The Brave Boer Boy and Other Stories

This true story of an unsung hero of the Boer War appeared as odd paragraphs in the Cape newspapers from the end of August, 1901.

The Anglo-Boer War was a restless war that marched through Natal and on to Kimberley and Mafeking. Driven by the wind, it swept through the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, and returned in 1901 to the Cape Colony, giving the colonists another ‘turn’ as the Boer commandos raced through the country districts, pursued by British and colonial troops.

Into all this mayhem, keeping his head down and his kattie (catapult) in his pocket, stepped a small, Boer boy. We don’t know our hero’s name, or where he came from. Only that he was eleven years old when he walked alone from the southern Free State to Cape Town to find his father.

. . . . .

Boetie wept bitterly when his father said no when he wanted to go on commando in 1899.

‘But Papa, I’m nine and I’ll look after the horses,’ he pleaded.

His Papa shook his head firmly. ‘I need you to look after Mamma and your sisters. I need a man on the farm.’ And Boetie had to be content.

At first the war went well for the Boer forces. But early in 1900 a stranger, leading a tired horse, brought bad news.

‘The English have surrounded General Piet Cronjé at Paardeberg, and your man and thousands of others are with him.’

They were stunned. Boetie’s mother didn’t cry. She just walked to the stove and picked up the kettle. As she poured coffee for the stranger she asked quietly, ‘But which Paardeberg is that?’

‘In the Free State, in the north,’ he replied sorrowfully.

There was a long silence. The man shook hands with them all and left. His Mother went to the edge of the werf (yard) and stared north, her face hidden in her kappie (bonnet). Boetie stood beside her.

Later news came that Papa was a prisoner of war at Greenpoint, near Cape Town in the Old Colony. ‘But where is Cape Town?’ they asked. Mother took Boetie outside while his sisters watched.

She said, ‘When the very first sun comes up in the morning, look ahead. Then turn your body until you can see the sun out of the corner of your left eye. In front of you is Papa’s way home. He will come back to us along that path.’

Boetie became the man of the house. They coped. He looked after the animals, filled the pot and learned to hide food from the hungry passers-by. Their stock dwindled, taken by both sides. Treasured letters arrived from Greenpoint. He promised himself he would go to Papa one day.

He was returning home with a small buck in his hunting bag when he saw the dreaded thing in the distance; a cloud of dust travelling along the road to the farm. He could barely remember when clouds of dust were exciting things that brought the family racing towards them - when dust from horses and carts meant visits from family and friends. Now he watched the dust with his mouth dry with foreboding.

The wind changed and he saw a troop of mounted Khakis. And, oh horrors! There was a wagon trundling behind. That meant that the Khakis would take his family away to a camp where many of their neighbours had now gone. He prayed his father would come racing up the path and chase them away, but he knew that was a dream.

It didn’t take long for the troopers to set the thatch alight, for the smoke to spiral up into the evening breeze. He crept nearer, staying out of sight, and tried to catch one last glimpse of his mother and his sisters, but they were too far away. He watched the wagon trundle away down the road.

He wept bitter scalding tears and then, still sniffing and giving the odd hiccup, thought the matter over. The family who had worked for them had fled back to Basutoland and the werf in the distance was now deserted. Even the dog had gone. Nobody had been sent to fetch him. His heart lifted for the first time. Did the Khakis even know he existed? Did his mother trust him to make his own plans? It seemed she did.

He didn’t return to the ruins of his home that night, but slept in one of his hunting spots and collected up a kattie, a dasdraad (wire for pulling rock rabbits from their holes), an old mug, a piece of leather to fix his velskoene (home-made leather shoes) and some dried biltong he had stuck away in a tin. At dawn he looked for tracks around his home like an old tracker, trying not to look at the damage or smell the desolation.

There were no fresh tracks about, so he went to their food store hidden in the rocks. A piece of paper under a stone nearby caught his eye. It was a letter from his father giving his line and tent number at Greenpoint. Between the rocks lay his mother’s fresh heel print. She had pushed Papa’s letter under the stone and trusted him to do what was best.

He started packing into his hunting bag; the awl he had scratched from the ashes, his oupa’s water bottle made from an ox bladder with the glass stopper and a piece of thick glass to make fire. Rusks, biltong, dried pumpkin, cold meat, dried quince rolls, pumpkin seeds and a small calabash were stuffed, with his old karros (skin blanket), into the hunting bag. He packed in a piece of Boer soap his mother had made. With Oupa’s mug, his hunting knife and his kattie tied to his belt, and wearing all he had, he considered himself well equipped for his journey.

