Oral History Review Advance Access published July 21, 2015
Power, Politics, and Performances of
Longing in Kat River
Susan I. Blackbeard
Keywords: dispossession, ethnicity, hero, Kat River, land claim, naming
In 2011 I began interviewing the descendant of an original Kat River settler to
provide new evidence “from the underside”1 concerning the Kat River Rebellion
of 1851–1852.2 As the interview progressed, my interviewee not only opened
new windows into the Kat River Rebellion and how it affected succeeding generations but indirectly demonstrated how this shaped his perception of the present. Owing to the complicated nature of the task, I have used a combination of
methodologies. I start with a brief background of the Kat River Settlement, the
1980s removals, land claims, and my interviewee’s family, before presenting aspects of the interview and analyses of them, testing my observations against the
theories I invoke. Finally, I assess the value to the oral historian of a drive-about
interview such as the one described in this article.3
I thank Pieter Johannes “Hymie” Groepe for his unstinting help and indefatigable good humor; Beverley Ball,
Christopher Brodrick, Keith James, Des Kopke, and Jeff Peires; and, not least, my Oral History Review reviewers
and editors, although I, alone, am responsible for any errors.
1
Paul Thompson, “The Voice of the Past: Oral History” in The Oral History Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Robert Perks
and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge, 2006), 29.
2
Concerning format and availability of my oral history recording(s) and notes: Some of the interviews in this
article were digitally recorded and others written down as we spoke. Some were conducted telephonically and
written down as I listened. All the recordings and transcripts in this article are in the possession of the author.
3
Although I use the ethnonym Hottentot in this article in colonial contexts and, following my interviewees’
self-reflexive use of coloreds, refer to them as such, neither name is intended to be pejorative. Similarly, the term
doi:10.1093/ohr/ohv039
The Oral History Review 2015, vol. 0, no. 0, pp. 1–36
C The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oral History Association.
V
All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected]
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Abstract: This paper examines how a physical interview-journey with a descendant of an 1829/30 Bastard settler of the Kat River Settlement in the Eastern
Cape, South Africa, can offer insights into historical phenomena such as generational dispossession and resistance, as well as current issues, as the interviewee
and his people again face the possibility of losing their land under current land
redistribution.
2 | BLACKBEARD
The Kat River Settlement
Bastard, designating descendants of people of mixed descent (originally referred to by the Dutch as Bastaards),
is used by my interviewees and not intended to be pejorative. On the origin of the name Bastaard, the different
kinds of miscegenation, and the different status involved (depending on family and social circumstances), see
Nigel Penn, The Forgotten Frontier: Colonist and Khoisan on the Cape’s Northern Frontier in the 18th Century
(Athens: Ohio University Press; Cape Town: Double Storey Books, 2005), 20.
4
Initially regent for his half brother, later Chief Sandile (of the Ngqika/Rharhabe Xhosa), Maqoma led the
amaXhosa in war from 1818 until his banishment to Robben Island in 1857. Timothy Stapleton, Maqoma: Xhosa
Resistance to Colonial Advance (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1994), 196.
5
Stockenstrom denied evicting Maqoma to create the Kat River Settlement, averring that the idea only occurred to him after Maqoma’s expulsion—his “punishment” for attacking the abaThembu. British Parliamentary
Papers, Select Committee on Aborigines, British Settlements (subsequently, SC), Evidence of Capt A. Stockenstrom,
19 February 1836, 213, and 4 March 1836, 236. See also C. W. Hutton, ed., Autobiography of the Late Sir
Andries Stockenstrom, Bart., Sometime Lieutenant-Governor of the Eastern Province of the Colony of the Cape of
Good Hope, (Cape Town: Juta, 1887), 1:365–371. On the Xhosa view, see Jeff Peires, The House of Phalo, A
History of the Xhosa People in the Days of Their Independence (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1981), 100–101.
6
See note 3 above concerning the nonpejorative use of these terms designating the various populations of
the region.
7
Gonaqua dispossessed from the Gamtoos and Fish Rivers lived near Fort Beaufort under missionary
Williams and, after his death, Maqoma. Stockenstrom granted their leader, Andries Botha, land at Balfour,
Philipton, and Buxton. Tony Kirk, “Progress and Decline in the Kat River Settlement 1829–1854,” Journal of
African History, Cambridge University Press, 14, no. 3 (1973): 412–414.
8
See note 3 above.
9
V. C. Malherbe, The Cape Khoisan in the Eastern Districts of the Colony before and after Ordinance 50 of
1828 (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 1997), 363n195.
10
The passage of Ordinance 50 enabling this. See Hutton, Stockenstrom, 1:356.
11
They not only had to defend the settlement and Xhosa entrances through it to the Colony but fight for
the British in all frontier wars. Hutton, Stockenstrom, 2:51–352.
12
SC, Evidence of Read, 29 June 1836, 599, British Parliamentary Papers, 23, 1847–1851, Pottinger to (Earl)
Grey, 21 March 1847, enclosure 1 in 17, Berkeley to Pottinger, 23 March 1847, enclosure 2 in 17; Pottinger to
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After the expulsion of the Xhosa leader Maqoma4 from the Kat River Valley in
1828, Commissioner General Andries Stockenstrom5 created the Kat River
Settlement in the District of Stockenstrom. The settlers comprised newly enfranchised “Hottentots” (people of Khoikhoi6 extract) from the Bethelsdorp and
Theopolis mission stations; “Gonahs” (Gonaqua Khoikhoi),7 discharged
Hottentot soldiers from the Cape Corps and their families; and “Bastard”8 tenant
farmers from the Baviaans River and Zwagershoek (Bedford) areas, who possessed a fair amount of movable property. From the outset, establishing
ethnicity—on which land grants depended—created problems, with, for example, colonial officials struggling to “unscramble the Gonah omelette.”9
The aims of the settlement were to prevent the extirpation of Hottentots
by giving them land on an equal footing with white colonists10 and to use them
as a barrier between the amaXhosa and the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope
(hereinafter the Colony).11 There were eighteen parties of so-called respectable
settlers under leaders capable of mustering ten able-bodied armed men at short
notice. Apart from being given seed corn, the settlers were unassisted, except
(grudgingly) during postwar distress.12 The Bastard leader Christian Groepe was
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 3
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Fig. 1. Map of Kat River Valley. (Map by André Rudman.)
appointed as the first field-cornet. Later, he became field-commandant and, ultimately, justice of the peace. The settlers built temporary dwellings, dug irrigation
canals and dams with wooden spades, sowed wheat, barley, oats and vegetables,
Woosnam, 24 March 1847, Woosnam to Metcalfe, 11 April 1847, enclosure 4 in 178, Pottinger to Berkeley, 14
April 1847, 58–59. See also James Read, The Kat River Settlement in 1851, Described in a Series of Letters
Published in “The South African Advertiser” (London: British Library Historical Print Editions, 2011), vi–vii.
4 | BLACKBEARD
and planted orchards. Two churches were allowed to operate in the area: a
Congregational church at Philipton under the Reverends James Read Sr. and
Jr.—attended mostly by Gonahs/Hottentots—and a Dutch Reformed Church
under the Reverend W. R. Thompson at Hertzog, which attracted mainly
Bastards.
All Kat River settlers were granted freehold land, tenure comprising five locations of village blocks consisting of 640 individually owned erven (allotments)
of six acres each (except for the elderly and infirm, who received town lots).
Each erf (allotment) was granted on perpetual quitrent, with titles only on proof
of industry.13 Many waited eighteen years for their titles, acquiring them only
after much importuning of officials. All settlers had access to generous commonage. Later, settlers’ bequeathing of various portions of their erf to heirs led to
white exploitation, as joint ownership of land permitted the property of all to be
seized for the debt of one.
The amaXhosa attacked the settlement during the wars of 1834–1835 and
1846–1847, with significant settler loss. Christian Groepe and other fieldcornets were rewarded with additional land for excellent military service. As
13
Hutton, Stockenstrom, 2:357. On tenure and title, see Kirk, “Progress and Decline,” 423.
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Fig. 2. Blinkwater and some its inhabitants, 2011. (Photograph by Susan I.
Blackbeard.)
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 5
The 1980s Removals, Land Claims, and Contestants
The 1980s removals occurred as a result of the apartheid government’s cession
of Stockenstrom to their newly created Bantustan,17 Ciskei, as part of their overall (black) “homeland” consolidation plan. Deputy Prime Minister H. van der
Walt finalized these plans in 1979 but Kat River people only heard of their impending removal later, via their white neighbors. They requested a territorial area
for coloreds in the Kat River watershed and, although Minister of Land and
Constitutional Development Chris Heunis promised to consider it, neither he nor
his successor F. W. de Klerk took action. A Kat River delegation sought an audience with Ciskei president Lennox Sebe. He failed to arrive. A white official told
them that “they were not Ciskei’s problem and Ciskei expected South Africa to
get rid of them before the land was handed over.”18 On April 30, 1984, the
South African Development Trust sent individual Stockenstrom landowners cash
offers for their properties, none of which was valued at more than R15,000.
Most received between R2,000 and R10,000 each, with forty only getting between R5,700 and R50. A flat charge of R100 was levied for transfer fees, and
14
Elbourne, Blood Ground, 306.
Elbourne, Blood Ground, 305.
