But Loots cleverly has Cronjé’s factotum, Fenyang, emphatically denying that the old duffer was even present there then. Actually this was a valiant feat of stripling Paul Kruger, retrieving the corpse of the namesake of the future Potgietersrus, which in turn becomes the basis of Herman Charles Bosman’s ‘Makapan’s Caves’ story, first published in The Touleier in December, 1930 (see Bosman 1930, 1998). Yet in Loots’s telling of the early life of this devout, staunch figure, he notched up several heroic defences of Boer interests, in his imagination, for instance, as a youth on the campaign against Makopane in 1854, rescuing his wounded older brother from those infested caves. By then, so utterly laid low and increasingly paralysed, he had certainly given up on having things his own way. Unlike the other two figures to be considered here, Cronjé did not write his own justification until late in life, with it being published posthumously in several episodes in the nowadays rather obscure Die brandwag in late 1913. 1911) are buried together in the Cronjé cemetery on private land. These were along the Schoonspruit River with its bulrushes, north of Klerksdorp in today’s North-West Province, which after all was the first of the old Transvaal’s towns.ĭuring his last decisive war his chief residence was never burned down, as his biographer would have it in volume 3 of the Dictionary of South African biography (Du Plessis 1977:185–187) and is often reported since, for it is still to be seen out on the Syferfontein-Eleazar route to the north, where the Brakspruit dirt road turns off to the left, as I confirmed on a recent recce.
There he was based on as many as half a dozen farms named Palmietfontein (not Palmietkuil as Loots would have it). Pieter Arnoldus Cronjé was a direct descendant of the 17th century Huguenot Pierre Cronier and known as the Lion of Potchefstroom for his ability in organising commando actions, his membership of the Volksraad and eventually as commander-in-chief of the Republican forces on the Western frontier. Such reworkings and updatings of actual documentary material are also of special interest here.Īware that no fiction writer may ever let historical facts get in the way of a good story, I nevertheless wish to record the following notes which have come to my attention, mainly on recent trips to St Helena and elsewhere, apart from the usual surveys of historical sites closer at hand and searches through sources in the usual repositories. This is Jan Horn’s (2012) ‘Die Goewerneur-Generaal van St Helena’, which a note explains is based on a recollection of his own grandfather. Then in the Boereoorlogstories series, edited by Jeanette Ferreira (2012) and also recently published by Tafelberg, whilst almost all the contributions are ‘fictitious’ as commonly understood, in volume 2 of 2012 one of them is actually a recreation of a historically factual experience. It is the handling of such literary aftermaths which are the topic here. This way Loots is able to meld familiar portraits with the bizarre and outrageous in order to speculate on the human implications of the newspaper coverage their desperate acts provoked, and hence how their reputations were manipulated for propagandistic ends, then and even nowadays. Subsequently both were then recruited by her superb third major character, the showman Frank Fillis, to recreate battle pieces of their downfall in a showbiz spectacular staged in the United States. 1868) of two different generations, who shared an exile as prisoners of war on St Helena. She focuses on the biographies of two well known generals, Piet Cronjé (b. A brilliant recreation of key events of the period, it is not only a wrenchingly human read, but an impeccably researched novel, as the many documentary sources cited in her acknowledgements make evident. (Shadwell 2008:54–55)The recently published historical work by Sonja Loots called Sirkusboere (2011) has renewed an interest in the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902. When they reach at their bridles and foam and fret,įor I sing of a rider: De Wet – De Wet. Like the gallop of steeds in their strength and pride, Let the music ride with a swinging stride, Like the thunder of hoofs as they roll along: Yes, I mourn, an exile, in a strange foreign land,įar away from my childhood’s scenes so dear,īut though darkness envelopes South Africa now, À la Nebuchadnezzar, as chief shepherd in charge. Out to grass on Deadwood fields with Mynheer Cronjé, They are a pastoral people, so we must needs turn them
0 kommentar(er)
