15. Bushmen and the Boers

The Bushmen were ultimately exterminated in almost all locations, where they existed. Well, here a very curious thought appears in my mind as to whether the higher mental qualities of the native-English are moving along the same pathway of getting exterminated from this earth.

It is true that in Europe, the Continental Europeans had tried for centuries to over-run the native English lands in Great Britain. However, the English could hold on, on their own. In the same manner, the Bushmen could hold on for a long time, being unconquerable in their unassailable strongholds. However, they were ultimately overwhelmed by the same route that multiculture has paved inside England. That of outsiders with inimical intentions walking inside with false demeanour of affable friendliness

I will speak more about these things later. Now, let us have a look at how the Boers treated the Bushmen.

QUOTE: The Koranas, finding that they could exchange them for guns, ammunition, and brandy with the old colonists, commenced kidnapping their children ; and a few years after the commencement of this traffic, some of the wandering Boers, following the example of their fathers along the Bushman borders of the Old Colony, made forays upon them for this express purpose, seizing almost all their children, dishonouring them if they were girls, and sometimes making eunuchs of the lads ; and thus it was that the Bushmen became greatly exasperated.

END OF QUOTE

In the above quote, Koranas are one of the native populations of Africa that slowly started moving into the traditional homelands of the Bushmen. They kidnapped the Bushmen children and sold them as slaves to the Boers, who gave them guns, ammunition and brandy in exchange. This same business was commenced by the wandering Boers also. So it appears that the others were treating the Bushmen like some kind of animal population which could be tamed for domestic and agricultural work purposes.

QUOTE: The old man still retained his bow and arrows, together with a number of other Bushman implements. He was very proud to show how he worked with his bone awls, etc. His wife was very intelligent, and was evidently well versed in the folklore of her tribe. Unfortunately the time was too short to permit the writer to avail himself of the knowledge she possessed ; and such was the dread of the Boers which animated these unfortunates, that no offer that could be made would induce them to stay even for a short time within the Free State border.

END OF QUOTE.

The above quote is about GEORGE W. STOW’s attempt to enter into a conversation with a Bushmen couple. Their terror of the Boers is what is mentioned above.

QUOTE: Thompson, who visited these tribes nearly twenty years later, says that after the larger game was driven out of the country by the guns of the Boers and the Griquas, the Bushmen were reduced to the most wretched shifts to obtain a precarious subsistence, living chiefly on wild roots, locusts, and the larvae of insects.

END OF QUOTE.

Griquas was the major African mixed group which received the best in terms of cultural and intellectual enhancement from the London Missionary Society. Both they and the Boers had reduced the Bushmen in one locality to the most wretched straits.

QUOTE: He stated that many years before his father's kraal, without the least provocation, had been suddenly attacked by a party of Boers from the Colony ; and that his father and many hundreds of his people, men, women, and children, had been killed ; that afterwards ten waggons were laden with the surviving children and driven off to the colony by the attacking party ; that since that time many commandos had come against his people, that multitudes of them had been shot, and the children carried away ; that when the missionary came he ploughed and sowed land for them, and when the harvest was ripe, he taught them how to cut down the corn, and divided it among them ; and they were happy, for no more commandos came upon them ; that some moons after the missionary had left them the Boers came and took possession of the fountains and chased them from the land of Tooverberg, the land of their fathers, and made them go and herd their sheep and forced their children into perpetual servitude ; and that he, without people, with only his wife and four children, was hiding amongst the mountains and subsisting on roots and locusts ; that whenever sheep or goats or cattle strayed, or were stolen, the Boers said that the Bushmen had stolen them, and they were flogged and shot on suspicion only, for the cattle and sheep which had been taken by others or destroyed by hyenas, lions, or panthers.

END OF QUOTE.

The terror that was the Boers. The African populations also were a terror for the Bushmen. However, till the advent of the guns, they could hold on against the local attacking populations.