16
Cape Archives A (Accessions) 707 (18) Kat River Settlement, List compiled by Surveyor Hertzog. See also
J. C. Visagie, “Christian Jacobus Groepe: Oosgrenspionier en Veldkommandant van Katrivier,” S A Tydskrif vir
Kultuurgeskiedenis 22, no. 1 (June 2008): 29–55.
17
The Bantustan strategy—a sophisticated political, economic, ideological, and demographic control of the
African population—included the creation of Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei. These puppet states,
designed to exclude black South Africans from demanding political rights, provided conditions for the production
of labor and capital by entrenching the migrant labor system. This strategy displaced an estimated 3.5 million
people.The Eastern Cape, in Forced Removals in South Africa: Surplus People Project Report (Cape Town: Surplus
People Project, 1983), vol. 2.
18
Jeff Peires, “Stockenstrom: By Trust and Betrayal,” Grahamstown Rural Committee Newsletter 11 (April
1988), Periodicals-Protected Collection, b 1011899, Cory Library, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South
Africa.
15
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applicants for the settlement increased, land became scarcer and erf-holders’
children had little recourse to new land or access to an equitable market.
Accordingly, adult children lived with parents14 and Gonah settlers shared their
allotments with Xhosa kin.15 Settlers were not granted further crown land. To exacerbate crowding, former government interpreter/informer Hermanus Matroos
(a.k.a. Ngxukumeshe, who became the leader of the Kat River Rebellion) was
given land in Blinkwater, and some Mfengu were granted land in the Mancazana
Valley. However, against all odds—and to the chagrin of white farmers—Kat
River settlers prospered,16 with many Bastard descendants remaining there as
farmers, mechanics, teachers, lay preachers, or small-business owners until forcibly removed in the 1980s.
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Fig. 3. Map showing the locations of Kat River and Friemersheim. (Map by André Rudman.)
6 | BLACKBEARD
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 7
19
Ibid.
For a more accurate earlier location of the Hoenigqua, see Hitherto into the Unknown, Ensign Beutler’s
Expedition to the Eastern Cape, 1752, ed. Hazel Crampton, Jeff Peires, and Carl Vernon (Cape Town: Van
Riebeeck Society, 2013), 75n139.
21
On Rharhabe see Jeff Peires, “‘He Wears Short Clothes!’ Rethinking Rharhabe, c1717–c1785,” Journal of
Southern African Studies 38, no. 2 (2012): 34, 346. On Ntsikana, see Janet Hodgson, “Ntsikana: History and
Symbol, Studies in a Process of Religious Change among Xhosa-Speaking People,” unpublished PhD thesis
(University of Cape Town, 1985), and Jeff Peires, “Nxele, Ntsikana and the Origins of the Xhosa Religious
Reaction,” Journal of African History 20, no. 1 (1979): 51–61.
20
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twenty percent of the payment was withheld as a deposit against possible
damage of fixtures; thus, “some landowners actually owe the Government
money for the privilege of losing their land.”19 In the meanwhile, the
Hertzog Dutch Reformed Church bought Moordkuil, a small (116 morgen) farm
adjoining Friemersheim for Kat River people to pursue their agricultural way
of life. Those who chose to go had to use their deposit to pay government
trucks to transport them there. Others sold and moved elsewhere. Some refused
to sell.
In 1994 in an attempt to “provide equitable redress to victims of raciallymotivated land dispossession” in South Africa, post-1913, the current administration passed the Restitution of Land Rights Act (Act no. 22 of 1994).
Claimants were invited to submit claims, with supporting evidence, through their
local land claims offices. The Land Rights Commission had not resolved all the
claims—including those of Kat River—when I interviewed Hymie Groepe in
2011. The process was halted and then resumed on February 4, 2014. Since
1994 many of the dispossessed have returned to Kat River and been engaged
in proving their rights to land that they were coerced into selling. The interruption of their physical occupation of Kat River has affected them materially—
many are worse off—and emotionally, as well as shaped their perceptions of Kat
River prior to their dispossession and diaspora.
There are other contestants for Kat River: the Hoenigqua Khoikhoi, who
claim, questionably, earliest occupancy under their chief Toena Ruyters/Ruiters;20
the Nkayi; and the amaCirha. The Nkayi, local Xhosa-speaking residents who entered Tambookiesvlei as sharecroppers on colored properties and had no specific
tribal affiliation, although vaguely thinking of themselves as amaJingqi
(Maqoma’s chiefdom), formulated a land claim under the guidance of Mr. Nkayi,
a local schoolteacher. Ngqika, chief of the Rharhabe Xhosa, and his sons lived in
the Kat River basin during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and
Ngqika’s counselor, Ntsikana, of the amaCirha clan (the first Xhosa convert to
Christianity), resided at Blinkwater but died at Twatwa (Tambookiesvlei) whilst on
a journey. The amaCirha currently regard his grave as their title deed and Nkayi’s
group have allegedly ceded their claim to them.21 In the meantime, groups of
squatters continue to move into Tambookiesvlei.
8 | BLACKBEARD
Historiography
22
See Andries Stockenstrom, “Light and Shade, as Shown in the Character of the Hottentots of the Kat River
Settlement . . . a Speech by . . . Sir Andries Stockenstrom, in the Legislative Council of the Cape of Good Hope,”
(Cape Town: Saul Solomon, 1854), and John Philip, DD, Researches in South Africa, Illustrating the Civil, Moral,
and Religious Condition of the Native Tribes: including Journals of the Author’s Travels in the Interior (London: J
Duncan, 1828).
23
See Godlonton’s editorials in the Grahamstown Journal, and Robert Godlonton and E. Irving, Narrative of
the Kaffir War 1834-1835 and 1850–1851–1852, 2 vols. (Cape Town: Struik, facsimile repr., 1962).
24
See Chase’s letters in the Grahamstown Journal, November 1839; and on Bowker, see Speeches, Letters,
and Selections from the . . . late John Mitford Bowker . . . Resident and Diplomatic Agent with certain Kaffir and
Fingo Tribes, ed. I. Mitford-Barberton (Grahamstown, 1864; repr., Cape Town: Struik, 1962).
25
See Thomas Pringle, Narrative of a Residence in South Africa (London, 1835; repr., Cape Town: Struik,
1966); The South African Letters of Thomas Pringle, ed. R Vigne (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 2011); and
Pringle’s letters in the Commercial Advertiser, October to December 1832.
26
George E. Cory, The Rise of South Africa: a History of the Origin of South African Colonisation and of Its
Development towards the East from the Earliest Times to 1857, 6 vols. (London: Longmans, 1910; repr., 1921–
1930).
27
See W. M. Macmillan, The Cape Colour Question (London: Faber and Gwyer, 1927); The Cape Coloured
People, 1652–1937 (Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press, 1957); Richard Elphick and Hermann
Giliomee, eds., The Shaping of South African Society 1652– 1840 (Cape Town: Maskew Miller/Longman, 1979);
Basil le Cordeur, “Robert Godlonton as Architect of Frontier Opinion, 1850–1857,” in Archives Year Book for
South African History (Cape Town, 1959); Basil le Cordeur, The Politics of Eastern Cape Separatism, 1820–1854
(Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1981); Stanley Trapido, “The Emergence of Liberalism and the Making of
Hottentot Nationalism,1815–1834,” in Collected Seminar Papers, Institute of Commonwealth Studies 42 (1992):
34–60; Clifton Crais, White Supremacy and Black resistance in Pre-industrial South Africa: The Making of the
Colonial Order in the Eastern Cape, 1770–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Timothy
Keegan, Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order (Cape Town: David Philip, 1996), and
Elizabeth Elbourne, Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and
Britain, 1799–1853 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002).
28
Robert Ross, The Borders of Race in Colonial South Africa: The Kat River Settlement, 1829–1856
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
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Kat River historiography began with its founder, Andries Stockenstrom, and Dr
John Philip,22 who both wrote about it and testified on it during Buxton’s Select
Committee on Aborigines (1835–1836), where it was one of the foci as a novel
colonial humanitarian experiment. Several local British settlers, under their
spokesmen, Robert Godlonton,23 John Centlivres Chase, and J. M. Bowker,24 attacked the settlement in oral and written media. The result was a polarization of
settler society accentuated by battles between their respective mouthpieces:
John Fairbairn’s liberal Commercial Advertiser backed by Thomas Pringle,25 and
Godlonton and E. Irving’s Grahamstown Journal. Pro-white-settler historian Sir
G. E. Cory provided detailed accounts of the settlement’s inception,26 with revisionist and radical historians such as W. M. Macmillan, J. S. Marais, Basil le
Cordeur, Clifton Crais, Timothy Keegan, Stanley Trapido, and Elizabeth
Elbourne,27 among others, challenging white-settler histories of eastern-frontier
indigenes, and Robert Ross providing, to date, the most comprehensive appraisal
of the Kat River Settlement.28
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 9
In the 1980s, Grahamstown Rural Committee newsletters provided a running commentary on the Ciskei forced removals, but few historians seem to have
addressed the Stockenstrom/Kat River removals, with the exception of Jeff
Peires. His video recording of Kat River interviews conducted during the 1980
removals (1984), followed by his article, “The Legend of Fenner-Solomon”
(1987), remain powerful but solitary oral history landmarks of that time.29
Methodology
29
Jeff Peires et al., Kat River: End of a Hope (Grahamstown: Dept. of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes
University, 1984), Videocassette (VHS), 36 min., and Jeff Peires, “The Legend of Fenner-Solomon,” in Class,
Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives, ed. Belinda Bozzoli (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1987).
