weekly journal published in London. Six South Africans, Leipoldt, Betty Molteno, Alice Greene, Albert Cartwright, Friedrich Kolbe and Anna Purcell, all of whom knew each other and operated almost as a small secret society, together with Maria Koopmans De Wet and Olive Schreiner (who was however under house arrest in Hanover in the Karoo), published pro-Boer, protest poems anonymously in The New Age. The poems written by the South Africans were anonymous because of martial law. They could have been charged with treason if it had become known that they had done so. After Leipoldt’s arrival in London, it was decided to publish in book form some of the pro-Boer and other anti-imperialist poems that had appeared in The New Age, and in this way Songs of the Veld and other poems appeared just after the end of the war in June or July 1902. Leipoldt was probably the driving force behind this publication, and it contained his first published poem, entitled The Executions in Cape Colony, a fragment. It reads as follows:

“The gibbet and the grave gave life, and will

Give life again to those that strive and strain

For freedom and its cause; nor strive in vain

Those whose desires need force and cords to kill.

The thing is done; or right or wrong ’tis done

And only the remembrance shall endure.

But not the memory of a wrong shall stand

More firm or rooted faster or more sure.

And it shall serve to keep this dismal land

More dismal till the final aim is won.”

Interestingly, and ironically given what happened decades later, the consignment of Songs of the Veld was destroyed when it arrived in Cape Town on board ship, and the book was banned by the British. Only a few copies were smuggled in to South Africa – enough, however, for the book to be unearthed years later and published as a facsimile edition in 2008. After 106 years, then, it became freely available in South Africa.

After finishing his medical studies, Leipoldt stayed in London, working as a medical inspector of schools. But he also travelled widely on the continent, and spent six months as the personal physician to the American publisher Pullitzer, after whom the Pullitzer prize is named, on his private vessel. In truth his services were required more as a conversationalist and man of letters than as a doctor, but this was his designation while he was employed by Pullitzer.

Leipoldt visited the East, where his father had been a missionary, and it seems that both father and son had a fascination for the East throughout their lives.

Eventually Leipoldt returned to South Africa in 1914, taking up a post as the first medical inspector of schools in the Transvaal. It is from this experience that his book in English, Bushveld Doctor, emerged.

For a while during this period Leipoldt shared a house in Pretoria with Eugene Marais. He also stood unsuccessfully for Parliament for Smuts’s South African Party.

Later, in the 1920s, Leipoldt returned to Cape Town, where he obtained a lecturing post in paediatrics at UCT, became editor of the South African Medical Journal and secretary of the SA Medical Union. He had charge of a paediatric ward at the Somerset Hospital near what is now the Waterfront.

He set up home in the Cape Town suburb of Kenilworth, at a house called Arbury, just below the railway line, and it was during this time that he adopted a son, Jeff Leipoldt, and opened his home to Peter Shields, who was not formally adopted, presumably because his mother was nearby in Stellenbosch.

It was also while at Arbury that Leipoldt became well-known – in Cape Town circles – for his dinner parties and his culinary expertise. (He had of course written Kos vir die Kenner in Afrikaans in 1926.)

After Arbury was sold, Leipoldt boarded at the home of a fellow-doctor, Dr Bobby Forsyth, in Newlands (just off Palmyra Road), and then later in Sea Point, which was where he died.

It was said of Leipoldt after his death that: “He preferred to contradict. He was the apostle of the opposite view.” The concept of “political correctness” would have been anathema to Leipoldt, who might also have been termed the apostle of political incorrectness. He would have enjoyed the jest – “when in Rome, do as the Carthaginians do”.

Teetotalism was not only foreign to Leipoldt, but one of his pet hates. He held strong views about abolitionism and the damage done by its advocates.

Although he was indifferent to conventional religion, Leipoldt accepted the need to live life according to a code; and he claimed to be a Buddhist. It is tempting to dismiss this claim as simply another instance of his contrarian instincts, but it seems that his missionary background – his parents and both sets of grandparents were missionaries – exerted a strong influence on him, and all the evidence supports the view that Leipoldt’s own closely held belief in the power and endurance of the highest form of love – that which expects nothing in return – was the code that he chose to live by. He certainly believed in the endurance and supremacy of this kind of love, and this, together with the value of service to others he must have imbibed from his own family, explain much about the way he lived his life, often taking groups of boys on camping outings or travelling with them, and opening his home to Peter Shields and his adopted son, Jeff.

