Everything/Anything and…Chess…"Despite the documented evidence by chess historian HJR Murray, I've always thought that chess was invented by a goddess"–George Koltanowski: from the foreword to:"Women in chess, players of the Modern Age"
Pretoria is the Capital of South Africa. One of 3 capitals actually! Cape Town and Bloemfontein are the other 2 Capitals of South Africa. Pretoria is the Admin Capital. The President’s Office is settled in the Union Buildings in Pretoria and for 6 months he spends his time in his office while the other 6 months, he’s in Cape Town in the Parliament! The Parliament is settled in Cape Town. Read more HEREon Wikipedia about Pretoria.
On THIS LINK on my blog, you can read more and see more pictures about Pretoria.
IT IS OCTOBER! and I can imagine….Pretoria…what you look like! Purple Jacarandas everywhere! You can’t hide yourself! This is the time when students are busy preparing for end-of-year exams…and…when they fall in love! I can remember how the men would come and visit with a bit of a Jacaranda branch! And..how you would go for a walk, bare feet…just to step on those blossoms and get your feet purple!
En jy dan ook saamstem met Louis Leipoldt se gedig…. hier..:OKTOBER MAAND! …
Thunder…in the city!
South Africa’s Reserve Bank in Pretoria, the Capital City
Pretoria: Union Buildings
Pretoria: The Voortrekker Monument – build in 1938 – The Great Trek was in 1838.
I want to post this recipe especially for one chess player….Earl… he said that he hasn’t eaten crumpets and wants to know more…so..here’s some work to catch-up on!…Earl! Ingredients: 350 g plain flour 1 level teaspoon salt 5ml baking powder 300 ml milk sunflower, oil for frying and greasing cooking rings or crumpet rings How to: Tip the flour into a bowl and stir in the salt and baking powder.Add the milk. (I usually like to add 1 egg too….it’s up to you if you want!)Beat the mixture well for about 5 minutes with a wooden spoon. The mixtureshould be quite liquid and of a spoonable consistency.Grease the cooking or crumpet rings with sunflower oil and smear a lightcovering of oil over the base of a solid frying pan. Place the rings on the baseof the pan and heat. When hot, spoon in the batter to about half-fill the rings.Cook the mixture over a gentle to moderate heat for about 4-8 minutes. Removethe rings and turn the crumpets over. Cook for about 2-3 minutes until lightly golden. Serve the crumpets hot with melted butter+honey/syrup. Enjoy!
As kids, we were given cod liver oil every night. I can remember the bad taste of it! You would get sick just to think of that bad taste! Very interesting reading here…
Health Benefits of Fish Oil – Omega 3Health Benefits of Fish Oil – Omega 3 include improving survival after heart attacks, reducing fatal heart rhythms and decreasing all-cause mortality in patients with known coronary heart disease. Fish oil has been shown in epidemiological and clinical trials to reduce the incidence of heart disease by lowering cholesterol. Large-scale epidemiological studies suggest that individuals at risk for coronary heart disease benefit from the consumption of fish oil as it is high in omega 3 fatty acids.Omega-3s, specifically DHA and EPA, are being examined for other health benefits, such as treating rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s (because of anti-inflammatory properties); treating depression and other psychological disorders (because they may boost serotonin and dopamine, decreasing depression and violent behavior); reducing the risk of diabetes, insulin resistance in people with diabetes, psoriasis and other skin conditions; helping osteoporosis (because they may enhance bone density); and fighting cancer (because they may inhibit cancer cells in the breast, prostate and colon). A recent Canadian study suggests a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish such as salmon and sardines, and in fish-oil capsules, can help keep Alzheimer’s disease at bay. Researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) found that a diet high in docosahexenoic acid, or DHA–an omega-3 fatty acid found in relatively high concentrations in cold-water fish–dramatically slowed the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in mice. Specifically, DHA cut the harmful brain plaques that mark the disease.Read more HEREabout fish oil.
And……..follow THISlinkto read about cod liver oil!
The “Huisgenoot” magazine is certainly THE oldest family magazine in South Africa. These pics come from the magazines which I found on TUKKIES (University of Pretoria) website. I myself have got a few of these old Huisgenoot mags, but they are in bits! I’ve got a few complete pages and others are half pages and bits…and…pieces….I think my oldest one dated 1932.(all in SA packed away) In our family, I was always the one that liked the old history stuff and wanted to keep all kinds of precious, (well to me) historical “artifacts” safe. I hated History as a subject at school when I had to study and learn for exams, but love to read about it and visit historical places and museums. In my last two years of study, I had an optional “subject”, called Museum studies. We visited every Thursday a museum in the city….or near the city…we were only about 15 students…my History tutor was really an interesting man. He joined us on all those trips and could come up with the most amazing facts about Pretoria and you were like…”oh my….gosh…I didn’t know that! and I do live here!”…your jaws dropped every minute he was talking…anyway…those trips were just big fun…the Post Office museum…which is not in Pretoria anymore, but in Cape Town….was the biggest fun…we played like 10-year old kids with everything, about the only museum where we were allowed to touch everything…we made phone calls to one another with the old phones and sent messages with the morse code machine…that was great fun! We had to hand in a folder with information abut every visit and museum by the end….and….I still have mine! …I couldn’t throw away such precious articles and photos/post cards/information/leaflets/notes …etc.
On these adds you can still see a little bit of Dutch, as Dutch was the spoken language and Afrikaans was still very young and not the official language at the time. Afrikaans was a young, upcoming language at that time….
Old Huisgenoot to be found HERE on the University’s website. The link will open in a new window..
If you click on the images, you would get a larger image to view and read. You will only be able to read if you can read the Dutch language, as that was the language spoken. We have a saying in Afrikaans that says: “Die Kaap is weer Hollands”….”The Cape is Dutch again”….and that means…everything is again OK. When the English ruled the Cape, the Dutch didn’t like it…..so when the Cape was given back…they said…”The Cape is again…Dutch!”…and we’re still using that saying in any situation…to say…everything is OK!…if things had gone wrong….
In this article, 1916, Afrikaans was recognised in the Church! as a language…only in the Free State….one of the provinces of South Africa.
This is now the current “logo” of Huisgenoot….and also in its modern format.
This issue has got Nuweland on the cover, Nuweland is THE place to be for rugby in Cape Town…it is a 1962-issue…and inside there were lots of rugby photos, rugby was and still is, THE sport of the day in South Africa.
De ontwikkeling van het Afrikaans Het Afrikaans heeft zich ontwikkeld uit het zeventiende-eeuwse Hollands: De Oost-Indische compagnie (VOC) koos in de 17e eeuw de Kaap de Goede Hoop als rustplaats op haar weg naar Indië. Op de lange zeereizen had men behoefte aan een vast station, waar vers eten en drinken aan boord kon worden gehaald, zieken konden worden achtergelaten enz.
De eerste kolonisten aan de Kaap kwamen uit het zuiden van de Nederlanden, wat aan bepaalde details in het huidige Afrikaans nog te merken is. Het waren matrozen en boeren, allebei groepen met heel verschillende woordenschatten en dialecten. De inheemse bewoners van het zuidelijke Afrika waren toen voor het grootste deel zogenaamde Hottentotten en Bosjesmannen.
Vanaf 1740 was de voertaal in Zuid-Afrika niet meer zuiver Nederlands. Een van de meest plausibele theorieën over het ontstaan van de nieuwe taal is, dat de belangrijkste veranderingen in het Afrikaans teruggaan op interferenties.
De Franse hugenoten die in de 16e/17e eeuw naar Zuid-Afrika kwamen, hadden geen grote invloed op de taal, alleen de Franse namen herinneren er nog aan. De Franse woorden die in het Afrikaans overgenomen zijn, kwamen uit het Nederlands van de 17e en 18e eeuw.
Ook de “Maleise slaven” uit Indonesië, Angola en andere gebieden, meestal Portugese kolonieën, die in de 18e eeuw naar Zuid-Afrika gebracht werden, hadden maar beperkte invloed op de taal. De Maleise en Portugese woorden in het Afrikaans werden al vroeger door het Nederlands ontleend (zeemanstaal).
In het midden van de 18e eeuw was het proces van deflexie (vereenvoudiging en reductie van de nominale en verbale paradigma; vgl. ook het flexieverlies in het Middelnederlands) al zo ver, dat een eigen variant van de taal was ontstaan, het “Kaap-Nederlands”. Vanaf de 2e helft van de 18e eeuw was een eigen taalsysteem gevestigd. Door analyse van de bronnen is een ontwikkeling van het Nederlands via het Kaapnederlands naar het Afrikaans te zien.
Rond 1800 kwamen de Engelsen naar Zuid-Afrika. Hun komst had echter geen grote invloed op de taal. Maar de Engelsen bleven hun eigen taal spreken, het bestuur en het onderwijs werden Engelstalig. De Kaap werd Britse kolonie. Het Engels had toen een veel hogere sociale status dan het Afrikaans; de bovenlaag, het bestuur en de intellectuelen praatten Engels, het Afrikaans werd als “kombuistaal” beschouwd. De opvolgers van de Nederlanders en de Vlamingen (“conservatieve boeren”) werden meer en meer ontevreden over het Engelse bestuur (slavenbevrijding) en trokken in de zogenaamde. “Grote Trek” (1836-44) naar het noorden, weg van de kust. In verschillende gebieden vond men nu ook verschillende varianten van het Afrikaans. De ruzies met de Engelsen gingen door.
Het opkomende nationalisme in de 19e eeuw vroeg ook om de verdediging van de taal door de Afrikaans-taligen. Voor het eerst begon men nu de Afrikaanse taal op te schrijven. Er werd een spelling ontworpen, men gebruikte de taal in het onderwijs en er werd een Afrikaanse bijbelvertaling geschreven. Deze vertaling was vanwege het gezag van de bijbel belangrijk voor de ontwikkeling van het Afrikaans (vgl. hierbij ook de “Statenvertaling” en de gotische bijbelvertaling). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Read more about the history of Afrikaans….
Spring in Clanwilliam….follow here for more daisy pics in South Africa…the link will open in a new window. Louis Leipoldt – one of our BEST poets, wrote a poem about spring…the month October….I must post it here when it is October! In his poem, he says October is the most beautiful month, and for South Africa, it is the truth!
I’ve started reading this book quite recently….-while reading “In Search of South Africa”, the book which Dennis from the chess site sent me….I posted an extract of it somewhere on my blog…- anyway…this book about Janine di Giovanni’s memoir of the war, is about the Kosovo-War….only now on page 13, and do agree with her…it is about “madness”….
My topic is “green”. Green is the colour that changes into different colours! During Autumn, it is amazing to see all the changes….if you look closely, you will see the seed of the Horse Chestnut on this tree… Here it is, but it has changed! And it has dropped down….ready for another cycle? The English call this a “concker” and earlier, they played games with the conkers and children knew how to keep themself busy with it!
In the corner of the garden, green, but with an invader…. Once again, beautiful green! Some children in London say that they hate green as a colour, because there is so much green in the country! …..never thought someone will say that… …..more green…… And…..there’s the invader…he thought I would never see him, I think he was ready to jump….wonder how fast that would be…Another Osterley-link with images I took in the park.
This is what South Africans call “Rusks”….it is not for children when “teething”…but our children like it too, even when teething! We like to give them these Boudoir biscuits…they are soooooo yummy!! At the bottom of this post is a recipe about Banana bread, very delicious and very South African! Enjoy!
English readers, click on this link for the English translated recipe… HERE is the translated of the rusks- Enjoy!! Read the history of rusks further down in this post and find a delicous condensed milk rusk recipe at the bottom of this post.
On this next link you will find only recipes in Afrikaans..tons of it. The link will open in a new window.
Ek het hierdie volgende resep by ‘n vriendin gekry en boere! is dit nou lekker. Ek moet hom nog net self bak. Daarby het ek nog nie uitgekom nie en dit is nou my doelwit vir hierdie komende week! Hier in Engeland het hulle soveel “Targets”, dis targets vir elke liewe dingetjie, ‘n wonder hulle het nog nie opgekom met targets vir jou met jou troeteldiere nie, want soms is dit al wat saak maak, die targets! Nou sal ek myself een stel…om die beskuit te bak…hier kom hy!
Karringmelk beskuit 3x 500 g pakkies bruismeel
1/2 t sout
3/4 van 500g margarien
3 eiers
2k suiker
1k klapper
1t vanilla geursel
1t voedselkleursel- geel
500ml Karringmelk
Metode:
Stel die oond op 180 grade C
1. Vryf die botter in die meel en sout.
2. Klits die Karringmelk, suiker en eiers saam.
3. Voeg klapper by die meelmengsel.
4. Voeg geursel en kleursel by die eiermengsel.
5. Meng alles saam. Voeg melk by indien die deeg te styf is.
6. Smeer broodpannetjies. Plaas die deeg daarin totdat +- 1/4 van die boom bedek is, anders is die beskuit te groot.
7. Bak +- 20 minute, sny en droog uit.
8. Geniet met ‘n heerlike koppie tee!
History of Ouma Rusks. Ouma Rusks (Afrikaans: Ouma Beskuit – literally “Ouma Rusks”; “Ouma” is a brand and proper noun meaning “Grandmother” ) are South Africa’s best-known brand of rusks – a traditional South African snack that is dipped in coffee or (less often) tea before being eaten.Owing to the South African diaspora it has become an iconic South African product that is consumed all over the world. It is usually marketed with the slogan Doop ‘n Ouma (in Afrikaans) or Dip ‘n Ouma (in South African English) (Dip a Ouma).According to the manufacturer, the history of Ouma Rusks began in the 1939 in the small Eastern Cape town of Molteno, where the effects of the Great Depression were bringing many people to their knees. During this time, a certain Ouma Greyvensteyn and her friends attended a church meeting where ways in which to help mission work were discussed. At the end of the meeting, each of the women were given a half-a-crown coin and told to multiply it using their talents, as in the Gospel. Ouma Greyvensteyn used this money to buy ingredients in order to make rusks using her family recipe. The rusks she baked proved to be extremely popular and orders continued to be placed for her rusks.Ouma Rusks are now owned by NOLA – one of South Africa’s leading food manufacturers and a division of Foodcorp. Currently, the rusks are available in single, 500 g and 1 kg packs in the following flavours:
Stel die oond op 180 C.
Klits die botter en suiker tot romerig en glad. Voeg die vanilla geursel by. Klits die eiers goed en meng dit by. Sif die droe bestanddele en voeg dit by. Meng goed. Meng die fyngedrukte piesangs by en meng alles deeglik. Plaas die mengsel in gesmeerde broodpannetjies. Bak vir 1 uur. Laat afkoel en sit voor met botter/margarien.
:: Banana Bread::
This very traditional South African bread is best served as buttered slices. It is best to buy the bananas a few days in advance and wait until they are at their ripest, with the skin just starting to turn black.
Ingredients:
125 butter or margarine
375 ml sugar
3 eggs
5ml (1tsp) vanilla essence
250ml (1 cup) banana pulp (about 2 bananas, depending on size)
500ml (2 cups) flour
10ml (2 tsp) baking powder
1.25ml (1/4 tsp) baking soda
1.25ml (1/4 tsp) salt
25ml milk
A small 25cm cake tray (1.75L)
*The banana is best mashed in a food processor; or just cut into pieces and then mashed with a fork/potato masher.
Method:
1. Mix the butter and sugar together. If you have an electric beater, all the better.
2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well inbetween.
3. Add the vanilla and banana pulp, mixing well.
4. Add the dry ingredients with the milk and mix well till you have a smooth thick batter.
5. Pour into bread tin and bake for one hour at 180 degrees Celsius.
Recipe to be found here: http://hoogendoorn.livedsl.nl/Recipes/Piesangbrood.html
This next recipe comes from Peter Veldsman, one of South Africa’s most knowledgeable food writers. I hope you enjoy it! CONDENSED MILK RUSKS (Makes 120 rusks)
The easy way out for those who can’t or won’t bake mosbolletjies.
1 tin (397 g) condensed milk
500 ml (2 cups) boiling water
250 g (250 ml/1 cup) butter
200 g (250 ml/1 cup) sugar
500 ml (2 cups) cold water
3 extra-large eggs, beaten
2 cakes of fresh yeast (25 g each), crumbled
1 packet (2,5 kg) cake flour
25 ml (2 T) salt
50 ml (4 T) aniseed (optional)
BAKING TINS
4 greased loaf tins
1. Mix condensed milk, boiling water, butter and sugar until butter has melted and sugar has dissolved. Add cold water, eggs, yeast and half the flour. Mix thoroughly to a smooth batter. Do not be too concerned if small pieces of yeast are still visible. Cover and leave in a warm place for 1-2 hours to allow the leavening to rise and become spongy.
2. Punch back the leavening and add salt, aniseed (if used) and enough of the remaining flour to make a soft dough. Sprinkle more flour, a little at a time, onto the dough board and knead well until the dough no longer sticks to the board. Knead for 15 minutes or until the dough is smooth and elastic. If another pair of hands is available, divide the dough into two and knead separately.
3. Complete dough by leaving it to prove, punching back, pinching into balls, packing tightly in greased baking tins and setting aside to rise again.
4. Bake the rusk loaf for 40-50 minutes. Cover with aluminium foil, shiny side up, as soon as the top becomes too brown. Turn out and leave to cool. Break into rusks and dry out.
Recipe from this site…http://www.showcook.co.za/pveldsman.htm
Hierdie volgende reseppie het ek van ‘n blog-leser gekry, sien haar boodskap in die kommentaar-boks hier. Ek plaas haar resep hier. Geniet dit!
Hier is ‘n Karringmelk beskuit resep – ‘n wenner!! (Dit was op die karringmelk houer).
1 kg Bruismeel; 5ml sout; 200ml suiker; 250g botter of magarien; 500ml karringmelk; 2 eiers; 25ml olie.
Metode: 1. Meng bruismeel en sout. 2. Vryf botter of margarine in (tot dit fyn korreltjis is). 3. Klits suiker, eiers, olie en karringmelk in ‘n aparte houer. 4. Voeg nou die “nat” mengsel by die “droee” mengsel. 5. Meng baie deeglik en plaas in ‘n gesmeerde oondpan – krap dit gelyk met ‘n vurk. (Ek maak nie bolletjies nie, dit neem te veel tyd!) 6. Bak ongeveer 45min by 180 grade Celsius – so ligbruin bo-op. 7. Haal uit oond, laat effens afkoel, dop uit pan en breek in stukkies. 8. Droog uit in oond. (Toe die kinders klein was het hulle dit net so sag geeet!)
Dis gou om te maak en baie lekker!!! http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
Ek het vanmore verder gegaan op my soektog na kuns oor die Boer/Britse oorlog, toe ek op Tala se bloginskrywing afkom oor die Boere-oorlog. Wat my sommer omgekrap het, is die feit dat sy sê dat die konsentrasiekampe nie so erg was soos Hitler se gaskamers nie!! Wel, wel, daarmee stem ek nou glad nie saam nie. Dis nou een ding waaroor jy nie met my moet verskil nie, dit is om deur dit te se! Waar in die lewe sien jy, dat ‘n sterk nasie, soos die Britte, wat al soveel oorloë geveg het, dat hulle teen die Boere nie hond-haaraf kon maak nie! Dit was ‘n situasie van “stalemate”…pat…soos ons in Skaak sê! Hulle het nie geweet waarheen met ons klomp nie, so wat was die volgende “beste” ding om te doen? Sit die vroue en kinders in konsentrasiekampe en verhonger hulle!! Brand hulle huise af tot op die grond….!! Maak die plaasdiere (vee) dood….Waar in die lewe kan jy nou sê dat dit nie so erg is nie! Jammer, Tala, maar ek verskil heeltemal met jou! Ek glo nie jy besef mooi wat daar gebeur het nie. Jy sê selfs dat jy nie die SA geskiedenis ken nie, omdat jy dit nie geleer het nie. Dus verskoon ek jou die keer, maar my liewe genade! Daar is vroue en kinders dood as gevolg van die kampe en die verhongering. Dink net aan die siektes daar ook! Ek wens so ek het daardie boek, wat ek op Lady Smith gekoop het, hier gehad om aanhalings vir jou te kon gee. Daarin word vertel hoe die vroue sterf, hoe die swanger vroue nie kry wat hulle nodig het nie, hoe die siekes ‘n tekort aan medikasie gehad het….hoe hulle hul water moes rantsoneer…ag nee man!! Dit is erg genoeg om na hierdie foto’s te kyk en te weet wat aangegaan het. Ek glo nie enige persoon wat ‘n Christen is, kan dit goed praat nie, of selfs sê dat dit nie so erg was nie. Ek gaan nou eers tee drink om my opgewondenheid te onderdruk…
For the English speaking people visiting my site…I was just letting some steam off, because I read on a blog found this morning, after looking for some Art-stuff on the British/Boer-War, that Tala said by putting the women and children – to starve – in concentration camps, wasn’t as bad as Hitler with his gass chambers!! For heavens sake!! What I say is…it is just as bad…how in your right mind can you let women and children starve and say…”that’s not too bad..”!! Wow! Hello!! Am I narrow-minded,…or what!…that’s what upset me! Do you think it’s “cool”…and please, don’t tell me war is war… we all know that..there is WAYS to seek solutions…and putting women and children in camps and to starve them…is NOT a solution… and please, don’t tell us that the British thought it was a way to feed the women and children..bull!! We all know that one too…there was no need for them..why did they not let them go when they wanted to leave the camps…hey..we’re not stupid….we all know the reasons…
Farm houses were burnt down!...with the scorced-earth policy
Women and children suffered the most! There were not allowed to leave the camps.
Edit…
More info can be found HERE and more on my blog-entry link. The scope of the war was the biggest thus far on South African territory and one of the greatest thus far waged by Britain in Southern Africa. The Boer forces had a potential of 54 000 men but never more than 40 000 were empIoyed at once, whilst the British forces grew to 450 000 at the height of hostilities. Casualties were as follows:
British soldiers: 7 792 (killed) 13 250 (deaths from disease)
Boers: 6 000
Women and children in Concentration Camps: 26 370
Blacks in Concentration Camps: 20 000+ (Official British figure: 14 154)
Of special importance is the final phase of the war, after the capitals Bloemfontein and Pretoria were captured and the Boer forces resorted to guerrilla warfare. In an effort to contain the guerillas the British adopted a two pronged strategy: the so-called scorched earth policy and the removal of the Boer women and children to concentration camps. It was during this phase of the war that the suffering of the Black people intensified. Since the farms were destroyed, livestock killed and crops burnt, the farm labourers and their families were taken to refugee camps Since there was also fear amongst the British that those Biack farmers who farmed independently may supply the Boer commandos with victuals or that their livestock might be commandeered, these farmers were taken to concentration camps. As the main reason for the war was the British desire to gain control of the gold mines in the Witwatersrand, there was a need to build a Iabour force with which to reopen the mines as soon as the state of hostilities allowed it. Forced labour camps were introduced and Black labourers were concentrated therein.
The condition in these camps were appalling, Epidemic diseases, malnutrition, insufficient medical care and dreadful sanitary arrangements resulted in the high death rate. In the white camps the death toll rose to 26 370 of the approximately 100 000 inmates. In the Black camps the official British figure was just over 14 000, but recent research proves that a figure in excess of 20 000 deaths among the 120 000 inmates of these camps is acceptable.
Read this newspaper clip below – where an Englishman described how kind the Boers were and that everything that was said in England about the Boers, was not true.
From the Boer War Facebook page
From the Boer War Facebook page
Artist: Ron Wilson….
LW: This post gets updated every now and then – more then than now – when I find more resources and information…new information and links will be added at the bottom of this post. Most links will open in a new window. When you see this link icon – you will know there’s a link to follow up. I hope this helps. I apologise and know it must be very confusing. Please check the bottom of this page for most of the links – without this icon. This post was written 12 years ago! I hope that all links will still be active.
Boer War Diary
The following extracts from a diary, of the authenticity of which we have obtained sufficient assurance, illustrate one aspect of the process of “clearing” tracts of the country occupied by the enemy.
Amsterdam, New Scotland, February 14 1901. This morning, about eight o’clock, the cavalry of the enemy entered the town, the infantry following.
Every garden and tree was stripped of everything. All the livestock was taken. General Campbell arrived; he was very abrupt. He said they, the English, had come to give us food and protection.
