VICTORIAN/EDWARDIAN FICTION IN S A

AFRICANA VOTES & VIEWS VOL 1 # 9

Let us consider the Victorian novel as placed in a South African environment. After all, so many of the soldiers, administrators and business-people were educated men; men who could write a fair description of an outlandish scene, people and their habits. So where and when did writers start using the subcontinent’s veld as a backdrop to their works of imagination? No, I’m not going to put my foot in it and declare this or that author and title to be able claim primogeniture, as such; that is too dangerous, and just asking for a rebuttal by someone with a better knowledge of the genre than myself. What we shall do is to browse around the shelves; revisit old favourites, and discover a few which are gems, and many that are not.
To date I have not come across any early books for the very young with a local backdrop or from the pen of a local writer. It would seem that the classic nursery tales, rhymes and fables of European origin were thought to be quite sufficient, or alternatively it may have been judged that the rough, colonial scene was not fit for the tender hearts and ears of Victorian sprouts. So it is only in the first decade of the twentieth century that we find a collection of adaptations from native tales by E J Bourhill and J B Drake, called simply Fairy Tales from South Africa (Macmillan, 1908). I can find no further information on the two authors, except that the introduction ends with the legend ‘Barberton, Transvaal, 1908.’ Speaking of introduction, this one goes to great lengths to explain the way of life of the black people, how each little tribe had its chief (hence all the kings, queens and princesses in the tales); how a man’s ambition was to have an impi of warriors to fight for him in his many battles; how they hardly ever worked except for a little cattle-herding, as work is what wives were put on earth for; that they had two or more wives, for whom they had paid lobola, and how they only lived in the idyllic surroundings of the Eastern Transvaal, Natal and the Eastern Cape. All a little patronising and full of generalisations and most certainly not PC – however, I must applaud the writers for a labour of love that might have been a very worthwhile introduction for a European child into another culture and belief system at the time. The tokoloshes might have become fairies, the chiefs great kings and the ntombis are all princesses; while the unspeakable cruelties and bloodshed are glossed over skilfully so as not to shock and offend, but something of the flavour of tribal legends has survived, and the book is a milestone of sorts in Africana Literature.
Catering for slightly older tastes, the institution of boarding-school life, so dear to the heart of the Englishman, doesn’t escape the colonial writers’ guild either. I cannot profess enough interest to have scoured the shelves in search of the subject, so I can’t speak of its full extent in the subcontinent, but I did run across one quite readable little effort by one ‘Natalian’, actually a gentleman by the name of Albert Weir Baker, who seemed to have been more famous for writing on serious subjects, such as the ‘effects of liquor on the natives’, ‘the evils of Freemasonry and its incompatibility with Christianity’ as well as a personal statement of faith, when he was director of the South African Compounds Commission. The book in question was A South African Boy; Schoolboy Life in Natal, (Marshall Russell, 1897). While the plot made no lasting impression on me (at a distance of some 12–15 years of having last read it) it was entertaining enough to keep me at it throughout, and I found it reflected the flavour of schooling in what must have been a vastly different environment from even what I experienced some sixty years later.
Some of the earliest works written to appeal to young minds, which I read, must have been those classics by G A Henty – With Buller in Natal, The Young Colonists, and With Roberts to Pretoria are three with a South African flavour that come to mind. All jolly good fun, British imperialism, courage, honour, adventure and the like; the baddies, ie Boers/Zulus etc got their come-uppance and the young hero either settled down to a long, productive and esteemed existence, or else he returned Home and became a sitting MP or JP or something. During my pre-teenage years I could find no fault with these adventure yarns, but even then the basic similarity of the above stories, each in a slightly different Victorian historical scene, came to my attention, and their attraction waned.
R M Ballantyne was another notable Victorian who wrote books with African, and in three instances South African background. He was a scion of a reputable firm of printers and publishers, and had the great good fortune to do an early stint of work in Canada, which stood him in good stead when he decided to devote himself to writing juvenile literature. While a large number of English-speaking people will have read at least his most famous work, Coral Island (1857), he wrote more than a hundred books, mostly characterised by meticulous attention to detail (said to stem from his making one colossal error about the thickness of a coconut shell in Coral Island) and he tried whenever possible to write from personal experience. Of his South African books, Hunting the Lion and The Settler and the Savage are pretty standard fare, while his third book is, in fact, the story of his Six Months at the Cape (1879), a light-hearted reminiscence of an extended vacation in the Eastern Cape and Karoo; an interesting and entertaining read for readers of all ages. The rest of Africa is not ignored, and we can find another half dozen or so novels, set in the Dark Continent. One of these, dealing with slavery, Black Ivory (1873), was in all likelihood inspired by David Livingstone and his crusade against this evil, as the author wholeheartedly endorsed the latter’s views. Ballantyne inspired not only generations of youngsters, with the dictum ‘that he believed that boys must be trained up from boys to be true men and not just left on their own to be boys’ , he also inspired other writers, among whom was Robert Louis Stevenson, who reputedly incorporated several of Ballantyne’s ideas in Treasure Island.
Almost certainly the next in line were those wonderful books by H Rider Haggard. She, King Solomon’s Mines, Alan’s Wife, Allan Quatermain, Ayesha – and dozens more titles that flowed from this talented man’s pen. His phrase of ‘She who must be obeyed’ has passed into the English language as all that stands for female authority over the hapless male of the species. Haggard spent a while in the Transvaal, where he had a position under Sir Theophilus Shepstone in the years leading up to the First Anglo-Boer War. During this period he met a number of the hunter-adventurers, like Selous and Burnham, on whom his most endearing character, Allan was based. There was romance, tragedy, battle, adventure and lost treasure and lost civilizations galore – but I have a sneaking suspicion that old Haggard actually had talent. While I find the MGM versions of King Solomon’s Mines and Mogambo a bit insipid after two viewings of Deborah Kerr and Grace Kelly each doing her vapid siren-thing, even separated by some thirty years; but I can still read his description of that noble Zulu warrior, Umslopogaas, swinging his deadly war axe and picking off enemies at will while chanting that wild war-song; and get a thrill from the heroic prose. Two of his books, Swallow (Longmans Green, 1899), dealt with the Great Trek, and Jess (1887), were probably aimed more at the fair sex, I seem to recall, being the adventures of young heroines. His books did not all end well, or tamely, nor did they always promote British suzerainty over the remote regions touched upon. I seriously doubt that they were intended to portray life as it was lived in the second half of the 19th century, but they were imaginative, well-written adventure yarns, which deserve to stand next to classics like Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
Still on the subject of juvenile literature, let us consider that phenomenon which is Jock of the Bushveld. Not a Victorian novel, you will say – well, almost, would be my reply. Though it was published in 1907, the experiences which led to the writing of the book were during Fitzpatrick’s years on the Eastern Transvaal Gold Fields from 1884 onwards, and when he accompanied Lord Randolph Churchill to Mashonaland in the late 1890s. Although presently not considered PC, as it reflects terminology, social attitudes and racial stereotyping which were common during the period, it is unlikely that even attempts at sanitising a book of such stature will succeed in killing off its popularity. This book has a genuinely wide appeal. Although written for the ‘lickle people’, ie Fitz’s children, there is enough meat on the bones to arouse every hunter’s and bush lover’s enthusiasm – anybody who wants to experience the flavour of the Gold Rush, the smell of the campfire, the heat of the fever-stricken Lowveld and the rough camaraderie of the men of the trails and tracks. The book certainly has enough literary merit to survive for many more generations. A less widely known work of fiction, which predated Jock, was published in 1897. It consisted of a number of short campfire-stories, quite readable and entertaining, entitled The Outspan – probably the best of a number of such volumes from different authors of the period.
Just from the above three authors and their dozen-odd books one can already see a theme developing. The subcontinent was portrayed as a blank canvas for adventurers; scope for explorers, prospectors and hunters. There were wild beasts aplenty, and wild people too, that would need subduing. So primarily the backdrop was portrayed as being attractive to the young would-be adventurer; there were riches to be found and fame to be won. South Africa was a man’s country, and a steady stream of hunting, travelling and soldiering books emanated from the gentry that forsook the shores of old Blighty, so perforce the tellers of tales had to follow the same paths, with their inventions ever surpassing reality. While a few hardy ladies followed in their footsteps, the raw environment did not endear itself to the female novelist as a backdrop.
A Victorian lady who entered the early literary fray was Harriet Ward, wife of an officer stationed on the Eastern Frontier. Her first effort was Five Years in Kaffirland (Colburn, 1848) in which she faithfully describes the ‘War of the Axe’, and displays great sympathy for soldier and colonist alike. This was followed by her editorship of a minor work on The Past and Future of Emigration, before she launched into a work of fiction, which was very much in the male domain of the ‘wild frontier, peopled by savage warriors and an intrepid bunch of colonists’ entitled Jasper Lyle; a Tale of Kaffirland (G Routledge, 1851–2). I have to admit that the lady’s style, plot and execution was not to my taste and some forty to fifty pages of her work were sufficient for the day for my needs. Nonetheless, I recall that her book did present life as it was then with a touch more realism than was generally incorporated in the fiction of the period by her male counterparts.
Olive Schreiner can be considered a rare exception with her books Story of an African Farm (1883) and Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland, but while the former faithfully describes the dreary lot of womankind and tackles the issues of the period, the latter was not just another tale of derring-do in the wilds with a political agenda thrown in for good measure, but a rather wearisome allegorical satire against the greed of one C J Rhodes in nabbing an entire country from the inhabitants. So one could say that Schreiner was the first to break out of the adolescent view of the Dark Continent and who painted the human canvas within the strictures of culture rather than physical environment.
Another fine craftsman of the adventure yarn was John Buchan. Although his book Prester John did not appear until 1910, the writer’s experiences during the last phases of the Boer War, and his later travels around the Transvaal, gave him the rich background into which he placed the young Scottish lad, David Crawfurd, who became embroiled in an uprising of the black tribes under the leadership of the messianic John Laputa. The setting is absolutely authentic; the two main characters are utterly believable and the plot is not that far-fetched that it could not have happened somewhere in Africa under British colonial rule, although some of Buchan’s work is nauseatingly jingoistic and racist, with archetypal villains – Jew, Levantine, Bolshevik, Portuguese halfbreed, Boer drunkard, Fuzzy Wuzzy and Boche or Hun – leaping off every other page. I have to concede that he writes a mean adventure yarn, which involves the reader sufficiently to make the book enjoyable almost a hundred years after it first appeared. His other books, though featuring a touch of South African flavour in the personages of Richard Hannay and the aviator Pieter Pienaar, have very little to do with Africa, and are thus outside the focus of this essay.
It would seem that a number of sportsmen, after having had their fill of the chase, decided to settle in their upholstered chairs and to allow their memories and imaginations free rein. One of these was the renowned naturalist and hunter, Henry Anderson Bryden, a great friend of Selous’, with whose cousin, Percy, he collaborated on a volume entitled Travel and Big Game, in addition to a number of hunting, natural history and historical books. In his latter days he also decided to branch out into fiction, and the result was the rather disappointing volume, From Veldt Camp Fires (1900), a rather nondescript collection of anecdotes. I read it recently, and apparently he wrote a few others, Don Duarte’s Treasure (1904) and The Gold Kloof (1907), which I have not seen to date, but I doubt that they contributed much to twentieth century literature.
A little earlier, similar tales were penned by one Captain Alfred W Drayson, who found enough time in his busy military schedule to embark on several hunting trips in the Eastern Cape and Natal. His real-life adventures are ably described in the hunting book Sporting Scenes among the Kaffirs of South Africa (G Routledge, 1858), even though the finish of his book left a lot to be desired due to the ghastly colour plates that adorned its pages in greasy splendour. Obviously his imagination became inflamed with all he had seen and heard, so he followed up his success with a series of books filled with ‘sporting narrative and daring adventures among savage beasts and hardly less savage men’, such as Tales at the Outspan (1865), White Chief of the Caffres (1887), Diamond Hunters of South Africa (1889), and From Keeper to Captain (1889) – the latter being the only volume I have actually looked through. Generally fairly standard adolescent fare for the period, but one does glimpse a few passages where the soldiers’ and hunters’ lots are sketched without the addition of excess purple prose.
The able historian, Joseph Forsyth Ingram, started off his literary career with an eminently collectible work with the snappy title of The Land of Gold, Diamonds and Ivory – being a comprehensive handbook and guide to the colonies, states and republics of South and East Africa (W B Whittingham & Co, 1889). It would seem as if Ingram assembled a wealth of material which he was unable to place in his tour de force, so he was motivated to offer his readership a collection of tales under the title of Story of a Gold Concession and other African Tales and Legends (W H Griffin & Co, 1893). The book is a strange mixture of fact, legend and pure fiction, which is very difficult to classify. The first tale, after the title of the book, is obviously fiction as it deals with the fate of a crazed prospector and his fabulously rich gold find in the Lebombo mountains of Swaziland. Another such prospector’s tale, this time set in Natal, also smacks of a fertile imagination. Then follow a number of tales with a tribal setting. Some of the personages mentioned are historical, and the stories run very much along the lines of a Victorian reinterpretation of African fireside tales. Lastly, there are a few oddments, about Paul Kruger, an Arab slaver, and hunting trips along the Pongola and Zambezi rivers. An odd assortment indeed. After this brief flirtation with fiction, he returned to write another three books on the early history of Natal, Pietermaritzburg and Durban, respectively; each a serious and sought-after work of Nataliana.
The institution (one hesitates to call it a firm) of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge also played a role in publishing a number of, presumably inspirational works, on a number of subjects, which one would not necessarily associate with devotional teachings. There were biographies of numerous missionaries, and heroic descriptions of their good works; one described the Herculean task of shipping a motor boat cross-country from the Cape to the Vaal River and then on to Mozambique; travels in the Transkei after the great famine caused by Nonquause’s prophecy; Mrs Charlotte Barter’s lone travels in Zululand; African language primers and dictionaries; works with some ethnographical pretensions, as well as a little piece of fiction, by a Charles Henry Eden, entitled An Inherited Task (1874), sketching the miseries of life as a missionary in Natal under the rule of Shaka. This author too, had a serious geographical work on the continent to his credit, while he also wrote another romance entitled Ula in Veldt and Laager (1879).
Lastly, let us consider one of my all-time favourites – William Charles Scully. In some of my other writings I have already waxed lyrical about his engrossing autobiographies, as well as his sole hunting title, Lodges in the Wilderness (H Jenkins, 1915). But Scully had a lively intellect and imagination, as well as having his work bring him into contact with many different people under varying circumstances. His work as a magistrate probably gave him a certain number of leisure hours, not least in Namaqualand, where, if his autobiography is to be believed, he was almost marooned in his house due to his feud with the mine manager. Whatever the reasons, he wrote three works of fiction before the turn of the century: The White Hecatomb (1897), A Vendetta of the Desert and Between Sun and Sand (both 1898). The first book consists of a number of short stories with an Eastern Cape background, as he had been stationed in various locations as magistrate for a number of years. From these years among the tribespeople, another book, Kafir Stories (1895) also emanated, and it is considered to be one of the early records of black folklore. The latter two novels are based on his Namaqualand and Bushmanland stints. The former is an adventure yarn of revenge and pursuit into the inhospitable wastes across the Gariep, while the latter is a romantic tale of the love between an itinerant trekboer’s daughter and a young Jewish smous, set in the now ghost town of Namies, near Pofadder. Both are well worth reading as they give the reader a fine snapshot of the meagre society and landscape that they have been set in. Another volume of short stories was to follow in 1907, entitled By Veldt and Kopje, and after many years of self-imposed silence due to his disgust with the way the British treated the Cape Boers during the war, he finally sent The Harrow to the publishers in 1921 – a book which castigated British authority and military to the utmost. In 1923 his last work of fiction, Daniel Vananda, was published. This can be called a precursor to Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country, with a similar theme, that of a rural African running afoul of European culture, with dire results.

