FIGHT WITH A PEN

The word Karoo conjures up ideas of vast empty dry land spaces to most of us. Imagine my surprise to be met by lush vegetation when I arrived in Somerset East for a month long Writer’s Residency at Jakes Gerwel Foundation’s Paulet House under the auspices of PEN SA. Situated at the foot and framed by the shadows of Boschberg Mountain the dorpie boast many waterfalls and at least five natural dams. Hence the oasis’ lushness and verdant old forests once made it a bread basket of the Eastern Cape during the early white settlement. When they came the European settlers planted forests of oak trees whose wood they mostly used for fire, wagons, furniture, wine, and brandy barrels. Reading the early history of the Eastern Cape dorpies is fascinating with a myriad of interesting stories and the sad realisation of how the foreign vegetation the white settlers imported upset the natural balance of the ecosystem in these areas, gumtree being the notorious example. Apparently, oak leaves were a health hazard to horses because they struggled to rear them until cross breeds adapted to the natural conditions were bred, which basically is what led to the establishment of the government-sponsored experimental farms in what we now call Somerset East.

The written history of Somerset East goes back to the Frans Johannes and William Prinsloo families in the late 18th century. But officially it is said to have been founded in 1825 when the then Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, established it as a breeding stock government farm. But the real history of the area goes far back than the mere arrival of white settlers in the area when you consider the often unrepresentative native history of KhoiSan and Xhosan (the intermix over centuries between the Khoekhoe, San and Xhosa people of the area).

One of the first, if not thee first, written accounts of Xhosa history was by Noyi, the son of Gciniswa, of Gando royal leanage. Noyi was a coeval to nkosi Maqoma ka Ngqika of amaRharhabe, the Xhosa nation that mostly resided west of iNciba (Kie). He was a staunch follower of the Xhosa prophet Ntsikana’s spiritual teachings that later became one of the first baptised Xhosa converts to Christianity. After conversion, he called himself Robert Balfour as was then the standard practice of naming yourself after a person who religiously influenced you. For instance, the first Xhosa converts called themselves amaJakane after Johannes Theodorus Van Der Kemp.* Van der Kemp, the first Christian missionary to amaRharhabe, is the subject of my current research that also awarded me a spot to be on the JGF residency. He stayed with amaNgqika during later parts of 1799 until towards the end of 1800 making a lasting influence in introducing the Christian religion to amaXhosa. Ntsikana and Nxele, aka Makhanda, were greatly influenced by his teachings on the early stages of their lives.

As my luck would have it, or the wisdom of the JGF nomination college, one of my fellow resident writers is a Dutch poetess, Emma Crebolder. Her brother is a retired professor of history in the Netherlands who has a fair amount of knowledge about his fellow Dutchman Van Der Kemp. I plan to lean on his knowledge, especially when I visit the Netherlands to tie up the knots of my research. I found a kindred spirit in Emma that’s epitomised by her imbongi (griot) powers of spontaneous composing poems. For example, on our hike to Glen Avon Waterfall when we saw a dead bushbuck on the rivulet she immediately composed this wonderful poem:

Vanaf mijn boombos kan ik over

continenten naar de bosberg reiken.

Daar in het voetspoor van gazellen

en de civitkat onderdoor oude 

Khoisan bomen zal de drenkplek zijn.

Zoals mij ooit de bosbok verscheen

komt in stuivende stilte de waterval neer.

Kniehoog in de stroom, houd me vast,

ruik het aas. Jij bent het grijze majesteit

hier gleden je hoeven af. Op drift

geraakt, geborgen in de oeverwal.

[From my tree wood I am able to reach

over continents to the Boschberg.

There in the footprints of gazelles

and the civet cat underneath old

Khoisan trees will be the watering hole.

Like once the bushbuck appears to me, so

the waterfall comes down in spraying silence.

Knee-deep in the stream, hold me,

smell the carrion. It is you, grey majesty

here your hooves slid down. You are

adrift now, sheltered in the riverbank.]**

In 1823 Noyi helped the missionary, John Ross, to transport the first printing press from Cape Town to Xhosaland. This laid the first seeds of the Lovedale Press which was to publish missionary and first Xhosa written material for the greater part of the century. Hence Noyi dictated the first written account of Xhosa oral history. He enacted how Tshiwo, the son of Ngconde, around 1670s, frequently crossed iNciba to hunt. In those days, Noyi’s account says, Tshiwo and his half-brother Gando kept a running fight that saw Gando eventually permanently fleeing across iNciba when they were defeated. Other Xhosa nations had been doing so centuries before, including Cirha who fled the defeat of his half-brother, Tshawe, the first recorded king to violently usurp the Xhosa crown. West of iNciba Gando’s people were accommodated by the hospitality of Khoekhoe chiefdoms in various settlements that spread around iNxuba (Great Fish River), Nyarha (Small Fish River), all the way to Cihwhi which is close to the present-dayt day town of Hamburg. This area is now called Blue Crane Route, of which Somerset East forms the central part.  