Mother replied that we were quite satisfied with the food and protection our own people afforded us. Then he said we were to be ready to leave the following day at 10 a.m.
Feb. 15. Worse than ever. The Provost Marshal, Capt. Daniels entered the house and began searching. They took what they wanted – soap, candles, mealies & c. even to white sewing cotton. When mother came in, Capt. Daniels turned to her and said, ‘Those devils of Boers have been sniping at us again, and your two sons among them, I suppose. If I catch them, they will hang.’
Feb. 17. At dawn Capt. Ballantyne said we would be allowed a quarter of an hour to load, and only to take the most necessary things. Beds, clothing, mattresses, chairs, chests & c., odds and ends of all kinds were burnt. Foodstuffs were also taken. At 9 p.m. we out-spanned in a hard rain. It was pitiful to hear the children crying all night in the wet wagons for water and food.
March 5. Annie very sick. Must be the food, as we have only meat, and mealies (corn) when we can pick them.
March 6. Annie very ill all day. A driving misty rain. Oxen with lung sickness are made to pull until they fall down in the yoke to die.
April 19 [in captivity at Volksrust]. Message that Major Watt, Assistant District Commissioner, wanted to see [Mother] at once. Mother, Annie and Polly Coltzer went with the policeman. Major Watt was in a dreadful rage.
‘You are Mrs. Cameron?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You are a most dangerous woman, you have been speaking against the British Government. You are an English woman.’ ‘All my sympathies are with the Boers.’ ‘Make a note of that. All the concessions we intended making you will be withdrawn. You will not be allowed to receive any parcels.’
April 25. We received the following: ‘I beg to inform you that you are to proceed to Maritzburg tomorrow by the 11p.m. train. A wagon shall convey your luggage to the station.’
B. R. Cameron, Prisoner of War, May 31 1901. Green Point, Pietermaritzburg, Natal.
“When is a war not a war?” — “When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa,” referring to those same camps and the policies that created them.
–see my link in this post: “Churchill makes me smile”– for more on this…see bottom of the page for the link.
Image: anglo-boer.co.za
Image: Tararualibrary…Wording on back:
“Boer war 1900 Troops parading prior to their departure.
Site: Cnr Millers Rd and Stanley St Paynes house on the right still there HBF garage on left hand corner”
Above image: HERE on the site of Tararualibrary. The link will open in a new window.
The British controlled government implemented Pass Laws in 1923 paved the way for further restrictions on non-Whites social and political freedoms when Afrikaner-led political parties gained control of the government in 1948 (the birth of Apartheid). This segregation along racial lines has further widened the gap between the White Afrikaans speakers and Coloured Afrikaans speakers…
Source:Diversity South Africa
Since the people were of white European descent, nobody was seriously punished for their part in the war….so…if they were black??
The Boer War shaped the destiny of South Africa and, as Rudyard Kipling remarked, taught the mighty British Empire ‘no end of a lesson’.
It was said to be the last of the ‘gentleman’s wars’, a ‘white man’s war’ and it would be over by Christmas. It was none of these things. The Boer War was brutal, racially explosive and it took the greatest empire in the world nearly three years to beat a Boer army smaller than the population of Brighton.
The Boer War capitulated the world into the 20th Century, prefiguring the worst excesses of modern conflicts: the indiscriminate bombing of civilians, scorched earth, rape, concentration camps. It was a civil war dividing families, communities and races.
It was a bitter conflict between two small Boer nations fighting for their life and freedom and a great empire asserting what it saw as it’s legitimate authority.
I often get people who got directed here – via google – with the search engine term: Boer – well, I would like to suggest you go back to google, put in a search the following: ‘South African farmer[s]‘ – you might like what you’ll see. Good Luck.
THE BOER NATIONS (“boer” is the Dutch word for “farmer”)
Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended
themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time
when Spain was the greatest power in the world. Intermix with them a
strain of those inflexible French Huguenots who gave up home and
fortune and left their country for ever at the time of the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. The product must obviously be one of the most
rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon earth. Take this
formidable people and train them for seven generations in constant
warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances
under which no weakling could survive, place them so that they acquire
exceptional skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a
country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the
marksman, and the rider. Then, finally, put a finer temper upon their
military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an
ardent and consuming patriotism. Combine all these qualities and all
these impulses in one individual, and you have the modern Boer — the
most formidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial
Britain. Our military history has largely consisted in our conflicts
with France, but Napoleon and all his veterans have never treated us
so roughly as these hard-bitten farmers with their ancient theology
and their inconveniently modern rifles. See link at the bottom of this page to continue reading… Concentration Camps
In early March 1901 Lord Kitchener decided to break the stalemate that the extremely costly war had settled into. It was costing the British taxpayer 2,5 million pounds a month. He decided to sweep the country bare of everything that can give sustenance to the Boers i.e. cattle, sheep, horses, women and children. This scorched earth policy led to the destruction of about 30000 Boer farmhouses and the partial and complete destruction of more than forty towns.. Thousands of women and children were removed from their homes by force.They had little or no time to remove valuables before the house was burnt down. They were then taken by ox-wagon or in open cattle trucks to the nearest camp.
Conditions in the camps were less than ideal. Tents were overcrowded. Reduced-scale army rations were provided. In fact there were two scales. Meat was not included in the rations issued to women and children whose menfolk were still fighting. There were little or no vegetables, no fresh milk for the babies and children, 3/4 lb of either mealie meal, rice or potatoes, 1 lb of meat twice weekly, I oz of coffee daily, sugar 2 oz daily, and salt 0,5 oz daily (this was for adults and children who had family members on commando).
In the camps – image – photosearch
hmmm….not very nice of them burning down people’s houses, hey… we all know war is war…but…to take away from women and children! That’s really not very humane!
On this next link, you can read extracts from the Parliamentary debates that were going on during the War in the British Parliament…you will see the death numbers too – not sure if that is correct, you know what politics are like…they will of course hide the exact figures as we all know – anyway..children’s deaths are about 10 times more than adults and women were held as prisioners as they were not allowed to leave the camps if they wished too. I’m sure more of the deaths could be prevented if people were not held in the camps. To say they were “fed” is just an excuse! They knew it was the only way to force the Boers to surrender, as the Boers couldn’t let these women and children dying in the camps like sheep on their way to a butcher!
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/hansxcv1.html
Concentration Camps
In early March 1901 Lord Kitchener decided to break the stalemate that the extremely costly war had settled into. It was costing the British taxpayer 2,5 million pounds a month. He decided to sweep the country bare of everything that can give sustenance to the Boers i.e. cattle, sheep, horses, women and children. Read more on the link I’ve given you. — What a shame for the Britain! Putting women and children in concentration camps to starve… that’s just as cruel as Hitler’s gass chambers! Killing people in this way when you know you can’t defeat them….And what’s more… Britain has already got more experience in fighting and wars than the South Africans, a small upcoming nation…..Hierdie Engelse sal ook nooit “jammer” se oor wat hulle weet hulle gedoen het nie. Hierdie konsentrasiekampe was vir my net so erg soos die Duitsers met hulle gaskamers! Ek het ‘n boek gekoop by ‘n museum op Lady Smith and daarin lees ook toe die naam raak van ‘n niggie van my ouma wat in ‘n kamp was! As jy die link “great grandad” volg, sal jy verstaan waarom ek so ‘n passie vir die oorlog-geskiedenis het en gedurig weer terugkeer na iets wat daarmee te doen het. Ek sal graag meer kuns en gedigte wil kry om hierdie week te plaas, veral kuns en ek was nogal verbaas om hierdie een van Coetzer te kry. Ek het afgekom op ‘n baie oulike webbladsy van ‘n ou in die USA en ek gaan die link hier plaas, daar is verskillende
Sources: Enslin Vosloo painting…
Ladysmith Town hall image: tokencoins.com/book/boer.htm#zar04
“Duty called the Cordons to South Africa and the plains of the Transvaal to fight the Boers. The Boers were regarded as an easy enemy and naturally would be overcome quickly. Boers were self reliant farmers dressed in civilian khaki suitable for the vast veldt. Most of British Army still favoured red jackets, white pith helmets and Crimean War tactics. Whereas the Boers formed commando groups to move across country swiftly and stealthily living off the land. They were extremely good shots armed with the accurate Mauser rifle and a common cry was Victory through God and the Mauser.”…from the same site as the site where the image comes from…
On THIS LINK you can read more about the War…read these poems too….see more pictures…some very upsetting…the link will open in a new window. C Louis Leipoldt (excerpt)
A poem written by Leipoldt in Afrikaans and it was translated…
You, who are the hope of our people;
You, who our people can barely spare;
You, who should grow up to become a man;
You, who must perform your duty, if you can;
You, who have no part in the war;
You, who should sing and jump for joy –
You must perish in a children’s camp
You must be eliminated for peace:
Fold your hands tight together,
Close your eyes and say amen!
Whooping-cough and consumption, without milk:
bitter for you is the fate of life!
There is your place, at the children’s graves –
Two in one coffin, a wedding couple!
Al you gain is that we will remember:
Our freedom more precious than woman or child!
~~~~~ also the next one…by Leipoldt
In the Concentration Camp
(Aliwal North, 1901) C Louis Leipoldt (excerpt)
You are cringing away from the gusts of the wind
The chill seeping through the hail-torn tent –
Your scanty shield against torturing torrents;
The June chill bursts over the banks of the Vaal –
And all you can hear are the coughs from your child, and the
ceaseless patter of rain on the canvas.
A candle stub, just an inch before death
faintly flickering in a bottle
(a sty offers more comfort and rest)
But here, at night every thought is
a round of torture and tears.
Here, the early-born child flounders
Here, the aged fades away
Here, all you can hear is wailing and sighs
Here, every second is a lifetime of dread;
Every minute leaves scars on your soul, sacrifice without end.
Forgive? Forget? Is it possible to forgive?
The sorrow, the despair demanded so much!
The branding iron painfully left its scar
on our nation, for ages to see, and the wound is too raw –
Too close to our heart and to deep in our souls –
“Patience, o patience, how much can you bear?”
~~~
Leipoldt also wrote heart-breaking verses on a soap box to the memory of children who could at least be buried in this luxury:
Image: http://appiusforum.net/hellkamp.html – where I refer to hellkamp at an image, it refers to this site (update 2019 – site link is dead – don’t bother to visit!) They made you in England, little soap box
To serve as coffin for our children
They found little corpses for you, soap box
And I have witnessed you as coffin
Equally unforgettable is AG Visser’s description of an orphan in the concentration camp in his poem,
The Youngest Burgher:
The camp of women is ruled by silence and darkness
The misery kindly concealed by the night
Here and there a minute light is flickering
Where the Angel of Death is lingering.
In this place of woe and of broken hearts
A young boy’s muffled whimpers quiver through the night
Who can count all the tears, who can measure the grief
of an orphan alone in the world
Later on in the poem De Wet describes the struggle to the escaped child who wishes to join the commando:
Freedom demands from our ranks
Men of courage who taunt mortal danger.
But also in the camp, the mother, the nurturer
And the innocent child on her breast.
And the reward? Perhaps on the plains
A lonesome grave doused by no tears.
Sometime, perhaps, posterity might honour our heroes…
Boy, do you feel up to it? General, I do!
This Afrikaans poem is about a solder that was beheaded…by a bomb.
Die ruiter van Skimmelperdpan
Op die pad wat verdwyn in die Skimmelperdpan,
By ‘n draai in die mond van die kloof,
Het ‘n bom in die oorlog ‘n vlugtende man
Op ‘n perd soos ‘n swaardslag onthoof.
Aan die saalboom krampagtig die hande verstyf,
Met ‘n laaste stuiptrekkende krag,
En die bene geklem soos ‘n skroef om sy lyf,
Op die perd sit die grusame vrag.
Met sy neusgate wyd en die ore op sy nek,
Soos die wind yl verbysterd die dier,
Met die skuim in wit vlokke wat waai uit sy bek,
En gespan soos ‘n draad elke spier;
By die huisie verby waar ‘n vrou staan en kyk …
In die afkopding ken sy haar man …
Met ‘n onaardse geil val sy bleek soos ‘n lyk …
Perd en ruiter verdwyn in die Pan!
Wee die reisiger wat daar onwetend kom skuil
Waar bouvallig die huisie nog staan,
En vreesagtig by wyle ‘n nagdiertjie huil
By die newelige lig van die maan!
Want by middernag waai daar ‘n wind deur die kloof,
Waai en huil soos ‘n kindjie wat kerm,
En dan jaag daar ‘n perd met ‘n man sonder hoof …
Wie dit sien, roep verskrik: “Heer, ontferm!”
Want die vuurvonke spat waar die hoefslae dreun,
En dit vlam uit sy neus en sy oog;
Styf en stram sit die ruiter na vore geleun,
En die bloed uit sy nek spuit ‘n boog;
En dan eensklaps van uit die vervalle gebou
Kom ‘n vreeslike skrikbeeld gevaar,
Al die hare orent – ‘n waansinnige vrou
Met ‘n hande-wringend gebaar:
“Waarom rus jy nie, rus jy nie, Jan van der Meer?
Waarom jaag jy my elke nag op?
Sal daar nimmer ‘n einde kom … altyd maar weer
Die galop … die galop … die galop?!”
Die afgryslike klank – nog gehuil nog gelag –
En die perd met die romp van ‘n man …!
Dis geen plek vir ‘n Christenmens daar in die nag
Langs die pad na die Skimmelperdpan!
A.G. Visser
Uit: Die Purper Iris.
Slagveld – Majuba
So sing die jonges vol van vreugde,
maar ag, oom Gert se hart is seer
as hy straks diep en dieper peinsend
gaan langs die slagveld van weleer.
Dáár lê Majuba, donker kleurig,
sy sye een en al terras;
dis of die berg van alle eeue
vir wonderdaad geskape was.
Daar lê Laingsnek; dis of Gods hande
dit vir ‘n skanswerk uit wou bou.
En daar’s Ingogo’s kronkelbedding—
net om die vyand op te hou.
Daar’s nog die wonderlike hoeke,
net om die vyand vas te keer;
maar ag, oom Gert voel nou so anders,
sy hart is onverklaarbaar seer.
Hy sien nou oral groot kanonne,
hy weet nie of die ding sal gaan.
Die treine voer nou alle soorte
van wapens uit die hoofstad aan.
Daar is hom ook so baie mense,
en baie goed word aangevoer;
voorheen was daar so min maar nodig:
‘n ryperd, biltong en ‘n roer.
Dis nodig, ja, die tyd die vorder,
en daarom swyg hy maar en kyk.
Maar heel die Amajuba-wêreld,
alles wil hom so anders lyk.
Tog leef hy weer, die troue krygsman,
al trek hy nou maar same net:
‘n oorlogsperd die stamp en runnik
wanneer hy hoor die krygstrompet!
Uit Goue Gode…XV : Verse van Totius
C. Louis Leipoldt: DIE KOPERKAPEL Die koperkapel kom uit sy gat
En sluip die randjie rond:
“Dit het gereën; die veld is nat,
En nat is die rooi-geel grond.”
Die meerkat kom, en sy ogies blink,
En hy staan orent en wag.
En die stokou ystervark sê: “Ek dink
Die reën kom weer vannag.”
Maar die geitjie piep: “Dis glad nie reën!
Dis kollerig, swart en rooi:
Kom jy sulke reën in jou lewe teen –
So glad, so styf, so mooi?”
En die wyse steenuil waag sy woord:
“Dis bloed, dis mensebloed!
Dis die lewensbloed wat hierdie oord
Se bossie-wortels voed!”
Wittekind in die Konsentrasiekamp
(Aliwal Noord, 1901) O, pazienza, pazienza che tanto sostieni! Dante. Jou oê is nat met die trane van gister; Jou siel is gemartel, deur smarte gepla; Van vrede en pret was jy vroër ‘n verkwister; En nou, wat bly oor van jou rykdomme? Ja, ‘n Spreekwoord tot steun–daar’s geen trooswoord beslister: “Geduld, o geduld, wat so baie kan dra! Hier sit jy te koes teen die wind, wat daar suie Yskoud deur die tentseil, geskeur deur die hael– Jou enigste skuil in die nag teen die buie; Die Junielug stort oor die stroom van die Vaal– Jy hoor net die hoes van jou kind, en die luie Gedrup van die reendruppeltjies oor die paal. ‘n Kers, nog maar anderhalf duim, voor hy sterwe, Brand dof in ‘n bottel hier vlak naas jou bed. (‘n Kafhuis gee makliker rus: op die gerwe Daar lê ‘n mens sag, en sy slaap is gered!) En hier in die nag laat jou drome jou swerwe ‘n Aaklige rondte met trane besmet. Hier struikel die kind, wat te vroeg was gebore; Hier sterwe die oumens, te swak vir die stryd; Hier kom ‘n gekerm en gekreun in jou ore; Hier tel jy met angs elke tik van die tyd; Want elke sekond van die smart laat sy spore Gedruk op jou hart, deur ‘n offer gewyd. En deur elke skeur in die seil kan jy duister Die wolke bespeur oor die hemel verbrei; Geen ster skyn as gids; na geen stem kan jy luister– (Eentonig die hoes van jou kind aan jou sy!) Wat sag deur die wind in jou ore kom fluister: “Geduld, o geduld, wat so baie kan ly! Vergewe? Vergeet? Is dit maklik vergewe? Die smarte, die angs, het so baie gepla! Die yster het gloeiend ‘n merk vir die eeue Gebrand op ons volk, en die wond is te na, Te na aan ons hart en te diep in ons lewe– “Geduld, o geduld, wat so baie kan dra!” Uit: Oom Gert Vertel en Ander Gedigte, C. Louis Leipoldt, Uitg. Mij. v/h. J. Dusseau & Co, Kaapstad 1921
Images..:south-africa-tours-and-travel.com
Read on THIS LINK about Jan Smuts. The link will open in a new window.
The title of a painting,” said Marcel Duchamp, “is another colour on the artist’s palette.” He also talked of treating the title “like an invisible colour”. Duchamp’s remarks were part of his ongoing argument with the art of painting…………………………….
The painting shows – well, what it obviously doesn’t show is the Boer War, or any individual episode from Britain’s Imperial war in South Africa, which had ended the year before this picture was painted. But the likely link between words and image isn’t hard to find. A lone woman stands by a stream at the bottom of a field or garden. She was the fiance or wife or sister of a man killed in the war. She’s lately heard the news, and gone off on her own. Or she’s been in mourning some time, but the place – this is where they used to walk, and never will again – calls out a sudden pang of memory and grief.
The Boer War is her back story, then, her motivation, the reason for her state of mind. It is the content of her invisible thought bubble. It is, in a sense, a perfectly straight descriptive title for this picture. For how do you show the Boer War except by depicting scenes from the war? And why shouldn’t those scenes include, not only battlefields and sieges, but also the scenes of bereavement and desolation that were the immediate consequence back home?
Read the complete article… HERE …. This next poem was written by Totius and it’s about the Afrikaner nation/Afrikaans that was stepped upon/damaged by the English and his message in this poem for the Afrikaner nation/Afrikaans is: “you’re strong, you will get up again, you will be a strong nation again and you should forgive what was done to you. The scars will be there, but you should grow to be strong again.”… a very deep poem… Vergewe en vergeet
Daar het ‘n doringboompie
vlak by die pad gestaan,
waar lange ossespanne
met sware vragte gaan.
En eendag kom daarlanges
‘n ossewa verby,
wat met sy sware wiele
dwars-oor die boompie ry.
“Jy het mos, doringstruikie,
my ander dag gekrap;
en daarom het my wiele
jou kroontjie platgetrap.”
Die ossewa verdwyn weer
agter ‘n heuweltop,
en langsaam buig die boompie
sy stammetjie weer op.
Sy skoonheid was geskonde;
sy bassies was geskeur;
op een plek was die stammetjie
so amper middeldeur.
Maar tog het daardie boompie
weer stadig reggekom,
want oor sy wonde druppel
die salf van eie gom.
Ook het die loop van jare
die wonde weggewis –
net een plek byl ‘n teken
wat onuitwisbaar is. Die wonde word gesond weer
as jare kom en gaan,
maar daardie merk word groter
en groei maar aldeur aan.
Totius The Concentration Camps
1. Introduction The concentration camps in which Britain killed 27,000 Boer women and children (24,000) during the Second War of Independence (1899 – 1902) today still have far-reaching effects on the existence of the Boerevolk. This holocaust once more enjoyed close scrutiny during the visit of the queen of England to South Africa, when ten organizations promoting the independence of the Boer Republics, presented her with a message, demanding that England redress the wrongs committed against the Boerevolk.
Women and children in the camps – image:hellkamp
2. Background The Second War of Independence was fought from 1899 to 1902 when England laid her hands on the mineral riches of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (Transvaal) under the false pretence of protecting the rights of the foreigners who swarmed to the Transvaal gold fields. On the battlefield England failed to get the better of the Boers, and decided to stoop to a full-scale war against the Boer women and children, employing a holocaust to force the burghers to surrender. 3. Course of the holocaust 3.1. The war against women and children begins Under the command of Kitchener, Milner and Roberts, more than homesteads and farms belonging to Boer people were plundered and burned down. Animals belonging to the Boers were killed in the cruellest ways possible while the women, whose men were on the battlefield, had to watch helplessly.
Leaving sheep to rotten – image: hellkamp
The motive behind this action was the destruction of the farms in order to prevent the fighting burghers from obtaining food, and to demoralize the Boers by leaving their women and children homeless on the open veld.
Before the blast – images:hellkamp
The Blast
After the blast
Destroyed for king and country
However, England misjudged the steel of the Boer people. Despite their desperate circumstances, the women and children managed to survive fairly well in the open and their men continued their fight against the invader.
Women and children on the run…away from the English
More severe measures had to be taken. The English hoarded the Boer women and children into open cattle trucks or drove them on foot to concentration camps.
3.2. False pretences
To the world England pretended to act very humanely by caring for the fighting Boers’ women and children in “refugee camps”. An English school textbook published in 1914 in Johannesburg, but printed in England, Historical Geography: South Africa, by JR Fisher, makes the following claim:
“During the later stages of the war, the relations, women and
children, of those Boers still in the field, were fed and cared
for at the expense of Great Britain, a method of procedure which,
though humane, postponed the end of the war, at the expense of
many valuable lives and much money.”
This statement is contradicted by various sources. The Cape Argus of 21 June 1900 clearly states that the destitution of these women and children was the result of the English’s plundering of farms: “Within 10 miles we (the English) burned not less than six farm homesteads. Between 30 and 40 homesteads were burned and totally destroyed between Bloemfontein and Boshoff. Many others were also burned down. With their houses destroyed, the women and children were left in the bitter South African winter in the open.” The British history text book says nothing about this.
Awfully generous of the English to care for those whose houses they destroyed!
Breytenbach writes in Danie Theron: “The destruction was undertaken in a diabolic way and even Mrs Prinsloo, a 22 year old lady who gave birth to a baby only 24 hours ago in the house of Van Niekerk, was not spared. A group of rude tommies (British soldiers), amongst whom a so-called English doctor, forced their way into her room, and after making a pretence of examining her, they drove her out of the house. With the aid of her sister, she managed to don a few articles of clothing and left the house. Her mother brought a blanket to protect her against the cold. The soldiers robustly jerked the blanket out of her mother’s hands and after having looted whatever they wanted to, put the house to fire. Afterwards the old man was driven on foot to Kroonstad by mounted kakies (British soldiers), while his wife and daughter (Mrs Prinsloo) were left destitute on the scorched farm.”
England’s claim of caring for the Boer women reminds one of somebody who boasts to have saved the life of someone he himself has pushed into the water. However, there is one vital difference: The holocaust on the Boer women and children began in all earnest once they had been forced into the concentration camps under the “care” of the British!
Family at the beginning – newly arrived with tea and bread (Nasty English Propaganda)
Despite the English claims that the concentration camps were “voluntary refugee camps” the following questions must be asked:
– From whom did the refugees flee? Certainly not from their own husbands and sons!
– How can the fact that the “voluntary” women and children had to be dragged to the concentration camps by force be explained?
– Why should the “voluntary refugee camps” be enclosed by barbed wire fences and the inmates be overseen by armed wardens? Kimberley camp had a five meter high barbed wire fence and some camps even had two or three fences!
