African Myths and Legends

by Dianne Stewart

  ‘Hey, man!’ they called down. ‘What are you drinking there? Give us a taste!’

  Renier looked up at the white-headed thunderclouds. ‘No! There’s not enough for all of us,’ he shouted. ‘I wet my throat – you wet yours!’ And he laughed as he tipped the last of the clear brown liquid down his throat.

  Up in the sky, the thundertops were angry. Certainly, they were able to wet their own throats and a few others as well. They weren’t going to be selfish. They glanced down at Renier who was stretched out and had his hat pulled over his face, and they scurried away on their own mischievous business. If Renier had been awake, he might have heard a sound like great barrels of drink being trundled across the sky. He might have seen sparks and flashes of hidden laughter from the thundertops. But, alas, adding a whole bottle of drink to the excitement of fishing had sent him fast asleep. While he snored, things were happening.

  He didn’t realise how the clouds had got their own back until he was woken by what felt like a barrel of water being tipped over him. A great gale of laughter swept across the sky. ‘Taste this!’ rumbled a voice. Then came another torrent of water and more thunderous mirth. Renier grabbed his rod, his pipe and his sodden hat and started to run home. But there was no avoiding the thundertops and their sense of humour. By the time he reached home, he was soaked to the skin. He shook his fist at the sky, while the clouds were tumbling over each other with high delight.

  Old Renier de Winnaar wasn’t going to be beaten by a bunch of fluffy clouds. The next day he sorted out a generous twist of his best tobacco, grown on his own farm. Then he climbed the hillside to a cave where a dust-devil lived. It was a mischievous dust-devil, this one, and it liked nothing better than to play tricks on people as it whirled and swirled around the Free State fields.

  ‘Morning, Dusty!’ called Renier loudly, as he finally reached the cave. ‘Are you looking for a bit of fun today?’

  The dust-devil woke with a start, choked and spluttered and nearly suffocated the old man in swirling dust.

  ‘Calm down!’ said Renier. ‘See here – I’ve brought you a pipeful of my best tobacco. It’s yours if you agree to join me in my little plan.’

  The fragrance of the tobacco was too tempting. The dust-devil coiled himself neatly and agreed to listen. As Renier told it about the rude, rough joking of the thundertops, the dust-devil liked the plan more and more. It had disliked the high-flown clouds for years and years. They had a habit of looking down on it in a most unfriendly fashion.

  ‘Just you wait until tomorrow,’ were Renier’s last words to the dust-devil. ‘I will go fishing again, and together we’ll give those clouds quite a different view on things.’

  Once again, Renier sat himself down by the river in the lovely, warm sunshine. For a long while the sky above him stayed blue and bright. But as he waved his bottle around, the light glinting on the glass, he thought he could actually see a few little inquisitive wisps of cloud.

  He glanced across the valley to where the dust-devil was lurking, like a thin trail of smoke, and he winked his eye. The smoke quivered.

  Apparently uninterested, a white-headed thundercloud sailed into view. Then two more, followed by a general gathering of thundertops. A distant rumble in the air sounded just a little like a water barrel being rolled into readiness, so Renier took off his straw hat and waved it about.

  Up into the air soared the dust-devil! All the sandy dust, choking ashes and crumbled mud from the valley floor was swept up with it. The large, white thundertops were bumped around the blue sky and completely smothered with dirt. Their laughter choked into gritty growls, and their feeble attempts to rain produced only a few muddy drops and dribbles. The clouds fled and the dust-devil chased them with delight far into the heights of the Maluti Mountains way away in Lesotho.

  There was no laughter left in the sky – but there was plenty down at ground level. Old Renier de Winnaar rolled around, hugging himself and howling in glee until tears rolled off his cheeks and made muddy puddles of their own.

  The story could have ended there. But it seems the thundertops were mighty offended by the way they had been treated. They stayed away from that corner of the Free State for weeks on end. The sun shone from an endlessly clear sky, without a drop of rain. Renier had stopped laughing long ago. His farm was parched, his cattle thirsty, and even his favourite fishing spot was a dried up pool of mud. The other folk of the valley were suffering as well. It was time he apologised.

