The rebel who died beneath a rock

I was following the river again, forever winding and twisting back and forth across it. I had to hurry now because I had promised Alex Pringle that I would pay a visit to his home – and I hadn’t had that on my schedule.

The road up the Baviaansriver valley, which crosses the river 27 times.

You have to drive carefully along these roads. I have previously lost two tires on a single stone along a deserted country road and had no desire to repeat the ordeal. My thoughts were elsewhere, though. They were marching with a troop of soldiers who was travelling this very road on the night of 9 October 1815. They were on a murderously hard mission to travel most of the valley’s length before the sun came up so that they could surprise one of the frontier’s toughest men. History will recognize the name of Freek Bezuidenhout.

The death of a rebel frontiersman

Freek Bezuidenhout was my great-great-great-great grandfather’s neighbour. He was a wild and restless man who feared nobody and seemed to merely want to be left alone. He was one of the few frontiersmen who had abandoned the conventions of regular life to a large extent. After the death of his first white wife, he imply cohabited with a brown woman, with whom he had a son called Hans.

At this time in history my ancestor’s youngest son, Adriaan, was working for Freek on his farm. Freek knew that the law would come for him one day. It started after a series of complicated arguments with a labourer of his by the name of Booi. The matter involved a dispute of livestock and wages, and looking at it now it is clear that both of them had acted wrongly. Booi, however, resolved to try to use the law against his former employer, knowing that the British authorities were at the time unusually biased in favour of the natives. He therefore went to complain to the authorities in Graaff-Reinet, who accepted his version of the story the way he told it.

Sir Andries Stockenstrom - the landdrost who sentenced Freek Bezuidenhout to a month's imprisonment in his absence, who ordered his arrest, and who had to preside of the eventual trials of the rebels of Slagtersnek.

When the law demanded that Freek had to come and explain himself, Freek essentially told the law to get lost, and gave Booi a thrashing to emphasize his dissatisfaction. Booi, of course, went and lay charges once again. The law summoned Freek to court a second time – a summons which he once again ignored.

This compelled the landdrost to sentence Freek to a month’s imprisonment in his absence. Freek sneered at the news and responded by making it clear that if the law wanted the honour of his company (it was probably a three week journey to Graaff-Reinet), the law could come to him. In all fairness it has to be granted that the law had dealt extraordinarily patiently with Freek Bezuidenhout throughout this drama.

There was by then an unexpected twist to the story, which history has sometimes missed, but which might help to explain Freek’s stubbornness in part. The fact is that Booi had become involved with the wife of another native, who then resolved the matter by murdering the intruder to his marriage. Freek knew about the murder, but since the outcome suited his purpose well-enough, he saw no reason to report it or make a fuss about it. Booi’s death should have ended all the drama. Unfortunately it made it worse instead, for it soon became apparent that news about the murder had leaked, and there seemed to be a chance that the authorities might consider that Freek must have had a hand in the murder. He was apparently quite innocent, but to Freek his indictment seemed to big a risk to bear.

The entire matter had taken two years by this time, but even Freek must have known that the matter was destined to come to a head eventually. The problem was that everyone was afraid of Freek. Even the district’s elected leader – field cornet Opperman – told the landdrost that he refuses to try to arrest Freek. It would simply be too dangerous.

So it came on this fateful night that a contingent of 12 Hottentot soldiers, called “pandoers” were sent to go and arrest the wild frontiersman at first light. They were under the leadership of a British lieutenant called William MacKay, a Hungarian mounted policeman named Gerrit Lemke, and a Dutch sheriff of the court called Londt, and soon also to be joined by a Lieutenant Rousseau.

27 times they crossed the Baviaans that night, no doubt nervous about what would happen when they finally met the man who defied all authority. I could well imagine that the Baviaans river valley must have been a scary place at night. With sleeping baboons barking their alarm from the cliff tops, or the sudden snort of a rhino in the riverine bush, their nerves must have been raw. They reached Freek’s farm just when dawn began to smile upon the world.

