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Frederick Hale, Stellenbosch University

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Frederick Hale, Stellenbosch University 26 FREDERICK HALE, STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY Heroism, Tragedy, and the Failure of Historicity in Anna de Villiers' Die Wit Kraai Since the 1890s the heroism of individual well entrenched in the case of those like Voortrekkers and of these emigrating Boers Retief and Maritz who had fallen at the generally has been a hallmark of fictional hands of Zulu foes. reconstructions of the Great Trek, especially More challenging, however, was the task those written in Dutch and Afrikaans, and of enthroning in the pantheon of indeed it has also left its mark on those Voortrekker leaders those whose place in which English-speaking writers have history was ambiguous. Hendrik Potgieter contributed to this sub-genre. This for instance, was widely known to have ' generalisation is particularly applicable to been autocratic and frequently at odds with works intended for the cultural and moral other trek chieftains. In the present article I edification of young Afrikaners, as I have shall consider how Anna de Villiers, an emphasised in earlier studies (Hale 1999a, Afrikaans female litterateur who was Hale 1999b). During the first four decades steeped in Afrikaner nationalism, tackled the ofthe twentieth century, the authors of such challenge in her novel of 1938, Die Wit books relied heavily on the heroic image of Kraai, of constructing the tragedy of Hans the Voortrekkers which such trail-blazing de Lange, a once-respected Voortrekker Afrikaner nationalists as Gustav Preller scout who, after settling in Natal and. meticulously constructed in the wake of the becoming a well-established farmer, became emotionally burdensome defeat in the one of the first Europeans in southern Africa Second Anglo-Boer War. In this strand of to be executed for murdering an indigenous the Afrikaans ethnic tradition, such leaders African. This novel is above all else a study of the Great Trek as Andries Pretorius , of historical relations between ethnic groups Gerrit Maritz, and Piet Retief were lionised and particularly of how its protagonist to serve as types to be emulated by their relates to his fellow Afrikaners, the British descendants in the Union of South Africa. colonial administration, and African Literarily raised from the grave, they were indigenes. Accordingly, much of the to continue to lead Afrikaners in the ongoing concentration is necessarily on De Villiers' competition with their English-speaking portrayal of these segments of the compatriots, as indeed they had done a demographic kaleidoscope, paying special century earlier. This role was particularly attention to the place of the heroic myth- Anna de Villiers' Die Wit Kraai 27 and its limits - in her representation of began to write a dissertation on "Die Voortrekkers and, concomitantly, the Hollandse Taalbeweging in Suid-Afrika", employment of other peoples as foils. No for which the University of Stellenbosch one-dimensional saint cast in what by the conferred on her the degree Doctor late 1930s was the conventional Litterarum in 1934. The topic reflected hagiographic mould ofVoortrekker heroes, vividly her ethnic and linguistic interests. her Hans de Lange is a fairly well-drawn De Villiers spent several years lecturing in character with a complex personality. Afrikaans at the Pretoria Technical College During the course of the narrative he is and, though for only a year, in history at the heroic, anti-heroic, sagacious, ruthless at University of Pretoria. In 1940 she returned times, for years a commendable pater to the Cape as principal of the Huguenot familias but later an insensitive and aloof University College in Wellington, a post she husband. A second focal point of this article occupied until that institution closed its is the historicity of De Villiers' treatment of doors a decade later. De Villiers then the legal ramifications of De Lange's final succeeded in following for well over a months, particularly the failure of Die Wit decade her keen interest in lexicography as Kraai as a reliable historical novel. an editor of the Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal in Stellenbosch. Intimately related to these professional activities, she An Afrikaans Female Perspective was deeply involved in such organisations as the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir De Villiers wrote from the perspective of Wetenskap en Kuns, the Suid-Afrikaanse an Afrikaans woman who spent most of her Taalbond, the Afrikaanse Skrywerskring, life amongst Afrikaners and devoted much and the Afrikaans Language Monurpent of her career to pursuits and causes Committee. intimately linked to the nurturing of Afrikaner nationalism. Born in 1900 near As an unmarried woman without children, Kuilsrivier in what was then the De Villiers found time to pursue her. Stellenbosch district, she was the eldest of interwoven literary and ethno-cultural six children and had countless relatives in interests. While teaching at the Pretoria