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Five generations later, the African Adventure.


Newlife

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This is the story of my family and our many generations of adventure in Africa from the mid 1800s. Only those who have lived in Africa understand the African context. As I take a long look back from the distance of Australia I am pleased with the adventure and the courage shown. We arrived in Africa with nothing and we left five generations later with nothing but we are richer for the experiences and value life, integrity, character and legacy and take nothing for granted.

 

"Young man if you want to make something of your life go north, there are reports of gold that would set you up for life." The year 1890. That young man was my great grandfather.

"Rhodes is wanting to open up new territory and he has promised farms to those who would take up the challenge." "Just think about it!" 

So he did and when the Moodie trek left for Matabelleland in 1892 young Sid was one of the people who left for new and dangerous adventures in the unknown north.

Only 17 wagons and 29 families could be persuaded to leave the relative safety of the south, 37 menfolk and 31 women. They would be cut of from civilization, far from any help, traveling arduously on a road that was little more than a rough track through virgin bush. Crossing mountain ranges and fording deep rivers, it was not a trip for the faint of heart. Those that did not believe in God soon learnt to pray.

This was the first group that attempted the long trip from Bethlehem in the South to Salisbury in the north.

"It will take four months to travel that distance and then you can get to work building a great future!" the experts had confidently predicted with the enthusiasm of spectators urging daredevils to jump into the unknown.

Eight months later they arrived. Eight months of grinding, arduous travel with sickness ,disease and death as constant companions, with deprivations and hardships that the modern man just could not comprehend, with hostile African tribes to negotiate with, no recourse but to push on, "just around the next river, just over the next hill, we cant turn back, its too far, better push on I'm sure we will get there soon enough...

 

When the Moodie party arrived they found that the country was sparsely inhabited and as they approached some of the kraals the populace would flee terrified. Thomas Moodie spoke Shangaan and discovered that they were in constant fear of raiding parties from the fierce and ruthless Matebele tribe who subjugated all surrounding tribes with the utmost cruelty and domination. The Matabele numbered in the region of thirty thousand and had fled from King Shaka, the famous and violent King of Natal after falling out with him. Mizilikazi had been one of Shaka's top men and had been a leader and an ambitious soul who had learnt the utmost in warfare, torture and extortion from the master himself. Shaka was devoid of mercy, totally psychopathic, life to him was as worthless as a twig tossed into a fire. He idly wondered at the miracle of life that came to pass in the womb, and asked for a young pregnant women to be brought to him for inspection. He disemboweled her for the sake of his curiosity and watched dispassionately as she and her fetus kicked their life out in the sand in front of him. Shaka though nothing of crucifying men by pushing poles up the anus and planting them in the hot African sun to slowly die. He trained his men in terror and intimidation, torture was a sport and the fear and fame of the Zulu nation spread far and wide. Shaka would kill any of his warriors who showed the slightest weakness. Shaka had a warfare style of total annihilation of the enemy and loved to kill babies. When his mother died Shaka murdered thousands of his subjects so that their family members could share his grief.  Mizillikazi was no more refined in his attitude and having fled Shaka in great haste made his way up north into Southern Rhodesia assimilating or destroying all tribes he encountered on the way. He set up his headquarters in the Matopos in 1834 and called it Bulawayo or the place of slaughter for the number of people that he killed there. He dominated the local Mashona tribe and had some simple rules. All women in the region belong to me, all cattle in the region belong to me, all men in the region are my slaves, all life in the region I can take at any time for any reason. All people in this region will pay tributes and taxes to me or die. Mizilikazi tried to kill all his own sons to protect his royal position and got it right to execute his heirs except Lobengula who's mother managed to conceal him. Mizilikazi died  in 1868 and Lobengula took his fathers place. Lobengula continued the constant raiding and taxing the surrounding area begun by his father. Lobengula was loathed by the surrounding tribes but much loved by his own.

 

Sid settled into life in this atmosphere and began a career as a farmer working hard to establish his farm and get some infrastructure going. Not long after arriving there was a dispute between the Matabelle and the Mashona as the Mashona, emboldened by the prospect of protection by white guns refused to pay cattle tribute to Lobengula. They requested protection and the BSA company was only too pleased to deal with Lobengula. Lobengula was not a well man and the Matabele fled into refuge where Lobengula died. If Sid thought his problems were over he could think again! In 1896 the Matabele launched a surprise attack to kill all whites in the country and returned in force, with guns and bullets.  With the regular army out of the country and the ordinary citizens virtually unprotected it was up to Sid to join a small group of civilian men to rescue stranded citizens in the path of an angry army of thousands of gun bearing Matabele warriors out to kill...

 

But that is another story.

Edited by RedPanda
typo fixed
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This is a period in history that my generation learnt absolutely nothing of at school. I've actually become a little curious about it since moving out of RSA.

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So Sid had left the civilised life and comfort of the south to travel with one of the first groups to open up Rhodesia. What an adventure, he had desired to make something of his life as his father who had come out of Britain just after 1820 had passed away in the 1880s in Queenstown in the Cape colony without leaving much inheritance. His mother still lived there and depended on her children for provision. Many people underestimated the hardships of immigrating to a new land to start afresh and Sid’s parents were no exception, there was no glory for them, a hard life of labour and little to show for it. Sid wanted something more. He was prepared to take hardship if it resulted in something that he could claim as his own and build a life around. He knew a bit about farming and staked his claim when he got to Salisbury. He took a fancy to one of the ladies on the trek and married Lou, the niece of “Groot Tom” who led the trek. Groot Tom died on his arrival from a tropical disease but Lou’s parents opened the first boarding house in Salisbury so at least she was close to a base and close to her parents.

Sid worked hard, he built a mud house with a thatch roof, developed his piece of land and hired the local Mashona to help him. Money was scarce, supplies hard to get and progress near impossible. The local tribesman did not understand his way of life and considered his drive to work absurd. They did not store up supplies as traditionally supplies would not last long in that climate. A people of subsistence they lived day to day and suffered terribly if there was a drought or lack of food. In times of plenty they squandered and in times of shortage they starved. They had never seen a wheel, did not own clothes, had never seen a plough and planted their crops of maize by hand, seed by seed.  Women did all the work in the culture and men had the job of protecting the community. Cattle were not bought or sold, they were for ritual use and a status symbol only. Trying to persuade them to sell cattle was difficult for they did not value money as currency and far preferred to have the beast than the cash. The Mashona  had a very hard life, persecuted by the stronger Matabelle they just managed to eke out a living and were killed in droves when the Matabele raided. The Matabelle would take anything they wanted, often stealing women and boys for their own use. Very superstitious people they would take any spiritual insinuation for hardship or misfortune very seriously indeed.  The native population in Rhodesia by all accounts was well under 300 000 and as far as land was concerned it appeared to Sid that large tracts were unpopulated.

The Mashona got sick and tired of having their cattle raided and one headman just plain refused to give Lobegula his tribute. Lobengula did not want to lose face and so sent some of his men to teach them a lesson but told them to leave the whites alone as he was wary of their weapons. The Matabelle went into the village and murdered scores of people and then shocked some of the residents of Salisbury by walking through the streets showing off their blood soaked spears in jubilation. Washing a spear in human blood was an important ritual for the young men it seemed. The public reaction was strong and when the Mashonas appealed for justice the BSA had their excuse to deal with Lobengula. Sid would not have had anything to do with this as there was a force of about 300 men  who kept law and order who would follow through with the raid on Lobengula. So the threat of Lobengula , “The Great Elephant Bull” was dealt with and Sid continued to work his farm in peace and industry. Or so he thought.