BOOKSENSE - A SHORT GUIDE TO HANDLING YOUR FAVOURITE BOOKS

AFRICANA VOTES & VIEWS VOL 1 # 8

This is a short, basic manual to keeping your library in a good condition. It does not pretend to be a comprehensive course in librarianship, conservation or archival methods – it is purely some commonsense and knowledge that I have garnered from many people, but most of the information came from my late wife, my friends Cyril Adriaanse and Peter Coates, both of whom worked at the SA Library, my sister Dr Cora Ovens (a lifelong librarian) and Frank Johnston a bookseller from Central Africa, where the bugs bite bigger and better.

Know thine enemy: The three main culprits under our South African conditions are a) Moisture b) Light c) Biological attack. There are many more, but most of these are found in association with the first three, so let us investigate these threats.

Of the tens of thousands of books that have been presented to me by prospective sellers, the greatest number of no-no’s have been books which have been exposed to moisture. In its grossest form, the volume has been dunked, or had water poured over it; there are water-marks across the pages; colours have run, the textblock is rippled; at worst, the pages are stuck together. A more subtle exposure to damp can result in the textblock absorbing so much water from the edges inwards, that the margins of the pages display a ‘high tide’ mark right around, in extreme cases. A hot steamy climate has the further effect of ‘foxing’ the pages of books, that is, the growth of those unsightly brown blotches that seem to get worse year after year. The quality of the paper that the book is made of, has something to do with the degree of foxing, since badly bleached and insufficiently sized paper is most prone; but the micro-organisms that cause the discolouration will grow on even the best cotton-rag paper, or a modern high-gloss paper, given enough time, heat and atmospheric moisture.

Mould is, of course, biological and the companion to severely drenched books. The remnants of this will also stain paper, mostly with green, blue or black shades – all equally unpleasant to look at. I have heard of desperation measures applied by an archivist to his precious documents when they were under a leak in the roof – he bundled the whole lot into a clean deep-freeze. The sub-zero temperatures prevented mould from forming, and slowly the moisture was evaporated from the paper and deposited on the walls of the freezer as ice, leaving the documents in reasonably good shape. It works the same way as putting a slice of bread in the freezer, forgetting about it for three months and then pulling out a dessicated piece of toast. I haven’t tried it myself, but it might just save a precious book. I wish I’d known the trick when we moved into a rented house in White River, Eastern Transvaal, some decades back. All of my books were standing in the lounge in tea crates. Our neighbours invited us over for supper, during which time a small tornado blew the roof off our house and dumped about 150mm of rain onto our goodies. I seem to recall I chucked away several hundred good books. All one can do with an area of mould on a page, is to brush it away gently, without inhaling the stuff. It really is not good for the lungs.

So, water and heat are bad, especially in tandem. What about cold? Well there seems to be some consensus among librarians that a chilly environment is really good for books, but most users would complain loudly if they had to wrap up in anoraks and shawls to do their research. In practice, seventeen degrees is a reasonable compromise – but a very far cry from a Bloemfontein or Johannesburg winter when it can get to way under the zero mark, or an Empangeni or Kalahari summer, when you’re pushing the mercury at forty plus, with about 95% humidity thrown into the bargain in Natal. What do they say?: climate is what you expect; weather is what you get. So you deal with whatever our fair country dishes out by way of ambient temperature. Most of us don’t go as far as airconditioning for our library, but it’s a thought. On the other hand, it’s not essential to be uncomfortable in your reading room, even if you are surrounded by books; to have frozen toes, nose and fingers while you are trying to concentrate on some work, or recreational reading, is no fun. I have a little fan-heater tucked away under my desk – just so that I can kick the switch to on when the cold bites a tad savagely. Talking about heaters though, there is a caveat – fireplaces, though comforting to the body, a treat to the senses of smell, sight and hearing – are a strict no-go area. Unfortunately one only has to look at the ceilings of rooms with open fireplaces to see what happens. A little smoke always escapes from the open hearth, and if there are books in the room, they not only absorb smoke and tars like blotting paper, which then react with cloth, paper and leather in a number of complicated and unwanted ways, but the books smell of smoke. Speaking of which, I have to act the reformed smoker part and thorough spoil-sport: smoke from cigars, cigarettes and pipes descends gently onto any exposed part of a book which is in the same room, it glues itself onto all the abovementioned materials with tenacity, and stinks, forever, quite apart from darkening and damaging bookcloth as well as the edges of the textblock.

Dry heat is probably the least problematic condition to deal with. Although certain older, and certainly most inferior types of paper, get brittle in a dry, hot climate, as long as the books are handled with care, they will rehydrate when the ambient humidity rises again. Leatherbound books do need some special care under those conditions though, since even opening such a volume under those conditions could cause the hinge to break, resulting in very expensive damage. This does not mean one should apply liberal dollops of dubbin or saddle soap to those ancient treasured tomes. There are a number of good products available, unfortunately mostly from overseas sources, which further complicates matters, since a number of these substances are in liquid, flammable form, which precludes the bibliophile importing even the tiny amount needed per mail. In effect you have to find a runner, who will smuggle the stuff out in their personal toiletries, disguised as after-shave or something, when they return from their holiday in Britain, Germany, or USA. The British Library does sell a solid wax, though, and this is best applied very sparingly with a soft cloth to the leather, especially at the hinges. Books so treated should be left to stand separate from their shelfmates for a few days, to prevent any possibility of them sticking together. The liquid lotions ( I use a brand from Germany, which my late wife smuggled into South Africa) one applies by wetting a sponge slightly, squeezing it repeatedly until it foams and then applying it in even strokes to the leather. It is left to dry, and then the book is buffed lightly with a soft cloth.