  One Sunday morning after church, the faintest whisper of cloud peeped down to see old man de Winnaar staggering towards the river bank with a small heavy barrel. Two other barrels were already there, with their tops opened and a heavenly smell of something rich and brown and delicious. He cocked an ear and listened. Was that a tiny, distant twitch of thunder he heard?

  ‘Listen, up there!’ he shouted. ‘You win – and I’m sorry. How about having a drink together, to show that friends are still friends, eh?’

  Well, the thundertops really began massing overhead at that point. The white clouds swept close to the ground and it might have been tears of gratitude which brought light rain pattering gently on the earth. But Renier had gone too far, as he usually did. Whatever he had put into those three barrels was far too strong for the thundertops. They went on a three day storming party! Lightning leapt about in a drunken fashion, thunder staggered from hill to hill, and the rain fell helplessly everywhere.

  For once in his life, Renier didn’t mind getting soaked. The valley needed that rain badly. But when it was all over, the clouds made a habit of sailing past with their heads even more in the air. Visit Zastron yourself. You will find that they still do. Renier de Winnaar didn’t mind that either. He got on with his fishing and his storytelling in peace.

  The Caledon River Valley

  If Renier de Winnaar, who in fact really lived from 1781 to 1883, had journeyed towards Bloemfontein, he would have crossed the Caledon River. This river still continues to divide the Free State from Lesotho to this day. Its fertile grazing lands were a source of constant squabbles between the Boer farmers and the Basotho. Fascinating things such as dinosaur bones, rock paintings, mission stations and tales of scary cannibals can be found around Zastron and Ladybrand. And thunder-topped clouds often form overhead.

  The killers of Prinsloo’s Kloof

  The baboons looked down from their rocks and chattered nervously. Humans were returning to the lonely valley which the baboons hoped had been deserted forever.

  Stephen Goodrick rode his horse with pride. Behind him, on horses and in trundling wooden wagons, were his wife, his children, servants and belongings. Ahead of him, sheltered in the folds of the Kouga Mountains, was the farm he had bought only a month before, in September 1860. He rode back to the first wagon where his wife sat beside the driver.

  ‘See,’ he told her with a dramatic wave of his arm. ‘Prinsloo’s Kloof is ahead of us now. There is the farm with its stone house and kraal. On the slope behind is where we shall plant our orchard. Isn’t it a picture? And I bought it so cheap. A real bargain! Van der Meulen seemed in such a hurry to leave that he threw in the cattle and goats with the price of the farm. He’s a kind man.’

  His wife remained tight-lipped, and said absolutely nothing. In her own experience, a bargain price often hid something else.

  The Goodrick family was welcomed to Prinsloo’s Kloof by an old farm worker named Cupido. Brown and wrinkled, he could have been one of the Khoi who had lived there for hundreds of years. He helped them move furniture into the sturdy farmhouse, and tended to the tired horses in the stables beside the stone-walled kraal. Stephen hugged his wife for joy before they fell into an exhausted sleep.

  They were woken by something like a scream from the dark. Stephen looked out of the window. His horses were neighing with fright. Taking his gun, he went outside. But the farm seemed empty of any intruders under the cold midnight moon.

  Next day the sun shone and Stephen was too busy on the farm to worry. H
is wife liked her new home and their children happily explored the streams and slopes of Prinsloo’s Kloof. The family celebrated Christmas with delight. The new year of 1861 was greeted as the beginning of their new farm life.

  Then came a hot summer night when the horses were frightened once more. Exactly the same thing happened the following night, and the next. Each time Stephen swore he had heard a scream, and the horses went mad with fear, sweating and stamping. He questioned Cupido, and the old man shook his head but would not look him in the eye.

  The next evening Stephen sat out on his stoep with his dog beside him and his gun in his hand. He sent his wife and his children to bed and watched the stars light up the valley that was his. Perhaps he had been dozing when his dog pushed a nervous snout against his hand. Stephen looked up and saw a figure with a wide-brimmed hat slip into the shadows by the kraal. The horses neighed with terror and galloped wildly into a corner of the kraal. Stephen ran towards them, saw the figure again and fired both barrels at point-blank range. The intruder turned towards him, apparently unharmed. Stephen saw the old-fashioned clothes, the bony shoulders and most of all the pale, waxy face of a man who was long dead. Then the figure vanished – and Stephen’s dog, who was usually so daring and brave, was whimpering at his side, quivering with fear.

