Stella Branca was born in South Africa and attended the

University of Cape Town. Married to an Italian

sweetheart, they had three children. She was a member
of the prestigious Afrikaans Writers Guild. Her interests
include portrait painting, sculpture, opera and
languages. She holds a 3rd dan karate black belt.

Dedication

For my father, with thanks to John Beecroft, Willem Branca

and Belinda Branca Van Fleet, and in loving memory of Jon
Branca.
My appreciation also to the security guard who made the
records of the Stormjaers treason trial available to me.

Work while the day lasts, make the people of South Africa
great it does not matter what their descent is, as long as
they regard South Africa as their country.

Last words of pres. Steyn of the Free State Republic,

quoted by General Christiaan de Wet at the presidents
funeral, 1916.(1)

(1) General de Wet (Eric Rosenthal), p. 273

Copyright Stella Branca (2015)

The right of Stella Branca to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims
for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British
Library.

ISBN 978 1 78455 079 0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978 1 78455 081 3 (Hardback)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2015)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.
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E14 5LB

Printed and bound in Great Britain

Foreword
This true story of an Afrikaner family is rich in intrigue,
espionage and treachery, from the end of the Anglo-Boer War
until 1984. Although not an official biography, the life story of
the remarkable figure later known as the lion of the North
West reads like a gripping novel.
The strong thread of Afrikaner nationalism runs throughout.
However, the central characters quick temper, the lively
political meetings of yesteryear and the irrepressible sense of
humour of the Namaqualand people provide many lighter
moments.
After his studies overseas, the young pastor Willem
Steenkamp Doctor in Theology as well as Philosophy is
appalled by circumstances at home.
Tens of thousands of women and children in the vanquished
Transvaal and Orange Free State had died in British
concentration camps: farms had been razed, there was no food,
livestock or work for dispossessed farmers. Many of them were
practically illiterate. Their language Afrikaans had been
banned. Some worked in road gangs, others laboured deep
underground. They formed a new class: the poor whites.
Dr. Steenkamp and his missionary wife Nettie determine to
spend their whole life in the betterment of these fellowAfrikaners and their beloved, tattered orphan of a language.
He turns his back on the world of books, declines many
calls and establishes himself in his thirstland a huge area of
people impoverished by repeated droughts and the after-effects
of the war; spiritually neglected and half-forgotten by the
government and the rest of the world.
There were no doctors, hospitals or telephones, ignorance
and intermarriage held sway as well as a deep-seated bitterness
towards everything English. But the greatest need was for
irrigation schemes, boreholes and, later, diamond rights.
Dr. Steenkamps parishioners elect him as their Member of
Parliament, where he instantly causes controversy. He is a fiery

and moving orator. He unhesitatingly clashes with political

leaders: a perverse fighter, the poor mans Don Quixote.
He must be destroyed.
He obtains results but is unprepared for the toll his
remarkable successes and shattering defeats would exact on
their lives, sometimes with drastic aftermath.
Imprisonment, court cases, ridicule and slander. He and his
son obtain medical degrees overseas together but he is thwarted
in his greatest ambition to return to his congregation as a
medically-qualified pastor. His son Willempie is framed for
illicit diamond buying
Even his actions during the shooting of the infamous
Bushman Koos Sas, the photograph then taken by the twelveyear-old Willempie with his box camera and his professional
interest in Bushman bones, found a derogatory echo more than a
century later in David Kramers controversial musical The
Ballad of Koos Sas, in which Sas was depicted as a
misunderstood freedom fighter.
The Maverick illustrates inter alia the epic battle between
opposing political leaders Boer War generals who cherished
the same ideals for the country but whose methods were
tragically diverse.
Also apparent is a striking similarity between the rise of the
Afrikaners and that of the black population, as well as the
futility of all efforts at building South Africa where old
undercurrents still run deep into a united nation.