His remains lie in a beautiful place of stillness on the Pakhuis Pass, not far from here. This was organised by his friends after his death.

If you read The Valley, which is made up of the three novels Gallows Gecko, Stormwrack and The Mask, you will find strongly biographical elements in all three novels, which cover the period 1820 to 1930 in the Clanwilliam area, which is however never mentioned by name. When he discusses, as he does, botanical, medical or culinary matters, it helps to know that the author was an expert in all these fields.

Let me read you an extract from chapter 8 of Stormwrack, where Leipoldt describes how the villagers of Clanwilliam used to gather twice a week to wait for the post-cart to arrive with their mail and their newspapers. Clanwilliam was an isolated village then, and the nearest railway station was about a hundred miles away. What Leipoldt describes is a mail day early in January 1896, just after the Jameson Raid, with the villagers anxiously waiting for more detailed news of what had happened, and it is almost certain that Leipoldt himself would have been present on this occasion. Note the reference to the Reverend Christian Uhlmann, one of the main characters in Stormwrack, who is based on Leipoldt’s father, the Reverend Christian Leipoldt. Note also the denseness of the writing. Stormwrack needs to be read at the pace of the ox, which of course is appropriate to the time Leipoldt was writing about. This was undoubtedly deliberate, as the style differs considerably from his other writing in English. He writes as follows:

“Here, in front of the courthouse, the village, or at least the adult, adolescent and older juvenile male portion of it, congregated on mail days. Some of them came to get their letters and parcels, but the majority had no expectation of any postal harvest and loitered for the simple reason that attracts any crowd – the chance of gossip, of novelty in some form or other, of interest, of mild excitement, a chance ever present when the only link between isolation and the larger civilisation three hundred miles away lies in the arrival of the weekly mail. Such occasions were made the opportunity for the interchange of opinion, for discussion between the older and more sedate members of the community, and for mild bickering and horseplay between the juveniles, who on these weekly gathering-days were allowed more liberty of action than was usually considered advisable in so conservative a community.

The post-cart was scheduled to arrive promptly at four o’clock in the afternoon, but the experienced knew well enough that the schedule was never strictly adhered to and that considerable latitude was granted to the driver. In winter, when the air was cold and rainy, few grouped themselves around the thorn tree much before sunset, and the gatherings were always smaller. In summer, when the heat of the day had died down and the air was pleasantly cool, it was another matter. Then there was no discomfort in loitering underneath the thorn tree, chatting with one’s acquaintances, observing with mild interest what went on, and smoking – in leisurely satisfaction – the fragrant home-grown tobacco whose smoke curled lazily into the air. There was no loss of dignity attached to that democratic intercourse, and in consequence the village had no scruples in attending. On such occasions one could see not only the magistrate, the chief constable and the local attorney among the little throng that clustered in the vicinity of the thorn tree, but practically everyone who counted for anything at all in the village, including the Reverend Mr Mance-Bisley, who took advantage of these opportunities to discuss the various questions with the parents of his scholars, and the Reverend Christian Uhlmann who, with a gravity befitting his position and with a childlike shyness that was temperamental, stood modestly aside and engaged in conversation only when he was directly approached. It took some time to sort the mail, and when the doors of the post office were opened there was a rush towards the counter and a quick dispersal of the waiting crowd homewards.”

Isn’t it wonderful? And it was just a short distance up the road from where we are now, 112 years ago.

I am still asked by people whether I translated The Valley into English, which only goes to show how Leipoldt has become typecast and pigeonholed as an Afrikaans writer and poet. No one other than Leipoldt could have written the English contained in the The Valley, and many South Africans have yet to discover Leipoldt in English. What many people also don’t know is that several of his Afrikaans poems were first drafted in English.

Leipoldt’s real triumph is that he truly understood the South African predicament, our tendency in all sorts of contexts to divide ourselves into “us and them”, and the subtle but strong message of The Valley, for those who read between the lines, is that redemption lies in overcoming the divides between, say, English and Afrikaans, or black and white. In this, Leipoldt was prophetic; and, writing about the past in 1930, he has a remarkably modern message for us in 2010. But never simplistic, never didactic, always balanced, human, endearing, subtle, sympathetic, and always debatable.

Leipoldt reminds us of the obligations we owe to the past – the obligation “of living for this country”, as one of his characters, old Charles Quakerley, puts it in Gallows Gecko – even as we face the future. This includes the obligation to transcend the divisions of the past, including but not limited to the divisions between English- and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, exacerbated by the Anglo-Boer War; to set aside the “us and them” attitude; and to work for the common good of this country.