Now let us deal with threat no 2 – that wonderfully abundant sunlight, which makes our country such a bright, cheery place to live in – in general – sunburn, melanoma and severe ‘sunning of the spine and covers’ apart. Any sunlight is taboo on the bookshelf, except possibly if sanitized by passing it through some total sun-block film on the window panes – if that should exist. Even if filtered through a semi-transparent curtaining material, the ultraviolet is still present in quantities that will at first bleach, and in time, totally destroy the cloth covering the boards of your books. Even sunlight reflected off water or a light-coloured painted surface, still has some destructive force left in it. The old builders and architects had good ideas during Victorian times – they surrounded most houses with wide verandahs or stoeps, which gave shade to the walls and interior of the house, as well as keeping stray sunbeams from intruding through the apertures. Nowadays we like to live behind walls made of glass, or sliding glass doors, under skylights or in houses with interior courtyards and patios. This new lifestyle results in much more exposure to the potentially harmful effects of the sunlight on your furnishings and other property viz your library. Without getting paranoid about it, choose a south-facing room where possible, or at least a wall that gets no sun, not even a passing sweep in the late afternoon. If you must face any other direction, you must have some form of blind, slatted, or rolling, if you don’t want to be in deep gloom behind dark curtains.

A last word on sunshine: if perchance you should leave a book out in the sun (as I’m sure we have all done on occasion) and you come back to find that the top cover has curled beautifully like a calamari steak ten seconds after it has hit a hot pan; all is not lost. Generally it just means that there has occurred a sudden imbalance of moisture content between the outer and inner layers of the cover, causing the outer (dry) to shrink, while the inner (ambiently moist) has remained roughly the same as it was previously. Do not try to rehydrate the poor cover by some precipitous means such as spraying it with water. The best cure is to put the book back into your library and to leave it alone for a couple of days. The covers’ moisture content will balance out again in a few days, and once the book has been returned to its place on the shelves, it should resume its correct shape. A similar effect is found occasionally when endpapers are replaced. If too much glue is slapped onto the inside face of the cover before the paper is applied, the paper is wetted, and expands. Once the glue dries, the paper shrinks and you have a book with permanently bow-legged covers. Not much you can do to that except to start over again.

Biological attack is next. I am sure there is no book collector alive that has not been rewarded by the quicksilver flash of a fishmoth (aka silverfish, Ctenolepisma longicaudata and several other species worldwide) slithering out of the just opened book and almost miraculously disappearing from sight again. The signs are there, usually on the edges of the endpapers, where the textblock doesn’t lie quite snugly against the boards due to the bookcloth having been folded over; or where a map is folded into the textblock; an exposed edge may be riddled with holes. Even some covers don’t escape the attentions of these voracious beasties, as they manage to chew away the starchy size between the threads of the bookcloth, leaving faint whitish trails which almost look like scratches. A very helpful Iziko website suggests you make a mixture of the following:
5 parts gum Arabic
5 parts sodium fluosilicate
4 parts flour
6 parts sugar
40 parts water (enough to make a thick paste)
Stir for hours (since the sodium fluosilicate hadly seems to dissolve at all) dip strips of card into the mixture and leave to dry. Hang them up all over your bookshelves. If you have difficulty finding the latter ingredient, you’re in good company; if you do find it, the chemist will be strangely reluctant to give it to you.

Other sites’ suggestions range from sprinkling whole garlic cloves (!!), to salt, boric acid powder or diatomaceous earth around your library, or leaving rolled up damp newspapers (which the silverfish are supposed to frequent for a drink, supposedly) and then burning it the next day without unrolling. Of course, you would never know how successful you have been, would you? Jokes aside, my conservator friend says crushed mothballs, sprinkled in a thin line on the shelf behind the books, keeps silverfish away – if you don’t mind the characteristic smell of naphthalene, or the fact that this lingers on the pages of the books, might make you sneeze when you read – and increases the combustability of your home, as it is volatile and forms a flammable vapour. I rather like the smell; it takes me back to my childhood, when granny took out her double fox-furs and slung them over her shoulders to keep out the cold on a winter’s day. Choose your weapons. Or you can ignore the pests.

One doesn’t hear too often of bookworms any more. Actually they are beetle larvae; from the death-watch beetle, Xestobium rufovillosum, or the furniture beetle, Anobium punctatum and I am certain, a whole horde of other species native to Africa. The tell-tale tracks of these are small holes, sometimes less than 1mm in diameter, running often at right angles through hundreds of pages, mostly near the spine. I only once, in the spirit of investyigation bought a book which had been infested with this plague. However, when I took it to pieces trying to find the culprit, I had no luck. Most likely the larva had pupated and flown the nest. Obviously if one sees little heaps of sawdust on one’s bookshelves, prepare to go to war with a vengeance. Infested books can only be successfully treated with fumigation using some really dangerous stuff, so best to leave it to professionals.

Termites are a scourge in the southern United States nowadays, primarily since their houses are constructed mainly from wood; less so in South Africa since we have stopped living in wattle and daub huts with cattle-dung floors. However these stealthy invaders tunnel away so craftily, from floor up into the vertical supports of bookshelves, from where they will branch out laterally into stopes to reach pay-dirt – to whit, the books. The only way of detecting them is to turn up your hearing aid, so that you can hear them as they chew away on dark nights (honestly) or to read your books frequently, so to discover their mining activities before an entire seam of books has been reduced to hollow shadows of their former selves. I recall a passage written by, I think, one Annie Martin in her charming book Home Life on an Ostrich Farm (G Philip, 1891) where she describes these repeated termite incursions and subsequent loss of her bookshelf. Her solution was to suspend a shelf by means of four wires from the ceiling beams, thus robbing the insects of their tunneling route. Only problem was, her brak roof then leaked copiously, right above her bookshelf. Makes one wonder how any books survived the African onslaught for longer than a hundred years or more.

A real home-wrecker is the cockroach. I’m talking of these large black, flying jobbies, the size of a small bat – which issue from the city sewers and drainpipes when darkness falls. There is no warning; suddenly you have a book that almost looks as if a rat or a small Chihuahua had been chewing at it. The cloth is in tatters, or patches of it are eroded to a latticework of threads, and it’s a matter of re-binding if you want to save your treasured collectors’ item. It is almost impossible to guard against them. Keep your library doors and windows closed at night; if there is a bathroom, plug the drains; above all, be watchful and whack the damn things whenever you see one. For all the above living pests, I do the following: every three months or so, I buy a couple of packets of Fumitabs from the chemist. These ominous looking (and smelling) globs come in foil-packs of three. They contain some pretty potent poisons, so don’t lick your fingers after handling them. Place one or two of the family-sized pills on a brick in each room, depending on size, seal all airbricks and other apertures in the room, light them, and scarper quickly. They emit a choking smoke for a few minutes, after which they self-extinguish. You may then leave the house for the rest of the day, making certain that your dog/cat/canary/child have all left the building. Do not leave your wors in the kitchen to defrost, or your bread, or any other loose comestible which you intend to partake of. Everything is bathed in deadly fug, and hopefully some six or eight hours later you can come back and reoccupy your home after opening all the doors and windows. Problem solved – for a while. One of my clients from Zambia has just sent me this hot tip – he recommends Bayer’s "Max Force", a cream injector syringe which enables one to run a bead around the bottom edge of a book case which keeps them at bay. I shall certainly try this as soon as I can lay my hands on some.

Rodents are not normally a real threat to books in modern homes. Those occasional lovely little grey house mice that some years ago wandered into our house and set up home in the fibreglass insulation of the kitchen stove, confined themselves to the crumbs of the table, so to speak, until the cats made short work of the whole family, which had increased to seven at one stage. They would take turns in popping up out of the spiral plates (cooled) of the stove during meals – as if to see what was on the menu. Anyway, rodents don’t eat books unless a famine strikes; at worst they may convert one into nesting material, or they might test their incisors on an edge, leaving characteristic chisel-marks. Free range pet birds, such as parrots, can be a menace too, according to a colleague who was asked to value a severely nibbled collection of books. Dogs have the delightful habit of lifting the odd leg here and there to demarcate their territory, while cats spray with wild abandon when the moon is right. Both are to be distinctly discouraged in a library unless they are adequately trained in human etiquette.

Now for some more general, and probably very obvious hints on book handling and storage. Metal shelves are best. That’s official; but I don’t care, I like wood, proper wood. Luckily I used to be a sawmiller, so I gathered a whole batch of strange timbers, Kiaat, Chestnut, Camphor, Cedar, Cypress, Cherry etc, all of which have been used to manufacture the shelves all over my house and business. Most of the shelves have no backs, but they are fastened to the walls by means of sturdy bolts ten millimeters away from the walls, as I suffer from a fear of falling bookshelves. This means that even if one of those occasional Northwest gales should occur, which has on one occasion been so strong that it drove the accompanying rain right through a double brick wall in my lounge (on the wall where my books are); the water could run harmlessly down the walls and onto the floor, without getting the books wet. It doesn’t need a disaster to wet your books. Walls are damp structures all too frequently, and books act like blotting paper. If your shelves are against the wall, nail a strip of timber along the back of each to keep your books from touching the masonry. If your bookshelf is backed, see that there is a space between the wood and the wall to allow for ventilation.

Don’t jam your books in too tightly. It’s not good for them, and it’s even worse when some ham-handed person insists on using a probing digit to extract a volume that is tightly jammed into place. Hence ‘slight damage to top of spine’. Better that the book should come to you willingly, that it should slide out of and back into its place. On the other hand, having gaps in your collection, resulting in the classic picture of a few upright volumes with one or two leaning at any angle against them, is not ideal either. The leaning books tend to get a permanent cocking of the spine which is difficult to remove once set in place. Best then to use a bookend, but if you haven’t got any, a pile of horizontal books will do just as well to hold the others upright – and the titles are still readable on the spine. Books should not be inanimate ‘collections’ for display purposes only. They should certainly be taken out, handled, opened, browsed through, and replaced. Within bounds, this is good for a book and I am not about to bring on the white cotton gloves – but clean hands are essential, and if you smoke a pipe, this most definitely applies, since the finger or thumb you use to tamp your ‘baccy down, leaves a horrible mark on a page as you turn it. The handling means that the volume is inspected periodically for damage, which may be caught in the early stage and remedied, the pages are aired, which helps to protect them against foxing, and the work could even be left standing on edge overnight (between some supports if it is a large book) with the pages slightly ajar as it were, if there is even a suggestion of a musty odour.

Heavy, old books should be opened and read in a book-cradle. Opening them on a flat surface puts a strain on elderly bindings, and could crack the glue used on the back of the textblock. Large folio size volumes are the most difficult to handle under the best of circumstances. A big table is a prerequisite; but in some cases the books are so large, and the paper so heavy and fragile, that one should think about using both hands to turn a page – one at the bottom corner and the other at the top. Even moderately large books can be damaged by the reader who persists in wanting to turn a page by inserting his thumb somewhere round about the middle of the bottom margin, and flipping the page from right to left. This frequently results in tears on the bottom edge of the page near the spine. The correct manner is to feel your way into the textblock at the top right hand corner of the open book, insert the hand fully and help the page over to the left. Left-handed people had better get used to this – there’s no alternative – except taking up Hebrew.

