Red Dog

by Willem Anker

  Only late the next morning on our way back to the Fish River do I inform my comrades that we are now allies of the amaNdlambe and that Christian and Heathen are now as blood brothers together going to wipe out Langa and Chaka. Lindeque blink-blinks and starts having second thoughts. He asks whether it’s too late to abandon the plan, and I laugh:

  Indeed, Brother; hopelessly too late.

  Oh Lord, deliver us from what we actually want, says Lindeque and I yawn.

  You’re lying to yourself and Maynier is lying to himself, I say: War is the only honesty remaining in this waste land.

  I’m sitting at the back of the hall, gazing out of the window at Graaffe Rijnet’s dust. Across the road a man is sitting in front of his house chewing tobacco and a riderless horse walks past and somewhere I hear crows. I put my head out of the window for fresh air. I see the slave curing on the gallows.

  The meeting creeps through the agenda and I don’t know the date is 6 May 1793 and I think of Nombini and Maria. I haven’t been home for a long time. I think of the Caffre girls in Ndlambe’s kraal and I smile. When Van Baalen announces that Secretary Maynier will be the next landdrost, all the men around me jump to their feet, but I have to stay seated because my breeches are straining across my crotch.

  Master Markus the goddam nightingale is also sitting in the back row. He listens attentively, but does not utter a word. When the men start squabbling heatedly, flinging abuse at each other and the Company, I look in his direction again. He is no longer there. Must have walked out at some point when I wasn’t looking. I can’t understand why that man doesn’t get buggered up each and every day.

  Captain Adriaan van Jaarsveld, the man with the pomaded hair and the trimmed beard, gets up in the midst of the mayhem. As usual the men fall silent when Van Jaarsveld clears his throat. Everybody knows the story of how in the course of a punitive expedition he came across some Heathens. His men throw out handfuls of tobacco before the Caffres. The Caffres scrabble around among the Christian horses, the assegais forgotten, their hands full of tobacco. Van Jaarsveld gives the order to shoot. He and his men mow down most of the scrambling Heathens. Since then both Caffre and Christian have called him the Redcaptain. He delivers a long address and concludes with He who loves me, follow me! and marches out of the door. The men look at each other; most have sat down again. Then a few heemraden get up and follow their Redcaptain. Every Christian has his own notion of what to do with the Caffres and every one splits off with his own gang. All that they have in common is the conviction that the Caffres must clear off from their farms and that the Company must clear off altogether. I sit back enjoying myself.

  Ndlambe sends two thousand warriors to guard the crossings in the Fish River. Lindeque’s commando attacks the Zuurveld Caffres on 18 May 1793 without the permission or knowledge of Landdrost Maynier and drives them back to the river where Ndlambe is lying in wait and that is the start of the Second Caffre War. The skirmishes are brief and only three or four or five Caffres are killed in the campaign and the rest disappear up the kloofs. Many fugitives leave their herds behind in their haste and we loot eight hundred cattle and give Ndlambe four hundred.

  Ndlambe is impressed with the Christians and even more so with the cattle. He once again offers me young women, once again I don’t say no, once again we rebel farmers make merry with the Caffres up to the first glimmering of dawn. We have overstepped not only the Fish River border but also the Colony’s law. You make a different kind of merriment when it could be your last.

  The next day Lindeque and I talk to Ndlambe. With bloodshot eyes and aching heads and loins we plan a bloodbath. Lindeque, indeed the only one without any notable tenderness of loin, leaves us others wide-eyed at the proposals pouring from his bloodthirsty mouth. The farmers and the amaNdlambe will combine to attack the remaining Zuurveld Caffres and wipe them out utterly. When he sees before his eyes the massacre taking place, Lindeque does not blink even once.

  The parched soil is white with frost when our Christian commando sets out that morning to meet up with Ndlambe’s army. The Christians are jovial and curse and boast about how they showed their wives who ruled the roost before they left and how they also showed the Hotnot bitches, whose lips up there and down there are the reddest and smell the strongest. A drunken farmer fires shots in the air. I ride on ahead with Lindeque. We don’t talk. Lindeque is blinking so fast it looks as if his eyes are hurting. Look, he sees the world as a series of flashes with a rosy tint, like blood in a river. I see my dogs running on the perimeter of this node of horses and ruttishness and lead.

