By this time other prospectors had reached the area and had established themselves along ‘Todd’s Creek’. Here a great deal of energy was spent and shafts, up to 150 feet deep were sunk, but the gold values proved patchy. Sir John, ever restless in nature, left August Greite in charge of the mine and set off for Pretoria, where he met the President of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, Marthinus Wessels Pretorius. Even after a cursory examination of the country, he was convinced that it was highly mineralised and so, in March 1860, he put to President Pretorius a proposal that even today is astonishing in both its foresight and its naivety.
The proposal was, first, that the ZAR grant exclusive rights to the London and Limpopo Company for the running of trackless steam engines throughout the Transvaal and, secondly, that the Company establish banks and manufacturing companies, as well as import goods and machinery, and that it act as sole agents for the ZAR.
To appreciate the situation, one should be aware that at this time the ZAR was totally bankrupt. Sir John knew this and proposed to alleviate the treasury’s plight. He offered to redeem the £60 000-worth of ‘blue-back’ notes the ZAR Government had issued by purchasing them at 10 shillings per £1 and paying as follows: 2 shillings and 6 pence in British coin; 2 shillings and 6 pence in the Company’s own notes, payable at six months; and 5 shillings in its own notes, payable at two years. The Company’s notes would be payable at its own banks, as well as banks in the Cape and Natal.
In return, the ZAR was to hand over all its lands to the Company as security until the notes had been redeemed and, furthermore, all the mineral rights on land not owned by individuals would be given to the Company in freehold tenure. The Company would also be given exclusive right to grant banking licences and, lastly, would receive a 5% commission from the net proceeds of farms sold.
When the Company had repaid itself, the amount of the outstanding notes – £60 000 as well as the 5% commission – the remaining farms would be returned to the Government, but the mineral rights would remain the property of the London and Limpopo Trading and Mining Company.
Professor Arndt has pointed out that the Company would have made a clear profit of £30 000 on the notes and some £3 000 in commissions. So in reality, it was offering £50 000 for the perpetual ownership of the mineral rights to the Transvaal. What is more amazing was that the offer received the backing of some of the Volksraad! The offer was considered in May 1869 and received careful attention. A technical difficulty arose. Sir John had forgotten to put the Company’s Articles of Association in as supporting documentation. Yet, there was some considerable support, as the Transvaal’s paper money could not get 2 shillings and 6 pence in hard cash. It is pleasing to note, however, that the ZAR did not sell the Transvaal’s mineral rights to Sir John.
When the deal fell through, Sir John had had enough. He returned to England, leaving Captain Levert in charge. The gold proved erratic and in 1872, having sent more that 2 000 ounces of gold to England, the London and Limpopo Trading and Mining Company faded into obscurity and the stamp battery stopped for good.
Other companies were formed, among them Tati Concessions and the Tati Blue Jacket Syndicate, and if today you travel by rail to Zimbabwe via Botswana, just outside Francistown you may still see the ruins of the Settlement of the Monarch Reef.
Sir John Swinburne lived to see the birth of the Rand and the rise of Johannesburg. By the time he died, gold worth more than one thousand million pounds sterling had been recovered in the Transvaal.
Swinburne, the little settlement just near Van Reenen’s Pass, proudly bears his name.
The flight of the Herero
The flight of the Herero
Everywhere in the gleaming sands lie the rusted parts of abandoned wagons, trek chains, thongs, and canvas tarpaulins, along with the bones of men and cattle, and the graves of those fallen in the most grievous of deaths – thirst. For a trekker, there was no word that could instil greater fear than dors (thirst) – the stories of the Dorsland treks live to this very day. Those who experienced a ‘small thirst’ on one of those treks never forgot the experience. The continual groaning of the oxen is the most heartrending sound that could ever come from an animal. Added to this was the blazing heat of the sun, the endless sand and the choking cloud of dust as they trekked onwards, becoming thirstier and thirstier.