Two days previously, after he returned from a visit to my great-great-great-great grandfather, Freek had told the boys who worked for him to keep an eye open for the law. Adriaan Labuscagne, together with Freek’s son Hans, and another Erasmus lad were already working in the fields when the soldiers made their first appearance. Adriaan was 17 (he later lied about his age and said that he was 15), Hans was about 20 (he did not know his own age), and Jacobus Erasmus was 18.

By reading all 1,000 pages of the trial transcripts which later followed, as well as other sources, I was able to piece together the events that followed in considerable detail.

Freek was the first who noticed the arrival of trouble when he observed to the boys: “Here come the soldiers who want to come and take me away.”

What Adriaan did exactly I could never find out, but it seems that at this point he must have made himself scarce. Freek’s wife brought guns, however, and these were pressed into the hands of the two boys, Hans and Jacobus. Freek shouted at the soldiers not to come any closer, but they either did not hear him or deliberately ignored him.

“Bezuidenhout! Give yourself up! Don’t be a blood fool, man!” lieutenant Rousseau shouted.

To this Freek bellowed in return: “Never!”

Rousseau then ordered his men to spread out and charge with bayonets, but with the instruction not to shoot.

Freek had other plans, though, and soon shouted at his son to open fire.

For a while Hans could not bring himself to shoot, and so an argument ensued between him and his father. Soon, however their position became so threatened that the boys felt obliged to open fire at the soldiers, along with the determined older man.

It took a while before the officer decided to finally answer the fire. As Freek’s trio of defenders retreated up the river’s course, with Freek’s wife was carrying a heavy bag that contained an astonishingly large amount of ball and powder. They were definitely prepared for a considerable resistance. Freek’s health was apparently not so good, though, and being greatly plagued with gout he retreated to the shelter of a cleft rock at the edge of a cliff that overlooked the river.

The monument marks the place where Freek Bezuidenhout fought his last battle against the Hottentot pandoers.

At this point Jacob Erasmus somehow abandoned the scene, leaving the stubborn Freek and his loyal woman and frightened son in their rocky fortress. The officers tried to convince Freek to surrender but he would not hear of it.

Even when Hans pleaded with him to give in, he replied that, “even if I present myself I will be hanged for it. Shoot me dead. If they shoot me dead – that’s when they’ll get me.”

The firefight resumed, and when it died down again, a Hottentot pandoer approached to try and reason with Freek.

“Who are you?” Freek demanded.

“Joseph,” the pandoer replied, upon which he asked if he could approach.

“No, stay away from me!” was Freek’s reply.

“Master Freek, lay down your gun; I shall do the same with mine, then we can talk about it,” the pandoer persisted.

“Don’t talk to me again,” Freek shouted back. “Stay away from me!”

Eventually, after much pleading from Hans, Freek reluctantly agreed that if he was allowed to exit his stronghold safely and was given a horse, he would ride to my great-great-great-great grandfather Frans Labuscagne, where he would presumably agree to cooperate.

Unfortunately their assurance did not sound so convincing, and suddenly Freek became suspicious.

“No, I can see it,” he roared. “You want to arrest me. Damn it – I won’t come out! You can have me if you kill me. Now I’m not saying another word…!”

After this the fighting resumed, with the soldiers firing into the crevasse, and throwing rocks into it.

Suddenly, however, Freek gasped, “Son, my arm is broken!” before falling to the ground.

A bullet had struck him in the chest so that it exited at the back of his shoulder blade. It had gone through the heart. For the wild frontiersman the world dissolved into a blur and then turned black as he exhaled his last breath. Freek Bezuidenhout had fought and lost his last battle.

The lonely grave of Freek Bezuidenhout, near where the rebels swore revenge.

This did not end the drama at the frontier, though. In fact, unbeknown to all the actors in this dramatic scene, the trouble had barely even yet begun. The next day all the neighbours in the valley assembled on the sad little plain where Freek would be laid to rest. They were all men of the veld – toughened by the elements and hard as iron in their desire to be independent and to survive. Men who could hold a gun were precious on the frontier. Even wild characters like Freek Bezuidenhout – and the frontier could ill afford to lose them.