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Selections of an interview with one Kat River inhabitant—Hymie (Pieter
Johannes) Groepe—are analyzed and interpreted with reference to the theories
of oral historians Alessandro Portelli, Daniel James, Valerie Yow, Paul Thompson,
Isabel Hofmeyr, and Sean Field; methodologists Michael Marker, Lisa A Mazzei,
and Alecia Youngblood Jackson; and clinical psychologists Robin S Edelstein,
Friderike Heuer, Robin Fivush, Jessica McDermott Sales, Daniel Reisberg, and
Paula Hertel, among others. Aspects of the interview relating to Kat River dispossession are compared to Jeff Peires’s video-recorded interviews and chapter
on Fenner Solomon. As a departure from the kitchen-table interview, we drove
to various places connected to my interviewee and, as we perambulated, I audio-recorded his narration and enactments of various events. During the transcription and interpretation, I was aware of the technical and moral challenges
of converting, with minimal intervention, an oral interview of words and song
into readable pages. Aware of the pitfalls of claiming to speak for, or about, another, I was mindful of the ways in which my interviewee positioned himself towards his subject, as well as his relationship(s) to his sources. Equally, I was
aware that his words and performances could have been affected by memory of
events ranging widely in emotionality, attachments to his physical and emotional
spaces, myths, and present preoccupations with political problems. On first analyzing the transcriptions, I made the common mistake of wrangling with the
concepts of truth, accuracy, and validity, until Alessandro Portelli explained that
my interviewee’s stories could all be valid because they were true or because
they were “truly told.” In the latter case, contradictions, discrepancies, and departure from what we know to have actually been the case can be meaningful.
And the “spaces into which subjectivity, desire, myth creep in . . . [can] tell us a
great deal about the meaning of the events for the persons who narrate them.”
Of course, as Portelli also pointed out, “in order to realize that there are errors
or contradictions we need to have a basic idea of some kind of factual truth, so
10 | BLACKBEARD
Christian Jacobus Groepe, Identity,
and the Kat River Rebellion
Christian Groepe’s German father, Heinrich Christian Albrecht Groepe, came to
the Cape Colony in 1775 in the service of the Verenigde Oostindische
Compagnie (Dutch East India Company), married a female slave, Maria, and
worked as an overseer on a Camdeboo (Graaff-Reinet) farm. Christian Groepe
30
Private discussion, University of Cape Town, May 18, 2012, with follow-up e-mail communication, May 21,
2012.
31
Peires, “Fenner Solomon,” 68.
32
Peires, “Fenner Solomon,” 67.
33
Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History,
SUNY Series in Oral and Public History (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), xii.
34
Sean Field, draft paper, staff seminar, Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town, March
17, 2013, 8–10.
35
Compare Erica Macwilliam et al., “Voicing Objections,” in Voice in Qualitative Enquiry: Challenging
Conventional, Interpretive, and Critical Conceptions in Qualitative Research, ed. Alecia Y. Jackson and Lisa Mazzei
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 70.
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that we can investigate the meaning of the wrong narratives.”30 Archival research provided some factual truth, and additional interviews with Hymie aided
an understanding of the “subjectivity, desire and myth” in the “spaces” in his
narratives/performances. Peires’s observation from his 1980s Kat River interviews that “five generations is too long a time for oral traditions that were not
consciously memorized or transmitted to survive intact,” also helped dispel unrealistic expectations.31 Nevertheless, even if an interviewee’s accounts of events
“prove to be exaggerated, it remains historically significant for it is the people’s
understanding of their own . . . past.”32
I was inspired by Portelli’s proposition that “oral history does not begin with
one abstract person observing another, reified one, but with two persons meeting on a ground of equality to bring together different types of knowledge and
achieve a synthesis from which both will be changed.”33 This proved true, although, despite our shared Eastern Cape origin and my concern for Hymie’s situation, having not experienced forcible loss of home or land, I found it difficult to
empathize with him as fully as I desired. However, we agree that we enjoy a
good rapport, although I appreciate Sean Field’s questioning of this notion as a
“mythical fantasy place that cannot be reached.”34
Jeff Peires suggested Hymie Groepe to me as an interviewee. Hymie was
confident, forthcoming, and able to deal with some very emotional aspects of
the past. He also happily granted follow-up interviews.35 During the interviews/
performances we switched languages (Afrikaans and English), following each
other’s cue, with both of us enjoying the ensuing dynamics.
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 11
Fig. 5. The remains of the watchtower at Fort Armstrong, 2011. (Photograph by Susan
I. Blackbeard.)
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Fig. 4. Commandant C. J. Groepe. (Image from Western Cape Archives.)
12 | BLACKBEARD
36
Visagie, “Christian Jacobus Groepe,” 29-36.
Cory, Rise of South Africa, 3:395.
38
Ross, Borders, 174.
39
See Trapido, “Emergence of Liberalism,” 34–60; Robert Ross, “The Kat River Rebellion and Khoikhoi
Nationalism: The Fate of an Ethnic Identification,” in Kronos: Journal of Cape History 24 (1997): 91–272; and
Elbourne, Blood Ground, 277. Many Kat River settlers feared that this bill would reduce them to their former
state of quasi slavery.
40
BPP 20, 1826–1836,Cape of Good Hope, Caffre War and Death of Hintsa, March 1835, Return of Troops
. . . under Col England, enclosure 1 of 2 in D’Urban to Secretary of State, 19 March 1835, 12.
37
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was born on September 16, 1789, whilst Heinrich was residing as a tenant
farmer in the Zwagershoek district. After the death of the farm-owner (1821),
the Groepes relocated to Robert Pringle’s farm in the Baviaans River area, north
of Bedford. Here, Heinrich and his other sons rented Pringle land whilst
Christian occupied a loan farm on the Mancazana River. The Groepes got on well
with their white neighbors, protected them from cattle thieves, and participated
in their commandos. By the time Christian Groepe and his first wife (of Khoikhoi
extract), Johanna Alida Arendse, left for the Kat River Settlement in 1829, they
had acquired much movable property.36
Initially, Hottentots in the settlement complained that Bastards, who comprised most of the field-cornets, treated them as inferiors. Groepe was also criticized for having too many “boersnuk (Boer habits/tricks) about him,”37
probably owing to his previous connections with Dutch/Afrikaans farmers
(boere). This early instance of animosity between Hottentots and Bastards suggests the beginnings of ethnic/social stratification in Kat River, a harbinger of
future strife in a settlement where the organizing principle was ethnicity.38 The
respective attitudes of the Gonah/Hottentots and the Bastards towards the
Mfengu also divided them. The last, brought to the Colony in 1835 to “rescue”
them from “slavery” to Paramount Xhosa chief Hintsa and to fight the
amaXhosa for the British, were used by the Gonah/Hottentots as cattle-herding
clients, but the Bastards saw them as being disruptive and land-hungry.
Further polarization occurred during the agitations against the proposed
Vagrancy Law, with eighty Bastards declaring that they were not Hottentots and
supporting the antivagrancy draft bill of 1834 against the latter who vociferously
opposed it.39 Although divided in many ways, they fought side-by-side under
Groepe in the wars of 1834–1835 and 1846–1847 against the amaXhosa—
with the Gonah Andries Botha playing a prominent role in rescuing British ammunition when amaXhosa attacked a wagon train at Burns Hill. During the 1851
Rebellion, however, many of the Gonahs joined the amaXhosa against the
English. As punishment, their land was taken from them.
During the 1834–1835 war, Groepe and his Kat River Burghers/Levy (numbering 501 at its zenith)40 participated in joint military campaigns against the
amaXhosa, relieved Kat River Post (Fort Armstrong) when it was attacked in
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 13
41
See BPP 20, General Order of H. G. Smith, Lieut-Colonel, enclosure 6 in 1, in Sir B D’Urban to the
Secretary of State, 27 February, 1835, May 30, 1836, 6, and Report by Capt. Cox, 74th Regiment, August 15,
1835, enclosure 5 in 9, D’Urban to Glenelg, November 7, 1835, 100–101. See also Hutton, Stockenstrom,
2:251–252, and BPP 22, 1837–47, Somerset to Hare, April 17, 1846, enclosure 1, Somerset to Hare, 20 April
1846, 118.
42
Hutton, Stockenstrom, 1:276–283.
43
BPP 23, 1851–1852, Somerset to Smith, 31 January 1851, 167 (428), and Trial of Andries Botha,
Field-Cornet of the Upper Blinkwater in the Kat River Settlement for High Treason in the Supreme Court of the
Colony . . . with a Topographical Sketch of the Kat River Settlement and Adjacent Country (Cape Town: Saul
Solomon, 1852), 119, 138.
44
Trial of Andries Botha, Testimony of Christian Zeeland, 119.
45
BPP 23, 1851–1852, J. Montague to B. Hawes, enclosure 1 in no. 11, Statement of Mango, Corporal of
the Alice Fingoe Levy to Wm Calderwood, January 31, 1851.
46
Trial of Andries Botha, Testimony of Read, 144, 146, and Read, Kat River Settlement, 48.