One such Dorsland trek has attracted very little attention in our country, probably because it was a black trek. The old newspaper Die Brandwag published the story in 1921.
It was the trek of the Herero out of South West Africa which went eastwards through the Kalahari and into the country of the Bamangwato, eventually coming to an end in Phalala, in the Waterberg region of what is now the North-West Province of South Africa. The size of this disastrous trek was unbelievable. More than 700 wagons were left behind in the desert, and more than 13 000 people died of thirst, the most terrible of all deaths.
The ovaHerero tribe originated in Central Africa and its people are exceptionally tall – an adult under 1,8 m is very unusual. At the time of this little-known trek, the majority of the tribe was educated and could read and write. High Dutch was their daily language. They built houses, wore European clothing and farmed, and were generally known to be a friendly people. It was said that their attitudes changed with the colonisation by the Germans, that they were influenced by the yellow people, and turned to murdering whites. I have heard this all too often in the stories of the Gqunukhwebe, the Xhosa and the Koranna at Mamusa, the list is endless. Behind the myth lies the greed to occupy land, and it was no different in the case of the Germans in South West Africa.
The Bondelswart Hottentots put up a fight on the plains surrounding the Karas Mountains and, when the Herero saw what happened to them, they were so shattered that the only option they could think of was flight. ‘Rather face the Kalahari’, said the elders of the tribe, ‘than face the Germans’.
So they prepared themselves for the long trek, before the German forces even reached their boundaries. They sent intelligence parties out to gather information about grazing, waterholes, Tsamma melons and general conditions, but nothing could have prepared them for the ordeal that they were about to face. The trek started and the Germans, following them to the last waterhole, reported that, even at this stage, they were following a path of dead and dying people and animals. Every waterhole was filled with dead cattle and the water trampled to mud. It is estimated that 4 000 Herero died, even before the big thirst began. The head of the trek was under Captain Samuel and the rearguard under one Julius, a preacher and schoolteacher.
When they left their homes there were more than 700 wagons, 14 000 people and cattle uncountable, but upon arrival in the Waterberg there were but 400 people and no animals except for a horse belonging to Samuel and the cattle given to them by the kindly people of Khama, the Bamangwato. It is estimated that in the desert 3 600 people died of thirst alone. There were very few old people or children that came through that crossing, and seldom has nature imposed her harsh code of ‘survival of the fittest’, more cruelly upon a people. Contrary to the hopelessly optimistic reports of the scouts, there were was very little grazing to be had, the pan water was scarce and the Tsamma melons were green and bitter to the taste. Three days after entering the desert, the cattle began to die, and what made matters worse was the panicky knowledge that the Germans were after them. All the known waterholes were rushed by thousands of thirsty cattle and immediately churned into mud, so the cattle were unable to relieve their thirst.
Inevitably, within fourteen days the last of the 700 wagons had to be abandoned. Everything transportable was made into bundles and everyone, young and old, had to help carry. In the forefront was Samuel, trying desperately to keep order. At the back was Julius, making sure that the weak and frail were not left behind. On the flanks, daily, were patrols to collect Tsamma melons, which would be distributed among all the people. It took a lot of melons to keep the people going, of course, so, as much meat as could be ca
rried, was made into biltong. But it soon became apparent that strict order could not be maintained and, within a week or two, the trek was so long and extended that the stragglers took fully three days to arrive at the place where the forward group had camped. Under these circumstances, of course, no fair sharing of meat and melons was possible. Contrary to what one would expect, there was very little selfishness, and heroic acts abounded.
The first to fall were the elderly and, almost every day, the rear section of the trek would pass small groups of them, usually lying under the shade of a thorn tree, having made their peace with God, and simply waiting to die. Usually the goodbyes and a little prayer had been said, and those who were strong enough moved on with the trek. Where a person had died in the company of another family member, he or she would be buried up to his or her neck in the sand. Mothers with suckling babies bore the brunt of the pain and very few made it through. ‘You could count them on your fingers’, Julius said.
