records Doris Stirk in her Southwell Settlers, ‘the bishops and clergy left for Grahamstown in their buggies and traps, while the remainder, in spite of the rain, partook of a sumptuous tea which was provided by the Southwell ladies, and a sale of fancy articles, which together with the offertory, brought in the sum of £61 to pay off debts accrued on the building.’
We walked around the little church and the graveyard, noticing the thick-set old lemon trees and casually abundant hydrangeas. I pocketed two lemons, comfortingly fat and knobbly, to take home to my wife, and we poked around the graveyard, Craig and Jako poring over collapsed headstones as we tried to picture how things were, looking for a way to access the graveyard as one might open a book. I stood for a quiet minute in the free-standing bell cubicle next to the church, noticing a plaque bearing an inscription to George Ford and his wife, Doris May (née Stirk), erected by their children in 1969. Everywhere in settler country, I noticed, was the same gyre of names looping back through space and time, the circles and ceaseless continuities. They spun back to Southwell, the village in Nottinghamshire from which these settlers came, yet admitted none but their own, the circle closed to other names and deeds and histories. Names associated with ‘coloured’ people and, to use the historical colonial term, the ‘Hottentots’ (the Khoikhoi), like Whitbooy Levellot and Ruyter Apollos, appear in records and books from round about this time. As a rule, however, the names of black people do not. As far as they are concerned, there are seldom written records and certainly no church graveyards. Their dead remain sharply forgotten, bones in the veld, neglect begetting further neglect.
In the graveyard we discovered a headstone commemorating the life of one William Gray – ‘… killed in action near the Karraa by the rebel Hottentots of Theopolis …’ – and, then, less than an hour later, found ourselves on the farm on which Theopolis was situated, currently the property of the generous Howson Long, a wiry man with greying hair and a gunslinger’s moustache. We were hoping to find a small group of graves, particularly those belonging to the family of the Reverend George Barker. The reverend and his wife, Sarah Williams, were married in London in 1815 and arrived in South Africa the following year. Their intention had been to serve in Robert Moffat’s missionary station in Kuruman, but Sarah’s ill-health prevented her from making the journey north. They joined Rev. Ulbricht as members of the London Missionary Society at the Theopolis Mission instead.
By all accounts, Barker was an enterprising and warm-hearted man. He made his own nails in the smithy and whenever he was asked to provide support to Presbyterian or Methodist flocks scattered nearby, he willingly did so, either jumping onto his horse or walking to their parish, cheerfully on the lookout for quagga and elephant as he bundled down bridle paths spidery across the hills. Despite the family’s hand-to-mouth existence and the questionable spiritual commitment of the Khoikhoi and a group then referred to as ‘Fingoes’ to the tenets of Christianity, there were glimpses of paradise. ‘He [Barker] was also a keen gardener and planted black and white mulberries, as well as orange and peach trees, which he procured on his various journeys to Lombard’s Post and elsewhere,’ writes Stirk. ‘He frequently rode down to the Kasouga river mouth with family, friends and visitors, where they bathed, rode along the beach and fished.’
While Barker survived the Khoikhoi’s splendid indifference and the deluge of 1826, he didn’t cope with the death of his wife. Ten years after the great, destructive flood, she died in childbirth and, with Long’s help, we managed to track down her grave and at least one other. Colin came along with his dad, and the farmer’s family trudged along with us. We parked the bakkies on the edge of the thicket and stumbled around for five minutes before finding the headstones. It was a strange moment, neither anticlimactic nor profound. It seemed the act of finding the graves was more important than thinking about them or trying to wrap our heads around what it all meant, because soon most of the party were heading back to open ground, perhaps too awkward to remain around the graves for long. As the main group departed, Jako and I found what we thought was probably the stillborn child’s grave, listing hopelessly beneath a covering of leaves. We knelt down to make out the inscription, surmising that this was probably the Barkers’ stillborn child, but weren’t finally sure. We couldn’t make out time’s illegible scrawl.
Within two years Barker had left the mission, heading for the slightly more civilised confines of Paarl. He lived there for the rest of his life, remarrying and eventually becoming blind before he died in 1861. By moving to Paarl, Barker missed the disintegration of his beloved mission – and the action that took Gray’s life. In 1851 a group of Khoikhoi men staying at the mission conspired to overthrow the station and return the land to the Xhosa. From what I can gather, the Theopolis economy was faltering. They had little water for irrigating crops and no lime (a scarcity throughout this section of the Cape Colony, according to Thomas Pringle), an important ingredient in concrete. Economic activity was confined to felling local trees for wagon parts and charcoal. Few crops survived the pestilence and rust, baptisms were down and morale was low after the death of Reverend Sass, Barker’s successor. The religious vacuum and the prevailing harshness of the times forced some of the mission residents to look for alternative alliances and this is what led the Khoikhoi to kill some of their own before fleeing. News of the sedition reached the surrounding forts, while those who remained at Theopolis were evacuated under protection to Grahamstown. Under their leader, Kiewit Piqueur, the rebels made off with what they could, camping in the bush, and although some of them were killed in subsequent actions, others escaped to continue to harry Theopolis for another day. Gray was killed in one of many inconclusive skirmishes, as the rebels and their pursuers played a prolonged game of cat and mouse across the hills. It was the beginning of the end for Theopolis. Very soon it returned to dust.
We had lunch at the Pig ’n Whistle in Bathurst and discussed the controversial state of land reform. As we tucked into our burgers, Colin mentioned that government had appointed intermediaries to help new farmers find their way. It seemed like a wise initiative, although such cosy positions often went to the wrong people: farmers who had themselves failed at farming or those with little knowledge or empathy to offer. He spoke of a well-connected man down country who’d managed to finagle a farm through his political connections. The farm was once used for producing pineapples but that had long since ceased. It was marginal anyway, whether it had been repatriated or not. Perhaps it looked better on a spreadsheet of returned farms than it did in the flesh. Not for the first time on our walk through frontier country, I felt confused and depressed, aghast at the shallow predictability of it all.
After dropping off Jako at his parents’ house in Kenton-on-Sea, we trundled back to Grahamstown. The rain we’d heard about – and successfully missed – began to flush down the Golf’s windscreen. Close to the Salem turn-off we noticed a stationary car’s hazard lights on the other side of the road and, in the middle of it, a man sitting down. We stopped and went across to him to find that he was not only hopelessly drunk, but uppity with it. Still mildly drunk ourselves, Craig and I grinned through his protestations and yanked him off the road, walking him to a ditch a couple of metres back. As we got back into the car, he sort-of abused us, kind-of thanked us, and we chuckled as we went on our way, darkness falling, the rain making us feel dry and warm inside the car. We hadn’t got very far when we noticed in the rear-view mirror that he was up on his feet, swaying happily back down the road. We turned around, bundled him back into the car and went in search of the turn-off to home. We found it easily enough and put him on his way. The man, giggling as he lurched through the remaining light, seemed happier when we left him the second time. We felt quietly pleased with ourselves, Samaritans in the gloaming. It was a good way to end a memorable weekend.
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