  The next day, 15 January 1861, was hot and humid. Thunderclouds growled past. As the sun dipped behind the dark-shaded mountains, Cupido came to the farmhouse door. He said he was a little frightened of the coming storm and asked if he could sleep in the farmhouse that night, instead of his own lonely cottage. Stephen’s wife agreed.

  Suddenly, at midnight, the kloof glared white with lightning while thunder crashed round the farm. Stephen woke with a start and heard, on the driving wind, shouts and yells and the same wild scream that he had heard night after night. The farmhouse door was open and old Cupido was standing outside, shaking with fear and his eyes staring.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked Stephen.

  Cupido trembled. ‘It is Jan Prinsloo,’ he stammered. ‘It is his night. Those who killed him are coming up the kloof. You can hear them now. Shut the door, Mr Goodrick – lock it and whatever you do, do not look out of the windows.’

  But Stephen ran outside, gun in hand, and his wife followed. The thunder storm had moved away and moonlight shafted down through the clouds to light up the kraal. There they saw the same man Stephen had seen the night before, carrying an old flintlock musket. He was screaming in rage and fear, for he was being chased by six others who were armed with spears and knives. He used the musket like a club but his attackers closed in, shouting and shrieking, to kill him and hack his body to pieces. And all six were fleshless ghosts.

  Stephen clutched at his wife as she fainted with shock. A last growl of thunder rolled. Dark clouds covered the moon. The stone-walled kraal was silent and empty once more.

  Next day, over many cups of coffee on the sunlit stoep, Cupido told them the story. Jan Prinsloo came to this deserted kloof because he was already known as a dangerous lawbreaker. On his new farm he treated his servants, some local Khoi, some from Mozambique, worse than slaves. His final deed was to fly into a drunken rage when he discovered that two of the women with one of their children had gone visiting without his permission. When they returned, he roped them to a tree and flogged them mercilessly with a sjambok. Then he took his musket and shot both women and the child dead.

  During the night, all the servants left him and Jan Prinsloo lived alone on the farm for a while. Then, on 15 January, seven of them returned. Craftily, they cornered Prinsloo in the kraal. He had shot one of them with his musket, when the others closed in on him giving him no time to reload. They chased him round the kraal and caught him near the stables. As he screamed and screamed, they cut off his arms, legs and head. Then they took everything of value from the house and fled.

  Cupido looked sideways at them. ‘That is what my father told me. He was a boy at the time. Many people have tried to live here since, but they always leave. Will Mr Goodrick be staying?”

  ‘No,’ said Stephen, after a long look at his wife’s face. ‘I don’t think this is the sort of home where we want to bring up our children.’

  So they packed up and left, and the farm in Prinsloo’s Kloof is now broken stone overgrown with grass. The baboons go there often.

  Baviaanskloof

  The name means ‘ravine of baboons’ but the baboons no longer have it to themselves. This valley now contains several farms and a forestry station. The rough, twisting road leads an adventurous traveller over narrow passes, past breathtaking precipices and through beautiful flower-filled landscapes. More than 170 kilometres long, the Baviaanskloof stretches from near Willowmore in the Little Karoo to the Kouga Mountains (containing Prinsloo’s Kloof) around the wiser, more welcoming Gamtoos Valley near Port Elizabeth.

  The Flying Dutchman

  Captain Hendrik van der Decken stood arrogantly on the high deck at the stern of the Flying Dutchman. The crew feared him. He was a cruel lion of a man: his long hair flowed out from under his three-cornered hat like a tawny mane, and his eyes had the hard, cold glare of the king of beasts. He worked his crew mercilessly, but the pay they earned was good.

  No captain in the Dutch trading fleet could deliver a cargo more swiftly, whatever the weather. He would chain and padlock the ropes controlling the sails to stop his crew from lowering any of the sails, however fiercely the storm howled. Any passengers were locked below the decks while he chased the hurricanes to speed his ship. So his cargoes travelled fast and fetched good prices – in Amsterdam, in the East Indies, and in Table Bay.

