PUBLISH'D AFRIKA

Novel inspired by the 1899 – 1905 Anglo-Boer War

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‘Do you know what upsets me the most about the Boers in this war, Mr. Steyn?’ he asked, and didn’t wait for a response. ‘You have the Germans, the Irish, the French, the Russians and the Swiss fighting on your side. Not only are you treating them better than you treat the Bantu, but you have promised them some of our lands and minerals as rewards for aiding you.’

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He had been running for a better part of the day, now and then glancing over his shoulders to see if his pursuers were gaining on him. He hadn’t seen them for over an hour. Maybe they had given up and returned to camp.
No, the stubborn British never gave up that easily, especially on a lone, unarmed Boer soldier. He stopped to take a breath, his eyes still scanning the wet, sprawling landscape. Then he heard it, the unmistakable gait of heavy hooves. Two horses appeared in the distance, the riders whipping the beasts into a frenzied, speedy gallop.
Steyn took a mouthful of breath, and set off in a sprint. He ran, but he had no hope of escaping. The grassy, muddied open kloof ahead offered no cover or shelter. He couldn’t hope to stand his ground and put up a fight. In his mind’s eye, he already saw the horses’ wide nostrils bearing down on him, and the great hooves raining the fatal blows on his body. In his untimely demise, the soldiers didn’t even have to fire a shot.
He decided the wise thing to do was to give himself up and hope he won’t be summarily and unceremoniously executed. He sank to his knees, and placed his hands behind his head. He felt the booted foot kicking the back of his neck. He fell facelong into the mud. The soldiers merely wheeled their mounts around him, the giant hooves threatening to squash his legs and hands as he lay in the mud. It seemed the soldiers wanted him alive.
‘How far did you think you were going to run?’ one soldier asked, as he kept reining his restless horse in. ‘We annexed this entire rotten land. There’s a patrol for every ten kilometres.’
‘Were you hoping to be shot dead?’ the other soldier with a lieutenant’s stripes asked. ‘The war is almost over and you want to be shot dead. You are hoping to be a martyr, aren’t you? You want to be Cornelius Broeksma? A dead hero.’
The British soldier was referring to Broeksma, who was executed by an English firing squad in the Witwatersrand, on 30 September 1901. He was convicted of violating the neutrality oath and inciting others to do so. He had spoken out about the deplorable conditions of Boer women’s camps during the war. His picture, along with that of his family, was put on a post card in Holland, celebrating him as a martyr.
‘Perhaps we should make his dreams come true, Lieutenant,’ said the other soldier.