QUOTE: The only Europeans who then visited it came for the ostensible purpose of elephant hunting, and also, according to the evidence obtained by Sparrman, to indulge in their old and favourite amusement of kidnapping Bushman children whenever a favourable opportunity offered.

END OF QUOTE.

This again can be about the Boers, who could consist of more than one Continental European population mix.

QUOTE: On these occasions the unhappy victims of their attack were generally surprised in their villages at night, the men were shot, and the surviving women and children, together with the cattle, were captured. When these commandos were undertaken, the practice was for a few Boers to unite their separate strength, and the principal part of the booty was divided among themselves, a fractional share only being given to the slaves or Hottentots who were in their service. There were at that time a few Boers in that district who were noted for the cruelties and murders they committed upon the defenceless natives in these marauding and plundering expeditions, and among these the name of Pienaar was not the least notorious.

END OF QUOTE.

The Boers were totally different from the native-English in all their basic attributes.

QUOTE 1: At that time the Bastaard population was spread along the banks of the 'Gariep for an extent of at least 600 miles. Their numbers, estimated altogether, amounted to about five thousand souls, and they had in their possession at least seven hundred muskets. They readily obtained constant supplies of ammunition, notwithstanding all the proclamations to the contrary, from the Boers, whom great profits tempted to carry on this traffic in defiance of the colonial regulations and the claims of humanity. The profits of this smuggling traffic were immense, as for every pound of powder sold to the banditti an ox or a cow was given in exchange. Such then was the chaotic state of affairs in 1823, and it was only around the contracted centre of Griquatown, under the immediate control of Mr. Melvill and the missionaries that any signs of peace could be found.

QUOTE 2: They were something in the position of the Boers in Namaqualand whose case we have just noticed ; first their modest requirements were merely to sit still and sow a little corn, then to build a mill, ending however in a dictatorial demand for the entire country.

END OF QUOTEs.

This is an attitude about which native England has to be very wary of. All outsiders, white, black, yellow & brown, who barge into England, have this mental attitude.

QUOTE 1: In earlier times missions among the Bushmen had been established at Tooverbjerg and Hephzibah on the southern side of the 'Nu-'Gariep. They were afterwards most unjustifiably suppressed, and the country in which they were was given to the Boers.

QUOTE 2: Their leader fixed upon this locality as his headquarters or great-place, at a spot called Mamakoa, in the neighbourhood of which are two great caverns, which afterwards became famous in the annals of their tribe for the terrible siege they endured when beleaguered in them by the Boers.

END OF QUOTEs

Boers were just another wild population let loose inside the South African location.

In this book, the next items to take up for inspection are the various native African populations. It is seen mentioned that none of them were the traditional owner population of the locations that is currently known as South Africa. The traditional owners were the Bushmen. However, they were not treated as fully human beings. For, they had the capabilities of the baboon, could easily compete with a horse in running across the rocky wilderness and had the technical skill to replicate the offensive capability of the serpent. However, they are mentioned as a set of population groups who were in possession of remarkably great sense of justice and commitment.

In the African location discussed in this book, the various native African populations that slowly entered the Bushman areas are all seen to be quite of a savage description. There is one exception mentioned.

Before going into the attributes of the other native populations, let me take some quotes from the book to denote certain features of the Bushmen.

QUOTE: All the farmers along the border had Bushman servants, principally, however, women and children.

END OF QUOTE

This taking of the natives of a place as servants is a very complicated issue, which can be interpreted in various manners. In British-India (around half of Asian Subcontinent), many lower classes did work as servants of the English as well of the Celtic individuals. These things are currently mentioned as the exploitation of the ‘Indians’ by the British. However, the larger fact is that these were the populations kept at various levels of oppression by the native land-owners. In fact, in their hands these populations were treated like dirt. When these oppressed classes escaped from these ‘Indian’ brutes, and joined as the workers of the native-English, actually they escaped from a hell in which their families had lived for centuries.