– Why would one of the camp commanders make the following statement quoted by Emily Hobhouse: “The wardens were under orders not to interfere with the inmates, unless they should try to escape.”? What kind of “voluntary refugee” would want to escape?
Perhaps the words of the Welsh William Redmond are closer to the truth: “The way in which these wretched, unfortunate and poor women and children are treated in South Africa is barbarous, outrageous, scandalous and disgraceful.”
3.3. Planning for death
The English claim of decent actions towards the Boer women and children are further contradicted by the location of the concentration camps. The military authorities, who often had to plan and erect camps for their soldiers, would certainly have been well aware of the essential requirements for such camps. Yet the concentration camps were established in the most unsuitable locations possible.
Boer-family in the camps
At Standerton the camp was erected on both banks of the Vaal River. It was on the Highveld, which ensured that it was extremely cold in winter and infested with mosquitoes in summer. The fact that Standerton had turf soil and a high rainfall, ensured that the camp was one big mud bath in summer, even inside the tents.
The same circumstances were experienced in camps such as Brandfort, Springfontein and Orange River. At Pretoria, the Irene Camp was located at the chilly southern side of the town, while the northern side had a much more favourable climate. Balmoral, Middelburg and other camps were also located on the south-eastern hangs of the hills to ensure that the inhabitants were exposed to the icy south easterly winds.
Merebank camp was located in a swamp where there was an abundance of various kinds of insects. Water oozed out of the ground, ensuring that everything was constantly wet and slimy.
By October 1900 there were already 58 883 people in concentration camps in Transvaal and 45 306 in the Free State.
The amenities in the camps were clearly planned to kill as many of the women and children as possible. They were accommodated in tattered reject tents which offered no protection against the elements.
Emily Hobhouse, the Cornish lady who campaigned for better conditions for the Boer women, wrote: “Throughout the night there was a downpour. Puddles of water were everywhere. They tried to get themselves and their possessions dry on the soaked ground.”
(Hobhouse: Brunt of the War, page 169.)
Dr Kendal Franks reports on the Irene Camp: “In one of the tents there were three families; parents and children, a total of 14 people and all were suffering from measles.”
In Springfontein camp, 19 to 20 people where crammed into one tent.
There were neither beds nor mattresses and nearly the whole camp population had to sleep on the bare ground, which was damp most of the time.
One person wrote the following plea for aid to the New York Herald: “In the name of small children who have to sleep in open tents without fire, with barely any clothes, I plea for help.”
According to a British journalist, WT Stead, the concentration camps were nothing more than a cruel torture machine. He writes: “Every one of these children who died as a result of the halving of their rations, thereby exerting pressure onto their family still on the battle-field, was purposefully murdered. The system of half rations stands exposed and stark and unshamefully as a cold-blooded deed of state policy employed with the purpose of ensuring the surrender of people whom we were not able to defeat on the battlefield.”
3.4. Let them die of hunger
The detainees received no fruit or vegetables; not even milk for the babies.
The meat and flour issued were crawling with maggots. Emily Hobhouse writes: “I have in my possession coffee and sugar which were described as follows by a London analyst: In the case of the first, 66% imitation, and in the case of the second, sweepings from a warehouse.”
In her book, Met die Boere in die Veld (With the Boers in the field), Sara Raal states that “there were poisonous sulphate of copper, grounded glass, fishhooks, and razor blades in the rations.” The evidence given on this fact is so overwhelming that it must be regarded as a historical fact.
3.5. No hygiene
The outbreak of disease and epidemics in the camps were further promoted by, inter alia, the lack of sanitary conveniences. Bloemfontein camp had only 13 toilets for more than 3 500 people. Aliwal North camp had one toilet for every 170 people.
A British physician, Dr Henry Becker, writes: “First, they chose an ill-suited site for the camp. Then they supplied so little water that the people could neither wash themselves nor their clothes. Furthermore, they made no provision for sufficient waste removal. And lastly, they did not provide enough toilets for the overpopulation they had crammed into the camps.”
A report on a Ladies’ Committee’s visit to Bloemfontein camp stated: “They saw how the women tried to wash clothes in small puddles of water and sometimes had to use the water more than once.”
3.6. Hospitals of homicide
Ill and healthy people were crammed together into unventilated areas conducive to the spreading of disease and epidemics. At first there were no medical amenities whatsoever in the camps.
Foodline
Later doctors were appointed, but too few. In Johannesburg there was one doctor for every 4 000 afflicted patients.
A report on the Irene camp states that, out of a population of 1325 detainees, 154 were ill and 20 had died during the previous week. Still this camp had only one doctor and no hospital.
In some camps matters were even worse. The large Bloemfontein camp did not have a single doctor; only one nurse who could not possibly cope with the conditions. During a visit to Norvalspont camp Emily Hobhouse could not even find a trained nurse.
The later appointment of medical personnel did not improve the conditions. They were appointed for their loyalty towards the British invasion; not for their medical capability. They maltreated the Boere.
Emily Hobhouse tells the story of the young Lizzie van Zyl who died in the Bloemfontein concentration camp: “She was a frail, weak little child in desperate need of good care. Yet, because her mother was one of the ‘undesirables’ due to the fact that her father neither surrendered nor betrayed his people, Lizzie was placed on the lowest rations and so perished with hunger that, after a month in the camp, she was transferred to the new small hospital. Here she was treated harshly. The English disposed doctor and his nurses did not understand her language and, as she could not speak English, labeled her an idiot although she was mentally fit and normal. One day she dejectedly started calling: Mother! Mother! I want to go to my mother! One Mrs Botha walked over to her to console her. She was just telling the child that she would soon see her mother again, when she was brusquely interrupted by one of the nurses who told her not to interfere with the child as she was a nuisance.” Shortly afterwards, Lizzie van Zyl died.
Treu, a medical assistant in the Johannesburg concentration camp, stated that patients were bullied and even lashed with a strap.
Ill people who were taken to the camp hospitals were as good as dead. One woman declared: “We fear the hospitals more than death.”
The following two reports should give an idea of the inefficiency of the camp hospitals: “Often people suffering from a minor ailment were violently removed from the tents of protesting mothers or family members to be taken to hospital. After a few days they were more often than not carried to the grave.”
“Should a child leave the hospital alive, it was simply a miracle.”
(Both quotations from Stemme uit die Verlede – a collection of sworn statements by women who were detained in the concentration camps during the Second War of Independence.)
3.7. The highest sacrifice
In total 27 000 women and children made the highest sacrifice in the British hell camps during the struggle for the freedom of the Boerevolk.
Mrs Helen Harris, who paid a visit to the Potchefstroom concentration camp, stated: “Imagine a one year old baby who receives no milk; who has to drink water or coffee – there is no doubt that this is the cause of the poor health of the children.”
Should one take note of the fact that it were the English who killed the Boers’ cattle with bayonets, thereby depriving the children of their food sources, then the high fatality rate does not seem to be incidental.
Despite shocking fatality figures in the concentration camps, the English did nothing to improve the situation, and the English public remained deaf to the lamentations in the concentration camps as thousands of people, especially children, were carried to their graves.
The Welshman, Lloyd George, stated: “The fatality rate of our soldiers on the battlefields, who were exposed to all the risks of war, was 52 per thousand per year, while the fatalities of women and children in the camps were 450 per thousand per year. We have no right to put women and children into such a position.”
An Irishman, Dillon, said: “I can produce and endless succession of confirmations that the conditions in most of the camps are appalling and brutal. To my opinion the fatality rate is nothing less than cold-blooded murder.”
One European had the following comment on England’s conduct with the concentration camps: “Great Britain cannot win her battles without resorting to the despicable cowardice of the most loathsome cure on earth – the act of striking at a brave man’s heart through his wife’s honor and his child’s life.”
The barbarisms of the English is strongly evidenced by the way in which they unceremoniously threw the corpses of children in heaps on mule carts to be transported to the cemeteries. The mourning mothers had to follow on foot. Due to illness or fatigue many of them could not follow fast enough and had to miss the funerals of their children.
According to PF Bruwer, author of Vir Volk en Vryheid, all the facts point out that the concentration camps, also known as the hell camps, were a calculated and deliberate effort by England to commit a holocaust on the Boerevolk
4. Consequences
4.1. “Peace”
As a direct result of the concentration camps, the “Peace Treaty” of Vereeniging was signed, according to which the Boer Republics came under British rule.
4.2. Called up by the enemy
It is a bitter irony that during World War I England laid claim to the same boys who survived the concentration camps to fight against Germany, which was well-disposed towards the Boerevolk.
Thereby they had to lay their lives upon the line for the second time to the benefit of England.
Kroniek van die Kampkinders (Chronicle of the camp children) by HS van Blerk describes how, after World War I, this generation were, in addition, kept out of the labor force and how they were impoverished – all simply because they were Boers.
4.3. Immortalised in our literature
In this modern world it seems as if few people realize the hardships our forefathers had to endure in order to lose our freedom only without forfeiting the honor of our people.
Therefore, it is proper to look at the reflection of the concentration camps in our literature, where the nobility of our forefathers is immortalized.
4.4. We may not forget
In total there were 31 concentration camps. In most cases, the adjoining cemeteries are in still in existence and are visited as often as possible by Boer people to mentally condition themselves to continue their struggle towards freedom.
There were concentration camps at: Irene, Barberton, Volksrust, Belfast, Klerksdorp, Pietersburg, Potchefstroom, Vereeniging, Turffontein, Balmoral, Nylstroom, Standerton, Heilbron, Kimberley, Bloemfontein, Middelburg, Kroonstad, Heidelberg, Krugersdorp, Vryburg, Vredefort, Brandfort, Springfontein, Bethulie, Norvalspont, Port Elizabeth, Aliwal North, Merebank, Pinetown, Howick and Pietermaritzburg.
4.5. Pillars of support
Amidst all the misery brought upon our people by the English, there were pillars of support: firstly the certainty that our cause was just and fair and based upon faith. However, there also were people who made major sacrifices in an effort to ease the burden of Boer women and children.
No study of the concentration camps could possibly be complete without mention of the name of Emily Hobhouse. This Cornish lady was a symbol of light and decency for Boer women and children.
Emily Hobhouse did everything within her power to assist the women and children. As a result of her efforts to persuade the invaders towards an attitude of humanity and reason, she was banned from South Africa by the British authorities.
However, the Boerevolk remains grateful towards Emily Hobhouse for her efforts and her remains are resting in a place of honor under the Women’s Monument in Bloemfontein.
Other people who spoke out against the barbaric methods of England were: J Ellis (Irish), Lloyd George (Welsh), CP Scott (Scottish), William Redmond (Welsh) and Ramsey McDonald (Scottish).
5. Effects
Today, the numbers of the Boerevolk are at least 3 million less that it would have been, had the English not committed genocide on the Boerevolk. This robs our people of our right to self-determination in the new so-called democratic system. (In truth, democracy means government by the people and not government by the rabble as is presently the case in South Africa.”)
The holocaust, together with treason committed by Afrikaners (take note: not Boere) such as Jan Smuts and Louis Botha, forced the Boerevolk to sign the peace accord of Vereeniging which deprived our volk of its freedom.
The alien and inferior British culture was forced onto our people.
The various indigenous peoples of South Africa were insensitively bundled into one Union without giving a thought to their respective identities and right to self-determination.
As in the case of the Boerevolk, the local black nations were effectively robbed of their freedom, which gave rise to the establishment of the ANC in 1912 (two years after the foundation of the Union) to struggle for black nationalism.
The British system of apartheid, which they applied all over the world (for instance also in India, Australia and New-Zealand), had to be imported to control the mixed population. The first manifestation of this were signs reading “Europeans” and “Non-Europeans”. No Boer ever regarded himself as a “European”. Apartheid invoked racial friction and even racial hatred which has in no means abated to this very day, and the bitter irony is that the Boerevolk, who had not been in power since 1902 and who also suffered severely under apartheid in the sense that apartheid robbed them of their land and their work-ethics, are being blamed for apartheid today.
England’s pretence for the invasion was the rights of the foreign miners. Yet after the war, these very same miners were treated so badly by their English and Jewish bosses that they had to resort to general strikes in 1913 and 1922 (3 and 12 years after the establishment of the British ruled Union), during which many mine-workers were shot dead in the streets of Johannesburg by the British disposed Union government. So much for the rights of the foreign miners under English rule.
The efficient and equitable republican system of government of the Boer Republics was replaced with the unworkable Westminster system of government, which led to endless misery and conflict. 6. Summation
The concentration camps were a calculated and intentional holocaust committed on the Boerevolk by England with the aim of annihilating the Boerevolk and reeling in the Boer Republics.
Comparing the killing of Jews during World War 2, proportionately fewer Jews were killed than Boer women and children during the Second War of Independence.
Yet, after World War 2, England mercilessly insisted on a frantic retribution campaign against the whole German nation for the purported Jewish holocaust. To this day, Germany is being forced to pay annual compensation to the Jews, which means that Germans who were not even born at the time of World War 2, still have to suffer today for alleged atrocities committed by the Germans. Should England subject herself to the same principles applied to Germany, then England must do everything within her power to reinstitute the Boer republics and to pay annual compensation to the Boerevolk for the atrocities committed against the Boerevolk.
“Their only crime was that they stood between England and the gold of Transvaal.”
Sources
http://www.boer.co.za/boerwar/hellkamp.htm
Message of Vryheidsaksie Boererepublieke to the queen of England.
Mediadienste. –1995–P 1 – 7.
Suid-Afrikaanse en Algemene Geskiedenis vir Senior Matriek, (Tweede Uitgawe) by BG Lindeque. Juta —1948– Pp 235, 239, 240, 249 – 258, 268 – 272.
Juta se Nuwe Geskiedenisleesboeke vir primêre Skole, Standerd IV by Alice Jenner. Juta. (Date of publication unknown) Pp 41, 42, 49 – 54.
Russia and the Anglo-Boer War 1899 – 1902 by Elisaveta Kandyba- Foxcroft. CUM Roodepoort. –1981– P 254.
Vir Volk en Vryheid by PF Bruwer. Oranjewerkers Promosies. –1988– Pp 346, 348, 407, 411 – 413, 416 – 455.
Die Laaste Veldslag by Franz Conradie. Daan Retief Publishers. —1981—Pp 62, 77, 78, 83, 123 – 126, 129 – 132.
Historical Geography of South Africa. Special edition for Standard III of South African Schools edited by F Handel Thompson. Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press, Hodder & Stoughton, Warwick Square EC. –1914– Pp 160, 165, 167 – 168.
Gewapende Protes by PG Hendriks. Oranjewerkers Promosies. –1988–Pp 8, 11, 12, 21, 24, 27, 29, 30, 46, 53 – 62, 94, 95.
Kroniek van die Kampkinders by HS van Blerk. Oranjewerkers Promosies. –1989– Pp 35 – 38, 49, 65 – 67, 70, 74, 75, 152.
From Van Riebeeck to Vorster 1652 – 1974. An Introduction to the History of the Republic of South Africa by FA van Jaarsveld.Perskor.—1975—Pp 197, 199, 202 – 205, 209, 217 – 220, 253.
Vyftig Gedigte van C Louis Leipoldt, ‘n keur deur WEG Louw. Tafelberg Publishers. (First edition 1946–Pp 19 – 23.
Gedigte by AG Visser (third print). JL van Schaik. –1928– Pp 57 -61.
Family narrations as recounted since the Second War of Independence from generation to generation. (Author’s great-great-grandmother was detained and tortured in the concentration camp at Heilbron.) Source …….. http://appiusforum.net/hellkamp.html[if the link doesn’t open on this link, type “hellkamp.html” in after the main url and you will find the actual link of the Source]
Recently a kind lady from Louisiana mailed me a copy of the “History of the Boers in South Africa,” written in 1887 by a Canadian missionary with no political axe to grind: namely George McCall Theal.
It contains a map showing the territories which were being farmed by the Boers: from the Olifants/Limpopo rivers in the north to below the Orange River in the South (Colesburg).
It shows the names of the towns they had started wihich carried names such as Lydenburg, ( Place of Suffering) Vryheid, ( Place of Freedom) Pietermaritzburg, (named after the famous Voortrekker leader) Pilippolis and Bethulie, (named after their beloved Bible) and Potchefstroom, Rustenburg, Winburg and Bloemfontein… as they Trekked, the Boers named the map of South Africa, and many of its vegetation and wildlife as well.
All these Boer names are now being wiped off the map of South Africa in one fell swoop by the ANC-regime — even though the Boers’ official history had ended in 1902, long before the elitist-Afrikaners who ran the secret Afrikaner Broederbond cabal had started apartheid in 1948.
Yet this is not the first time that the Boers are facing such an ethnic cleansing campaign by a nation which is hell-bent to remove their very rights to exist in South Africa – this is actually already the third time in Boer history.
The first time the British tried to eradicate them from the map of South Africa with their vicious war and their even more vicious concentration camps where many tens of thousands of Boer women, children and elderly starved to death within just a few months.
After this first genocide to target the Boer nation, their descendants still managed to cling to their identity for at least another generation – until …..
Drummer Hodge ~Thomas Hardy
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined – just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew –
Fresh from his Wessex home –
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge forever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellation reign
His stars eternally.
Boer War and the movies…
Sean Mathias is directing Colossus, based on Ann Harries’ Manly Pursuits, a novel about the Boer War. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film’s scored a pretty impressive cast, considering that its budget is a relatively small $15 million: Colin Firth, Rachel Weisz, Ian McKellen and Susan Sarandon are all on-board. Though it’s not yet been announced which roles the stars will play, the movie “tells of ailing arch-colonist Cecil Rhodes’ [probably McKellen] belief that he can only recover his health if he can hear the sound of English song birds outside his window in Cape Town.” Get this: Someone is sent from England with 500 freaking songbirds. When he gets there, he falls in love and decides he needs to stop the Boer War from happening. Ah, if only all men in love would immediately resolve to end wars — what a lovely world this would be.
Source:
Please click HERE for the Gutenberg-files about the Boer Women during the War and then click on this file-number: files/20194/ Click HERE for a list of Africana books about the war, there’s a list of about 177…English as well as Afrikaans.
Available below is a 1901 recording of the Boer War sentimental favourite Goodbye Dolly Gray. An extract of the song’s lyrics are also provided.
The song was written by Will D. Cobb (lyrics) and Paul Barnes (music). Although it gained widespread fame during the Boer War it had earlier been sung in the U.S. during the U.S.-Spanish War of 1898. The song saw renewed airings with the onset of the First World War in 1914.
Listen to the song here:
Goodbye Dolly Gray
I have come to say goodbye, Dolly Gray,
It’s no use to ask me why, Dolly Gray,
There’s a murmur in the air, you can hear it everywhere,
It’s the time to do and dare, Dolly Gray.
So if you hear the sound of feet, Dolly Gray,
Sounding through the village street, Dolly Gray,
It’s the tramp of soldiers’ true in their uniforms so blue,
I must say goodbye to you, Dolly Gray.
Goodbye Dolly I must leave you, though it breaks my heart to go,
Something tells me I am needed at the front to fight the foe,
See – the boys in blue are marching and I can no longer stay,
Hark – I hear the bugle calling, goodbye Dolly Gray.
Image and caption: nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/boer-soldiers-posing
General Joubert’s unit of Boer soldiers and their African servant stop for lunch at Newcastle, Natal, less than a week after war was declared in 1899. Several of the soldiers are leaning against Dr Visser’s travelling medical wagon. Photographed by Robert Gell, 17 October 1899.
British tactics during the South African War included the burning of farmhouses and destruction of livestock so that they would not fall into the hands of Boer commandos. Here members of New Zealand’s Seventh Contingent pose with the carcasses of chickens and sheep.
Fashion could be important, even out on the veldt, as the garments of these Boer women suggest. Photographed by Rough Rider John McGrath
Drummer Hodge…poetry of the Anglo-Boer War.
Drummer Hodge: Poetry of the Boer War—van Wyk Smith, M.
Clarendon Press, Oxford 1978
ISBN: 0198120826 Source: elizabethsbookshop.com.au
These people were as near akin to us as any race which is not
our own. They were of the same Frisian stock which peopled our own
shores. In habit of mind, in religion, in respect for law, they
were as ourselves. Brave, too, they were, and hospitable, with
those sporting instincts which are dear to the Anglo-Celtic race.
There was no people in the world who had more qualities which we
might admire, and not the least of them was that love of
independence which it is our proudest boast that we have encouraged
in others as well as exercised ourselves.Source:
The title of a painting,” said Marcel Duchamp, “is another colour on the artist’s palette.” He also talked of treating the title “like an invisible colour”. Duchamp’s remarks were part of his ongoing argument with the art of painting. His point was that painting should not be understood as a purely visual or optical or (to use his favourite jibe), “retinal” art. That was the state to which Impressionism had reduced it. But painting should mobilise all its resources of meaning, among them the title. This verbal component shouldn’t be neutrally descriptive, nor be seen as something extraneous. It could be an integral effect, like another colour.
Comparing titles to colours was, of course, provocative, because colour is often considered the least verbal, the most inarticulate and untranslatable factor in a painting. But Duchamp’s phrase is more than a tease. It suggests that the title should be liberated. It should be used, not as a caption that presides over the whole picture, but as one more ingredient in the mixture, an active element in the picture’s drama.
Titles were to be given free play. Duchamp’s own were often spectacularly lateral, puzzles and mini-poems in their own right. There was Tum’. There was The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even. And other 20thcentury artists, Dadaist, surreal, abstract, conceptual, took up the challenge, putting the oblique title through all its possible paces.
But the device itself was not the invention of modern art. In the 19th century, while Impressionism flourished in France, another kind of painting had sprung up in England, which would later be criticised, not as “retinal”, but on the contrary as “anecdotal”. In the works of the pre-Raphaelites and their contemporaries, the title of the picture was often made to do crucial extra business.
The Last of England, The First Cloud, The Awakening Conscience, Our English Coasts – these titles are vital ingredients. They introduce story, symbolism, state of mind and always something more or something other than what the picture shows. They make the viewer’s mind jump from the image to an idea behind or beyond the image. And sometimes the jump itself, the sense of distance between the title and the rest of the picture, is where the work’s real power lies.
John Byam Shaw’s The Boer War is far from being a great work. But it’s a work that understands the rich possibilities of the oblique title. The ways that its title performs in the viewer’s mind, both connecting and disconnecting to the image, makes it a kind of masterpiece.
The painting shows – well, what it obviously doesn’t show is the Boer War, or any individual episode from Britain’s Imperial war in South Africa, which had ended the year before this picture was painted. But the likely link between words and image isn’t hard to find. A lone woman stands by a stream at the bottom of a field or garden. She was the fiancée or wife or sister of a man killed in the war. She’s lately heard the news, and gone off on her own. Or she’s been in mourning some time, but the place – this is where they used to walk, and never will again – calls out a sudden pang of memory and grief.
The Boer War is her back story, then, her motivation, the reason for her state of mind. It is the content of her invisible thought bubble. It is, in a sense, a perfectly straight descriptive title for this picture. For how do you show the Boer War except by depicting scenes from the war? And why shouldn’t those scenes include, not only battlefields and sieges, but also the scenes of bereavement and desolation that were the immediate consequence back home?
So the title fits. But at the same time, clearly, we’re to feel a great rupture and estrangement between those words, The Boer War, and the scene before us. And this distance can stand for and stress the various other distances – geographic, experiential – that the work evokes.
There is the distance between peace and war. There is the distance between the green English countryside and the dusty South African veldt. There is the distance between the woman and the man who was absent far away and is now absolutely dead and gone. There is the distance between the woman, with her mind fixed on loss and death, and the burgeoning natural world around her – further emphasised by the way her figure slightly sticks out against the landscape like a piece of collage.
The classic pre-Raphaelite manner of Byam Shaw’s painting, with its manic eye for the proliferating detail of nature, contributes to this effect. You can see it as how the woman herself sees her surroundings. Shock and grief can cause the mind to become blankly transfixed by the minutiae of the physical world, seeking something clear and particular to hold on to – as the narrator in Tennyson’s poem “Maud” focuses on a tiny sea shell after his world has fallen in.
Or again: the way the title, The Boer War, fails to “mean” the picture is like the way those words might become a malignantly empty phrase in the woman’s mind, words she must continually reiterate to herself and to others – the Boer War, the Boer War, he was killed in the Boer War – but which call up nothing and have no purchase on her loss.