My family was there, of course, but the mood was sombre where the dark-clad figures huddled upon the windswept plain. When Freek’s coffin was finally covered they all retired to his house to talk things over. The Bezuidenhout family was furious about what happened, and his brother Hans seemed most upset of all.

When he noticed that the mood was getting ugly, Great Willem Prinsloo asked my great-great-great-great grandfather Frans to take a walk with him in the garden sine he had a feeling that matters were heading in an unpleasant direction. He didn’t want anything to do with it, and so he hastened to eat, upon which he returned homeward down the valley.

The rocky cleft where Freek Bezuidenhout fought and died.

Soon Hendrik Prinsloo, Christiaan and Diederick Muller, Cornelis Faber, Stephanus and Louw Bothma all vowed to take revenge, with Hans Bezuidenhout being the loudest of them all. He then singled old Frans Labuscagne and Lucas Van Vuuren out and declared that they were “worse than hyena turds.” He even went so far as to blame field cornet Opperman. Being thus insulted, my great-great-great-great grandfather walked away in disgust. He had resolved that he would have no further part of the rebellion.

By the time I reached the place where Freek was buried, I had already relived the entire frontier drama in my mind and seen it played upon the surrounding landscape like a mental movie. I had always felt sorry for Freek Bezuidenhout. He had been in the wrong completely, but he had touched my heart with his simple desire to be left alone to mind his own business. It was an ambition with which I could strongly identify.

Freek Bezuidenhout's last stand as seen from the north-east.

At the site where Freek was killed, the wind comes rushing down the valley bottom, hits the cliff face and then blows your breath away with the unexpected updraft. I always look down into the crevasse with a mix of curiosity and caution. You cannot really see down to the bottom for the shadows are too deep. It was a dramatic place for a frontiersman to die. In a way I’m glad he lost his life in this picturesque spot, instead of in some British prison. More than likely he would have been thrown into the black hole, as the dungeon in the Castle at Cape Town was called. There, the man who had known nothing but the open plains since the day that he was born would have wept and withered until he joined the shadows that were darker than night itself. Freek died as he had lived. Wild, stubborn and completely free.

Monument at the place where Freek was shot.

The church at Eildon

Beyond the place of the tragedy the road suddenly dips lower, and then winds deeper into the mountains. Finally it reaches a junction where a simple sign on a farm gate announces that you had finally reached the place that I was heading towards. It was the old Faber farm, which now bore the Scottish name of Eildon.

Road towarrds the Winterberg.

Immediately upon my left, there stood a settler’s church, build of neatly dressed sandstone. This was the old Scottish Presbyterian church which serves the handful of remaining inhabitants to this day. Alex Pringle had invited me to explore it at length for I would find the door unlocked. He was right. The door swung open easily at my approach.

The Scottish settlers church at Eildon.

I found the church to be quite small, and guessed that it would seat about fifty people. It was clean and cool inside, with everything in order. An arrangement of withered flowers reminded me that the previous day had been Sunday. It was very quiet as the sun filtered through a stained glass window and bathed the floor in amber glow. It seemed like a world within a world, half removed from full reality.

It almost felt as if I shouldn’t be there. As if I was an intruder from a different environment who would spoil the untouched sanctity of this gentle place. 

Church interior at Eildon.

The big old Bible lay upon a pedestal, begging to be opened, inviting the traveller to read a passage. Seeing a Bible of its size and weight, I’m sometimes reminded that perhaps this is one reason why older generations used to take the word of God so much more seriously than people do today. It just seemed so imposing, so substantial – and so impressive – in such massive form. Maybe we unwittingly miniaturized God in our own minds when our printing presses succeeded in shrinking Bibles to a size that could more easily be carried in our pockets.

Bibles were large when people still had respect for the word of God.

Around one corner hung a hand-painted portrait of Thomas Pringle, who had been awarded the farm after the revel Faber had been hung at the execution which followed Slagtersnek. Beneath the sandstone slab, lay the bones of Thomas Pringle, re-interred here after his death in England. He was buried in the ground that had once belonged to a man who had believed that he would fight to set it free.