Dust is another, albeit minor, enemy. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath, and also into every nook, cranny and book, if you leave it in any place for long enough. Let us say your library has matured for another year, loved and admired, and occasionally perused in part. A little housekeeping is indicated, say once a year, or maybe every two or three. A feather mop will do at a pinch, but it’s going to be a sneezy, wheezy sort of job, really only fit for outside the house; which in turn, is not ideal for the books. So technology should be called in – a vacuum cleaner, of the small, hand-held sort, one with a little doodah at the business end, which has got a nice soft Führer moustache, with which to kiss your books. If the item to be cleaned has a dustjacket, lay the book down, open the front cover, flap back the dustjacket, use said vacuum cleaner to remove dust, dead insects etc from covers, replace dustjacket, close book, turn it over and repeat the performance for the back cover. That way you have examined the entire book. But wait, the edges of the textblock, and especially the top edge, gather large quantities of dust, which eventually seep in between the pages and so dirty the entire volume. So once again the vacuum brush is employed, either while the book was lying flat with its dustjacket flapped out of harm’s way, or after the first action is completed, one takes the book and vacuums the entire textblock edge, taking care not to damage the precious dustjacket in any way. This is a lengthy process, best handled by a minimum of two people, who enjoy each other’s company and have something to chat about as they go about this exquisitely boring task.

Lastly, let us consider a little library hygiene of a different sort. Ordering your collection in some fashion so that you can actually find that reference book that you need right now, or that beloved novel that you incautiously (as even friends can’t be trusted to return books) want to lend to your best friend who has come to visit. The librarians devised the so-called Dewey system (or rather Dewey did), which is all very good, and those accession numbers on the spine, which so grate the buyers of antiquarian books who buy library discards, are all good, useful stuff. Problem is, nobody except librarians can be bothered to swot up a book of some hundreds of pages, and to memorise all the guff within. So one reverts to an alphabetical order. Ah, but there are so many different subjects – best one keeps each of them separate, in alphabetical order, so one allocates a few metres of shelf space here for this subject, followed by another few metres there for the next. Uh, small problem, Subject A has a few large folio volumes, which only fit into the shelf earmarked for Subject D; the same applies to Subject C. So already Subject D looks like a dog’s breakfast, three subjects in it, either with dividers between, or in general disarray – but at least alphabetical. Problem is, how do you remember five years on which subject has a few books tucked away on an odd shelf among a bunch of other stuff? Then there is the problem of allocating a volume to a certain category. Take the category art - possibly antique furniture, being a craft should be in another, or maybe it should be in architecture, as the objects are found in houses, or maybe even in history. There is no hard and fast rule as to what is right or wrong. One has to please oneself, but some order is essential, as is some record of what you own. Almost every month clients clamour to buy books, that I can positively prove to them, they have already bought from me a few years back. So frail is the human mind; mine included. Which is why I have invested a certain amount of money and time and effort in maintaining a database record of every book that I have in my possession, as well as its whereabouts. That’s still not infallible – but it helps. If your collection contains a treasure or two – or many, then keep some sort of record of what the value is, in case some form of public transport should prematurely curtail you natural span. It will help your executors in disposing fairly of your assets after your demise, and it will prevent your lovingly amassed collection from landing on the dump.