This is why Leipoldt continues, not only to charm, impress, entertain and fascinate us, getting under the skin, as it were, of his characters, and of South Africa and her problems, but also why he challenges our views and the way we live our lives in South Africa today, one and all.

* Advocate TS (Trevor) Emslie, managing editor of Cederberg Publications,  gave this talk at Clanwilliam on 1st May 2010

Cederberg's collection of Leipoldt's writings.

Cederberg's collection of Leipoldt's writings.

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Methods of barbarism and the underground resistance in South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Marthinus
  
Songs of the Veld and Other Poems was published in 1902 in London by The New Age. It was, however, suppressed in South Africa. Cederberg Publishers republished the anthology after a rare copy was discovered in the archives of the University of Stellenbosch. The preface and introduction to the new edition was done by Marthinus van Bart. The editor was Trevor Emslie of Cederberg Publications.

Songs of the Veld and Other Poems was published in 1902 in London by The New Age. It was, however, suppressed in South Africa. Cederberg Publishers republished the anthology after a rare copy was discovered in the archives of the University of Stellenbosch. The preface and introduction to the new edition was done by Marthinus van Bart. The editor was Trevor Emslie of Cederberg Publications.

  

By MARTHINUS VAN BART 

“War is always a dangerous thing and brings with it destruction and devastation. Therefore it should not be resorted to rashly but should only be used as a last resort. The basis of action of the armed forces must be justice and validity, and it’s reasons for going into action must clear, intelligible and be met with general approval. War waged out of greed and possesiveness only leads to the destruction of the country and to turmoil in the decades to follow. Brambles grow where such an army has been,” the Chinese sages of antiquity declared. 

The war Britain waged from 1899 to 1902 on the two small Boer Republics of Transvaal (Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek) and the Orange Free State (Oranje Vrijstaat), both rich in mineral wealth such as gold and diamonds, was injust, invalid, unclear and unintelligable. 

The true nature of this war can be gauged by the way it was initiated by the British arch capitalist and mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes and his henchman dr. Leander Starr Jameson. They launched a coup d’etat on Kruger’s Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek between Chistmas and New Year 1896 when they knew the Afrikaner community woulod be celebrating this, for them, holy week with solemn sermons, prayers and pious socializing. 

Like thieves under cover of darkness Jameson and his hirelings from Rhodes’s British South-African Company stole into the ZAR from Mashonaland with an army of hired dogs of war whilst their armed cohorts waited in Johannesburg to attack Pretoria from the back. The government in London was fully aware of this coup, planned in total secrecy. 

The conspiritors, however, underestimated the alertness of the Boers, who stopped the raiders at Doornkop near Roodepoort and Krugersdorp on New Year’s Day 1897. 

On 11 October 1899 the anticipated war between Britain and the independent Boers finally broke out.  Although Jameson and his cohorts were condemned in 1897 by the courts of justice in Pretoria and London, Jameson was elevated from criminal skunk to administrator of the Cape Colony in 1904. A golden handshake par excellence. 

Britain’s gold war with the Boers was condemned worldwide by all civilized nations. Its sole supporters were the British posessions worldwide, called the British Empire or Great Britain, and its partner in business and crime, America. And even from the midst of dubious America, who at exactly the same time was waging a cruel war of extermination in the Philippines, came a message of support for the Boers signed by hundreds of school children of Misssippi and delivered to Kruger in Pretoria a day before the Boer capital fell into the hands of the British army. 

When Winston Churchill, after his lightning sojourn in South Africa to “earn” his traditional upper class medals in the war, went to America in December 1900 for political support, MARK TWAIN, American writer, journalist and philosopher, was asked to introduce him (Churchill) at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Twain, an anti-emperialist, gave a short and sharp introduction: “I think that England sinned when she got herself into a war in South Africa which she could have avoided, just as we have sinned in getting into a similar war in the Philippines. Mr. Churchill by his father is an Englishman: By his mother he is an American; no doubt a blend that makes the perfect man. England and America: Yes we are kin. And now that we are also kin in sin, there is nothing more to be desired. The harmony is complete, the blend is perfect – like Mr. Churchill himself, whom I now have the honour to present to you.” 

