The Covenant (68 page)

His Christian name was Saul, and Hilary promptly sent him back to Xhosa lands to spread joyful news about Golan, and because of Saul, at the end of six months the mission was home to one hundred and forty Hottentots and twenty Xhosa. The latter taught Hilary the traditions of their people, and he developed respect for the ease with which they adjusted to life at Golan. As he worked with them he found himself constantly referring to the practical instructions he had acquired from young Simon Keer, rarely to the theological indoctrination of the older LMS clergymen. “Missionary work,” Keer had predicted, “is one-tenth disputation, nine-tenths sanitation.”

The first white man Hilary met was a Boer living at a remote spot twenty-eight miles to the northeast, across hills that separated the Sundays River from the Fish. He rode into Golan one afternoon, a tall, rough-clad, white-haired old man who looked like someone from the early books of the Bible, his beard trembling in the wind. “Name is Lodevicus,” he said in halting English. “Lodevicus van Doorn.” He had come to warn Hilary not to allow any Hottentots from the north to take refuge at Golan.

“Why not?” Hilary asked.

“They … my laborers … they signed papers,” he growled, obviously disliking the necessity of speaking in a foreign tongue. “They to work … not pray.”

“But if they come seeking Jesus Christ …”

Lodevicus showed his irritation that Saltwood made no effort to address him in Dutch: “If you here … missionary … damnit … learn Dutch.”

“I should! I should!” Hilary agreed enthusiastically, but to continue the conversation it was necessary to find someone who had both languages, which put Lodevicus in the awkward position of lodging a complaint against Hottentots through the agency of a Hottentot. It was fortunate that Lodevicus did not recognize the melon thief, and insensitive to the impropriety, went on talking, with Pieter listening respectfully and saying “Ja, Baas” at least once a minute.

“Baas say, ‘His Hottentots not come seek Jesus. They run away from work his place.’ ”

“Tell him that even so, if any of his workmen were to come seeking refuge with me …”

No sooner had the interpreter started this sentence than Lodevicus interrupted.

“Baas, he say, ‘My goddamn workers come here, no trouble for you. I come gettim.’ ”

“Tell him that if any Hottentot or Xhosa seeks Jesus Christ …”

Once more Lodevicus issued a string of threats, only some of which the Hottentot bothered to repeat. So this first meeting between the Boer and the Englishman ended in disarray, with Lodevicus shouting as he remounted his horse that Saltwood was no better than that damned idiot Simon Keer. He sputtered what sounded like curses, and Hilary was told: “Baas say damn-fool Master Keer come back, he meet him with sjambok.”

“Assure him that Reverend Keer is safely in London and will not be seen again in these parts.” When this was delivered, Lodevicus directed the Hottentot to say, “Damn good thing.”

As a Christian, Hilary could not allow his first acquaintance with a neighbor to end so poorly, and with a complete change of attitude he said to the Hottentot, “Ask Mijnheer van Doorn if he will join us in evening prayer?”

This sudden switch to the Dutch
mijnheer
softened the old man somewhat, but only for a moment, for he soon realized that the prayers would be conducted in English, whereupon he spat: “I pray Dutch church.” And with that he galloped off, even though night was almost upon him.

And that was the way things stood between the mission station of Golan and the nearest white man to the north until the end of the first year—when the Reverend Simon Keer burst upon the South African scene with a reverberation that would last for two centuries, making his name accursed. He did not appear in person, which was prudent, since he would have been whipped, but a booklet that he published in England did arrive by ship. It bore the pejorative title
The Truth About South Africa
, and was a compilation of accusations against the Dutch so horrendous that the civilized world, meaning London and Paris, simply had to take notice.

