Our eternal curse II

by Simon Rumney

  As Robard's mind developed, he became more and more aware of the contradictions that surrounded him. His education became a constant search for logic within the illogical treatment of people with different skin color, and it drove his mother to distraction.

  Robard simply would not accept her off-hand answers. "Because that is how things are in Africa", or "Kaffirs are different to us", or "Kaffirs simply do not think like us white people."

  So when Robard asked questions that could not be satisfactorily deflected by his mother, her total frustration led to the inclusion of her more forceful husband in his education.

  Robard would be “sat down” by his father and told in an extremely authoritarian voice the same thing he himself had been told as a young boy. "We Boer's are God's chosen people in the ZAR."

  Although he was a “dyed-in-the-wool” racist, he was always proud to point out that his kaffirs were not slaves. His justification for such a wild claim was, "My kaffirs cannot be called slaves because, even though God's scriptures tell the Boer people that kaffirs are beasts of burden created only to serve us, I provide my kaffirs with plenty of fresh straw in their weather-proof huts, good food in payment for their hard work and, unlike many Afrikaners, I never beat my kaffirs."

  When Robard asked why he did not actually pay his kaffirs money for their hard work, his father said, "What would my kaffirs do with money? They have nowhere to spend money and nothing to spend it on."

  This superficial statement, and its decisive delivery, served to shut Robard up until his incredibly astute mind learned how to read his mother's Holy Bible. One day soon after completing the book full of fascinating stories, he made the mistake of pointing out the slaves in the Bible also received nothing but lodging and food for their work and they were still called slaves.

  That became a day when Robard's mother had to find a creative new way to placate her husband's fury. Poor young Robard had never intended to contradict or humiliate his father. He simply had an extremely curious mind and truly wanted to understand why his beloved friends were different, but his father had such a ridiculously short fuse.

  Even though Robard received what he saw as an unjustified scolding, he forgave his father because, unlike many other farmers in the ZAR, his father was a fair man who did not beat his child. Robard knew this made his father the closest thing he would ever get to a kind man in the Orange Free State.

  By the time he reached the age of five, Robard had employed his ever-hungry and expanding mind to construct arguments that would stretch his father's shaky logic for the very first time. On the day Robard asked his question, his farther delivered his usual glib speech dismissing kaffirs as “God's shills” and ordered “the Good Kaffir” to reward him for his efforts by fetching him his evening gin, lime and water.

  Completely satisfied with the veracity of his argument, Robard's father was walking out to the veranda to watch the sun set as Robard delivered his opening argument. "I have read the Bible from cover to cover, but there is nothing about the Afrikaner being God's chosen people. How can that be so?"

  Robard's mother blanched with embarrassment and fear as her husband turned red with anger. Even though she knew some kind of displeased response would be coming Robard's way, the focus of his shouted words took her by surprise. "Now you are lying to your father? You are too young to have read the Bible and I did not raise you to be a liar!"

  Young Robard's well-planned strategy had been to impress his father with evidence that would prove his argument, but the shock of being called a liar left him dumbfound.

  Seeing her son's panic, Robard's mother stepped in to help him. "Your son has read the Bible, husband. He has read that and many, many other books."

  Turning his anger on his wife, Robard's father shouted, "Telling more lies to support the boy helps no one, woman!"

  Standing her ground, Robard's mother spoke with pride. "I am not lying, husband! Your son can read. He has read many books!"

  "This is not possible!"

  Robard's father paused as he saw the determination in his wife's eyes. "Can this really be possible? How did I not know this?"

  At this moment, Nanny returned holding a tray with one glass of pale green transparent liquid standing on it, and Robard's mother looked to Nanny for support. "I have mentioned this to my husband on a number of occasions. Have I not, Nanny?"

  The drink on the tray began to vibrate as Nanny shook with fear. Looking absolutely terrified, she nodded her head 'yes'.

  Sensing an opportunity to steal the moral high ground, Robard's mother adopted a crestfallen tone. "If you bothered to listen to me, you would not have called our son a liar."

  She knew her words had hit their mark when he said in an apologetic tone, "But I thought you meant he read like a child. Just a few simple words."

  Not wanting to let her husband off the hook quite yet, she sent a verbal barb aimed at his greatest weakness. "And, if you had bothered to read the Bible, you may understand your son a little better."

  These deliberately well-placed words hit their mark but, as she watched her husband's confidence crumple, she immediately regretted saying them. She knew full well that Robard's father had never read the Bible because he could not read.

  She knew it was very unusual for an Afrikaans man raised by the Doppers in the Dutch Reformed Church not to read and write. She knew it had brought great shame to him and his family during the great trek. She knew the Doppers had tried to beat reading into him. She knew that whatever punishment he received, he simply could not do it. And she also knew that exploiting this weakness was going too far.

  Robard's mother was in the process of finding the words that would let her back down without causing her husband any further loss of face, when her son chose to stick to his guns. "If the Bible does not tell us we are God's chosen people, why do we believe we are?"

  Robard didn't know about his father's shame; all he wanted was an answer to his well-thought-out question. He simply could not understand why his father shouted, "Because the Doppers say it is so!"