The esteemed philosopher and journalist GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON, said: “I was called a Pro-Boer, and, unlike some Pro-Boers, I was very proud of the title. It expressed exactly what I meant much better than its idealistic synonyms. Some intellectuals indignantly repudiated the term, and said they were not Pro-Boers, but only lovers of peace or pacifists. But I emphatically was a Pro-Boer, and I emphatically was not a pacifist. My point was that the Boers were right in fighting. I thought that these farmers were perfectly entitled to take to horse and rifle in defence of their farms, and their little farming commonwealth, when it was invaded by a more cosmopolitan empire at the command of very cosmopolitan financiers. The imperialist is the direct enemy of liberty. The staunch imperialist H.G. Wells defends the only sort of war I thoroughly despise, the bullying of small states for their oil or gold; and he despises the only sort of war that I really defend, a war of civilizations and religions, to determine the moral destiny of mankind.” 

HERBERT SPENCER, British philosopher, wrote in Ethical World on 10 February 1900 about the Anglo-Boer War: “We are in the course of rebarbarization; and there is no prospect but that of military despotisms, which we are rapidly approaching.” 

And on the 14th of June 1901 SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, leader of the Liberal opposition in London, condemned the scorched earth warfare of the British army in South Africa by saying: “When is a war not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.” 

The respected British political commentator SIR A.M.S. METHUEN, who was described as both pro-Boer and decidedly not pro-Boer, wrote in the preface to the original edition of Peace or War in South Africa, 1901: “It is the policy of the Government (expressed by Lord Hugh Cecil in a letter to The Times of June 24th, 1901) to throw the blame for the barbarous methods of this war on our generals in the field. Such an attitude is both unconstitutional and cowardly. The Ministry is responsible to Parliament and the public for the acts of its executive departments; and to shelter itself behind our brave and sorely-tried army is an unworthy trick.” 

Writing about the Afrikaner character, Methuen concluded: “Their history, written in tears and blood, will be an eternal inspiration to generous minds. In an age when the ideal has little influence and little value, they have struggled – the few against the many, the poor against the rich, the weak against the strong – for the sake of freedom against overwhelming odds  for over two years. They have seen their wives carried into captivity, their children dying, their homes burnt, their property confiscated; but they have not flinched. When peace and the ordered ease of English rule were offered them if only they would forswear their country, they refused the temptation and were strong to fight on. 

“Are we not chivalrous enough to acknowledge that these men are heroes and worthy of our steel and our regard? Let us, in Burke’s noble phrase, confess that we do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people… when the day of our own Armageddon comes, we shall utter no better prayer than to face our destiny with a courage as dauntless and serene.” 

To what extent were the British parliament and public informed about the impact of Kitchener’s ruthless methods to combat the Boer guerrilla resistance,  winning through psychological warfare not military supremacy? 

Regardless of the answer, the British parliament and public should have been well aware of what Kitchener was capable of: Shortly before the Anglo-Boer War, after the Battle of Omdurman, Sudan, September 2, 1898, Winston Churchill, then war correspondent, wrote: “Being now free from military discipline, I was able to write what I thought about Lord Kitchener without fear, favour or affection and certainly did so. I had been scandalised by his desecration of the Mahdi’s tomb and the barbarous manner in which he had carried off the Mahdi’s head in a kerosene can as a trophy.” 

At home in South Africa six Cape Intellectuals, muted by Matial Law to cry out against the war crimes committed by the British army at an unpresedented scale across the whole country, used the only weapon at their disposal: journalism and poetry. This they masterly deployed to attack Britain world wide in intellectual circles for its immoral, greedy and posessive war to lay claim to a vast mineral wealth that was not hers for the taking. And thus poetry, part and parcel of the world of the written word, of literature, became a weapon of war, perfectly fitting the expression: ” The pen is mightier than the sword”. 

Going back in ancient history, we find that the ancient Greeks revered Apollo as their god of war, and he is thus depicted with a bow and arrow in his right hand. But curiously enough, in his left hand he holds a lyre, the stringed instrument the Greek poets played in accompanyment when reciting their verse, aptly called lyric poetry. And the Greeks are well known for their lyric poetry praising their gods as well as their heroes on the battle field. 

In line with this ancient tradition, we find that during the Anglo-Boer War many rhymes were made up and turned into songs which built up the morale of the men. This was done by both the British soldiers and the Boer guerillas in the field. Many a British soldier was heard to remark that the habit of the Boers to sing religious songs at night time, made them feel quite uncomfortable. Winston Churchill actually declared that it scared him. 

