Great-uncle Joris

For quite a number of Boers in the Transvaal Bushveld the expedition against Majaja’s tribe of Bechuanas – we called them the Platkop kaffirs – was unlucky.

There was a young man with us on this expedition who did not finish a story that he started to tell of a bygone war. And for a good while afterwards the relations were considerably strained between the long-established Transvalers living in these parts and the Cape Boers who had trekked in more recently.

I can still remember all the activity that went on north of the Dwarsberge at that time, with veldkornets going from one farmhouse to another to recruit burghers for the expedition, and with provisions and ammunition having to be got together, and with new stories being told every day about how cheeky the Platkop kaffirs were getting.

I must mention that about that time a number of Boers from the Cape had trekked into the Marico Bushveld. In the Drogedal area, indeed, the recently arrived Cape Boers were almost as numerous as the Transvalers who had been settled here for a considerable while. At that time I, too, still regarded myself as a Cape Boer, since I had only a few years before quit the Schweizer-Reneke District for the Western Transvaal. When the veldkornet came to my farm on his recruiting tour, I volunteered my services immediately.

“Of course, we don’t want everybody to go on commando,” the veldkornet said, studying me somewhat dubiously, after I had informed him that I was from the Cape, and that older relatives of mine had taken part in wars against the kaffirs in the Eastern Province. “We need some burghers to stay behind to help guard the farms. We can’t leave all that to the women and children.”

The veldkornet seemed to have conceived an unreasonable prejudice against people whose forebears had fought against the Xhosas in the Eastern Province. But I assured him that I was very anxious to join, and so in the end he consented. “A volunteer is, after all, worth more to a fighting force than a man who has to be commandeered against his will,” the veldkornet said, stroking his beard. “Usually.”

A week later, on my arrival at the big camp by the Steenbok­spruit, where the expedition against the Platkop kaffirs was being assembled, I was agreeably surprised to find many old friends and acquaintances from the Cape Colony among the burghers on commando. There were also a large number of others whom I then met for the first time, who were introduced to me as new immigrants from the Cape.

Indeed, among ourselves we spoke a good deal about this proud circumstance – about the fact that we Cape Boers actually outnumbered the Transvalers in this expedition against Majaja – and we were glad to think that in time of need we had not failed to come to the help of our new fatherland. For this reason the coolness that made itself felt as between Transvaler and Cape Boer, after the expedition was over, was all the more regrettable.

We remained camped for a good number of days beside the Steenbokspruit. During that time I became friendly with Frikkie van Blerk and Jan Bezuidenhout, who were also originally from the Cape. We craved excitement. And when we were seated around the camp-fire, talking of life in the Eastern Province, it was natural enough that we should find ourselves swapping stories of the adventures of our older relatives in the wars against the Xhosas. We were all three young, and so we spoke like veterans, forgetting that our knowledge of frontier fighting was based only on hearsay. Each of us was an authority on the best way of defeating a Xhosa impi without loss of life to anybody except the members of the impi. Frikkie van Blerk took the lead in this kind of talk, and I may say that he was peculiar in his manner of expressing himself, sometimes. Unfeeling, you might say. Anyway, as the night wore on, there were in the whole Transvaal, I am sure, no three young men less worried than we were about the different kinds of calamities that, in this uncertain world, would overtake a Xhosa impi.

“Are you married, Schalk?” Jan Bezuidenhout asked me, suddenly.

“No,” I replied, “but Frikkie van Blerk is. Why do you ask?”

Jan Bezuidenhout sighed.

“It is all right for you,” he informed me. “But I am also married. And it is for burghers like Frikkie van Blerk and myself that a war can become a most serious thing. Who is looking after your place while you are on commando, Frikkie?”

Frikkie van Blerk said that a friend and neighbour, Gideon Kotze, had made special arrangement with the veldkornet, where­by he was released from service with the commando on condition that he kept an eye on the farms within a twenty-mile radius of his own.

“The thought that Gideon Kotze is looking after things, in that way, makes me feel much happier,” Frikkie van Blerk added. “It is nice for me to know that my wife will not be quite alone all the time.”

“Gideon Kotze –” Jan Bezuidenhout repeated, and sighed again.

“What do you mean by that sigh?” Frikkie van Blerk demanded, quickly, a nasty tone seeming to creep into his voice.

“Oh, nothing,” Jan Bezuidenhout answered, “oh, nothing at all.”

As he spoke he kicked at a log on the edge of the fire. The fine sparks rose up very high in the still air and got lost in the leaves of the thorn-tree overhead.

Frikkie van Blerk cleared his throat. “For that matter,” he said in a meaningful way to Jan Bezuidenhout, “you are also a married man. Who is looking after your farm – and your wife – while you are sitting here?”

Jan Bezuidenhout waited for several moments before he an­s­wered.

“Who?” he repeated, “who? Why, Gideon Kotze, also.”