The wider fact is the being under the feudal language speaking ‘Indians’ is a very terrible thing. In fact, if one were to go to the newly cleared forest areas of India, one might find a lot of forest people forced into Indian citizenship and kept at the excrement levels in the Indian feudal language verbal codes by the Indian rich and the Indian officialdom. They are usually addressed in the meanest levels of You, Your, Yours, He, His, Him, She, Her, Hers &c. in the feudal languages of India.

As to the Bushmen working as servants of the Boers, it is not a very ideal situation. May be being with the English would have been better or even the best. This is just because of the planar language quality of English.

QUOTE: My ideas, however, upon this point underwent a considerable change as my notes accumulated, for as I gained more and more information regarding the native tribes, I became gradually impressed with a firm conviction that the Bushmen alone were the true aborigines of the country, and that all the stronger races, without exception, were mere intruders.

END OF QUOTE

If what the writer contends is true, there ends the issue of who traditionally owns the geography of the lands currently inside South Africa. However, if this is true, it does not automatically mean that South Africa - the nation is owned by the Bushmen. That is a different question. I will not take it up for inspection.

QUOTE: as they imagined there must be some ulterior motive in seeking for information with regard to their early movements, having no idea that such a thing could be done from a simple desire of acquiring historical knowledge. On many such occasions, therefore, they feigned profound ignorance and obliviousness, while the younger men of the rising generation, instead of troubling themselves about the ancient traditions of their tribes, seem, as a rule, desirous of forgetting and even obliterating, if possible, the recollection of the antecedents of their savage forefathers.

END OF QUOTE

Viewing the above quote from my South Asian English colonial time book reading experience, I find that two different items have been twined together in the words above.

One is the sense of suspicion about the ulterior motives of such un-understood aspirations of outsiders. See these words from the Native Life in Travancore by The REV. SAMUEL MATEER, of the London Missionary Society.

QUOTE: The report on the Census of Travancore, taken on May 18, 1875, supplies valuable details respecting the population of the State, and their social and religious condition. The enumeration itself caused considerable commotion amongst the people, especially the lower castes. For some months previously the rural population were in a state of complete ferment, dreading that advantage would be taken of the occasion to impose some new tax or to exercise some bitter oppression, as was often done on various occasions in the old times of cruelty and injustice. This opportunity was seized by some Muhammadans and others, to despoil the poor slave-castes of their fowls and other domestic animals, by telling them that the Sirkar was about to seize everything of the kind, and to exact a similar amount annually, so that they had better sell them off at once at any price than lose them altogether. The Sudras also sought to frighten them by the report that the Christians were to be carried off in ships to foreign parts, in which the missionaries and their native helpers would assist. When numbers were stamped upon all the houses, people thought that soon they themselves would be branded and seized by the Sirkar. Absurd reports were raised.

Some said the Maharajah had promised to supply inhabitants for a country which had been desolated by famine. Others said that a certain number were to be shipped off on the 18th May. Till that date the people were whispering “Today or tomorrow we shall be caught.” For example, an old woman having shut up her grandson in her house for safety, went to call her son, weeping all the way and beating her breast. One who met her comforted her and went back with her to the house, where the child was found half-dead with fright. Many of the people left their gardens uncultivated during the panic, ate up the seed corn, sold their cattle and sheep. One man had ten fowls, and, taking them to a river, he cut off their heads, and threw them away. So dreadful is the ignorance of the people through want of education. It was even reported that the missionaries had prepared a building on the sea-coast, where a great meeting was to be held, immediately after which the people would be caught and shipped off. Many of the uneducated Sudras also in distant localities were much afraid. END OF QUOTE.

The second item is the response of the modern generations to what had happened in the past in the families of their own ancestors. No one is happy to mention or see mentioned the realities of their past. For instance, in Travancore there was a huge section of very low castes, by names such as Pulaya, Pariah, Vedan &c. and some low castes such as Ezhava etc. A particular section of these individuals were converted into Christianity by the efforts of such organisations such as the London Missionary Society. Many of these converted persons became rich by various means, including government jobs, occupying forest lands in the erstwhile Malabar district in the Madras Presidency in British-India and setting up huge plantations there and such other ways. Currently none of them want to mention anything about their ancestry. Such a mention would connect them to the various lower castes under the Hindus. The very fact that England had a hand in emancipating them is not known to many of them.