On the Boer side FW Reitz was a master at the art of humorous rhyming mocking the British for their pomp, sermony and pride. These rhymes were turned into song, giving the Boers a much needed psychological boost to their morale when they more than often had to face overwhelming numbers of their enemy whilst their women and children suffered in the concentration camps and their burnt down farms offered no replenishment. 

Politicians often make war using rhyme. Julius Malema and Jacob Zuma are two contemporory examples of politicians who at public mass gatherings incite murder and mayhem with words and song.  “Bring me my machine gun…” 

Songs of the Veld and Other Poems, published by The New Age in 1902 in London, was re-published in 2008 by Cederberg Publishers of Cape Town.

Songs of the Veld and Other Poems, published by The New Age in 1902 in London, was re-published in 2008 by Cederberg Publishers of Cape Town.

The poetry of the Cape intellectuals, as collected together in Songs of the Veld and Other Poems, however, is in a class of its own. It was written when the Anglo-Boer War was in full swing and the scorched earth onslaught of the British army at its severest. From 1900 onwards the British army had its hands fuller than before as the elusive and hardy Boers relentlessly kept on waging a highly effective guerilla war against it. And on top of it all these farmers, these Sons of the Veld, were dealing the professional British army with its proud tradition and military history of beaming successes over the centuries and all over the globe, the one humiliating blow after the next. As Kipling put it: “Teaching Britain no end of a lesson”. 

SCORCHED EARTH TACTICS

A very frustrated British army leadership, namely generals Bobs Roberts and Horatio Herbert Kitchener, when they could not pin down the Boers, resorted to Scorched Earth tactics. If you cannot get to the men, get hold of their wives and children and hold them hostage, burn their homesteads, destroy their flocks and crops and make life on earth a living hell, forcing the men to lay down their weapons (in actual fact, as the war progressed, it was the British army’s own stock the Boers were using) and to surrender. 

The whole country was completely fenced in  and heavily armed block houses erected all over. And when the Boer commandos invaded the Cape Colony, the headquarters of the British Army, martial law was declared and every citizen reduced to a prisoner. Life even for loyalists became unbearable in South Africa under British military authority and Martial Law. 

When all was in turmoil and the news of the numerous war crimes committed by the British Army suppressed to keep the outside world in the dark “till the final aim was won”, six Cape intellectuals –  C. Louis Leipoldt, Friedrich Carl Kolbe, Albert Cartwright, Betty Molteno, Alice Greene and Anna Purcell – wrote poetry in English exposing these scorched earth atrocities to the outside world, condemning Britain for forsaking its own proud tradition of heroism in battle by refering to i.e. William Wallace (Braveheart), Robert the Bruce and other famous icons who opposed tyranny, keeping the moral highground. 

Six intellectuals verbally attacked the British Empire with scorching poetry, exposing the war crimes committed by the British army in South Africa in the barbarian pursuit of the gold and diamond riches of the Boer Republics. The New Age published their poetry in a magazine called The New Age. An outcry from across the world followed as intellectuals published their own protest verse against the Empire. The best of these was compiled in the anthology Songs of the Veld and Other Poems and published by The New Age in 1902. It was banned in South Africa. In 2008 Cederberg Publishers of Cape Town re-published the anthology as Africana.

Six intellectuals verbally attacked the British Empire with scorching poetry, exposing the war crimes committed by the British army in South Africa in the barbarian pursuit of the gold and diamond riches of the Boer Republics. The New Age published their poetry in a magazine called The New Age. An outcry from across the world followed as intellectuals published their own protest verse against the Empire. The best of these was compiled in the anthology Songs of the Veld and Other Poems and published by The New Age in 1902. It was banned in South Africa. In 2008 Cederberg Publishers of Cape Town re-published the anthology as Africana.

These numerous poems from the Cape were smuggled out of the country, presumebly by war correspondent Leipoldt’s diplomatic connections, and printed in London by The New Age, a Literary Magazine circulated to all English speaking countries world wide. 

Soon intelectuals from America, Britian, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere responded with outrage, many writing their own poetry – likewise condemning Britain for its methods of barbarism in South Africa and challenging the so called Christianity of its crown. 

Because of Martial Law in South Africa, writing poems such as these by subjects of the Cape Colony and Queen Victoria would have been regarded as acts of treason. If found out, the punishment would have been incarceration and even the firing squad or the gallows. 