Beneath this slab, in the Scottish settlers church, the bones of Thomas Pringle lie.

Poor Faber. Poor everybody who had played a part in this sad drama. In the end it struck me that practically everyone who participated in the events that followed the death of Freek Bezuidenhout seemed to have emerged as victims of this deadly tragedy. Even Landdrost Stockenstrom and Landdrost Cuyler, who had to prosecute the rebels, yet also did their best to obtain clemency for them – even they were victims of the ironic hand of fate.

View towards the south-east from one of the windows in the Scottish settlers church at Eildon.

The aftermath of Freek's death

The tale which followed the funeral of Freek Bezuidenhout is far too long to share here, but I will briefly summarize. When the funeral was over, Hans Bezuidenhout and his companions began a campaign to stir up a large-scaled insurrection across several of the gigantic frontier districts. It was about far more than just the death of his brother, if you understand the context of events. The frontiersmen had suffered years of being terrorized by neighbouring tribes, during which first the Dutch colonial authorities, and later the British authorities usually showed themselves to be perplexingly on the side of the attackers, instead of the side of their own colonials. For decades the Dutch administration had been inefficient and corrupt, and when it was replaced by British rule, the settlers found them to be approximately just as bad, or sometimes even worse.

Hans Bezuidenhout selected a very novel strategy, which however original it might have been unfortunately also proved to be the undermining of his scheme. He namely went to the Xhosas in the east and tried to form an allegiance, aimed at overthrowing British rule at the Cape and driving the occupiers back into the ocean.

While many of the frontiersmen supported his initiative at first, this attempt at bonding with an enemy which had caused the settlers years of death and misery simply proved too much to accept. It cost him and his ringleaders critical support which they would eventually pay for with their lives. My great-great-great grandfather Leonard and his little brother Adriaan joined the rebels in the beginning stages, but as the drama unfolded and the bitter root of the allegiance began to reveal that it was doomed to failure, they managed to disentangle themselves from it just in time.

As it was, they still found themselves charged along with the other rebels, after the Government forces defeated the rebels at the place called Slagtersnek – or Butcher’s ridge. They were lucky, however, and escaped merely with a fine. The five ringleaders, on the other hand, were hung until they were dead.

The poet's shepherd tree 

I was now on the farm that Thomas Pringle had received, thanks to the vacuum of ownership after the rebels had been executed. He could not have known it then, but already the frontiersmen had had enough and were dreaming about leaving the British colony. It was 1820 when Pringle arrived, and by 1836 my family would join the first of the Voortrekkers to leave the country.

When they realized that they would spend the rest of their lives living in war and subject to pillage and plunder, they just packed their waggons, abandoned their farms, and rode away into the limitless no-man’s land that lay beyond the Orange River. With them came hundreds, and later thousands of other emigrants – tired to death of fighting both against their enemies, and being persecuted and humiliated by the authorities who ruled over them.

Painting of Thomas Pringle in the Pringle home at Eildon.

Thomas Pringle was the son of a Scottish farmer, who having a handicap to his walking, had not been able to follow in his father’s footsteps. Instead he became a poet, a writer and a journalist, before finally accepting a resettlement grant to relocate to the eastern frontier. Little did he or his fellow immigrants know it at the time, but the government’s sorry purpose was to bring more men into the conflict zone that had to function as a buffer between the Xhosa raiders and the interior of the colony. Instead of a mild and generous agricultural paradise, they discover a wild and savage land where the land yielded its produce grudgingly and everything around them was conspiring towards their destruction.

Thomas Pringle, however, did not seem so phased about it. Perhaps that was because ultimately he only lived seven years in South Africa before returning to England, and probably because Africa had charmed his soul just as she charmed the lives of all the men who came to love her. Still, the times he spent at his farm, which he now called Eildon, appear to have been happy ones.

