Bush Telegraph

Boom – boom – boom – boom – boom – boom – those kaffir drums (Oom Schalk Lourens said). There they go again. There must be a big beer drink being held in those Mtosa huts in the vlakte. Boom – boom – boom – boom. Yes, it sounds like a good party, all right.

Of course, that’s about all the kaffirs use their drums for, these days – to summon the neighbours to a dance. But there was a time when the sound of the drums travelled from one end of Africa to the other.

In the old days the drum-men would receive and send messages that went from village to village and across thick bush and by deserts, and it made no difference what languages were spoken by the various tribes, either. The drum-men would know what a message meant, no matter where it came from.

The drum-man was taught his work from boyhood. And sometimes when a drum-man got a message to say that a cattle-raiding impi sent out by the chief was on its way back without cattle, and running quite fast – some of the fatter indunas throwing away their spears as they were running – then the chief would as likely as not be ungrateful about the message, and would have the drum-man taken around the corner and stoned, as though it was the drum-man’s fault.

Afterwards, however, when we white men brought the telegraph up through these parts on the copper wires, there wasn’t any more need for the kaffir drums.

I remember the last drum-man they had at the Mtosa huts outside Ramoutsa. His name was Mosigo. He was very old and his face was wrinkled. I often thought that those wrinkles looked like the kaffir footpaths that go twisting across the length and breadth of Africa, and that you can follow for mile after mile and day after day, and that never come to an end. And I would think how the messages that Mosigo received on his drum would come from somewhere along the furthest paths that the kaffirs followed across Africa, getting foot-sore on the way, and that were like the wrinkles on Mosigo’s face.

“The drum is better than the copper wire that you white men bring up on long poles across the veld,” Mosigo said to me on one occasion.

He was sitting in front of his hut and was tapping on his drum that went boom – boom – boom – boom – boom – boom. (Just like the way you hear that drum going down there in the vlakte, now.)

Far away it seemed as though other drums were taking up and repeating Mosigo’s pattern of drum-sounds. Or it may be that what you heard, coming from the distant koppies, were only echoes.

“I don’t need copper wires for my drum’s messages,” Mosigo went on. “Or long poles with rows of little white medicine bottles on them, either.”

Now, this talk that I had with Mosigo took place very long ago. It happened soon after the first telegraph office was opened at Nietverdiend. And so when I went to Nietverdiend a few days later, it was natural that I should have mentioned to a few of my Bushveld neighbours at the post office what Mosigo had said.

I was not surprised to find that those farmers were in the main in agreement with Mosigo’s remarks. Gysbert van Tonder said it was well known how ignorant the kaffirs were, but there were also some things that the kaffirs did have more understanding of than white men.

Then Gysbert van Tonder told us about the time when he had gone with his brother, ‘Rooi’, to hunt elephants far up into Portu­guese territory. And wherever they went, he and his brother ‘Rooi’, the kaffirs knew beforehand of their coming, by means of the drums.

“I tried to get some of the drum-men to explain to me what the different sounds they made on the drums meant,” Gysbert van Tonder said. “But that again shows you the really ignorant side of the kaffir. Those drum-men just couldn’t get me to understand the first thing of what they were wanting to teach me. And it wasn’t that they didn’t try, mind you. Indeed, some of the drum-men were very patient about it. They would explain over and over again. But I just couldn’t grasp it. They were so ignorant, I mean.”

Gysbert van Tonder went on to say that afterwards, through having heard that same message tapped out so often, he grew to recognise the kind of taps that meant that his brother, ‘Rooi’, had killed an elephant. And then the day came when an elephant killed his brother, ‘Rooi.’ And Gysbert van Tonder listened carefully to the drums. And it was the same message as always, he said. Only, it was the other way around.

As I have told you, the telegraph had only recently come up as far as Nietverdiend. And because we had no newspaper here in those days, the telegraph-operator, who was a young fellow without much sense, had arranged with a friend in the Pretoria head office to send him short items of news which he pinned on the wall inside the post office.

“Look what it says there, now,” Org Smit said, spelling out the words of one of the telegrams on the wall. “‘President Kruger visits Johannesburg stop Miners’ procession throws bottles stop.’ Now, is there anything in that? And what’s the idea of all those ‘stops’?”

“Why, I remember the time when the only news we had was the sort the drum-men got over their drums,” Johnny Welman said. “And it made sense, that sort of news. I am not ashamed to say that I brought up a family of six sons and three daughters on nothing else but that sort of news. And it was useful news to know. I can still remember the day when the message came over the drums about the three tax-collectors that had got eaten by crocodiles when their canoe capsized in the Limpopo. I don’t mean that we were glad to hear that three tax-collectors had been eaten by crocodiles –”

And we all laughed and said, no, of course not.

Then Org Smit started spelling out another telegraph message pinned on the wall.

“‘Fanatic shoots at King of Spain,’” he read. “‘King unharmed stop. This enrages crowd which flings fanatic in royal fish-pond stop.’”

