Thoughts of a Confused "Boer"

I asserted my independence outside of the pulpit and the congregation to exercise the full rights of citizenship, to use my voice as well as my vote for what I believed to be the better policy. I incurred still greater displeasure as a pro-Boer.

-AE Garvie, Scottish Theologian, 1899

Boer leader and philosopher, Jannie Smuts, once said:
"There is a crack that runs through the universe and that crack runs through me!"

I'm not sure what he originally meant by that but I suspect he was speaking about our fractured natures.

By some strange coincidence I may have inherited something of a broken Boer trait too. Though of Scottish-German descent providence has wrapped me around with the Boer character. I have previously written about my interest in genealogy and family history. For some inexplicable reason my lot has repeatedly been linked with that of the Boers. Two stories come to mind.

The first from my father's line, is a reference from Richard Meinertzhagen's  Kenya Diary (1902-1906). The Garvies of Kenya, including my grandfather, were granted certain land rights in Nandi territory, Western Kenya. This didn't impress Capt. Richard Meinertzhagen of the King's African Rifles. The Anglo-Boer War was still fresh in the minds of the British. To some, Boers were a despicable breed. No matter the fact that the Garvies weren't Boers but Scots, never mind that these very Garvies served British regiments back in the Transvaal Republic as Laurance Garvie put it, "I have had five sons all through the Campaign fighting the Battles for their King and Country...I have been two years and four months exiled from my home" to Meinertzhagen the Garvies were Boers to be spurned.

On the 13th April 1905 Meinetzhagen recorded: "The only European settlers in the whole of the Nandi country are two Boer families called Garvie and Steyn. They have recently come from the Transvaal and are related to the ex-President of the Orange Free State. They all seem terrified of the Nandi and have been applying for a guard of my men... After the guard had started Garvie came to see me and told me I could not now have the room I had chosen but could have another one, which was not suitable. I told him he must abide by my first choice or not have the guard. He said he would sooner have the guard, so I did not recall it. But this afternoon the guard returned with the report that the room had been changed and that they had been put in with the pigs. So I withdrew the guard. These Boers are indeed slippery customers." Donald Sutherland Garvie's grave sin appears to be that he had fallen in love and married a Boer girl, Cornelia Steyn! I am happy to say that once the facts became known, Meinertzhagen and the Garvies seemed to have gotten on famously.

The second story, from my mother's line, is detailed in Albert Blake's Boereverraaier (Boer Traitor). A chapter is devoted to how my second great-grandfather, Oupa Frederick Koch was shot by the Boers in a skirmish during the Boer War near Wakkerstroom. His son, Hendrik was executed by firing squad having being found guilty of treason by a tribunal set up by Chris Botha, the brother of Louis Botha. The family were branded "Verraaiers, Traitors" and ostracised. However the historical record suggests that the tragic event was a horrible miscarriage of justice. Frederick Koch's gravestone reads, "Shot by L.Badenhorst and his men at Roodepoort although innocent."

Do I now forever harbour resentments because both Brit and Boer judged us harshly? On the contrary, tragic and unjustified as these incidents might have been, I draw inspiration that rather than being worthless farmers or traitors my forebears were in fact pioneers and reconcilers to be honoured and admired. History is riddled with ironies. Donald Sutherland Garvie introduced “bioscope” to Kenya. A Nairobi newspaper obituary reported that Donald was "formerly the leading spirit of the newspaper the ADVERTISER... He belonged to the quiet and unostentatious sphere of true gentility". The Magistrate of Wakkerstroom wrote, "The late Mr. Koch was a Burgher of considerable influence and standing in the neighbourhood and when he saw that the cause of the Boers had failed he and his whole family surrendered and... he did everything in his power to assist the British in bringing the war to a conclusion."

I am this strange confluence of prejudice and bitterness but more. When I despair, when I feel misunderstood, negated, broken, fractured, and hard done by my colleagues and compatriots, I remind myself of my two Boer stories and realise there is always another story yet to be told. A crack may well run through us as Smuts asserts, but cracks can also be redemptive breakthroughs. Vladimir Nabokov said, "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." I'm beginning to see through my cracks now!

For further reading:
Errol Trzebinski, The Kenya Pioneers
Richard Meinertzhagen, Kenya Diary (1902-1906)
Albert Grundlingh, The Dynamics of Treason: Boer Collaboration in the South African War of 1899-1902

Albert Blake, Boereverraaier, Tafelberg, 2010
Piet Beukes, The holistic Smuts: A study in personality
Alfred Ernest Garvie, Memories and meanings of my life,



©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za/