At the Fireside--Volume 1 (15 page)

Mantatisi – the African Boadicea

Mantatisi – the African Boadicea

This is the tale of Mantatisi, the black Boadicea, a woman who lends credence to the saying that ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'.

It was early in the 1800s and the tribes in what is now Zululand were fleeing from the wrath of Shaka. Some of these fugitives were given refuge by Morotsho, Chief of the Batlokwa, a metalworking people whose home was on the western side of the Drakensberg.

Among the fugitives was a young man named Motsholi. Unfortunately for him, he engaged the fancy of Mantatisi, Chief Morotsho's wife and queen of the Batlokwa tribe. She was absolutely smitten by the young fugitive, though she had a small problem – her husband!

In 1813 Chief Morotsho died mysteriously and Mantatisi immediately called upon the fugitive Motsholi to be her consort. Motsholi rejected her, saying, ‘Shall I eat Morotsho's food?' His implication was clear – if he were to take the place of the chief, would he not run the risk of ending up eating the poisoned food that Mantatisi had used to rid herself of her husband?

This rejection enraged the bloodthirsty Mantatisi. She called upon her son, Sikonyela and said to him, ‘I want Motsholi's collar!' She was referring to the brass neckband that Motsholi wore to signify his royal rank amongst his own people. That band was moulded exactly to the man's neck, and could not be removed without decapitation. Clearly Mantatisi was demanding Motsholi's death. Sikonyela carried out his mother's instructions, and, along with Motsholi's head, presented the collar to Mantatisi on a platter, echoing the story of John the Baptist and Salome. At this point the rest of the fugitives fell upon the Batlokwa and they had to flee, led by their queen.

Scorned in love, Mantatisi's blood boiled. She proceeded to take it out on the entire world, as she knew it, especially upon the Southern Sotho, Koranna and, eventually, the Tswana peoples.

When the fleeing Batlokwa reached the Lekoa, later known as the Vaal River, in the district of Harrismith, Mantatisi called a halt on the banks of the river. She began to put to good use the knowledge she had gleaned from the fugitives, information she had accumulated from the conversations held with the men during their stay with her tribe.

Mantatisi taught the men to fight in the style of Shaka. In fact, she actually bettered Shaka's tactics in her determination to visit a reign of terror on the land. Her warriors, like Shaka's, fought naked, their bodies were polished jet black. They were adorned with gleaming collars, waistbands and armlets of brass and copper, and upon their heads they wore great plumes of ostrich-feathers. She trained them to grimace furiously, and to clamour like demons.

It was said that Mantatisi had a single eye in the middle of her forehead. The explanation for this probably lies in the fact that forty years later diamonds were discovered in her district, and the ‘eye' was probably a large diamond strung on a headband. It was also said that Mantatisi fed her warriors on her own breastmilk. This probably symbolizes the queen instilling courage into her warriors.

From then on Mantatisi's warriors were called the Mantatees and, like Shaka, they went on to destroy tribe after tribe, sweeping up from the Harrismith district into the Transvaal, laying everything bare before them, sparing only the strong for warriors, the beautiful to consort with, and killing all the rest, including the very young. The tribes that could not flee were decimated.

On and on she went, destroying everything before her, conquering until there was nothing left to conquer or destroy, and nothing left to eat. The grain was gone, the cattle were gone, the countryside was left completely bare, and the warriors, with no other sustenance, turned to cannibalism. The Mfecane was under way and when, years later, the Voortrekkers arrived on the Highveld, it is true that they found these vast tracts of land uninhabited, and entire villages laid waste. There were only small pockets of people living as cannibals on the tops of hills and mountains.

It was at this time that Mantatisi, now a power-hungry, ruthless despot, made her fatal error. The Mantatees had penetrated very far west, into the Koranna country, and they fell upon the Koranna, thinking that fighting them would be no different from any other tribe. The Koranna numbered only 150, and the Mantatees 15 000, but the Koranna had firearms and the Mantatees did not. Bullets could reach where spears could not and, using the tactical withdrawal system that had yet to become famous in this country's military history, the Koranna tore the Mantatees to shreds. The Koranna were, to some extent, under the influence of the missionary Robert Moffat, and showed no mercy for these cannibal hordes.

Another tribe in the same area of the Vaal or Lekoa River were the Batlaping, a weak but very cruel tribe, so the missionary notes and diaries inform us. They joined the Griqua in the battle but not until the only warriors left on the field were the wounded and the dead. The Batlaping stoned and speared the wounded remnants of Manatatisi's army. They cut off heads and kicked them about. They severed arms and legs and carried them around as trophies. Not one of the wounded survived that day.