47
They comprised the Cape Mounted Rifles—burghers, levies, and volunteers. Prior to this the English—
farmers in the area and shopkeepers—who had taken refuge in the fort were evacuated to Whittlesea, though
their wagons were looted and the houses and shops around the fort burnt. Ross, Borders, 227.
48
Godlonton, Narrative of the Kaffir War, 2:258. In all, 358 rebels were killed, 160 taken prisoner, and 1,000
women and children surrendered (ibid.). Ross cites between 90 and 150 rebel casualties during the Fort
Armstrong action. Ross, Borders, 230.
49
BPP 23, Montague to Hawes, January 31, 1851, 54, and Trial of Andries Botha, 166–7.
50
Trial of Andries Botha, 54–56.
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1834, and fought “gallantly” against Maqoma and other Xhosa.41 In 1846 they
successfully opposed an attack by Maqoma’s 2,000-strong armed Xhosa.
Groepe was also part of Stockenstrom’s expedition to Paramount Xhosa Chief
Sarhili on August 21, 1846—the only nonwhite of five signatories to the
treaty.42
When the Kat River Rebellion erupted in 1851—the biggest test of Kat
River loyalty—Groepe was ill and past his prime.43 Initially, he tried to dissuade
the 800-odd rebels from their course by riding to their camps to parley with
them. He and Andries Botha tried, also unsuccessfully, to stop the rebel leader
Uithaalder (who replaced the deceased Matroos) from attacking Fort
Armstrong,44 the only frontier fort to fall into the hands of anticolonials.
Despite rebels also targeting Groepe’s property, along with that of the English,
witnesses at Botha’s trial for high treason hinted at Groepe’s sympathy for the
rebels. They noted, for example, that Groepe was “crying” when he was parleying (unarmed) with them,45 that he initially “waived an engagement with the revolters,” and that he was unwilling to fire on them.46 Eventually, Somerset and
his troops47 stormed the fort and “reduced” (burned and destroyed) it, destroyed Philipton, and broke up the Kat River Settlement.48
We do not know exactly what Groepe’s sons’ or his brother’s affiliations
were, although there is mention of Marthinus and Jan Groepe, two of Groepe’s
sons, being sent out of Fort Armstrong on the day of the attack (with
Marthinus Lotz), with the flag of truce.49 Groepe’s brother(?), Hans Groepe, together with Lotz,50 were also interrogated with regard to the theft of some
14 | BLACKBEARD
Interview with Pieter Johannes “Hymie” Groepe,
Great-Great-Grandson of Christian Jacobus Groepe,
“the Kommandant”
Having set up the interview prior to my arrival, I meet Hymie outside the Dutch
Reformed Church in the hamlet of Hertzog in the center of Tambookiesvlei,
where most Bastards were granted land. Large pools of water in the dirt road
testify to recent heavy rain. Hymie, friendly and enthusiastic, is waiting. He gets
into the battered 1989 Toyota Hilux bakkie (utility vehicle) I am using, and we
splash along the main dirt road, Thomson Street, past straggling houses into the
51
Groepe maintained that Lotz and Hans Groepe owned the four horses that the Mfengu were instructed to
take to Fort Beaufort, and which were stolen by rebels. Groepe’s testimony, Trial of Andries Botha, 137.
52
CA CCP 8/1/51, Government Gazette 16 October 1855, Government Notice no. 239, 1855, Colonial
Office, Cape of Good Hope, 15 October 1855. Marthinus Groepe was prisoner no. 2132, and Hans Groepe prisoner no. 2133.
53
Ross, Borders, 59.
54
Ross, Borders, 212–13.
55
Testimony of James Read, Trial of Andries Botha, 146. Botha’s main “crime” was failing to present himself
at Somerset’s muster and “going into the bush” for several days, allegedly owing to fear of being lynched by the
English or amaMfengu. (Prior to this, they had shot at him when he went to Fort Beaufort with fellow field-cornets and James Read to discuss counterinsurgency measures with Colonel Sutton.) Ross, Borders, 228–9.
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horses during the Rebellion.51 Both Marthinus Groepe and Hans Groepe were
among the rebel prisoners at Bain’s Kloof, so there must have been some evidence for their complicity in the Rebellion.52 (Later, as in the case of other rebels, they were pardoned.)
If Groepe’s sons did rebel they may have had good reason to do so: “The
[Groepe] family, as a whole, was still smarting at the treatment they had suffered
in the War of the Axe [1846–1847].”53 Furthermore, Groepe was not the only
field-cornet to have putative rebel sons. All Botha’s sons defected, as did Boesak’s
son and field-cornets David Jantjies and Piet Bruintjies. The majority of the rebels
were the more radical youth. They could have been more easily inflamed by
Rebellion ideology—which used Biblical texts to justify rebellion in order to attain
freedom from oppression—and those who did not own erven had less to lose.54
Botha’s sympathy for the rebels seemed to have been more apparent
than Groepe’s, although Botha “flatly refused” their entreaty to become their
general.55
Further ethnic divisions emerged during Botha’s trial, with Mfengu witnesses providing hostile evidence against him and Hottentot witnesses testifying
to his loyalty. Identity consciousness in Kat River did not diminish over time, although names changed, with Bastards calling themselves Christians and, from
the apartheid era onwards, coloreds.
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 15
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Fig. 6. Hymie Groepe, 2011. (Photograph by Susan I. Blackbeard.)
veld. As we drive, Hymie maintains a running commentary on the inhabitants
and buildings, indicating the little community hall and a new house belonging to
his uncle, Hermanus “Manie” Loots, a.k.a. James Stewart, erstwhile trainer of
Umkhonto weSizwe, or MK, the armed wing of the African National Congress
(ANC) and member of the first ANC Parliament. As we ascend the hill to
16 | BLACKBEARD
Groepeskloof (Groepe’s Gorge)56 where Hymie lives, the road becomes very bad.
Where possible, we talk as we drive,
Hymie then explains how the farm—Groepe’s reward from the colonial government for outstanding military service—was divided among his nine sons by his
first wife [an Arends] and one daughter by his second wife [a Loots]. It remained
in the family until the 1960s, when portions of it passed into white hands, aided
by the Seymour lawyer Fenner-Solomon, who allegedly gave Groepe’s daughter’s
descendants firewood and brandy for signing huurkontrakte (leases).
HG: Then, in 1963/4 a white man got letters from Fenner-Solomon and
took portions fourteen and fifteen [of Groepeskloof] and his son took
portion sixteen—where the dam is now—and called it Eureka. And portions twelve and thirteen they called Sonop [Sunrise]. They invented new
names to rebaptize the land. That’s why I moved back here in 1994—to
force the gates open for others. We have permission [from the ANC] to
live here until the land claim is resolved.
SB: How did you go about returning to Groepeskloof?
HG: In 1994 Manie Loots came to me at Kroomie and told me to launch
a claim. I was encouraged by Mr. Derek Hanekom [then Minister of
Land Affairs]. He came here [to Tambookiesvlei] and we had a big
meeting . . . in the school grounds.
The entire Kat River Settlement . . . and the whole ANC delegation was
there. And Derek said, “The Kat River story—your claim—is the most
clear-cut in the Eastern Cape and this land should be returned to you
56
Or Groepe’s Hoogte (Groepe’s Heights). Read, Kat River Settlement, 81. General Somerset’s wagon train
was attacked en route to Groepeskloof during the Rebellion. Ibid. There were various Xhosa and rebel attacks on
outlying areas before the rebels occupied Fort Armstrong. The day before Somerset stormed the fort (January
22, 1851) burgher forces charged and routed a body of amaXhosa at Balfour. Godlonton, Narrative, 2:252–3.
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SB: How long have you lived here, Hymie?
HG: I was born here on 5 May 1948 and have lived here all my life except
for the time I went to work at General Motors in Port Elizabeth, where I
trained as a diesel mechanic, and for fifteen years when I lived in the
Kroomie [a mountainous area near Kat River].
SB: And the land you live on now belonged to your great-great-grandfather, Christian Groepe?
HG: Yes, it was all one big farm—Tambookiesvlei, and Groepeskloof, which
was used as grazing by the Kommandant. One farm, one owner, one title
[which was only granted belatedly in 1844]. I am only on portions twelve
and thirteen.
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 17
Fig. 8. Tambookiesvlei School, 2014. (Photograph by Susan I. Blackbeard.)
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Fig. 7. Tambookiesvlei, 2014. (Photograph by Susan I. Blackbeard.)
18 | BLACKBEARD
We cross a flooded river on a narrow causeway, with debris-festooned trees and
banks, and continue up the track, which becomes mere ledges between dongas
(small ravines). As we each higher ground, euphorbia-clad kloofs (gorges) close
in on us.
HG: But we were forcibly removed. No one agreed to go. No one agreed
to sell. We were forced to sign. If you didn’t, you could be stripped [of
your land]. Like in the days of Fenner-Solomon—way back—when there
was big corruption, daylight robbery, like when he got the Arendskop
farm. A white man went to him and said he wanted the farm, and Sollie
[Fenner-Solomon] went to the farm and found the vassteek, a small
plant with thorns like the prickling [prickly] pear. And they found the land
full of it. And Sollie called the two Arends brothers—Uncle Andrew
Arends was koster (sexton) of the church. And Sollie said, “Are you
owners of the land?” And they said, “Yes.” And he said, “You will be
penalized for this [plant]! The government wants you! The only thing for
you to do is to sign a document saying you don’t own the land—deny
the land!”