Reading things into it? Yes, exactly. That’s what this kind of picture, this word image-juxtaposition, invites you to do. Reading things in, letting scene and title interact in the mind, is the way it works. In more than one way, Byam Shaw’s painting about a remote Imperial war has a rather contemporary feeling.
THE ARTIST
John Byam Shaw (1872-1919) was the second wind and last gasp of true pre- Raphaelitism. By the end of the 19th century, the movement had moved away from the Ruskin-Millais ideals of intense observational realism and moral commitment. It had drifted towards an airy-fairy religiose symbolism. Byam Shaw recovered some of the old ground – just at the point when this kind of art was about to go completely out of fashion, even in Britain. His name is now too small to get into all but the very biggest artdictionaries. But it is preserved in the north London art school that he founded, The Byam Shaw, which exists to this day.
Source:
(Interviews with Errol Lincoln Uys,1970)Johanna, or Joey as she was later called, was born in July 1892. Her mother was killed in a train crash in 1896, and Joey and her sister went to live with an uncle and aunt in Bethulie, Orange Free State, Magiel and Lettie Roux. When the Second Anglo-Boer War broke out in October 1899, Magiel joined the Bethulie Commando.
In September 1900, as British troops rolled over the veld, Magiel and thirty commandos attempted to flee the Orange Free State for the Transvaal. Joey and her cousins, the child Magiel and Johann, were in the convoy when it was attacked and captured by the British “Tommies” near Springfontein in the Free State.
We trekked with fourteen wagons, seventy women and children, escorted by thirty Boer commandos. Three days after leaving Bethulie, the Tommies found us.
“O, God, ons is nou gevang!” – (“O, God, now we’re caught!”)
It was daylight. I hid under a wagon. Magiel and Johann lay on the wagon floor. They couldn’t understand what was happening. There was confusion. People screaming. Shouts. “Rooinek vark!” – (“Redneck pig!”)
Women were shooting and killing Tommies. Tant (aunt) Lettie was a crack-shot. She kept firing till she’d no more bullets.
Several Boers were killed. Then we ran out of ammunition. We surrendered with a white flag on a stick.
I still see the red faces of the Tommies. They wore khaki, brass buttons, and leggings. Their heavy boots thudded as they walked.
They gathered our men together and took their guns and horses.
Before they were led away, our commandant warned us to obey the Tommies or be shot.
My uncle said goodbye. We were all crying.
Magiel looked at me. “Never desert her,” he said to my aunt. “If you’ve one crust of bread, break it in half and give it to her.”
As Joey recounted the attack on the wagons to me, she sang a line of an old Boer War song: “Zij geniet die blouwe bergen op die skepe na Ceylon.” — “They enjoy the blue mountains on the ships to Ceylon.”
Magiel went as POW to Sri Lanka where five thousand Boer guerillas were interned during the war. The British shipped four times that number to other camps in India, St. Helena and Bermuda.
At the wagons, the Tommies searched the women and went through their belongings.
The soldiers weren’t cruel. They hadn’t tasted real war yet.
While they searched our stuff, my aunt sat on a trommeltjie filled with bottles of Lennon’s home remedies. The Tommy’s never looked inside the medicine chest.
Tant Lettie had hidden gold sovereigns under the bottles.
After they took our men away, they made us get back into the wagons. We trekked across the veld to a station. We stayed there all night, some lying down, others sitting up in the wagons. In the morning, they pushed us into boxcars.
I couldn’t see anything. There were vents on top and one of these slammed onto my aunt’s head. When the train moved off, the boxcar shook so much we fell against each other.
My mother’s reference to a boxcar is unusual. Most women and children were herded into fetid cattle trucks to be shunted across the Free State under a boiling sun or through frigid nights.
We realized we were going to Bloemfontein.
“You’ll get food, everything you need in the camp,” the Tommies said.
At Bloemfontein, we were placed in carts. We were taken three miles outside town and dumped down on the veld.
They put up bell-tents for us, one next to the other. Hundreds of round tents, far as the eye could see. We met one of Tant (aunt) Lettie’s sisters and stayed together for a while.
A woman in the tent next to us went into labor. Her baby was born that night. The child contracted some disease and died soon after.
We slept on the bare ground. No bedding, no pillows, only some blankets from the wagon. It rained heavily. In the beginning, we didn’t know we had to loosen the tent ropes and let the water run off. We got sopping wet. Tant Lettie and I went outside in the rain. We released the ropes and knocked in the pegs again. It was a quagmire. Exhausted, we lay down in the mud to sleep.
We lit a paraffin lamp in the tent at night. At nine o’clock, all lights had to be out. Women were kicked and beaten if they disobeyed the orders of the Tommies. We obeyed.
We were issued ration cards and stood in line for food. We got meat, sugar, mealie meal, condensed milk. The meat was chilled. Even after cooking, it had chunks of ice in it. We used a paraffin tin outside the tent for a stove, same as a ‘kaffir-koggel ,’ with holes in the sides and irons to hold pots. We collected firewood on a kopje next to the camp. Water was brought from a river by cart. Every morning we stood in line to fill our buckets. We were always short of water.
Tant Lettie, the two boys and Johanna were designated “Undesirables,” a term applied to Boers who don’t go voluntarily into captivity or had family members on commando. “Refugees” described displaced Boers who surrender, the “hands-uppers” and their dependants. The latter are rewarded with a few extra spoonfuls of sugar, condensed milk and the luxury of the occasional potato. In either case, rations are insufficient to stave off starvation and disease.
If we had grievances, we were taken in front of the camp commandant. Usually, we kept quiet. We didn’t want trouble with the Tommies.
During the day, the women visited each other. We walked around the camp. The sun burnt us black. Our shoes wore out. Our clothes were unironed and filthy. Afterwards we got blue soap to wash our things. The toilet was horrible. A big hole with plank seats and sacking around it, you climbed up on top of the planks. No newspaper, no rags.
The camp was lice-infested. I watched Tommies take their leggings off, unwinding them like strips of bandages. They used broken glass to scrape the lice from their legs. My aunt had to cut all my hair off.
There was a church but I don’t remember going to it or to a school begun in the camp. Tant Lettie read to us from the Bible.
Theft was rife. There were fights between women.
Prostitutes carried on with Tommies and Boers in the camp. Most of the men were elderly. One old man called De Wet was a bastard. He wanted to interfere with my aunt. She chased him out of the tent. Tommies also interfered with the women.
I remember a short man with a gray beard. I hated him.
My aunt became friendly with one of the Tommies. She stole someone else’s skirt and walked with him.
Thousands of newcomers arrived at Bloemfontein camp. Thousands became sick. The marquee hospital tents were always full. The doctors worked day and night.
We found pieces of blue stone vitriol in the sugar. Lots of people were poisoned.
People died like rats. Carts came down the rows of tents to pick up the dead. There were funerals every day.
In the eighteen months Johanna and her family were in Bloemfontein concentration camp, the population soared to six thousand three hundred and twenty two. Of this number, one thousand six hundred and ninety-five perished from want and sickness.
British propagandists alleged that Boer mothers were killing their children through their own stupidity and carelessness. When seven-year-old Lizzie van Zyl died of hunger at Bloemfontein, a report said her mother starved her.
Emily Hobhouse, an English activist, spent six months in South Africa from January to June 1901 visiting Bloemfontein and six other camps. She saw Lizzie van Zyl die on an airless April day.
“I used to see her in her bare tent lying on a tiny mattress which had been given her, trying to get air from the raised flap, gasping her life out in the heated tent. Her mother tended her. I got some friends in town to make a little muslin cap to keep the flies from her bare head. I was arranging to get a cart made to draw her into the air in the cooler hours but before wood could be procured, the cold nights came on and she died. I found nothing to show neglect on the mother’s part.”
Emily returned to England to campaign against “a gigantic and grievous blunder caused not by uncaring women but crass male ignorance, helplessness and muddling.” Her militancy brought the scorn of the British people who called her a rebel, a liar, an enemy of the nation, hysterical and worse.
No one hated Emily more than Lord Kitchener, whose troops burnt down 30,000 farm houses, torched a score of towns and interned 116,572 Boers, a quarter of the population.
“It is for their protection against the Kaffirs,” said the British War Secretary, oblivious to the fact thatAfricans were being armed and encouraged by the English to attack a mutual enemy. Also ignoring the fact that 115,000 “black Boers” were sent to their own concentration camps, loyal servants who saw twelve thousand of their number die.
Miss Hobhouse was banned from visiting the most terrible of all camps that had been established just outside Bethulie, a place name meaning “Chosen by God.” My mother considered it a blessing of the Almighty that they weren’t interned at Bethulie where twelve hundred died in one six-month period from pneumonia and measles and from hunger.
The concentration camps claimed the lives of 27,972 Boers. Of these, 22,074 were children like Lizzie van Zyl.
We guarded the gold sovereigns day and night. After lights out, we slept next to the box where Tant Lettie had hidden the coins.
Women could apply to the camp commandant for a pass to go into Bloemfontein. Tant Lettie went to buy extra food. This was all that kept us alive.
I think of the thousands who died in the camps. I thank God that we survived.
In summer 1902, as Kitchener’s cordon strangled Boer resistance, Tant Lettie got notice that she and the children were going to another camp.
My mother was too young at the time to know why they were moved, whether Tant Lettie’s Tommy friend pulled strings or what other reason was behind the transfer. They went from Bloemfontein to a camp at Kubusie River near Stutterheim in the Eastern Cape, nestled in the green hills of the Amatola Range, a world away from the horrors of the dumping ground at Bloemfontein.
This time, Johanna recalled making the two-hundred-and-fifty mile journey in a cattle truck. According to one report, some of the refugees were supplied with tents, which they ingeniously erected on the beds of railroad cars. Others were covered with tarpaulins like so much baggage.
“The former arrived more contented and less sullen. All were provided with hot water and cocoa en route.”
We were vaccinated on arrival at Kubusie. Our arms swelled up. Magiel and Johann became sick but after a while we were all OK.
We lived in a one-roomed house. A big room with a plank table, plank chairs and three plank beds with straw mattresses.
Our days at Kubusie were happier. Farmers in the district helped the Boers. The camp was small, nothing like Bloemfontein. I don’t recall anyone dying at Kubusie.
A Miss O’Brien taught school in the camp. I learnt English from her. After school, she invited me to her room. My dress was in rags. Miss O’Brien cut up her own clothes to make dresses for me. She taught me how to knit and gave me a ball of wool for a pair of socks.
Who was Miss O’Brien? Was she English or Irish as her name might suggest? Was she one of Emily Hobhouse’s angels of mercy? It matters not, just that she was there, sitting with a child pretty as a flower, teaching her to knit a pair of socks.
Today, the site of Kubusie Concentration Camp has been turned into a car park and the surface area graveled and curbed.
“The socks were yellow,” Johanna said a lifetime later. She never forgot Miss O’Brien’s kindness.
Update: October 2008…this poem is an Afrikaans poem about the concentration camps…very sad poem, maybe I should try and translate it sometime for English readers…
C. Louis Leipoldt (1880-1947)
In die konsentrasiekamp
Aliwal-Noord, 1901
O, pazienza, pazienza che tanto sostieni! – Dante
Jou oë is nat met die trane van gister;
Jou siel is gemartel, deur smarte gepla;
Van vrede en pret was jy vroeër ’n verkwister;
En nou, wat bly oor van jou rykdomme? Ja,
’n Spreekwoord tot steun – daar’s geen trooswoord beslister:
“Geduld, o geduld, wat so baie kan dra!”
Hier sit jy en koes teen die wind wat daar suie
Yskoud deur die tentseil, geskeur deur die hael –
Jou enigste skuil in die nag teen die buie;
Die Junie-lug stort oor die stroom van die Vaal –
Jy hoor net die hoes van jou kind, en die luie
Gedrup van die reëndruppeltjies oor die paal.
’n Kers, nog maar anderhalf duim voor hy sterwe,
Brand dof in ’n bottel hier vlak naas jou bed.
(’n Kafhuis gee makliker rus: op die gerwe
Daar lê ’n mens sag, en sy slaap is gered!) –
En hier in die nag laat jou drome jou swerwe
’n Aaklige rondte met trane besmet.
Hier struikel die kind wat te vroeg was gebore;
Hier sterwe die oumens te swak vir die stryd;
Hier kom ’n gekerm en gekreun in jou ore;
Hier tel jy met angs elke tik van die tyd;
Want elke sekond’ van die smart laat sy spore
Gedruk op jou hart, deur ’n offer gewyd.
En deur elke skeur in die seil kan jy duister
Die wolke bespeur oor die hemel verbrei;
Geen ster skyn as gids; na geen stem kan jy luister
(Eentonig die hoes van jou kind aan jou sy!)
Wat sag deur die wind in jou ore kom fluister:
“Geduld, o geduld, wat so baie kan ly!”
Vergewe? Vergeet? Is dit maklik vergewe?
Die smarte, die angs het so baie gepla!
Die yster het gloeiend ’n merk vir die eeue
Gebrand op ons volk; en dié wond is te ná –
Te ná aan ons hart, en te diep in ons lewe –
“Geduld, o geduld, wat so baie kan dra!”
–uit: Groot Verseboek, 2000
Die Oorwinnaars By die kindergrafte uit die Konsentrasiekamp van Nylstroom
Oorwinnaars vir ons volk,
bly u vir al wat beste in ons is ‘n ewig’ tolk;
nooit weer sal vyandsvoet u stof so diep vertrap en smoor
dat ons u langer nie kan sien – en hoor.
Nie onse Helde, wat die magtig’ leër
op glansryk’ velde kon weerstaan en keer;
nie onse Seuns, wat aan die galg en teen die muur
die diepe liefde vir hul eie moes verduur;
nie onse Moeders, wat met bloeiend hart en seer,
in swart Getsemane die ware smart moes leer;
nie onse Generaals, vereer met krans en riddersnoer;
– was waardig vir ons volk die hoë stryd te voer
en te oorwin.
Nie ons, met vuile hand en hart ontrou was waardig
om die vaandel hoog te hou.
Maar u, o bleke spokies, in U kermend’, klagend’ wee,
staan voor ons ewiglik beskermend – uit die lang verlee.
Eugene Marais
Boer internees were separately held from black Africans. There were a total of 45 tented camps built for Boer internees and 64 for black Africans. Of the 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, 25,630 were sent overseas. The vast majority of Boers remaining in the local camps were women and children, but the camps established for black Africans held large numbers of men as well. A number of the black African internees were used as a paid labour force as they were not considered by the British to be hostile, although they had been forcibly removed from Boer areas. The majority of the black African internees however languished in the camps and suffered a high mortality rate.—so, “apartheid” by the British during the Boer/British war!
Danie Theron: The man picked for the job was Danie Theron, who was a lawyer from Krugersdorp. Even before the outbreak of the war he had formed a bicycle corps of Scouts believing that the effectiveness of horse mounted men was being undermined because modern bicycle technology was not being utilized properly.
He made a submission to Transvaal President Paul Kruger and General Joubert requesting the formation of a bicycle corps by pointing out that a horse needs rest and food, whereas a bicycle needs only a pump and oil.
To support his belief in the superiority of the bicycle he had planned a race between a bicycle and a horse from Pretoria to the Crocodile River a distance of 75 km.
The man he picked to ride the bicycle against the horse was cycling champion JP Koos Jooste.
The Cape Argus of 21 June 1900 clearly states that the destitution of these women and children was the result of the English’s plundering of farms: “Within 10 miles we (the English) burned not less than six farm homesteads. Between 30 and 40 homesteads were burned and totally destroyed between Bloemfontein and Boshoff. Many others were also burned down. With their houses destroyed, the women and children were left in the bitter South African winter in the open.” The British history text book says nothing about this.
An old man sits in front of his house with a few saved belongings. On this next link you can order some books and I’ve found these three images on this link too. The link will open in a new window. The books are in English, but the site in Afrikaans, you can give me a big shout if you need any help with the site! If you click on the link “kontak ons”, on this site where you can order the books, – it means “contact us” – you will find an email address and contact details.
Lord Alfred Milner – Rothschild front man, executor of the “Scorched Earth Policy” and concentration camps for Boer women and children in 1899-1902; and spokesman for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which branched into such organizations as the CFR and the Trilateral. His spirit and his legacy lives on in the present genocide of the Boers.
Apartheid is properly the legacy of Britain –- which has been under the control of the Rothschilds and his London Elite for centuries, and which refused to give independence to the Black nations currently within present-day SA, as it did to the cannibal Basuto tribe (Lesotho), and to the Swazis (Swaziland), before forming the Union of South Africa in 1910 out of the two former Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State; and her two SA colonies viz: …read more on this link, but be warned, a very upsetting image…on this link. On the following link: Deirdre Fields – reports on the heroic Boer struggle for survival and self determination.
The Boer Republics had no organised force. In the event of war against natives or against some foreign Power, the burghers were called up from their farms, the husbands, fathers, sons of the nation, to fight for home and fatherland. This left the women and children unprotected on the farms, but not unprovided for, for it is an historical fact that the Boer women in time of war carried on their farming operations with greater vigour than during times of peace. Fruit trees were tended, fields were ploughed, and harvests brought in with redoubled energy, with the result that crops increased and live-stock multiplied.
Read on the Gutenberg-link more from the book written by Johanna Brandt.
The following update: 26/9/09 – from an Afrikaans blogger and her grandma who survived the Irene Concentration camp and she blogged today about things her grandma told her when she was little. I will translate for you in short.
Trisia says the following: Her grandad was put in jail and they were given food with worms in it. After the war he worked for a sjieling per day to reconstruct/rebuild the burnt-down farms. Her grandma told her some gruesome stories and one is where the English took her little cat, swung it on its tail and smashed it against the wall. [POOR KITTY!] Also, they took her grandma’s dolls and burnt it with all their other stuff. [I can imagine their grusame smiles on their faces while doing it] Please find “Maankind”-s link (Trisia) if you want to read the entry on her blog – of course it is in Afrikaans only.
Oupa het graag vertel hoe hy as seun saam geveg het, en van sy hoed met die koeëlgaatjie in waar hy rakelings aan die dood ontkom het. Sy baadjie se moue het te kort geword gedurende die oorlog, en ek sien steeds die prentjie van die rankerige boerseun met die baadjie met driekwart moue in my kop. Hy het ook grusame verhale vertel van sy verblyf in die tronk as rebel, en van die wurms in die sop. Dan ook hoe hulle later na die oorlog op die paaie gewerk het teen ‘n “sieling” ‘n dag om hulle plase weer te kon opbou.
Ouma se stories was meer hartseer. Sy het die oorlog as dogtertjie beleef, wat gehuil het oor haar poppie, wat die Engelsman gegryp het en in die vuur geslinger het, en hoe hulle moes staan en kyk hoe hulle huis met alles daarin, in vlamme opgaan.
Wanneer ouma se oë sonder uitsondering vol trane geraak het, en haar stem gebewe het, is elke keer as sy vertel hoe die “Ingelsman haar katjie gegryp het en aan sy agterpootjies geswaai het, en sy koppie teen die muur papgeslaan het.
South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies—your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans
Nightly to clear Canopus: “I would know
By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law
Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?
And what of logic or of truth appears
In tacking ‘Anno Domini’ to the years?
Near twenty-hundred liveried thus have hied,
But tarries yet the Cause for which He died.”
Christmas-eve 1899. – Source:
Follow this link to read about the “stalemated” Boer/British War and you will find a link to the Canadian War museum. The link will open in a new window.
On my blog HEREyou can read about the Boer/British-War and Melrose House . The link will open in a new window. On this link you can also read about the role my great grandad played during the war.
A very good site about the Boer-war HERE …the link will open in a new window.
Please click HEREto read the complete online book of Arthur Conan Doyle about the Boer War…the link will open in a new window.
Ek slaap in die rus van die eeue gesus,
ongesien, ongehoord,
en dof en loom in my sonnedroom,
ongewek, ongestoord.
Tot die yl-bloue bande van die ver-verre rande
skuif my breedte uit,
wyd-kringend aan die puur al-omwelwend asuur,
wat my swyend omsluit.
Jong aarde se stoot het my boesem ontbloot
bo die diep van die meer;
en volswanger van lewe ’t oor waat’re geswewe
die gees van die Heer.
Uit die woelende nag van haar jeugdige krag
brag die aarde voort
Lewiátansgeslagte, geweldig van kragte –
storm-ontruk aan haar skoot.
Diep in my gesteente berg ek hul gebeente –
die geheim van hul lewe en lot;
maar gewek uit die sode herleef uit die dode,
na die ewig hernuwingsgebod,
die stof van die verlede in vorme van die hede,
in eindeloos kome en gaan;
wat die dood my vertrou ’t, ek bewaar dit as goud,
en geen grein sal ’k verlore laat gaan.
As die son oor my vloer in die môre kom loer
en die dou van my lippe kus,
dan kyk ek net stom met ’n glimlag om
en lê maar weer stil in my rus.
Hoog bowe die kim op sy troon geklim,
is hy heer van lewe en dood;
na wil en luim geef hy, skraal of ruim,
verderf of lewensbrood.
Uit gloeiende sfeer brand hy wreed op my neer
tot my naaktheid kraak en skroei,
en my koorsige asem in bewende wasem
al hygend my bors ontvloei.
In sy skadetjie rondom sy stam op die grond
staat ’n eensame doringboom,
soos die Stilte op haar troon, met dorings gekroon,
wat roerloos die eeue verdroom.
Geen drop vir die dors aan my stofdroë bors:
my kinders versmag en beswyk,
en die stowwe staan soos hul trek en gaan
om my skrale dis te ontwyk.
Soos ’n vlokkie skuim uit die sfere se ruim
kom ’n wolkie aangesweef,
maar hy groei in die blou tot ’n stapelbou
van marmer wat krul en leef –
kolossaal monument op sy swart fondament,
waar die bliksem in brul en leef.
En o, met my is die windjies bly:
hul spring uit die stof orent
en wals en draai in dwarrelswaai
oor my vloer, van ent tot ent;
die gras skud hul wakker om same te jakker,
tot hy opspring uit sy kooi
en soos mane en sterde van jaende perde
sy stingels golf en gooi.
Met dof-sware plof, soos koeëls in die stof,
kom die eerste druppels neer,
tot dit ruis alom so deur die gebrom
en gekraak van die donderweer.
Met kloue vooruit om te gryp en te buit
jaag ’n haelwolk langs verby,
soos ’n perde-kommande wat dreun oor die lande
vertrap en gésel hy –
en sy lyke-kleed sien ek ver en breed
in die awendson gesprei.
Stil in die duister lê ’k so en luister
hoe die spruite gesels en lag;
maar bowe die pak van my wolkedak
het die maan al lank gewag:
nou breek en skeur hy ’n baan daardeur
om te deel in my vreug benede;
hy sprei die waas van sy romig-blou gaas –
en ek lag so stil-tevrede.
Plek op plek, soos die wolke trek,
sweef die skaduwees onder mee,
soos eilande wyd oor die waat’re verspreid
op die boesem van die grote see.
Met ’n afskeidskus gaat die maan ook ter rus,
en ek wag op die daeraad –
so skoon en so mooi soos ’n fris jong nooi
wat lag in haar bruidsgewaad.
Oor die bulte se rug slaat die gloed in die lug
van brande wat ver-weg kwyn,
en doringbome fluister in rooi skemerduister
van gevare wat kom of verdwyn.
Uit slote en plas, uit die geurende gras,
styg ’n danklied op ten hemel;
en dis net of ek hoor hoe die kriekies se koor
weergalm uit die sterre-gewemel,
waar wêrelde gaan op hul stille baan
tot die ende van ruimte en tyd.
So, groots en klaar, staat Gods tempel daar,
wyd – in sy majesteit.
Jan FE Cilliers
Dis al
Dis die blond,
dis die blou:
dis die veld,
dis die lug;
en ‘n voël draai bowe in eensame vlug –
dis al
Dis n balling gekom
oor die oseaan,
dis n graf in die gras,
dis n vallende traan –
dis al
My own translation: see more of his poems translated on the “my gedigte/my poems”-page That’s All
It’s the blond
It’s the blue
It’s the veld
It’s the air
and a bird circles above in a
solitude flight
That’s it
It’s an exile that came
across the ocean
A grave in the grass
A shed teardrop
That’s all.