Mantatisi was utterly broken in power and her army totally destroyed. She fled back to the Basutoland area from where she had originally come. It is said that she sought refuge with the first king to unite the Basuto people, Moshweshwe the First. Moshweshwe was a wise leader and, realising that living and carrying the burden of what she had done to her people was a far heavier sentence than death, he gave her and her son, Sikonyela refuge in his country. There she died a lonely old woman, driven to the very edge of insanity because of her deeds.

If you go into the Magaliesberg region today, just before the Olifantsnek dam, on the farm called Olifantskloof, you will find the remnants of a village. Its stone walls are where the ‘Bakwena Mmatau' or ‘The People of the Lion', once lived peacefully. Its ruins are all that Mantatisi's warriors left, a grim reminder of the fearsome warrior queen.

Sir John Swinburne

Sir John Swinburne

Tucked away on the side of the N3 highway, halfway between Johannesburg and Durban, lies the tiny settlement of Swinburne, named after Sir John Swinburne, a relative of the famous English poet, Algernon Charles Swinburne. Although Sir John has been largely forgotten today, he remains an interesting character in the history of our country.

Sir John was the 7th Baronet Swinburne, a title created by Charles Il in 1660. In 1831, when he was twenty-nine years old, he succeeded his grandfather and inherited over 30 000 acres in Northumberland. As a young man he joined the Royal Navy and saw active service in the Burmese War of 1852, and the Crimean War, after which he was posted to the Baltic where he served until 1858.

He retired, a naval captain, to his ancestral home Capheaton near Newcastle-on-Tyne and married the daughter of another north-country Baronet, Mary Eleanor Brinckman. For the next fourteen years he lived the life of a country gentleman and followed with interest the adventures of a German explorer, Karl Mauch, who became famous in this country. Mauch was prospecting in the interior, eventually landing up in Mashonaland and Matabeleland in what is now Zimbabwe. Swinburne was absolutely smitten by Mauch's reports of gold in the area called the ‘Tati Territory'. This is the area where our Northern Province meets Botswana and Zimbabwe. The find came about in the following manner. A famous elephant hunter, Henry Hartley from Magaliesberg in the Transvaal (on whom Sir Rider Haggard based the character of Alan Quartermain), on an ivory-hunting expedition to the Zambezi Valley, had stumbled upon ancient gold diggings in Matabeleland. He told the story to Mauch. Mauch was intrigued by the story of the gold diggings that had been worked by an ancient people in a time long gone. But more of that another time.

Several local gold companies were formed. Two of these, one under Captain Black, consisting of thirty-four Australian diggers, and the other under a Mr MacNeil, set out to find the Tati goldfields. Both failed.

Sir John Swinburne, his head full of these tales, met Captain Arthur Lionel Levert in 1868 and between them they formed the London and Limpopo Mining Company. They raised money, purchased plant, hired staff and in the same year landed at Durban. Soon after landing they began their trek into the interior, loaded with all the equipment of a central African expedition: guns, ammunition, traps for wild animals, tents, ropes, shovels, picks, crowbars, cooking utensils and everything else required for a mining operation in the remote bush.

Sir John had also brought along a steam traction engine, the first ever to land in South Africa. He was aiming to introduce mechanised road transport to South Africa. At this time the only railways in South Africa consisted of 2 km of line from Durban Harbour to the Point, 11 km of line from Cape Town to Wynberg and about 60 km of line to Wellington. So the arrival of this ‘beast' was quite spectacular. It steamed and snarled its way through that trackless country, bumping over boulders, levelling dongas and cleaving a path through virgin bush. Wherever there was a pan, they would stop to fill the boiler and, from the surrounding bush, fine wood was continually cut to feed this insatiable monster.

Alas, the steam traction engine was way before its time. It never completed the journey. It was abandoned along the way and eventually sold. So, somewhere in Natal lie the ruins of this amazing vehicle, which chuffed ponderously through the bush where only people, horses and ox wagons had gone before.

Swinburne was not to be deterred. The traction engine may have proved unequal to the task imposed on it, but another first for South Africa, was a static steam engine which survived the 500 km trek and arrived in Tati in April 1869. Foundations were laid and the engine was put to work. Mzilikazi, the king of the Matabele, was so impressed by Swinbume that he granted him prospecting rights in what was to become known as the Northern Goldfields. Sir John had a stamp battery designed and made in Durban – another first for South Africa – and had it taken up to the mine by ox-wagon.

By this time other prospectors had reached the area and had established themselves along ‘Todd's Creek'. Here a great deal of energy was spent and shafts, up to 150 feet deep were sunk, but the gold values proved patchy. Sir John, ever restless in nature, left August Greite in charge of the mine and set off for Pretoria, where he met the President of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, Marthinus Wessels Pretorius. Even after a cursory examination of the country, he was convinced that it was highly mineralised and so, in March 1860, he put to President Pretorius a proposal that even today is astonishing in both its foresight and its naivety.