After Lobengulas death his spiritual adviser, Mlimo, took over leadership of the people.  He was a good politician and persuaded the Mashona that a locust plague, a drought and cattle disease were the result of the white man and that they should join forces and annihilate the farmers. The Matabelle had a force of 20 000 men armed with modern rifles and had learnt to shoot with some proficiency. In 1896 the entire native populace rose up as one and attempted to murder every white person in the whole country. The BSA police force had temporarily left Rhodesia to go on an unauthorised raid in the Transvaal and so the farming community had no defence force and were unprepared for the surprise attack. Sid and his wife got news of the attack and moved to Salisbury to safety where a defensive position was built and Sid joined a civilian commando force to protect the community. Just as they were settling into their new circumstances a friend came up to Sid, "Hey Sid, a telegram has just come through, there are some folk under siege at the Alice mine in Mazoe, will you be part of a relief force to help them?"  So a group of twelve men under Inspector Nesbit accepted certain death in order to effect a rescue mission against thousands of gun toting natives setting many ambushments along the road to the Alice mine. As Sid kissed his wife goodbye she must have wondered if she would ever see him again.

 

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Inspector Nesbit called a meeting,  “Listen chaps, this is what has happened.”  “There are some people under siege at Alice mine, some who work for the mine, some prospectors and some Salvation Army missionaries, about fourteen souls in all. We know that there are three women, two of whom have seen their husbands murdered before their very eyes.”  “Judson left here yesterday to help them with seven men and a wagonette but we do not know if he made it through.”   “They have built a defence but are surrounded by what seems to be thousands of natives firing on their position.” “We need to be brave and push through and who knows perhaps we shall prevail.” “We shall ride through the night and endeavour to slip through to the laager before daybreak.”

Sid had never been involved in active fighting before and he was filled with a combination of both excitement and fear. What he didn’t realise was that an employee of the BSA police, Mhasvi, who was Mashona had been listening to the wartalk of the Matabele and had figured that he could be the next big Mashona king in the region. He had deserted his British police post a few days earlier and had called a meeting of all the chiefs in the area.  “My people listen to me, I have been inside the white town and have heard what the Matabele are doing to them in the Matopos, we can drive them out and then whatever you see can be yours. All their possessions you can have. We can be great again as before both Matabele and white man came here.” “Now we have guns and I can shoot, bring me all the men who have weapons and I will teach you to shoot well like me.”  They practised their shooting and then hatched a plan to go around the farmsteads killing as many farmers as they could. A fighting force of more than 2000 armed men looking for war and murder spread across the countryside. When they had killed some farmers and their families and the others had fled they heard about the people besieged at Alice mine and all flocked to finish the job.

 

 Mazoe Post lay isolate,
Defenceless, far afield,
While every donga, krantz, and kloof
Marauding foes concealed;
And every wind that stirred the reeds
A warrior's plume revealed.

Fort Salisbury, the nearest help,
Lay thirty miles away,
And knew not of Mazoe's plight,
Nor where the danger lay;
So men could only wait for death,
And women only pray.

Time and again the rifles rang!
Time and again the foe
Reeled beaten from the laager's walls,
Row upon writhing row;
Yet still the sea of mocking plumes
Tossed restless, to and fro!

 

Sid and his party of 13 men slipped out into the night riding towards Alice mine. They stayed off the roads and rode through the bush silently in single file. They came upon a messenger send from the Alice mine who confirmed that the defence had held and help was needed. They went on and arrived at daybreak storming through the enemy lines just before dawn broke without one casualty although shots were fired at them. After preparations were made, the wagonette had some steel sides attached and all available ammo was placed into it, some of the horses were in spanned even though they had never pulled a cart before and the group of about thirty set off into the teeth of some very fierce gun fire.

Sid was placed right at the front with his friend Hendricks as an advance guard shooting at anything that moved. The rifles were single shot breach loaders and they carried rows of ammunition on bandoleers across their shoulders, shoot, eject, load, shoot, eject, load, shoot. Soon the rifles became red hot as the rounds flew through the barrels. The women in the cart reloaded the bandoleers and called encouragements as the men fought though a terrible ambush in a narrow pass. Pascoe the Salvation Army man climbed up onto the roof of the wagon and called out to the others where the enemy was most concentrated.  Sid fighting up front for hours without letup found himself surrounded and fired in a circle to keep the hordes off him. Suddenly his mate Hendricks fell to the ground shot through the face. Sid jumped off and firing still, threw a scarf around Hendricks head to lift a sagging jaw shot through and smashed. He resaddled Hendricks and when he looked again the wagon was surrounded and he and Hendricks cut off. Hendricks once again fell to the ground but it was his horse that had been shot this time and he jumped up behind Sid as the two of them fought on. They managed to break free and made it to Salisbury where Hendricks more dead than alive was attended to. Sid was beside himself with shame and guilt at having to leave his men and begged the commander to take a force of men from the laager with a maxim machine gun to aid the party on the road. The commander said that he could not compromise the safety of the town, the group might have been massacred already and they had to consolidate. Imagine the delight when a couple of hours later the wagon straggled into town with the highly traumatised group alive and mostly intact. They had lost three men and some wounded out of the thirty but had killed more than one hundred and prevailed against over a force of 1500 adversaries. Pascoe the Salvation Army man who had been a prime target on the roof of the wagon got a bullet through his hat and one of his shoelaces had been shot off but he was untouched.  Mrs Cass and Mrs Dickerson who had seen their husbands killed were never the same again. The hostilities lasted many months and Sid was wounded on another patrol quite seriously and had to take a break. His farm was destroyed, his work all for nothing and he went back to Queenstown disillusioned for a season until the call of adventure lured him back to Rhodesia.

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After the 1896 uprising and countrywide unrest in the young country of Rhodesia my great-grandfather Sid and his wife lost all their possessions, burnt to the ground by marauders. Sid had been exposed to attack and had faced life threatening situations. He and his wife packed up, sold up and moved to Queenstown in the Eastern Cape where his mother lived. They had two children there but in 1899 returned to Salisbury in Rhodesia, where my grandfather was born. They bought a farm just outside Salisbury and called it Good Hope Farm as they were hopeful for a better outcome this time around. Farming life for the early pioneers was very challenging. The family was very poor as markets had not been developed and farming had not yet taken hold. Sid had to do work in the town of Salisbury to make ends meet and it seems as if he really struggled. He built one of the first brick and mortar buildings in Salisbury which still stands in Harare today. He was also arrested for a farmers' protest at one stage and charged for being part of an illegal gathering. It was during this time that the Anglo Boer war started in October of 1899 but Sid would have nothing to do with that as he had many Afrikaans friends and family.  When Sid was in his early fifties a terrible thing happened to him. It has been said that he took poison mistaking it for quinine and ended up in Salisbury hospital where he died after three days. I think he might have committed suicide but the generation at the time did not talk of such things and the true story will always be hidden. I believe he must have carried some significant trauma from his time in the Matabele uprising and might have carried some guilt and shame at leaving his party after having been cut off by the hordes of attackers. Desertion carried a huge stigma and although he was exonerated he might have felt he left the heat of the fight too soon. Who knows if he struggled with depression or addiction to alcohol, those things were just not mentioned in those days. His wife lived all her life on Good Hope Farm, looked after by her oldest son’s family where she died after a long and happy life in the 1950s, honoured as a Rhodesian Pioneer who was part of the Moodie trek. My grand father told me that his mother had told him that "Groot Tom" Moodie, her uncle, had been so strong that he could pick up a man in a chair by stooping down and with one hand grasping the leg of the chair and picking him up. Malaria was stronger than him though and he died before he could even put down roots after the trek.