–Nikita–2008
Trou
Ek hou van ‘n man wat sy man kan staan,
ek hou van ‘n arm wat ‘n slag kan slaan,
‘n oog wat nie wyk, wat ‘n bars kan kyk
en ‘n wil wat so vas soos ‘n klipsteen staan!
Ek hou van ‘n man wat sy moeder eer,
in die taal uit haar vrome mond geleer,
die verraaiersgeslag in sy siel verag
wat, haar verstotend, homself kleineer.
Die oog wil ek sien wat ‘n traan nog ween
vir ‘n heldegeslag, in hul rus daarheen,
maar ‘n blits van trou in die traan van rou,
wat aan liefde weer gee wat haar bron is ontleen.
Vir my d’Afrikaner van durf en daad,
wat mammon’s eer en loon versmaad,
sy hoof en sy hand vir sy volk en sy land
en ‘n trap van sy voet vir laag verraad!
O, ‘k hou van ‘n man wat sy man kan staan;
ek hou van ‘n daad wat soos donder slaan,
‘n oog wat nie wyk, wat ‘n bars kan kyk
en ‘n wil wat so vas soos ‘n klipsteen staan!
And I think I’m slowly getting the hang of my camera…
Osterley Park is so tien minute se vinnig stap van ons af waar ons bly. Dis ‘n lieflik groot park. Dis baie besig gedurende naweke, mense kom hou graag piekniek in die park, stap sommer net rond of ry fiets…daar is verskillende paadjies, maar ongelukkig is van hulle nou toegemaak en moet jy betaal om daar te ry met jou fiets of om te stap. Wat ‘n jammerte! Dis so pragtig om daar rond te ry, nou is ons baie beperk met die beweging van ons fietse. Ek dink hulle wil op ‘n manier fondse insamel. Die “huis” wat op die foto gesien word, is ‘n historiese gebou en soms word daar kuns uitgestal. Ons was self nog nie daar binne nie. Een Sondag was daar ‘n troue op die grasperk voor die gebou. Asiese troue en dit het baie indrukwekkend gelyk, ek dink net dis baie onpersoonlik met al die ander mense wat oral op die gras rondsit of rondloop. Die ander gebou is ‘n winkeltjie – die een met die klok – en daar kan jy sit en iets bestel, lekker skons met room, ens. en hulle verkoop ook allerhande tradisionele goed, soos konfyt wat self gemaak is…..ens. ‘n Ander pragtige park, omtrent 15 min per motor, is Richmond Park. ‘n Verskriklike groot park, pragtig bokke en uitgestrekte dele vir stap/ry/fietsry/piekniek en selfs perdry! Ek eksperimenteer bietjie met die kamera wat ek het – hy is iewers op my blog – en daarom sit ek van tyd tot tyd foto’s, ek wil graag beter “close-ups” neem, maar met die kamera van my, is dit ‘n kuns…af ek is maar bietjie dom met die ding! “Practise makes perfect”, soos hulle se, so dit sal seker nog tyd neem voordat alles perfek is!
This is the schedule for the remaining part of the World Chess Championship in Mexico….see the link earlier in September.
Chess Love
Please click HEREto play through the game! The link will open in a new window. The game is on my Blogger-blog as WordPress didn’t import it when I moved my blog to WordPress.
In this chess game, I played black. Although my opponent’s rating is slightly lower than mine, he’s a very challenging player not to play very lightly! I think the end was good, but look at my king, at one stage he was almost in real big trouble! He panicked a few times!
“Two Frogs” is a fantastic book. I want to share this book today and by doing this, do my “good deed” for today! I love books, even more, children’s books! I’m slowly busy building up a library! I used this book with great success during Philosophy lessons… Firstly, the pictures in this book…just look how stunning! Doesn’t it convey a lot, only by looking at it! That’s why children’s books fascinate me, you get outstanding illustrations and lifelong messages. This book is definitely one of those which you would buy and have different uses for, when teaching. I’m going to copy a few lines from the book…and the images support the text just brilliantly!
—Once there were two frogs sitting on a lily pad in the middle of a large pond. One of the frogs was holding a stick. “What’s that for?” asked the other frog. “For protection,” said the frog with the stick. “This stick is to beat off the dog.”
“What dog?” said the other frog, quickly looking over his shoulder. “I can’t see a dog. There is no dog!” “Not now there isn’t, not at this moment,” replied the frog with the stick. “But what if a dog should come swimming across the pond and try to eat us up? Better be safe than sorry.” The other frog was puzzled. “But no dogs ever come swimming in the pond,” he protested. “At least I’ve never seen one. In fact I can’t even remember seeing one on the edge of the pond. And why would a dog want to come swimming in the pond anyway? They’re not so fond of swimming as us frogs, you know.”
Now, by looking at the pics, you can imagine what happened…I put questions forward to 9 year old children e.g. Should we always be prepared? Should we always think about all the “what ifs”? Is it ridiculous thinking the worst might happen? Why would you want to be prepared for the worst? What do you need to be well prepared? What do you see as “the worst”? How else can we prepare us for the “worst”? This book lends itself to numerous questions and at least an hour’s discussion with children. One of the “what ifs” in this book really happened at the end! That was the dog…but the frogs were already gone and not there to see the dog…
If you want to leave your point of view about these questions, it would be well received!
Image: frogsonice Please click HERE to read a story about two frogs..do enjoy
24th September is National BQQ day in South Africa!
These are “golden rules” when having a BBQ on the 24th!
1. Die braaier mag braai waarvan hy hou en hoe hy daarvan hou.
2. Dit is onwettig om in ’n ander persoon se braai te krap of in te meng. Dit sluit in die rondstamp en omkrap van kole, toetsvingers in marinades of die onregmatige draai van roosters wanneer die braaier nie kyk nie.
3. ’n Verbruiker van braaivleis het die reg om seker te wees van ’n skoon rooster in die braaiproses. Enige reste van dooie diere, klonte van marinades en gefossileerde as moet asseblief verwyder word voordat die braaiproses begin.
4.Dit is toelaatbaar om hoender vooraf te kook, aangesien die organiseerders van nasionale braaidag voorstanders daarvan is dat elke individu die reg het om teen salmonella beskerm te word.
5. Vis en vleis moet asseblief op aparte roosters gebraai word, behalwe in gevalle waar die rooster sorgvuldig tussen die braaiprosesse gewas word.
6. Braaiers wat beskermende handskoene dra, moet liefs nie getart, geteister of gespot word nie.
7. Gasbraai is slegs vir woonstelbewoners.
Om te braai, is om te lewe.
Bron: Kliek die link Beeld in SA. http://www.news24.com/Beeld/Suid-Afrika/0,,3-975_2186915,00.html
See on THIS LINK , on my blog, more pictures about the Blyde River Canyon and also a full picture of the Tufa Waterfall and…a movie…with some of my hols photos about the area where the waterfall is!
When we’d gone on the boat trip on the Blyde River (“Blyde” means “joy”), we were told by the guide that this tufa waterfall has the shape of a face. That is so true, we could really see the “face” , that’s why this tufa waterfall is called the “Weeping/Crying Tufa”, it literally looks like it’s crying…you can only see this waterfall when you go on the boat trip! If you watch this movie …you will see it!
The fall is about 43m and that makes it the 3rd longest in the world. Incidentally, the Blyde River Canyon is also the third largest in the world! (read my other posts about the Blyde River Canyon by following the labels). 1. Grand Canyon 2. Fish River Canyon (Namibia)
The Blyde River Canyon is the greenest Canyon in the world.
A tufa waterfall is formed when water running over dolomite rock absorbs calcium. Mosses which grow on the rocks in the stream extract carbon dioxide during photosynthesis which precipitates the calcium from the water to deposit it as layers of tufa on the surface of the waterfall – a process that takes millions of years. The waterfall continue to flow underneath this rock-hard outer shell. There are only a few active tufa waterfalls in the world – one of which is at the Blyderivierspoort Dam.
I think this is perhaps what an ant sees when it looks up! And now, the best part of all, that’s ME! Say hello…..! I was looking for some scraps and hoping the people in the car would throw me something! In particular the lady! She was so friendly to me, I really thought she was gonna throw me something…heard words like….ahw….hungry…poor thingy….look….siestog….arme ding!
Follow this link HERE and you willNOT regret it! The MOST spectacular pictures I’ve seen on the web from these places!! Do yourself a favour!!
I love the bit where the crowd joins in with the Anthem in Afrikaans! I can imagine how proud they felt when singing it…you can hear it! And I feel proud of the South Africans over there!! Well done you lot!! You do us proud!!
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – Khmer Rouge “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, Pol Pot’s top surviving henchman, was arrested on Wednesday at his house on the Thai border and taken to Phnom Penh to face the U.N. “Killing Fields” tribunal for the first time.
A terse, two-sentence statement by the $56 million (28 million pound) court said the octogenarian communist guerrilla would “be informed of the charges which have been brought against him” — in all likelihood genocide or crimes against humanity.
Nuon Chea was arrested by a squad of Cambodian special forces soldiers, police and Western security guards who surrounded his small wooden home in a forest on the Thai border.
He was questioned inside for a short time before being taken away by helicopter and flown to Phnom Penh.
“My dad seems to have no worries, but my mother is worried about him,” his son, Nuon Say, told Reuters Read further on THIS LINKabout the Khmer Rouge and I posted a few days ago also about them….
Sammour–Hasbun – Smith after 19.Bxa6 White seeks to undermine Black’s control of d5.If 19…Bxa6, then 20.g5
Boylston Chess Club Weblog
I was really surprised to find my blog linked to Boylston Chess Club and feel honoured! I think this site is really a good site and very extensive….a must to check out…and there are a lot of good links on the blog…sorry, my Tufa waterfall has to wait a bit…
Have a great day!
‘n Volkwatsyverledevoortdurendvooroëhou, en ‘n volkwatsyheldeeer, is ‘n gesondevolk.
Mag ditook van die Boere–Afrikaners van ons dag gesê word.
A nation looking back constantly at its history and a nation honouring its heroes, is a healthy nation. May it be said from the Boer-Afrikaner nation!
I think this pic is really great…the thorns….I like the focus here…just what I wanted…. And of course….the leaves and the colours were the focus here…I love Autumn, for all the changes during Autumn… If any South African can leave me the name of this plant…I would appreciate it…I don’t know what it is called, I only know that it got seeds on the end of the branches….they make a lovely scence, though the colour looks a bit dull… Waterfall sign post alongside the road from Swadini Forever Resort on your way to the Blyde River dam. This waterfall is about 20minutes’ walk into the forest…stunning!
And…as you can see…ET! When you arrive at the waterfall, ET meets you there…look at that eye! I know these pics are not that great…if you are in a hurry, this is what you get! That’s the only pic I have with this rock tied-up in the tree… And this little mini-beast!!! He wouldn’t let me photograph him properly, I tried everything to enhance the pic for you to see what I tried to capture…this little naughty spider, was a bit curious and even played dead! on the last pic…he suddenly turned over and aish! he thinks I’m dumb! He must have known that I know he plays dead…silly little creature…but I love them, I can watch them for hours! I wish it was my job to go out in nature to photograph these creatures or just to do research on them….I would love it…
Next pictures to blog…a Tufa waterfall…the third longest in the world, called the Crying Tufa…in the Blyde River Canyon and I’ve got some very good pictures on it! A tufa waterfall is formed when water running over dolomite rock absorbs calcium. Mosses which grow on the rocks in the stream extract carbon dioxide during photosynthesis which precipitates the calcium from the water to deposit it as layers of tufa on the surface of the waterfall – a process that takes millions of years. The waterfall continue to flow underneath this rock-hard outer shell. There are only a few active tufa waterfalls in the world – one of which is at the Blyderivierspoort Dam.
Here is a fantastic linkto keep your mind busy while I’m sorting my pictures…
Here are two links to spider websites, South African spiders and I’ve sent an email to Norman on the one site to identify the spider on this pic for me!
This waterfall is in the historical town of Shanklin…..beautiful!
King Henry’s Kitchen…a Restaurant on the Island….He is also the King who beheaded 2 of his 6 wives! Read here… about King HenryHe was King Henry VIII…a vicious king I would say! He was the founder of the Church of England……and he wrote “Green Sleeves”!
In primary schools the children learn this rhyme to remember what happened to his wives…”Divorced, beheaded, died
Divorced, beheaded, survived”. In that order, is what happened…!
Houses and a hotel on the Isle…..I particularly liked the house on this picture…it has some style and character…. A tack shop on a farm where you can do horse riding! Everything horsey in here..! I had to take a picture from this book! It is in an art shop…a tiny shop…everything is left there…there is nobody…If you want to buy something, you write your name and the amount you leave in this book!! Ha! They really do trust people on this island!! Amazing!!
Graveyard….and daisies….
This place was really enjoyable….this is called the “Needles”…whoops! Look at THIS SITEand you will see why I say the chair lift is kind of scary!! It was really fun going there…..but be prepared for those chairs…I just closed my eyes and bit on my teeth at one point…!
Some of you know already how much I love the Poetry of William C Williams! And this poem…. –my year 5/6 (mixed class) children, wrote their own poems based on this one…– it’s such a cute little poem!
This is just to say…
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.
— William Carlos Williams
Then, a “reply” was found to this poem….
Reply
(crumped on her desk)
Dear Bill: I’ve made a
couple of sandwiches for you.
In the ice-box you’ll find
blue-berries–a cup of grapefruit
a glass of cold coffee.
On the stove is the tea-pot
with enough tea leaves
for you to make tea if you
prefer–Just light the gas–
boil the water and put it in the tea
Plenty of bread in the bread-box
and butter and eggs–
I didn’t know just what to
make for you. Several people
called up about office hours–
See you later. Love. Floss.
Please switch off the telephone
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click HEREto read more about the reply.
Landcape with the Fall of Icarus
Willimas Carlos Williams
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year
was awake tingling
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted the wings’ wax
unsignificantly
off the coast there was
a splash
quite unnoticed
this was Icarus drowning
The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheelbarrow
glazedwith rainwater
beside the whitechickens. Poems inspired by William Carlos Williams. You can read his bibliography on this link too.
Some poems have only 16 words! Emily Dickinson
We introduce ourselves
To Planets and to Flowers
But with ourselves
Have etiquettes
Embarrassments
And awes
One chess player sent me this poem, he wasnt’ sure if his friend copied it from somewhere and if his friend wrote it himself…
This is what Nicky looked like. I’ve found this photo on the internet as our photos of Nicky and Lompie are packed away.
She was a cat found at a nursery. It was a rainy day in Centurion. I wanted to get some plants for a big clay pot in my class. I walked into the nursery. While looking around in the section where they kept all sorts of pots and stands with seeds, I heard a cat mewing. It was a soft, fainted mew and I couldn’t make out where it was coming from. I kept on looking around, but saw nothing. There were tons of shelves, covered in hessian with stuff on display. I starting lifting up the hessian, near where I heard the cat. There she was! A very young kitty with a plate of milk. I couldn’t resist stroking her and picked her up immediately. There was a man serving customers – with a wheelbarrow busy doing all sorts of odd things. Stroking this beautiful little kitty, I walked to him and asked him whose cat it was.”Nobody’s, I only feed her while she’s around.” I pleaded to have her and he agreed as it was nobody’s cat anyway.
That day was my lucky day! I locked her in my car and ran back to get the plants. I couldn’t get my plants fast enough and to get back to the car. I got back to the car and there, very pleased with herself, she was waiting on the back seat, looking me very thankfully in the eyes through the window. I still remember those large green eyes, head a bit tilted sideways. When I got into the car, it was only a loud purrrr-purrrr I could hear and I knew she was happy. She looked at me as if she has been mine for years.
Nicky loved water! It was funny. I found her on a rainy day and she loved water so much, she liked it if you poured it all over her. She would then look over her shoulder and just say…”purr-mew”…as if she was asking for more! I used to have a small red watering can and when I had it with me, she came to me as if she was asking to have water running down her spine. When I poured the water down her spine, she would then wriggle her body and, “purr-mew”, to show how she enjoyed it.
She was friends, big friends, with Lompie. Lompie was the Blue Lilac-point Siamese! They were like kids – crazy kids, chasing one another up and down the flat – and later in the house [when we moved into a house] and around the garden, looking a bit silly most of the times, making us laugh when they were doing it. Lompie would start to chase and then suddenly turned around and then Nicky would chase Lompie. Completely two ‘silly’ children. We had great fun with them and could sit in the garden looking at them playing ‘hide-and-seek’ with one another, hiding behind plants, or going up a tree. It was as if they enjoyed entertaining us and knew how we enjoyed them. Their tails were swishing from side to side when they were taking position, when playing. It was funny.
The following pictures were found on the internet. I was looking for pictures that portray her personality the best.
Nicky used to get into the basin quite often and loved it when you open the tap slightly to drink some water from the tap. I think she enjoyed the coolness of it too.
She loved to wriggle on the carpet, also when they played, she was always the one on her back, defending herself from Lompie.
Nicky was curious, very curious and I know we have a similar photo of her which we took in our garden, almost this very same position, looking at ‘something’.
In our flat, we also had a beam like this! [behind the front door]. She loved to walk on it, sometimes she was ‘hiding’ there when she heard us coming up the stairs [from outside] and when we opened the door, she would “purr-mew”, as if she couldn’t help herself saying, “hello, here I am!” or maybe it was her way of saying, “wha! got you!”
Very strange but this photo IS Nicky!! 100% Nicky! Found on dreamstime.com, but this is SO, SO Nicky! 500%!
This is typical what Nicky was like, at times. Lazy-looking, self-content expression on her face.
Enjoy this cat-poem.
Cat in the window
What do you see? Cloud, wind, birds,a bird in a tree. The daffodils shivering the February breeze, A puddle in the road beginning to freeze.
Snow on the wind Dusk in a cloud. Leaves in a frenzy, The bird’s head cowed. Winter – though the sun shines. Blizzard, and the north wind’s whine.
Vandag is sommer net een van daardie dae wat ek Suid-Afrika mis! En dan maak dit die verlange nog groter as jy na Steve luister! Ai, hierdie man het darem ‘n stem aan hom en ‘n manier van dinge doen wat ‘n mens se hart warm laat klop vir Suid-Afrika. Ons het hom in 2006 hier in London gesien sing in die Palladium en dit was ‘n fantastiese optrede gewees. Ons het ook daar ander SA’s ontmoet met wie ons nou groot vriende is. Ek wens ek kon ‘n video kry van daardie aand se optrede. Nadat ek BiB se brief op sy blog gelees het wat hy aan Stefan geskryf het, Stefan wat nie meer daar is nie, het hy my baie bewoe gehad! ‘n Mens se hart is maar altyd in Suid-Afrika, al is jy waar in die wereld, jy sal ALTYD ‘n Suid-Afrikaner bly…murg en been… dit is IN jou, niks of niemand kan dit uit jou kry nie, wat hulle ook al se of doen. Dit is net jammer dat sekere dinge ‘n mens wegdryf en jy nie eens jou eie land kan geniet soos jy wil nie, dat jy nie vry kan wees en voel daar is ‘n toekoms vir jou kinders nie. Jy voel jammer vir jou kinders, want jy wens hulle kon daar grootword, jy wens hulle kon deel wees van die kultuur. Alhoewel jy in die vreemde jou taal praat en vir hulle vertel van die dinge, is dit anders, hulle beleef dit nie soos hulle dit sou beleef het nie. Miskien eendag, ons hoop almal en glo dat dinge positief sal uitwerk vir almal, almal in die vreemde sowel as almal daar. Niemand in die vreemde wil dit regtig he soos dit is nie, elke mens besluit vir homself op daardie oomblik wat is goed en jy dink aan jou kinders. Jy dink aan die toekoms. Jy dink aan alles! Hiermee wil ek nie se dat mense wat daar in SA is, dink nie soos ons nie. Nee, glad nie. Ons het die geleentheid gehad om te kom, baie mense wil, maar het nie die geleentheid nie. Mens wil graag he dat almal wat wil , die geleentheid moet he. Ek sal graag my hele familie hier wil he. Al wat jy in die vreemde kan doen is om jou kinders positief te hou teenoor Suid-Afrika sodat hulle eendag daarheen sal wil terugkeer. Ek praat later weer.
Read HERE about Pol Pot… I’ve read the book…”First they killed my father…” A VERY upsetting book, but fantastic narration…follow my links to read more about the book. I’m now busy with “Lucky child…” Last night there was on CNN a very interesting program on TV and that inspired me to post this on my blog… Lung Ung Until the age of five, Loung Ung lived in Phnom Penh, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official. She was a precocious child who loved the open city markets, fried crickets, chicken fights, and sassing her parents. When Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975, Ung’s family was forced to flee their home and hide their previous life of privilege. Eventually, they dispersed in order to survive. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans while her other siblings were sent to labor camps. Only after the Vietnamese destroyed the Khmer Rouge were Loung and her surviving siblings slowly reunited.
Loung Ung is a national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine Free World, a program of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. She is the author of Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind, and she lives with her husband in Ohio. Khmer Rouge on trial, CNN. Read HERE about the author.
For those chess players, who know about my trout…ok, here they are! And the dish! I prepared trout…for the first time myself…and I have to say first…that I HATE these heads still being attached! I know it is etiquette…to serve trout in Restaurants with these heads attached…but I am no Restaurant owner!….this is a private home! lol…..I couldn’t get rid of these heads fast enough…not that I found that a very pleasant act! Well, to be honest…not again…can Tesco and these other supermarkets take notice please! Stop selling trout with heads attached! I don’t like it…! I felt like King Henry VIII….he beheaded his wives…half of them! He had SIXwives! …This is the evidence for a couple of chess players that demanded to see the evidence…well, see with your own eyes…..I’m “tough” ….hey!
This is what I did…I had in the fridge…leeks…tomatoes, onions…you can also see some lemon juice, garlic and dried thyme! I added salt and oil too…
What I did was…chopped the leeks…put in oven pan…see the picture! Then the fish on top…with chopped tomatoes, onions, salt, crushed garlic, dried thyme…you can use fresh thyme of course instead…and don’t forget a bit oil and lemon juice….according to taste! Basically…use your imagination! Everything goes in the oven….for about 20 minutes…oh, a hot oven of course…gas mark 6…..and…voila! Trout a la…yours! Serve with whatever you want…I served it with greens, potatoes…and salad…very delicious! Any comments?…feel free to add your recipe here in the comments box!
I want to continue my Friday’s mood….so here goes…
William Morris was an artist too…on the pic here you can see some of his art…
There is so much going on in this world of us…do we ever stop! and think….think about an ant crossing a road…a caterpillar on a leave…honeybee buzzing on a flower……a bird seeking for crumbs….a newborn calf trying to get up…..newborn kittens struggling their way to their mummy’s milk……children with Aids! sleeping hungry, crying for their mums….orphans….are we thinking what difference we can make to other people’s lives? Let’s start thinking how we can alter our lives to make a change to other people’s lives, to bring love, joy and happiness to everybody in the world!
William Morris
Love Is Enough
Love is enough:
though the World be a-waning,
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows,
and the sea a dark wonder,
And this day draw a veil over all deeds pass’d over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble,
their feet shall not falter;
The void shall not weary,
the fear shall not alter
These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.
Morris, William1834—96, English poet, artist, craftsman, designer, social reformer, and printer. He has long been considered one of the great Victorians and has been called the greatest English designer of the 19th cent. Read more about William Morrishere.