Chapter 1
A Ravished Land Unites
In a small bedroom in the heart of South Africa a tall, well-built
young clergyman held his wifes small foot, pressing hard into
his chest, and agonised while the doctor struggled to bring their
baby into the world. His wife whimpered and his soul shrank.
She never cried. Was he going to lose them both?
Thank you, Dominee, you can do no more, the doctor
said. He was exhausted, as much by the husbands suffering as
that of the young woman.
Willem left the room with heavy heart. She had been in
labour throughout this terrible night and was at the end of her
strength. Out of sight, he alternately wept and prayed.
A dog barked at the moon, and its ode was taken up by
another some distance away. Pretoria slept.
Willem walked into his scantily furnished study. On a small
table rested an enormous Bible, six inches thick, its leather
covers joined by brass clasps. It had been in the family for
several generations, and births and deaths since Willems Dutch
forebears were recorded in it in fine copperplate. He turned to
the back, where a special page contained family portraits. He
looked at a wedding photograph of himself and his waspwaisted bride.
He had met the small-boned, auburn-haired young woman
two years before, when, newly ordained, he had arrived at
Beaconsfield as assistant minister. She had been the organist
and it was love at first sight. They were married shortly
afterwards.
His eyes brimmed. They were burning from all the tears he
had shed. He threw himself on his knees before the chaiselongue.
From the depths of the house a clock chimed four. The notes
dropped into the chasm of his soul, feathers in the windless
night.

Oh God! he wept. Maker of the universe ... our Father.

He could think of no new words but the endlessly repeated
supplication. Please spare my Nettie ... without her I cannot
live!
For hours, since it had become evident that the confinement
was in all probability a matter of life and death, he had
contemplated the bleakness of life without her. Long ago, with
his conversion, he had accepted completely and with finality
what was willed for him. But at the thought of doing his lifes
work without her support, his courage failed him.
His thoughts crept into his prayer.
What right have I to expect God to deliver me? Yet how
many times has He delivered me? Why? Why? What is the only
answer? Out of pity; compassion. Will He not have pity now?
I know that you hear me, Lord, he whispered, his head
buried in his arms. Ive known that since the first time I ran
after brother Kaspers straying sheep, so important in our
poverty, and I was frightened by the thunder and lightning and
the lowering sky. In your wonderful mercy, the better to guide
me in my efforts to serve you, you have seen fit to give me
Nettie, my haven of peace, the angel on my lifes path ...
Without her I shall fail.
He drew a shuddering breath. There was no sound save the
hammering of his heart.
How often, despite his innermost convictions, had a
devastating doubt struggled with these convictions for
supremacy? Could there be a worse affront to a God whom he
feared as he loved? How often had it left him trembling and
blighted with sorrow, conscious of another terrible retrogression
in his search after God?
I am not worthy of the dust at your feet, Lord. But my life
is yours. Accept my love and my puny faith and my efforts to be
a Christian. Help me fight my filthy temper and my infernal
pride so that your will may be done through me ... so that I may
use my accomplishments to your glory and in the service of my
fellow men. Tears coursed warmly down his cheeks.
Oh Lord, if I can reach past sins of such magnitude, if you
see fit to use me, give me a sign ...!

In the bedroom, the doctor wiped away the slime from the
babys face and breathed into its mouth: rapping the little
buttocks had brought no response. Still there was no visible
result. Desperately he splashed first cold and then warm water
on the limp little body.
The babys mouth opened wide and it sucked in air. There
came a thin cry.
Willem leapt up and plucked open the bedroom door. Its
over, said the doctor, perspiration damming up in the furrows
on his forehead. The child will live.
Nettie. He smoothed the wet hair from her brow, kneeling
at her bedside.
She smiled. We have a little boy, Willie, she whispered.
The doctor wrapped the blood-streaked baby in a blanket.
Then he busied himself about his patient, and the father came
over to look at his son.
His breath caught. One small eye was a bloody weal; the
instruments had left bruises on the forehead. An ear was torn
and the skin of the babys throat was broken and bleeding.
Will the child be all right? he asked with trembling voice.
Yes, said the doctor, and looked over his shoulder.
Congratulations, Dominee. He smiled.
Willem Steenkamp felt for the first time the tiny weight of
his son in his arms. My little man, he whispered. He
examined, wonderingly, every feature of the babys face. It bore
a marked resemblance to himself.
Carefully he walked to the study, where he placed the crying
child on the chaise longue. He knelt and breathed his thanks,
conscious of the total inadequacy of words.
He listened to the babys voice.
His sign.
He is yours, Lord, to do with as you please, he whispered.
Let him become what you think fit, even if it be a cobbler. Or
if you want to take him away ... May your will be done.
Your wife is not a strong person, Dominee, said the
doctor afterwards, a cup of steaming coffee in his hands.
Not physically, perhaps, said Willem, but she has
courage of which you cannot conceive.