  Near to the mustering place I hear something like the flapping of thousands of wings and a light thrumming as if the earth is short of breath. A Christian next to me curses and Lindeque swears and bridles his horse and the animal staggers. See, here on the plain where the thorn bushes open up before us like velvet curtains, a sea of warriors are sitting in formation on their shields. They are young and strong and lusting after violence and excited by death as only young men can be and naked and daubed with red clay and some of them sport blue crane feathers on their heads and there are thousands of them and they stamp their feet and seethe like a tempest and chant in anticipation of the blood that must flow and will flow and my fellow Christians see this horde that is as one and they fall silent and then they turn around and more than one pisses himself and they flee and I flee with them and their panic spreads like a pestilence through the Zuurveld and distant farms become deserted farms and farmers fling what they can onto wagons and clear out and the Caffres see the wagons trekking away and the blind terror in the eyes that cannot afford to look back and they know that those guns in trembling hands are not almighty and the Mbalu and the Gqunukhwebe and all that is Caffre comes down on the Christian homes and herds and Hottentot servants and slaves and burns down the houses and drives off the herds and kills the labourers and slaves and the names of these people are recalled by no one, and go and look, they’re not recorded anywhere and they are just dead and gone and of these raids only statistics remain, like the 4 farms out of 120 that were not plundered and the 40 Hottentots that were killed and the 20 homesteads that were burnt down and the at least 50 000 cattle and the 11 000 sheep and the 200 horses that were stolen and the 25 families fleeing the Zuurveld and the rest that form laagers in groups with 50 heavy wagons in a circle and the thorn bushes in the openings beneath and between the wagons and then Chaka and Langa attack Ndlambe and the corpulent king who cannot understand why his allies deserted him must crawl back across the Fish and in these plunderings four Christians are killed, Johannes Grobbelaar, Juriaan Potgieter, Stephanus Cloete and Pieter Vivier, and the Caffres catch a Christian boy of sixteen, one Stroebel, and nobody ever hears anything about him again and I’m hardly back home when the day breaks that Langa, whose wife is now my wife, takes all my cattle, burns down my farms and house and everything in it and leaves me adrift in poverty.

  I send my wives and children to my henchman Jan One-hand Botha until I can get another house built. Jan stands with his pipe in his hand and waves me good bye with his stump. While I’m seeking to avenge myself in the course of the next punitive expedition, while I’m wildly hitting out and shooting and chasing after Caffres into the bushes and only returning to the Christian fires late at night, my brother Frederik – who played with me when I was small but now hardly knows me – is severely wounded and my uncle Petrus gets hit in the chest with an assegai. I sit through the night holding my uncle’s hand. I ask him about my father. He says my father was a brave man to stay at home and see that the yard was kept cleared. My father was brave to teach his sons to shoot and ride and not to go hunting too far and to sleep with the same woman, that Christina, he says, every night. By dawn it seems as if Uncle Petrus is going to make it, but then he dies while I’m fetching him water.

  I ride into Graaffe Rijnet. There are wagons and tents everywhere between the houses. Children and women are wandering around in the streets. Bezuidenhout scratches at his
red beard that reaches almost to his belt and looks at the woman walking past him and looks at the little girl she has by the hand. He tells me that the women are streaming into town because the Caffres leave them alone. They only burn down the farm and take the cattle and torture and murder the men. But the women and the children they leave alone.

  We also torture and murder, I say.

  But we know better than to leave the young girls alone, Bezuidenhout laughs.

  We ride on to the drostdy where Maynier’s commando is to muster. Neither I nor any of my comrades have any time for the new landdrost, but when there’s a commando that wants to drive out the Caffres and take their cattle, we’re ready and willing. In front of the jail one of the militia is tying a Christian to a pole and then he starts whipping him; the man howls like a baboon.

  Maynier is highly learned and fluent in Dutch, French and English, but doesn’t understand warfare. The Political Council orders him to avoid violence and to negotiate peaceably with the Caffres. As an immortal I, Omni-Buys, have many an idle hour for my little obsession: the history of which I was part, but of which at the time I couldn’t see anything beyond my own broken nose. I laugh from my immaterial belly when I read in a battered book that for these negotiations Maynier requisitioned the following trinkets from the commissioner, as gifts for the Heathen:

  300 pounds of beads,

  200 knives,

  300 pounds of copper plates,

  150 pounds of wire for bracelets,

  300 pounds of tobacco,

  150 tinderboxes and flintstones,

  400 pounds of bar iron and

  150 mirrors.