During our holiday in August – South Africa, we were really lucky to find accommodation at a place next to the Swadini Forever Resort (previously Aventura). I grew up in the Eastern Transvaal -now Mpumalanga, which means:”place of the rising sun.” We drove through Lydenburg, spent time on the farm where I grew up.Krugerspost lies between Lydenburg and Pilgrims Rest, the historical town and from there we then ventured off to the Echo Caves. First we stopped at Ohrigstad to fill-up the car. We first thought to stay at the Echo Caves Motel, but changed our minds and headed for the Blyde River Canyon. We initially thought that we would just pop-in and have a place to stay! But, as we were on holiday and didn’t take any notice of dates and public holiday days in SA, we didn’t know it was a long weekend!Thursday was Women’s day and the Friday was a public holiday! Anyway, we got at Blyde River Forever Resort: “Sorry…we are fully booked!” Well, we didn’t expect to hear that, but then realised why we heard such unexpected words! OK! It was 7pm, not very late you know, but we’ve been on the road for a very long time by then. There were loads of B&B places, which we saw on random roads, not very far off, so, we decided to take the road, looking for some decent B&Bs. Just as we took a turn-off, stopped to look at an entrance of a B&B, Andre stopped next to us. He was our angel! “Hello…are you lost?” he asked very friendly and with him was his partner.”No, but we’re looking for a place to stay”, we replied anxiously. “Come with us! You can stay in Marius’s lodge!” We didn’t wait for a second invitation. Tired of being all day on the road basically from Groblersdal, we followed him, for only just about 80 m! What we got, was a fantastic lodge, place for about 10 people to stay. We could pick and choose where to sleep, like Goldilocks!! haha..I tried different beds…playing Goldilocks…! It was fun…2 bathrooms, showers …huge kitchen…(if you keep coming back to my blog later, you will see all of this) It was fantastic.”Because you don’t have any cleaning services for the weekend, you can pay R30 per person less…,” he continued through all the non-stop talking! I wanted to say: “Shus, you’re talking too much,” because Andre was talking non-stop about all the places we can visit and the more he talked, the more excited he got!! He also told us about – click here: – Moholoholo Animal Rehabilitation Centre, but our time was limited and you have to book to go there. Our boat trip was already booked for the same time we could go to Moholoholo, so sadly, we couldn’t go there, as we were heading for Pilgrims Rest and Sabie the following day…If my memory hasn’t gone lost…”moholoholo” means something like…”falling rock”…or ‘rolling rock.’
Enjoy this movie about the area of the Blyde River, which I put together using some of my pictures, not a great camera, I need to warn you. Our video camera perished a few days ago and we need to wait till we’re back in the UK to try and get it fixed.
You need: brown sugar, sticky type..in South Africa you get “tricale” brown sugar
cream
bread dough I found this bread recipe. I haven’t tried it myself.
5 cups flour
2 tablespoons yeast (or 2 x 7g pkts)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups warm-hot water
1/4 cup cooking oil
Put 4 cups of the flour, yeast, sugar and salt into large bowl.
Pour in hot water and oil and mix until combined- it will be sticky.
Add the remaining flour in increments until dough is no longer sticky.
Knead for about 5 minutes until dough is elastic and smooth.
Place dough back into bowl and cover with a damp tea towel and let it rise until double its size- about 1/2 hour. Now for the Bokkenvolle!
Roll small pieces of dough – like golf balls. Put in oiled oven dish or pan.
Cover the rolls with brown sugar. Be generous with the sugar! Don’t worry if there’s some at the bottom of the dish or pan. Pour cream in the dish, about 1 cm thick in the bottom, at least.
Bake in hot oven by about 180 deg C.
It takes longer than the plain bread rolls due to the cream that gets soaked up by the bread rolls.
Vladimir Kramnik was born in Tuapse, on June 25, 1975. In 1991 he won The World Under 18 Championship, and began a string of international success. At the Manila Olympiad 1992, he achieved a gold medal for best result on reserve board. Major tournament triumphs were soon to follow, such as Dortmund 1995, Tilburg 1997, and Wijk aan Zee 1998. Dortmund became a favorite stop, as Kramnik would go on to win seven more times, either as shared champion, or clear first. In 2000 Kramnik won his first Linares tournament, completing his set of victories in all three of chess’s “triple crown” events: Corus, Linares, and Dortmund. Kramnik would later capture additional Linares victories in 2003 (shared) and 2004. Follow THIS LINKto read more and to view his games!
I’m still busy sorting zillions of pictures, here are a few pictures from Pretoria…I liked this taxi..the yellow was striking and the number plate…just right! This is where the road from Akasia split, turn off to Gezina and the Market and other routes….when you take this turn off and turn left again, you cross the Apies River, before entering Gezina ….I think from Van Heerden Street…is the one way …from West to East…”Apies” is the Afrikaans for “ape”….the river is named after the many apes that were found in this area when Pretoria was founded in 1855…this Apies River can be a “mighty” river! With heavy rains, places alongside the river get flooded, but that doesn’t happen very frequently though. This is a very familiar “landmark” ….the cement factory as you leave Pretoria and you travel north to Pretoria North/Akasia….or on the Mabopane highway..traffic on the road can be quite heavy…if you look at the lanes on the right…you can see….rush hour is a nightmare on this road…! We were heading towards the city….and it was after rush hour…. Traffic in Pretoria, paper boy on his way to his post…just sold us a paper!
.Gezina if you turn left…Harties (Hartbeespoort) if you keep going…..more traffic, 10-ish in the morning… I know this road like the palm of my hand! Travelled this road for a couple of years from school in the afternoon…..Zoo coming up on your left….LangenhovenHigh school as the sign board indicates…always a speed trap when you go down! I missed them most of the time, but got ONE once….it is a 60km/h zone and I drove 70….think my fine was something like R60! wasn’t much anyway…. Now, if you live in Pretoria, you know Boom Street very well!! Buses…zillions of them, because, this is Zoo-area ….and….a main route for the buses to travel to other areas easy accessible for them. There is parking for coaches at the Zoo…and as you can see by looking at the trees: It was Winter!! July/August…”boom” is the Afrikaans word for “tree”….this is also a VERY busy and “dangerous” street…crime! Though the police claimed that crime isn’t anymore that high in this area, they (the police) also claimed that they are very visible….because of all the tourists visiting the Zoo…we didn’t see them…perhaps they were around…. This is the same road…the one I travelled a couple of years from my school, just a few meters back…all these pictures were taken from inside the car…perhaps yo can see the wipers of the car!…..there wasn’t time to stop every now and then to take a shot….so, they are not as good as they should be! I was in a moving car!!…hahaha… ZOO! entrance….Boom Street…this is really a MUST if you go to Pretoria. I’ve been to London’s Zoo and it’s not a patch against Pretoria’s…I must truly say, I was a bit disappointed the day when visiting London’s Zoo….visit the Pretoria Zoo WEBSITE here.
This is….Comfrey and it is similar to Spinach! so you don’t have to use confrey, I’ve done the same with spinach too!
I used to make this “pizza slices” as a Sunday-evening snack…it is really delicious, even more with lemon pepper! We couldn’t find lemon pepper at the supermarket(s) where we usually buy…so we’ve brought with us…all the way…from SA…a huge bottle, because we love it! But I ‘ve heard of people making their own…so I guess you can do that too…
Basically, what you need is quite clear on the pictures! Slices of bread, butter, mushrooms, onion, tomato, cheese and your spices. I think the steps are very obvious, leave me a note if I need to explain more!
What I can say about the Comfrey…don’t eat it too often, like in twice per week…and cook it like spinach…on the pictures you can see…I added potatoes and onions and I mashed it…then it goes on the buttered slices of bread…all other toppings on top….and then your cheese, put in the oven till cheese melted and voila! The Comfrey is easy to grow, we found some in our garden and were pretty much surprised. It’s the first time since we’re in the UK (almost 4 years now) that I make it…used to make it back home as a snack and it turned out very deliciously!…again…
These pics about the Boks come from a site…closed it before I could blog the link! But the bok at the bottom…surely not from the same site! 🙂 This impala, is called a Springbok! …for people not knowing it…and for people not knowing…South Africa beat Samoa with 59-7. England is next…so let’s hope the best for the Boks!
The meat usually comes first. Add a dash of cooking oil in the pot and when it is hot add the meat. Add sliced onions and stir the meat to seal in the flavour. Cook the meat until nearly done. Add vegetables in layers according to cooking times, carrots at the bottom followed by sweet potatoes, potatoes, pumpkin, mushroom etc. Arrange the vegetables in layers around the sides forming a hollow for the rice. Marinade or liquid is now added to about 2 cm under the top layer of vegetables.
Replace the lid and do not stir after this. Keep the pot simmering until done. Before serving, stir through once to ensure the meat and veggies at the bottom will be dished up and enjoy. Basically, everyone makes it their way…so you go and have a go and see what works best for you!
I’ve just found this site: http://www.biltongmakers.com. I’ve copied here some of their recipes. On this next link on my blog, you will find about 7-9 other Potjie Kos recipes from their site.
In this lovely Potjie extra salt is not needed as the soya sauce contains enough salt.
As substitute for the sherry you may also use Port.
It’s enough for 6 people and a size 3 Potjie Pot is recommended.
Ingredients
1 kg Stewing beef, cubed
1 Beef kidney, cubed
2 Medium onions, sliced
125 ml Dried apricots, soaked in water for 1 hour
4 Carrots, peeled and sliced
2 Sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced
4 Medium potatoes, peeled and halved
6 Baby marrow, sliced
250 ml Cabbage, chopped
1 Tomato, peeled and sliced
30 ml Dried parsley
30 ml Cooking oil
Black pepper to taste
The sauce
125 ml Sweet sherry
125 ml Soya sauce
5 ml Black pepper
3 ml Dry mustard
1 ml Dry rosemary
1 ml Dry thyme
1 Cube beef stock
500 ml Boiling water
Method
Heat the oil in the Pot and brown the meat and kidney till almost brown
Add the onions and brown together
Mix the ingredients of the sauce and add it to the Pot
Stir well, cover with the lid and simmer for 1.5 hours
Layer the dried fruit and then the veggies as they appear in the recipe
Sprinkle some pepper over the tomatoes
Cover with the lid and allow the Potjie to simmer for about 2 hours or until the veggies are done
Serves 6
Beef and Beer Potjie
Ingredients
1 kg beef fillet, cubed
15 ml cake flour
5 ml paprika
15 ml butter
15 ml cooking oil
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
15 ml white sugar
8 green beans, sliced
4 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
5 ml mixed dried herbs or marjoram
375 ml beer
250 ml beef stock
1 packet tomato soup powder
1 bay leaf
15 ml vinegar
10 ml cornflour
salt and pepper to taste
Method
Combine the paprika and flour and place in a plastic bag.
Add the meat cubes and shake well to coat the meat.
Melt the butter and oil in the pot and brown the meat over medium hot coals.
Remove and set aside.
Fry the onions and sugar, stirring now and then until the onions are tender.
Add the beans, carrots and garlic and simmer for 5 minutes.
Return the meat to the pot and stir in the herbs, beer, stock, soup powder and bay leaf.
Replace the lid and simmer till the meat is tender (45 minutes to 1 hour).
Stir occasionally, using a wooden spoon.
Mix the vinegar and cornflour and stir in.
Simmer until the gravy has thickened and season with salt and pepper.
Mutton Curry Potjie
This unique Potjiekos won third prize in Huisgenoot’s Transvaal Potjiekos competition and first prize in Beeld’s Potjiekos competition.
It’s enough for 6 people and a size 3 Potjie is recommended.
Ingredients
2 kg skaap-skenkel (sheep shin), cubed
3 Large onions, diced
2 Medium eggplant, peeled and cubed
8 Baby potatoes, peeled
4 Large tomatoes, diced
60ml Oil
50ml Butter
4 Sticks of cinnamon
10 Whole cloves (kruie-naeltjies)
Salt and pepper to taste
Little bit of white sugar
The Marinade
30ml Oil
20ml Medium curry powder
10ml Grated ginger
10ml Borrie (turmeric)
10ml Lemon juice
5ml Mustard
The Yoghurt mixture
500ml Natural yoghurt
20ml Chopped fresh parsley
Method
Mix the ingredients of the marinade and pour over the meat for about 1 hour
Heat the oil and butter in the Potjie and then add the stick cinnamon and cloves for a few minutes
Add the onions and braai until soft
Remove the onions but let the stick cinnamon and cloves remain in the Pot
Brown the meat and add a little water if necessary
Add the onion mixture to the meat, cover with the lid and allow to simmer for about 1 hour
Place the eggplant cubes on top of the meat and season with the salt and pepper
Layer the potatoes and tomatoes and once again season with salt and pepper and a little bit of white sugar
Cover with the lid and allow to simmer for approximately 2-3 hours
Stir well before serving and serve with rice and the yoghurt mixture over each serving
Serves 6
Oxtail Potjie (1)
Ingredients
1 kg oxtail, cut into joints
500 ml water
300 ml red wine
6-8 whole button onions, peeled
1.5 cups baby carrots, peeled
12 whole new (baby) potatoes, unpeeled
2 cups frozen green peas
250 ml water
25 grams oxtail soup powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp crushed garlic
Method
Heat the pot until very hot
Brown the meat in its own fat (don’t burn it!)
Add the water and the wine
Cover and simmer for 1 hour
Add the onions
Replace the lid and simmer for another 2 hours
Have an occasional peek and add water if necessary
Arrange the carrots, potatoes and peas in layers on top of the meat.
Cover and simmer for a further 1 hour
Mix the water, soup powder, salt and garlic and add to pot
Simmer for a further 15 minutes
Serve with French bread, chips or rice
Serves 4 Oxtail and Mutton Potjie
This Potjie has won competition after competition.
It has it’s ingredients packed in circles and not in layers, which makes the dishing up easier and also enables one to have a better look at what’s in the Pot.
It’s enough for 6 people and a size 3 Potjie is recommended.
Ingredients
1 Oxtail, cut into pieces
500g of Skaap-skenkels (sheep shin), cut into pieces
500g Skaapstertjies/ribbetjies (Sheep tails/ribs)
250g Bacon, diced
8 Medium onions, diced
500ml Green beans, cut up
1 Bunch of carrots, sliced
0.5 Cauliflower, broken up
300g Button mushrooms
1 Green pepper, diced
15 Baby potatoes
2 Celery sticks, chopped
15 Whole baby onions
1 Red chilli pepper
Roughly chopped parsley
30ml Butter
4 Blocks beef stock, crumbled
10 Whole peppercorns
8 Whole cloves (kruinaeltjies)
4 Cloves of garlic, chopped
10ml Mixed herbs
1 Stick cinnamon
Pepper to taste
125ml Dry red wine
62ml Water
Grated neut-muskaat to taste
15g Brown onion soup
Method
Coat the Pot with the butter and braai the meat for about 15 minutes until brown
Add the onions, bacon, beef stock, spices and herbs and braai for a further 15 minutes
Remove the mutton pieces
Add the water and the wine to the oxtail, cover with the lid and allow the Potjie to simmer for about 1 hour
Replace the mutton and let it simmer for a further 50 minutes
Now pack the veggies as follows – A ring of green beans against the edge of the Pot, then a ring of carrots and a ring of cauliflower right in the middle
Push the mushrooms tightly between the edge of the Pot and the green beans and sprinkle with the chilli
Pack the potatoes between the beans and the carrots and sprinkle the celery over it
Pack the onions around the cauliflower and sprinkle the soup powder and parsley over it
Cover with the lid and allow it to simmer for a further 2 hours or until the veggies are soft
No salt is used as the soup powder and beef stock contains enough salt
Serves 6
All recipes in the post is from the link in the post….but recipes following now, are from the source at the bottom of this post.
Yogurt and Chicken Potjie
Marinade :
500 ml Natural Yoghurt
500 ml Dry White Wine
10 ml dried Thyme
10 ml Grated Lemon Peel
5 ml Fresh Ground Black Pepper
3 Bay Leaves
5 ml Dried Tarragon
Ingredients :
1 Large Onion ( Finely Chopped )
2 kg Chicken Pieces
2 Green peppers
300 g Carrots ( Peeled and Sliced )
6 Large Potatoes ( Peeled and quartered )
100 g Dried Apricots
200 g Green Beans ( Sliced )
150 g Fresh Mushroom ( Sliced )
Salt to Taste
1 Packet Creamy Mushroom Soup Powder ( If Required )
Mix all the marinade ingredients , pour over the chicken and marinade for 6 – 8 Hours .
Heat the pot to very hot . Remove the chicken from the marinade and fry a few pieces at a time with the pepper until golden brown .Arrange the Carrots , Potatoes , Apricots , Green Beans , and mushrooms in layers on top of the meat . Sprinkle them with salt and add the marinade . Replace the lid and simmer slowly for two hours . Should the potjie render to much liquid , it can be thickened with the mushroom soup powder . Mix the soup powder with the gavy and allow to simmer for another 15 minutes .
Serves 6 – 8 People
Beef and Beer Potjie
Serves 6 people Ingredients :
15 ml Cake Flour
5 ml Paprika
1 kg Beef fillet , ( Cut in Cubes )
15 ml Butter
15 ml Olive Oil
2 Medium Onions ( Thinly Sliced )
15 ml White Sugar
8 Green Beans Sliced
4 Carrots ( Peeled and thinly Sliced )
1 Clove of Garlic ( Finely Chopped )
5 ml Mixed Dried Herbs or Marjoram
375 ml Beer
250 ml Beef Stock
1 Packet Tomato Soup Powder
1 Bay Leave
15 ml Vinegar
10 ml Corn Flour
Salt & Pepper to taste
Preparation :
Combine the paprika and flour and place in a plastic bag . Add the meat cubes and shake well to coat the meat . Melt butter and Olive oil in the pot and brown the meat over medium hot coals . Remove and set aside . fry the onions and sugar stirring now and then until onions are tender . Add beans carrots and garlic , cover and simmer for 5 minutes . Return the meat to the pot and stir in the herbs and beer , stock , soup powder and bay leave . Replace the lid and simmer until meat is tender ( +\- 45 min. to a 1 Hour ) . Stir occasionally using a wooden spoon . Mix the Vinegar and corn flour and stir in . Simmer until the gravy has thickened and season with salt & pepper
Chicken and Noodle Potjie
Ingredients :
8 Chicken Thighs
Salt & Pepper to taste
30 ml Cooking Oil
2 Celery Sticks ( Chopped )
2 Tomatoes ( Skins Removed and sliced )
1 Green pepper ( Finely Sliced )
250 g Whole Button Mushrooms
250 g Chives ( Chopped )
500 ml uncooked shell Noodles
15 ml Parsley ( Finely Chopped )
10 ml Dried Mixed Herbs
5 ml Freshly Ground Pepper
3 ml Dried Rosemary
250 ml Dry White Wine
250 ml Grated Cheddar Cheese
Preparation :
Sprinkle the chicken with salt & pepper . Heat the oil in the pot and fry the chicken , a few pieces at a time , until golden brown . arrange the vegetable in layers on top of the meat in the following order : Celery , tomatoes , green pepper , mushrooms and chives . Sprinkle the parsley and mixed herbs on top and add the noodles . Sprinkle the pepper and rosemary on top and pour over Wine . Cover and simmer for 1 hour .
Sprinkle with cheese and simmer a further 20 minutes .
Whole-Wheat Beer Bread 600ml Beer
250 g Whole-Wheat Flour
250 g Cake flour 20 ml Cream of Tartar
10 ml Baking Soda
5 ml Brown Sugar
3 ml Salt
Mix all the ingredients thoroughly and place the mixture in a well greased flat bottom pot. Grease the lid and cover the pot with it. Bake the bread for approximately 1 hour over the coals, placing some coals on top of the lid as well. Remove the pot from the coals and leave the bread to stand in the pot for 10 minutes. turn out on a cloth. Serve with butter.
This bread can also be baked successfully in oven of 200 C for 1 hour. Cover the bread with tin foil after 30 minutes and bake for a further 30 minutes.
Tangy Chicken Potjie
Ingredients :
30 ml Cooking Oil
2 kg Chicken Pieces
5 Medium onions ( chopped )
1 Large chili ( Seeded and Chopped )
250 ml Water
5 Carrots ( peeled , Sliced into Strips )
6 Medium Potatoes ( Peeled and cubed )
125 ml Uncooked Rice
200 g frozen green peas
15 whole button mushrooms
2 Tomatoes ( Skinned and Cubed )
10 ml Dried Parsley
5 ml Garlic Flakes
5 ml Lemon Pepper
5 ml Dried Oregano
2,5 ml Coarsely Ground Black Pepper
1,25 ml Peri peri Powder
125 ml Dry White Wine
30 ml Sugar
20 ml Salt
15 ml Mild Curry Powder
1 Chicken Stock Cube , Crumbled
Preparation :
Heat the oil in the potjie. Fry the chicken, a few pieces at a time, until golden brown. Remove and set aside . Fry onions and chili until tender Return the chicken to the pot and add the water. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Mix the wine with the remaining ingredients and pour over the potjiekos. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Check that the rice is done. If not, simmer until cooked . Stir through before serving .
Chicken and Vegetable Potjie
Ingredients :
30 ml Cooking oil or Butter
10 Chicken Thighs
2 Large Onions chopped
45 ml Chutney
10 ml Salt
5 ml Dried Mixed Herbs
5 ml Garlic flakes
1.2 ml Freshly Ground Black pepper
6 Large Carrots ( Peeled and sliced )
12 whole Baby Potatoes ( Peeled )
1 Small Head of Cabbage ( Shredded )
½ Medium Butternut ( Sliced )
1 Tin ( 410 g ) Mealie Kernels ( Do not drain )
125 ml Sweet White Wine
Preparation :
Heat the oil or butter in the pot. Fry the chicken pieces and onion together for approximately 30 minutes. Mix the chutney, salt, herbs, garlic flakes and pepper. Spread the meat evenly with half the chutney mixture. Arrange the carrots, potatoes, cabbage and butter nut in layers on top of the meat. Spread evenly with the remaining chutney mixture and sprinkle the mealie kernels on top. Add the wine and allow to simmer very slowly for 1 ½ to 2 hours. Chicken and Mushroom Potjie Ingredients :
200 g Butter
3 kg Chicken pieces
8 Medium onions ( Sliced )
6 Medium Potatoes ( Peeled , Cut into small pieces )
250 g Rind less Streaky Bacon ( Cut into small pieces )
900 g Whole Button Mushrooms
1 Tin ( 440 G ) Pineapple Chunks ( Drained )
1 Packet Rice-O-Mix ( Chicken Flavour )
25 ml Chicken Seasoning
5 ml Worchester Sauce
5 ml Salt
5 ml Freshly Ground Black Pepper
Preparation :
Heat the pot and melt a knob of butter, fry the chicken a few pieces at a time, until golden brown. Melt remaining butter add the onions cover and steam for 10 minutes until nearly done. Add the chicken to the onions in the pot, replace the lid and simmer for 45 minutes. Add the potatoes and simmer for 30 minutes until tender. Arrange the bacon ,mushroom, pineapple and rice in layers on top of the potatoes add the chicken seasoning and Worchester sauce. Sprinkle with salt and pepper ( To Taste ) Replace lid and simmer for another hour until rice is done . Chicken , Broccoli and Rice Potjie Ingredients :
45 ml Cooking Oil
12 Chicken Thighs
Aromat ( to Taste )
4 – 6 Cloves of Garlic
6 Carrots ( Peeled and sliced )
300 g Broccoli
300 g Whole Button Mushrooms
250 g Courgettes , ( Thickly Sliced )
250 g Uncooked Rice
5 ml Salt
1 Litre Boiling Water
2 Chicken Stock Cubes
125 ml Dry White Wine
30 ml Mushroom Soup Mixed with 125 ml Cold Water
Preparation :
Heat the oil in the pot . Season the chicken pieces with Aromat and fry a few pieces at a time until golden brown . Return the all the meat to the pot and add the cloves . Cover and allow to simmer for 30 minutes . Arrange the vegetables in layers on top of the meat in order as listed . Make a hollow in the centre and place the rice and salt in it . Dissolve the chicken stock cube in boiling water and add to the pot . Replace the lid and allow to simmer very slowly for 1 ½ hours without stirring . Add the wine and mushroom soup , replace the lid and simmer for a further 10 minutes . Lexyson’s Chicken & Pork Potjie Ingredients :
45 ml Cooking Oil
1 Kg Chicken Drum Sticks
500 g Pork ( Cubed )
Salt & Pepper ( To Taste )
3 Large Onions
2 Green peppers ( Seeded and cut into rings )
8 Whole cloves of Garlic
45 ml Smooth Apricot Jam
500 ml Green Beans ( Sliced )
375 ml Semi Dry White Wine
3 Medium Tomatoes ( Skinned & Sliced )
Preparation :
Heat the oil in the pot . Sprinkle the chicken and pork with salt & pepper . Fry Meat gently , a few pieces at a time , until golden brown . Remove and set aside .