THOSE BL...D MISSIONARIES

AFRICANA VOTES & VIEWS VOL1 # 7

Love them or hate them, revile them or praise them – missionaries played an immense role in the colonisation of Africa, as well as in the introduction of European culture, ideas, practices, prejudices – as well as vices, to the indigenous populations which they came to uplift and enlighten. These fervent spreaders of the Gospel, often themselves ill-educated men with but a few artisanal skills, braved a hostile environment among alien peoples whose languages they could not speak, whose customs appalled and whose very mode of existence was an opposite to the settled agrarian life of northern Europe whence these teachers came. They were ill-equipped with materials and funds, practical knowledge and teaching skills – yet they taught their flocks simple agriculture, carpentry, building, language, and later reading and writing. They struggled valiantly to assimilate local languages, in the quest of that Holy Grail – the testament in the vernacular, to make it intelligible to all their parishioners.
Mostly they were supported by wives; often all too short-lived, as they succumbed to illnesses or childbirth. When one reads of the last days of some of these worthy women, one can only marvel that any were to be found who would trek alongside their menfolk into the howling wilderness of the hinterland. Some widowers then married Khoi or slave women, who became valuable aides in the exchange of culture in both directions, however much the practice was frowned on by the government or society of the day.
Above all, the missionaries wrote. Firstly they had to report back to their mission societies, either in South Africa, Moravia or in London, from whose records much of the regional histories can be reconstructed, or if they were fortunate enough to be able to return to their homelands on retirement, they sometimes penned their memoirs. It is mostly from these writings that we know today how life was lived then, how people found food, water and shelter; how they celebrated, how they mourned; how they played and how they warred with each other. Imperfect the records may be, filtered through the dour dogmas of the faiths these men professed, and coloured by their narrow views, but the reader should find information, adventure, natural history, ethnography and yes, entertainment and humour among the ‘missionary labours’.
Georg Schmidt was the first of this illustrious band to come out to the Cape. Although he was not of the ‘official’ reformed church, he was found acceptable to the establishment and settled first at Riviersonderend, and later Baviaanskloof, which became known as Genadendal. Although his baptismal practices brought him into conflict with the establishment, he spent seven years in South Africa, and though his converts were few, his reputation probably eased subsequent entry by other Herrnhut brethren into the country. This simple farmer’s diaries and letters are available in the book Dagboek en Briewe van Georg Schmidt (Wes Kaaplandse Instituut vir Historiese Navorsing, 1981). A hiatus of almost fifty years followed before the next batch of Herrnhuters established themselves at Baviaanskloof, where their work flourished during the changes of government from Dutch to British, not without some suspicion by the European community, but also earning some commendation from notable travellers such as Lady Anne Barnard and the governor, the Earl of Caledon. In 1808 the Moravians were permitted to open a station at Groene Kloof, or Mamre, as it became known.
Meanwhile, a South African Missionary Society had also been founded by interested locals, and the renowned London Missionary Society entered the field. Before the end of the 18th century, two men, Kicherer and Vanderkemp, assisted by Messrs Edwards and Edmonds respectively, went to work in the northern Karoo and in the Eastern Cape. Although Kicherer made much of his work among the ‘Bushmen’, his efforts scarcely reached the few remaining tribespeople, nor did he convert any. He did parade a couple of converted heathen in Cape Town and even Europe, but from the book by Karel Schoeman J J Kicherer en die Vroë Sending 1799-1806 (S A Library, 1996), it would seem as if he had very little taste for the heartbreaking slog of teaching the nomadic flotsam that inhabited the region between the Zak and Orange Rivers, and that he preferred the lecture halls of the great cities. Vanderkemp achieved fame, or rather notoriety at Bethelsdorp, near Port Elizabeth, where he lived and worked in the same humble circumstances as his converts, and even married one – as did one of his fellow missionaries, one Read. The former's controversial career is described in the book Doctor Vanderkemp' by A D Martin (Livingstone Press, 1948).
By 1810 there were a number of workers in the missionary field of the subcontinent; the Albrecht brothers, Anderson, Edwards, Kok and Seidenfaden pioneered briefly in the north, while two men who left a lasting impression on the region, Ebner and Schmelen, also arrived at this time. The former wrote one of the first ‘missionary memoirs’, which appeared under the snappy title Reise nach Sued Afrika und Darstellung meiner waehrend acht Jahren daselbst als Missionar unter den Hottentotten gemachten Erfahrungen ( L Oemigke, 1829). While the book is a chore to read, even to one who has no problem with Gothic font and antiquated German language, in between the pages of pious drivel and biblical references, there are signs of a man with keen observational powers, intellect and the ability to paint a vivid picture of the Namaqualand scenery and people during the period 1812–1820.
During this time, the LMS sent a couple of inspectors to tour the pioneer mission establishments, and to report on how the directors’ money was being spent. One of these was the irrepressible Dr John Campbell, who travelled widely and left an endearingly breezy record of his journey (which predated Ebner’s book by many years). Travels in South Africa (1815 & 1822) proved to be a hit with a public hungry for news of the opening of the pearly gates for the heathen. The book was reprinted several times in the next few years, expanded, and even published in a miniature ‘pocket’ version for the use of scholars and travellers. It remains an eminently readable work to this day, and is even available in a recent reprint.
The good Reverend Latrobe did a similar task for the Moravian brethren when he visited Mamre and Genadendal in 1815. He then penetrated further east and chose a new site for the Enon station in the Uitenhage region. His book, Journal of a Visit to South Africa (1818 & Struik 1969) has endured as a classic work on the Southern and Eastern Cape, as Latrobe was an educated, tolerant, kindly and observant man, as well as a writer of considerable talent. His book is prized for its illustrations, which he takes pains to explain ‘were all made on the spot’ probably using a camera obscura, and though they seem to have been redrawn by others, Latrobe’s artistic talents would appear to have been considerable. The book is essentially a humanist’s record of the people that he met with, their way of living, their culture or lack thereof, described in a gently humorous vein, which should entertain most readers as well as supplying a record of the Cape of the period.
Back to the early workers in the field. Johann Heinrich Schmelen, who accompanied Ebner, as recorded above, worked at various missions in Namaqualand and Namibia during an eventful career spanning some thirty years. Unfortunately none of his writings have been published, and we are limited to the few scraps of information contained in books such as H Kling’s Onder die Kindere van Cham (Nasionale Pers, 1932), W Moritz’s Auf dem Reitochsen quer durch’s Südwestliche Afrika (John Meinert, 2004) and U Trueper’s The Invisible Woman – Zara Schmelen (Basler Afrika, 2006). His main legacy is the mission station and settlement at Komaggas, which survived even the apartheid era as a ‘coloured reserve’, as well as the oldest extant building in Namibia, at Bethanien – the so-called ‘Schmelen House’. With the aid of his Nama wife, he did succeed in translating a Dutch catechism into the Nama language, even though the ‘click’ sounds he transcribed were not successfully rendered in the printing of it. Schmelen’s experiences told in his own words would have made a memorable book, I feel.
The Wesleyans were among the next few prominent churchmen to make their mark; both Shaws – Barnabas and William – were fated to do important work, and to leave written records. Barnabas settled at Leliefontein and started a station among the Nama who had been granted a reserve there by Governor Ryk Tulbagh. He had to contend with the nomadic lifestyle of his flock, and managed to introduce them to agriculture – a not altogether wise choice, with hindsight, since the poor soils, scanty rainfall and growing population made this type of economy unsustainable – even in present times. Shaw wrote a book after his retirement, Memorials of South Africa (Mason, Hamilton Adams, 1940 & Struik 1970), which is almost readable – depending on how interested one is in the practical aspects of changing an entire economy of a people. The mission proved to be an important way-station for missionaries on their way to the interior, and numerous others who worked there left records of their sojourns.
William Shaw came a few years later with the Sephton party of 1820 Settlers, and worked among them for a short time before embarking on an almost fatal missionary venture to the pestilential swamps of Delagoa Bay. He returned to the Eastern Cape and spent the next thirty-odd years establishing a network of Wesleyan missions, of which he became superintendent. He did valuable work in establishing educational facilities, and became involved in the politics of the region in the aftermaths of several frontier wars. His book The Story of my Mission in South Africa (Hamilton Adams, 1860) did not manage to capture my attention in its entirety, though I read a few chapters to get the ‘feel’ of the author. Possibly it would be a different story for readers with a greater interest in Eastern Cape matters.
The next few decades saw a proliferation of missionary efforts. The London, Rhenish, Berlin and Paris Missionary Societies, as well as the Wesleyans, all entered the fray, so to speak, and while relations among these Protestants were usually cordial and co-operative, some sniping and poaching of converts did start. Messrs T Arbousset and F Daumas, from the Paris Society, settled in Basutoland and in 1836 they set out on a journey to explore the regions to the northwest, between the Vaal and Orange Rivers. Theirs was no missionary enterprise – their book Relation d'un Voyage D'Exploration au Nord-Est de la Colonie du Cap De Bonne-Esperance (Arthus Bertrand, 1842) is a work of considerable value as it contains much reliable information on the natural history, as well as on the tribes of the region and their ethnography. While no thrilling read, it is worthwhile to have a look at the modern English reprint Narrative of an Exploratory Tour to the Cape of Good Hope (Struik 1968), especially for first-hand accounts of the founder of the Basuto Nation, Moshesh, as well as the rise of the Zulu nation, Mantatise's Tlokwa, the Bechuana and other tribes they came into contact with.
The year 1817 also saw the arrival of a number of worthy men, among whom several made a lasting name for themselves. One was a callow youth, James Kitchingman, who wended his way toward Namaqualand and Namibia in the company of Robert Moffat. He was one of the less hardy souls who found the tough region and nomadic flock more than he could handle, and he departed within a short time for the kinder climes of Bethelsdorp, where he did considerable work during several stints until his early death. The Kitchingman Papers by le Cordeur & Saunders, eds. (Brenthurst Press, 1976) are a trifle tedious collection of writings which are probably of more interest to historians interested in his correspondents, Messrs Read and Philip.
Moffat, on the other hand, is a completely different proposition. He also earned his spurs in Namaqualand, but before long he was off to Great Namaqualand to the kraal of the Nama robber-chief Afrikaner. After a short and uneasy partnership with the aforementioned Ebner, he explored the country to the east, which later became known as Griqualand. Moffat displayed great leadership in rehabilitating Afrikaner, and by establishing a mission at Lattakoo among the Batlhaping under the chief Mothibi. In 1823 the missionary assumed the de facto generalship of a combined force of Griquas and Bechuanas who beat off a huge force of Mantatise’s pillagers and inflicted heavy losses on them – so altering the balance of power in the entire region. He firmly established the mission at Kuruman, and this became a hub of civilization, exploration and in time religious conversion. He also became a political power-broker between tribes and the British, as well as using his influence to exclude the expansion of the Boers from the republics eastwards and north. His book Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa (John Snow, 1844) does not make for the easiest reading, as like most of his brethren, he is inclined to sermonise. He does, however, include a wide scope of history in the narration of his personal story, and some of the passages are descriptive writing of a high order, with even the odd humorous glimpse.
It is almost obligatory to mention Livingstone at this stage – connected as he was to Moffat through his marriage to the latter’s daughter. During my younger days I avoided the great man’s writings like the plague. I could never understand why he was called a ‘missionary-explorer’, since those two titles are not compatible. If you explore, you beat your way through the jungles or slog through the sands of inhospitable deserts; if you are a missionary, you stay put, plant pumpkins and pray with the locals while trying to learn the lingo to translate the bible – period. I would have forgiven him the odd weekend jaunt, or 19th century long-leave equivalent thereof, but after he got a whiff of travel fever, he was off trailing that unfortunate woman and kids for a spell, before dumping them in England so he wouldn’t have them hampering those heroic footsteps. So caught-up with his own importance was our Davey, that he forgot entirely to mention his wee wife or his nuptials in what was supposed to be his biography. It took a gentle nudge from his publisher, John Murray, to put that right, resulting in the hilarious situation that subsequent impressions of the book have the thrifty Scottish solution of three page eights following each other, thus obviating the expense of needing to redo the entire typesetting of the book.
All-right, so he did a little dilettante converting when he stopped for long enough, but for a couple of decades he was much too busy earning fame and his place in the resting-place of kings. Then, at a time of having nothing better to occupy me, I read Missionary Travels and Researches in Southern Africa (John Murray, 1857 and dozens of reprint versions) of which I happened to have a tatty copy in stock at the time. To say that I was surprised would be putting it mildly. I was touched by the miseries and heartbreaks of the slavery he describes, I was engaged by his indomitable spirit that persisted against hunger, disease and dreadful travelling conditions, while his descriptions of the country traversed and the people he met with, kept me interested for all but the inevitable ‘and so I preached a sermon and we sang and prayed etc etc’, which was, after all, his stock-in-trade. It was only after reading the work that I could understand how the man had managed to become the beau ideal of missionary endeavour, the champion of the poor, enslaved and oppressed, the teacher of the ignorant as well as the magnetic beacon that would inspire others to plunge into the wilderness that was the centre of Africa. He’s still not my favourite man of the cloth, but hey, he publicised his professed trade better than anyone else did; he awoke compassion in people, and great good came from his life. Try reading him sometime.
By the middle of the 19th century missionaries were two a penny. In addition to those groups already mentioned, the next fifty years also saw the entry into the field of the Americans, the Anglicans, the Scottish Presbyterians, the Norwegians and the Catholics. It would be a very difficult and lengthy process to review the millions of words that made it into print by the efforts of these worthies. A number of them became astute politicians (perhaps they were born to it), and as their circle of influence spread among their parishioners, they grew powerful and assumed duties and rights which were not theirs over their little fiefdoms. They took it upon themselves to travel to the Cape, to lobby the government – yes, even as far as Britain they went, to try to persuade the old queen’s men to annex their sphere of influence, or to declare a protectorate over it. One such man was John Mackenzie, who laboured at Kuruman, a successor to Moffat. His work-rate was prodigious, his influence vast, but the various books written by him and about him are more of a picture of political machinations than missionary work with human beings. The volume written by his son, entitled John Mackenzie, South African Missionary and Statesman (Hodder & Stoughton, 1902) has a fitting epitaph for him: ‘to have been the man who first forced Great Britain to face her God-given task of controlling the destinies of the entire region from the Cape to the Zambesi’. Ja, well, no, fine – didn’t Mr Rhodes have similar ideas? If Mackenzie influenced the southeast of Bechuanaland, his colleague J D Hepburn struggled to play a meaningful role towards Lake Ngami. His book, Twenty Years in Khama's Country (Hodder & Stoughton, 1895) gives an interesting picture of the country and its people, but the poor man strove in vain to come to terms with the powerful chiefs like Moremi and the almost legendary Khama, and finally he had to decamp back to Britain to nurse his disappointment.
I have kept my most favourite piece of missionary literature for last. One Benjamin Ridsdale, a young Wesleyan minister, arrived in the Cape at the end of 1843, and he was almost immediately despatched via Leliefontein towards Nisbett Bath (Warmbaths, Namibia ) with his wife. Here was a lad with a cheerful outlook on life, who was not shy to enthuse about having a picnic in a lovely spot, or describing his antics when they had to cross the Gariep on a swimming log. He claimed to have been the first to sail on the Great River in a boat assembled by him with whatever materials he could find, and powered by a scrap of sheeting flapping in the breeze. The young minister slaved away in the torrid heat, often sustained by no more than a bowl of milk that someone saw fit to give him during the day, and the pair endured for four years before his health could no longer take the strain. Ridsdale and his wife had endeared themselves to their flock during that time by unselfish devotion, hard work and a real effort to understand their nomadic ways, and the scenes he describes of his departure in a mutual flood of tears is quite touching. His Scenes and Adventures in Great Namaqualand (T Woolmer, 1883) has become a prized rarity available at eye-watering prices, but for those who can put up with it, you can buy a horrible softcover scanned reprint from Kessinger, USA, as I did. – just to have an occasional read of a few pages of thoroughly heart-warming stuff.
This essay is not a history of missionary endeavour; neither would I condemn their efforts to obtain basic human rights for the fragmented, downtrodden and displaced people among other, strong, traditionally ruled nations in the subcontinent; nor is it an endorsement of the perceived benefits of conversion to another belief-system and a break-down of traditional ethics and morals. Rather, I hope to have given the interested readers an idea of what they are likely to find between the covers of the books written by some extraordinary – and some very ordinary people – who were also pioneers, travellers, explorers, ethnographers, biographers and historians, without whom the early literature on the Dark Continent would be much poorer.