Steyn was dragged away to a makeshift British camp, just as an embarrassed soldier ran past dressed only in his underwear. He later heard that the soldier was one of many who had been caught by the Boer commandos. But instead of being summarily executed or detained, the Boers simply stripped them of their uniforms, their boots, horses and weapons and then chased them away. The British soldier’s story gave Steyn hope that the khakis will return the favour and release him in his undies.
He was mistaken. For three days in a row he was marched out to the bush for what he thought would be his encounter with the firing squad, but for some reason they never got round to killing him. They simply sat under the shade and chatted, commenting about the din of gunfire in the distance, smoked and then led him back to camp.
It was on the fourth day that he knew his luck had run out. He woke up to a camp bustling with activity, as the soldiers packed away their supplies and mounted their horses. They were abandoning the camp.
Two soldiers came riding in his direction, while their comrades rode out of the camp. He was certain the pair were his executioners. They were going to kill him, and then reunite with their comrades thereafter. The two soldiers, barely a day over eighteen, joked nervously, in a bid to build up the courage to shoot a man at point blank range. They had clearly never done it before.
Their jestering was abruptly interrupted by a flash of fire, as bullets ripped the ground near the horses’ hooves and whistling past their heads. The horses, startled by the gunfire, raised their hooves into the air, tumbling the riders into the muddied ground. The beasts galloped into the distance.
Steyn saw the two soldiers raising their rifles, and then their uniforms perforating at innumerable places, as bullets ripped into them. They dropped next to him shuddering, wide-eyed, their lives ebbing slowly away.
Steyn stared, startled at the source of the gunfire. It was a group of twelve armed black men who rose from the grass, just ten metres away. He was shocked at their appearance – some of them were dressed partially in British military uniforms and carrying British army issue rifles, the bolt action Lee-Metford and the breech loading Martin-Henry. He knew the weapons from disarming many British soldiers, both captured and killed. It was the tufts of grass on their heads that helped to camouflage their presence as they lay hidden in the grass.
‘Stand up!’ came the order from their leader, a tall, dark man dressed in muddied overalls that had to shed their sleeves to expose the man’s bulged, muscular arms. ‘Are you injured?’
‘No, thank God,’ Steyn replied.
‘Shouldn’t you be thanking us?’ asked the man, amused. ‘We are the ones who saved you. Your God had nothing to do with it.’
‘No, I meant…’
‘Relax, I know what you meant,’ he said. ‘A figure of speech. Yes, I know what you are thinking. An educated Bantu. We have the missionaries to thank for that, don’t we? My name is Mathew Ramatekoa. You might have heard about us. We are the Bantu Resistance Movement.’
Steyn had heard of the Bantu grouping with no allegiance to either side of the war. It failed dismally, leading to its leaders and a handful loyalists going into hiding. They had tried to mount defences of their own villages from being overrun by either the Boers or the British. But as the war raged on, their villages grew increasingly attractive and strategic for both fronts. Their locations, most of them alongside rivers and streams, were perfect for military outposts and for their ready supply of Bantu labour.
The stories of Bantu groupings resisting the European advances spread quickly, and gained favour with some villages. They found themselves being active participants in the war which they earlier tried to stay on the sidelines of. But thousands others enlisted for the war on either sides. Most of them soon found that they wouldn’t even be allowed to shoot a gun. They became agterryers; they were good enough to tend to camp chores, drive wagons and look after horses.
The Resistance effort was bound to fail, thanks to a cleverly crafted ploy by the Native Refuge Department to reward the families of those black men who accepted employment in the British army. They could buy mielies at half pence per pound, while those who continued to resist enlisting paid double.
Leaders like Mathew found themselves exiled for fear of arrest and the certainty of facing the firing squads. They scoured the land, launching guerrilla warfare on mostly British outposts, supply trains, wagons and roving patrols. The guerrillas dwindled even further after the Native Affairs permitted the recruitment of Blacks, for the re-opening of goldmines that had been closed down because of the war. Most men were recruited from the concentration camps, which meant Matthew’s men had to volunteer or be captured. During interrogation, some broke. That’s how Mathew became the most wanted man of his time.
‘I am Lloyd Steyn,’ he said, wondering if he should extend his hand for a handshake. Mathew hadn’t offered.
Steyn turned to look at the men, some who were already disarming the dead soldiers. The uniforms wouldn’t do; they were heavily bullet-riddled. He was stunned into silence.
‘Thank you,’ Steyn finally regained his ability of speech. ‘Unless of course, you are still planning to kill me.’
