EXECUTION OF MAMPOER, NOV. 22, 1883.
Such was the terror and excitement existing that, although Pretoria had a garrison of 2,000 effective men, reckoning regulars and volunteers, yet a force of at the most 600 Boers kept them and the inhabitants shut up for months, like rats in a cage. This garrison made one or two sorties. On the 16th of January they had a fight at Elandsfontein, of which the less said the better, and another on February 12th, at Red House Kraal, situated the other side of the Six-mile Spruit, on the road to Natal. This was a Majuba in miniature; our troops, showing the white feather, made a regular skedaddle. Nixon, who has written a most interesting work on the Transvaal, and who was in Pretoria at the time, says he saw our men running away down the hills into Pretoria, as hard as their legs could carry them. Eighty Boers made 200 red coats take to their heels, and the remainder of a column, 900 strong, were, to the disgrace of our arms, ordered to retire. The Boers formed a supreme contempt of the “Rori Baajtes.” These disastrous occasions, though such exceptional instances in the long and glorious annals of British arms, suffice in no way to tarnish their brilliant lustre in the eyes of those better acquainted with European history than these uneducated Dutch farmers. But to return to my sight seeing. After leaving the late military camp, we went to the gaol. This is very well kept, and in first-rate order. I walked round and saw the additions which had been made to the yard during the siege, all now merely mementoes of the past. Among the prisoners in the gaol, my attention was drawn to one tall, princely looking native pacing his cell and clanking his chains with an air of haughty disdain. This was no other than Niabel, alias Mapoch, who with another chief, Mampoer, had been sentenced to death by the Transvaal government, but reprieved.
The story of Sekukuni’s murder, Mampoer’s execution and Mapoch’s imprisonment, reads like a novel. Sequati, a Bapedi chief on the northeastern border of the Transvaal, had two sons, Mampoer, a son by the royal mother, and Sekukuni, a son by a wife of inferior rank. They fought for the succession, when Sekukuni being victorious usurped the throne and Mampoer fled to Mapoch, a small chief in the Transvaal. As time went on Sekukuni would not pay taxes to the Boers.
Johannes, a petty chief, with whom in former years he had been on bad terms, but who, having made up the dispute, now resided near him, was the first to rebel against the Boers. Mampoer assisting them. Johannes was killed and his tribe utterly broken up. The Boers, following up their success, tried to subdue Sekukuni, but failed, their Amaswazi allies having left them, being utterly disgusted with their (the Boers’) cowardice.
President Burgers then went to the front himself, but all in vain. Deserted by the burghers, who raised the now proverbial cry of “huis toe,”[[107]] and broken-hearted, without adherents, without money, he had to return to Pretoria and leave Sekukuni virtually master of the situation. This ultimately led to Burgers’ downfall and the assertion of British authority, and here he learned from painful experience that “the Boers were not those of the great Trek, and he himself was not Ketief, Maritz, Pretorius the elder, or even Paul Kruger.”
After the British annexation of the Transvaal, Sekukuni did not come to any settlement, so when Sir Garnet Wolseley arrived in September, 1879, after the dethronement of Cetywayo, he at once sent a special envoy, dictating terms to Sekukuni, which the latter refused. This at once led to an attack upon his stronghold, which Sir Garnet Wolseley stormed and captured, supported by sixteen companies of infantry. 400 mounted men, two or three guns and 10,000 Swazi levies under Mampoer, and Sekukuni was taken prisoner. He remained prisoner as long as the English retained possession of the country, but the Boers specially stipulated for his release in the now celebrated convention of Pretoria (Article 23).[[108]] When Sir Garnet Wolseley gave Mampoer back the country which Sekukuni had usurped, knowing well that Sequati his father had in former years proclaimed him chief, Mampoer took over one of Sekukuni’s young girls for himself; but on Sekukuni’s release and return in terms of the convention, he demanded her back, and this led to another fight, wherein Sekukuni was killed. The Boers now accused Mampoer of murder and called upon him to surrender himself, but instead of this he took refuge with Mapoch, with whom the Boers had also a quarrel, as he would not acknowledge them or pay taxes. War was now declared against Mapoch (Niabel), who defended himself bravely for many months; but at last, worn out by hunger and want, he and 8,000 of his men, who were afterwards “apprenticed” into slavery, surrendered, and Mampoer and Mapoch both found themselves prisoners of war.[[109]]
They were tried and sentenced to death, and although Mr. Hudson, the British Resident, pressed upon the Boer Executive the desire of the English government that capital punishment should not be carried out, no notice was paid in the case of Mampoer, the sentence of Mapoch alone being commuted.
Mampoer with his dying breath said, “I have fought Sekukuni for the Dutch, I have fought him for the English, and now I am hanged for doing my duty.”
Poor fellow! his execution was a sad, brutal exhibition. Pretoria was full, even on my visit, of the accounts of the scene, how the rope round his neck broke, how he was hoisted again into position, and how the day of his execution was looked upon by the Boers as a gala day, and an opportunity of exhibiting their independence of the “verdomde Englishmen.” Even photographic art was called in to perpetuate this official murder, the accompanying view of the execution being openly sold in the streets of Pretoria.
When I saw Niabel, he knew I was an Englishman and a stranger, and by his manner evidently wished to show me plainly the contempt in which he held his captors. Leaving the gaol, Dr. Dyer drove me all round the outskirts of the town and then put me down at my hotel. Next day Mr. S. Marks, the managing director of the Eerste Fabrieken, a large distillery about nine miles from Pretoria on the Pienaars River, and who had been the originator of the French Diamond Mining Co. at Kimberley, kindly drove me out to see the factory. Immediately on crossing the Pienaars River, after an hour and a half’s pleasant drive, the distillery, malt-kilns and stores appeared in sight. The building, 210 feet long, 90 feet broad, and four stories high, was fitted up with the most powerful machinery made on the latest principles, and contained as well large store-rooms for spirits and grain. Every class of work I found done on the premises.