The British, represented by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, had annexed the Transvaal Republic in 1877, and the broken-hearted Sarah decided to make a new life for herself She purchased 100 shares in the Transvaal Mining and Trading Association. Lame, widowed and in poor health, she set sail for South Africa. She arrived in December 1878 in Durban. Having bought a horse and, in the company of a transport rider, she rode into the Transvaal, westward to Rustenburg, where the business venture she had bought into was supposed to have been situated. She stayed at the local inn, only to discover that the whole thing was a hoax. The scheme did not exist. Her money was now running low and she realized that if she did not get a job with lodgings, she would be in desperate trouble.
The local clergyman arranged a post for her as a private tutor to the two Jennings daughters on the faini Nooitgedacht, in the Hekpoort valley. The Jennings’ were quite a family themselves, being second-generation 1820 settlers who had trekked up to the Magaliesburg and started farming. This was a pleasant period for Sarah. In the winter months the family would trek up to the Northam region for the cattle to enjoy the winter grazing, returning to the farm with the onset of spring.
Sarah, however, was becoming restless and, having learned quite a lot about farming, she persuaded William Jennings to sell her a portion of the farm Groenfontein. It was during this period that she employed an Englishman named Edgerton, who was ‘down on his uppers’. She then acquired a wagon and twelve ‘salted’ oxen, and decided to become an itinerant trader, a ‘smous’. Male smouses were common then, but a woman smous – unheard of! She left Nooitgedacht and trekked to the markets of Pretoria, where she bought supplies of all sorts of commodities the farmers required. On the way home, she sold her goods along the valley. The northern part of the country was now being opened up, and she decided to ply her trade on the Great North Road. Northwards she travelled with Edgerton as her ‘voorloopee, leading the oxen. She would trade her goods at settlements such as Marulaskop and the Nylstroom district, and then head back to Pretoria. On one of these expeditions she entered an agreement with Makopane (Makapan), trading very successfully in grain with the Chief until the outbreak of the so-called ‘Gun War’ in Basotuland caused a shortage of grain. She fell out with George Edgerton, her presumed lover, and he went off to the Basotu War never to be heard of again.
She soon realised that war between the Boers and their British rulers was imminent and moved onto the farm she had bought. The First Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1880. Anstruther was defeated at Bronkhorstspruit, Colley was defeated at Majuba, the British sued for peace and the Transvaal was returned to the Boers. This heralded the end for those farmers who had supported the British. Business in the Transvaal had collapsed. Banks were calling in their loans and many people were going bankrupt. She decided to head for Natal. On the way her oxen sickened and died, a Boer shot her beloved dog ‘Prince’ and at Harrismith, she gave up. She eventually made it to Durban where she sailed for England.
We know very little about Sarah’s life between 1881 and 1887, other than the fact that she helped out in the East End Hospital. However, as happens with so many people who leave this country, the memory haunted her. She longed for the African sun and the bush and, in May 1888 she arrived in the boom-town of Johannesburg, where gold had been discovered only two years before. The bondholders had foreclosed on her farm and she set herself up as a sharebroker in Booysens. Her timing could not have been worse! March 1899 saw the mines hit pyrites and yields plummeted. The boom collapsed almost overnight and the biggest slump in the history of Johannesburg began.
Sarah weathered the storm, found a buyer for her farm, settled the bond and, with the little that was left, she decided to go transport-riding and farming. She bought a ‘Burgher’s right’ farm out near Middelburg on the road to Mozambique, invested in two wagons with oxen and set about remaking her fortune by transport-riding on the Great North Road. It was here that she found the ideal faun, ‘Tobias zyn Loop’, and, when the railway came, she was bought out at a handsome profit. The business grew, especially now that she had the capital for trading. She moved to the northern Transvaal, loaded her wagons and travelled the 110 kilometres down the Klein Letaba area, where she supplied the miners at the Birthday Mine with their requirements. She bought the farm Ravenshill and worked out the first farm-schooling scheme in the Transvaal, launching the Transvaal Women’s Educational Union in 1898.