‘Mr. Steyn, our war may be against all foreigners who believe they have more rights than us on the land of our birth, but we would never pull the trigger on an unarmed man,’ said Mathew. ‘That’s the only reason these two are dead, and you are alive. The dueling field wasn’t even. You were outnumbered and outgunned. As long as this war continues, we will meet again, Mr. Steyn. Maybe then, we will exchange gunfire. But on this day, we will share a meal.’
Mathew and his men set up camp in the walls of a demolished farmhouse that Steyn and his men had passed just a week earlier. The silent military precision with which the men operated, from the smokeless camp fire, their seamless blending with the landscape and guard-posting, told Steyn that they had received expert military training. He wondered if the resistance had been tailing him and his men all along.
‘You are wondering whose side we are on in this war, aren’t you?’ Mathew asked, chewing noisily as he and a few of his men dug ravenously from the same bowl of meat and porridge. ‘There was a time when the answer would have been neither. But that meant we would have both warring parties gunning for us. We had to choose a side, the lesser of two evils.’
‘There already have been Blacks fighting on both sides of the war,’ Steyn pointed out. ‘You might say, evil had already been in the eye of the beholder, then?’
Mathew smirked.
‘Another figure of speech, albeit your own,’ he said. ‘Indeed, our people made their choices, uninformed and coerced choices. It would not have hurt to wait. It would not have hurt to use hindsight. Boers and the British have never seen the Bantu as an equal, and they are not going to anytime soon. There’s already talk for peace, an end to the war. Who is representing Bantu interests? We haven’t even been invited to the table, because this wasn’t our war in the first place.’
‘Yet you are still fighting,’ Steyn said. ‘Whose side are you on?’
‘From the beginning of this war, we were the ones who had to pick a side, but were the conditions conducive for us to make an informed, objective choice?’ he asked. ‘We are talking about men whose lives were interrupted, who because of your war, had to leave their jobs in the Witwatersrand, the Free State and the Transvaal, and return to villages ravaged by poverty. They were not in a position to make an objective decision which side to pick in this war. They simply took what was on offer. Yet you, the warring parties, still agreed amongst yourselves that we shouldn’t be armed. You felt our methods in war were brutal, you felt we cannot be trusted with guns. A black man with a gun might not be easy to govern after the war, you said. So we were still not good enough for both sides, Mr. Steyn.’
‘Yet here you are,’ Steyn said, and accepted another piece of meat from the bowl the men kept passing around as they feasted.
‘We are the other side, the side both the Boer and British feared might be born out of this war, the independent-thinking Bantu,’ he said. ‘Not your agterryers. We have thought of fighting with you, Mr. Steyn. Your people have shown a willingness to make the land your home, to start afresh. Not to make it yet another colonised outpost of Her Majesty the Queen. But it is up to you how long you want our rifles pointing the other way.’
‘But we have almost already lost the war,’ said Steyn. ‘The British have nearly won this war.’
‘Our struggle is just beginning,’ Mathew said. ‘The British might have won, and for you it is over. But not for us. You will have to remember, Mr. Steyn. Both you and the British have been fighting for land that belonged to neither of you. We are the undeniable, lawful owners of the land. But we are the ones who now have to live in hiding. We cannot go back to our homes. There would be no trial. Only the gallows await Bantu who kill mlungu. Even the Boers agree.’
‘I don’t agree,’ said Steyn as a matter of fact.
‘Only because it was the Bantu who saved your life from your sworn enemy,’ Mathew said, standing up and wiping his hands on his overalls. ‘Had your enemy killed you, it would have been accepted that you were a casualty of this war. Had I killed you, it would have been murder. You recognise that this isn’t a blackman’s war only when it suits you. You are not the only Boer we have saved, Mr. Steyn. We have opened fire on many other mlungus to save lives. Black lives. But for that we face the gallows. You know why? Because black lives don’t matter. Not to the British, and not to the Boers.’
Mathew drew a deep breath, and stared at Steyn intently.
‘Do you know what upsets me the most about the Boers in this war, Mr. Steyn?’ he asked, and didn’t wait for a response. ‘You have the Germans, the Irish, the French, the Russians and the Swiss fighting on your side. Not only are you treating them better than us, but you have promised them some of our lands and minerals as rewards for aiding you. I am going to go and get some sleep. I suggest you do the same.’
One of Mathew’s men, who had been placed on guard duty, gave Steyn his rollbed. For the first time in many months, Steyn actually fell asleep. He opened one eye just after midnight, and saw the men quietly alternating guard duty. Then he drowsed into a sound, peaceful slumber.

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