She is a missionary, you know. Together we ministered to

the poor people in the concentration camp outside Kimberley.
We took them candles, soap, blankets and clothing donated to
the Dames Hulp Comit by the public.
Pitiful.
The worst was when the children died in our presence ...
one emaciated little boys last words to Nettie were, Auntie,
give me a piece of bread...
Willem saw again the childs huge eyes, already dimming in
death, pleading. He thought of the miracle of his little sons
birth. What if it had been his child?
As a student, he had not experienced the horrors of the
recently-ended Anglo-Boer war, when South African farmers
untrained in military manoeuvres but crack shots and fiercely
patriotic had taken on the might of the entire British army
rather than surrender their gold-fields. The two republics, which
were situated North of the two South African provinces under
British rule, were populated mainly by pioneers of Dutch
descent who had trekked inland, preferring the perils of an
untamed country to the harness of British colonialism.
But Willems whole life now was permeated with the
horrors of the aftermath. A scorched-earth policy had left the
countryside of the two republics devastated and the farms in
ruins. But what had forced the farmers eventually to surrender
their arms even those who had opted to fight to the bitter
end was the deaths, in newly-established concentration
camps, of tens of thousands of their women and children, from
starvation and disease.
My wife devoted her evenings to those poor,
unsophisticated Boer illiterates who had left the ruins of their
farms to seek employment across the border, teaching them to
read and write, Willem continued. What is to become of
them? Willems cup tilted, his coffee forgotten.
They bring their camp stools and candles to the small
church where I preach: dispossessed, humiliated, fearful;
thankful for soup kitchens and old clothes. Every evening
during their devotions they pray for the restitution of the two
Boer republics. They are referred to as poor whites. Our

people. The descendants of those fearless free spirits who had

carved out a niche for themselves in a harsh country, Willem
thought, who had devolved their own language from the parent
Dutch; who had come to be referred to as Afrikaners.
Willem stared at the doctor, his mind on the misery he had
seen in the slum areas of Johannesburg heart of the gold-fields
the Insanitary Area where Afrikaner squatters in the white
location or ghetto had had numbers painted on their shelters;
where they lived among blacks, Chinese and Indians in such
squalor that bubonic plague had broken out.
Others lived in the back streets, selling off their furniture to
pay for foetid rooms. But even they were better off than those
who had squatted on the brick fields before the war, where
human waste had been dumped into old clay pits which formed
stinking pits whenever it rained.
I have recruited some of the unemployed into a brass band
to keep them out of mischief, Willem continued. They play on
street corners and they sometimes earn a few pennies. I listen to
them and my heart breaks. He stirred his coffee.
The doctor looked at the strained young face with its welldefined features large, well-formed nose and belligerent
mouth and was thankful that the piercing grey eyes were no
longer boring into his. He was at a loss for words.
It is the result of the war, the doctor said lamely. The
sooner we unite to rebuild the country, the better for the people.
Botha is right.
Botha is asking too much, said Willem, suddenly aware of
the fragrance of the coffee and his own fatigue. He drank.
Generals Louis Botha and Jan Smuts had led the Boer militia
with considerable success and now spearheaded the broken
people in efforts to establish some sort of order. The only
possibility of doing so, they said, was not to resist the British
governor in his efforts to rebuild the country.
I was a student during the war, he continued. My only
war-time suffering was when, for some reason, I was arrested as
a spy and imprisoned on my way home for the vacation. It was
my bad luck that we lived in the Cape Colony, under British
rule. Of course, any association with the cause of the two Boer

republics was regarded as treason and carried the death penalty.