  This wasn't an answer that Robard could do anything with, so he vented his frustration. "But the Reformed Church are basing that on nothing."

  Robard's words were followed with a terrible silence. His mother looked truly worried, Nanny was beside herself with fear, and his father was rigid with anger. When he eventually spoke, his words came out in a stumbling fury. "The Dutch Reformed Church does not base things on nothing, boy!"

  Robard understood the messages in his father's tone. His stance was also telling him to let this one go, but he really wanted to understand why the color of someone's skin meant so much. Standing proud, he asked, "If we are chosen, why do I have this?"

  Lifting his arm, Robard pointed to the birthmark that surrounded his wrist like a thick, light brown bracelet. "This is the color of a kaffir. Is this part of me somehow unchosen?"

  Robard's furious father began to shout. "Never compare yourself to a kaffir, boy! You are a Boer! My father was a Boer and my father's father was a pure blood Boer! You do not question your color, not even a part of your skin! Do I make myself clear, boy?"

  Turning to his wife he said something that was intended to convey disgrace, but to Robard it felt like a compliment. "It's as though your son just can't see color!"

  Sitting down in an armchair behind Robard, his mother held her brave son as he proudly faced down his father. In an attempt to defuse the tension in the room, she spoke with a gentle and soft voice. "Maybe it is time to tell the boy everything, husband."

  She cuddled Robard harder as she went on. "If you want the boy to understand, you must explain. You must teach him."

  Finishing his gin in one mouthful, Robard's father held the empty glass out for the Good Kaffir and Nanny was more than happy to take the glass and escape from the room.

  Waiting for his second gin, Robard's father looked out to his fertile land to calm himself. When Nanny returned and placed the gin in his hand, he took a sip. For some re
ason he did not turn to face his wife or his son, he simply started talking as though he was addressing the scenery. "On that day in 1838 we were outnumbered more than ten to one by Zulus."

  At this point, he turned to look his son in the eyes. "You know that Zulus are the best fighters of all the kaffirs, right boy?"

  When Robard nodded his head 'yes', he turned back to look at the view, paused to sip gin, then continued. "There were thousands of them charging down upon our laager. I remember them as though I can see them, out there, now. I was a child, but I remember those savages clawing at our wagon as we children loaded our father's muskets."

  Robard's father turned to see his wife and his Son hanging silently on his words. "We had muzzle-loading muskets. You know what that is, boy?

  Robard nodded his head 'yes' once again and his father turned back to the view. "They carried assegais and shields."

  In an air of wonder he added, "Those cow hide shields of theirs became musket-proof when they dipped them in water. Did you know that, boy?"

  Robert shook his head 'no', but his father did not turn to see it. He just assumed his son did not understand as he continued in his somber voice. "Neither did we, back then."

  His body tensed as though he was expecting some kind of horror to happen to him now. "Our fathers had to shoot them at close quarters to get through those shields. So many of them got inside our laager."

  Robard's father's tiny pause seemed to frame the fear behind his words. "Far too many of our people were massacred by those damn Zulu kaffirs."

  As a five-year-old raised on a peaceful farm, Robard had no way of truly understanding what his father was reliving. How could he be expected to grasp the importance of an event that defined every single day of his father's life? In hindsight, he knew he should not have pushed his father, but Robard really wanted to understand why Ahh, Beeya and Ceeya should be considered different to himself. The words came tumbling innocently out of his mouth. "But I still do not understand why we are the chosen people and everyone else is not."

  Robard watched his father turn back from surveying his land. Once again his face was bright red with frustration and fury. When he eventually spoke, he seemed to be answering the wrong question. "I was just a little older than you are now but I kept my head! Do you not understand what I am trying to tell you, boy?"

  Robard wanted to answer 'no', but his father went on answering the wrong question without giving him the chance to speak. "While the other children pissed their pants and screamed with fear and clung to their mother's skirts, I kept loading those muskets! Our lives were just seconds from a savage ending, but I alone kept loading those muskets!"

  An involuntary whimper catching in his throat provided a clue to why he was answering the wrong question. "What good was reading and writing on the day God chose us? The day when so many of those self-righteous children let people die because they were too weak to load muskets?"

  With these words, Robard's father had exposed too much of his true feelings. Looking to his wife, he searched for her expression of shame and disgust but saw nothing but love and admiration.

  Calming a little, Robard's father turned his back on the room and the thing he perceived to be his shameful weakness, before getting to the nub of Robard's question. "Before the battle, we all prepared for certain death. We were so completely outnumbered. We all knew we were about to die. The Doppers made us all pray and we did it, not because they told us that this was God's way of testing the Boer, but because we all expected to arrive in Heaven just moments after our prayers. But we were wrong. They told us our victory would deliver us as God's chosen people, and it did."

  Robard's next question was asked in a doubting tone. "But surely you survived because you loaded the muskets, not because God chose the Boer people?"

