Thoughts on South Africa

by Olive Schreiner

The mental attitude of the brave free-men who had peopled the untrodden land and made themselves a home in our African wilderness was for him, as for some who have succeeded him, a region he was never able by his mental constitution to penetrate.

Many things had produced pain among this free-folk. The mere fact that without their consent or desire their land had been placed in the hands of England; that there were no representative institutions through which the people could make their voice heard; that the Dutch language spoken by all the white inhabitants with the exception of a few English officials was not recognized by the Government; that the Governor received ten thousand pounds a year and four residences out of the small revenue, and that he with a few officials absorbed one-fourth of the entire revenue of the land; that he ruled with the same autocratic absoluteness with which the Czar of all the Russias is supposed to control his subjects—all these were sources of friction. But all these smaller matters might have been removed into the background and made of little account, had more tact and judgment been shown. But this man moved along his own course, apparently as oblivious of the thoughts and affections of the people whom he had to deal with as a dull menagerie keeper is of the thought and dispositions of his lions.

One of the things most keenly felt by the colonists was the arming of Hottentots and placing them under English officers as soldiers in control of the country. The Hottentots are an interesting, lively and volatile, brave little race, now nearly extinct. They were, except the Bushmen, the most primitive of African peoples; and anyone who has lived in countries where primitive dark races are found side by side with white men will recognize at once how much bitterness will be evoked by this proceeding, and how cruel is the result in the long run to the primitive races themselves who are so used. Were England to-morrow to conquer the United States, and to organize and drill the American negroes for the purpose of keeping down the white races, not merely would the whole American population rise to a man, but it would be the most cowardly and cruel, though indirect, way of assisting in the destruction of the negro.

From a small beginning in 1815 rose an occurrence which has set an uncleansable mark on the history of South Africa, and which, through South Africa, may perhaps ultimately react on other streams of life.

In the Baviaans River Valley, on what was then the extreme northern frontier of the Colony, lived a farmer called Frederick Bezuidenhout, a man who had always been opposed to the resignation of the Colony to the British Government, which had now finally supplanted the Government of Holland for nine years. He was summoned to appear before the landdrost of Graaff Reinet for striking a Hottentot, and he refused to obey the summons. A corps of Hottentot soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Rousseau was sent to arrest him. They went up the wild and beautiful valley of the Baviaans River, till they arrived at Bezuidenhout's farm near the banks of the stream. Bezuidenhout and one of his servants stationed themselves behind the stone wall of the sheep-kraal near the house. When ordered to surrender in the name of George the Third, King of England, he refused to do so, and fired his gun, but no one was touched. He then retired to the house and slipped out at the back before the Hottentots could capture him, and climbed into a krantz, or precipice, across the river, accompanied by one of his native servants.

We have visited the spot; it is a scene of singular loveliness. The wild rocky African mountains rise on every hand; at the bottom of the valley is a tiny plain which may be cultivated; mimosa and other typical African trees are scattered about, and the krantz, or great precipice of broken rock, into which Bezuidenhout climbed, rises precipitously from the bank of the river, some rocks jutting up like fortified towers. From the lower, the riverside, this krantz is almost if not quite inaccessible; but by going round and climbing the hill you can easily come down upon the top. The place in which Bezuidenhout hid is often called a cave, but in the common acceptation of the term it is not such. The rocks which form a large proportion of our African precipices are of a peculiar formation, apt to split vertically into huge blocks, between which great chasms are often formed, and many of us remember playing among such chasms in our childhood. It was into such a cavity that Bezuidenhout retired, open to the sky at the top and forming a kind of little room to be readily entered into from the top only, while in the walls are small chinks and holes through which one may look out and see the river and plain below. At the time of the year at which we visited the spot, hundreds of the red African aloe flower on their long spikes were in bloom at the top of the krantz, a large wild bird had built its huge nest on the point of the rocks at the top of the opening, and the trees springing out of the krantz were in leaf. Some state there was one servant with him, others two. The soldiers are said to have discovered the spot by seeing the muzzle of a gun gleam from one of the openings in the side. Finding they could not reach it by climbing up from the river, they went round on to the hill and came upon it from the top of the crags. The soldiers called upon Bezuidenhout to surrender, but he refused, declaring he would never be seized alive by Hottentots. A volley of shots was fired down from the top and Bezuidenhout fell dead. His native servants surrendered, and were afterwards tried, but acquitted as being merely dependents. Towards evening his brother, Jan Bezuidenhout, came, and with the other relatives removed the body, which was buried the next day.