  The Flying Dutchman was of unusual design. She was heavily built and curiously curved at the bow to cut the water more cleanly. Heavy square sails overlapped on each mast. Eight brass cannon guarded her yellow-topped hull with its black sides below. Many a time had she fought her way round the Cape, with full sail set on her three tall masts.

  Van der Decken watched the cargo going ashore to please the good burgers of Cape Town. Spices from Batavia to liven their cooking, silks from Cathay to adorn their ladies, planks of satinwood and bulks of ivory. He fretted and cursed at the time it took. He was only happy out at sea, proving himself the master of wind and water.

  Above him, the bulk of Table Mountain swirled with cloud. Van der Decken laughed. The storm giant, Adamastor, had long been his foe. Already the bay looked angry and the waves were threatening. The Flying Dutchman rolled restlessly as his seamen sweated. Van der Decken had given his ship the same sense of urgency.

  ‘Close the hatches!’ he yelled suddenly. ‘Let loose! Man the yards! Helmsman, we sail!’

  ‘But there’s a storm brewing: pleaded the mate.

  ‘Tomorrow’s Easter: said another.

  ‘Let them keep Easter in church!’ roared Van der Decken. ‘We sail, storm or no storm!’ So the frightened seamen climbed high on the swaying masts to set full sail as their captain demanded. The ship plunged its fore-deck repeatedly into the beating sea. Even Van der Decken had an uneasy feeling that this was a storm beyond any he had faced before. But that was even more reason to defeat it.

  A sail split with a crack and fragments whipped away in the ferocious wind. Water flooded the decks. For hours, then days, they fought to round the Cape of Storms but the wind and waves threw his ship back every time. His crew begged him, this once, to run before the storm to save their lives. One seaman dared to kneel before him and pray for mercy. Van der Decken seized the man and with a string of fearful oaths he hurled him into the sea. Then he lashed himself to the wheel to prevent being washed overboard and headed the Flying Dutchman back into the hurricane.

  ‘Never!’ ranted Van der Decken, wild with a spirit of madness. ‘Nor man nor giant nor God Himself will make me change my mind. I’ll round the Cape if I sail till the Day of Doom.’

  Then, in an instant, the wind died down. A shaft of hard white light lit up the deck. A ghostly figure suddenly appeared and the men shielded their
eyes in fear. Was it the storm giant, Adamastor? Or was it actually God Himself?

  Even Captain van der Decken was scared for a moment. Then he pulled a pistol from his belt and fired at the figure. It was a foolish thing to do. His arm fell by his side, withered and useless. The foremast snapped and crashed to the deck.

  A voice louder than the storm had been, proclaimed, ‘You have named your own fate. You shall indeed sail these seas until the Day of Doom’.

  Lightning crackled. The sails shuddered. The ship glowed blood-red. His crew lay round him, every man dead. As Van der Decken stared, the flesh melted off their bones leaving only whitened skeletons on the deck. No longer a mortal man, Captain van der Decken sailed into the darkening storm.

  So, as legend has it, from that day onwards, the Flying Dutchman has sailed Adamastor’s stormy seas, forever trying to round the Cape of Good Hope but doomed never to succeed.

  Many ships, through the years, have claimed to have seen the ghost vessel. A red glow in the sea mist is the first sign, they say. Next comes the phantom shape of an old three-masted ship with full sails set. Some say they have heard the anchor chains rattling, and a boat being rowed across the water.

  ‘Letters’, a desperate voice cries, ‘for our families in Amsterdam’. But woe betide any ship that dares linger to take these ghostly messages, for their ship is bound to meet with disaster!

  The most famous person to be linked with this legend was a midshipman aboard HMS Bacchante named George – then Prince of Wales, later to be King George V. He wrote in his diary, ‘July 11, 1881. At four a.m. the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows’. The ship’s log recorded, ‘She first appeared as a strange red light, as of a ship all aglow, in the midst of which light her masts, spars and sails … stood out in strong relief as she came up’. When the Bacchante reached the spot some two hundred metres away, there was no sign of any ship. The sea was empty to the far horizon. In the early morning, the logbook said, ‘the sea was strangely calm.’ Later that morning, the seaman who had first reported the phantom vessel fell screaming from the crow’s nest at the top of the mast and was killed instantly. It seemed that the Flying Dutchman had claimed another member for her ghostly crew.