In 1902, after the Second Anglo-Boer, she sailed for England, where she was treated as a celebrity. She caused a sensation by attacking Emily Hobhouse, declaring how very little the latter actually knew about the entire situation! She soon returned to the Transvaal and took lodgings on the corner of Du Toit and Schoeman Street, Pretoria. In 1903 she took ill and on 17 April she died, at the age of sixty-three years. Her obituary which appeared in the Pretoria News, was written by Vere Stent, secretary to Cecil John Rhodes.
And so, a tremendously brave and indomitable woman of pioneering spirit lies resting peacefully in the Wesleyan section of the old cemetery in Pretoria. She is an example to us all.
The Po people
The Po people
In the late 18th century the area around what is now the small town of Magaliesburg, west of Johannesburg in the North West Province, was the ancestral land of the Po people. They are a sub-tribe of the Tswana and their totem is the elephant.
When Mzilikazi fled the wrath of Shaka and entered the Magaliesberg, many, though not all, of the Po fled their lands and migrated down to Thaba Nchu where they lived untroubled by the wrath of the warrior king, who ruled supreme in the Transvaal. When the Voortrekkers arrived, Mzilikazi suspected their intentions and fell upon the Erasmus family near present-day Rustenburg. The scattered Trekkers consolidated in the Parys area and in the Battle of Vegkop that followed, a mere forty families drove back an impi of more than 3 000 Ndebele. The Voortrekkers then attacked and ransacked Mosega, one of Mzilikazi’s kraals near Zeerust. At the same time a Zulu impi attacked from the east and, although Mzilikazi himself was safe at eGabeni to the north, his power in the Transvaal was broken. Hendrik Potgieter, the Boer leader, took advantage of this and in a nine-day running battle, Mzilikazi was driven out of the country and up through present-day Botswana to the north, where he went on to form the great Matabele nation.
The Po who had fought alongside the Trekkers against Mzilikazi, then settled in the valley of the Nagakotse (Magalies) River. In 1841 they again fought on the side of the Boers when a group of Ndebele warriors raided into the Transvaal. This, however, did not help the Po. The Boers moved inexorably onto their land. They surveyed and cut it up into farms and the Po had to dig irrigation furrows from the river for them. Anybody who has driven through the Hekpoort Valley will know how fertile the land is. The Po were devastated and deeply resentful of the Boers who had stolen their land. In 1847 their Chief Moghali Moghali (after whom the Magaliesberg range is named) was accused of gunrunning and conspiring with chiefs hostile to the Boers. He was summoned to appear before Commandant Kruger, the father of Paul Kruger. Suspicious of the whites’ justice, however, Moghali Moghali left his home with a few followers and fled to Thaba Nchu. Years later he and his people came back to make their peace with the then president of the Transvaal, Marthinus Wessels Pretorius. After negotiations the Boers decided to allocate some land north of the Magaliesberg range to the Po, but the fertile valley between the Witwatersberg and the Magaliesberg was not returned.
The Po were told that they would have to purchase the land from the Transvaal Republic, so Moghali Moghali called the tribal elders together and they decided to send all the able-bodied men down to the Cape Province to find work. They then levied a tax upon the men’s earnings and in this way were able, in 1863, to pay the Transvaal Government for the return of a portion of their sacred lands. The Po settled just south of the present-day town of Britz at a place called Tlhogokgolo Mountain or Wolhuterskop.
It was no wonder that, when the Anglo-Boer War broke out, they sided with
the British, hoping to retrieve their lands, but that too was in vain and the Po still live at the foot of Wolhuterskop to this day.
Mantatisi – the African Boadicea
Mantatisi – the African Boadicea
This is the tale of Mantatisi, the black Boadicea, a woman who lends credence to the saying that ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’.
It was early in the 1800s and the tribes in what is now Zululand were fleeing from the wrath of Shaka. Some of these fugitives were given refuge by Morotsho, Chief of the Batlokwa, a metalworking people whose home was on the western side of the Drakensberg.
Among the fugitives was a young man named Motsholi. Unfortunately for him, he engaged the fancy of Mantatisi, Chief Morotsho’s wife and queen of the Batlokwa tribe. She was absolutely smitten by the young fugitive, though she had a small problem – her husband!