This time when Jan Bezuidenhout sighed, Frikkie van Blerk joined in, audibly. And I, who had nothing at all to do with any part of this situation, seeing that I was not married, found myself sighing as well. And this time it was Frikkie van Blerk who kicked the log by the side of the fire. The chunk of white wood, which had been hollowed out by the ants, fell into several pieces, sending up a fiery shower so high that, to us, looking up to follow their flight, the yellow sparks became for a few moments almost indistinguishable from the stars.

“It’s all rotten,” Frikkie van Blerk said, taking another kick at the crumbling log, and missing.

“There’s something in the Bible about something else being some­thing like sparks flying upwards,” Jan Bezuidenhout an­nounc­ed. His words sounded very solemn. They served as an introduction to the following story that he told us:

“It was during my grandfather’s time,” Jan Bezuidenhout said. “My great-uncle Joris, who had a farm near the Keiskamma, had been commandeered to take the field in the Fifth Kaffir War. Be­fore setting out for the war, my great-uncle Joris arranged for a friend and neighbour to visit his farm regularly, in case his wife needed help. Well, as you know, there is no real danger in a war against kaffirs –”

“Yes, we know that,” Frikkie van Blerk and I agreed simultaneously, to sound knowledgeable.

“I mean, there’s no danger as long as you don’t go so near that a kaffir can reach you with an assegai,” Jan Bezuidenhout continued. “And, of course, no white man is as uneducated as all that. But what happened to my great-uncle Joris was that his horse threw him. The commando was retreating just about then –”

“To reload,” Frikkie van Blerk and I both said, eager to show how well acquainted we were with the strategy used in kaffir wars.

“Yes,” Jan Bezuidenhout went on. “To reload. And there was no time for the commando to stop for my great-uncle Joris. The last his comrades saw of him, he was crawling on his hands and knees towards an aardvark hole. They didn’t know whether the Xhosas had seen him. Perhaps the commando had to ride back fast because –”

Jan Bezuidenhout did not finish his story. For, just then, a veld­kornet came with orders from Kommandant Pienaar. We had to put out the fire. We had not to make so much noise. We were to hold ourselves in readiness, in case the kaffirs launched a night attack. The veldkornet also instructed Jan Bezuidenhout to get his gun and go on guard duty.

“There was never any nonsense like this in the Cape,” Frikkie van Blerk grumbled, “when we were fighting the Xhosas. It seems the Transvalers don’t know what a kaffir war is.”

By this time Frikkie van Blerk had got to believe that he actually had taken part in the campaigns against the Xhosas.

I have mentioned that there were certain differences between the Transvalers and the Cape Boers. For one thing, we from the Cape had a lightness of heart which the Transvalers lacked – possibly (I thought at the time) because the stubborn Transvaal soil made the conditions of life more harsh for them. And the difference between the two sections was particularly noticeable on the following morning, when Kommandant Pienaar, after having delivered a short speech about how it was our duty to bring book-learning and refinement to the Platkop kaffirs, gave the order to advance. We who were from the Cape cheered lustily. The Transvalers were, as always, subdued. They turned pale, too, some of them. We rode on for the best part of an hour. Frikkie van Blerk, Jan Bezuidenhout and I found ourselves together in a small group on one flank of the commando.

“It’s funny,” Jan Bezuidenhout said, “but I don’t see any kaffirs, anywhere, with assegais. It doesn’t seem to be like it was against the Xhosas –”

He stopped abruptly. For we heard what sounded surprisingly like a shot. Afterwards we heard what sounded surprisingly like more shots.

“These Platkop Bechuanas are not like the Cape Xhosas,” I agreed, then, dismounting.

In no time the whole commando had dismounted. We sought cover in dongas and behind rocks from the fire of an enemy who had concealed himself better than we were doing.

“No, the Xhosas were not at all like this,” Frikkie van Blerk announced, tearing off a strip of shirt to bandage a place in his leg from which the blood flowed. “Why didn’t the Transvalers let us know it would be like this?”

It was an ambush. Things happened very quickly. It became only too clear to me why the Transvalers had not shared in our enthusiasm earlier on, when we had gone over the rise together, at a canter, through the yellow grass, singing. I was still reflecting on this circumstance, some time later, when our commando re­mounted and galloped away out of that whole part of the district. To reload, we said, years afterwards, to strangers who asked. The last we saw of Jan Bezuidenhout was after he had had his horse shot down from under him. He was crawling on hands and knees in the direction of an aardvark hole.

“Like great-uncle, like nephew,” Frikkie van Blerk said, when we were discussing the affair some time later, back in camp beside the Steenbokspruit. Frikkie van Blerk’s unfeeling sally was not well received.

Thus ended the expedition against Majaja, which brought little honour to the commando that took part in it. There was not a burgher who retained any sort of a happy memory of the affair. And for a good while afterwards the relations were strained between Transvaler and Cape Boer in the Marico.

It was with a sense of bitterness that, some months later, I had occasion to call to mind the fact that Gideon Kotze, the man appointed to look after the farms of the burghers on commando, was a Transvaler.

And when I saw Gideon Kotze sitting talking to Jan Bezuiden­hout’s widow, on the front stoep of their house, I wondered what the story was, about his great-uncle Joris, that Jan Bezuidenhout had not been able to finish telling.