I arrived before the brilliant white twin gables of an imposing old colonial house, feeling as unsure as I generally do when imposing myself upon strangers. I keep forgetting however, that in the wilderness there are no strangers. There are only friends whom you have not met before. Here, where people are even scarcer now than they used to be during the 1800’s, visitors seemed welcome. And the Pringle household proved to be no exception.

The stately manor of Eildon.

On the broad veranda I was met by a charming woman with a graceful bearing who extended her hand and introduced herself as Barry Pringle. She asked if it was alright if we talked while she was watering the garden. She would be hosting a gardening event next weekend and was expecting the arrival of a thousand people. It was important that the garden should look good, even in the baking heat of early spring.

Talk soon turned to the life of Thomas Pringle. I was told that her husband Alex, actually descended from Thomas’ brother, who had remained behind in South Africa, and who founded a dynasty whose roots trace back to this very house. She then asked if I had ever seen Pringle’s shepherd’s tree. I was mystified. I thought I knew a fair amount about history, but I had certainly never heard about this tree.

Formal gardens of Eildon.

So it came that Barry and I took a farming pickup and drove past the old family cemetery, down the slope and across a stream to where the original settler’s cottage was still standing. Her son now lives there, but even though the house had been restored over the years, it was still the same old settler’s cottage from generations ago. At the time that Thomas Pringle arrived, however, there was no house at all. Instead, he had himself built a native beehive hut, constructed from grass. Cool in summer and snug in winter, these beehive huts were very traditional, and very practical to live in at the time.

Next to the hut he had a shepherd’s tree, which most South Africans prefer to call the “witgat” tree. These are utterly remarkable trees. Firstly because there are relatively few of their kind. Secondly because of their pleasing appearance which is often umbrella-like in shape on account of how the animals tend to prune the succulent branches along the trunks.

The shepherd's tree at Eildon.

And thirdly because it is such a downright useful tree. The leaves can be eaten as a vegetable, and the roots are habitually roasted and ground to make popular substitute for coffee. It was under this tree, I was told, that Thomas Pringle used to sit and compose his poems, or write his fantasy stories about an imaginary world.

I don’t think Barry realized how enchanting I found this ancient tree. When I compared its current size to that depicted in a very old photographs of the same tree and house which must surely date from the 1800’s, it seemed almost no older at all. The witgat grows extremely slowly. It is an imminently patient plant, so very much in character with Africa itself.

Thomas Pringle would have been pleased if he could have seen a modern generation growing up beneath his trusty tree. Barry’s little grandchildren were playing the garden. Their mother apologized for what she called a mess, but what seemed to me to be just a delightfully homely country scene. She complained about the bushbuck that were eating her pansies and even the lavender bushes as fast as she could plant them.

The Shepherd's tree in olden days.

The shepherd's tree today, looking largely unchanged after perhaps a century.

I listened, but kept stealing glances at the shepherd’s tree. I’m not much of a poet, but for the sake of a romantic heart, I dearly wished that I too, could have spent an hour with my back against its trunk. To dream, to think, and perhaps to write a few paltry verses that would seek to capture something of the beautiful simplicity of this valley and its pleasant people.

Back at the manor house, Barry took her time to show me her graceful formal garden. Words can seldom describe the feeling of delight that one has in the wilderness of Africa whenever one comes across such an old haven of colonial splendour. Somehow it just seems to accompany the spirit of this ancient land so perfectly. With flowing gestures, she showed me her priceless painting by the famous painter, Thomas Baines. It depicted the Pringle house, probably around the 1840’s as seen from a distance.

A painting of Eildon by Thomas Baines, presumably around the 1840's.

Baines had a wonderfully unique talent to paint scenes that intimated animation. You always get the feeling that if you look away and suddenly look back at one of his pictures, you might be just in time to catch one of the figures still moving. While I enjoy good art immensely, you will always find me lingering the longest in front of the rare and wonderful paintings of the romantic explorer that was Thomas Baines.