When I tried to get away I got a bayonet in the thigh and only
narrowly escaped being shot.
The doctor made no comment.
The Boer forces under Gen. Smuts had invaded the Cape
and there was fighting in our district. With postal services
disrupted I had no means of communication with home and no
money. I was confined to the university town where I was
studying and had to report twice daily to the police. I would
have starved, had not a Jewish shopkeeper made me a loan.
That was the extent of my suffering, Doctor, but that
together with what I saw in the concentration camps and the
misery I witness today suffices for me. Botha I am well
acquainted with and Gen. Smuts is my friend. I have the greatest
regard for them both. But I cannot agree with their policy ... and
how can these poor, broken people? One cannot serve two
masters!
Reconciliation will not be easy, said the doctor, but it
must be done if the country is to survive.
In the bedroom, the baby cried, and Willem got rid of the
doctor with ill-concealed haste.
Later, when he held his little son in his arms again and
studied the small face, he was reminded of his dedication of the
child to the Lord. He wondered what life held in store for his
son, whom he already loved with a passion. It was not a good
time to bring a child into the world.
The shattered country was steeped in despair: the
countryside had been razed. Livestock had practically
disappeared. Despondent farmers had returned not only to
demolished houses and blackened farms, but had had to deal
with the worst drought in fifty years, followed by floods and
locusts. In the cities their inferiority to blacks was brought home
to them.
No, it was not a good time to raise children. He himself had
been raised in poverty. He did not want the same for his child.
There was a long, uphill road ahead for everybody
concerned. Lord Milner, governor of the two vanquished Boer
republics, had to build up the land: repatriate Boer exiles,

rehabilitate prisoners of war and return tens of thousands of

women and children who had survived the concentration camps.
He had started with large-scale aid to agriculture. He had
appointed experts and established agricultural colleges. In time
this would undoubtedly bear fruit. But for the impoverished
Boers the need was immediate. For six months they had lived
from hand to mouth: then Lord Milner imported frozen beef and
canned rabbits.
It did little to alleviate the situation.
To the governor the Boers were an enigma. But then, how
could he be expected to understand why rabbit meat was
unacceptable to people who had been used to fat meat twice a
day: to whom death by the bayonet or lance was equivalent to
that of a slaughtered animal and the enemy delicacy oysters
could only be tinned birds intestines?
The Boers, again, could not forgive the unfair manner in
which the governors relief funds had been allocated. Or the
other matters.
Farmers were allotted 25 across the board; handsuppers
collaborators and foreign adventurers, however, were
rewarded with 4m. Dutch was banned from schools; a violation
of the Peace Treaty! and those who spoke Afrikaans its
simplified form; a kitchen language, as Lord Milner called it
were persecuted. When he imported Chinese labour to replace
that of blacks now unwilling to work for the lower post-war
wage for the Boers it was the last straw ... no matter that it
obtained for Milner a crucially needed 30m. loan from hardpressed mine owners.
Willem had attended the three-day conference addressed by
Gen. Louis Botha of the ex-Boer republic of Transvaal, where
gold had been discovered. Louis Botha, former field
commandant of the Boer militia and Member of the Transvaal
Assembly, had large violet-blue eyes under almost saturnine
dark brows. His hair was closely clipped. He was a powerfully
built man with a natural authority and charisma and was the
very embodiment of the Boers fiercely independent spirit the
man who had inspired his unconventional army and had taken