 

My Grandfather was born in Salibury in 1899 and grew up in this hard environment. In 1914 the first World War broke out and when my grandfather was 16 years old he enlisted and went to war with numerous other Rhodesian men. The enlistment rate for men in Rhodesia was 40%, even higher than the rate of enlistment of British men. I think this was because work was scarce for young men in Rhodesia at the time and the war served as an opportunity for some employment and adventure. Rhodesians and South Africans were famous for their great marksmanship as the frontier life had taught them well how to shoot. It has been claimed by one source that one group of 24 Southern African snipers wounded or killed over three thousand of the enemy during the First World War. Used to the wide open spaces and freedom to get on a horse and gallop across the veld, the trench warfare of the Western Front was a miserable thing for the South African/Rhodesian men. My Grand Father was little more than a boy when he went to war and told me stories of the terrible shelling that he had received from the Germans as he and his friends took cover in the freezing mud of the trenches that they had dug. My grandfather said that during the course of his service he had been completely covered by soil as the shells exploded and had to be dug out on three occasions. When the war came to an end in 1918 my grandfather returned to Rhodesia as an eighteen year old who had become a man in the most testing of circumstances. He returned as a war hero and had constant reminders of his valour and bravery from his community for many years until they slowly forgot about the war and moved on with life. I still find it amazing to have discussed with him his role in the First World War as it seems so distant and far off to this generation but in truth the First World War is only just outside of living memory.

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On 10/25/2017 at 4:48 AM, Newlife said:

After the 1896 uprising and countrywide unrest in the young country of Rhodesia my great-grandfather Sid and his wife lost all their possessions, burnt to the ground by marauders. Sid had been exposed to attack and had faced life threatening situations. He and his wife packed up, sold up and moved to Queenstown in the Eastern Cape where his mother lived. They had two children there but in 1899 returned to Salisbury in Rhodesia, where my grandfather was born. They bought a farm just outside Salisbury and called it Good Hope Farm as they were hopeful for a better outcome this time around. Farming life for the early pioneers was very challenging. The family was very poor as markets had not been developed and farming had not yet taken hold. Sid had to do work in the town of Salisbury to make ends meet and it seems as if he really struggled. He built one of the first brick and mortar buildings in Salisbury which still stands in Harare today. He was also arrested for a farmers' protest at one stage and charged for being part of an illegal gathering. It was during this time that the Anglo Boer war started in October of 1899 but Sid would have nothing to do with that as he had many Afrikaans friends and family.  When Sid was in his early fifties a terrible thing happened to him. It has been said that he took poison mistaking it for quinine and ended up in Salisbury hospital where he died after three days. I think he might have committed suicide but the generation at the time did not talk of such things and the true story will always be hidden. I believe he must have carried some significant trauma from his time in the Matabele uprising and might have carried some guilt and shame at leaving his party after having been cut off by the hordes of attackers. Desertion carried a huge stigma and although he was exonerated he might have felt he left the heat of the fight too soon. Who knows if he struggled with depression or addiction to alcohol, those things were just not mentioned in those days. His wife lived all her life on Good Hope Farm, looked after by her oldest son’s family where she died after a long and happy life in the 1950s, honoured as a Rhodesian Pioneer who was part of the Moodie trek. My grand father told me that his mother had told him that "Groot Tom" Moodie, her uncle, had been so strong that he could pick up a man in a chair by stooping down and with one hand grasping the leg of the chair and picking him up. Malaria was stronger than him though and he died before he could even put down roots after the trek.

 

My Grandfather was born in Salibury in 1899 and grew up in this hard environment. In 1914 the first World War broke out and when my grandfather was 16 years old he enlisted and went to war with numerous other Rhodesian men. The enlistment rate for men in Rhodesia was 40%, even higher than the rate of enlistment of British men. I think this was because work was scarce for young men in Rhodesia at the time and the war served as an opportunity for some employment and adventure. Rhodesians and South Africans were famous for their great marksmanship as the frontier life had taught them well how to shoot. It has been claimed by one source that one group of 24 Southern African snipers wounded or killed over three thousand of the enemy during the First World War. Used to the wide open spaces and freedom to get on a horse and gallop across the veld, the trench warfare of the Western Front was a miserable thing for the South African/Rhodesian men. My Grand Father was little more than a boy when he went to war and told me stories of the terrible shelling that he had received from the Germans as he and his friends took cover in the freezing mud of the trenches that they had dug. My grandfather said that during the course of his service he had been completely covered by soil as the shells exploded and had to be dug out on three occasions. When the war came to an end in 1918 my grandfather returned to Rhodesia as an eighteen year old who had become a man in the most testing of circumstances. He returned as a war hero and had constant reminders of his valour and bravery from his community for many years until they slowly forgot about the war and moved on with life. I still find it amazing to have discussed with him his role in the First World War as it seems so distant and far off to this generation but in truth the First World War is only just outside of living memory.

Enjoying! Waiting for the next Chapter

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OK Matrx, just for you, another chapter.

When the Matabelle rebellion was put down in the late 1800s the native population of Rhodesia settled down and the nation enjoyed a period of great happiness and peace for many decades. These are my impressions and I am sure not all will agree but I will place these things on record anyway. The tribes of Rhodesia were many and varied but the vast difference was between the Zulu colonists who were late arrivals and the Mashona who had been there longer.  Each tribe considered itself better than the other tribes among the Mashona  traditions and a strong caste system existed. The Ndebele of Zulu origin considered themselves the paramount race and enforced their superiority on the other tribes vocally and physically. Interestingly, during the raid on the Alice mine in which my great grandfather was present, it must be noted that an Ndebele man who had joined the Mashona for the battle  was heard to shout to the Mashona in Ndebele, “ Hey! How is it that I who am an Ndebele warrior must be up here  at my post without tobacco, bring me tobacco now!” The Mashona brought him tobacco quickly. It was widely accepted that if the Europeans had arrived later than they did in the history of the area the Ndebele would have committed genocide on the Mashona and the race might have disappeared completely. The Mashona seemed to be a very happy people with laughter and chatter punctuating their days. They were good at tasks that required short bursts of activity and enjoyed an exciting venture but did not like a task that was monotonous and did not like hard work. They loved soccer and would have a tendency to be fanatical over it. They were very courteous people and had elaborate customs and communications. They were very touchy and easily offended especially if it was by a tribe they considered inferior. Some small slight that would pass unnoticed by Europeans would be an absolute deal breaker. The exception would be a chief or somebody important in their estimation, they would submit to them without offence or receiving any slight. The tribal leaders were born into the position of chief from a royal family and remained there for life. They inherited the family spirits that were passed down from chief to chief and gave spiritual authority to the chief.  The chief would also inherit physical objects linked to the spirit world that gave him psychological and spiritual dominance over his people. The chief was able to discipline his people to the point of death at his whim, he was able to give away women in the tribe and life and death was in his hand and so it was custom not to take offence and to give blind obedience to the leader.  After the  1896 uprising was put down by the British South African police a European leader was seen in the same light as a chief and offence was not easily taken even when the white chap was totally ignorant of local customs. My great grand father and the original pioneers were fascinated by the local tribes and did much research to get to know them and their elaborate customs and adopted their place names for many sites in Rhodesia, they often celebrated the African culture with great interest.