“What’s the good of news like that to white farmers living in the Bushveld?” we asked of each other.

And when the telegraph-operator came from behind the counter to pin up another little bit of news we told him straight out what we thought. It was just a waste of money, we said, bringing the telegraph all that way up to Nietverdiend.

The telegraphist looked us up and down for a few moments in silence.

“Yes, I think it was a waste,” he said, finally.

Boom – boom – boom – boom – boom – boom. Getting louder, do you notice? The whole village down there must be pretty drunk by now. Of course, why we can hear it so clearly is because of the direction of the wind.

Anyway, there was that other time when I again went to Mosigo and I told him about the King of Spain. And Mosigo said to me that he did not think much of that kind of news, and that if that was the best the white man could do with his telegraph wires, then the white man still had a lot to learn. The telegraph people could come right down to his hut and learn. Even though he did not have a yellow rod – like they had shown him on the roof of the post office – to keep the lightning away, but only a piece of python skin, he said.

Although I did not myself have a high opinion of the telegraph, I was not altogether pleased that an old kaffir like Mo­sigo should speak lightly of an invention that came out of the white man’s brain. And so I said that the telegraph was still quite a new thing and that it would no doubt improve in time. Perhaps how it would improve quite a lot would be if they sacked that young telegraph-operator at Nietverdiend for a start, I said.

That young telegraph-operator was too impertinent, I said.

Mosigo agreed that it would help. It was a very important thing, he said, that for such work you should have the right sort of person. And then Mosigo asked if I could not perhaps put in a word for him in Pretoria for the telegraph-operator’s job. He would one day – soon, even – show me how good he really was. It was no good, he explained, having news told to you by a man who was not suited to that kind of work. And Mosigo spat contemptuously on the ground beside the drum. You could see, then, how much he resented the competition that the telegraph-operator at Nietverdiend was introducing. Much as he would resent the spectacular achievements of a rival drum-man, I suppose.

“Another thing that is important is having the right person to tell the news to,” Mosigo went on. “And you must also consider well as to whom the news is about. Take that king, now, of whom you have told me, that you heard of at Nietverdiend through the telegraph. He is a great chief, that king, is he not?”

I said to Mosigo that I should imagine that he must be a great chief, the King of Spain. I couldn’t know for sure, of course. You can’t, really, with foreigners.

“Has he many herds of cattle and many wives hoeing in the bean-fields?” Mosigo asked. “Has he many huts and does he drink much beer and is his stomach very fat? Do you know him well, this great chief?”

I told Mosigo that I did not know the King of Spain to speak to, since I had never met him. But if I did meet him – if the King of Spain came to the Dwarsberge, say – I would go up to him and say I was Schalk Lourens and he would say he was the King of Spain, and we would shake hands and talk about the crops and the drought and the Government – and perhaps about the new telegraph, even. We would talk together like any two white men would talk, I said.

But Mosigo explained that that was not what he meant. “What is the good of hearing about a man,” he asked, “unless you know who that man is? When the telegraph-operator told you about that big chief, he told it to the wrong man.”

Mosigo fell to beating his drum again. Boom – boom – boom – boom – boom – boom it went. Just like that drum down there in the village. Sounds wild, in the night, doesn’t it? And did you hear that other sound? That one there, that shrill sound? I expected something like it. Yes, that shrill sound is a police whistle.

Some time later I was again at Nietverdiend. On the wall of the post office there were some more messages that Org Smit spelt out for us. Org Smit was on his way to Zeerust by ox-wagon with a load of mealies.

“Fanatic fires at Shah of Persia” – Org Smit read – “stop Misses stop Infuriated crowd throws fanatic in royal horse-trough stop.”

On the way back from Nietverdiend I again called round at Mosigo’s hut. I started telling him about the message that Org Smit had read out, but Mosigo interrupted me. Boom – boom – boom – boom, Mosigo’s drum was going … By the way, do you hear how loud those drums are beating in the village? And the police whistle has stopped. I mean, it stopped suddenly. I hope it isn’t serious trouble …

“Baas Org Smit?” Mosigo said to me. “Baas Org Smit is dead. A wagon with mealies went over him.”

I did not wait to hear more. I climbed back on to my mule-cart and drove away fast along the road I had come. When I was almost halfway back to Nietverdiend I could still hear Mosigo’s drum throbbing.

I had travelled a good distance along the Zeerust road and it was late afternoon when I saw a wagon that I recognised as Org Smit’s and that was loaded high with mealies. The wagon was proceeding slowly down the dusty road. I made haste to overtake it. I drew close enough to see the driver. He was sitting on the seat and brandishing his long whip. From the back I recognised the driver as Org Smit. When I was almost abreast of the wagon I shouted. In the moment of Org Smit’s turning round on the seat his whip caught in one of the wheels.

When I saw Org Smit fall from the wagon, I turned my face away.