them past the limits of physical and emotional endurance. But

the message he had brought was disconcerting.
We must rebuild our country and educate our people, hed
said. If we all pull together we can do it. Unity is strength! But
if the war has taught us anything, it is that we are fair game for
any overseas power seriously attempting to take our country!
We need, however bitter the thought, the protection of the
British Empire.
There had been a sudden silence.
Hed raked them with his eyes. And that we cannot achieve
as an enemy. Neither this British government nor ourselves will
achieve anything at all while we are consumed with hatred for
one another, living in day-to-day tension. While we must fight
for our language, fight for our people, fight for our
independence as a dominion, we must try and forgive those of
us who acted as scouts for the enemy. However hard it is to do
so, we must extend the hand of friendship to the English. Then
work together like ants to build up a great South Africa!
They have got to believe me, Botha thought, in the dead
silence. What if I fail?
The meeting, despite the emotional upheaval, had achieved
political solidarity: they had established a peoples party, and
Louis Botha their spokesman. They carried with them the ailing
Transvaal presidents good wishes, whispered from his exile in
a Swiss telegram. Later, they made their way to the British
governor to present their resolutions.
The men had walked in silence; in silence the people on the
pavements had watched.
How must I forgive the back-stabbers who betrayed us?
one of the delegates had said to Willem afterwards. How must
I befriend the English? Did they not fire my house and farm
even while my wife and children were looking on? Who was it
that caused her and the baby to die of hunger?
Willem had not replied.
I will never forget, the delegate had said, nor will my
children, nor my childrens children.

Life was difficult enough, Willem thought, his eyes playing

over his little sons features, without a child being burdened
with that sort of bitterness.
He would smooth his childs path as far as he was able, in
Gods mercy.
The afternoon following the babys birth a magnificent brown
horse breasted a rise. The rider, a tall, well-built man with light
blue eyes and a handlebar moustache, reined in his mount.
Hamilton, he said softly, pronouncing it as an Afrikaans word.
And the British generals namesake stood motionless as his
master raised his binoculars to his eyes.
Over the crunch of his horses hooves, his keen ears had
detected a faint drumming sound. Now he sat with the vast
plains of the Bushmanland before him, delighting in the wild
beauty of a herd of wild ostriches in full stride, their feathers
riding the breeze. Bushmanland and the adjoining
Namaqualand, named after the indigenous people, were semidesert regions on the West coast in the northernmost reaches of
the Cape Colony. While the vanquished Transvaal and Free
State Republics were plagued by drought, Namaqualand and
Bushmanland had received good rains and the ostriches giant
toes beat down on waves of grass.
Tobias Beukes drank in the sight. During the dreary months
of his confinement in a Cape Colony jail he had yearned for the
vast quiet and unrestricted reaches of the Bushmanland with its
herds of large and small antelope and other game.
He had thought never to see it again.
He had joined the Boer fighters after Gen. Smuts, with his
abortive invasion of the Cape Colony, had had the effrontery to
beard the British lion in his den. But he had fallen prey to the
typhoid which had felled more Boers and British troops than the
ravages of war, causing him to drop from Hamiltons back. The
retreating Boer commando had transported him to a farm in
such crazy haste that the springless wagon in which he lay had
twice spilled him onto the veld. He was more dead than alive
when the British arrived and took him prisoner.

Tobias breathed deeply, sucking in the crisp May air. He

would remember forever the foetid air in the small room where
he was interrogated ... I am a Free Stater, not a Namaqualander,
he had lied even in his delirium. No, I did not join the Boer
commandos. I came down to Namaqualand with them. I am a
Free Stater. The officers face swimming into the scenes of his
delirium: I am a Free Stater, not a rebel.
Rebel Cape Colonists were shot.
He had somehow recovered in jail.
Until your time is come, thought Tobias, filling his mind
with the beauty of the ostriches, you are immortal.
We did not think, the day we rode from our farms, of death.
We remembered only the non-white soldiers bursting into the
tents and mat houses around the Bowesdorp village church, our
own farm hands, given horses and rifles by the English and
treated as whites, ordering us outside as we dressed for
Communion, laughing at the terrified servants at the cooking
fires, laughing at us because we were powerless and if we
resisted, Capt. Shelton would order them to shoot.
Shelton had no sympathy for our hardship during the
drought. He made no allowances for the fact that notices on
shop doors were few and far between and practically worthless
in a sparsely populated territory with no form of
communication. Would people have come hundreds of miles if
they had known that gatherings without a permit were
prohibited?
You have broken the law, Shelton shouted. You are not
allowed to be here. You are not allowed to carry arms. You are
to be fined 1 per person and 1 per draught animal. No matter
that some lived from hand to mouth. No matter that some
wagons were drawn by a team of 16. Silence! he shouted.
You will take your hats off and say, three times, God bless the
king!
No, Tobias reflected, we did not think of death. We made no
move. We thought only of saddling up, stocking up on dried
bread and pemmican and joining our Gen. Maritz: of shooting
Shelton when he shouted, HATS OFF and God bless the