FOR MAN MUST EAT

AFRICANA VOTES & VIEWS VOL 1 # 6

I have a secret addiction - cookery books. I must confess here and now that I don't actually READ them, page after page, but rather prefer to handle them lovingly, to flip through the pages (often stained with spatters of grease and droplets of food) picking up a word here and there. Once my attention has been captivated, I dwell lovingly on a whole recipe, combine the ingredients in my mind, savour the aroma, imagine the taste, sigh contentedly and pass on to the next culinary delight. It is rare that I cook a recipe exactly as it appears in a book. Since I am perforce a bachelor, my shopping is not terrible methodical, and too often I find that I haven't got one or the other ingredient called for - so something else will have to do; at times a dish ends up being something completely different from what had originally been intended - occasionally resulting in a serendipitous combination that is consigned to the 'Repertoire de Moi'.
South Africans are spoilt for choice. We are placed at the crossroads of the greatest culinary migrations of mankind; our population has been swelled by cooks from all over the world flocking to our shores in their droves. The foodstuffs that are available consist of indigenous crops, classical European staples, exotic Middle and Far Eastern spices and fruits, as well as the cornucopia of the New World. What more could one want? From 1890 onwards, a steady stream of cookery books became available, from the simplest primer for the newly-wed to a book featuring fancy restaurant dishes.
Aunt Allie Hewitt's ground-breaking book, 'Cape Cookery - Simple but Distinctive' (Darter Bros, 1890, & D Philip, 1973) claims to have the distinction of being the first in line, though I would ascribe that honour to A R Barnes' 'Colonial Household Guide' (1st ed Darter Bros 1889)which predated the former by a scant year. No matter; Allie's book is delightfully introduced by her grand-nephew, Robert Ellis, and he paints a loving picture of the little, fierce old lady slaving away over her hearth. While the fish recipes (mostly of the boiled variety) don't exactly stimulate the gastric juices, when it comes to the meat dishes, she comes up trumps with (now) exotic foods like korhaan, porcupine or beef muisjes. Her bredies, 'bobotees' and 'sassatees', mutton hams are sure to be of interest to those who wish to taste the early Malay influences on Cape cooking. The choice of vegetable dishes is slim, it seemed to have been a case of 'rys en aartappels' with the odd stewed-to-death veg melange added on Sundays and feast days. However, when it comes to sweet dishes, she really shines. 'Macaroons for a regiment' starts with 500 almonds - you can imagine the rest. There are Most Bolletjies, Matabele and Boer's Birthday Cake and a wealth of konfyts, chutneys and the like. Altogether a worthy book for any serious collector of the genre.
The book mentioned above, 'Colonial Household Guide' by A.R.B (Mrs Barnes), who refers to herself as a 'housewife of the Colony', contains a wealth of information for even the most inexperienced cook. Starting off with good Olde England standard fare of the times, such as a cuppa tea, a boiled egg, potato chips and bubble & squeak, she swiftly progresses to more ambitious projects such as kidneys and ham, stewed oxtail and even exotic stuff such as Scotch Haggis. Obviously Mrs B. was raised in the school that thought Brit was best, especially when it came to cooking. She does, however daringly branch out a bit with some local fare, such as 'cabbage brede', 'wild buck to roast', 'baba' (barbel fish, which she claims is similar to eel, and I concur heartily), but almost all the dishes contain only the main ingredient, fat, water and salt - possibly a dash of pepper. Her vegetarian side dishes are several pages of European veg, invariably followed by the word - 'boiled'. Where she does open a window into the past is with her pastry and bread recipes. Again she starts with basics - the construction of an outside oven, the firing of it and temperatures needed to achieve optimum results. A number of yeast and sourdough recipes follow, as well as one for unleavened bread.
There is a wealth of recipes of Victorian sweets, from puddings to tarts, buns to cakes, biscuits to compotes and jellies. In this subject she is most diverse, rounding off her list of delights with some fine pickles and preserves. From creation to destruction. The reader can pick up handy tips on the extermination of all manner of creepy crawlies and fungi, as well as the eradication of spots, stains and rust-marks, after which she gives a beginner's class in how to 'Cowdung Wash' your kitchen floor for that aromatic antiseptic look. Mrs Barnes would instruct the newcomer to the colonial kitchen in such arts as 'drenching horses through the nose, without killing them' or more robust pastimes such as 'killing tigers', and occasionally she comes up with bizarre abilities, such as how to make ice using hot water and refined nitre (??). This one I'd really love to try and I would appreciate it if one of my chemically inclined clients could elucidate how this process works. Many pages are devoted to the ills that would have inflicted the colonists, and especially their children, and there are a goodly number of simple remedies to aid the reader.
While the book has only a curiosity value as far as most recipes go, the whole gamut of tasks that are taken for granted in the late 19th century kitchen are a true eye-opener, and I can heartily recommend the good lady's work to all enquiring minds as well as those who enjoy a good laugh. Nonetheless a valuable social history document.
The next culinary writer whose work appeared in print, Hildagonda Duckitt, wrote two books that have remained classics for more than a hundred years. Her first, 'Hilda's Where is it of Recipes' ( Chapman & Hall, 1891), was the result of collecting recipes, both local and English, in ingredients and flavours, from among the extended circle of acquaintances which frequented her social circle. Her cooking skill, simple descriptions and mouth-watering results must have gladdened many a family's table at the Cape. Her second book 'Diary of a Cape Housekeeper' ( Chapman & Hall, 1902) is a much more personal document, which allows us a peek into the Cape Kitchen at the end of the 19th century, as well as sketching life on the family farms at Constantia and Grootte Post, between Mamre and Darling.
Hilda divides her culinary year into seasons, and recommends fitting dishes to suit both availability and climate and she does not shy away from advising you to wear your winter flannel underwear in July, while March is described as 'often very hot and trying' - and so it would be if you are slaving over a huge cast-iron stove in a farmhouse kitchen. Nor does she disappoint when it comes to a few hints on invalid care - in fact she recommends that every woman who expects to live in some out and beyond place, should 'spend a few months previously in nursing training, so as not to be entirely ignorant of the elements of what good nursing means!' She obviously had a tender heart for the beasties too, since she has included a chapter on 'to spare animals unnecessary pain', ie how to kill anything from a crayfish to a calf. In this book she has become more chatty and for anyone interested in the art, it is a pretty good read, even if only taken in small doses at bedtime. For those interested in Hilda's background, Mary Kuttel, one of the descendants of the Melck family, who were great friends with the Duckitt's, edited a little Balkema reprint of selections, entitled 'Hildagonda Duckitt's Book of Recipes', which is a little easier to find than the original books.
A little oddity is next. The printing firm D F du Toit and Co, in Paarl, were the publishers of the first dictionary of Afrikaans - then a language in the process of being born - when they issued the 'Patriot Woordeboek' in 1904. However, they published a recipe book a few years previously in the same language. It was entitled 'Di Suid Afrikaanse kook- koek en resepteboek, byeenversameld en geskrywe deur mejufvr E J Dijkman' (Patriotpers, 1891). The only copy I have ever seen had no title page, nor a front or back cover, the spine was missing as was the last page or two - but it still found a home with a client who was as mad about cookery books as I am. Unfortunately I can't recall much about the contents, except that the recipes tended to be good, plain burgher fare, imported from Europe in the main, but showing a few glimpses of country life and culinary arts that were transmitted back into the cities after the great era of pioneering had passed. This little volume was also reprinted a number of times in the Cape Dutch/Afrikaans language, and even in the changes of the title one can see developments in spelling that occurred during the period 1891-1922. The book proved popular and was either translated or rewritten by the redoubtable Mrs Dijkman herself in the English language under the title 'Mrs Dijkman's Cookery and Recipe Book' (Paarl Printing, 1905).
From the relatively large numbers of cookery books that have passed through my hands since I became interested in the art, it would almost seem that Mesdames Barnes, Hewitt, Duckitt and Dijkman satisfied the market for advice in the kitchen during the last decade of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. I have only come across two new publication on the subject in the latter period - Mrs M ( P W) de Klerk's 'South African Cookery Made Easy' (Juta, 1912), and F G Oakley's 'Homestead Cookery '(Maskew Miller, 1917). The former is full of standard starchy fare, cakes, biscuits, puddings, breads and the like, with only a hint of the exotic such as 'Mossbolletjies' or 'Boer biscuits' - until one comes to the selection of Breakfast dishes, when she surprises with offerings such at 'sasaties', 'hotom' (actually just plain flour porridge) 'poor man's friend' (quite an elaborate dish, I'd say) and 'Turkish Dolmans'. Some of her tips on curing and smoking of meat and fish are not to be despised, while her cool drinks and liqueur recipes leave one a little puzzled, since her 'Apple Cider' contains nothing even vaguely resembling that fruit as an ingredient, nor does Boston Cream contain any of the latter part, as one would expect.. As refreshing drinks, one can imagine better solutions than Toast Water, Lemon Kale or Oatmeal Water for that hot summer's day - but then possibly our taste-buds have been altered by global warming. Mrs de Klerk also does her bit for the health of the nation, advocating such remedies as 'a bottle of gin combined with the grated peel of a black radish and a bunch of stinging nettles' for the agonies of gallstones. Hm, yes, I'd say the gin alone ought to do the trick of putting one into a stupor. She has advice if you should swallow anything from a wasp to a coin or a fish-bone - or if you need to loosen a rusty screw - Mrs de Klerk is at hand.