  Oh, the wondrous abysm of lists!

  The Caffres take the gifts, but want no truck with peace. That is when Maynier receives instructions to drive them from the Colony. He assembles a commando of eighty Christians and thirty-seven Hottentots. Ferreira’s Lange Cloof commando joins us. I read Ferreira’s letter to the commissioner in which before his departure he begs for a few items for the advancement of bloodletting:

  1 000 pounds of lead,

  2 000 pieces of flintstone,

  hand grenades and

  any available field guns.

  Believe me, no hand grenades or field guns came our way.

  When Bezuidenhout and I arrive at the drostdy, a bunch of men are already standing around in front of the buildings smoking and muttering. Maynier comes walking out onto the stoep. His face and neck are red and full of freckles. He has no chin. His clothes are all show. The shirt with the frills, the breeches, the stockings of silk. The suit was tailored for him in the Cape and belongs in the Cape and won’t last a day on horseback by the banks of the Fish.

  There’s no place for a prick in those pants, says Bezuidenhout.

  Why should there be?

  A man in front of us looks around and clears his throat at our comments on the local authority. Bezuidenhout slaps the pestilential prattler on the back of the head when he turns back. Maynier greets us and reads administrative arrangements from a piece of paper. He asks Redcaptain van Jaarsveld to lead the commando as commandant. Van Jaarsveld tousles his greasy hair and the hair stands up straight and stays like that. He thanks Maynier for the honour and lists his excuses for having to decline:

  His horses are not up to the journey and

  his wife is ill and

  he has too few labourers to keep his farm going.

  The men around me snigger at the stylish Van Jaarsveld’s discomfiture. Maynier minces hither and thither and his dandified collar darkens with sweat. He asks Captain Burgers with the ears to lead the commando and Burgers too declines:

  He doesn’t have any horses and

  he is scared the Bushmen may plunder his farm when he turns his back.

  Maynier shakes his head and giggles in disbelief. He offers the command of the commando to all the officers who turned up. Every single one declines this dubious honour. Where Maynier’s chin should have been his face starts trembling. He castigates the officers for their dereliction of duty and all of them persist in their respective lists of excuses. Maynier proposes that he himself should lead the commando. All the burghers agree unanimously. Later in the inn we laugh at the silly pantywaist who wants to muck in among the bushes and the Caffres in his embroidered waistcoat. We’ll all ride along, just to see what the little bantam cock does the first time a wild Caffre or a lion charges him.

  I send a Hottentot to One-hand Botha with a letter to Maria telling her they needn’t keep food hot for me. While taking apart my gun, I consider what I’ll do to One-hand if Maria or Nombini doesn’t say no to him loudly and clearly and firmly enough. Because believe me, he’s going to try it on with them, I know it, because I would have. I oil each part separately and when I remember the Bushman we met on our way here, I cut another notch in the butt with the older notches keeping tally.

  On Glider I’d easily be able to travel from Graaffe Rijnet to the heart of the Zuurveld in three or four days. Maynier’s commando with the wagons full of provisions and munitions travels mighty slowly. Besides, we have to stop every now and again to fend off Heathens. We don’t encounter many of them. Chaka and Langa – damned Langa – left only a scattering of their men and a few head of cattle on this side of the Fish. This little lot keep track of the commandos and then send their Hottentots through the river to go and report to the chiefs.

  Maynier does not ride out in front of the commando as is usual for leaders, but gets the farmers who know the veldt and the bush to lead the way. He trots in the middle, shielded by the big men around him, on a huge bay that he can’t mount unaided. Every morning a Hottentot has to help him onto the horse. We jest among ourselves – but loudly enough for him to hear – that he should rather saddle one of his coiffured dogs. The nights are cold. Maynier wants to keep the fires small, as if all of the Zuurveld and Caffreland didn’t already know of us. At night I lie wrapped in two karosses and listen to the night. All that I hear are the hyenas and jackals and owls and the farmers around me who have been away from home too long and are too cold and then lie too close to each other and then the grunting. One night late Bezuidenhout slides in behind me and mumbles things I cannot hear. His beard is warm in my neck. He moves closer and in under my karosses and I let him have his way. He growls as he rams himself into me. Then it’s my turn and then I’m no longer so cold. I drift off for a while before we’re in the saddle again with the break of day and make raucous jokes about all that is tit and arse and cunt.