king! his eyes flaming, our people mumbling, the Coloured

troops laughing.
Hamilton shifted his weight and Tobias lowered his
binoculars. It was comforting to feel the weight of the rifle on
his back. That Sunday had seen the end of church attendance in
Namaqualand. It had been the decisive day for some of them:
others, not knowing who was friend or enemy, had trekked
further inland to the Bushmanland or across the border to
German South West Africa.
God curse the king, one of the Beukes brothers had
ground out, pulling his hat over his ears. Man, theyll shoot
you! his neighbour had whispered, his eyes sweeping the
valley. Soldiers had manned the roads leading to the sparsely
populated towns or further into the mountain. Hed plucked the
hat from his friends head.
After the ceremony in the modest little church, many of
those whose rifles had been confiscated and their pockets
depleted took leave of their families. Among them were Tobias
Beukes, his brothers Jan, Koos and Hendrik. We are going to
join Gen. Maritz, Tobias had told his mother in the cool old
homestead with its three-foot-thick walls. Yes, shed said,
thinking of what had happened.
Tobias put away his binoculars. The ostriches had long
since disappeared; the long grass held only fleetingly the waves
and eddies of the late afternoon breeze.
It was all over. It was 1904 and he had survived and married
the tall, beautiful girl whose fianc had been killed in the war;
Coba of the abundant black hair and olive skin and light blue
eyes.
They had lost her brother Gert, whose baritone had blended
so well with her soprano. And Hendrik Beukes. The youngest
Beukes brother, a boy of 16, had been ambushed and wounded.
Tobias himself, after so many skirmishes at the side of Gen.
Maritz, whose scout he had been, had filled the time of his
imprisonment recalling the granite hills and whispering poplar
groves and long yellow smears of wheat on his farm, the peace
of which nurtured a mans soul.

Kom! he said. The thought of Coba stirred him. She was

expecting their first child. He gave the horse his head.
Joyfully, Hamilton exerted his body to the full, his race
horse lineage evident in his graceful pace. He was
acknowledged to be the fastest horse in this part of the world,
and Tobias the finest rider.
I am free, the man exulted. I am alive and I am free and
Coba is waiting for me.
At the end of November, three months later to the day after the
birth of the young clergymans son, a baby girl was born to the
Namaqualand rebel Tobias Beukes and his wife Coba.

Chapter 2
About Ghosts And Poison Doctors. An Impossible
Challenge
The shadows were beginning to crawl across the veld through
the December heat when a cart came into view. At the sound of
the approaching horses a cluster of white-breasted crows
flapped reluctantly from the emaciated carcass of a sheep. It was
a familiar sight in the Bushmanland.
Neither man on the cart passed comment. The countrywide
drought of 1912 had dropped its weight on man and beast and
exacted its toll.
Theres the well, said the man wearing the white panama
hat, and wiped his face with his handkerchief. His collar and tie
were stifling him.
Ye-e-es, Doctor, replied his companion, a black man. To
Dawid was entrusted the care of the pastors horses. Dawid was
proud of his position, for it was an important one. The pastor
spent hours, when possible, in the stable. The mares pregnancy
and the birth of a foal had given him innate joy.
Hour after hour Willem had listened to Dawids stories
about the dassie adder the huge snake with the diamond on
its forehead the great ghost of the Heitsi-Eibib and other
spectres which will not pass by a Coloured person; of the
healing properties of various veld plants kattekruid for pain,
handjiesbos or Vier Oulap in braised-out net-vet for all manner
of skin disorders, and the special little bush for syphilis and
rashes, and the wonderful services of the gifdokter (poison
doctor).
The grease marks on the inside of a poison doctors hat,
Dawid said with his slow speech and exaggerated accent, so
typical of the non-white people of the region, was because of the
snake fat which was rubbed into it (and the snake fat, besides,
was very effective treatment for sore eyes). He himself had one
day seen how a poison doctor had shelled a huge brown snake

