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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Smuts rifles

When it looked like there would be a bit of shooting over the decision to fight with the Empire in 1914, the first thing Jannie Smuts had to deal with was the rifles he had issued to farmers when he had been worried the gold miners in Johannesburg would go on strike; they went on strike once and the government had to back off and he was not going to have that happen again. Now it looked as if those rifles would be used against those who, like him, supported the decision to take out the radio mast at Windhoek. During my research, I was impressed with how quickly and efficiently Smuts recovered most of those weapons, not only weapons but horses as well, the transport system of the Boer Commando. What I enjoyed about the research was that the information was in personal notes and about people and their thoughts, not great issues that overshadowed people. 

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Dead cats at meetings

Further research into Smuts and 1914 revealed that at the start of WW1 the Germans in Namibia, German South West Africa as it was then called, had erected an enormous radio mast at Windhoek, which, on a good day could transmit directly to Berlin. The Royal Navy were concerned that they would send details of the shipping around the Cape and the submarines would close in on the ships in that congested area. Churchill was at the Admiralty and had become friendly with Smuts and suggested approaching the South Africans for help. Smuts and the then President Louis Botha, who had become friendly with Kitchener, agreed. It split the government,some wanting to fight for the Kaiser, and acrimonious meetings were held all over the country at which dead cats were thrown at the platform. Don't ask a South African about this, it is well buried.

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Boer War legacy

In my study of the History of the Cape Corps I was surprised to find the general commanding the British (Empire) forces in East Africa was Jannie Smuts from South Africa. What intrigued me was that, WW1 started in 1914, and thirteen years previously, Jannie Smuts had been ambushing and killing Redcoats with gusto. What had happened in the meantime? It turned out that, because of the generosity of the Brits at the negotiating table, a section of the Boers felt they had been given their land back, not just their land, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republics, but the thing they had dreamed of, a united South Africa from the Limpopo to the Cape and they felt an obligation to support their benefactors.

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Soldier of the King

Linda, in Pniel, showed me a book her father, Davids, had been given, or acquired about the history of his regiment. It was called simply The History of the Cape Corps and traced the origins of the involvement of the men of mixed race in the various struggles in South Africa, up to and including WW1. I must, unfortunately, summarise but the book followed the Cape Corps from South Africa to German East Africa, Tanganyika, and from there to Palestine and finally to police duties in the Middle East when demonstrations and strikes broke out. There were pages missing but I found a copy in the Cape Town archive and copied the pages for Linda to make her copy complete. One comment I remember from the East Africa campaign after some gruelling fighting and slogging it out among the heat and insects was a senior officer commenting that the only soldiers who could sing as they marched were the Cape Corps. I'll tell of what triggered them, but the two books, King or Kaiser and Shadows in the Veldt were to lead up to the creation of the Cape Corps and their WW1 experience. It's on the list, Linda. The picture shows the Pniel church with the grave of the predicant wwho whipped the drunkards in the foreground and the slave bell they erected to remind them of their heritage.
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