SB: And they did?
HG: They had no option. And Sollie took the land and gave it to [the
white man] and so Arendskop was sold to [that] family. So Uncle Andrew
Arends lost his farm, he and his brother [in a retelling, it is his cousin].
That was one of the tricks of that lawyer, Sollie. He could take the land
very, very easily from you! Then he wanted to jump onto Groepeskloof
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immediately, because you have all the proof.” But the next minister came
and said that the claim must be researched and racial purification
proved—family trees must be provided. And we provided ninety-five
percent, and she said evaluation will follow—but it did not. Then
another two ministers came—and nothing happened. Two groups of
researchers . . . made reports and . . . evaluated the land. I still have the
evaluations. But when they came in July [2011], they said, “Who wants
their land?” And they said the money they gave us in 1984–88 they will
deduct from the new global evaluation total . . . and use it to resettle our
people on the land and buy tractors and implements and start training for
the youngsters. We are waiting on this—for the development of the land.
They tested soil, and the dam for irrigation is in the pipeline, the dam [to
be built] here in Groepeskloof. Yes, this is all just for Tambookiesvlei. This
farm granted by the government to the Kommandant is unique in the
Valley—we have solid documentation, and the last will and testament of
the Kommandant, saying it must be “from generation to generation, and
must not be sold to any stranger.”
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 19
A signboard announces that we are entering Hymie’s property. We drive up to the
house. Lowering mountains encircle it, and a fuzz of pale blue-flowered plumbago,
interspersed with bright orange flowers of the wild dagga (Leonotis leonurus) blur
the fence. On the edge of the werf (farmyard), we admire Hymie’s fine herd of
Fig. 9. Groepeskloof. (Photograph by Susan I. Blackbeard.)
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and take it, too, but the Ciskei government put them out in 1984–88,
put the whites and the coloreds out.
SB: Then you went to Kroomie. Where did the other Kat River people go?
HG: Many went to Friemersheim, near Mossel Bay. The [Hertzog] church
bought land there for the Tambookiesvlei people with the money they got
from selling church lands. About fourteen families went. The lorries came and
loaded them all up. You had to show your [church] membership cards to get
the Moordkuil (Murderpit/pool) land—ja (yes), what a name! But when the
people arrived and wanted to move onto the land the whites said only two or
three families could come because it was not zoned as a woonbuurt (residential area)—it was zoned as agricultural land, you see. So they sat in the little
RDP houses (low-cost housing) at Friemersheim and couldn’t pay for electricity, so they had to work as agricultural laborers.
SB: Do they have land there now?
HG: No, just small little portions with their houses on them.
20 | BLACKBEARD
boerbokke (large goats with brown and white markings). He explains that their excellent condition is due to the area having “the best grazing in the country.”
We walk through the gate and a pack of lithe indigenous hunting dogs,
which Hymie keeps to frighten off rooikatte en die rooijakkals en die maanhaarjakkals (caracal, the black-backed jackal, and hyena), leap around us. There is an
old green John Deere tractor in the yard, a big grey gas bottle (the colored areas
have no electricity), a thatched rondawel (hut), and washing on the fence. The
house, built by the white man who renamed the farm Sonop, faces east. Hymie
occupied it in 1994 when he was encouraged to return. It has a pitched roof
and partly timbered gable, and a porch half hidden by an old olive tree and a
lanky sunflower. There are no people in sight. Apart from the snuffling and
scratching of the dogs, the only sounds are the river below the house, the chirp
of birds and the occasional bawl of a cow from over the hill. Hymie says that he
has seventeen beeste (cattle) of mixed breeds. He grazes them on his upper
pastures, but people steal his fencing, pasture their own cattle there, and hire
out his land to others. Consequently, his cattle wander and get lost or stolen.
HG: (earnestly) That’s why we want the title deeds [recognized] so we
can do something about it. We don’t want the caretaker agreement the
government is offering us—we want the deed of transfer! And, in the
meantime, a letter of authority.
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Fig. 10. Hymie’s goats. (Photograph by Susan I. Blackbeard.)
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 21
HG: In Tambookiesvlei there is a small committee to work for the
community—just six of us. We’ve been working on the Kat River land
claims for a long time. We sent our title deeds as proof that we owned the
land. Then they wanted proof of racial purification—and we had to provide this too, to show which families we came from. They sent someone
to value the land. But we are still waiting to hear. We’ve been waiting for
[eighteen] years now.
Hymie tells how he and family members Charles Groepe, Uncle Wykie Loots, and
Anna Pringle helped Kat River people to submit their claims in 1996. The men
drove to East London to collect forms, which they handed out in meetings they
called in Tambookiesvlei. People came from Fort Beaufort, Blinkwater, Seymour,
Balfour, Mancazana, Philipton, Readsdale, and Lushington, and Hymie and his
team read them the procedure. They sat in desks dragged from the community
hall and, aided by the team, filled in the forms.
HG: The people enjoyed being outside in the winter sunshine. Anna made
vetkoekies (fried dough-balls) with tomato and onion [fillings] and worsrolletjies (sausage rolls) for them on paraffin stoves. Then I took the [completed] forms in my old box Cortina to the land claims office in East
London. It took two to three months to get them there—quite a few trips.
SB: Did anyone help with the petrol costs?
HG: I didn’t get a blue penny! I could see the tears in the eyes of the people and had to help them. I handed in the forms and brought back the all
the receipts. Then we had other meetings to hand them back.
I ask Hymie about the mountains surrounding his farm.
HG: To the left is Snell’s Peak, and behind it is Lushington and the state
forest, and Peffer’s Kop, past the dam. There were colored people under
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As we walk through the long grass bordering his crops—onions, potatoes
and maize—Hymie enacts, with sound effects, his method of hand-drilling
poison into the soil to eradicate noxious weeds. And, dramatically, he recounts
how, “the other day,” his wife trod on the head of a pofadder (puffadder).
It coiled around her leg but he killed it quickly. When I ask about the
veldkos (field-food) that sustained the original people in the area, he
mentions some Khoikhoi names and speaks proudly in the first person plural:
“We formed the Khoi [Khoikhoi] Union in 1995. We have Gnaus (big
traditional ceremonies).” Then he tells me how, as chairman of the local land
claims committee, he encouraged the Kat River Khoikhoi to submit their land
claims.
22 | BLACKBEARD
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Fig. 11. Tambookiesvlei community hall, 2014. (Photograph by Susan I. Blackbeard.)
Kommandant Peffer—you know Kommandant Peffer? He served under
the Kommandant.
SB: I’ve read about him.
HG: And there is the grave of neef (cousin) Adam Peffer on the right of
the stream, and on the left, the house with the big oak tree next to it.
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 23
Fig. 13. Uncle Wykie Loots, 2014. (Photograph by Susan I. Blackbeard.)
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Fig. 12. Anna Pringle, 2014. (Photograph by Susan I. Blackbeard.)
24 | BLACKBEARD
Review
From the outset, the interview is dominated by space—the imposing
amphitheatre, ancient, yet constantly changing, with shifting dark clouds revealing shafts of chiaroscuro-like sunlight; high, hidden valleys where Hymie’s
friends and relations lived; Hymie’s werf with the goats in their pen, the dogs
snuffling and scratching around us, and the cows lowing in the distance—and
by Hymie’s attachment to it, his desire to prove ownership of it, and his anger at
how it was winkled from them in the 1960s and wrested from them in the
1980s.
Kinship—evident in the interconnectedness of the Kat River people—is a
prominent strand in Hymie’s narrative. As names and naming are so important to
him, he includes them wherever possible; hence his scorn at the way whites
“rebaptized” his land. Since the latest power shift in 1994, there is also a tenuous solidarity with the Hoenigqua Khoikhoi—another marginalized people—
with Hymie referring to them in the first person plural: “We formed the Khoi
Union . . . We have Gnaus.”
In the Arends story, Hymie uses dialogue masterfully, accompanied by appropriate gestures and facial and tonal expressions, as he presents the crafty
Sollie stripping vulnerable relations of their land. As Peires puts it, owing to his
legal knowledge, Vivian Fenner-Solomon (b. 1883)—Seymour mayor, chairman
of the local school board, the divisional council, and the tobacco cooperative,
brother-in-law to the town clerk, and member of the Union parliament—“held
Kat River by the throat for fifty years.”57 Although Peires’s interviewees described
Solomon as a bully who hurried them into signing documents, gave them inadequate time to repay loans, “lost” people’s titles, sold property he had no right to
sell, and used a loophole in a certain land act to dispossess people further of
their allotments and the commonage, “oral recollections are notoriously prone to
57
Peires, “Fenner-Solomon,” 77.
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He had a farm with geese and sold the feathers to Pudneys in PE [Port
Elizabeth]. He was the last Peffer in Lushington; the people all left and
never came back.
SB: And the peak to the far right?
HG: Ai, that’s Spitskop, the big peak there, and in the middle, the klein
koppie (little mountain) Tyhume, is where Driefontein (Three-Fountains)
is—a waterfall where the three fountains come from, and Oudassiekraal
(Old Rockrabbit Kraal), with a little fountain behind it, where the Pieterses
farmed. Driefontein, he helps us a lot with the water. We pump it up from
Groepesrivier—remember we crossed it on the way here?—and it runs all
the way down, past the Hertzog church.