QUOTE: Even those native authorities of the present day who profess that they have preserved some portion of the history of their tribes have so mutilated and adulterated the traditions, modifying them to suit the altered conditions of the nation or tribe to which they belong, that the originality and authenticity of these narrations have at length in many instances become so completely obscured or destroyed that they are rendered nearly valueless as affording material whereon to build a reliable and veracious tribal history. END OF QUOTE

This again has a very interesting sync with what has happened in South Asia. In South Asia, as of now there are three nations, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. The actual history of the subcontinent is that of an immensity of minute kingdoms lying scattered all over the place. Each of these locations would not be a particular nation as currently understood by the word ‘nation’. Instead, each such location would be a series of populations one upon the other in a ladder-like manner, the top one oppressive to the bottom one, and the bottom one revering the top one. The various locations had nothing in common from the northern parts to the southern parts. The populations inside each location were different across the ladder-like set up. As the same time, across the subcontinent also, the populations were different. The languages were different. The cultures were different. And there was no historical, social or family-link connection between the different locations.

Even though it is generally currently mentioned that Hinduism was the common religion across the land, the fact remains that the Hindu religion was confined to the Brahmins only. A few lower to the Brahmin populations in the social hierarchy in each of the locations were much connected to the Hindus, but the vast others were not. The only common link across the lands might be the presence of some group who claimed to be Brahmins. The claim in itself has many problems in that there might not be any family links between the Brahmins across the locations. Even between such closely connected locations like Travancore and Madras Presidency or between Travanore and Malabar or between Malabar and Madras Presidency, there was historically not much of a family-link-wise or social connection. The only link that sprang up periodically was the pillaging, massacring and molesting raids that came in the guise of warfare.

This might be the factual gist of the real history of South Asia. However, that is not the way the history is seen as of now. As of now, India is a great nation with traditions, conventions, systems, legal codes &c. &c. extending backwards over the centuries.

QUOTE: That these Bushmen were susceptible of the feelings of jealousy was illustrated by a tragical incident which took place amongst some of them about this time.

END OF QUOTE

I cannot say anything about how it was with the Bushmen before their land was occupied by others. Their innate emotional triggers and reactions change when they are dispersed among peoples who speak in language systems which are evil. For instance, the native-English people’s emotional reactions will slowly change as England gets filled with the feudal language speakers. Feudal languages can induce terrible emotional disturbances inside the native-English, if and when they get to feel or understand the evil codes inside these evil languages. Native-English husband-wife relationships can go into disarray in the presence of feudal language speakers. For, these evil languages can relocate both the husband as well as the wife to weird locations inside the virtual software arena that exists behind physical reality. Their relationship can get distorted. These are things that require huge information. Interested readers are requested to follow the posts inside this Telegram Channel: https://t.me/SouthAsiaEnglish/32. If the link is not working, search for SouthAsiaEnglish inside Telegram.

QUOTE: This is but another proof of the determination of their resistance ; they rallied at the point of greatest danger, as it was doubtless this cause which occasioned them to collect in large bodies, in order to be the better able to withstand the encroachments of the colonists, who had already taken away their best dwelling and hunting places. END OF QUOTE

The above is about Bushmen. However, it could even be about the native-English, as they make a desperate last stand in England in years to come.