It charged the Boers with having already killed off the Bushmen, annihilating the Hottentots, and beginning to abuse the Xhosa—expropriating their land, stealing their cattle, and killing their women and children. It was especially harsh in allegations that the Hottentots and Coloured brethren were being tricked into slavery and denied ordinary decencies. It was a blanket indictment, its charges so
melodramatic that they might have been ignored had he not added one accusation which more than any other inflamed the Christians of England and Scotland:

Such charges ignited action throughout England, especially since that nation now had responsibility for the governance of South Africa, and protests of the most vigorous force were launched. What made government intervention inevitable was Reverend Keer’s closing statement that he personally could indict a hundred Boers for forced enslavement, criminal abuse and even murder.

When the four dozen copies of
The Truth About South Africa
reached the Cape and were distributed, with Dutch translations being rushed to the frontier, a sullen resistance developed. Even prospering townsmen in Cape Town and Stellenbosch who had clearly benefited from the English takeover protested that Keer had unjustly maligned the entire colony. And the frontier Boers! Each man felt that he was being specifically accused, and wrongfully. Pamphlets were prepared, rebutting the absent missionary, and practically the entire population combined to defend South Africa’s reputation.

But the power of an inspired missionary to inflame English public opinion would always be great, and while at the Cape a few people were defending South Africa, in London a multitude called for action, and before long, commissions were on their way to the Cape to look into Keer’s charges, and the mournful day came when formal accusations had to be lodged against some fifty Boers, who were commanded to stand trial before judges who would circulate throughout the colony. The Black Circuit, this exhibition would be called, and in due course it would reach Graaff-Reinet, several days’ ride to the northwest, and there Lodevicus van Doorn would be tried for physically abusing his Hottentots, starving them and denying them the right to attend religious services. He was also accused of murder.

Before the Black Circuit reached Graaff-Reinet, Lodevicus, convinced
that no judge appointed by the English would accord a Boer justice, swallowed his pride and rode back to Golan, where he found that Hilary could now speak moderately good Dutch. The two men conducted an impassioned conversation.

“All I ask, Saltwood, is that you come with me, now. Look at my farm. Talk with my Hottentots and slaves.”

“I’ll not be party to this lawsuit.”

“It’s not a lawsuit. It’s a charge of murder.”

“And other things, if I hear correctly.”

“And other things. Trivial things. And it’s those you must inspect.”

“I’m not a witness, Mijnheer van Doorn.”

“All men are witnesses, Dominee.”

The sudden use of this Dutch appellation caught Hilary’s imagination, and he had to admit that in a situation so grave, all men were witnesses, so that even though Van Doorn had been an unpleasant man, if he now appealed for help, it had to be given. On the spur of the moment he said, “I’ll ride with you, but I’ll not testify in court.”

“No one asks you to,” Lodevicus said gruffly.

Leaving Golan in care of Saul, Hilary left for the north, finding a ride with Van Doorn a moving experience: “These vast lands with no markings—how do you find your way?”

“The look of things,” Lodevicus said, and Hilary thought: That’s what I’m being asked to judge—the look of things.

As in the days when Mal Adriaan wandered these lands with Dikkop, this Van Doorn and his English clergyman formed a bizarre pair, the first an old man with heavy frame and white whiskers, the second a tall and gawky young man with the open face of a child. They were unlikely associates, Boer and Englishman, with different heritages, different attitudes toward life and vastly different religions, one Old Testament, the other New. Yet they were joined in a forced association that would prove, for better or worse, inescapable.

When they entered the low hills that separated the mission station from the farm, a wholly new vista opened, the vision of a land immense in its dimensions, softly varied in the rise and fall of its low ridges, but ominously grand in the substantial mountains that rose to the north. They seemed to warn Saltwood: This is a greater land than you have envisaged. The challenges are vaster than Simon Keer defined.

At the crest of the last rise Lodevicus reined in his horse and
pointed down to a small valley hemmed on all sides by hills of varying height. It was as tight a little world as Saltwood had ever seen, a secure haven cut by a river which brought fruitfulness to the rolling fields. The river entered the area at an opening to the southwest, ran diagonally across the meadows and exited at a pass in the northeast. If ever a frontier settler had a farm that was secure, this was it.

“De Kraal,” Van Doorn said gruffly but with evident pride. “Safe place for keeping cattle.”

“Have you cattle?”