The South African News was established in a new building in Keerom Street, Cape Town. After the editor, Albert Cartwright, was put into jail for opposing the British regime, the establishment was closed down till after the war.

The South African News was established in a new building in Keerom Street, Cape Town. After the editor, Albert Cartwright, was put into jail for opposing the British regime, the establishment was closed down till after the war.

Cartwright, editor of The South African News, was thrown into jail for accurately reporting in his Cape Town newspaper on the shelling of a Boer homestead occupied by Boer women and children, killing some and wounding the rest. And by reporting that Kitchener gave an order not to take Boer prisoners, but to summarily execute them. This was later denied by Kitchener, but in recent times these allegation has resurfaced in Australia, where a military pressure group is arguing for a posthumous pardon of the executed Bushveld Carbineers who murdered, robbed and cattle rustled in Northern Transvaal during the war. Their reasoning: They acted on orders from Kitchener to take no Boer prisoners. 

Three other newspaper editors, FS Malan, L.E. de Jong and J.A. Vosloo, who also carried these reports in their papers, were likewise incarcerated and their printing presses closed down. John Ntengo Jabavu, editor of two Xhosa newspapers in the Eastern Cape, who warned his readers not to join the British forces for a few bob a day and all you can rape and rob, was also prosecuted and his papers banned. Jabavu actually predicted future retaliation for the atrocities committed by blacks on especially Boer woman and children if the Afrikaners (descendents of the Boers) should ever regain control of the government. He was prophetical in this: Apartheid at its worst had very much to do with settling old scores with the blacks for joing the enemy and participating in the plunder and the outrage of the Boer (Afrikaner) community. 

KITCHENER

In a speech made at Johannesburg, June 18, 1902, Kitchener went beyond the customary complimentary remarks regarding one’s former enemies that the winner is wont to make. In fact, rather ironically, he expressed opinions that echo in the pro-Boer poetry in this anthology: 

“And, gentlemen, what have we learnt about our enemies? We were told that the Boers would all run away. Well, they ran away very often, but they always came back again. We were told they would never hold together in any cohesive formation, and I fully believe that there is no one more self-confidant of his own individual opinion than the Boers. And yet, what have we seen? That they have subordinated themselves to their leaders and have worked with discipline through a long and protracted war. We have seen them courageous in attack and retreat. They have always shown such marked ability as to be a lesson to us all. There is another characteristic they have displayed which, if we are true descendents of our forefathers, we ought to be most capable of fully appreciating. I refer to that wonderful tenacity of purpose, that ‘don’t-know-when-you-are-beaten’ quality which they have so prominently displayed in this war. There may be individuals amongst them whose characteristicts and methods we do not like and do not approve of, but judged as a whole I maintain that they are a verile race and an asset of considerable importance to the British Empire, for whose honour and glory I hope before long they may be fighting side by side with us.” 

CONCLUSION:

In the context of the Anglo-Boer War the nature of the imperialist war is analized to show it has been ethically indefensible and unjustifiable. And where ethical questions are concerned, it is clearly still a small but valiant  band who, against the general conformist mentality, forces a breach for the advancement of human civilization. The contribution of the female poets, writers and journalists in this regard must not be underestimated. They, in particular, proved that a socio-political powerless position cannot constrain the power of the conscience. 

The publication of this controversial little anthology, Songs of the Veld and Other Poems,  – so controversial that in a hundred years it has never been published in South Africa – is a tangible indication of the important role of the ethically motivated journalist and publisher to promote freedom and right by fighting with the pen, always mightier than the sword, against the oppressive, and thus dehumanising hegemony, of a rapacious, hedonistic dispensation. 

Songs of the Veld is a striking example of what can be achieved when  journalist and poet take up this weapon together. Under great pressure, despite imprisonment and the closing down of newspapers and publishing houses, these poets, journalists and publishers  were prepared to stand or fall by their convictions. 

Through the print-media they opened windows on a reality that presented completely different socio-political and economical scenes than those offered by the imperialist politicians and their publications, carthorses of unscrupulous capitalists and war-financiers. The power of the pen proved to be able to awaken the power of public awareness. 

Copies of Songs of the Veld and Other Poems can be obtained by Cederberg Publications at www.cederbergpublications.co.za

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Sources

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Sarietha

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Du Toit, P. 2002. Suid-Afrika op soek na ’n opvolgskikking. University of Stellenbosch.