My great grandfather established a farm in Rhodesia, which went to his oldest son after his death. As my grandfather did not inherit a farm he would have to make his way in the world and earn his own place. He worked for other men and gained skill in farming but would turn his hand to anything to make a living and so became a jack of all trades as was so often the case in the early days of Rhodesia. His life changed forever when he met his wife to be, who was on tour from Australia, and he said goodbye to Africa to go farming in Tasmania before he began to miss the place.

 

But that is another chapter.

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18 hours ago, Newlife said:

OK Matrx, just for you, another chapter.

When the Matabelle rebellion was put down in the late 1800s the native population of Rhodesia settled down and the nation enjoyed a period of great happiness and peace for many decades. These are my impressions and I am sure not all will agree but I will place these things on record anyway. The tribes of Rhodesia were many and varied but the vast difference was between the Zulu colonists who were late arrivals and the Mashona who had been there longer.  Each tribe considered itself better than the other tribes among the Mashona  traditions and a strong caste system existed. The Ndebele of Zulu origin considered themselves the paramount race and enforced their superiority on the other tribes vocally and physically. Interestingly, during the raid on the Alice mine in which my great grandfather was present, it must be noted that an Ndebele man who had joined the Mashona for the battle  was heard to shout to the Mashona in Ndebele, “ Hey! How is it that I who am an Ndebele warrior must be up here  at my post without tobacco, bring me tobacco now!” The Mashona brought him tobacco quickly. It was widely accepted that if the Europeans had arrived later than they did in the history of the area the Ndebele would have committed genocide on the Mashona and the race might have disappeared completely. The Mashona seemed to be a very happy people with laughter and chatter punctuating their days. They were good at tasks that required short bursts of activity and enjoyed an exciting venture but did not like a task that was monotonous and did not like hard work. They loved soccer and would have a tendency to be fanatical over it. They were very courteous people and had elaborate customs and communications. They were very touchy and easily offended especially if it was by a tribe they considered inferior. Some small slight that would pass unnoticed by Europeans would be an absolute deal breaker. The exception would be a chief or somebody important in their estimation, they would submit to them without offence or receiving any slight. The tribal leaders were born into the position of chief from a royal family and remained there for life. They inherited the family spirits that were passed down from chief to chief and gave spiritual authority to the chief.  The chief would also inherit physical objects linked to the spirit world that gave him psychological and spiritual dominance over his people. The chief was able to discipline his people to the point of death at his whim, he was able to give away women in the tribe and life and death was in his hand and so it was custom not to take offence and to give blind obedience to the leader.  After the  1896 uprising was put down by the British South African police a European leader was seen in the same light as a chief and offence was not easily taken even when the white chap was totally ignorant of local customs. My great grand father and the original pioneers were fascinated by the local tribes and did much research to get to know them and their elaborate customs and adopted their place names for many sites in Rhodesia, they often celebrated the African culture with great interest.

My great grandfather established a farm in Rhodesia, which went to his oldest son after his death. As my grandfather did not inherit a farm he would have to make his way in the world and earn his own place. He worked for other men and gained skill in farming but would turn his hand to anything to make a living and so became a jack of all trades as was so often the case in the early days of Rhodesia. His life changed forever when he met his wife to be, who was on tour from Australia, and he said goodbye to Africa to go farming in Tasmania before he began to miss the place.

 

But that is another chapter.

Thank you @Newlife

What makes this story fascinating for me ,is I learnt this history in my school days in Zim. The history textbooks' recounts of the arrival of the  pioneers ,and the subsequent wars are very shallow. They skip through a lot of details. Your posts have thrilling details which I enjoy especially because am of the  "Mashona " people.  I have do ask, Is the account from a journal ?

 

I hope you forgive me , but I will keep asking for more chapters :')

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6 hours ago, matrx said:

Thank you @Newlife

What makes this story fascinating for me ,is I learnt this history in my school days in Zim. The history textbooks' recounts of the arrival of the  pioneers ,and the subsequent wars are very shallow. They skip through a lot of details. Your posts have thrilling details which I enjoy especially because am of the  "Mashona " people.  I have do ask, Is the account from a journal ?

 

I hope you forgive me , but I will keep asking for more chapters :')


Schooled from 1995-2006:
I'm part of the generation where they changed everything every 2-3 years, and what we learnt in history is shocking in its disjointed irrelevance to our lives. We literally started in Gr 1 learning of Jan van Riebeeck and Rachel de Beer, and by St1 we were trying to learn about the new flag from a teacher who wasn't too sure either, then in St 3 we learnt a summary of 'Die Groot Trek' in a single year, with only a few stories given in detail but lacking an overview of the whole thing. Then we did a summary of the 'known' movements of the major black tribes in South Africa, but you could see that our teachers had no idea what they where teaching us, couldn't pronounce all the names, it was obviously as new for them as for us.(I say 'known' because looking back at it, I'm sure it was drawn up from some university level course in African Studies, adapted for 12 year old kids. And since we were the first group to learn it, nobody else apart from academia had the faintest clue) Then the next year they tried to teach us about different ancient civilisations a new one each month eg Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Aztec.. really I kid you not. And nobody ever got to WWI or WWII, or taught us what happened in the Anglo-Boer war. Nada. And all through the whole time the teachers where so confused about what they were supposed to teach, what they were allowed to teach.

As a result we just ignore history completely. Live as though nobody existed before our grandparents. (Not literally, but for all practical purposes that's what it feels like)

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Ah..uhm... I just realised that I forgot to make my point :blush-anim-cl: I actually wanted to say, thanks for putting this up, it's stories like this that are completely lacking in my generation.

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I'm aware that the viewpoint of this history might be skewed by the fact that it is told from the perspective of a very small group of people, but these were their impressions an so I'm sure it an accurate description of what they thought and felt. (They might not have been right in all cases or even politically very correct). Actually life in Rhodesia in the early days was very hard and many people left again after trying to settle, I seem to remember that someone said that in the time around the 1920s the number of original pioneers were under the number of twenty. The different races were so radically different in culture, customs, way of life, approach to problems, language that integration just would not have happened at all, there was no way the cultures could meet they were just too different in all respects. The people of my great grandfathers age were totally absorbed by the radical difference in lifestyle of the indigenous people and their close to the earth lifestyle was often glamourised, strereotyped, and sold to tourists as an interesting and positive curiosity. The farmers who did the best were the men who could relate to the population, get along with them, earn their respect and in many cases learn the language, contrary to modern opinion there was often plenty of goodwill from both sides. The tribal chiefs were honoured as leaders of their people and given authority to govern under the umbrella of the Rhodesian government. They were also paid a stipend from the government in recognition of this position of authority, while some men like my great grandfather did not receive any government help in the face of dire financial need, to the point of the farmers protesting and being arrested, I don't know for sure but I feel that this grave financial pressure and general hardship might have contributed to my great grandfathers early death. The tribal wars that identified the area were stopped and a strong law and order was brought into the area prohibiting crime for all population groups giving stability to all. The fact that this period of time was beneficial for the indigenous people is testified to by the growth of the indigenous population during this time. The population might have been as low as 300 000 before the arrival of the pioneers, death rates high due to natural hardship, sickness and tribal war. By 1927 the 300 000 had grown to be over three million, 1946 five and a half million, By 1970 half of the population was under fifteen years old showing an incredible numerical growth. Modern history does not reveal the real attitudes of the people on the ground a century ago, just the ideas of leaders and the political manipulation of world powers for greed and self gain. I sometimes think that over a century ago it was a real struggle to just survive and the differing cultures of Africa worked together fairly well as a simple matter of necessity. My great grand father and grandfather would be responsible for the administration of medicine for people in their area and would jump at an opportunity to render assistance as it was also an opportunity to gain credibility with their workforce. It would be an interesting exercise to time travel and speak to ordinary people of the time before politics and popular opinion coupled with astronomical population growth formed new and divisive arguments.

