Thoughts on South Africa

by Olive Schreiner

CHAPTER VII
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE BOER

Before turning to consider the English element in our society, we would linger yet a moment, before we finally leave the Boer, to consider some of the many assertions made with regard to him, and what of truth or falsehood appears to us to lie in them, and, above all, how they have come to be made.

It has been said, though it will probably never be said again by any person who knows what courage is, that the Boer is a coward and cannot fight. How, in view of his history during the last two hundred years, this ever came to be said, even by his bitterest foes, has appeared to us always a matter of some astonishment. We can explain it in any way only when we consider the fact that bravery, like every other virtue, may assume more than one shape, and that men accustomed to recognize it under one aspect do not readily recognize it under another. In the animal world, there is the courage of the bull terrier always eager for a conflict, and seeking a fellow combatant for the pleasure of fighting him, and the courage of the mastiff, whom you may even tread on with impunity as he lies sleeping at your foot, but who, should his master or his master's property be attacked, may be more dangerous than any bull terrier; there is the courage of the tigress robbed of her young, who faces fearlessly fire and death to regain it, yet at other times prefers to slink away from man, and there is the courage of the game-cock who chafes angrily against the bars to reach the game-cocks in other cages; and the courage of the red African mier-kat, who attacked, will try to get to his hole, and, if he cannot, will fight fearlessly to the death.[71]

In the human world, there is the same diversity of courage; there is the courage of the woman robbed of her infant, who climbs where no other human foot dare tread and recovers it from the eagle's eyrie, while the crowds below look on with breathless astonishment, and the courage of the peasant woman, who, after being broken three times on the wheel, on being asked to give up the names of her confederates, already almost past speech, shook her head in refusal, is again put on the wheel, and dies. This courage is quite consistent with an extreme distaste for conflict and an extreme sensitiveness to pain, and takes its rise only in natures so constituted that impersonal passions or convictions are capable of obliterating the natural bias, and this form of courage is probably the most indomitable. But there is also the courage, very rare in its way, of the prize-fighter, always showing his biceps and challenging his acquaintances, and to whom life would probably not be worth living without the applause and excitement of the ring; but who, on the other hand, if he knew that the odds were fifteen to one against him, and that there was neither money nor applause to be gained if he won, would probably refuse to fight at all.

Now the courage of the old-fashioned Boer tends markedly to resemble the first rather than the last type; and, why this should be so, a study of his history makes clear.

In all societies, whether savage or civilized, in which a distinct military organization exists, and in which military success is the path to emolument and power, much meretricious glory hangs about the occupation of the slayer.

From the Bornean savage, who until he has a certain number of skulls to hang about his waist may not marry or take share in deliberations of state, and the Zulu who must first wet his spear in human blood to be accounted a full man, on to many of our so-called civilized states, where in pageants and pastimes preference always is given to the man who slays or overthrows over the man who creates or produces, war is continually surrounded with a certain meretricious tinsel which ends by making the thing attractive for its own sake. It is to increase this artificial charm and render war attractive, that the savage hangs cats' tails round his waist, sticks cock-feathers in his hair, and beats on his tom-tom, when he is working himself up for battle, and that the so-called civilized man wears red stripes on his trousers, struts with his chin high in the air and his shoulders well held back and padded, and that he wears feathers, tails, or portions of metal, whatever is believed to make his appearance more striking and important. It is this which makes war and the warrior so attractive to the ignorant youth of both sexes. The soldier, dressed and holding himself as other men, would not be so eagerly sought after by the idle woman of the ball-room, nor would her cook be so anxious to walk about with the private if he walked as other human creatures walk and had the same kind of hat; and the peasant boy who enlists does so, in nine cases out of ten, because of the drums and the marches and the flags. It is not generally really the desire to feel the blood and the brain of a fellow-creature, dismembered by your hand, start out, and still less to lie with one slug in the stomach and another in the lungs, while the blood rises in mouthfuls and there is a rattle in the throat, that tempts the majority of men to become soldiers. It is, in nine cases out of ten, not the desire to kill or be killed, but a hunger for the tinsel with which war is surrounded, that influences men who affect a love for it; it is the hope of fame, metal stars, gilt crosses, the glitter and glare of the parade-ground, and the possibility of title and honours, which make the youth to enlist and maiden to say, "How beautiful is war!"

For the African Boer there has never been this meretricious tinsel pasted over the ghastly reality of war. His training for two hundred years has been in a wholly different school. For generation after generation the Boer has gone out with his wife and child into the wilderness, and, whether he wished it or no, the possibility of death for them and for himself, by the violence of beasts or men, has been an ever present reality. Night by night, as he has gone to sleep in his solitary wagon or daub-and-wattle house, he has had his musket within reach of his hand; and his wife hearing a sound in the night has sat up anxiously, whispering, "What is that!" and together they have listened while the children slept. If the Boer went out to hunt lion or buffalo, it was accompanied with no hilarious excitement at the thought of the applause of friends at his success, of pictures in the illustrated magazines, and the newspaper paragraph over the mighty hunter. All it meant was this, that, if he killed the lion, then the cow that gave milk for his children would be safe, and his small son could now go out and herd the lambs without danger. If he brought home a load of springbok or of wildebeest, it meant simply that his wife cut it up into biltong and hung it to dry outside the house for food. If his own right arm failed him, or he kept no sufficient watch and fell by the hands of savages or the jaws of beasts, then it meant that not only he died, but possibly that wife and children died with him; and it might be years before the news of their death travelled down to their kindred if, indeed, it ever reached them. If, single-handed and however bravely, he defended himself and his against odds of the mightiest kind, there was no admiring world before which his success would be blazoned forth. Even were he a commandant, and died at the head of his little body of men ever so heroically, there was no Westminster Abbey and no requiem for him; his comrades buried him where he fell, and a little heap of rough African stones on a wide African plain, with the African wind blowing over him, was all that he had for recompense. If he led his little band to victory, there was no triumphal entry into the city with bunting flying, and bars filled with drunken men, and hoarse mobs shouting incoherently, or delirious women anxious to kiss him, or present him with weapons gilt and jewelled—simply, he went home to his house or wagon, and his old wife kissed him and said she was glad he had come back; and his comrades said, "He is a good fighter," and next time there was war he had to go in front again. If his aim were true and his hand never shook and his courage never failed, then it meant life for himself and all dear to him; if he failed, then it was death; but that was all.

In this stern, silent school for generations the Boer has been trained. Courage has become inherent and hereditary with him; he sucks it in with his mother's milk; and, with it, an equally uncompromising antipathy to war and conflict. For generations, deadly strife and conflict, or the possibility of it, was part of the daily unending discipline of his life. He regards it now as one of life's crowning evils, to be avoided if possible—never to be flinched from when inevitable.

It is this attitude which has led to so much misunderstanding of the Boer's character by those who do not know him, and even by those who think they know him. His view with regard to the chase illustrates exactly his attitude toward human slaughter. If the leopards or wild dogs decimate his flocks, he will spend days in the most unwearied, skilful, and daring hunting; yet when he has killed them he will often return home, and say with a sigh of relief, "Now it will be six months before I need go after them again." If you inform him that in England at great expense men keep and breed up foxes which, with great damage to crops and hedges, they afterwards spend days in hunting, he will look at you as though doubting the truth of your assertion, remarking quietly: "But the Rednecks must then be mad? What do they want with the wild beasts?"[72]