  Robard’s father's anger seemed spent. His tone was soft and filled with reverence. "Had you been there at Blood River, you would not dare say such a thing. If you saw what I saw, you could do nothing but believe in our divinity. Thousands upon thousands of Zulu lay smitten by our good Lord and we alone survived. We Boer's more than survived, we thrived. And the kaffir were chosen to serve us by God!"

  And that was the end of that discussion. Robard's father walked outside and drank too much gin, and Robard was put to bed by Nanny.

  Growing up odd

  Robard never really lost his “funny ideas”, as his father called them, but he grew strong and tall and worked hard and worked smart.

  His mother was proud of him, but she could never think of him as “a true Boer” because he was just a little too close to Ahh, Beeya and Ceeya for her liking. She tried her best to break the bond between them, but unlike other Boer children, Robard did not grow up to build an invisible barrier between himself and his levees. They were always by his side and they were always treated as equals.

  They were with him when he learned how to ride horses, they were with him when he learned how to fire his father's musket, and they were with him when he learned how to hunt game.

  Shooting from the saddle, Robard became expert at killing impala, wildebeest, bush pig, springbok and many, many other kinds of game. But even this simple and “pure Boer” activity provoked awkward racial questions because, when the meat was dried and made into biltong and boerwors and droewors, Robard wanted to know why more was not given to their farm workers. He was just not satisfied with his father's standard answer. "The kaffirs prefer their mealie-meal."

  Robard also wanted to know why Ahh, Beeya and Ceeya had to run alongside his horse. His parents even forbade him from buying them horses with his own money.

  When he insisted, they refused to give him access to his savings account in Bloemfontein. The little money he had inherited from his grandparents and earned with his own hard work was inaccessible to him.

  Frustrated by his parent’s actions, Robard needed to know why they had done it and, once again, he was not convinced by his mother's answer. "Kaffirs simply do not ride horses and they most certainly do not hunt in the ZAR."

  From then on, Robard chose to irritate his parents with good-natured but awkward questions that all Boer children knew not to ask from an early age. He would deliberately use a happy tone to ask, "Why were Ahh, Beeya and Ceeya expected to carry the game he shot?"

  The answer would invariably be, "Because they're kaffirs."

  He would then counter with, "But I am as strong as they are and I'm going to be made stronger by eating the meat. Why should I not carry my share of the burden?"

  He knew the answer was too predictable for his parents to even bother saying out loud. If he really wanted to be provocative, he would ask something like, "The front door opens for kaffirs as well as white people, so why are Ahh, Beeya and Ceeya not allowed to use it?"

  Sometimes they would give the standard answer and sometimes they just didn't bother, but there was one question his parents could never leave alone. "Why not teach Ahh, Beeya and Ceeya to become good shots with our musket, then give them their own muskets and horses to increase the number of animals we hunt?"

  Robard's mother and father were always angered and frustrated by the “obvious stupidity” of this idiotic question, and always gave the same answer. "You want to give our kaffirs the means to rebel against their masters?"

  Unable to sway his parents, Robard decided to ignore their strict orders and take his turn on foot while teaching Ahh, Beeya and Ceeya how to ride his horse and shoot his father's musket. Robard also placed himself in the rotation when it came to carrying heavy game tied to a pole.

  No Boer ever took turns helping his levees. It was unheard of and his parents believed he did it out of pure spite just to annoy them, but Robard did it because he simply could not see skin color. He could not justify treating his friends differently simply because they looked different to him.

  There was no doubt Robard made his parent's angry, but his rebellious and eccentric behavior was tolerated because he also made them laugh. As well as having a good sense of h
umor, he had a very kind nature. He was also a fine looking young man with a well-muscled body, blue eyes, and white teeth that shone out of the almost permanent smile on his sun-tanned face framed by his light blond hair.

  He had all the Boer attributes. He was very good at hunting and farming and, despite his awkward questions, he was always such a pleasure to be around.

  Everyone who knew him hoped he would grow out of his radical behavior, but he never showed any sign of doing so.

  Bloemfontein

  Ever month, Robard would drive the wagon into the fast-growing city of Bloemfontein with Ahh, Beeya and Ceeya to pick up supplies. He never particularly enjoyed the trips because his arrival was always frowned upon by the Boer population. In “Boer circles”, Robard's radical treatment of kaffirs was considered extremely odd behavior at best and threateningly dangerous behavior at worst.

  Robard paid no mind to these negative opinions because Ahh, Beeya and Ceeya were his brothers and he trusted them with his life. If he was in trouble, he knew absolutely his brown friends would be there for him, which is more than he could say for any of the white people he knew.

  All Boers believed Robard's familiarity and kind treatment of kaffirs demonstrated weakness that would lead to unrest in the whole kaffir population, but one Boer in particular was more outspoken than all the others. His name was Janco van Deventer and, as a child, he had been on the trek with Robard's father. For some reason, Janco hated Robard's father and, as a result, he also hated Robard.

  Whenever Robard rode into town sitting on his ox cart with Ahh, Beeya and Ceeya, Janco would stop whatever he was doing and taunt their progress. As the owner of the largest livery stable and the city blacksmith, Janco was always around when it happened, so he never missed a single visit.