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History is not written by those who are right, but those who are left.- One of my late grandfather's favourite sayings. Attesting to the fact that the story gets told by other people later and changes as they see fit.

I think it is important to try to preserve stories as authentically as possible, even if it is with a lot of bias. That can be sorted out later, and become a point for discussion and thought. The more intact a story stays the more can tell you about the original teller.

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After the First World War my grandfather struggled to settle and worked in farming in Rhodesia. When he was in his thirties he met an Australian seven years younger than him who came from a wealthy Launceston family. She was on tour traveling the world and experiencing the different cultures of the time. This was to be my grandmother. Her father had come out to Australia in the 1800s and had set up a business selling dry goods, cordial, liquor, powdered chocolate, flour and all manner of staples to the area. He was an astute businessman and by the end of the century had established himself as a fairly wealthy merchant.  I see that the records show that he won a few best exhibits at the Royal Melbourne Show at the time. My grandmother went to school in Melbourne and went home to Launceston on her holidays. My grandparents got married and moved to Australia where my grandmothers’ father bought them a farm on King Island much to my Grandfathers delight. The delight soon turned to gloom when winter set in and the harsh climate blew gales and the icy rain fell horizontally for many months. My grandfather would return exhausted from a hard day’s work in winter and then have to chop wood to heat the house. He told me that he started the first Massey Ferguson tractor agency on the island. From what I gathered King Island was very remote in the 1940s and not very prosperous. My grandfather said the fishing was great, he said that he would just put a red rag on a hook when the fish were running and he would be sure to catch. I imagine these must have been the yellowtail kingfish he was talking about. He said they fought hard and were great sport to catch offshore. After a couple of miserable winters my grandfather began to reminisce about the wonderful sunny climate of Africa, the noisy happy people who lived there and the close knit farming community who enjoyed great fellowship with each other and they sold the farm on King Island and returned to Africa to purchase a farm there. My grandmother said goodbye to her parents whom she loved and whom she would never see again. The trip to Africa was by ship and not a journey one made frequently. My grandmother wrote to her parents every week about her African exploits which must have seemed exotic and glamorous to her family that she left behind in Launceston.  The family business was poorly managed by her younger brother who had a drinking problem and soon the business passed from the family as the mismanagement resulted in bankruptcy. A Melbourne family bought the Melbourne side of the business, operated it in my great-grandfathers’ name and it continued to be a household name. I feel a sense of history when I go shopping and see my great grandfathers name on the packaging of bicarb, split pease, lentils, beans and other dry goods. Today his name is in almost every supermarket I visit and I enjoy his legacy and the memory of his industrious life.

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When My grandfather and his wife settled in Rhodesia it was an idyllic time for them. 1940s, 50s 60s. They bought a farm on the outskirts of a game reserve and had constant forays of animals like lion and elephant coming after their cattle and crops. The farm workers seemed content to live on the property and many of them stayed for decades. They grew crops and had some stability from a regular pay check and weekly food rations, part of the food rations were parcels of meat, most of the farmers knew that good rations resulted in happy workers. Many many people were accommodated on farms and something like 40% of the population were given gainful employment and housing on the rural properties. They were free to wander the property, practise their customs as well as grow their own produce. The Rhodesian farmers were world leaders in crop production and won many international awards.  The farm workers would get very excited when lion attacked the cattle or elephant in the maize and would live for the sortie to go and chase them off back into the reserve.  My grandfather probably did shoot some elephant and lion but he was not really a hunter and his son, my father did not hunt at all. Visitors from all over the world would come and visit and stay on the farm and it must have felt like a grand adventure for my grandparents. In the 1960s the Rhodesian government required the farm to incorporate it into the reserve and took it with some financial compensation that my grandfather said was insufficient and he remained bitter about that for many years. They relocated to South Africa.

My father was a teacher in Rhodesia and when the bush war started getting more intense the men of Rhodesia would have to do six weeks on six weeks off military service. This was not sustainable and when I was just a little chap my parents relocated to South Africa. Coming from Rhodesia we could speak no Afrikaans at all which was not a problem for my parents but did become an issue for us kids. The government of Rhodesia froze the bank account as many people were leaving and they did not want financial collapse. So to leave Rhodesia in those days meant leaving with nothing and starting fresh from scratch. This was a bleak time for my family, my father did not have connections in South Africa and work was slow to take off. The stress on him was incredible and finances were non-existent for some years. We went without many luxuries and learnt to make do with what we had.  When it was time for me to go to school at the age of six I had not had any experience of preschool and hated it. The first year teacher was pretty ghoulish and she would have some neat tricks to get children to comply. She would dig her fingernails into a child’s scalp in the hairline so as to leave no marks and she would tap her fingernails hard emphasising every word. “I (tap) told(tap)  you(tap)  not(tap)  to(tap)  do (tap) your(tap) numbers (tap) there(tap), put(tap)  them(tap)  in(tap)  the(tap)  right(tap)  place!” She would also pull ears very hard with a bit of a sadistic twist. If our hair grew too long she would place the offending boy in front of the class on a chair and put clips in his hair and spend some time ridiculing them, “look at Jim his hair is just like a little girl, maybe we should call you Jemmima.”  I remember once she told us six year old kids that there had been a local car accident and the persons scalp had been left behind in the hole in the windscreen and when she went to look at the wreckage she saw a cat eating the scalp. I developed a strong case of skool siekte and managed to miss school for a solid six weeks.  I could get so worked up before school that I could vomit on command.  Finally graduating from her we found the headmistress not much better. She would have outbursts and throw the blackboard duster or other objects at pupils. She would talk to me in Afrikaans, “Skakel die lugte aan aseblief”  and then say “Did you seriously not understand one word, how stupid can you get?” I remember being very happy when my junior school days were over.  As a youngster in South Africa I would not have a clue that there was anything wrong with the country. I do remember seeing some young men at the beach in the 1980s who were missing limbs and my mother told me that they had been fighting for the country. Life out of school was very happy. We did not own a tv and played outside all day in perfect safety. The municipal tractor would do the rounds some afternoons and my brother and I would jump up into the black drivers’ lap and steer the tractor all over the suburbs. His name was Desmond and he always seemed happy to see us. Later on I made friends with the neighbours’ gardener whose name was John Gangu who was in his 40s and we would go on all night fishing trips down to the river, just the two of us, and it never occurred to me that anything was amiss. I don’t think anyone’s parents would let their kids do that today. John had a car, an old blue Ford and it was always a big discussion to persuade him to give up his Friday night party to go fishing with me, he was a party animal and had girlfriends everywhere, his wife was very grumpy about this. His wife would make vetkoek, he would put paraffin in his primus lamp and off we would go at five pm and come back the next day. I was always amazed at how quickly he could find firewood for our campfire, it seemed that in five minutes he had a major pile of wood assembled. The population where we lived was rural and possibly things were more political in the cities.

