What the Butler Did

I enjoy doing a story about some minor character in the Bible, someone who plays a real part in the story,but about who there are few details. I relate more to them than to the kings and prophets. One is the butler in Joseph's story. Did he risk getting his head chopped off if Joseph couldn't interpret Pharaoh's dream? In the story linked to this, he's given it careful thought and decided to go to the chief administrator.

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Over the hills and far away

One might be excused for thinking an village built by the slaves in 1830 would be a bit of a shanty town with inward looking people but the slave ancestors of Pniel were business rivals of the Dutch East India company, sent to the Cape as punishment for opposing the conditions the DEA company insisted upon. They were, in many cases, aristocratic successful business people in their own land of the Spice Islands. Far from being insular, one 'Auntie' had visited relations in Australia, another in New Zealand and even one in Tighnabruaich in the Western Highlands of Scotland. Whether the later's relationship started when the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders went to the Cape during the Napoleonic War, or at some later date when the Seaforths were there, I never found out. The picture is looking over Pniel into the valley in which it rests, Boschendal is on the left beyond the fields.

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The village the slaves built

This tale of the Five Shilling Rebellion came to my notice through the people in Pniel, the old mission village near Cape Town, but the village has its own history. It was built on ground three farmers set aside in anticipation of the slaves being freed when slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1834. The farmers were sure the slaves would run off to find work in factories and leave them with no labour, so they set aside a piece of land on which the slaves could build houses, and would have a reason to stay in the area. The slaves stayed and prospered as free men and women and I felt honoured to know them. I doubt if they got much help to build the houses but they have created a model village, which sits behind the church with its slave bell to commemorate their forebears.

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Shadows in the Veldt

Shadows in the Veldt follows what happened during the chase of the last general, Beyers, of the 1914 South African rebellion. One of the mysteries that I never solved was why his personal bodyguard was dismissed and he was taken in hand by what seems to have been a gang of hardliners. When he drowned in the Vaal River, it looked very much as if he was trying to escape from the new bodyguard or was more determined than they were to get away from the English sympathisers. In fact, the whole affair is surrounded by 'what might' questions, right to Beyers' burial. The picture was reproduced in a contemporary edition of the Glasgow Herald, so even the Scots were interested in the Five Shilling Rebellion. 

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Five Shilling Rebellion

South Africa 1914 One of the characters in the 1914 revolt against Smuts and President Louis Botha took up arms because a magistrate, appointed by the English after the Boer War, had fined him five shillings - for beating his own servant. (The law did not prohibit a chastening but if the chastening amounted to a beating, the servant could take his master to court and several did.) When this came out Smuts wasn't going to miss the opportunity for a bit of spin and christened the disturbance the Five Shilling Rebellion. This first part is the background for King and KaiserWho the man in the white uniform is in the picture, I don't know but the others are some of the leaders of the rebellion, dour opponents, not the kind to run!

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