The white settlers started coming to the area during the regency of Ndlambe whose quarrel with his nephew Ngqika broke and weakened the nation of amaRharhabe. At first amaRharhabe enjoyed their encounter with white people because it had beneficial effects, like Colonial trade. Ndlambe sometimes formed alliances with white people, particularly the Boers of the Agter-Bruintjies-Hoogte area, to defeat and suppress other minor Xhosa chiefs who challenged his hegemony. He used these allies to assist him in subduing chiefdoms that resisted Rharhabe domination—principally, imiDange and amaGqunukhwebe. Those who refused his subjugation were pushed west of iNxuba where they made themselves a nuisance to amaNtinde and imiGwali who had settled there since the previous century. So, during the greater part of the 18th century, Ndlambe, assisted by the Boer Commandos, like that of Van Jaarsveld, fought and defeated other minor Xhosa chiefs. But the more the white settlers came, themselves fleeing the pressures of the British rule present-day Western Cape area, the more the population on the land grew. This led to skirmishes and serious conflicts with the Boers now referred to as early Frontier wars.

In 1795, the recently circumcised nkosi Ngqika, rebelled against his regent uncle, Ndlambe, for refusing to hand back the crown back to him. Ndlambe sort an ally across iNciba from the paramountcy of amaGcaleka, under the young chief Hintsa. But Ngqika’s forces defeated them in two subsequent wars. After the Gcalekas were driven back East, over iNciba, by Ngqika’s warriors who pursued them until around Jujura River, Ndlambe roved the land towards the west of iNciba. He eventually settled around the Qhoyi (Kowie) River, the land his father Rharhabe had bought with thousand herds from KhoeKhoe queen, Hoho. With his fortunes temporarily in reverse, Ndlambe intensified the conflict with amaGqunukwebe. In 1799, again with the help of Boer Corrmandos, he pushed those who refused his subjugation over Nqweba (Sundays) River. But his success was short-lived because the British, themselves targeting the then so-called Zuurveld land, started intervening in Xhosa internal quarrels. They allowed amaGqunukwebe to return to their land between iNqweba and iNxuba Rivers, (from which the British were ultimately to drive them out 1812 through the genocidal hand of young Colonel Graham for 1820 British Settlement). 

When Ndlambe had consolidated his forces, again with the help of Hintsa of the Gcaleka paramountcy, they challenged and decimated amaNgqika in what turned out to be the great Xhosa civil war of 1819 known as the Battle of Amalinde, or Battle of Thuthula. Governor Somerset intervened again on behalf of Ngqika, restoring him as the chief of amaRharhabe. Maqoma uttered his famous words when he realised, the mistake his father, Ngqika, had made in asking assistance from Lord Somerset: “When you bring home a nest full of maggots you must expect a visit from the lizard.”*** Maqoma could detect early on the writing on the wall for Xhosa land dispossession. As such he lived to become the most formidable enemy the British Empire had on the East Cape Colony.

These heavy thoughts of history I carry along when my feet touch the Eastern Cape. For me, this land has ghost whispers and the burden of unresolved historical things. On it I hear the voices of our ancestors in ways I am not able to explain even to myself. Somehow, I feel their voices as my guides. I guess history, the stories of the dead, come as some form of heartbreaking reality to the progeny of the defeated. And memory is the only instrument they inherit to counteract the historical narrative, distortions, and usual lies of the victors. Part of their ask is in repositioning told history—contextualising established facts by raising unheard voices to be part of the narrative. In fact that is the challenge of all historical novelists–I prefer the term creative history. If all narratives must somehow stand the scrutiny of time history can never be an established reality, because it is always evolving as the aperture gets widened by new knowledge. The historical novelist’s part in the ptomaine is to imagine the inner lives of especially the defeated whose voice is often suppressed in the telling of history. They look at the so called historical facts from the zeitgeist and worldview of the defeated, perchance unpluck the thorn of history out of their flesh, so as to find ways and means of coping with the nature of things. To resurrect the intensity of past emotions, grafting them back into historical facts. This task goes beyond the mere feigned academic objectivity.

This area of the East Cape is fraught with history, with Robert Sobukhwe also having been born just up the road in Graff Reinet, which happen to be the seat of the first South African public library—the second one in Cape Town was founded through Somerset proclamation in 1818. He left the Cape Colony in 1826 after being embroiled in the then scandal of having a homosexual relationship with his private doctor, Barry. Very few people know that the first black pharmacist, Dr Zokufa was born in Somerset East. Ayanda Ntsaluba also, once an MP and the legendary Dr Dilima whose family was part of the people who were forcibly removed from ePotsi (District Six of the town) when in 1968 the apartheid regime wanted to create white-owned citrus farms from the mixed-raced settlement of Clevedon aka ePotsi. In Postsi black people (Onothenga) also owned land and houses; they successfully farmed the land and sold their produce in Cookhouse like all other farmers before they were forcibly removed to the outskirts now known as the townships of Mnandi and Aeroville (coloured township). Aeroville built on the graveyard site—the current graveyard serenades the national road as you enter Somerset from Cookhouse direction. Other people removed from ePotsi were dumped as far away as Hewu (Whittlesea) and Linge outside Komani.