In 1813 Chief Morotsho died mysteriously and Mantatisi immediately called upon the fugitive Motsholi to be her consort. Motsholi rejected her, saying, ‘Shall I eat Morotsho’s food?’ His implication was clear – if he were to take the place of the chief, would he not run the risk of ending up eating the poisoned food that Mantatisi had used to rid herself of her husband?
This rejection enraged the bloodthirsty Mantatisi. She called upon her son, Sikonyela and said to him, ‘I want Motsholi’s collar!’ She was referring to the brass neckband that Motsholi wore to signify his royal rank amongst his own people. That band was moulded exactly to the man’s neck, and could not be removed without decapitation. Clearly Mantatisi was demanding Motsholi’s death. Sikonyela carried out his mother’s instructions, and, along with Motsholi’s head, presented the collar to Mantatisi on a platter, echoing the story of John the Baptist and Salome. At this point the rest of the fugitives fell upon the Batlokwa and they had to flee, led by their queen.
Scorned in love, Mantatisi’s blood boiled. She proceeded to take it out on the entire world, as she knew it, especially upon the Southern Sotho, Koranna and, eventually, the Tswana peoples.
When the fleeing Batlokwa reached the Lekoa, later known as the Vaal River, in the district of Harrismith, Mantatisi called a halt on the banks of the river. She began to put to good use the knowledge she had gleaned from the fugitives, information she had accumulated from the conversations held with the men during their stay with her tribe.
Mantatisi taught the men to fight in the style of Shaka. In fact, she actually bettered Shaka’s tactics in her determination to visit a reign of terror on the land. Her warriors, like Shaka’s, fought naked, their bodies were polished jet black. They were adorned with gleaming collars, waistbands and armlets of brass and copper, and upon their heads they wore great plumes of ostrich-feathers. She trained them to grimace furiously, and to clamour like demons.
It was said that Mantatisi had a single eye in the middle of her forehead. The explanation for this probably lies in the fact that forty years later diamonds were discovered in her district, and the ‘eye’ was probably a large diamond strung on a headband. It was also said that Mantatisi fed her warriors on her own breastmilk. This probably symbolizes the queen instilling courage into her warriors.
From then on Mantatisi’s warriors were called the Mantatees and, like Shaka, they went on to destroy tribe after tribe, sweeping up from the Harrismith district into the Transvaal, laying everything bare before them, sparing only the strong for warriors, the beautiful to consort with, and killing all the rest, including the very young. The tribes that could not flee were decimated.
On and on she went, destroying everything before her, conquering until there was nothing left to conquer or destroy, and nothing left to eat. The grain was gone, the cattle were gone, the countryside was left completely bare, and the warriors, with no other sustenance, turned to cannibalism. The Mfecane was under way and when, years later, the Voortrekkers arrived on the Highveld, it is true that they found these vast tracts of land uninhabited, and entire villages laid waste. There were only small pockets of people living as cannibals on the tops of hills and mountains.
It was at this time that Mantatisi, now a power-hungry, ruthless despot, made her fatal error. The Mantatees had penetrated very far west, into the Koranna country, and they fell upon the Koranna, thinking that fighting them would be no different from any other tribe. The Koranna numbered only 150, and the Mantatees 15 000, but the Koranna had firearms and the Mantatees did not. Bullets could reach where spears could not and, using the tactical withdrawal system that had yet to become famous in this country’s military history, the Koranna tore the Mantatees to shreds. The Koranna were, to some extent, under the influence of the missionary Robert Moffat, and showed no mercy for these cannibal hordes.
Another tribe in the same area of the Vaal or Lekoa River were the Batlaping, a weak but very cruel tribe, so the missionary notes and diaries inform us. They joined the Griqua in the battle but not until the only warriors left on the field were the wounded and the dead. The Batlaping stoned and speared the wounded remnants of Manatatisi’s army. They cut off heads and kicked them about. They severed arms and legs and carried them around as trophies. Not one of the wounded survived that day.
Mantatisi was utterly broken in power and her army totally destroyed. She fled back to the Basutoland area from where she had originally come. It is said that she sought refuge with the first king to unite the Basuto people, Moshweshwe the First. Moshweshwe was a wise leader and, realising that living and carrying the burden of what she had done to her people was a far heavier sentence than death, he gave her and her son, Sikonyela refuge in his country. There she died a lonely old woman, driven to the very edge of insanity because of her deeds.