After junior school I went to a private boarding school and so saw many black and white kids who seemed pretty well integrated and so I never dreamed there was a rift in this beautiful country. The idyllic daydream was shattered in the year after school when I received call up to do my military service. “ Dan het ek mooi geleer om Afrikaans te praat, Boetie!”

But that is another story.

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When I left school and responded to the South African military conscription call up I realised just how deep the bubble was that I had been living in. In the early 1990s the country was poised on the brink of a civil war, we just did not realise that fact. My call up was one of the largest national call ups of young white men to ensure national stability in a very unstable time. Thousands of young white men climbed on buses all over the country to be transported to very well organised army bases in order to receive military training and a period of operational military service.  The staff sergeant who was in command of our bus was a likeable fellow who spent most of the six hour journey telling us how the girls loved men in uniform and how doing military service was the best thing in the world. I remember laughing because at school my friends and I would joke about life after school, saying “Hey, if you fall on hard times and you can’t find a job you could always join the permanent force!” We saw the army as a last resort occupation. Once we arrived at our base which happened to be in Ladysmith the organisation proceeded to strip us of our individuality and train us to become an organised fighting force. Basic training was relentless. Everybody got a shaved head, brown overalls, basic kit, sleeping bags, boots ect. People I had made friends with on the bus vanished as without hair everyone looked different. We spend hours sitting around in the sun with bald heads. We were placed in groups of twenty and assigned a barracks. Part of the training was to sleep deprive the new recruits and move them around to break down any bit of resistance so that the whole group was unquestionably compliant. Every hour during the night a corporal would march through the room banging two dustbin lids shouting, “ waker word! waker word! Staan op! Staan op! Ander man, ek het staan op gese!” and he would tip beds over and throw people out of bed. We would spend some time doing pushups and other exercises. This would happen over a period of days until everyone was ratty and short of sleep. We would also be relocated frequently. Shown into new accommodation, told to get ready for a big inspection and then just before the inspection moved to new accommodation.  The corporal would try and split the group during exercises during the day, saying, “Ja, manne, julle het mooi gedoen maar hierdie klien etter het nie die taak reg gedoen nie, Ander Man, jy is n matijie naaier, almal moet dit nou weer doen.” We would all turn on the individual with frustration and heap verbal abuse on the poor guy. The corporal would keep finding a new matjie naaier after every exercise until we realised that he would just keep doing this and we would have to work together to achieve the task in hand. We started to protect each other, helping the slow guys to keep up and accepting punishment as a group instead of competing as individuals. Members of the group who stood up to the corporal were celebrated and push ups and other punishments were taken more lightly. One time he said, “Do you see that tree on the horizon, run up to it and tell me what it says.”  Off we went, came back lined up, “What did it say?” “Niks, Korporaal” “Gaan weer! Daar gat julle!” After three times around the tree he said, “I’m sure you listened more carefully, what did the tree say this time?” “Corporal”, one of the brave souls responded, “the tree would like to speak to you in person, daar gat jy!”  After the initial phase of basics we were accommodated in tents due to such high numbers in the army base. One time we had just finished cleaning the ablution block for a major inspection, polishing all the brass fittings, cleaning all the windows and going to painstaking detail in ensuring that everything was perfect when two officers walked in with buckets of dirt and water and threw them everywhere leaving huge pools of mud over our pride and joy. Our response, “ Dankie, Korporaal! Dit lyk baie beter!”

During basic training we learned to shoot our R4s with accuracy, lob hand grenades, use tear gas, learn how to shoot the LMG and other weapons of war. During the training, the national anthem, Die Stem, would play over loud speakers and we would all have to stop what we were doing, face the flag, stand at attention and salute. I often asked myself, “Is this a weird dream? What the heck am I doing here?” After basic training I went to mounted infantry because I didn’t want to be stuck behind a desk, but that is another story.

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7 hours ago, Newlife said:

we would have to work together to achieve the task

 

Called team building the african way - wonder what the psychologists would say.

None of the forming, storming, norming speak - just pure physical discipline!

Change management at its best. Boys became men overnight!

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Yeah, you’d think that having heard all the stories before doing basics you wouldn’t fall for the same old nonsense.

 

Our corporal’s trick was to arrive with a whole lot of cigarette butts that he “found” outside our tent. Worked well until we worked it out. He had his own store of them which he recycled.

 

It got much better after basics and going to the border to be a ware grensvegter was a lot of fun.

 

Something I had great difficulty explaining to my fellow Witsies when I went back to Uni. Particularly the willowy arts students whose knickers I was trying very hard to get into. 

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When  I did my basic training in Ladysmith the group was about an even split English Afrikaans and everyone got on with each other during the period. After basics I applied for mounted infantry and was transferred to Potch. Now I had had very little exposure to Afrikaans during my high school years and lived in an English community and noticed straight away the difference in the boys who I encountered at Potch. There were some Afrikaans boys from the city, (one memorable chap from Capetown who was very funny) who were quite bilingual and mixed freely and had some fairly progressive attitudes to other races. There were some English boys from Natal who were quick witted and humorous and did not hang out much with the Afrikaans guys. Then there was a very special little bunch of Afrikaans boys who hung out together and had in common that they belonged to the AWB and predominately came from farming backgrounds. I did not perceive at the time that these guys also did not like the English and imagine that they had an oral tradition of recounting the Anglo Boer war from generation to generation. They did not speak to me or make eye contact and refused to speak English at all and so I had to sukkle to make myself understood. I was not used to experiencing such animosity as the community I grew up in was fairly well-connected, bilingual and functional. I got the impression they did not mix with English speaking people at all and got by in the remote farming communities by mixing with Afrikaans people only. I soon had a massive wake up call. One evening when standing in line to get the evening meal, some of my new friends were in the back of the line and motioned to me to keep them some seats at the four seater table when I had got my food so we could sit together and chat, no problem I gave them a thumbs up. I got my food and went to sit down at an empty table. The chap behind me who had seen the interaction came and sat down at the table opposite me. “Excuse me,”  I said, “would you mind if I reserved this table so that my friends could join me?” He stood up and leaned over me, “Soutp**l, vandag gaan ek  jou lekker opv*k.” “Jou enneglese blix*ms dink dat alles bewoord aan julle, vandag gaan ek jou regtig hard moer.” He stormed off. “What was that all about?” asked my friends when they came over, “I’m not sure,” I said, “I think he misunderstood me somehow, he seems very upset.” After supper I went over to his bungalow to apologise and try and make right with him. I walked in wearing a heavy bushjacket and boots and stuck my hand out. He was wearing a tshirt and some tracksuit pants and was barefoot. He came up to me smiling and I though, “oh this is not too bad!” Then he hit me in the head, hard. Turns out that he enjoyed boxing and I had walked right into his trap. It didn’t take long for me to realise that he had a very long reach and he was very light on his feet and blocking punches wasn’t going to work for long, so I stormed him tackled him to the ground, over tromels, under beds we rolled until we ended up outside, bam! He hit me a real good shot and I felt my scalp split, I stormed him again and got him in a chokehold, shut off his air and felt him go limp. “Klim van die man af, jou enngles donder, hy sal doodgaan, klim af, etter, voetsek met jou.” His mates pulled me off and pushed me away. When I walked into my bungalow my friends said, “Man! What happened to you, look at all the blood!” I had a cut in my scalp and it had bled well. I went up to the office and said that I ran into a window and went to the Doc for some stiches. Interestingly when I climbed up into the ambulance there was the guy who had attacked me, apparently he had slipped on the floor and had some concussion!