As a flâneur, I prefer to learn the history of an area on foot. Small dorpies like Somerset East are convenient in the sense that you can circumscribe them in the scope of an afternoon. In one of my perambulations, I came across a war memorial on the exit end, towards Graff Reinet, of the town. I was impressed to discover that it doesn’t only contain the names of white soldiers—as is often the case in these things—who died in numerous South African wars, but the black natives who perished with the sinking of SS Mendi also during the WWI. The right reverend Isaac William Wauchope, uDyobha ka Citashe, also sunk with that ship, dancing the death drill before joining The River People—the Xhosas refer to their ancestors as such—had previously been preaching on the newspaper articles as far back as 1879:

YEKANI UMKHONTO … YILWANI NGOSIBA

[PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS … FIGHT WITH THE PEN.]

Next to Paulet House is the Walter Battiss Art Museum which houses some of the artworks of the eccentric artist who was born in and of the town. It is a museum of water colour painting wonder, and intrigue regarding the quack of Walter Battiss who once made up his own island (Fook), with passport, foreign currency, and all. In the museum video, he claims to have once used his made-up passport to enter Italy and exchanged its banknotes there. As someone who is a proud denizen of the Republic of Hout Bay I cannot judge.

The character eccentricities are a make or break of Writers’ Residencies. Luckily ours proved to be wonderfully balanced across age, race, ethnicity, language and all. As such it proved to be a pleasant melting pot of ideas. Loit Sôls, with his thundering muscle laughter, kept us entertained against the obstinacy of most nights by his busker guitar music poetry. We spent numerous loadshedding nights by the fireside, our hands stretched out begging for warmth of the umga (thorn tree) with its fragrant peat. Sometimes the wind would belt down lengthened Boschberg shadows, and wash the valley with cool rain. Often we poached the fabled ghost stories that circulate like thinning smoke in all old houses of dorpies. We conjured and a poem framed the ancient superstitious fears when we discovered a pet cemetery in the manicured garden of Paulet House. In that garden, if you linger enough, can be heard the whistling by the grave of starlings, the low croak of ravens, and the majestic screech of black eagles as the night start closing with the mist fist over the overbearing mountain. You would know by the tense hush of the usually querulous starling that her majesty, the serrated winged black eagle was circling the skies.

Chef Gilbert kept us licking our fingers with hearty meals and deep knowledge of the area, from history to natural vegetation and habitant. Mia Arderne, of the famous start line: “Don’t be taken for a poes.” in her Mermaid Fillet book, reminded us still that she wanted to depict how the pursuit of pleasure must also treat seriously the advent of sorrow as the price of living. If you wanna know about contemporary urban Kaap culture get the book. Naomi Meyer, anxious Naomi, worried too much about the passing literary time as her thriller writing muse temporarily refused to thrill. Elodi Troskie, the youngest of the group, wise beyond her years with a sharp mind, poetic preferences, and veritable vegan lifestyle often, with Naomi, pealed the curtain behind the contemporary Afrikaans literature for us. Under the vino influence, my tongue was often too loosened.

The mornings, the blue sky noon, under the honking sounds of the hadedas, are also good in the gardens of Paulet House. Every time the owl hooted in the evening we got to the business of solving the mystery of who was Stompie, from pet cemetery. Some think Stompie was a dog; others figure a horse or a cat. I’m convinced Stompie was/is a tortoise because she whispered in my ear, in characteristic democratic patience and pretended indifference of her species: “My broer, look closely around the house; you’ll see my footsteps everywhere. I claimed this house. A house is a nest for dreaming; a shelter for the impossible actions of the mind; a metaphor for imagination in portal form, and a shell of withdrawal into one’s solitude. It provides safe space to observe the universe in time. But time, time my broer can commit terrible crimes; killing us and leaving us by the limbo road to insist we’re still alive though dead. With all its sublime beauty, its art of echoing eternity in geometric forms, architecture too cannot escape the clutches of time in space. Paulet House is also the family body in time you became part of for a month. Now it’ll linger a while in our creative spirit before it all goes back to dust one day, like our individual biological bodies. But for now, write my broer. Tell the world you were here. Fight with your pen against the ravages of passing time!”

* https://paulethousestories.jgf.org.za/van-boombos-naar-bosberg-en-bosbok/  Elodi Troskie translated Emma Crebolder’s poem from Dutch into English.

** https://www.scross.co.za/2019/03/why-xhosa-christians-are-majakane/

*** Ntabeni, The Broken River Tent (p73)