I wondered about Stephanus Erasmus.
There are lots of people like Van Rensburg who can just foretell the future, but when a man comes along who can actually make the future, then you feel that you can’t make jokes about him. All the farmers in Drogedal talked about Stephanus Erasmus with respect. Even when he wasn’t present to hear what was being said about him. Because there would always be somebody to go along and tell him if you happened to make some slighting remark about him.
I know, because once in Piet Fourie’s house I said that if I was a great prophet like Stephanus Erasmus I would try and prophesy myself a new pair of veldskoens, seeing that his were all broken on top and you could see two corns and part of an ingrowing toenail. After that things went all wrong on my farm for six months. So I knew that Piet Fourie had told the prophet what I had said. Amongst other things six of my best trek-oxen died of the miltsiekte.
After that, whenever I wanted to think anything unflattering about Stephanus Erasmus I went right out into the veld and did it all there. You can imagine that round that time I went into the veld alone very often. It wasn’t easy to forget about the six trek-oxen.
More than once I hoped that Stephanus Erasmus would also take it into his head to tell General Kemp that it was the right time to go into rebellion. But Erasmus was too wise for that. I remember once when we were all together just before a meeting of the Dwarsberg School Committee I asked Stephanus about this.
“What do you think of this new wheel-tax, Oom Stephanus?” I said. “Don’t you think the people should go along with their rifles and hoist the Vierkleur over the magistrate’s court at Zeerust?”
Erasmus looked at me and I lowered my eyes. I felt sorry in a way that I had spoken. His eyes seemed to look right through me. I felt that to him I looked like a springbok that has been shot and cut open, and you can see his heart and his ribs and his liver and his stomach and all the rest of his inside. It was not very pleasant to be sitting talking to a man who regards you as nothing more than a cut-open springbok.
But Stephanus Erasmus went on looking at me. I became frighten-ed. If he had said to me then, “You know you are just a cut-open springbok,” I would have said, “Yes, Oom Stephanus, I know.” I could see then that he had a great power. He was just an ordinary sort of farmer on the outside, with a black beard and dark eyes and a pair of old shoes that were broken on top. But inside he was terrible. I began to be afraid for my remaining trek-oxen.
Then he spoke, slowly and with wisdom.
“There are also magistrates’ courts at Mafeking and Zwartruggens and Rysmierbult,” he said. “In fact there is a magistrates’ court in every town I have been in along the railway line. And all these magistrates’ courts collect wheel-tax,” Oom Stephanus said.
I could see then that he not only had great power inside him, but that he was also very cunning. He never went in for any wild guessing, like saying to a stranger, “You are a married man with five children and in your inside jacket-pocket is a letter from the Kerkraad asking you to become an ouderling.” I have seen some so-called fortune-tellers say that to a man they had never seen in their lives before in the hope that they might be right.
You know, it is a wonderful thing this, about being a prophet. I have thought much about it, and what I know about it I can’t explain. But I know it has got something to do with death. This is one of the things I have learnt in the Marico, and I don’t think you could learn it anywhere else. It is only when you have had a great deal of time in which to do nothing but think and look at the veld and at the sky where there have been no rain-clouds for many months, that you grow to an understanding of these things.
Then you know that being a prophet and having power is very simple. But it is also something very terrible. And you know then that there are men and women who are unearthly, and it is this that makes them greater than kings. For a king can lose his power when people take it away from him, but a prophet can never lose his power – if he is a real prophet.
It was the schoolchildren who first began talking about this. I have noticed how often things like this start with the stories of kaffirs and children.
Anyway, a very old kaffir had come to live at the outspan on the road to Ramoutsa. Nobody knew where he had come from, except that when questioned he would lift up his arm very slowly and point towards the west. There is nothing in the west. There is only the Kalahari Desert. And from his looks you could easily believe that this old kaffir had lived in the desert all his life. There was something about his withered body that reminded you of the Great Drought.
We found out that this kaffir’s name was Mosiko. He had made himself a rough shelter of thorn-bushes and old mealie bags. And there he lived alone. The kaffirs round about brought him mealies and beer, and from what they told us it appeared that he was not very grateful for these gifts, and when the beer was weak he swore vilely at the persons who brought it.
As I have said, it was the kaffirs who first took notice of him. They said he was a great witch-doctor. But later on white people also started taking him presents. And they asked him questions about what was going to happen. Sometimes Mosiko told them what they wanted to know. At other times he was impudent and told them to go and ask Baas Stephanus Erasmus.
You can imagine what a stir this created.
“Yes,” Frans Steyn said to us one afternoon, “and when I asked this kaffir whether my daughter Anna should get married to Gert right away or whether she should go to High School to learn English, Mosiko said that I had to ask Baas Stephanus. ‘Ask him,’ he said, ‘that one is too easy for me’.”
Then the people said that this Mosiko was an impertinent kaffir, and that the only thing Stephanus could do was not to take any notice of him.
I watched closely to see what Erasmus was going to do about it. I could see that the kaffir’s impudence was making him mad. And when people said to him, “Do not take any notice of Mosiko, Oom Stephanus, he is a lazy old kaffir,” anyone could see that this annoyed him more than anything else. He suspected that they said this out of politeness. And there is nothing that angers you more than when those who used to fear you start being polite to you.
The upshot of the business was that Stephanus Erasmus went to the outspan where Mosiko lived. He said he was going to boot him back into the Kalahari, where he came from. Now, it was a mistake for Stephanus to have gone out to see Mosiko. For Mosiko looked really important to have the prophet coming to visit him. The right thing always is for the servant to visit the master.
All of us went along with Stephanus.
On the way down he said, “I’ll kick him all the way out of Zeerust. It is bad enough when kaffirs wear collars and ties in Johannesburg and walk on the pavements reading newspapers. But we can’t allow this sort of thing in the Marico.”
But I could see that for some reason Stephanus was growing angry as we tried to pretend that we were determined to have Mosiko shown up. And this was not the truth. It was only Erasmus’s quarrel. It was not our affair at all.
We got to the outspan.
Mosiko had hardly any clothes on. He sat up against a bush with his back bent and his head forward near his knees. He had many wrinkles. Hundreds of them. He looked to be the oldest man in the world. And yet there was a kind of strength about the curve of his back and I knew the meaning of it. It seemed to me that with his back curved in that way, and the sun shining on him and his head bent forward, Mosiko could be much greater and do more things just by sitting down than other men could do by working hard and using cunning. I felt that Mosiko could sit down and do nothing and yet be more powerful than the