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 25
The 1980s Forced Removals
As we walk around Groepeskloof, I ask Hymie how he lost his land.
HG: When the rumors started going around [in the late 1970s] that our
land was going to the Ciskei—our white neighbors told us about a meeting in Balfour—a meeting of the [white] Kat River Farmers’ Union. They
invited me—the only one from Tambookiesvlei. I was actively involved in
the Tambookiesvlei Farmers’ Union, for colored people—just for landowners. Wykie Loots was the chairperson and now it’s my brother’s son.
When the rumors became true, we investigated by writing letters . . . to [a
man] in Cradock in charge of land transactions in Kat River and to Chris
Heunis—the two voormense (main people) who worked for the SADT
(South African Development Trust). Their secretary replied to us and said
(I know it off by heart because I’ve still got the letter): “U saak word ernstig oorweeg. ’n Verdere skrywe word binnekort aan u gerig.” (Your matter
is being seriously considered. Further communication will be sent to you
shortly.) But nothing ever came.
The principal of the Hertzog school was chairman of our Kat River
Landowners’ Union. He fought back. We trusted him—he grew up with
us in Tambookiesvlei—and the correspondence lasted for a number of
years. Then a lawyer from Seymour asked for all our title deeds. We had to
hand them in and they said they would send us koopbriewe (purchase
contracts) to tell us what our lands were worth. We had to go to Seymour
by donkey cart and in old tractor trailers—four-wheeled ones, pulled by
donkeys—and queue there in the bitter cold. Ja, it was winter. This went
on for more than a year.
58
59
Peires, “Fenner Solomon,” 86, 90.
Peires, “Fenner-Solomon,” 88.
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elaboration and inaccuracy of detail.”58 The remissness of some Kat River people
in registering their complicated land transactions also enabled “ambitious small
capitalists to prejudice the security of the Kat River Settlement, buying up village
blocks, erf by erf” and, after the 1905 Snywet (fencing law), the commonage for
tobacco farming. Yet, as Peires observes, “In hounding small proprietors [to sell
their land] and expropriating their commonages, Fenner-Solomon was only expediting processes which capitalist agriculture, working through laws of contract
and land tenure, would ultimately have executed anyway.”59 Bearing Peires’s caveat in mind, Hymie’s retelling of Uncle Andrew Arends’s dispossession is truthful
in Portelli’s sense, despite subjectivity (in Hymie’s sympathy for Arends) and desire (for justice) filling the spaces in the narrative.
26 | BLACKBEARD
Review
In contrast to the Arendskop story, Hymie’s recounting of the forced removals
of the 1980s, in which he was both victim and eyewitness, is more powerful.
The clarity of the details is compelling, with Kat River families, “loaded up into
lorries” bound for Friemersheim, evoking connotations of animals being
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All the people from Kat River had to go: they flocked up to Seymour
on horseback or in donkey carts. And we were standing there all day
without food or anything to drink in the bitter cold on the [magistrate’s]
verandah, waiting to sign up. We had to hand in our names and [title deed]
numbers to get the title deeds. They were kept in the safe in the magistrate’s court. We had to go on certain days to fill in the forms to get them.
There were people from Port Elizabeth and George and Cape Town;
they had to come by train and bus. You could see the people did not want
to leave; you could see it in their faces. They sat [on the concrete floor of
the verandah] and waited. And I walked up and down and talked to them.
The old people were crying, and they were asking if they could vat ’n
paar sinkplate van hulle dak af (take a few sheets of corrugated iron from
their roof) with them when they moved—to give them shelter. Lots of
them had nowhere to go and had to hire rooms in town [Fort Beaufort].
And some of them are still there today.
We took the title deeds home for a week or two. Then we had to bring
them back and hand them in. We were told that if we didn’t participate in
this hulle sal ons grond wegvat (they would take away our land). When we
handed in our title deeds we didn’t get receipts but I asked for one. We had
to sell the land—or stay and hire it back from the government. No
one wanted to do that. The money took time to come. It was really forced removals. The bakkies came in with cameras and corrugated iron, and boys
[workers] with paintbrushes. Mr. P. was in charge. And he went round and
put up little pieces of corrugated iron at your gate with your number painted
on it. The whole land in Kat River was evaluated in two days.
SB: How did you feel about all of this?
HG: I was very sad but I had to be strong; my parents were very old and
died soon afterwards at Kroomie. We weren’t allowed to buy land in whitezoned areas because of the Group Areas Act but I managed to form a company with [a white man] and bought some land in Kroomie. I paid the
money. But the land was in his name and I could only stay on it and work
on it; you see, a white man had to stand surety. The money we got for our
land in Kat River was not paid in full. They kept back some, die agterskot
(the final payment), to check that we didn’t take out any doors or windows
when we left. But that agterskot was never given to us.
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 27
60
See Susan I. Blackbeard, “It Was a Strange Place to Me: Cultural Genocide at the Kat River Settlement,” paper presented at the annual INoGS (International Network of Genocide Scholars) Conference, Cape Town,
December 2014.
61
Daniel Reisberg and Friderike Heuer, “Memory for Emotional Events,” in Memory and Emotion, ed. Daniel
Reisberg and Paula Hertel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 31.
62
Field, Oral History, 85.
63
Peires, “Fenner Solomon,” 89.
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transported to the abattoir or of people being shipped to ghettos or concentration camps. Not only was it an alien place—595.8 kilometers by road from Kat
River, with a different climate and culture—but, according to my other interviewees, Friemersheim people were hostile to the newcomers.60 Hymie poignantly conveys the Kat River people’s shattered hopes when their land did not
materialize: they sat in their RDP houses and then went out to sell their labor—
a familiar South African tragedy.
Again, as in Hymie’s previous narratives, there is a strong story line, with
the characteristic amplifications, asides, digressions and dialogue. The threatand-tricks modus operandi of white lawyers is elevated to a grander scale in the
apartheid removals, where again there is no real choice and they are grossly underpaid. Surprisingly, though, Hymie evinced less emotion than anticipated during the recounting of the 1980s removals. There is sadness in recalling numbers
being painted outside their gates, and distrait old people wanting to take pieces
of corrugated iron with them, but there is also control. When asked how he
felt about it at the time, he says simply, “I was sad but I had to be strong.”
Reisberg and Heuer’s theory of the changing assessment of prior emotional
events resulting in the fading of the sting of past mishaps holds here.61 Hymie’s
details, both central and peripheral, are clear and convincing, as memories of
causal events often are. And, although he may have suffered inchoate
anger and sorrow at the time, he speaks of the removals now with comparative
composure, illustrating what psychoanalytic psychotherapists call emotional
containment.62
There are notable differences between Hymie’s accounts of the 1980s removals and those of Jeff Peires’s two elderly interviewees, Andries Arends and
Piet Draghoender, who were interviewed during the removals. Arends was born
in 1908. He farmed in Stockenstrom all his life and his family owned extensive
properties in Hertzog and Cathcartvale. He was occupying a portion of
Tambookiesvlei land and was a deacon of the Hertzog church when Peires interviewed him on September 1, 1982. Draghoender’s father had been a sergeant
on the colonial side during the Kat River Rebellion. His family had also lost successive portions of land to Fenner-Solomon and neighboring farmers but still occupied about three morgen when interviewed. He was illiterate and had lived on
his farm all his life.63 Peires interviewed him on December 15, 1982, and again
on January 10, 1984, in the midst of the removals, when his emotions were raw
28 | BLACKBEARD
The Kommandant’s Exploits in Story and Song
Before we leave Groepeskloof, I ask Hymie about the 1851–1852 Rebellion. He
says that he knows about Willem Uithaalder, Hermanus Matroos, and Andries
Botha, the Gonah field-cornet who was accused of being a rebel, but denies
knowledge of Groepe’s sons being rebels.65 Moreover, the two stories that he
tells are not directly linked to the Rebellie (Rebellion) but showcase the
Kommandant and his men.66
HG: (indicating a copse on a hillside) That is Stuurman se bos (Stuurman’s
forest), but there are actually two bushes, Stuurman se bos and
Christiaantjie se bos (Little Christian’s forest), that is next door to us. The
Stuurman brothers, from Lower Blinkwater—they were some of the fighters, some of the big fighters. In 1851 they were ambushed and sent to
Robben Island.67 They were real fighters. They fought on the side of the
rebels, like Hermanus Matroos and Willem Uithaalder and Jan Fortuin
and Andries Botha.68 They—two of them [the Stuurmans]—returned
alive . . . to the Gonah location at Blinkwater.
SB: Do you think Andries Botha was a rebel?
HG: (cautiously) Well, he had some ties with Maqoma. And his sons became worse after he was taken to Cape Town. Maqoma was the enemy of
Kat River. He lived at the foot of the Katberg mountain but he was never
at home—he was always attacking—here, there, everywhere—from
64
Arends, for example, was a deacon in the Hertzog Sendingskerk (Dutch Reformed Church): Peires, “Fenner
Solomon,” 89.
65
Compare Ross, Borders, 206: “Commandant Christian Groepe, leader of the Kat River force . . . had sons
among the rebels.”
66
These skirmishes could have occurred when the amaXhosa attacked the Settlement during the Wars of
1834-1835 or 1846-1847.
67
On Kupido and Klaas Stuurman, see Read, Kat River Settlement, 32. On Klaas Stuurman, see Ross, Borders,
198, 201.