After that the AWB guys did not talk to me and I avoided them even when I ended up in the same platoon as some of them. They were a bunch of idiots and when we went into riot areas on horseback they made trouble in the communities by using their horses to barge doors in and some used to break windows as we rode past. When we had to put down riots by force one of the boys who had lost his parents in a terrorist attack in Rhodesia would remind the boys to hurt as many people as they could in the encounter.  Our lieutenant   was an incredibly stupid man and he allowed some of this to go on and even encouraged it at times. After some pretty lousy behaviour by our platoon in a troubled township the locals were so angry that they launched an ambush on our patrol one night and I didn’t blame them. The lieutenant  fell off his horse when the shots were fired and he had to run on foot to catch up to the platoon as they galloped down the road into the darkness. I did have a laugh about that. None was injured. I must admit that I didn’t try to miss him when he fell under my horses’ hooves. There was a conspiracy between the members of the AWB in my platoon and some higher rank and they stole cases of rifle grenades and boxes of ammunition to use in the impending civil war that they were convinced was about to happen. The military police caught them and they ended up in military detention and so when we had our passing out parade they were still sitting in custody for another year. I shudder to think what would have happened had this element been successful in sparking a civil war. But most of the guys I served with were moderate and got along with everyone, black or white. I remember some boys had been on leave to their homes in Johannesburg and one the way back had broken down outside Soweto where they had been attacked and nearly killed but for the chance arrival of some policemen. They told me that their attackers had repeatedly said, “Where are the guns, we want your guns.” Oh yes , I had been living in a bubble, things were not as nice as I had thought they were.  

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After my national service I returned to my bubble of ignorance around South Africa’s troubled politics. I did not have much time for tv and even tv between the years of 1990 -1994 was censored so as not to alarm the public. I started a small business in my early twenties which did really well and kept me very busy. I did not know, and it came as a shock, as I am sure it will to many others reading this, to realise that the time I thought was the most stable was actually very dangerous and unstable for the country of South Africa. From July 1991- June 1993, five hundred and eighteen, 518, South Africans were killed by security forces (SAP) in public and in daylight mostly as part of public order policing against protests. There were a few massacres that I never even knew about at all. In one year from July 1992-June 1993 200 police members were killed in violent incidences. In one month alone in July 1993 six hundred and five people lost their lives due to political violence. In August 1993 seven hundred and five South Africans lost their lives due to political violence. Between the years of 1990 to 1994, fourteen thousand, 14000, South Africans lost their lives due to political violence. The shocking reality is that the underlying reason for this violence has not gone away but lies dormant waiting to rear its brutal head again. The reason for this violence was what was called “faction fighting” between the up and coming political parties seeking positions of power in the new dispensation. The Inkatha Freedom Party even threatened civil war and huge bloodshed if it was not included in the negotiations. Most white people think violence is aimed at them because we only hear about incidents that affect our community or our social connections. Truth be told the violence runs much, much deeper than a white black divide and affects population groups who were at war long before the west arrived in Africa. During the Rhodesian bush war the total fatalities in the entire 17 year war came to twenty thousand. “That’s a huge number!” I hear someone say. Really? That includes members of military units and civilians on both sides, the total death toll of the Rhodesian Bush war was twenty thousand over nearly two decades.  When President Mugabe took office in 1980 the death toll among one population group, the Ndebele, was well over twenty thousand in only three years. Bearing in mind that this death toll was delivered to a civilian population in peacetime who were defenseless, having no firearms at all. The tribal memory does not forget and blood feuds in Africa do not stop with the passing of time. The deeds that Mizilikazi and Lobegula perpetrated on the Mashona before the advent of the Rhodesian pioneers in the 1890s were not forgotten.   I remember being on holiday in Zimbabwe around 1984 and watching tv. There was a political advert after a program. A scene in which a car crashed. In the next scene a coffin being loaded into a hearse. The narrator spoke in an ominous voice that chilled my twelve year old soul, “This is one way to die, to vote against ZANU PF is another way to die.” “Vote ZANU PF and live!” I realise now that this was a literal threat. If murder of this magnitude had happened to our friends and family it would have been never forgotten and would be all we spoke about. Because it happened to some else far away and had propaganda protection, I never even knew about it. Even as my family were on holiday in this gem of a country enjoying the game parks and hospitality, innocents were being brutalised and killed not far away. I was an ignorant young man, not realising the power and primacy of the forces at play in Africa. A protected youngster who had never been exposed to raw violence or unrestrained cruelty and the lawless nature of criminals over vulnerable communities. I was brought up to believe that good always triumphs and that naughty people always get punished by a law and an order that was sane and just and far reaching. Very Naïve , thinking that most people must feel like me and have good and noble intentions.  I have come to realise that tribalism is one of the most powerful, primal forces in Africa, a force that does not look to be weakening but gaining momentum as individuals with influence fan the flames of tribal identity to create momentum to use tribalism as a mindless vehicle to rise to prominence and wealth against the flow of sanity, decency or the rule of law.  I was out of touch thinking that with a tweak here or a nudge there the heart of tribalism in Africa could be changed.  In 1998 I had an experience that awakened me to the heartbeat of Africa, but that is another story.

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Having grown up in South Africa I came to appreciate the natural beauty of the country. I spent years sitting in solitude on magnificent rivers, or hiking mountains, visiting wilderness areas, going on camping adventures. Life as a youth was idyllic and I can see how privileged I was to grow up in Africa without being forced to become polarised by politics. In the rural area where we lived people were people and I would often attach myself to a group of young black kids and we would fish together all afternoon, they spoke no English and I understood rudimentary Xhosa and so we would get along quite well.  The local black township was not out of bounds for us and we just saw it as another suburb of the town where we lived. My brother and I would often ride our bikes through the township as a shortcut home or a shortcut to the river. I was known by many of the black people who lived there and I knew many of them.