The proposal was, first, that the ZAR grant exclusive rights to the London and Limpopo Company for the running of trackless steam engines throughout the Transvaal and, secondly, that the Company establish banks and manufacturing companies, as well as import goods and machinery, and that it act as sole agents for the ZAR.

To appreciate the situation, one should be aware that at this time the ZAR was totally bankrupt. Sir John knew this and proposed to alleviate the treasury's plight. He offered to redeem the £60 000-worth of ‘blue-back' notes the ZAR Government had issued by purchasing them at 10 shillings per £1 and paying as follows: 2 shillings and 6 pence in British coin; 2 shillings and 6 pence in the Company's own notes, payable at six months; and 5 shillings in its own notes, payable at two years. The Company's notes would be payable at its own banks, as well as banks in the Cape and Natal.

In return, the ZAR was to hand over all its lands to the Company as security until the notes had been redeemed and, furthermore, all the mineral rights on land not owned by individuals would be given to the Company in freehold tenure. The Company would also be given exclusive right to grant banking licences and, lastly, would receive a 5% commission from the net proceeds of farms sold.

When the Company had repaid itself, the amount of the outstanding notes – £60 000 as well as the 5% commission – the remaining farms would be returned to the Government, but the mineral rights would remain the property of the London and Limpopo Trading and Mining Company.

Professor Arndt has pointed out that the Company would have made a clear profit of £30 000 on the notes and some £3 000 in commissions. So in reality, it was offering £50 000 for the perpetual ownership of the mineral rights to the Transvaal. What is more amazing was that the offer received the backing of some of the Volksraad! The offer was considered in May 1869 and received careful attention. A technical difficulty arose. Sir John had forgotten to put the Company's Articles of Association in as supporting documentation. Yet, there was some considerable support, as the Transvaal's paper money could not get 2 shillings and 6 pence in hard cash. It is pleasing to note, however, that the ZAR did not sell the Transvaal's mineral rights to Sir John.

When the deal fell through, Sir John had had enough. He returned to England, leaving Captain Levert in charge. The gold proved erratic and in 1872, having sent more that 2 000 ounces of gold to England, the London and Limpopo Trading and Mining Company faded into obscurity and the stamp battery stopped for good.

Other companies were formed, among them Tati Concessions and the Tati Blue Jacket Syndicate, and if today you travel by rail to Zimbabwe via Botswana, just outside Francistown you may still see the ruins of the Settlement of the Monarch Reef.

Sir John Swinburne lived to see the birth of the Rand and the rise of Johannesburg. By the time he died, gold worth more than one thousand million pounds sterling had been recovered in the Transvaal.

Swinburne, the little settlement just near Van Reenen's Pass, proudly bears his name.

The flight of the Herero

The flight of the Herero

Everywhere in the gleaming sands lie the rusted parts of abandoned wagons, trek chains, thongs, and canvas tarpaulins, along with the bones of men and cattle, and the graves of those fallen in the most grievous of deaths – thirst. For a trekker, there was no word that could instil greater fear than dors (thirst) – the stories of the Dorsland treks live to this very day. Those who experienced a ‘small thirst' on one of those treks never forgot the experience. The continual groaning of the oxen is the most heartrending sound that could ever come from an animal. Added to this was the blazing heat of the sun, the endless sand and the choking cloud of dust as they trekked onwards, becoming thirstier and thirstier.

One such Dorsland trek has attracted very little attention in our country, probably because it was a black trek. The old newspaper
Die Brandwag
published the story in 1921.

It was the trek of the Herero out of South West Africa which went eastwards through the Kalahari and into the country of the Bamangwato, eventually coming to an end in Phalala, in the Waterberg region of what is now the North-West Province of South Africa. The size of this disastrous trek was unbelievable. More than 700 wagons were left behind in the desert, and more than 13 000 people died of thirst, the most terrible of all deaths.

The ovaHerero tribe originated in Central Africa and its people are exceptionally tall – an adult under 1,8 m is very unusual. At the time of this little-known trek, the majority of the tribe was educated and could read and write. High Dutch was their daily language. They built houses, wore European clothing and farmed, and were generally known to be a friendly people. It was said that their attitudes changed with the colonisation by the Germans, that they were influenced by the yellow people, and turned to murdering whites. I have heard this all too often in the stories of the Gqunukhwebe, the Xhosa and the Koranna at Mamusa, the list is endless. Behind the myth lies the greed to occupy land, and it was no different in the case of the Germans in South West Africa.