68
On the rebels, see Ross, Borders, 193–271.
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and his future uncertain. Both he and Arends are outraged, with Draghoender
beating the ground with his stick and invoking stern Biblical prophecies and maledictions on the expropriators—an apposite discourse for church-people, and
perhaps the only way in which they could safely vent their anger.64 During the
removals Hymie was younger and more adaptable than Arends and
Draghoender. In addition, new skills and a broader outlook on life gained from
his Port Elizabeth sojourn enabled him to turn his loss into victory by acquiring
tenure of white land at Kroomie. This is not to suggest that Hymie felt less for
his land than Draghoender and Arends but that he was better equipped to cope
with the disaster.
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 29
Maqoma’s Hoek, his lali (abode, from isiXhosa ezilalini). It was near
Balfour, there—past the sawmills, by the big trees.69
SB: Some say that Andries Botha’s sons were rebels. But wasn’t one of
Groepe’s sons a rebel, too?
HG: (in a surprised tone) Was he? I haven’t heard of that.
He then proceeds to tell the first story, Stuurman se bos.
In a subsequent retelling, the Kommandant was “old and sick.” But he “gave
the signal and his horsemen went and grabbed back the cattle of the
Kommandant.”
HG: And they killed some of the Mfengu and chased them all the way to
Healdtown, the Mfengu location up on the hill near Fort Beaufort. You
can see the lights up on the hill there at night; they have electricity.
69
Since January 1851 the rebels under Uithaalder controlled the whole of the Kat River Valley, and the
amaXhosa had free passage across the northwest to the settlement. Ross, Borders, 227. On Maqoma’s movements, see Read, Kat River Settlement, 66.
70
See V. C. Malherbe, “The Khoi Captains and the Third Frontier War,” in V. C. Malherbe and Susan NewtonKing, “The Khoikhoi Rebellion in the Eastern Cape (1799–1803),” Communications no. 5 (1981) and V. C.
Malherbe, “David Stuurman: Last Chief of the Hottentots,” Journal of African Studies 39, no. 1 (1980): 47–64.
71
During the Rebellion, Kat River loyalist Hendrik Heyns remarked on the “great confusion amongst the people” and Ross maintains that at this time “the amaMfengu were likely to be viewed as traitors.” Ross, Borders,
228, 232.
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Now, Stuurman70 was one of the families that worked for the
Kommandant—one of the cowhands. He was nearly killed here by the
Maqoma army; he escaped from that kloof (indicating a small gorge). You
see Vaalkop, just above right from Stuurman se bos? That is very bushy;
that is where the Mfengu—they were also on the side of the Maqoma
people—used to attack the Valley.
SB: But I thought the Mfengu were on the side of the Kat River people?
HG: Ah well, the whole Valley was mixed up.71 Now, one day an old cowhand, old Vaalkop—he was employed by the Kommandant—and one of the
Stuurman brothers, who was also the Kommandant’s cowhand, got caught
by the Mfengu. They took the cattle, the Kommandant’s cattle, and tied
[Vaalkop] up. The other one ran away. They killed one of the cows and
cooked the meat. This is going to be your last piece of meat, old man, they
said to him. Then he [old Vaalkop] asked for a knife to cut it. And he cut the
rope and the meat with one stroke and ran off. They had stripped off his
clothes so that saved him—no bush could hook him. He ran to the
Kommandant and the Kommandant fired at the guys and his men chased
them back to Fort Beaufort and grabbed back the Kommandant’s cattle.
30 | BLACKBEARD
Hymie proceeds to tell the story of Christiaantjie se bos.
There are additional details in a subsequent retelling:
HG: He [Christiaantjie] was thrown right through by an assegai; it went
right through his back and came out in the front. He and his uncle, the
Kommandant’s brother, they had voorlaaiers. Christiaantjie, the son of the
Kommandant, went with his uncle to collect the community livestock and
he got assegaied when eighteen Xhosas attacked them. Grandma and
Mamma used to tell us that there was still blood on the rocks there . . .
He [Christiaantjie] was given a gold-coated Bible and a brand-new gun—
a musket [by the government].72
SB: Who told you all this, Hymie?
HG: The stories were passed on; we knew the bush as Christiaantjie se
bos, a dirty old bush. We were told, “Your grandfather was nearly killed
here by the Xhosa warriors!” And my mother and her sister, Auntie
Lettie—she did not get married—used to take us to the Kommandant’s
grave once a month. They also took the school children there when we
went to the shop at Hertzog. It was owned by an Indian, Peter Casson,
who was married to a colored woman, Ellen Kram; her family also married
into the Groepe family. There was also a shop owned by a white man. He
grabbed some of our land, and the post office too, and he even changed
the road to Tambookiesvlei so that people could buy petrol; he had a petrol pump outside. He used to check our packets [bags] when we walked
past, and shoot our dogs. But when he got old and sick, Uncle Andrew
Arends and his [church] choir used to go to his house and sing for him.
The last shop there closed in 1988. It was run by Mammatjie Abdul. When
we went to the shop Grandma and Mamma used to buy some biscuits and
72
The main details of Hymie’s story match Visagie’s account. He mentions that it occurred in January 1835,
and, despite being seriously wounded, the young man (Christiaantjie) speedily retired, with his face to the enemy: Visagie, “Christian Jacobus Groepe,” 51.
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HG: Now, Christiaantjie se bos is up there [pointing to a copse on another
hill]. He was thrown right through by an assegai (spear); it went right
through his back and came through on the left side. They [his friends]
pulled it through. He and his uncle, the brother of the Kommandant, were
ambushed by eighteen Xhosa rebels. There was no way out. They had old
voorlaaiers (muzzle-loading muskets) but they took on the enemy back
to back; the old man on the one side, and the younger one, Christiaantjie,
was wounded with the assegai. He survived at Fort Adelaide military
hospital.
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 31
In a very emotive performance, Hymie performs the songs. In the Kommandant’s
song, which Hymie intones almost reverently in Afrikaans (see the English translation below), the Kommandant rides up front, leading his burghermag into battle, and returning later, triumphantly. The third-last line, reminding the listener
of the price they had to pay for defending their land, causes Hymie’s eyes to fill
with tears as he utters it.
Die Kommandant se liedjie
Die saal en die toom en die blesperd,
Vier wit voete en ’n stompstert:
Dis hy wat die saak sal waar maak,
Dis hy wat die saak sal waar maak.
Wie ry voor so regop in die saal?
Dis die Kommandant wat ons almal kom haal.
Daar gaan hy vorentoe!
Met ons bloed het ons alles betaal.
Dis hy wat die saak sal waarmaak.
Dis hy wat die saak sal waarmaak.73
(The Kommandant’s song
The saddle and bridle and the horse with a blaze,
Four white feet and a stumpy tail:
It’s he that’ll make it all right,
It’s he that’ll make it all right.
Who rides up front so straight in the saddle?
73
Hymie (P. J. Groepe) holds the copyright to this song, which appears here in print for the first time.
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we would sit under a thorn tree and they would tell us the stories and
sing us the songs. And at night, we when we sat around the fire and
cooked roosterkoek (griddle-cake), they would also tell us the stories and
sing the songs. You can say that these things come from the women. And
the songs, like the Katrivierliedjie en die Kommandantsliedjie (the Kat
River song and the Kommandant’s song). The women used to sing the
Kommandantsliedjie when he came back from fighting Maqoma. All the
people in the settlement and the women that stayed behind would come
out to see the Kommandant and praise him and sing die lied van die community (the song of the community).
32 | BLACKBEARD
It’s our Kommandant come to call us.
There he goes up ahead!
With our blood we have it all paid.
It’s he that’ll make it all right,
It’s he that’ll make it all right!)74
HG: (after a few seconds of silence) You see, Sue, this is blood-land. They
paid for it with their blood.
The Kommandant’s Grave
En route back to Tambookiesvlei, Hymie suggests that we stop at Hulde-akker
(Acre of honor/tribute). This unmarked area in the overgrown Hertzog cemetery
is where the Kommandant is buried, not beside his family but flanked by his
fighters, or what Hymie calls his “military wing.” Though the locally gathered
headstones have fallen and are almost smothered by grass, and the handwritten
inscriptions have long been effaced by the weather, Hymie knows which one is
the Kommandant’s.
Set some distance apart from these, three imposing granite tombstones
guarded by iron railings indicate the remains of the first (white) minister of the
Dutch Reformed church, the Reverend Ritchie Thomson, his wife, and his successor—indications of apartheid, even in death. It is a somber moment; the silence broken only by the rippling of a small wind through the long grass that
shields the fallen tombstones of the Kommandant and his men.
Final review
Rugged Groepeskloof, empty of people but filled with running water, clouds,
and bird and animal sounds, and Hymie’s visible attachments to it, heighten his
performances in which nostalgia and history blend to “create memories of solace” to help him bear past losses and face present problems.75 His farm, and
Christiaantjie and Stuurman’s “bushes,” the Hertzog church, the school where
political meetings were held, the shop and tree under which Grandma told the
stories, and the Kommandant’s grave where they placed flowers, provide not
74
75
English translation by Susan I. Blackbeard, July 2012, revised February 2015.
See Field, Oral History, 95.
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Before we leave, Hymie invites me into the house to show me documents proving the Kommandant’s ownership of the farm. Poring over the papers in the dim
room, one is aware of the absence of electricity.