Beautiful pieces of Victorian furniture, large old silver serving dishes with their plating worn away just slightly. Very tall ceilings and ancient panes of glass, through which the world is never as it is, but always rippled in impressionistic style. This was the house which the home of the Oracle. His son, David, told me more about the settler generation’s days. When I explained that I was still trying to find the exact place where my ancestors would have lived, he volunteered to introduce me to his father’s cousin, whom he described as a hugely interesting man whom he was sure I would enjoy greatly. I found him to be right on that account.

The butterfly collector 

On our way to the neighbouring farm of Ernest Pringle, David told me that Ernest had the biggest private collection of butterflies in the southern hemisphere. Originally an attorney, Ernest seemed more interest in life itself, and had spent much time discovering several unique new butterfly species, a number of which he had named after himself.

“Unless you plan to spend the rest of the day here,” David cautioned me, “I’ll advise you not to speak of butterflies.”

I took his advice, but I was tempted not to.

We found Ernest in a very large old house that seemed as if it had been caught in a time bubble from the 1950’s. Everything breathed the kind of world I had last experienced when I was a little child. Ernest invited us in with one of those extra wide and friendly smiles that you would come to expect among the best of country folk. He seemed surprised and slightly delighted when he heard about my quest.

It was not long before he vanished into the cool dark caverns of his house, only to return with an ancient hand-drawn map of the surrounding farms, done so beautifully that it might as well have been a picture in a gallery. Stories both related and completely unrelated to my quest poured fourth like water from a bubbling brook, and I knew that I was going to risk running out of daylight soon.

But when you meet people such as these good folk, you consider the risk only briefly, and then decide that you can sleep in your car for one night, if you really have to. Listen while you can when you find yourself in such a situation – for often times such experiences present themselves but once.

Across the map was scrawled in the hand of some legal clerk a case number and the words: “Pringle vs. Pringle.”

“What is that?” David asked his uncle.

“Oh that,” David smiled shyly, “is an unfortunate incident which we normally prefer not to talk about…”

For all its great mystery, however, Ernest proceeded to tell us the tale of an ancient feud between two family neighbours. A will, a contested property boundary, and water rights. It is a story as old as farming history itself – and it sounded all too familiar to me.

David told me about one solitary grave of a Boer fighter on the crest of one of the mountains on their land, which he thought nobody probably knows about. He said he had once almost driven into it with his pickup when he was fighting a runaway fire. It was in a place where no stones are to be expected, and he had completely forgotten that it was there. Together, we all wished we knew its history.

Then the conversation turned to farming. Fighting land claims was consuming much of Earnest’s time, while David and Alex were very concerned about the marauding jackal which he said, claims the lives of 500 of their sheep every year. The life of a farmer seems to have become no easier over the past 150 years.

I listened and I learned, while Earnest’s old Labrador lay by my feet, sleeping the slumber of a tired old beast that looked old enough to have been born when Thomas Pringle’s tree first sprouted. I knew that I would have to go soon and already felt sorry about all the information that I would not be able to absorb. It was a world which sounded so familiar to the one that I had come from. The same kind of people, the same kind of old-worlde homes, the same kind of conversations. It felt as if I had been invited to drink from a stranger’s pond, only to find that the waters tasted exactly like those which flowed from my own brook.

The road towards Winterberg.

And so we pointed our vehicle back towards Eildon where we arrived just in time to meet the Oracle himself as he returned home from towm. Alex smiled as we told him about our visit to his neighbour, and was glad to hear that I had seen the little chapel that he and the other farmers maintain so well, the shepherd’s tree – and the ancient world upon which the footsteps of my ancestors seemed to be only lightly covered by the sands of time.

It was time to go, for the sun was low by now, and I had yet to cross the Winterberg. The road gets at its worst along the berg, they told me, but as long as it was dry, my car would probably make it.

“Just take it slowly as you can,” I was told by one and all.

And so I took leave of the kind and generous people of the Baviaansriver Valley. With a feeling of contentment I turned eastward once more, and began the long and exhausting assault on the high land mass whose summit is always cold – the one so aptly called Winterberg – the Winter Mountain.

Next blog posting: I get lost, but am found by a man with a dog on a motorbike who helps me to find the place where Hans Bezuidenhout was killed.