The unfortunate mothers with more than one child had an even worse time of it, and often you would see a mother walk the path three times, as she carried her children forward one by one, along the trek and, sooner or later, these poor mothers came to realise that one, or even two would have to be sacrificed, to save the last one. Many mothers actually had the courage to kill their children, instead of leaving them to a lingering death in the blazing sun. Samuel and Julius agreed – there was no option – though usually this decision was taken far too late and most of the mothers died shortly thereafter. One young woman, Maria, who gave birth to her first child at the beginning of the trek, used a galvanized iron bathtub as a sled and pulled her baby through the desert – and made it. Unfortunately, when a suckling mother becomes dehydrated, her milk dries up. Many babies died of hunger, usually shortly followed by the mother who would inflict knife wounds to her breasts in a vain attempt to give sustenance to the dying child. Julius recalled an elderly couple, long married – the woman was too weak and could go no further. The man was strong and would have pulled through, but decided to stay with his wife in the desert. They bade farewell to their children, their bundles were redistributed and the trek moved on, with the vultures always circling overhead.
The survivors went on, with feet and legs swollen, without skin, and bleeding. Their lips and tongues swelled up and cracked, so much so that it was almost impossible to eat the Tsamma melons. For two months they had not seen water.
Suddenly, these skeletons dressed in rags, heard voices calling them, but, with their burnt lips and burst tongues, all they could manage in answer was a hiss, as the Bamangwato tribe of Khama came into the desert to save them. Slowly, oh so slowly, the Bamangwato nursed the survivors back from the brink. Water was given in half measures to the weakest and the children first, then the others and, to those nearest to death, it was administered drop by drop, for drinking would have killed them.
After six months’ recuperation, the remnants of the Herero tribe moved on to Phalala in the Waterberg, where this terrible, but largely forgotten epic was recorded, and is still spoken about very softly at night, around the fires.
The search for Utopia
The search for Utopia
Between the Nahoon and Konyhana rivers in the Eastern Cape lies Africa’s real life Utopia, in which the poet laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson, played a part. The colony was named after him – Tennysonia.
The story starts with the death of General Gordon in Khartoum. On the crest of the great wave of emotion that passed through England, ‘The Gordon Memorial League’ was established to perpetuate the qualities of religious faith, idealism and military genius. The purpose of the League was to train poor, unemployed people in English towns to enable them to go farming in South Africa. Gordon and Tennyson had often discussed this idea.
Every man was to be given between 20 and 50 acres of land, 10 head of cattle and 10 sheep. There would be no charge for the first year and a subsistence allowance would be paid for six months. After a year a charge of £10 per family per year would be levied until £200 had been repaid. Huts, tools, implements, wagons and seed were all provided free of charge, and only families were sent out because of the isolation.
The League set up in King William’s Town and 3 400 acres were purchased from the Camarvon Estate. In August 1886 twenty-four families arrived at East London and trekked to the pleasant hilly country of Tennysonia. There they found huts fitted out with stoves and furniture, even groceries had been delivered and the League had provided a schoolroom with a teacher.
In 1887 Alfred White, one of the founders of the Gordon Memorial Trust, came out to South Africa to report on the progress of the scheme and found nothing but discontent amongst the settlers. The huts were too small, the plots were too small, and the produce prices were too low. White realised that it had been a mistake to select settlers who were not farmers and recommended that those who did not wish to stay be entitled to leave the land and be replaced with more suitable families of farming stock. Part of the problem was that the goldfields of the Witwatersrand had been discovered and this proved an irresistible drawcard to the settlers, who all wanted to trek to Johannesburg.
In June 1888, 25 families from Hampshire arrived and joined the remaining 13 families in Tennysonia. Each of the 25 new cottages had a fenced garden and 50 acres of arable land, 33 acres of ordinary soil and 13 acres of very rich, black vlei soil.