Saute the onions and green pepper for a few minutes and add the cloves of Garlic . Return the meat to the pot and spread the chicken with the jam Add the beans and wine , Cover and simmer for 45 minutes . Add the tomatoes and simmer for further 45 minutes .
Read ON THIS LINK about Marais.Have you read….”The soul of the white Ant”…or…”Die siel van die Mier!” by Eugene Marais… if not….you have a gap in your culture…:))….get “The soul of the white ant..” and read it…
And……on THIS LINK you can read his poem…”Dans van die reen”…which I translated into English for my blogreaders….”Dance of the rain”…enjoy!
Where is the soul of a termite, or the soul of man?
“Someone once said that all behaviourism in nature could be referred to as hunger. This saying has been repeated thousands of times yet is false. Hunger itself is pain – the most severe pain in its later stages that the body knows except thirst, which is even worse. Love may be regarded as a hunger, but it is not pain.
“What protects animals, what enables them to continue living, what assures the propagation of race? A certain attribute of organic matter. As soon as one finds life, one finds this attribute. It is inherent in life; like most natural phenomena it is polarised, there is a negative and a positive pole. The negative pole is pain; the positive pole is sex. This attribute may be called the saving attribute of life; and it is here where one comes closest to what appears like a common purpose beyond nature.” (Eugène Marais, The Soul of the White Ant, 1989:261)
Eugène Nielen Marais[1] (1871-1936) was a South African lawyer, naturalist, poet, and writer. Although Marais is remembered by South Africans more for his contribution to Afrikaans literature than for science, he has been described as being a scientist far ahead of his time.
He began life after leaving college as a journalist, then studied medicine for four years, but eventually took up law and was called to the bar by the Inner Temple. He was a scholar and a man of culture.
However, it was not only as jurist that Marais distinguished himself as a brilliant (yet eccentric) character in South African history. He has been described as “… a human community in one man. He was a poet, an advocate, a journalist, a story-teller, a drug-addict, a psychologist, a natural scientist.”
In 1910, he abandoned his law practice and retreated to the remote Waterberg (‘Water Mountain) – the mountain area north-west of Pretoria. Here he studied two creatures – termites and baboons that, on the face of it, had nothing in common. Both fascinated him, as did all wild creatures.
Settling near a large group of chacma baboons, he became the first man to conduct a prolonged study of primates in the wild. It was in this period that he produced My Friends the Baboons and provided the major inspiration for The Soul of the Ape.
His studies of termites led him to the conclusion that the colony should be considered as a single organism. Although Marais could not have known it, he was anticipating some of the ideas of Richard Dawkins (1941— ). He also observed chacma baboons at length and he was the father of the scientific study of the behaviour of primates. Because Marais refused to translate his works into English, they remained almost unknown outside of southern Africa, which is the only place in the world where Afrikaans is spoken to any degree.
Termites are social insects and are most closely related to the cockroaches with which they share a close common ancestor (?). They are among the most important groups of animals on land because they play a vital role in breaking down dead plant material. They have symbiotic flagellates or bacteria in their hindguts that are able to break down plant cellulose to a digestible form and in the subfamily Macrotermitinae the termites culture and eat fungi in their nests using dead plant material.
Ants (order: Hymenoptera; family: Formicidae) are often confused with termites because they are also social, and termites are sometimes called ‘white ants’ (a confusing term). Ants, like wasps (from which they evolved (?)), have a constriction half way down their body whereas in termites the body is uniformly broad. The prominent mounds you see in the South African countryside are made by termites not ants. Whereas ant workers are all females, in termites, workers can be both male and female. In ants, mating occurs before the nest is founded and the male dies after mating – he does not become a king, and live and mate with the queen in the new colony, as in termites.
Marais published his conclusions about termites as a series of speculative articles, written entirely in Afrikaans and appearing only in local newspapers, as The Soul of the White Ant. While observing the natural behaviour of these creatures, he noticed that firstly, the whole termitary (a termite nest) had to be considered as a single organism whose organs work like those of a human being.
Termitaries, as one sees them so frequently in Central and Southern Africa, are tall, compacted columns of earth sometimes four to five metres high. Within the terminary lives the society, with its castes and its ranks, in countless numbers.
Marais concluded that all members of the colony and the terminary itself form what is essentially a single living organism. The terminary itself is the body. The various castes in the society have the functions of the body’s organs, with fungus gardens contributing the digestive tract, soldiers and workers the cells of the blood stream, the queen the brain as well as the reproductive organs, and even the sexual flight executing the function of sperm and eggs. How all communicate (pheromones, telepathy?) we do not know, but the ‘soul’ of the termite – the psyche, we should say – is the property of the entire society. He concluded secondly that the actions within the termitary were completely, instinctive.
His work on termites led him to a series of stunning discoveries. He developed a fresh and radically different view of how a termite colony works, and indeed, of what a termite colony is. This was far in advance of any contemporary work. In 1923, he began writing a series of popular articles on termites for the Afrikaans press and in 1925; he published a major article summing up his work in the Afrikaans magazine Die Huisgenoot.
He published The Soul of the White Ant (1937) and then My Friends the Baboons (1939) which was posthumously published after he had taken his life.
His book Die Siel van die Mier (The Soul of the Ant, but usually given in English as The Soul of the White Ant) was plagiarised by Nobel Laureate Maurice Maeterlinck, who published The Life of the White Ant in 1926, falsely claiming many of Marais’ revolutionary ideas as his own. Maeterlinck was able to do this because he was Flemish and therefore understood Dutch, from which Afrikaans was derived. Maeterlinck was as a consequence one of the few people in Europe who had read Marais’ original texts.
Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) was a leading literary figure of the time. In 1911, he won the Nobel Prize for literature following the success of his play The Bluebird. In 1901, he had written The Life of the Bee, a mixture of natural history and philosophy, but he was a dramatist and a poet, not a scientist.
In 1926, one year after Die Huisgenoot published Marais’ article, Maeterlinck stole Marais’ work and published it under his own name, without acknowledgement, in a book titled The Life of the White Ant, first published in French and soon afterwards in English and several other languages.
Maeterlinck’s book was met with outrage in South Africa. Later, in 1935, Marais wrote to Dr Winifred de Kok in London. She was beginning her English translation of The Soul of the White Ant, “You must understand that it was a theory which was not only new to science but which no man born of woman could have arrived at without a knowledge of all the facts on which it was based; and these Maeterlinck quite obviously did not possess. He even committed the faux pas of taking certain Latin scientific words invented by me to be current and generally accepted Latin terms.
“The publishers in South Africa started crying to high heaven and endeavoured to induce me to take legal action in Europe, a step for which I possessed neither the means nor inclination. The press in South Africa, however, quite valorously waved the cudgels in my behalf. The Johannesburg Star [South Africa’s biggest English-speaking daily newspaper] published plagiarised portions that left nothing to the imagination of readers.
“The Afrikaans publishers of the original articles communicated the facts to one of our ambassadorial representatives in Europe and suggested that Maeterlinck be approached. Whether or not this was done, I never ascertained. In any case, Maeterlinck, like other great ones on Olympus, maintained a mighty and dignified silence.”
Marais took legal action against Maeterlinck but gained little satisfaction.
Marais began writing Soul of the Ape in 1916, but never finished it. It was published posthumously years later. His theory was that, unlike termites, baboons – and by extension all primates – had the ability to memorise the relationship between cause and effect. They could therefore vary their behaviour voluntarily. While termites were instinctive, the mind of baboons was based on ‘causal memory’.
The reason for this difference, according to Marais, was natural selection. According to him, natural selection was not, as Darwin had insisted, ‘the survival of the fittest’, but rather ‘the line of least resistance’. Those species best able to adapt to their specific environment survived, while those not able to, would become extinct. Natural selection, therefore, had the tendency to both localise and specialise species.
The conclusions to which he came were new and radical and might well have had an influence in Europe. However, Marais was half a hemisphere away, half a century too soon and writing in a language no one could understand.
The Soul of the White Ant was brought under the attention of the world only by being seemingly plagiarised by a Belgian Nobel prize laureate, Maurice Maeterlinck. The Soul of the Ape was incomplete and originally only published in South Africa.
Maeterlinck’s The Life of the White Ant, in which he describes the organic unity of the termitary and compares it with the human body. This theory aroused great interest at the time and was generally accepted as an original one formulated by Maeterlinck. The fact that an unknown South African observer had developed the theory after many years of indefatigable labour was not generally known in Europe.
The 1927 files at The Star to which Marais referred were checked and confirmed by American author and social anthropologist Robert Ardrey (1908-1980) forty years later. “Maeterlinck’s guilt is clear”, Ardrey wrote. It is easily confirmed by a comparison of the two books. Marais’ point is indisputable: his picture of the termitary is startlingly original, it could not possibly have been hypothesised or inferred without a great deal of original research, at the very least – and yet there it is in Maeterlinck’s book.
Yet it is impossible to ignore the fact that Marais’ work is revolutionary, especially if one takes into account the time and place in which it was written. Robert Ardrey says in his introduction to Marais’ work on ants and baboons published in 1973, “As a scientist he was unique, supreme in his time, yet a worker in a science unborn.”
He was master of a science that was only invented fifty years later (ethology). It was sixty years before anyone else attempted to study what he had studied (ape societies in the wild). He described natural mechanisms and systems that were not identified by mainstream science until forty years later (pheromones), and neither science nor society has yet caught up with many of his findings and conclusions. Marais made no direct contribution to entomology, but his ghost continues to haunt the discipline.
His fourth book, The Soul of the Ape, completed in 1919, might just have made him world famous if it had been published then, but in fact half a century was to pass before it appeared in book form in 1969, thirty-three years after his death.
Their observations and the insights Marais gained from them formed the basis of a serious work later to be called The Soul of the Ape.
They also led to a more popular work, Burgers van die Berge (Citizens of the Mountains, translated as My Friends the Baboons), first published in book form in 1938, two years after Marais’ death.
In 1948, twelve years after Marais’ death, Nikolaas Tinbergen[2] (1907-1988) reformulated Marais’ extremely important concept of the phyletic (inborn) and causal (acquired) memory.
Thirteen years later, in 1961, Washburn and De Vore[3] published a lengthy article, ‘The Social Life of Baboons’, in the Scientific American. Though some of their observations were contested, they were seen as the first serious observers of baboons in the wild (meaning not in captivity), a title which surely Marais had earned fifty years before. His notes on baboon behaviour in The Soul of the Ape are regarded as honest and reliable by modern ethologists.
When The Soul of the Ape was finally published in 1969, it was too late.
Read the rest of the article….HERE on Authorsden. The link will open in a new window.
Winter’s Night
Oh the small wind is frigid and spare and bright in the dim-light and bare as wide as God’s merciful boon the veld lies in starlight and gloom and on the high lands spread through burnt bands the grass-seed, astir, like beckoning hands.
Oh East-wind gives mournful measure to song Like the lilt of a lovelorn lass who’s been wronged In every grass fold bright dewdrop takes hold and promptly pales to frost in the cold!
METRO newspaper….on the tube… Thief picks wrong house to burgle Friday, September 7, 2007
Of all the houses in all of Britain, he had to break into this one. A bungling burglar was locked up on Thursday after breaking into a flat while its police officer owner was at home. Jason Marshall forced the front door and began sneaking around when Sgt Abdul Haque came downstairs. In a flash of inspiration, Marshall explained he had come to clean the windows but was told: ‘Not here you’re not. You’re nicked.’ Sgt Haque grabbed him and called for back-up. A search revealed he was carrying 9g of heroin. The 31-year-old later admitted one count of burglary, possession of a class A drug and asked for 14 other burglary offences to be taken into consideration. He had recently stolen more than £5,500 worth of property, a court heard. Marshall received a three-year sentence at Portsmouth Crown Court Read the Metro heretoo.
Albert Einstein, born March 14, 1879, was a theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as the greatest scientist of the 20th century. He proposed the Theory of Relativity, which greatly advanced humankind’s understanding of the universe. He also made major contributions to the development of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and cosmology. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect.
Einstein had an interest in chess. In 1936, he told a reporter that he played chess as a boy. In 1927 Einstein metEmanuel Laskerin Berlin, and they became good friends. Einstein called Lasker “a Renaissance man.”
In 1931 a pamphlet was written called “One Hundred Authors Against Einstein.” One of the authors was Emanuel Lasker. Lasker thought Einstein’s theory of relativity was wrong and that the speed of light was limited due to particles in space. Lasker did not think there was a perfect vacuum.
Einstein is quoted as saying: “Chess grips its exponent, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom and independence of even the strongest character cannot remain unaffected.”
Click HERE to play through the game played in 1933 by Einstein and Oppenheimer. The link will open in a new window.
Albert Einstein (1879 C-1955) was born at Ulm in Wurttemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. The family moved to Munich in 1880. He may have first played chess in Munich. In 1936, he did tell a reporter that he played chess as a boy. He grew up in Munich, but left at age 15 when his parents moved to Italy in 1894. His parents then sent him to Switzerland to finish secondary school, which he completed in 1896.
In 1896 he renounced his German citizenship and enrolled in a Swiss technical school. He graduated with a teaching diploma in 1900 and became a Swiss citizen in 1901.
In 1902 he had an illegitmate daughter (Lieserl) with Mileva Maric, a Serbian classmate and mathematician. Einstein could not find a teaching post. Someone helped him get a job at the Swiss Patent Office as an assistant examiner.
He married Mileva in 1903. In 1904 his first son, Hans Albert, was born.
In 1905, at the age of 25, he received his doctorate after submitting his dissertation “On a new determination of molecular dimensions.” That same year he wrote articles on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, special relativity, and energy equivalency. The paper on the photoelectric effect later won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.
In 1908, Dr. Einstein was licensed in Berne, Switzerland as a teacher and lecturer. In 1910, he second son, Eduard, was born.
In 1914 he moved to Berlin as a professor at the local university and became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He also served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics.
In 1915 he presented a series of lectures on the theory of general relativity.
In 1919 he divorced Mileva and married his first cousin, Elsa Einstein. At age 43, she was 3 years older than him (he was now 40).
In 1921 he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect.
In 1927 Einstein met Emanuel Lasker in Berlin and they became good friends.
In 1928 Einstein wrote to Dr. Emanuel Lasker, congratulating him on his 60th birthday, calling Lasker a Renaissance man.
In 1930 he received a patent for a new type of refrigerator.
In 1931 a pamphlet was written called One Hundred Authors Against Einstein. One of the authors was Emanuel Lasker.
Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933 and there was a nationalist hatred of Einstein, accusing him of creating “Jewish physics.” Einstein then fled Germany and was given permanent residence in the United States. He accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He was 54 years old when he first arrived in the USA. The director of the Institute was Dr. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967). Emanuel Lasker also fled Berlin about the same time that Einstein left. Both of their homes were ransacked by the Nazis.
Einstein was an amateur chessplayer. He played chess with his neighbors and friends. He always had a chessboard set up at home. He was probably most active in chess in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
In 1934 Einstein visited friends and relaxed with a game of chess. When he met children, he asked them if they liked music or could they play chess. He would occasionally teach a child the basics of chess, then tell that child to practice, then would play that child a game of chess the next time they met.
In October, 1936 Einstein was interviewed by the New York Times. In that interview, he said, “I do not play any games. There is no time for it. When I get through work I don’t want anything which requires the working of the mind.” Einstein preferred playing the violin and sailing. Einstein did say he played chess as a boy.
In 1937, Einstein’s second wife, Elsa, died.
In 1938, Paul Nemenyi, a Jewish Hungarian scientist, fled to America and headed to Princeton to consult with Albert Einstein. He found a job working for Einstein’s son, Hans Albert, at the University of Iowa’s hydrolgy lab. There are strong indications that Nemenyi is the biological father of Bobby Fischer. He met Bobby Fischer’s mother, Regina, in 1942, at the Univesity of Colorado.
In 1939 Einstein met Dr. Edward Teller. Teller was an avid chess player, but there is no indication they played chess.
He became an American citizen in 1940 at the age of 61. He also maintained his Swiss citizenship.
He died on April 18, 1955 at the age of 76.
Einstein was a good friend of Dr. Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941). Lasker thought Einstein’s theory of relativity was wrong and that the speed of light was limited due to particles in space. Lasker did not think there was a perfect vacuum.
Einstein knew Edward Lasker (1885-1981). On one occasion, Edward Lasker visited Einstein at Princeton and gave him an autographed copy of his book Go and Gomoku, written in 1934. Einstein, in return, gave Edward Lasker an autographed copy of one of his papers on relativity. The book given to Einstein later showed up in a Baltimore used bookstore. When someone told Edward Lasker about this, Lasker replied, “That’s all right. I left his relativity paper on the subway.”
Einstein thanked Edward Lasker for his book, but then asked, “You are obviously an intelligent man; clearly a great deal of work went into this book. But why for such a trivial and unimportant topic?” Edward Lasker replied, “A friend of mine recently said the following, and I must say I agree with it: ‘We are born and we die, and in between these two events of a lifetime, there is a lot of time that must be wasted. Now, whether it is wasted by doing mathematics, practicing law, or playing games, it is really quite insignificant.'” Ed Lasker was quoting Clarence Darrow. In 1951 Einstein met a Go grandmaster from Japan and told the interpreter that he (Einstein) did not know much about Go.
Einstein is quoted as saying that “chess grips its exponent, shakling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom and independence of even the strongest character cannot remain unaffected.”
Einstein also said, “I always dislike the fierce competitive spirit embodied in [chess].”
Einstein wrote a preface to a posthumous biography of Emanuel Lasker, Emanuel Lasker, The Life of a Chess Master, published by Dr. Jacques Hannak in 1952 (written in German in 1942). Barnie Winkelman wrote to Einstein to see if he would write an introduction to Hannak’s book for an Engish edition. Einstein replied back with this foreward.
Emanuel Lasker was undoubtedly one of the most interesting people I came to know in my later years. We must be thankful to those who have penned the story of his life for this and succeeding generations. For there are few men who have had a warm interest in all the great human problems and at the same time kept their personality so uniquely independent.
I am not a chess expert and therefore not in a position to marvel at the force of mind revealed in his greatest intellectual achievement – in the field of chess. I must even confess that the struggle for power and the competitive spirit expressed in the form of an ingenious game have always been repugant to me.
I met Emanuel Lasker at the house of my old friend, Alexander Moszkowski, and came to know him well in the course of many walks in which we exchanged opinions about the most varied questions. It was a somewhat one-sided exchange, in which I received more that I gave. For it was usually more natural for this eminently productive man to shape his own thoughts than to busy himself with those of another.
To my mind, there was a tragic note in his personality, despite his fundamentally affirmative attitude towards life. The enormous psychological tension, without which nobody can be a chess master, was so deeply interwoven with chess that he could never entirely rid himself of the spirit of the game, even when he was occupied with philosophic and human problems. At the same time, it seemed to me that chess was more a profession for him than the real goal of his life. His real yearning seems to be directed towards scientific understanding and the beauty inherent only in logical creation, a beauty so enchanting that nobody who has once caught a glimpse of it can ever escape it.
Spinoza’s material existence and independence were base on the grinding of lenses; chess had an analogous role in Lasker’s life. But Spinoza was granted a better fate, because his occupation left his mind free and untroubled, while, on the other hand, the chess playing of a master ties him to the game, fetters his mind and shapes it to a certain extent so that his internal freedom and ease, no matter how strong he is, must inevitably be affected. In our conversations and in the reading of his philosophical books, I always had that feeling. Of these books, “The Philosophy of the Unattainable” interested me the most; the book is not only very original, but it also affords a deep insight into Lasker’s entire personality.
Now I must justify myself because I never considered in detail, either in writing or in our conversations, Emanuel Lasker’s critical essay on the theory of relativity. It is indeed necessary for me to say something about it here because even in his biography, which is focused on the purely human aspects, the passage which discusses the essay contains something resembling a slight reproach. Lasker’s keen analytical mind had immediately clearly recognized that the central point of the whole question is that the velocity of light (in a vacuum) is a constant. It was evident to him that, if this constancy were admitted, the relative of time could not be avoided. So what was there to do? He tried to do what Alexnder, whom historians have dubbed “the Great,” did when he cut the Gordian knot. Lasker’s attempted solution was based on the following idea: “Nobody has any immediate knowledge of how quickly light is transmitted in a complete vacuum, for even in interstellar space there is always a minimal quantity of matter present under all circimstances and what holds there is even more applicable to the most complete vacuum created by man to the best of his ability. Therefore, who has the right to deny that its velocity in a really complete vacuum is infinite?”
To answer this argument can be expressed as follows: “It is, to be sure, true that nobody has experimental knowledge of how light is transmitted in a complete vacuum. But it is as good as impossible to formulate a reasonable theory of light according to which the velocity of light is affected by minimal traces of matter which is very significant but at the same time virtuallt independent of ther density.” Before such a theory, which moreover, must harmonize with the known phenomena of optics in an almost complete vacuum, can be set up, it seems that evey physicist must wait for the solution of the above-mentioned Gordian knot – if he is not satisified with the present solution. Moral: a strong mind cannot take place of delicate fingers.
But I liked Lasker’s immovable independence, a rare human attribute, in which respect almost all, including intelligent people, are mediocrities. And so I let matteers stand that way.
I am glad that the reader will be able to get to know this strong and, at the same time, find and lovable personality from his sympathetic biography, but I am thankful for the hours of conversation which this ever striving, independent, simple man granted me.
Here is a game attributed to Albert Einstein. The game was first published in Freude am Schach (The Pleasure of Chess) by Gerhard Henschel in 1959.
Some (Dennis Holding) have attributed the above game to Albert Einstein’s son, Hans Albert (1904-1969), and played at Berkeley in 1945 where Hans taught. But Hans Albert did not play chess. There is no indication that Oppenheimer was in Berkeley in 1945. He was either at Los Alamos, New Mexico or Princeton, New Jersey in 1945. He was at Berkeley from 1929 to 1933.
This page comes from the Woman’s Weekly, 28th August 2007. (UK magazine) It all looks delicious!! Hubby bought the mag for me…perhaps thought it was high time I read a woman’s mag for a change…and not playing chess…hahaha….he also bought me “The People’s Friend” (The Famouse Story Magasine”…wonder why…although there are some good articles in it…one about Willie Shand…whoever he is! ….lol and…there is a page about Gloucester Cathedral too…really good reading stuff…he knows I like to read stories…perhaps that’s why he’s bought the “story magazine”……anyway…thought to share the recipes!! I’m going to try the “Mille Feuille Slices”…not today….perhaps the weekend…I like baking, but I must be in the “mood” ….did it a zillion times when at secondary school, but don’t do it as much as I did it when at school. I can remember, we went to the movies, I was in Standerd 9…now…that was in the OLD South Africa…now it is Grade 11! Not 11th Grade…like the Americans say…we do it always the other way around in South Africa….hahaha….just to prove we are “different”…but anyway…we came back that Friday night, I baked a chocolate cake AND we finished it about an hour later…!! My first pudding was when I was 10, never heard of “method”…started reading and as far as I go, mixed everything! I got the best compliments for my Vinegar pudding…and it was really nice, must say myself…and from there, every Sunday….everybody wanted that pudding!! And….then I discovered the “method” bit…and it wasn’t the same again….so…ignore the method bit and mix! haha..
Vinegar pudding
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Baking time: 45 minutes Oven temperature: 160°C
Serves: 6
Batter
250ml milk
15ml butter
15ml smooth apricot jam
15ml vinegar
1 large egg
155g (185ml) sugar
150g (250ml) cake flour, sifted
5ml bicarbonate of soda
Syrup
250ml cream or evaporated milk
125ml milk
100g butter
100g sugar
Preparation
Batter:Place the milk, butter and jam in a saucepan. Heat to melt the butter and jam. Add the vinegar and set aside.Whisk the egg and sugar in a bowl over hot water until light and fluffy. Stir the milk mixture in then fold in the sifted flour. Quickly fold in the baking powder. Pour the mixture into a greased, square or rectangular 1,5-litre ovenproof dish and bake for 45 minutes to an hour or until the mixture shrinks away from the edges of the dish.Sauce: Combine all the ingredients and simmer for 3 minutes. Remove the dish from the oven and prick the surface of the pudding with a fork. Pour the hot sauce over the pudding and leave to absorb. Serve hot
Here is another Vinegar pudding recipe…click HEREfor the recipe.