the De Villiers and Bester families (her Technical College, she wrote the first of her mother was a Bester), both of which were several books about Afrikaans history, a firmly rooted in the history of the Cape. quasi-autobiographical historical novel titled Anna De Villiers matriculated at the Sterker as die Noodlot, which was published BloemhofGirls' High School in in 1930. Die Wit Kraai was her second Stellenbosch in 1918 and received her fictional work. De Villiers' third published Bachelor of Arts at that town's university novel, Hercule de Pres, appeared in 1947 three years later. During the early 1920s she and dealt with her early Huguenot forebears taught briefly at Oudtshoorn and earned a in the Cape. She also ventured into Master of Arts at her alma mater in 1924. nonfictional reconstructions of historical The young linguist then served briefly on topics, chiefly the Great Trek and South the staff of Die Afrikaanse Woordeboek. African women's history, sometimes During a brief stint as a translator at the merging these two themes. Department of Statistics in Pretoria, she 28 Canadian Journal ofNetherlandic Studies A Fictional Reconstruction ofthe Great and Piet Retief and the Christian ministry pf Trek Erasmus Smit. Undeterred by cursorily described Matabele attacks on their wagon In some respects Die Wit Kraai resembled train, they press on towards the "Promised other novels about the Great Trek which had Land" of Natal and eventually cross the begun to appear in the late nineteenth Drakensberg. Along the way Hans de Lange century and were being published with repeatedly evinces his skills as a scout and, increasing frequency during the 1930s as the while the official leaders are away centenary of that migration approached and confronting the "Kaffers" (natives), as an Was observed. De Villiers related her tale efficient an hoc commander of the camp. from a conventional omniscient narrator Negotiations with King Dingaan at the Zulu point of view. The almost completely linear royal kraal result in the ceding of an narrative of the text spans approximately enormous tract of land to the Voortrekkers, 250 pages and is divided into fourteen who, after briefly interacting in a co­ chapters. The first and considerably longer operative manner with the few British of the two parts of the novel deals with the settlers at Port Natal and defeating in the period from the mid-1830s, when the Battle of Blood River the supposedly last De Lange family is still farming and fighting Zulu resistance to their colonisation venture, off raids by Xhosa tribesmen in the Eastern begin to layout farms and establish a Cape, until the defeat of the Zulus by the republican government at Pietermaritzburg. Boers at the Battle of Blood River in At this point De Villiers goes beyond the December 1838. The second carries chronological framework of most earlier De Lange's tale as a farmer in Natal from novels of the Great Trek. The vexing 1846 until his death on the gallows in 1861. British, refusing to allow these pioneers to There is nothing complicated about the plot live undisturbed and realise their vision of of Die Wit Kraai, and very little in it will self-determination, annex the Republic of seem novel to anyone who is familiar with Natalia and impose on the Boers imperial antecedent fictional reconstructions of this ways similar to those which had harried historic migration, as its author them out of the Cape Colony. De Lange and unquestionably was. Like most other novels many of his neighbours consequently trek about the Great Trek, it briefly relates the again, secure from Dingaan' s successor woes which frontier Boers in the Eastern King Mpande another expanse of lan~, and Cape were experiencing during the mid- constitute on it the Klip River RepublIc, but, 1830s, and in this respect De Villiers, again in what strikes the settlers as a painful true to convention, uses farmhouse dialogue repetition of history, the British are hard on to voice (though here in extremely skeletal their heels and incorporate that short-lived form) the grievances which they had against country into Her Majesty's recently founded the British colonial administration, colony of Natal. In this politically particularly with regard to woefully .. unsatisfactory setting the ageing De Lange, inadequate compensation for the abolItIOn of increasingly withdrawn from his wife, slavery and the inefficacy of military allows his smouldering anger to flare up protection from the Xhosa. The De Langes when Ncatya, one of his Zulu employees, is join the trek to the north and soon c~me . reported by a female colleague to have. under the secular leadership of Gerrlt Mantz broken into an outbuilding. Accompamed by Anna de Villiers' Die Wit Kraai 29 a troupe of his other workers, De Lange sets first novels about the Great Trek, De out to take the accused to a magistrate in Voortrekkers, ofHet Dagboek van Izak van Ladysmith but becomes involved in a fight der Merwe, which the two Dutch Reformed with him en route and kills him with a dominees Nico Hofmeyr and his brother-in­ firearm.
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