He woke to the first rays of the sun, fixed himself onto Papa’s path and trotted out of the werf, taking one last long sidelong glance at the ruins that a few days before had been his home. He went to find Papa.

He made good time through the Free State, avoiding both commandos and columns, knowing they would ruin his plans. He stayed away from roads and railways, keeping the railway line almost on the horizon as an added marker. Once he waited for a British patrol to move on, and found a few tins of bully beef near the ashes of the fire.

When he reached the Orange River he spent a couple of days looking for the right place to cross. He slept that day and swam the river after the moon rose. When he was asked later where he had crossed the Orange, he just shook his head. ‘Don’t know,’ he said.

Boetie woke just before dawn, and walked or trotted, keeping a steady pace for about four hours until it was time to eat. The veld was his pantry and he gathered in veldkos (food from the veld) as he went. He ate anything the baboons ate, small animals, black num-nums, orange kriedoring berries and long chewy pieces of acacia gum. During the heat of the day he would rest where he could see but not be seen until the sun lost its heat.

At four o’clock he started off again, but only after listening for the thud of horses’ hooves by resting his ear on the ground. He relied on the flight of a startled bird and the bark of a baboon to warn him that people were in the vicinity. He never lit a fire where he slept under the stars, curled up under his karros. Just in case.

Programmed with hunting lore by the men of his family, he stayed down-wind without even thinking from any animals he was stalking. He never looked at anybody or anything he was trying to avoid in case they felt his eyes. He made fire by reflecting the sun’s rays through the piece of glass onto the fine fluff of a tontelbos (tinder bush). The thumping on his hip kept Papa’s warnings alive, ‘Never pass any water by without filling up yourself and your bottle. Don’t rob beehives until you are old enough to smoke and can blow it onto the hive and make the bees hungry or you’ll get stung. Don’t mess with snakes.’

Only once did he see a Boer commando trekking by. He was working his way through the thorn trees in the big flat south of the Nieuweveld when he heard the faint thud of horses’ hooves echoing along the earth into his ear. Later he cautiously watched a small commando cut across his path in a north-westerly direction. The commandant rode in style, armed with a rifle, two bandoleers and his second horse was used as a pack animal and had bundles tied to its back. Fifteen Boers followed at intervals. The stragglers at the back didn’t seem to have rifles and the last few were running to keep up. He followed their tracks for a while, sorry for the boy with the small, bare feet. He thought about joining them, having a friend in the commando, but was afraid of the swaggering commandant. So he turned back to Papa’s path.

Every so often he would take the day off to wash his clothes, and it made him sad to see his mother’s soap melting away. Then he would play with the animals around him or brei (tan) a dassie skin by rubbing it endlessly until it was soft, or just catch the sun as the days grew colder and shorter.

It was the winter days that eventually drove him to the farmsteads, which up to now he had kept at a distance. The lights twinkling from the windows set up such a longing for his home and his mother and sisters that he nearly despaired. The thought of his Papa in Cape Town, or returning to the Free State to nothing, kept him going.

One day in the Gouph (the southern part of the Karoo) this need drove him to the road and down to the donkey cart he had been watching as it lurched its way along the rutted track. The Oom and Tannie (the Uncle and Aunt) reminded him of his other grandparents who once came for a visit. Before he could stop himself, he ran down the rocks and jumped into the dusty road, holding his hand up, silently asking for a ride. The cart halted.

He saw a comfortable old woman wearing farm clothes and a kappie tied firmly under her chin, and an old man whose face was mostly whiskers. They saw a boy, a strange boy, carrying a bundle. The Oom said ‘Up!’ so Boetie hopped onto the back of the cart, and it lurched on down the road. A voice said ‘Child!’ and a slab of bread with a piece of meat appeared at the end of an old hand, worked rough by the years. Boetie said ‘Dankie’ (`thank you’) and made short work of it.

The lift in the donkey cart was the first of many. Due to Martial Law his luck was in. People had adapted to all the new regulations, and quickly realized the less you knew, the less you could report. So, unlike times of peace when he would have been questioned endlessly, people were firmly not curious.

Without knowing why, he avoided large farms with imposing gates and instead took a humbler route, appearing at the bywoners’ (tenants) cottages in the Hex River as it grew dark and cold. Once he had a dog with him for a while, and he got used to asking for lifts. When it