which had emerged from the wheat. Everybody scattered to the

edge of the field where there were stones with which to kill the
snake. But the poison doctor had asked for the snake to be
entrusted to him. The east wind had already come up, as it did
every afternoon around three during harvest time.
Hed trotted above the wind so that the snake got his scent
and reared up. The poison doctor sailed his hat towards the
snake, which sank its fangs into it and moved away. Oh, you
are cheeky as well! he called ... Dawid relived his story. There
were many details about all who were present that day, what
each one called out, and how the snake moved.
When the snake had attacked the hat a second time, it
moved in under it. Then the old man walked towards a bush and
cut two long sharp sticks. When he lifted his hat, he swiftly
impaled the snake on one of the sticks and thrust it deep into the
ground. He turned the snake on its back and cut it down its
length where the stomach and side scales met. As the snake
thrust around in its death pangs, it twisted completely out of its
skin.
Then he cut the fat out all along its length and spread it
over a bush to dry. He cut out the poison sacs carefully,
carefully Dawid gestured with one hand squeezed them
out into his mouth and swallowed the poison. And then he
attached them to his hat band with a thorn, in order to dry them
out. Yes, Doctor.
But couldnt the snake poison kill him? Willem wanted to
know.
No, Doctor. One evening a deadly night adder bit one of us
and he got such a fright that he ran right into the masters room
and cried, Help me baas Im going to die Im burning up!
Fortunately a poison doctor was there with his special sawed-off
horn with its little opening at the top.
The poison doctor cut off the mans circulation at three
points, including below the knee, Dawid continued, and then cut
a cross on the wound with his penknife, of which the blade was
extremely keen. Then he placed his horn on it, took half a
mouthful of brandy and sucked out the slimy poison. Because

it was a short horn, some of it landed in his mouth, even though

he spat.
And nothing happened to him? Willem asked.
Felt sick later on, but that was all.
Dawids account reminded Willem of a ghost story he had
heard at their last stop. The farmer slept in long johns in the cold
weather. During the night, he heard his sheep and realised they
were escaping the corral. When he got to the gate he saw his
labourer approach, who stopped dead in his tracks when he saw
the indistinct figure of his employer. Well what are you waiting
for, get them back in the corral! the farmer called. And with
trembling voice the labourer said, If that would only stand to
one side, I could try...
And he had been told for the truth, as the saying went,
about the two brothers who spent the night in an abandoned
house in the Bushmanland. During the night, one of them had to
relieve himself and went outside. The other rose shortly after but
a cloud had passed over the moon and he stopped in the
doorway when he saw the tall white figure approaching the
house. His brother, in his nightshirt in the veld, stopped in his
tracks when he saw the tall white figure in the doorway. He took
flight around the corner of the house only to see the ghost
appear at the other corner. And so the two brothers fled from
each other until they discovered their mistake. Then they
laughed themselves silly, but thereafter went out together to
relieve themselves.
When Dawid was silent, Willem lit a cigarette. He had
acquired the habit on his long, boring journeys.
Willem thought of the many miles of sand and shrub and
burning granite rocks behind them. But how thankful he was to
have succeeded in his studies!
His father, an astute farmer, had introduced lucerne and
ostriches in the district and he himself had spent many of his
holidays, sickle in hand, cutting lucerne and wheat and tending
the huge birds.
But he was no farmer.
How ashamed he would have been had he been forced to try
and wrest a living from the soil ... and failed. Better, then, the