Set in southern Namibia, Great Namaqualand, ‘Bittersweet Karas Home’ is the story of three families, the Hills, Walsers & Hartungs, whose lives merge and intertwine in a semi-arid land that presents both hardship and blessings. Over the next few months, we would like to share this bittersweet saga with you from the (as yet) unpublished book.
CHAPTER ONE (cont . . .)
Groendoorn in the eyes of the law
Although Charles Henry Hill and Carl Wilhelm Walser were respected members of the Farmers’ Association conference in Keetmanshoop in 1894, things changed after Charles Henry’s death.
In 1912, Roland Martin Hill shot a number of kudus on the family farm. He sold the horns and skins to railway employees. Neighbouring officials and farmers reported him to the police even though Roland had a hunting permit and had hunted on his own land. Policemen called him a ‘native’ and scolded him for being overgenerous in the distribution of meat. ‘Whenever a piece of big game has been shot, friends and acquaintances turn up, who exploit the natives’ weakness by asking him for meat. Natives give as long as they have anything … a mere two days after the shooting he [Roland Hill] had no venison left’. (Imperial Districts Office (Kaiserliches Bezirksamt) Keetmanshoop, 9.6.1912, docket No. 4125, police report by Police Sergeant Hense) The police did not find that he had committed any offence but classified him as a suspect.
The new railway line was a source of conflict. The Hills were expected to pay for an increase in property value brought about by the railway but, in actual fact, experienced value depreciation. Their pasture had been divided by the tracks, veld fires occurred because of the trains’ sparks and livestock theft increased with the number of people passing through. Transport riding, a source of income for the Hill sons, became obsolete. Land was isolated by the railways’ tracks, stations and settlements for its employees, and the police station in Holoog. Grazing was required for railway personnel’s livestock and wood for the locomotives. The officials acknowledged the Hills’ property rights but expected them to unquestioningly comply with their demands for resources. The police reports and the discriminatory classification of the Hills as ‘natives’ didn’t help the situation.
In 1914 and 1915 the Germans arrested all suspects who were potential enemies – among them the Hill sons and Karl Arthur Örtendahl, Elizabeth Hill’s husband – and moved them to an internment camp in Okanjande (near Otjiwarongo). This was in retaliation for the internment of Germans, who were sent to Fort Napier in Pietermaritzburg as enemy aliens. When the South African Union forces advanced, they liberated Okanjande’s inmates without complications. The Hill sons’ pro-British stance and their internment for their convictions did not guarantee them preferential treatment by the post-war government. They were seen as Basters rather than British subjects.
The government passed a law restricting the number of farm labourers allowed to stay on farm premises to five. This law had been designed to solve the problem of labour scarcity after World War I. The accumulation of so-called ‘work-shy’ natives had to be forbidden. Roland Martin Hill had already been suspected of tolerating and encouraging illegal overcrowding on his farm Tsawisis in the early 1920s.
Tsawisis was home to many children who attended the Klein Karas school that fell under the Educational Department in Windhoek, the Rhenish Mission in Keetmanshoop and the farm owner. Zacheus Thomas was the school principal, Roland Martin Hill was the farm owner (although his brother-in-law, Karl Arthur Örtendahl, already featured as a creditor at that time) and Lind (from Keetmanshoop) was the manager of the church and school. Tsawisis and the Klein Karas hamlet formed a Nama and Baster mission station like the Roman Catholic stations Gabis and Heiragabis. The magistrate in Keetmanshoop decided, however, to treat Klein Karas as a farm, subject to overcrowding laws. Roland Martin Hill and his brothers were criticised: ‘The sons [did not carry] on the old man’s [Charles Henry Hill’s] traditions in regard to work. The estate has rapidly fallen to pieces’. (Magistrate Keetmanshoop, 27 August 1930)
Roland Martin Hill was obviously against the idea of evicting the inhabitants. The officials attributed this to his obligations to his many relatives who lived on the farm. Roland was married to Magrieta née Vries, a Baster. His brother Charles’s common-law-wife was Sarah Vries. The women’s parents, Johannes and Sara, had come from Steinkopf and had stayed in Heirachabis before they moved to Tsawisis. There were altogether 23 Vrieses on the farm. The magistrates assumed that many of the other children were actually the Hill sons’ illegitimate children – and they, posthumously, did not even exclude Charles Henry Hill from this suspicion, although this was worded very euphemistically.
The statistics drawn up in 1930 by Zacheus Thomas are evidence of the imbalance. There were 59 adults and 103 children (80% under the age of 14) living on the farm Tsawisis in 28 huts. Some adults were employees but many were unemployed, some of them blind, sick and aged. The livestock statistics drawn up by Zacheus Thomas also revealed that Roland Hill owned less than his dependants. The non-employed residents lived off their livestock and possibly also off veldkos and hunting produce. The employees would have received food rations and wages, but they also depended on their livestock. The right to graze on farm land was apparently part of their payment. The farm owner and his personnel were engaged in subsistence production and lived almost beyond the money economy. According to Karl Arthur Örtendahl, Roland’s herd of sheep had dwindled from 1000 to 200 head within two years. The missing sheep may have been used to feed farm residents. Over the years, Roland Hill ran up a debt of £1700 with Karl Arthur. Not being able to repay this amount he might have been forced to sell land to cover the debt.
He did not immediately comply with the magistrate’s order to reduce the number of inhabitants to five. Many residents had been born on the farm and had lived there all their lives. Evicting them was emotionally difficult for Roland and was probably executed by Karl Arthur. Many of the farm dwellers eventually settled in the hamlet of Klein Karas, next to the railway, and in close proximity to the school.
The Hills would have told a story of Tsawisis life that outlined forms of cooperation, community and mutual aid, but the administrators wrote the official version of neglect and mismanagement. It was irrefutable that Tsawisis and the Groendoorn estate were in a critical state. The 1920s and the 1930s were times of drought. The global economic Depression also negatively impacted on Roland Martin Hill and his family. Eventually he had to relinquish Tsawisis, moving to Keetmanshoop with his sons and daughters and then to his sister Wilhelmina Charlotte’s farm, Enos, at the invitation of his niece, Anna Vries, née Hartung. He died on 21 July 1941 and was buried on Enos. His daughter, Sarah, married her cousin Hermanus Hartung in 1943.
(Join us every Sunday to take a step back in time and follow the interesting, sometimes sweet, sometimes heart-wrenching tale.)