Ms(?) Oakley's ingredients, though, have a much more local flavour. We find Cape crayfish, kabeljau and snoek in the first few pages; Rhodesian eggs, ostrich, penguin and plover eggs just a few pages later. Here is treasure indeed among the unassuming pages. Even her vegetable dishes are full of innovation: beetroot fritters, celery cheese, curried cucumbers and vegetable curries make an appearance, while carrot and parsnip salad is another unexpected dish. Fruit salads appear among the traditional puds, and even treats such as marula jelly, 'kie apple chutney' and paw-paw seed pickle (this one I've got to try out!) among a host of interesting concoctions. She concludes her really interesting little book with two unusual items to try, namely condensed milk and melon butter, before she adds the obligatory few household hints - but one can see that her real enthusiasm is for cooking. Reading through these recipes was a revelation to me, and henceforth I shall dip into Mrs Oakley's work more often.
We have come to an end of an era. World War I has come and gone, and so has the good life for many people, in Europe as well as the colonies. Presumably recipes have adapted to the times - no longer would they start with the familiar Victorian or Edwardian phrase "Take five dozen eggs…." and so on; families were smaller, ingredients became more diverse. Sometime in this period, a volume appeared by a lady with the imposing name of Susanna Johanna Elizabeth (nee van Hoogenhouck) van Tulleken. I have been absolutely unable to find any record of the first editions of her 'Practical Cookery Book for South Africa', which was in its 28th edition by 1951, or of the Afrikaans edition entitled 'Praktiese Kookboek vir Suid Afrika' of which I have a copy, sans title page, but with a foreword by Isie Smuts dated 1922, in which she applauds the first appearance of the book in that language. Possibly some of my learned clients in the library business can remedy my ignorance in this regard - I've not been able to trace her in SABIB.
Gen. Louis Botha cake, Gen Hertzog teekoekies and Gen Smuts teekoekies all certify the good lady's patriotism, but the local flavours only really start among the seafood dishes, where crayfish, snoek, even unspecified 'riverfish' and a dozen recipes using oysters, which are fried, poached, braised and stewed to a sanitised death, which would lack appeal to modern palates, I would think. Her poultry recipes are fairly standard, but I would mention that in her book, as well as many of those previously mentioned, pigeon features quite regularly in dishes. Looking at the huge flocks populating our cities, I do wonder that no enterprising restaurateur has stationed hordes of small boys armed with 'catties' to supply some of this 'unnatural bounty' to the tables of the discerning diners. She offers a plentiful selection of meat recipes, mostly fairly standard fare, and here I see biltong make an appearance, as well as wors - but either 'net wors' or 'bees en varkwors' - not a boerewors recipe in sight. Her veg dishes show some interesting variations the modern vegetarian would approve of. Among bean fritters, a dozen dishes using green mealies can be found, kale, marakkas, spinach, parsnips, kohlrabi, pumpkin and aubergines are all used to varied and good effect - a good balance to the inevitable stodgy meat and starch components of the meals. There is a plethora of sweets, conserves, pickles and sauces - too many to mention - but then there is soap as a separate subject. I was surprised to read about all the varied materials one could use, ie potatoes, prickly-pear leaves, ostrich eggs, pumpkin, resin, sour milk and even mealiemeal porridge! After a quick gallop through the pages, I can well see why this remained a firm kitchen favourite for many decades.
Another writer made her appearance during that period. The modestly entitled 'Household Science Cookery Book' (CNA, 1914) by Porterville lass, Jeanette C van Duyn, was obviously intended as a serious contender on the cookery scene. Its material was painstakingly assembled by the author while she wrote a column for the Transvaal Agricultural Journal. The first edition's three-hundred page content had swelled to six hundred pages only six years later in a subsequent edition, and Ms van Duyn wrote a whole slew of other learned works on preserving, canning, sweet-making and so on. Where or how Ms van Duyn metamorphosed into Mrs H M Slade, I cannot say, but 1936 saw the 6th edition of her work under a new title, 'Mrs Slade's South African Cookery Book', under which name it appeared until the late 1950's, after which the good lady had another change of name and the book became 'Mildred Slade's Cookery Book' (Timmins, 1976). In general, I would say that van Duyn/Slade's work is clinical, focussing on correct preparation, classic dishes, with very little 'homey' flavour, though I did find a Boerewors , Pierneef biscuits and the odd interesting combination like beet and pea salad. A worthy teacher of the culinary arts she may be, but her tomes, to my taste, lack the 'sizzle of the steak'.
So we come to a new chapter in the culinary arts in South Africa. I am not suggesting that there were no chefs active in the subcontinent, but rather that there was no male star on the firmament until C Louis Leipoldt wrote his 'Kos vir die Kenner' (Nasionale Pers, 1933). In this guise I first came across the man in Lawrence Green's books a goodly number of decades back, for Green was a foodie of note, and the gastronomic expertise of Leipoldt and his Congolese assistant Tito, features in half a dozen or more of the writer's works. It was only relatively recently that I actually held a copy of this precious and rare work of Africana in my hands for the first time. Suddenly I was in a different world. Leipoldt didn't try to teach you basic cooking - he assumed you knew how to do that; he wanted to teach you to appreciate, savour, capture the nuance, enhance the flavour - and try the odd ingredient you had never considered as a comestible before. In a brusque preamble the author states that as most culinary terms have Latin and French origins, he will explain these terms, and in fact he creates an entire Afrikaans vocabulary to encompass the processes of the art. Then a short injunction to warn against the substitution of substandard or lesser ingredients - and we are off into the mysteries of soupmaking.
Almost immediately the recipe for 'Suringsop' and 'Wateruintjiesop' catches my eye. Not your everyday ingredient, even though the tart leaves of the Oxalis species is well-known to most of us who chewed them as children, and some of us might have even rinsed the little bulbs before we popped them into our mouths. Nor does the chef shy away from the indigenous foodstuffs, which have been a mainstay of the Khoisan people for thousands of years. Though possessing a strange smell (which should be ignored), there are half a dozen dishes containing tortoise or turtle meat (which is not to be recommended as the beasties are protected species nowadays), monitor lizard is deemed fine fare, though he seems to have missed out on snakes - most likely so as not to offend the more delicate sensibilities of his readership. Flamingo breast rubs shoulders with Frascati eggs, penguin jostles with pilaf, while the common tinned sardine can be found as a starter - or as a savoury after the main course. The man blows away any preconception you may have had about what is and what is not fitting. Who would dream of deep-frying paw-paw pieces in batter ? Would any cook believe that mustard, sugar, vinegar, ginger, nutmeg or tomato sauce were all fit accompaniments for a piece of avocado? Almost every other page delivers a culinary knock-out blow.
As Lawrence Green noted, Leipoldt's knowledge of local fish and the dishes one could conjure up from them, must have been enormous. From the now almost unknown Dageraad, 'Bottervis', 'Kliptong' and Maasbankers, the author urges us to try even such bony offerings such as Yellowfish from the rivers, or in contrast, a sumptuous, steamed crayfish pudding. His treatment of octopus and perlemoen is much gentler than I have read elsewhere, as he speaks of 'tapping it gently with a wooden hammer until tender', before simmering it gently for an hour over a slow fire. Neither the garden snail nor its relative the alicrock are ignored, and mussels are prized along with raw oysters. A few wise words on wine and its indispensability on every table and in every kitchen follow among a number of other drinks recipes - not least among which is one for 'Wine and Milk' which are boiled together, after which it is left to cool, the clear liquid on top is poured off, and the remainder is drunk (??) For all South Africans who are able to read Afrikaans, and who are curious and adventurous in the matter of food and its preparation, I can really recommend this as a book which can be browsed through for years. There is, of course, also a smaller work in English by Leipoldt, entitled 'Leipoldt's Cape Cookery'. The manuscript was discovered among his papers by his executors after the writers death in 1947, and this was published in 1976. Most of the material has been gathered by the author from other sources, and he states that the recipes have already been used in his previous book. Of interest is his introduction to Cape Cookery and a page or so on the Malay influence - which he was able to appreciate at first hand, since he had travelled widely in the East.
This is where we must stop for now. My original intention was to introduce a few of the earlier 'kitchen goddesses' and their works, and instead I have rambled on until the 1970's. On my desk more than a dozen cookery books have been piled for over a week; next to them eight weighty volumes of bibliographies and a few other works of reference had also to be consulted. Enough – but here are still many more worthy writers' works to be discussed. So we shall have to make another date for a further stroll through the kitchen bookshelf.