  In the course of the next few days we don’t shoot many Caffres, but we do manage to plunder over two thousand cattle. Maynier looks both satisfied and terrified. He hasn’t fired a shot, has hardly issued an order and mostly just looked on in confusion while the Christians were doing what they’ve been doing since childhood. Then, one morning after shaving and putting on his outfit, which is already showing signs of wear and tear, he orders the commando to cross the Fish. Ferreira and other burghers whose callused palms mirror the landscape try to dissuade him. Maynier squirms uncomfortably on his horse. His foot slips from the stirrup but he keeps to his resolve. He wants to cross the drift at Trompetterskraal. Ferreira says the Caffres will see us trekking across and then simply drive their cattle over the river. With the whole commando in Caffreland, the Zuurveld will be undefended and the Caffres will be free to invade and lay waste the Colony once again. Maynier asks him if he’s clairvoyant and nobody laughs.

  I know this land, is all that Ferreira replies.

  Maynier pretends not to hear him and talks to the officer next to him. He flicks his horse too hard, the animal takes off in the direction of the drift, almost leaving him behind. Ferreira, small and squat and with a surprisingly loud voice, shouts after Maynier in God’s name to leave part of the commando on this side of the Fish to defend the goddam Colony. Maynier manages to rein in his horse, halts and returns to Ferreira. The two men glare at each other. Maynier grinds his teeth audibly, a muscle twitches in his cheek. I burst out laugh
ing. Then some of the others also laugh. Maynier’s horse retreats from Ferreira and takes up position in front of the commando. He gives the order for Ferreira and me to be dealt lashes. Nobody moves.

  We trek through the drift, over the border into Caffreland. In the bush I spot the red dogs once, but they stay out of the way of the raucous Christians. And behold, as soon as our last horse sets foot on the far bank, the Caffres drive their cattle across the river and over the border into the undefended Zuurveld and go and hide out with their cattle in the undergrowth along the Bushman’s River and Sundays River and murder and thieve as far as the other side of the Swartkops River and the remaining farmers in the area are once again in terror of their lives and flee.

  The commando spans out. A few burghers set off to shoot game for the griddles. I sit to one side with Botha, Martiens Prinsloo, the two Bezuidenhouts, Campher and Van Rooijen and talk about hunting and women. I tell them the stories I have heard of baboons lazing about fat and contented on the farms where food is easy to plunder and the lions and leopards have long since been shot out. The young males no longer have to fight for survival and don’t have far to forage for food. They get bored and pursue antelopes and jump on them and rape them howling on the run and shriek like the four horsemen in the last book of the Bible.

  A Gonna Hottentot named Hans turns up in the camp along with a group of peaceable Caffres. He convinces Maynier that they are of Ndlambe’s tribe and also want to bugger up the rebels Chaka and Langa. Maynier is overjoyed at the greater numbers and Hans and his Caffres join the ranks of the commando. The farmers smell a rat. Stoffel Botha says he recognises some of the faces; he says those mugs he’s seen with Chaka and those with Langa. He’s not happy with the Caffres that appear out of the blue and increase in number every morning and are welcomed into the commando. He tells his Hottentot to watch them at night. The Hottentot comes to report, out of breath and scored by thorns, that these Caffres leave the camp in the evenings and set fire to anthills and dry grass and other fires appear on the horizon and then disappear. He says that Hans’ Caffres are never from Ndlambe, they are warning Langa and Chaka. Botha tells us and we tell the commando leaders. Maynier says we need the trackers and they know the territory as we farmers don’t know it. He says Hans’ Caffres must stay and Hans’ Caffres stay. The glares of the farmers leave them in no doubt as to who invited them. Sometimes there’s a fight but not much and what’s the use. Hans’ Caffres trek with the commando until the commando is disbanded.