The lands, planted with potatoes, were expected to yield some 6 000 bags. Large fields of mealies and forage were planted. A little over nine megalitres of water was earmarked for irrigation per day, after it had passed over the water-wheel that drove the flourmill. Dams holding 910 megalitres of water were constructed to serve, among other things, the strawberry beds and orchards. More than 2 000 oaks, as well as other trees, were planted. The flourmill cost £8 000 and was powered by a 10 m waterfall driving a turbine that produced 22 kW.
Most of the settlers, whose names are still familiar in the Eastern Cape, such as Cock, Marshall, Wyatt, Baker, Cranmer, Mountsford, Pressley, Griffiths, Bolton, Godfrey and Watts, stayed on. Some of them moved to the highlands of the then British Kaffraria and others to the goldfields.
Alfred White, after this second try, realised that Utopia was not be be attained this way – but let’s face it, it was an honest and gallant attempt.
The First Frontier War
The First Frontier War
The Eastern Cape area has a history that would take a lifetime to understand, reconstruct and rewrite, because most of the accounts are very one-sided and jingoed in favour of the Dutch, the British,
and the settlers themselves. Now it is time to tell the other side of the story. For those who would like to read a balanced and accessible account of those troubled times between the 1770s and 1880s, Noel Mostert’s magnificent book, Frontiers, published in 1992, is a must.
There are memorable figures from that time, such as Coenraad de Buys, Willem Prinsloo and many others, but we will keep them for another story. We will turn our attention now to the actual causes of the First Frontier War and its final outcome. In the 1770s the Dutch East India Company found itself compelled to proclaim formal boundaries beyond which the trekboers could not go – this after a period of expansion with half-hearted attempts at control by threats and warnings. Previously there had been no formally defined Eastern Frontier. Now firm limits were imposed. This was delineated at Bruintjieshoogte in the North and the Gamtoos River in the West, just on the Cape side of Algoa Bay, near present-day Jeffreys Bay. Some trekboers had settled, or were looking to settle, beyond those markers and one of the first Afrikaaner families to become distinctly recognisable in this regard were the Prinsloos. They did not come rougher or tougher than that family. Willem Prinsloo, an elephant hunter and cattle trader, was the principal boundary breaker and bounty hunter. When the Cape authorities sought runaway slaves or military deserters, it was Prinsloo who would offer to bring them back – for a consideration, of course. The Prinsloo family has now almost faded
into the mists of time, but at that stage, for almost sixty years, they were at the centre of most frontier mischief, and were eventually directly accused of being responsible for starting the First Frontier War between the Xhosa and the Colonists. Finally, in 1815, we see Prinsloo, together with some others, hanging by the neck – the first Afrikaner martyrs to the British. This botched execution was used to whip up nationalism in the 1948 election. The Afrikaners never forgot Slagtersnek.
The story unfolds thus. At the beginning of the 1770s we find the first records of old Willem Prinsloo, moving out beyond Bruintjieshoogte, between Graaff-Reinet and Somerset East, into the land and the pastures of the Xhosa. This led to his family’s fateful place in our country’s history. By 1772, he had established himself on two farms in the Fish River Valley. The authorities ordered him to return, because he was outside the boundary, but instead Prinsloo was joined by thirteen other trekboers, who all petitioned the Cape for permission to remain there. In 1775 the authorities granted the request and then arbitrarily drew new boundaries, this time the Fish River to the East of Bruintjieshoogte and the Bushman’s River near the coast. This appears to have been done by decree, with no consultation with the Xhosa Chiefs at all. The Chiefs were most unhappy with the situation as they were being pushed westwards by Chief Rarabc, who demanded the submission of outlying chiefdoms, such as those of Gwali, Mdange and Ntinde.
This is how the first of the most crucial relationships on that frontier started off – an interpenetration of two distinct societies, one indigenous and the other intrusive. The history of the region as a frontier ‘opens’ when the first members of the intrusive society arrive and ‘closes’ when a single political authority takes control of the area.
At the Fireside--Volume 1 Page 14