FOR MEN MUST WORK

AFRICANA VOTES & VIEWS VOL 1 # 5

Since work takes up a large slice of our waking hours, it is fitting that you and I should show some measure of interest in it - besides which it helps to pass the 45-odd years that you are going to be stuck on the old treadmill, beavering away to earn your daily bread. However, I seriously doubt that a person with a fascinating career in insurance broking, undertaking, housekeeping or equally repetitive work, will feel as captivated by their vocation at the end of a useful and industrious life, as someone who, say, has run away from home at an early age to join a circus, eloped with an exotic dancer and slaved on a potato plantation in the pestilential jungle of some far-off land, before taking to the high seas to promote the trade in bootleg sardines, followed by a spell as a hanging judge in a small town in the western USA - or some equally bizarre modus operandi for earning an honest income.
I can count myself among the lucky in that my career-path has changed radically every seven years or so of my working life; partly due to serendipity, partly because I have a really short attention span, requiring new challenges to keep boredom at bay. Still, I enjoy reading descriptions of working careers in a host of categories. Civil engineering might not be to everyone's taste, but you have to admit that there is something grandiose in the idea of a fine bridge spanning a foaming torrent, a sweeping pass hugging the perilous flank of a looming crag or even the building of an unusual habitation. Ben Uys’ book, ‘My Friend Adventure’ (Timmins, 1960)describes a whole slew of such projects that the author tackled during a varied career. He built a number of bridges from Namaqualand to the Northern Transvaal, as well as irrigation works. His modest book includes a number of other interesting interludes, such as riding transport for the Germans in Namibia during the Nama War, a spell as a sawmiller, he washed gravel for diamonds and recruited labour for the mines. A good yarn, full of interesting anecdote and personalities.
The next dam builder gets to be a lot more technical. Henry Olivier’s book, ‘Damit’ (Macmillan, 1975) is not for the faint-hearted in engineering matters. The author writes well and his material is interesting, but the human factor is dwarfed by the scale of his gargantuan projects. Along with a number of pioneering schemes worldwide, he was principally involved in many of the African mega-projects, like the Owen Falls hydro-electric scheme on the White Nile, the great Kariba Dam, the entire early Orange River Scheme and Cahora Bassa Dam in Mozambique. If earth-shaking human activity rocks your boat – this book has it.
Roads and their builders have a romance and fascination of their own. Our country can boast a number of prominent pioneers in that department, starting with Andrew Geddes Bain, who was originally an saddler, but found this too monotonous and became a hunter and explorer, before becoming embroiled in the 6th Frontier War. A short spell of farming was cut short by an about-face of government policy which deprived him of his farm. This is the point when Bain turned to road construction, for which he showed extraordinary aptitude, and a number of iconic passes were constructed during the next twenty years under his supervision. Bain was an immensely talented man, and he achieved much in the fields of geology, palaeontology as well as writing and art. His ‘Journals of A. G. Bain ‘ edited by Margaret Lister (VRS, 1949), as well as numerous other books and articles testify to his lasting monuments in the subcontinent.
His son, Thomas, had some forty six years in the service of the government ( with only a month holiday in the entire working life !!) and the number of projects he executed brilliantly are legion. Probably the best known book about his work is by Pat Storrar – ‘Colossus of Roads’ (Murray & Roberts, 1984), but this short resumè, though an interesting read, hardly scratches the surface of the great man’s endeavour. A later book, which appeared in 2002, by my friend Graham Ross, entitled ‘The Romance of Cape Mountain Passes’ is a much expanded and well-researched volume on all the roads in the province – in the reconstruction or construction of which the author often had a hand.
From construction let us go to destruction. Though I am not a supporter of the art of shortening my fellow-man by means dexterous or mechanical, I do read the odd military work – and find it fascinating to boot. One that immediately comes to mind is Major P J Pretorius’ book ‘Jungle Man’ in which he describes his spying activities in the Rufiji delta, which led to the sinking of the German cruiser, the Königsberg during WWI. Another is Kenneth van der Spuy’s ‘Chasing the Wind’ (Books of Africa, 1966). The author got into aviation during the box-kite stages, so to speak, and during the early days of WWI graduated to chucking buckets full of darts and jam-tins full of explosives at enemy troops below him, and firing off revolvers and sawn-off shotguns at opposing aviators. In the author’s own words “ I was beginning to enjoy myself “ – and so he should. Happy days indeed before the advent of atom bombs and ICBM’s!
Another work I read recently was David Tyndall-Biscoe’s ‘Sailor, Soldier’, in which he chronicles his great-uncle’s military and naval experiences on a wide front, from the bloody battles of the futile Mahdist war in the Sudan and Egypt, to the Matabele Rebellion and the Anglo-Boer War. Taken from the diaries of the long departed old warrior, the book is a must for those who revel in the movements military, of men and ships, the deployment of guns and the spilling of gallons of gore. The book does not mince matters, but it does a fine job of mutilating words.
Building empires is another fascinating job, so popular during the previous two centuries. There were those of the ilk of Rhodes and Jameson, to be sure, and even Bismarck could be jollied into partaking a little of the colonial cake by the likes of Lüderitz and Peters, but with these gentlemen it was more of an obsessive-compulsive disorder than a form of employment. No, I’m thinking more along the lines of a ‘Chirupula’ Stephenson, who set out as a callow lad to do something related to stringing a telegraph line across the lastest of Mr Rhodes’ acquisitions in Central Africa ( or so I seem to recall). He ended up buying himself a ‘local princess’ for the princely sum of ten bob, married her (as well as another lady from a different tribe – or was it two of ‘em?) acquired large tracts of land, and farmed/ranched with the assistance of his descendants and almost the entire tribe he had, so to speak acquired through marriage and become the chief thereof.. Now THAT’S ENTERPRISE for you! He immodestly describes his life’s work in ‘Chirupula’s Tale’ (Geoffrey Bles, 1937) as does K S Rukavina in ‘Jungle Pathfinder’ (Hutchinson, 1951) – in a more fuzzy, romanticized way.
A most admirable man, on the other hand, was Stewart Gore-Brown, who carved a pocket empire out of the Zambian bush on the shores of Lake Shiwa. An English gentleman to the core, with an unhappy romance overshadowing his entire life, he built his African Dream, a manor house on the heights; he experimented expensively with a number of pioneer farming ventures and later entered politics, earning the respect and admiration of colonialists and Zambians alike. Christina Lamb’s work, ‘Africa House’ (Harper Collins, 2004) does credit to the man and his works, a treat to read.
Hans Merensky, on the other hand, acquired fame for his skill at geology, and in particular his uncanny ability to sniff out Mother Earth’s riches. His missionary parents seem to have had little influence on the young man, and after a fitful start at finding his niche, he settled in on his geological path – to whit, at the coalface of a mine in Silesia – literally. This was the sort of apprenticeship students faced in those days and this was followed by technical studies. After completing his degree, he returned to Africa, and was soon fossicking round the Western Transvaal Bushveld. This was to culminate in the discovery of the immense lode of platinum, later dubbed the Merensky Reef, which stretched for dozens of miles. Just a few years later he played a pivotal role in realizing the discovery of the Namaqualand diamond finds. He was the man who figured out the relationship between the fossil oyster beds and the presence of diamonds – something that other prospectors like Cornell, Carstens and Reuning had not connected.
Merensky’s empire, though founded on mineral riches, was something quite different though. It lay on the slopes of the misty mountains of the Woodbush Range, in the kingdom of Modjadji, the Rain Queen, and it was called Westfalia. This acquisition was followed by a whole string of other estates in Germany and elsewhere in the Union and Namibia. Each farm was dedicated to one or other activity, but Westfalia became a sort of personal experiment; firstly with teaching sustainable agriculture to the African inhabitants, and later with a number of crops which he thought might be suited to the subtropical climate and high seasonal rainfall. The lack of sufficient permanent water led to an investigation of how to conserve this precious resource – and he constructed a huge dam, which even today (in its enlarged form ) is of great importance in the region. He planted tens of thousands of trees, to combat soil erosion on the steep slopes, as well as to enrich the topsoil with life-giving humus. A whole book could be written on the man’s life and work – and so it was, by Olga Lehmann in her work ‘Look Beyond the Wind’ (Timmins, 1955). As a youngster I often roamed around parts of his estate and the sawmill that was harvesting the timber he planted, though the doctor had finished his life’s work some years back. It was only many years later that I read his story and it was certainly one of the books that fuelled my desire to become a field geologist, and later possibly a farmer. The former was not to be, except perhaps as a hobby, but I was fortunate later in life, like Karen Blixen, to also be able to say: “ I had a farm in Africa…”
Scientific endeavour and discoveries are fascinating subjects, especially to the layman. While Africa has not produced, to my knowledge, any of the great physicists or chemists, we have our fair share of prominent geologists like Merensky above, and earlier Bain, Atherstone, Mauch, du Toit and Martin, to name but a few. Much of their pioneering work is ably described in Carl Anhaeusser’s book ‘A Century of Geological Endeavour in Southern Africa’ (Geol. Soc of SA, 1997) There were also numerous innovators in the development of the mining industry, an extremely technical field, which probably is not for the general reader. So far I have not come across a book to explain basic mining techniques and the development of some of the deepest mining capability on this planet, and what little I have learnt, has been from the odd older books like C B Jeppe’s ‘Gold Mining on the Witwatersrand’ (Tvl Chamber of Mines, 1946) through which I paged, scanning the numerous diagrams and so picking up a few grains of knowledge without being blasted by the hailstorm of technical terms that I didn’t understand. My days on the diamond drilling rigs of the sixties and seventies, and the long conversations with geologists and miners, have filled in a number of blanks spaces, but much remains a mystery.
The geologists and the mining engineers can be said to be the success stories of mineral riches – the prospectors were more often than not the losers in the game – but their quests are so much more romantic. The epitome of the glorious failure, to my thinking, must be Fred Cornell, whose evergreen work ‘The Glamour of Prospecting’ (T Fisher Unwin, 1920 plus many reprints) relates cheerfully all the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ that are slung at the diligent seeker of treasure. There is thirst, fatigue, heat, hunger, cold – and hope, in every chapter and it seems as if the hapless fellow was jinxed as he missed striking it rich at every turn, before being killed in a motor accident in London, when he seemed to have success in his pocket. One of those ‘must read’ books.
Jack Carstens was also dogged by ill fortune, but more cruelly so, since he actually found some of the first traces of the enormous wealth that was to be extracted from underneath Namaqualand – he just didn’t profit from it to any appreciable degree. Others employed him to do their rough work for him, as he ably describes in his book “Fortune Through My Fingers’ (Timmins, 1962), since he lacked the capital to develop his finds.
A totally different prospector was John Williamson. He was a brilliant Canadian geologist, who had a dream, as well as the faith, tenacity and capacity for hard labour under an equatorial sun, which kept him going for year after year, prospecting the incandescent Tanganyikan bush until he actually found his El Dorado. The Mwadui diamond mine was to make a major contribution to the impoverished African nation, and made its discoverer hugely wealthy. His story is told factually in H Heidgen’s book, ‘The Diamond Seeker’ (Blackie, 1959) – or if one prefers to have the story spiced up with a little fiction, one can read John Gawaine’s effort of the same (unimaginative) title, complete with femme fatale and imaginary dialogue (Macmillan, 1976).
The medical field too, holds much of interest. Whether it is a morbid curiosity in all that ails the human body; the freak accidents and disasters that can befall this frail construct, or the human face of distress and succour – there is a never-ending source of information and fascination. Even the relatively placid life of a country doctor, as described by Con Weinberg in his work ‘Fragments of a Desert Land’ (Timmins, 1975) during his stint between the World Wars in the Gibeon and Maltahöhe regions of Namibia, is much material of incident and drama. Another charming cameo work is the book ‘Salt River Doctor” by B A Mackenzie (Faircape, 1981) this time dealing with the afflicted of the Mother City.
The development of neurosurgery comes under the spotlight in David Gamsu’s book entitled ‘Adventures of a South African Brain Surgeon’(Hugh Keartland, 1967)– which seems a rather inept title for such a cerebral tome. However, that aside, the author does succeed in giving the layman a comprehensible insight into a profession, the description of which could be spiced up to be completely indigestible to the ordinary mortal. Much of the work described is forensic, and thus for the criminological fans even more interesting.
In a minor medical key, the calling of the nurse during the early days on the Diamond Fields is painted in the little book ‘The Lure of the Stone’ by W M & V Buss (Timmins, 1976).Sister Henrietta Stockdale had the fortitude to care for the ill and the injured on the dusty, dirt-ridden, overcrowded slum that was the Diamond Fields, where living conditions during the first few years must have been truly horrid. Similar experiences are to be found in Rose Blennerhassett and Lucy Sleeman’s ‘Adventures in Mashonaland’ (Macmillan & Co, 1893 or Books of Rhodesia, 1969). These two intrepid ladies pioneered the first bush hospital at Penhalonga and did valuable service in providing the first medical service of any kind in the territory.
The veterinary field, of course, spawned South Africa’s first Nobel laureate, Sir Arnold Theiler. From Thelma Gutsche’s work, ‘There Was a Man’ (Timmins 1979), I managed with great difficulty to extract a faint picture this extraordinarily gifted man’s vocation and the development of veterinary science in the subcontinent and further afield. Somehow the actual ‘beef and bones’ of the science never appeared out of the flood of soup, and after spooning laboriously through almost five hundred pages of the author’s offering, I was still left in want.
Possibly more in the James Herriot vein, but vastly more entertaining, was ‘From the Horse’s Mouth’ by W J van Rensburg (van Schaik, 1983) in which the author relates in lively and interesting prose, his country veterinarian experiences, as well as a stint at Onderstepoort, like Theiler. Needless to say he did not get the Nobel Prize – but then he managed to avoid Gutsche as well!
Obviously there are still a large number of glamorous occupations that should come under consideration. The transport-riders, as epitomised in Percy Fitzpatrick’s ‘Jock of the Bushveld’, have left a legacy redolent of camp fires and creaking oxwagons, perilous paths and the crack of whips and the shouts and whistles of the drovers. The heroes have their shoulders to the wheel, and the villains zoom through the leafy glades to inject the deadly trypanosome into the straining beasts, or assume the shadowy forms of the great cats lying in ambush along the rutted ways. Ah, what pictures one can see: from Poultney and Bee’s ‘Kalahari Campfires’ (Knox, 1941), to Stanley Portal Hyatt’s books ‘Biffel the Story of a Trek-Ox’, ‘Off the Main Track’ and ‘The Old Transport Road’ dealing with treks in Rhodesia, to works like Cecil Cowley’s ‘Schwikkard of Natal and the Old Transvaal’ (Struik, 1974) and C T Stoneham’s ‘Africa All Over’ describing his working life in post-WWI Tanganyika. There are a number of excellent books available in Afrikaans on the subject of transport-riding; C F Gronum’s work ‘Transportry, Runderpes en Poskoetse’ (Pro Rege, 1975) is a good example.
What would Africa be without its animals? Although the spread of man endangers all other living species on the planet, at least humankind seems to realize there is a problem, and attempts are being made to preserve remnants of former glories for future generations. Enter the conservationist, the game ranger, the anti-poaching patrol, and those kind and loving souls who succour orphaned rhinos, lions and other beleaguered beasties, raise them with the aid of large bottles of Klim plus supplements, and then find that they have to spend the rest of their days looking after them. Surely this heartbreaking work has more glamour and romance attached to it than any other career in the subcontinent; almost any little girl would want to be a veterinarian at some stage in their lives; most boys would want to be game rangers, but of the legion of books that have been written by people in this vocation, many testify to the hard life, dangers and disappointments that come with intensely exciting action, interesting challenges and occasionally a sense of a worthwhile job well done, and with visible, lasting results. A man of legendary status in South Africa is, of course, Harry Wolhuter, who wrote of his experiences as ranger in the early days of the Kruger Park, in ‘Memories of a Game Ranger’. His claim to fame lay not in conservation, but rather in killing the lion that attacked him, with his hunting knife – but he could claim extreme provocation as the said kitty was chewing his shoulder at the time.
A book that made a lasting impression on me just after we came to South Africa, was Mervyn Cowie’s ‘Fly Vulture’ (Harrap, 1961), which chronicled the fight to establish game reserves in Kenya. I must admit to being completely won over by the film version, in which the Hollywood Bunch had the baddie get his come-uppance at the horn of an angry rhino which consigned his truck into a donga. I seem to recall that I erupted into loud cheers and clapping at the sight. Since then I have read more sobering versions of the fight against poaching, which is often paid for by organized crime, such as Richard Leakey’s ‘Wildlife Wars’ (Macmillan, 2001), or D W Potgieter’s ‘Contraband’ (Quellerie, 1995).
There is a long list of authors and locations to choose from: like Nick Steele’s Natal books ‘Gameranger on Horseback’ and ‘Bushlife of a Game Warden’, to George Adamson’s ‘Bwana Game’ in Kenya, Cronje Wilmot’s ‘Okavango Adventure’, Daphne Sheldrick’s ‘Orphans of Tsavo’ and ‘The Tsavo Story’, Hannes Kloppers’ two volumes, ‘Veldwagter’ and ‘Gee My ‘n Man’, dealing with the Kruger and the Kalahari Parks respectively. I have read dozens of these offerings, and found something to keep me at it in each one. The writing may not be exceptional, the subject matter is rarely unique, but each account of the work done by these dedicated people involves the reader to a degree seldom felt with books dealing with other occupations – and so, read on.