Over the grave impassioned speeches were made by friends, especially by Jan Bezuidenhout, who declared that they would never rest till the Hottentot corps was driven out of the country, and their wrongs were redressed. So began the first small uprising against England of 1815. On the 9th of November a little body of farmers met at Diederick Mulder's and resolved to take up arms, but were betrayed by a spy, who hurried away to inform the English officials. Five days later the little commando, under Willem Krugel, numbering fifty men, took the oath to stand by each other till death. "I swear by God Almighty never to rest till I have driven the oppressors of my nation from this land." On November the 18th they were surrounded by a large body of troops under Colonel Cuyler; eighteen of the men surrendered, while the rest fled. Five men, Jan Bezuidenhout, Cornelius Faber, Andries Meyer, Stefanus and Abraham Bothma, resolved to fly from the country to take refuge in Kaffirland, and with their wagons and families to cross the river. An English major, with one hundred Hottentots and twenty-two white men, followed them. In the Winterberg Mountains, the wagons of two of the men were first overtaken and captured; but Jan Bezuidenhout, Cornelius Faber, his brother-in-law, and Stefanus Bothma were out-spanned near a small stream by a ravine in the mountains. They had lit their fire, and Bothma went to the stream to fetch water; when a band of Hottentot soldiers, under an English lieutenant, who were hidden by the stream, fired on them. Bothma had no arms and was captured, Faber returned the fire, and fell wounded in the shoulder and was also captured. There were now left of the fugitives only Jan Bezuidenhout, his wife, and their son, a boy of twelve years, all of whom were at their wagon. The Hottentots gathered round the wagon and called to them to surrender. Bezuidenhout's only reply was to fire. His wife stepped to his side. "Let us die together," she said. And she stood beside him re-loading his guns. He soon fell mortally wounded. She is said to have seized his gun and fired, but was struck by a bullet, and her son also was wounded. Bezuidenhout died in a few hours, and the wife and son were made prisoners.

Thirty-six persons in all were arrested for this rising and were tried on the 16th of December—a day which became celebrated in the later history of South Africa, being observed in the Dutch republics as a public holiday, under the title of Dingaan's Day, because on that day the great Zulu army of Dingaan was conquered by the Boers at Blood River. The same day is also, curiously enough, memorable as the day of the outbreak of the first war of independence.[65]

The prisoners all fully admitted having taken the oath. On the 22nd of January, 1816, they were sentenced, six of them to death, to be hanged at Slachter's Nek, where the oath had been sworn by them; while the rest, after witnessing the execution of their fellows, were to undergo various punishments, ranging from banishment for life to imprisonment and fines. Martha Faber, the widow of Jan Bezuidenhout, and the sister of Cornelius Faber, one of the men to be hanged, was sentenced to banishment for life from the eastern part of the colony. Krugel's sentence was afterward changed to banishment for life, because he had taken no part in armed resistance and had done the British Government great service in the Kaffir wars; but Hendrick Prinsloo, Cornelius Faber, Stefanus Bothma, Abraham Bothma, and Theunis de Klerk were sentenced to death by hanging on the 9th of March, 1816.

These sentences were within the letter of the law, but no blood had actually been shed by any of the prisoners in their small and abortive rising. It was universally supposed that the Governor would exercise his prerogative of mercy, and commute the sentence to one of banishment. But it was not so. On the 9th of March, 1816, a scaffold was raised on the ridge of stony land uniting two mountains, near which the oath had been sworn, and which has since been known throughout South Africa as Slachter's Nek, or the Butcher's Neck. The train from Port Elizabeth to the Midlands passes this spot daily, with the Rish River flowing to the right and the neck on the left. Here were brought the five men sentenced to be hanged, and the thirty-two who were to witness it; one of them, Frans Marais, had been sentenced to be tied with a rope around his neck to the foot of the gallows, while his companions were being hanged.