“The Hottentots have taken our herds north to graze. But this kraal is for human beings. A nest within the hills.”

Hilary turned in his saddle to inspect the land, and from his experience with meadows on the Salisbury Plain estimated that De Kraal ran five miles west to east and something less than three north to south. Making such calculations as he could, he said in astonishment, “You have nine thousand acres down there.”

“Yes,” said Lodevicus. “This is the land of the Van Doorns.” And he rode down into his little empire as if he were Abraham riding a camel to Canaan.

The three days Hilary spent at De Kraal were a revelation, for he was in an enclave removed from any outside influence and ruled by one man. It was into this fortress that English justice presumed to force its way. Lodevicus had a wife, of course, and Hilary was surprised when he met her, for she seemed not at all awed by her austere husband, even though he was at least thirty years older. Wilhelmina van Doorn was a big, amiable woman who obviously set the laws to be observed in her house. She had one son, Tjaart, a square-bodied young farmer with a lad of his own.

De Kraal had nine Madagascan and Angolan slaves, few by comparison with the intensively farmed vineyards near Cape Town, but it also had thirty-two Hottentot and Coloured workers and their families, some whose ancestors had become affiliated with the Van Doorn family generations ago. By law they were contract laborers duly registered at Graaff-Reinet; whether they were de facto slaves was moot. No outside observer like Saltwood would be allowed to ascertain the facts.

“Thirty-two Hottentots?” Saltwood asked. “Isn’t that a lot?”

“They have to herd our cattle sixty miles north of here.”

“Sixty miles! Doesn’t that put them on other people’s land?”

“There are no other people.”

Lodevicus invited Saltwood to inspect every aspect of De Kraal, where the slaves and Hottentots ate and where they slept and worked. Since Hilary now understood much of the Dutch-Portuguese-Malayan-Madagascan dialect spoken between master and servant, he was able to conduct his investigations without the interference of Van Doorn. He was especially eager to interrogate the Hottentots, for Golan’s people had said that the Boers were constantly abusing them, but when the herders were brought in he found them a jovial lot who loved their horses and the open range.

“How much do you get paid?” he asked the lead man.

“Paid? What is paid?”

“Wages. Money.”

“We got no money.”

“Not now, but how much does Mr. Van Doorn pay you?”

“He not pay nothing.”

Saltwood started again: “You work? Seven days a week? How much do you get paid?”

“Baas, I no understand.”

So with great patience the missionary explained that everywhere in the world, when a man performed a certain task, like herding cattle …

“We like cattle … sheep … big land.”

“But what do you get paid?”

After many false starts Hilary discovered that they got paid nothing in cash. They did receive their clothes, and their horses, and their food, and when they fell ill, Mrs. Van Doorn medicated them.

“Are you free to leave De Kraal?” Hilary asked.

“Where would we go?”

Three times Saltwood questioned the Hottentots, trying to ascertain whether they were in fact slaves, but he never reached a satisfactory answer, so he broached the subject with Van Doorn himself: “Would you call your Hottentots slaves, like the Madagascans?”

“No! No! They can leave any time they wish.”

“Have any ever left?”

“Why should they?”

Hilary dropped this line of investigation, turning his attention to the slaves, whom he found to be in good condition but surly in manner, unlike the Hottentots who worked the free range. One of the Madagascan men showed scars, and when Saltwood inquired about
them, he found that the man had run away, been recaptured and punished.

“Why did you leave?” he asked.

“To be free.”

“Will you run away again?”

“Yes, to be free.”

“Will you be punished again?”

“If he catch me.”

When Hilary asked Van Doorn about this, the Boer could not mask his disgust: “He’s my slave. I paid good money for him. We can’t let our slaves get the idea they can run away at will. Of course they have to be punished.”

“You seem to have whipped him rather harshly.”

“I disciplined him.” When he saw how Saltwood flinched, he said sharply, “Dominee, in the old days he’d have had his nose cut off, his ears, one hand if he persisted. These are slaves, and they must be disciplined, as the Bible says.”