BITTERSWEET KARAS HOME - 9

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 Over the next few months, we would like to share this bittersweet saga with you from the (as yet) unpublished book.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 . . .)
A home in Groendoorn

Peddling deep in the greater Namaqualand and married life did not mix well and Charles soon became tired of being separated from his wife and family. After ten years of married life in the Richtersveld, the couple realised that the livestock they had acquired from trading over the years gave them the opportunity to become farmers. They heard there was land available across the border and the Great River. They had travelled there before and were well informed about developments. In 1830 the Bondelswarts Captain Abraham Christian in Warmbad had become an official ally of the Cape government, receiving a salary of £25 a year to secure peace in the region, following a lawless period when LMS missionaries were pushed out of Warmbad in 1811 and Bethanie in 1822. In 1825, the missionary, William Threlfall, and his Khoi assistants, Jager and Link, from Kamiesberg were murdered. The Bondelswarts captain tried and punished the murderers, thus gaining the trust of the Colony. Missionaries from the Wesleyan Mission had since returned to Warmbad. A future British annexation of the region seemed likely.

In the section of Great Namaqualand where the Hills wanted to settle, the Bondelswarts reigned supreme. The Red Nation, the most senior clan, had been sidelined and the Afrikaner Oorlams who had dominated large parts of Namibia under Jonker Afrikaner, had lost their military advantage after his death in 1861. There was only a small stretch of land in the southeast, with Blydeverwacht as its centre, that they could still call their own.

Charles Henry Hill contacted the trader Robert Duncan, who was a fellow client of Bensusan & Co. They shared similar interests and together established the hunting and trading company Duncan & Hill. Robert Duncan and Charles Henry Hill approached Captain Willem Christian and his deputy-captain, Timothy Snewe, in Warmbad in 1876 for land. In the meeting the Warmbad council was present as well as the Rhenish missionary, Friedrich Wilhelm Weber. There was a choice: Oub, Blydeverwacht, Haaib or the farm complex Groendoorn, Holoog and Tsawisis that lay between the Fish River Canyon and the Klein Karas mountain range. Huge areas of land were needed in this southern section because the farmers, dependent on open water sources, would have to travel large distances with their cattle for grazing, returning to the outposts to water their animals. The first three options were rejected because the Bondelswarts might require the pasture closer to Warmbad in times of drought. The Groendoorn complex at the periphery of the Bondelswarts land was a much safer option. The Council accepted Reverend Weber’s advice and Groendoorn was selected. Duncan and Hill paid £800 for 250 000 hectares of land. Although the sale was finalised with the customary presence of alcohol, this did not play a decisive role. Half of the Duncan & Hill payment had to be invested in the rebuilding of a proper church in Warmbad as proof of the Bondelswarts leaders serious commitment to the community.

In modern Europe, purchase was a guarantee of exclusive ownership. Africans, however, did not own their land and waterholes individually; rather the rights of usage of waterholes and land were communal property. Other clans and individuals had the right to water and to graze livestock at certain times. The Bondelswarts sold the land to Duncan and Hill who they saw as traders and therefore middlemen with valuable connections to the world market. The Bondelswarts had expectations from the men. Hunters needed guns and ammunition, help in times of need and as much loyalty and respect as one can expect from middlemen. They would also have to tolerate livestock grazing on their land in times of drought.

Because Hill and Duncan bought a vast territory for the mere sum of £800, a rumour soon spread that Charles had obtained his land by deliberately making one of the tribal chiefs drunk with brandy. It was said that the inebriated chief told Charles: “Measure out the land you want until I have finished the brandy.” This rumour would turn out to be damaging in a future ownership challenge.

Charles Henry employed many Bondelswarts and Baster workers on his farm. Employees owned livestock, grazed them on their employer’s land and lived off their own livestock as much as off the food rations and wages they received. They dug wells, built houses, herded livestock, were engaged in food gardening and hunting. The Warmbad Bondelswarts were satisfied with the situation, knowing their people were employed and economically secure.