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 33
76
Valerie Yow, “‘Do I Like Them Too Much?’: Effects of the Oral History Interview on the Interviewer and
Vice-Versa,” in The Oral History Reader 2nd ed., ed. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge,
1998), 66.
77
D. B. Bosman et al., eds., Tweetalige Woordeboek: Afrikaans-Engels (Cape Town: Nasionale Boekwinkel,
1962).
78
See Isabel Hofmeyr, We Spend our Years as a Tale that Is Told: Oral Historical Narrative in a South African
Chiefdom (Johannesburg: Heinemann, 1993), 139-150.
79
See BPP 21, A. B. Armstrong, Journal, 5 March, 1834 and BPP 22, 1837–47, enclosure 4 in 23, D’Urban
to Glenelg, 9 June 1836, 112–113.
80
Hofmeyr, We Spend our Years, 139–150.
81
See, for example, Luisa Passerini’s theories on intersubjectivity, memory, and oblivion with regard to trauma:
Luisa Passerini, “Connecting Emotions: Contributions from Cultural History,” Historein, 8 (2008), 117–127.
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only a matrix for Hymie’s memories but in the remembering and retelling they
become extensions of the people celebrated. The Kommandant and his burghermag are elevated to eponymous stature as they engage with the formidable
Maqoma. Similarly, Hymie emerges as a hero in the narrative, following in his
forbear’s steps as he fights for his people by submitting and following up on
their land claims, and performing his stories and songs to those whom he hopes
will represent a wider audience.76 This perhaps unconscious portrayal of himself
as the second Kommandant is one of the ways in which Hymie’s perceptions of
the present (and himself in it) are shaped by his views or representations of the
past. His stories and songs are enacted on the land, his erfenis—an Afrikaans
word denoting heritage, with erf, its root, signifying “a plot of ground” as well
as “to inherit.”77 In Hymie’s case, both drive his quest.
In Hymie’s stories and songs, as in other oral narratives of early South
African heroes,78 there are the usual hallmarks: the episodic nature of the narrative; the larger-than-life hero (the Kommandant) and the ubiquitous foe
(Maqoma); skirmishes instead of battles; and the blurring, telescoping, or personalizing of chronology. Although some details may be exaggerated, spot archival checks—for example, on the military stature of the Kommandant and the
strength of his burghermag79—endorse Hymie’s claims. The formulaic nature of
the narrative, paratactic syntax, asides, digressions, and amplifications are regular
features, as are Hymie’s affective dialogue and dramatic gestures.80
Discrepancies in his retellings show how événements are reinterpreted in
the longue durée of memory. They also accentuate changing alliances, resulting
in confusion (“Ah well, the whole Valley was mixed up!”) and tragedy, as when
the same family, wittingly or unwittingly, harbors both loyalists and rebels during
the Rebellion. The reason for Hymie’s silence with regard to Groepe’s son’s/sons’
implication in the Rebellion could simply be owing to his not having heard of
it—defection is not generally something that is passed on in family history.
Speculation—could Hymie be in denial, or disbelieve what he desires to be
untrue, or could it be amnesia induced by experiencing/hearing of painful
events?81—is, therefore, ultimately fruitless. Other minor discrepancies in
34 | BLACKBEARD
HG: During the bonte-oorlog (Kat River Rebellion) my grandfather was
taken and sent off to fight. And when the War was over Mr Stockenstrom
. . . said, “I am sending you home, and I am going to give you grazing
ground. This is your property, the basela (reward) which I’m giving you for
. . . what you gave up to death, to make this place free. And you did make
it free. This ground was washed clean by blood.”84
This highlights a continuum of symbolism in Kat River memories and underscores Robin Fivush and Jessica McDermott Sales’s observations that “emotion
and memory are inseparable” and “the events of our lives are imbued with emotion, both at the time of experience and in retrospect.”85
Place—and its story,86 celebrated in the Paradise-Lost trope since the
1980s forced removals—and struggle are constant presences throughout the interview, with the drive-walk-about format sharpening them. Physically, the dark
amphitheatre, and valleys once peopled with friends and family, dominate the
Kat River Valley, with the “best grazing in the country,” the mountains providing
life-giving water that runs—bearing Hymie’s surname—through his farm to
Tambookiesvlei. There is pride and joy in the natural resources but Hymie
82
Visagie, “Christian Jacobus Groepe,” 51, citing Cape Archives, KAB, DSGEP 82, Kat River Correspondence:
C. J. Groepe to W. F. Hertzog, 1837-01-23, s.p.
83
Robin Fivush and Jessica McDermott Sales, “Children’s Memories of Emotional Events,” in Memory and
Emotion, 245, and Robin S. Edelstein et al., “Emotion and Eyewitness Memory,” in Memory and Emotion, 362.
84
Peires, “Fenner-Solomon,” 69. Kat River men also fought for the British in the Anglo-Boer Wars and the
First World War. The old man to the extreme left of figure 2, “Blinkwater and some of its inhabitants,” remembers
being told stories of Oom Paul se Oorlog (Uncle Paul [Kruger’s] War, a.k.a. the Second Anglo-BoerWar).
85
Fivush and Sales, “Children’s Memories,” in Memory and Emotion, 265.
86
Compare Sean Field, Oral History, Community and Displacement: Imagining Memories in Post-Apartheid
South Africa, (New York: Palgrave and Macmillan, 2012), 37–41, on place in his interviews with displaced colored
people in the Cape.
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Hymie’s narratives/performances could exemplify desire filling the spaces, such
as Christiaantjie’s (Dutch) Bible being gold-coated in Hymie’s story but having a
silver clasp in the archival record.82 Hymie could have meant that the clasp was
literally gold (and the archival record is incorrect) or it may be an example of his
gilding (metaphorically) the deeds/objects relating to the Kommandant and his
men.
Using frameworks acquired as a young listener, Hymie passes on the stories
of his grandfather, grandmother, aunt, or uncle, imprinted with his own reflections, interpretation, and fresh emotion during each retelling. Not only does the
emotionality of the events visibly and audibly affect his performances but at
times there is additional vivid emotional recall, as when intoning the
Kommandant’s song.83 Hymie’s reference to Kat River as blood-ground recalls
Draghoender, who used the same image to describe earlier Kat River sacrifices.
Power, Politics, and Performances of Longing | 35
stresses the hardships of the colored community—their poverty, lack of skills
and electricity, the continually deferred dam, new school, clinic, and shop, and
the frustration caused by their land claims not being resolved. Although Hymie
maintains that the ANC “have been good to us,” the future looks uncertain as
more squatters, requesting RDP housing, move into the area, and hopes for a
speedy and equitable resolution begin to evaporate.
Conclusion
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I found the drive-and-walk-about interview very rewarding and would recommend it if conditions are conducive to it and the interviewee is willing and able
to carry it off. We were fortunate in that there was no traffic or other barriers,
such as the obtaining of permits, allowing our drive-about to be totally ad hoc.
One of the benefits of an itinerant interview is that changing locale jogs the
memory of the interviewee, providing additional information that a kitchen-table
interview may lack. An outdoor-itinerant interview also allows the interviewee to
see, hear, touch, and smell the areas in which the people lived and things happened, imparting a clearer understanding of the interviewee and his/her subject.
One must, however, budget generously for time. Yet, what can oral historians
learn from this project, apart from the above, and a reminder of how oral stories
and songs can help a marginalized people in highly contested territory retain
their sense of community and heritage, and continue to offer resistance in the
face of cyclic dispossession?
During our interview-journey, Hymie knit together various strands of diverse
Kat River histories: Maqoma’s dispossession in 1828, the Kat River rebels’ forfeiture of their land in 1853, the 1980s forced removals, and currently, the possibility of Kat River colored people losing their land to other postapartheid
claimants. The reality of the dispossessions was driven home by hearing about
them and seeing them enacted in the landscapes and built environments in
which they occurred, and in which they may reoccur. Not only was there a palpable continuum of history but a sense of imminence, as present history
unfolds.
Ironically, all dispossessions in this part of the country have been driven or
are being driven by “rectification.” Maqoma in 1828 and the 1852 rebels had to
be punished, and black spots had to be removed from white areas in the 1980s
to rectify things along the lines of white supremacy, and currently, the ANC government is rectifying apartheid injustices by redistributing land. One of the sobering observations arising from this survey is the certainty with which each
administration seems to have pursued—and continues to pursue—their moreor-less arbitrary rectification, and the extent to which each buttresses its
decisions with explicit or tacit appeals to ethnic or racial purity. The generational
dispossessions and the turmoil they occasioned have served to bond some
36 | BLACKBEARD
diverse claimants together and honed their resilience and determination not to
be robbed again of their land. It remains to be seen, though, if their efforts will
be rewarded and the Sisyphean cycle of events of this extraordinary valley can
be broken.
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Susan I. Blackbeard holds a PhD from the University of Cape Town and has taught in the university’s departments of English and historical studies. She has published in the South African
Military Journal (2009), the South African Historical Journal (2011), and the Journal of
Genocide Research (2015). Under the name SI Brodrick, she has published a trilogy of novels
(OUP, 2006), a work on the 1857–8 German settlers in South Africa (2009), and a novel based
on the anti-apartheid struggle (2011). Currently, she is working on a book on Kat River. E-mail:
[email protected]