The Bondelswart Hottentots put up a fight on the plains surrounding the Karas Mountains and, when the Herero saw what happened to them, they were so shattered that the only option they could think of was flight. ‘Rather face the Kalahari', said the elders of the tribe, ‘than face the Germans'.

So they prepared themselves for the long trek, before the German forces even reached their boundaries. They sent intelligence parties out to gather information about grazing, waterholes, Tsamma melons and general conditions, but nothing could have prepared them for the ordeal that they were about to face. The trek started and the Germans, following them to the last waterhole, reported that, even at this stage, they were following a path of dead and dying people and animals. Every waterhole was filled with dead cattle and the water trampled to mud. It is estimated that 4 000 Herero died, even before the big thirst began. The head of the trek was under Captain Samuel and the rearguard under one Julius, a preacher and schoolteacher.

When they left their homes there were more than 700 wagons, 14 000 people and cattle uncountable, but upon arrival in the Waterberg there were but 400 people and no animals except for a horse belonging to Samuel and the cattle given to them by the kindly people of Khama, the Bamangwato. It is estimated that in the desert 3 600 people died of thirst alone. There were very few old people or children that came through that crossing, and seldom has nature imposed her harsh code of ‘survival of the fittest', more cruelly upon a people. Contrary to the hopelessly optimistic reports of the scouts, there were was very little grazing to be had, the pan water was scarce and the Tsamma melons were green and bitter to the taste. Three days after entering the desert, the cattle began to die, and what made matters worse was the panicky knowledge that the Germans were after them. All the known waterholes were rushed by thousands of thirsty cattle and immediately churned into mud, so the cattle were unable to relieve their thirst.

Inevitably, within fourteen days the last of the 700 wagons had to be abandoned. Everything transportable was made into bundles and everyone, young and old, had to help carry. In the forefront was Samuel, trying desperately to keep order. At the back was Julius, making sure that the weak and frail were not left behind. On the flanks, daily, were patrols to collect Tsamma melons, which would be distributed among all the people. It took a lot of melons to keep the people going, of course, so, as much meat as could be carried, was made into biltong. But it soon became apparent that strict order could not be maintained and, within a week or two, the trek was so long and extended that the stragglers took fully three days to arrive at the place where the forward group had camped. Under these circumstances, of course, no fair sharing of meat and melons was possible. Contrary to what one would expect, there was very little selfishness, and heroic acts abounded.

The first to fall were the elderly and, almost every day, the rear section of the trek would pass small groups of them, usually lying under the shade of a thorn tree, having made their peace with God, and simply waiting to die. Usually the goodbyes and a little prayer had been said, and those who were strong enough moved on with the trek. Where a person had died in the company of another family member, he or she would be buried up to his or her neck in the sand. Mothers with suckling babies bore the brunt of the pain and very few made it through. ‘You could count them on your fingers', Julius said.

The unfortunate mothers with more than one child had an even worse time of it, and often you would see a mother walk the path three times, as she carried her children forward one by one, along the trek and, sooner or later, these poor mothers came to realise that one, or even two would have to be sacrificed, to save the last one. Many mothers actually had the courage to kill their children, instead of leaving them to a lingering death in the blazing sun. Samuel and Julius agreed – there was no option – though usually this decision was taken far too late and most of the mothers died shortly thereafter. One young woman, Maria, who gave birth to her first child at the beginning of the trek, used a galvanized iron bathtub as a sled and pulled her baby through the desert – and made it. Unfortunately, when a suckling mother becomes dehydrated, her milk dries up. Many babies died of hunger, usually shortly followed by the mother who would inflict knife wounds to her breasts in a vain attempt to give sustenance to the dying child. Julius recalled an elderly couple, long married – the woman was too weak and could go no further. The man was strong and would have pulled through, but decided to stay with his wife in the desert. They bade farewell to their children, their bundles were redistributed and the trek moved on, with the vultures always circling overhead.

The survivors went on, with feet and legs swollen, without skin, and bleeding. Their lips and tongues swelled up and cracked, so much so that it was almost impossible to eat the Tsamma melons. For two months they had not seen water.

Suddenly, these skeletons dressed in rags, heard voices calling them, but, with their burnt lips and burst tongues, all they could manage in answer was a hiss, as the Bamangwato tribe of Khama came into the desert to save them. Slowly, oh so slowly, the Bamangwato nursed the survivors back from the brink. Water was given in half measures to the weakest and the children first, then the others and, to those nearest to death, it was administered drop by drop, for drinking would have killed them.

After six months' recuperation, the remnants of the Herero tribe moved on to Phalala in the Waterberg, where this terrible, but largely forgotten epic was recorded, and is still spoken about very softly at night, around the fires.