An unfortunate event put the Bondelswarts-Hill relationship under severe strain. When a group of Bondelswarts hunters or raiders strayed onto the Hill’s unfenced territory, the Hills and their workers formed a posse to follow and confront them. Guns were fired in the pursuit and a Bondelswarts man died. This situation was deplorable and complicated; the intruders were on traditional Bondelswarts ground but were engaged in illegal activities. Even though the Hills had purchased their land, it did not alter the fact that they were still guests of the Bondelswarts and had to consider Bondelswarts interests. The killing was clearly an offence. Charles Henry Hill travelled to Warmbad to meet with the Council, ask forgiveness and to declare his intention to make amends. He was asked to pay compensation in cattle. He swiftly complied and was pardoned. Full trust was soon regained between the groups.

While Robert Duncan, who was Nama chief Hendrik Witbooi’s ally and brother-in-law, was well-liked amongst the Nama, Charles Henry Hill did not receive the same approval. He had once made the mistake of calling the Berseba captain, Jacobus Isaak, a rebel in front of other Nama, making an instant enemy. Isaak feared the accusation would incite the Cape government to banish him to Robben Island, the prison for rebellious indigenous leaders, or, even worse, to have him executed. The Bondelswarts, however, were certain that Charles Henry Hill would never approach Cape officials with such an accusation.

If Nama captains assumed they were subject to Cape jurisdiction, traders like Duncan and Hill - both of them affiliated to Bensusan & Co - knew they were part of the Cape economy and had an interest in keeping it that way. When William Coates Palgrave, a commissioner from the Cape, negotiated with indigenous leaders and made them sign peace treaties, they welcomed the transaction. They wanted peace and saw an annexation to the Cape Colony as advantageous. The negotiations collapsed when there wasn’t consensus amongst the leaders, some who felt that they had been treated unfairly in past treaties. The governments in Cape Town and in London also shied away from any decisive engagement and the expenses a military campaign would entail.

Robert Duncan and Charles Henry Hill were distressed to hear that the German flag had been hoisted in Lüderitzbucht (Lüderitz Bay) in 1884. German merchant, Adolf Lüderitz, acquired the bay, Angra Pequeña, the coastal belt and a piece of land into the interior from Nama captain, Joseph Frederiks, receiving Germany’s protection and beginning the establishment of German South West Africa. They were not, however, prepared to believe that this was an irreversible state of affairs. There were hardly any changes on the ground initially, and it didn’t seem unreasonable to hope that the situation would somehow resolve itself. Six years later these matters were eventually finalised by the Anglo-German Agreement. The Bondelswarts captain ceased being a Cape employee and signed a protective treaty with the Germans. The British settlers had to face the inevitable; they were now German subjects and had a choice between obedience or rebellion.

Robert Duncan was born in St Andrews, Scotland, in 1835, and had run away from his upper-class family, progressing from a globe-trotting cabin boy to a rich ostrich farmer in the Cape. He arrived in Namaqualand in the 1860s after the ostrich-feather industry collapsed when ostrich feathers became unfashionable. His children had to abandon their education in England. Duncan started to sell arms and ammunition to the Nama in 1866. His marriage to Anna Maria Cloete, a Witbooi woman, held him in good standing. In a meeting with William Coates Palgrave in 1879, Paul Pfister, the Nama Council’s speaker, said: “He is the only white man who is good. We still pray God may spare him for a few years.”

The Duncans moved repeatedly over the years and had homes in Haruchas, Gochas, Keetmanshoop, Rietfontein and Hasuur. This eventually led to the Duncan & Hill team parting ways and the Hills having exclusive use of the Groendoorn farm complex. Duncan’s part of the farm was purchased for £4000 in 1895.

(Join us every Sunday to take a step back in time and follow the interesting, sometimes sweet, sometimes heart-wrenching tale.)