If you go into the Magaliesberg region today, just before the Olifantsnek dam, on the farm called Olifantskloof, you will find the remnants of a village. Its stone walls are where the ‘Bakwena Mmatau’ or ‘The People of the Lion’, once lived peacefully. Its ruins are all that Mantatisi’s warriors left, a grim reminder of the fearsome warrior queen.
Sir John Swinburne
Sir John Swinburne
Tucked away on the side of the N3 highway, halfway between Johannesburg and Durban, lies the tiny settlement of Swinburne, named after Sir John Swinburne, a relative of the famous English poet, Algernon Charles Swinburne. Although Sir John has been largely forgotten today, he remains an interesting character in the history of our country.
Sir John was the 7th Baronet Swinburne, a title created by Charles Il in 1660. In 1831, when he was twenty-nine years old, he succeeded his grandfather and inherited over 30 000 acres in Northumberland. As a young man he joined the Royal Navy and saw active service in the Burmese War of 1852, and the Crimean War, after which he was posted to the Baltic where he served until 1858.
He retired, a naval captain, to his ancestral home Capheaton near Newcastle-on-Tyne and married the daughter of another north-country Baronet, Mary Eleanor Brinckman. For the next fourteen years he lived the life of a country gentleman and followed with interest the adventures of a German explorer, Karl Mauch, who became famous in this country. Mauch was prospecting in the interior, eventually landing up in Mashonaland and Matabeleland in what is now Zimbabwe. Swinburne was absolutely smitten by Mauch’s reports of gold in the area called the ‘Tati Territory’. This is the area where our Northern Province meets Botswana and Zimbabwe. The find came about in the following manner. A famous elephant hunter, Henry Hartley from Magaliesberg in the Transvaal (on whom Sir Rider Haggard based the character of Alan Quartermain), on an ivory-hunting expedition to the Zambezi Valley, had stumbled upon ancient gold diggings in Matabeleland. He told the story to Mauch. Mauch was intrigued by the story of the gold diggings that had been worked by an ancient people in a time long gone. But more of that another time.
Several local gold companies were formed. Two of these, one under Captain Black, consisting of thirty-four Australian diggers, and the other under a Mr MacNeil, set out to find the Tati goldfields. Both failed.
Sir John Swinburne, h
is head full of these tales, met Captain Arthur Lionel Levert in 1868 and between them they formed the London and Limpopo Mining Company. They raised money, purchased plant, hired staff and in the same year landed at Durban. Soon after landing they began their trek into the interior, loaded with all the equipment of a central African expedition: guns, ammunition, traps for wild animals, tents, ropes, shovels, picks, crowbars, cooking utensils and everything else required for a mining operation in the remote bush.
Sir John had also brought along a steam traction engine, the first ever to land in South Africa. He was aiming to introduce mechanised road transport to South Africa. At this time the only railways in South Africa consisted of 2 km of line from Durban Harbour to the Point, 11 km of line from Cape Town to Wynberg and about 60 km of line to Wellington. So the arrival of this ‘beast’ was quite spectacular. It steamed and snarled its way through that trackless country, bumping over boulders, levelling dongas and cleaving a path through virgin bush. Wherever there was a pan, they would stop to fill the boiler and, from the surrounding bush, fine wood was continually cut to feed this insatiable monster.
Alas, the steam traction engine was way before its time. It never completed the journey. It was abandoned along the way and eventually sold. So, somewhere in Natal lie the ruins of this amazing vehicle, which chuffed ponderously through the bush where only people, horses and ox wagons had gone before.
Swinburne was not to be deterred. The traction engine may have proved unequal to the task imposed on it, but another first for South Africa, was a static steam engine which survived the 500 km trek and arrived in Tati in April 1869. Foundations were laid and the engine was put to work. Mzilikazi, the king of the Matabele, was so impressed by Swinbume that he granted him prospecting rights in what was to become known as the Northern Goldfields. Sir John had a stamp battery designed and made in Durban – another first for South Africa – and had it taken up to the mine by ox-wagon.
At the Fireside--Volume 1 Page 13