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The golden moment that never was

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Sarietha

The tantalising question is what Slabbert would have done if he had stayed on in Parliament and had been leader of the Democratic Party when De Klerk made his offer. Some of his close friends in the party told me that such an offer would have been Slabbert’s golden opportunity, one for which he was uniquely equipped. My view of Slabbert as a politician is that he was never interested in an opposition politics that took two particular forms: the one the kind of opposition that becomes a cult of true believers; the other an opposition that accepted the dominant party’s mores and values at the cost of being seen as its pale imitation (Levite & Tarrow, 1983).

Slabbert was interested in power, not only in opposing it effectively, but also in an opposition party such as the PFP achieving a balance of power and ultimately sharing in power. From his first academic article on politics, published in 1975, he believed that the NP could be challenged only from the right within the parliamentary system. He had also recognised that ‘non-electoral ­sources of pressure’ on the government would mount. What he could not foresee was the possibility of the NP government becoming paralysed by the mid-1980s as the result both of these different pressures and President Botha’s personality (Giliomee, 2008).

Thus there was a golden opportunity – once PW Botha had retired – for an Afrikaner politician, unsullied by apartheid, to join FW de Klerk in trying to find a way out. Was that not the kind of role for which Slabbert had prepared himself ever since the mid-1970s? Would he not have accepted the offer from De Klerk that De Beer turned down? Had Slabbert become part of a tripartite alliance, he might well have become a chief negotiator once Gerrit Viljoen became ill. Finding himself in a position of awesome responsibility, Slabbert, with all his superb gifts, would have been compelled to assess the assumption of my daughter’s friends in 1982 that a black party in power might, after a century of political exclusion, not act exactly like the Progressive Federal Party. If that assumption was correct, a different constitution was needed.

In the capacity of negotiator, Slabbert might well have turned to South Africa’s Options and its proposals on power-sharing and a minority veto on crucial issues. As a compromise proposal, it clearly would have had more substance than the uncertain kind of power-sharing that the NP was forced to accept. This is only speculation, but how impoverished the craft of the historian would be if there were not a place for considering alternatives and counterfactuals in history.

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A constitutional settlement at risk

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Sarietha

Soon after a new constitution was accepted in 1996, it became clear that there was no clarity about what the different parties meant by negotiations or agreement. The NP and several other parties thought that the settlement was a mutually beneficial and stable contract between the parties that could be changed only by mutual agreement. If any conflict arose – for instance, about the hierarchy of merit and transformation in the labour market – the Constitutional Court would give a carefully weighted judgment, which would be applied across the board. The ANC, by contrast, adhered to the notion that the Constitution was not a contract but part of a process, which was, in fact, a semi-revolutionary process. It subscribed to the theory of what it called the ‘national ­democratic revolution’ (NDR). In the first stage of this revolution, the goal was to take charge of the political and economic system and from this base create the conditions for the transition to socialism.

The ANC fought a classic ‘war of position’ in which each concession it extracted from the government became the platform for the next assault in the national democratic revolution. It amended its position as the balance of forces shifted in its favour (Du Toit, 2000; Du Toit, 2002). In 1995, Thabo Mbeki, Deputy President of South Africa, would tell an ANC conference that the negotiations for an interim constitution were ‘contrived elements of a transition’ necessary to end white domination. At no time did the ANC consider them ‘as elements of permanence’ (Mbeki, 1995).

The difference between the Constitution as binding contract and the Constitution as part of a radical process became starkly clear a decade after it had been signed. In July 2007, Rapport carried a bold front-page headline, ‘The ANC lied to us’, over a report of a speech by ex-Foreign Minister Pik Botha on affirmative action in which he said: ‘If the ANC had demanded that the provisions of the Employment Equity Act, and in particular the way it was implemented, be incorporated in the new constitution, such a constitution would not have been agreed to’ (Giliomee, 2009:706).

In a private exchange of letters, President Mbeki rejected the view out of hand. He told Botha that the ANC had stood ‘as a buffer between a deeply aggrieved black majority and white minority that seems mercilessly insensitive to the grievous harm that was done to millions’. White South Africa should not feel unhappy about giving up power in 1990–94 because ‘in reality they had no other choice’. It was objectionable that change should only take place ‘in content and pace’ as defined by ‘the white beneficiaries of our long history of colonialism and apartheid’ (Giliomee, 2009:707). It was clear that the parties had failed to resolve their fundamental differences at the negotiation table.

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