This daisy is called a Baberton-daisy…what’s in it?! My favourite colour!! Baberton is a town in the Eastern part of the country…Jock of the Bushveld – country….a legend of a dog…read it!! Search my site for Jock of the Bushveld…it is there…
The GREENEST canyon in the world!!! All other canyons are dry!!! And..this is the THIRD biggest…in the world! The Blyde River Canyon….Grand Canyon is the first…then…in Namibia!! the Fish River Canyon…and then ours…do you know where Namibia is…it borders South Africa…! Windhoek is the capital of Namibia…once called South West Africa and before that…do you know what is was called before THAT!! YES! there is another name….try find out….
This is the Blyde River dam….this is about 1/2 of it on this pic… map….. and here….ladies and gents…can I introduce you to…the very famous POTHOLES!! In the Blyde River!! And…I hoped there was a spider here…can you see one?
I love the Drakensberg mountains….did a few hiking trips there….my first was when I was 15…with a school trip….and I made it to the top of Mount Aux Sources…the highest peak in South Africa…I think it is about 4300m……there was a hut…but the roof was down! The highest peak of the whole range is in Lesotho.
If you’re the kind of outdoor-type of person and like to go on hiking trips….you MUST go there….!! You will not regret it…be careful….you get snow in October in the Mountains and you musn’t go by yourself! On any hiking trip…always at least 3 people….I also did a couple with children…my library monitors back home…three times…good old times….In the UK I would never dream of taking children on a trip like that…”health and safety” always a big issue….what a shame, this country has really brought some problems upon themself with “health and safety”… I wonder what it is like in other parts of the world…I think that’s why our kids from SA is much more “tougher”…they can handle a lot more and cope with much more than kids in the UK….you feel like pampering them all the time…Read in English here what I’m going to write in Afrikaans…you can also see a movie on that link.
Toe ek ‘n student was, was ek met ‘n staptoer saam met Oom Mauritz…van Centurion…hy was die hoofingenieur van die Hoogland waterskema in die Transkei en hy het die Transkei soos die palm van sy hand geken. Ons was ‘n groep van so 36 wat vanaf Port St Johns gestap het, noord na Port Edward se kant. Daar was ‘ n paar kindertjies ook van so 10-11 wat die trip bietjie moeilik gevind het, daarom het ons by Mkambati Natuurreservaat opgehou. Oom Mauritz het die bus van Margate laat kom om ons daar te kry en ons het regdeur na Margate geskiet en daar by ‘n hotel ordentlik gebad en ‘n dag daar deurgebring. Dit was heerlik!! Die roete wat ons gestap het was fantasties….soms op die strand gestap en soms op die rantjies….lees hier (gaan net af met die slider wanneer jy by die link uitgekom het) oor die roete en stappie daar… by Port St Johns het ons beeste op die strand gekry…en natuurlik anderskleuriges wat in onderklere swem…wonder hoe dit deesdae daar lyk….Oom Mauritz het ons na teeplantasies geneem…die Magwa Falle ook gaan wys….’n waterval gewys wat die enigste in SA is wat DIREK in die see val!…allerhande pragtige plekke…ek wonder of hy nog leef! Dit was regtig ‘n belewenis om saam met hom te stap…ek het dagboek gehou van letterlik alles, waar ons gestap het, hoe laat ons waar geeet het, waar ons geslaap het…een nag het ons onder ‘n oorhangende rots geslaap…genoeg slaapplek vir almal van ons!
Hy het ons in kookspanne in gedeel en almal het vir almal gekook, jy het jou beurt gekry om “aan diens” te wees en die gees onder die groep was fantasties…daar was twee uitruilstudente wat hulle by ons groep geskaar het, met die gevolg dit was heeltyd Engels praat terwille van hulle. Die eerste nag was nogal ‘n koue nag, ons was veronderstel om in hutte te slaap wat oom Mauritz gereel het met plaaslike bevolking wat hy geken het by Lusikisiki…hierdie spelling…weet nie meer of dit die regte spelling is nie, maar toemaar, ons weet min of meer…en toe was die hutte se dakke af en hy kon nie die mense daar kry nie. Ons het toe maar in die oopte geslaap en dit was koud…Oktober…maar die wind het gewaai! Oom Mauritz het in Hans Strydomlaan gewoon, spoor hom op en kry hom op ‘n staptoer in die Transkei!
The Chainladder that takes you to the top of the mountain…
Yummy…!! This is the biggest yummy in the whole wide world!!
PEPPERMINT CRISP FRIDGE TART …serves 6-8
500 ml fresh cream or any other whipping cream 1 can Caramel Treat 3 bars of Peppermint Crisp Chocolate -grated 2 packets Tennis Biscuits
peppermint essence [optional]
Directions:
Whip cream until stiff
Gently fold in the caramel and two thirds of the peppermint crisp chocolate to combine. Add a few drops of peppermint extract if you like a stronger peppermint flavour. I add just 2 or three cause I don’t like it to be too over powering.
Layer tennis biscuits at the bottom of a square or rectangular dish about the size of an oven tray.
This is Polenta…what we call “maize meal”…You can read about Polenta more HERE on the BBC’s website. The link will open in a new window.
Maize meal, in the UK called Polenta. The maize meal can be bought from any South African shop in any country outside South Africa. In the UK there are a couple of shops….if you do a search…you will come across loads of them all over the world..from America to Holland…to Australia…etc.
Ok, now the “how” of the Pap in the microwave….
First, take about 3 cups of maize meal, (more or less) only the maize meal, and put it in the microwave….for 3 minutes. If you use less maize meal, obviously you use less time too.
Then, stir it a bit and put back for another 3 minutes!
Next….boil water, about 4 cups….and mix with the maize meal, but it must be boiled water, use it immediately after it has boiled….stir it…you can even whisk it….to avoid humps….for the dish it must not be a stiff porridge…it doesn’t matter if it is a little bit runny…. it will settle once it’s been used with all your ingredients in the oven….
Finally….. microwave for another 3-4 minutes! And…you have “Pap”…!
If you try it the first time, take the water/maize meal bit by bit…to practise and see how you get on….good luck!
If I make it, I don’t measure the water/maize meal exactly….it is a matter of…how I “feel” http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
As I promised some of my chess players….and all other people reading here…this dish is a must if you’re having a BBQ. In South Africa we like to have it as a side dish, some people won’t make it, but instead having just Pap…which is well-known to the “Southerners” in America as “porridge”. (They also call it “grits” ). In South Africa we also call it “porridge”…in English…but this dish is known for the Afrikaans word… “Pap dis”…which means… “porridge dish”….[it’s an oven dish] or Pap tert [pap tart].
Some people will sometimes have porridge for breakfast….depends on taste and what you like for breakfast. Sometimes you get people who don’t like Pap, then you will have bread rolls for them, usually people from the Cape! They don’t know what is delicious and good for them…wonder if they know the difference between a Springbok and a Kudu…! hahaha…only joking! Ok, we had friends Saturday night for a BBQ and I took photos step-by-step of this dish, specially to post them here for my poor chess players – some are now very much into Saffa-goodies and foods and all the nice/delicous stuff they can order from South African shops all over the world. One chess player was so confused after telling him what to do, well, now he’s got the pictures too…Our friends told me to tell everyone here that they all had a second helping and it was really delicious…–[btw..it is the truth…] To make Pap (porridge)…click HEREand it’s only 3 min in the microwave, although another recipe is to be found at the bottom of this post…so you have a choice! The link will open in a new window. On THIS LINK you will find a delicious recipe about South African buttermilk rusks…[karringmelk beskuit]..the link will open in a new window. and…..on
THIS LINK you will find many more South African traditional recipes, like milk tart, [whoop whoop! yummy!] scones, sugar cookies (soet koekies) etc. The link will open in a new window.
…and…any South African loves this mouthwatering KOEKSUSTERS (cook sisters)and would love you for this! The link will open in a new window. This is really the ultimate for any Saffa! You can bribe anyone with it.
And…if you like something pizza-ish…click HEREfor something really delicous! The link will open in a new window. This is my own recipe and our friends go crazy for it… For the Pap Dish…you need…..
………Cream…single cream….as double cream is a bit too thick and you need more “runny” cream….
…….one onion……more if you like more….
………chopped………
………..mushrooms……sliced………..
………bacon……diced……….my own “ingredient”
………frankfurther……..depends on taste…to serve 4 people it’s enough to add one per person…this is also my own “ingredient”…as it wasn’t in the original recipe….
………grated cheese……..
Pap…porridge… make it a little bit runny…if it’s thick, you’re going to have trouble to “smear” it in your dish….recipe at the bottom of this post…
…..fry….mushrooms….I like to fry everything separately, it’s up to you, you can mix it straight away from the start and fry it all together….
fry bacon……………
fry…….frankfurthers……….
mix them all together…onions fried too, of course……..
Take a heat-resistant glass dish….cover it first with a thin layer of oil, butter or margarine, whatever you like…and start with a thin layer of pap (porridge)
…..add a layer of the fried mixture……
……. at this stage, I like to add a thin layer of grated cheese and cream, it’s just a bit more creamy if you do it…
………cover with a layer of pap (porridge)…..
………completely……….
……..now add your cheese and cream and your dish is ready for the oven!
………..and….Voila! This is what you get after about 30 min (keep checking it…not in a too hot oven…about 180 deg C….)
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How to make “Pap”…
from……
wikihow.com/Make-Pap-in-the-Microwave
Its only 10 minutes, so pay attention! Things You’ll Need
A microwave
Coarse Maize Meal (Mieliemeel)
a kettle of freshly boiled water
a large microwavable bowl with lid
a fork – preferably a large two tine fork
Measure out a cup of maize meal into the microwave bowl (1 cup should make enough for 3-4 people).
Depending on where you are from and how you like your pap add a pinch of salt, more than a pinch or none at all!
Add just enough of the freshly boiled water to wet all the maize meal and work it in with the fork.
Set microwave on “High” and the timer for 10 minutes.
Put the lid on your bowl and pop it in the microwave.
Microwave for about a minute and then remove again.
Thoroughly stir in a little bit more water and return to the microwave.
Repeat this process (Remove, add a little water and stir, microwave again) 3 or 4 more times during cooking time at regular intervals – find a rhythm that works for you! Tips
A glass (Pyrex) bowl is preferable to a plastic microwave bowl
If you have a big enough bowl you can use more than a cup of maize meal, but you might have a better end result if you rather make it in batches – should you require more pap.
Likewise you can use the same method to make smaller amounts – just use a third or quarter cup to make a single serving
for Putu (Krummel) pap, add a little less water and use the fork make to the pap crumbly – believe me, the microwave can make perfect krummelpap!
In the same way, adding more water will give you a denser (stywe) pap or if you add too much water (with finer maize meal) you will have slap pap.
Making pap in the microwave may seem strange at first, but you will master it in no time and no one will be able to tell the difference! Warnings
Use oven mitts as the bowl will get really hot after the first couple of minutes. A cloud of super hot steam will escape every time you open to stir so take the lid off carefully and away from your face
DO NOT forget about it after the first minute! If you neglect to add water and stir an incredibly dense layer of burnt maize will form and the bowl you were using will be a write off.
Maize meal…which you can buy or order from any South African shop anywhere in the world.
……and this is a replacement in Tesco……shops in the UK….and costs about £1.40
Vetkoek is a name given due to the way you bake it. It’s a “cake” baked in oil. In Afrikaans the “vet” means ‘fat’ and this cake is oily.
This is a fantastic recipe as I made it myself too. Please scroll down for the English translation. In these pictures you can see what mine looked like from this recipe and the family’s comments: delicious, we want more!
This recipe comes from a South African famous recipe book and it contains only winner recipes.
Aanwysigings Sif die koekmeelblom, suiker, bakpoeier en sout saam. Klits die eiers in ‘n aparte mengbak. Klits die kookwater by die eiers: klits goed. Voeg die eiermengsel by die meelmengsel en klop met ‘n houtlepel tot goed gemeng; die beslag is slap.
Skep dessertlepelsvol beslag in matig warm kookolie in ‘n braaipan. Braai die vetkoek totdat die onderkant goudbruin en die bokant vol lugborrels is. Draai om sodat die bokant ook goudbruin kan braai. Plaas die vetkoek op kombuispapier sodat alle oortollige olie daarin kan dreineer. Sit die vetkoek warm voor met botter en heuning of appelkooskonfyt óf met maalvleis. (Die resep afgeskryf uit Huisgenoot Wenresepte)
English recipe.
Ingredients:
Oil for deep fry
1 cup of boiled water (I used hot water and not boiled water)
2 eggs
Pinch of salt
2 teaspoons of baking powder ( I used 4!)
2 dessert spoons of sugar (I didn’t add any sugar – it’s healhier)
2 cups (500ml) of Flour
Directions: Sift dry ingredients. Whisk the eggs and add the water. Add to the dry ingredients
and mix the batter with a wooden spoon. Drop large spoonsful of batter in warm oil.
Make sure you’re oil is not too hot! Fry both sides well, till it’s golden brown.
Enjoy with a beef mince filling/syrup/honey/jam, whatever taste you like. This recipe produces about 6-10 “vetkoeke”/fat cakes…depending on the size.
On this site you can find a recipe for a bread machine!
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Another recipe I’ve found that looks great :
~~~~~~~~
Ingredients
Vetkoek/fat cake
250ml (1cup) cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
125 milk
125 ml oil for frying
~~~~~~~~~~
Instructions on how to make it
Sift flour, baking powder and salt together. beat egg separately and add to flour. Add milk and mix until smooth heat oil in frying pan and drop a tablespoon of the mixture into oil. Fry for two to three minutes on one side, then turn and fry for one minute on other side. Serve hot.
Recipe can be found HERE too.
**And…another!! This one is with YEAST and I do like Fat Cake with yeast !
Vetkoek means ‘oil cake, which refers to the method of frying, not baking the bread.
It is a classic South African “bread”. You can have it with a sweet filling or a savoury filling.
Beef mince or syrup, like maple syrup…add some cheese and you have a nice “filling”.
Vetkoek/fat cake
1 kg (2 1/4 pounds) white bread flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 packet instant yeast
1 litre lukewarm water (1 quart)
Vegetable oil for deep frying
Method
In a large dish mix flour, sugar, salt and yeast together. Slowly add lukewarm water and stir. Combine until dough pulls away from sides of bowl. Cover with greased kitchen paper, put in warm draft-free place, and allow to double in size. Heat enough vegetable oil for deep frying. Fill another dish with cold water and place next to your vetkoek dough. Wet your hands in cold water before breaking off a piece of dough, rolling it into the shape and size of a tennis ball and carefully lowering it into hot oil. You can easily do five or six vetkoek at a time. Allow to turn golden brown on all sides by frequently turning. Remove from oil and drain on kitchen paper.
This next pie is really something very delicious! My sister used to make it..and I’ve found the recipe here: fruittart.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/daring-little-tart/ Lemon Meringue Pie
Makes one 10-inch (25 cm) pie
For the Crust:
¾ cup (180 mL) cold butter; cut into ½-inch (1.2 cm) pieces
2 cups (475 mL) all-purpose flour
¼ cup (60 mL) granulated sugar
¼ tsp (1.2 mL) salt
⅓ cup (80 mL) ice water
For the Filling:
2 cups (475 mL) water
1 cup (240 mL) granulated sugar
½ cup (120 mL) cornstarch
5 egg yolks, beaten
¼ cup (60 mL) butter
¾ cup (180 mL) fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp (15 mL) lemon zest
1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla extract
For the Meringue:
5 egg whites, room temperature
½ tsp (2.5 mL) cream of tartar
¼ tsp (1.2 mL) salt
½ tsp (2.5 mL) vanilla extract
¾ cup (180 mL) granulated sugar
For the Crust: Make sure all ingredients are as cold as possible. Using a food processor or pastry cutter and a large bowl, combine the butter, flour, sugar and salt. Process or cut in until the mixture resembles coarse meal and begins to clump together. Sprinkle with water, let rest 30 seconds and then either process very briefly or cut in with about 15 strokes of the pastry cutter, just until the dough begins to stick together and come away from the sides of the bowl. Turn onto a lightly floured work surface and press together to form a disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for at least 20 minutes.
Allow the dough to warm slightly to room temperature if it is too hard to roll. On a lightly floured board (or countertop) roll the disk to a thickness of ⅛ inch (.3 cm). Cut a circle about 2 inches (5 cm) larger than the pie plate and transfer the pastry into the plate by folding it in half or by rolling it onto the rolling pin. Turn the pastry under, leaving an edge that hangs over the plate about ½ inch (1.2 cm). Flute decoratively. Chill for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350ºF (180ºC). Line the crust with foil and fill with metal pie weights or dried beans. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Carefully remove the foil and continue baking for 10 to 15 minutes, until golden. Cool completely before filling.
For the Filling: Bring the water to a boil in a large, heavy saucepan. Remove from the heat and let rest 5 minutes. Whisk the sugar and corn-starch together. Add the mixture gradually to the hot water, whisking until completely incorporated.
Return to the heat and cook over medium heat, whisking constantly until the mixture comes to a boil. The mixture will be very thick. Add about 1 cup (240 mL) of the hot mixture to the beaten egg yolks, whisking until smooth. Whisking vigorously, add the warmed yolks to the pot and continue cooking, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a boil. Remove from the heat and stir in butter until incorporated. Add the lemon juice, zest and vanilla, stirring until combined. Pour into the prepared crust. Cover with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming on the surface, and cool to room temperature.
For the Meringue: Preheat the oven to 375ºF (190ºC). Using an electric mixer beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar, salt and vanilla extract until soft peaks form. Add the sugar gradually, beating until it forms stiff, glossy peaks. Pile onto the cooled pie, bringing the meringue all the way over to the edge of the crust to seal it completely. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden. Cool on a rack. Serve within 6 hours to avoid a soggy crust.
Daring Bakers Extra Challenge Free-Style Lemon Tartlets Prepare the recipe as above but complete the following steps:
To roll out tartlet dough, slice the dough into 6 pieces. On lightly floured surface, roll each circle of dough into a 5 inch disk. Stack the disks, separated by pieces of plastic wrap, on a plate, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
To bake the dough, position rack in oven to the centre of oven and preheat to 350ºF (180ºC). Place the disks of dough, evenly spaced, on a baking sheet and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until golden brown. Cool completely.
To finish tartlets, first place oven rack in the upper third of the oven and increase heat to 425ºF.
Divide the lemon filling equally among the disks, mounding it in the centre and leaving a 1-inch border all the way around.
Spoon the meringue decoratively over each tartlet, right to the edges, in dramatic swirling peaks. Return tartlets to oven and bake for about 5 minutes, until the meringue is golden brown.
Additions:
You can make one pie or tartlets (in a tin or free-form)
You can compliment your pie with a sauce. For example, you can serve it with raspberry or white chocolate sauce.
You can use a piping bag to apply the meringue if you like.
Decoration is up to you – lemon zest or fruit are totally acceptable
This is the first entry from this book, as I promised. I will just post very short bits from the book. I hope it inspires more people to get hold of the book and to read it, especially South Africans. It is really a book I treasure and I can’t thank Denis enough (from the chess site) for sending me this book! The way he describes places and the people/events that happened at that time and earlier is very informative….the country was still the “Union of South Africa”….we became a Republic in 1961. This book was published the first time in 1948!
In Search of South Africa….by HV Morton–First Published in 1948.
from the “Introduction”
While I was in the Union of South Africa I was constantly reminded of the classical world, in which illusion I was assisted of the air and the architecture of Sir Herbert Baker. It seemed strange to me, as indeed it still does, that a part of the earth which the Greeks and the people of the Hellenistic world would have adored, and the Romans have found so profitable, should have remained concealed from them.
….Flying to South Africa, which sophisticated friends told me would be boring, turned out to be a sheer delight from beginning to end. ……..I alighted in a country of haunting beauty and found myself among a people whose kindness and warmth of heart are not anywhere exceeded. As I travelled about the country, I learnt a page of history new to me, and one, I might add, which is not too well known in Europe or America. …..My thanks are due to Mr Winston Churchill for permission to print for the first time the text of the letter he left on his bed the night he escaped from prison in Pretoria in December, 1899. This interesting document has been cherished ever since as a family heirloom, and I am grateful to Mrs O E de Souza of Baberton for showing it to me. In a letter authorising its publication, Mr Churchill says, “You are at liberty to contradict the story of my having swum the Apies River.”
Chapter 1
……..I knew, of course, that South Africa had grown up in the course of the last fifty years, but the full extend of this growth, whose most spectacular proof is perhaps Johannesburg, was striking and unexpected. Johannesburg, like the word Klondyke, builds up in the mind a picture of gold rush, bars and tin shacks, a picture that was perfectly true fifty years ago. But I stepped out the next morning into a city which seemed to me to bear some resemblance to a small New York, while at the same time retaining something which reminded me of Kingston, Jamaica.
……….When for the first time you found yourself in a crowd of South Africans, your first impression is that these people look, speak, and dress more as we do in Great Brittain than any other folk. And this is true also of those South Africans of Dutch, French, and German descent who have no wish to be like us in any way, for they belong to the same racial stock and cannot help it. Even their language – Afrikaans – has the same roots as English, and gives one the impression that any student of Chaucer should be able to learn to speak it, or at any rate to read it, in a few weeks.
…….to begin a tour of South Africa in Cape Town, and I went there in the Blue Train…….It was a train of great splendour and finer than any train at present running in Europe, and as fine as the best the United States can boast. It was a train of blue sleeping-coaches and restaurant cars, even each compartment, air-conditioned, as I discovered when I found it possible to raise or lower the temperature by moving a little chromium switch above the bed. ……………….There came a time when, traversing the Hex River Pass, the train became a snake which twisted back upon itself, so that the locomotive was seen puffing valiantly now wat the left-hand window and now at the right. All round were mighty mountains, each cleft and corrie filled with pale blue shadow, the shadows we know on the west coast of Ireland as “Atlantic blue”; and so we came down into a happy land of peach-blossom and grape-vines, where a stream of ice-clear water ran beside the train for a long time. ………Such was my first impression of Cape Town: a city of dignity and beauty seated at the foot of a blue mountain where two oceans meet, and washed by a magic light that should make of men poets, artists, and philosophers.
———–to be continued…………
Chess games of Bobby Fischer…..Click here. He is THE greatest chess champion of all times! Listen to Bobby himself herewhen he was interviewed in Aug. 2004.
And herein Iceland where he now is —as we all know….
I got this link from Steve’s blog and what can one say…..”Cry my beloved country”….that is what you can say…..CRY!My own family back home had some “experiences” too, recently….so sad…it is on my blog…they were “lucky”, but other people are less lucky….
Leone and Pieter live in Aberystwyth and we met them here in London. Leone is a fantastic artist and some of her work can be seen in Embassies in some countries. I took two pictures – bear in mind that I’m not a professional photographer- but I think it is still good enough to admire and to share. The first two pictures are the two which I photographed and I found the others by a search on Yahoo….Links in this post will open in a new window.
We visited them in Wales and you can follow this link (and go down with the slider) to look at the pictures in Aber and read more about our visit there.
The first day of Spring in South Africa!! And this is how I remember Pretoria!! The Jacaranda trees almost fully in bloom! When it’s October, I will just admire these pictures and picture it in my mind!
On this picture you can see the City Hall of Pretoria.
Telcom Tower in Groenkloof The cityalso called the Jacaranda City. This picture shows the view from the city from the Union Buildings, you can see the gardens of the Union Buildings. The “black” building is the Reserve Bank and the tallest building to the right of it is Absa-bank.
These last two pictures are from the Union Buildings,it was made of sandstone and was designed by Sir Herbert Baker and in November 1910 the cornerstone was laid.
Click here to see what the weatheris like in Pretoria.
Spoken by great men:"Give me 20 divisions of American soldiers and I will breach Europe. Give me 15 consisting of Englishmen and I will advance to the borders of Berlin. Give me two divisions of those marvellous fighting Boers and I will remove Germany from the face of the earth." - Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, Commander of the Allied Forces during WW2.
"The Americans fight for a free world, the English mostly for honour, glory and medals, the French and Canadians decide too late that they have to participate. The Italians are too scared to fight, the Russians have no choice. The Germans for their Fatherland. The Boers? Those sons of Bitches fight for the hell of it." American General, George 'Guts and Glory' Patton.
Chessalee 