So it came as a shock to serve the country in military conscription and see masses of people angry and discontent. It began to dawn on me that these guys were not happy.  After having half bricks and stones thrown and the retaliation of teargas and charging the crowd with horses one came to the realisation that there was a fair bit of hatred between the groups. It was a massive wakeup call. I had a friend who had become a policeman who had died in unpleasant circumstances and it troubled me to hear how he had died and what happens after death. I had not considered the finality of death, had not been confronted by unpleasant evidence of cruelty and the realisation that some people were handing out death as a routine lifestyle. When I left the army I immersed myself in work and got busy but had a sneaking suspicion that something was missing. I lived hard, drank hard and had multiple relationships at that time. A member of my family tried to impress upon me the existence of God but I was not interested.  The Church seemed to have no answers, the brand of traditional Christianity I grew up with seemed stuffy, legalistic and excluding. I did not feel that my chosen lifestyle would be acceptable and I did think that the Church was made up of a bunch of people who made their own rules. I was never, ever going to commit to join an organisation whose members had more issues than the average man on the street.  The Christians I knew did not seem to have anything special or different. In 1998 my life took a turn for the worst.  A relationship I was invested in failed badly, my work suffered and I went into debt. I ended up feeling depressed, grief stricken and had nothing, no qualifications, no job, no money and did not like my chances. I began to investigate the possibility of supernatural intervention of some sort. I questioned a member of my family, “You believe in God don’t you?” “Well when you pray and speak to Him, does He answer you ever?” they said, “No, I don’t hear Him speak to me it’s just enough to know that He is out there somewhere.” I said, “Well, that’s a bunch of nonsense, if you never get a response to your prayers it’s because He does not care, or God does simply not exist, in fact there is a strong possibility that He does not exist, you might as well believe in the easter bunny or father Christmas.”  “And,” I went on, “If He does not care enough to answer you then He does not care and He might as well not exist for all the help you might receive. I need help today and I need to have Him answer my prayers or not at all!” “Well,” they said, “there is a Bible, go and read that and make up your own mind.” So I read something from the Old Testament and thought about it for a while. Then I prayed, “God if you are real I would like to meet you tonight, if you reveal yourself to me I will follow you for the rest of my life. If you don’t answer this prayer then I take it you do not exist and I will continue on my own.”  I waited, no response. “Oh well,” I thought, “It’s not real.” And I went to bed.  When I stepped over the threshold of the door to the room I was sleeping in there seemed to be a strange static feeling in the air. My body seemed to be heavier than usual and I sank to my knees on the carpet. My experience was as if there was a stranger in the room, some presence I was unfamiliar with and my attention was gripped. I was facing the window and an orange, pinkish light shone through the curtains from the outside and made the shape of a black cross on the fabric. At the same time I felt a strange sensation within me, like a bubbling in my heart. It felt like bubbles were slowly rising within me and I felt a strange sensation of peace, quite a weird experience. I went to sleep that night and slept well. The next morning I was due to leave and travel four hours to the town where my father lived. It was a Monday morning. I first went to a little stone Church that was empty and knelt at the front by myself, “God, I believe that you were in my room last night but I don’t believe that I really know you, could I meet you today please.” Again the strange bubbling sensation in my heart and I just felt that something was coming. When I got to my destination on that Monday by some strange chance there was an evangelist holding a meeting that night only. He was a black man who had preached all over Africa and had been written about in the newspapers. Apparently he had prayed for a man in Zimbabwe who had died and the man had risen from the dead. Well, I felt that this meeting was for me and I went along. The message was not gripping, I don’t remember much of it. After the message he invited people to come up for prayer and so I did. I was standing behind a lady who was receiving prayer for some illness. When the evangelist was praying for her he said, “I rebuke this condition in Jesus name.” When he said, “Jesus name,” I was thrown to the ground by some supernatural force. I remember getting up, thinking that someone had hit me, but there was no one around. He called me, “You need Jesus, would you like to meet Him now?” “Yes, yes, I would.” I felt unsteady, shaky and my limbs seemed to be lighter than normal. His wife touched my hand and I felt a warmth travel up my arm and into my chest cavity. At that moment I became aware of many things that I had done that had been wrong and found myself apologising. “It’s over,” said the evangelist, “It’s forgiven, your past is dealt with.” When I came to I was lying on the floor. I got up and went to sit down. Whenever this man prayed and said the name of Jesus, my body would shake and power seemed to be released. I wanted to go up for prayer again because this connection seemed so strong, so I asked God to tell me what He wanted me to do with my future. The evangelist said, “Somebody needs to come to the front and you know who you are.” I found myself approaching the front, “Put your hands up,” the evangelist said. I did and he began to pray in another language.  I found that in a split second it felt as if a light began to shine inside me and the power of God seemed to fill me to the degree that I thought I would burst. I heard the words, “I HAVE CALLED YOU AND I HAVE CHOSEN YOU AND YOU SHALL SERVE MY CHURCH AND YOU SHALL SERVE MY PEOPLE.” The power seemed to increase and at one time I thought I would burst and let out a great shout but the sound of the shout seemed far away and I was not aware that it had come from me until they told me about it afterwards.

Well this experience changed my life. I found that I was now welcomed into the lives of Africans through an African because of the common bond of faith in God. I had no doubt as to what my future would hold and began to study and throw myself into the work of Christianity with great satisfaction. I am grateful to have experienced this and have many experiences since. One of the highlights was to go on a trip to Zimbabwe in 2007 and stay with people in remote villages and realise that these were the great grandchildren of the people that my great grandfather was at war with and now we were eating out of the same pot and sharing life together.

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After the life changing experience of coming to faith in 1998 everything seemed different. In many ways it felt for me that I had only really started living after this big experience, or that I had been living in black and white and now suddenly had full colour switched on.  I found that a joy seemed to have penetrated my life that could not be switched off. I often felt like singing and found myself laughing a lot. I still went through difficult times but felt that I had an enormous capacity to handle the discomfort of disagreeable circumstances. Something deep within me had changed in that brief encounter in Church and I remember saying to someone as I walked out of the evening service, “What just happened to me?” “You just got born again my friend, that’s what happened!”  Well I spent the next three years studying theology to figure out in theory what had happened in reality and I could not help myself from telling the story to any who would listen. I became an ordained minister in 2002 and planted a Church in South Africa in 2004. Much of my work was in the townships in South Africa and I got to understand first hand from people on the ground how serious the situation in South Africa really is.  Many times when holding outreach meetings in tents I found myself warning the congregation about the difficult times that were coming as corruption became entrenched. “When you left apartheid and entered into the new South Africa, it was not a leaving of Egypt and entering into the promised land, it was a leaving of Egypt and entering into a wilderness experience, prepare your heart, don’t allow yourself to be shaken, tough times are coming.”  This message was well received as people  grappled with reality. I found the situations in the townships dire. In some communities up to 80% of the adult population were total alcoholics. I worked with a youth group of around 300 young people and when we had a youth meeting around sexual abuse and prevention it transpired that most of them had been violated. Many youngsters were fatherless, not even knowing who the man was who fathered them. Many times when I worked with women it was to help them through issues of forgiveness related to a man that had hurt them in some way. Among the white congregants were stories and experiences of robbery, burglary, assault and murder. We can pretend that these things are not happening but reality tells the truth. People would often ask me why my God did not change the situation and would be surprised when I told them that there were some things that God will not do. God will never force people to do something against their will. Most of the suffering we see comes from the hand of man against their fellow man. I believe God is anguished over these things as much as we are but He will never withdraw the gift of choice from humanity. People are free to behave as they want but will be held to account in the end.

I got married and began to think about our children. It is fine for me to be called to ministry in Africa but I must not remove the opportunities that my children might have to choose a different future. In 2008 my wife and I began to pray that God would open doors for us to travel and settle overseas. It would have to be supernatural as we did not have any qualifications as such and absolutely no cash at all, as we had a poor congregation.  We continued in ministry and raised up an associate Pastor to take over the Church. Our first child was born in 2011. We had prayed every night for three years for the door to open to overseas travel and early in 2012 God opened the door. But that is another story.

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