QUOTE: Several farmers, who perceived that they were not able to get at the Bushmen by the usual methods, shot a sea-cow, and took only the prime part of it for themselves, leaving the rest by way of bait ; they themselves in the meantime lying in ambush. The Bushmen with their wives and children now came down from their hiding-places, with the intention of feasting sumptuously on the sea-cow that had been shot ; but the farmers, who came back again very unexpectedly, turned the feast into a scene of blood and slaughter. Pregnant women and children in their tenderest years were not at this time, neither indeed were they ever, exempt from the effects of the hatred and spirit of vengeance constantly harboured by the colonists with respect to the Bushman nation, excepting such indeed as were marked out to be carried away into bondage. END OF QUOTE

The native-English are also headed the same way. To see how the scenario would look like, see what is happening in Indian occupied Kashmir. If the native-English are in the same plight as the Kashmiris at any moment in history, the same experience of the Kashmiris would befall upon the native-English. The only solace would be that the native-English cannot understand the Hindi. This could save them from the hammer blows of the pejorative verbal form that are there in Hindi. However, the Indian side would take all steps to see that the native-English kids learn Hindi, either by force or by cajoling.

QUOTE: Of all the nations, he adds, who have been ill-treated by the Europeans, none remembered their wrongs with so much bitterness. They never forgot the treachery of the colonists or the infamous return made for the many signal services they had rendered them, and such, he says, was the resentment of these people, that the terrible cry of vengeance was ever in their mouths.

END OF QUOTE

The terribleness in the above words is in the callous use of the word ‘European’. This word is seen used in many colonial period writings of South Asia also. The careless use of this word has created a confusion. Actually there was the need to very carefully delineate the definite difference that was there between the native-English and the rest of the white folks who had arrived on the South Asian geographical area. One was quite opposite of the other in every aspect of human quality and refinement. However, in these books they were mentioned in a very slipshod manner, that the negative features of both sides get added up on the native-English side.

QUOTE: The clans which inhabited De Bruyn's and Achter De Bruyn's Hoogte lived peace-ably with the first Christians who migrated there. The latter were then few in number, and doubtless found it expedient to adopt, as all isolated voortrekkers ever did, a conciliatory policy towards the aborigines, instead of the arrogant and overbearing treatment meted out as soon as their number was sufficiently augmented to enable them to dictate terms to those who in the first instance had welcomed them as friends.

In the days of their weakness the Bushmen were accustomed to perform the kindest offices for them, and would frequently go unasked in search of a stray lamb or the like belonging to the Christians, and take it home to them ; but at length, after their countrymen had been harried by the relentless commandos, and massacred in their caves, they withdrew themselves and lived concealed in the holes and crevices of the rocks in different parts of the country, like the other Bushmen.

END OF QUOTE.

Actually all feudal language speakers use the technique of affability, friendliness etc. to deceive another entity whom they want to entrap, conquer or shackle. In fact, just after the 2nd World War the Japanese side used this very scheme to defraud and deceive the gullible US officials. Even women were made available to the US side. They were honoured and shown ‘respect’. And at the end of the day, the US economy and market were opened for the Japanese conquerors to takeover. Even now the US policymakers have not detected this.

The same is the case with the Germans and Italians. However, I may speak about them in some other context.

The issue with persons who come for conquering with no arms or munitions, other than extreme obsequiousness, servitude, servility, affableness, worshipful eyes etc. is that the moment they get the upper hand, they would demand these very same things from the populations which had given them the shelter and the space inside their nation.

See these words a Chinese man who made it big in England. It was an online conversation with me:

QUOTE: My parents came from Hong Kong which was a former British colony. It was basically a territory Britain won from China so she could sell drugs to Chinese and get them addicted. China was defeated and had to pay reparations as well as cede Hong Kong. This was to correct Britains trade deficit due to her love of tea, silk and porcelain. This caused untold misery to China, devastating families, emptying the coffers (this was one of many incidents where Britain forced reparations on China and seized territory).

There are some very wealthy yes. But immigrants are diverse and many came here poor. My parents came with £20 in their pocket and worked till they built up a business. We lived in an area with many pakistani and indian immigrants who were poor.

Hong Kong government operates at a profit, Britain used to take all of that. Now that she is gone there is more welfare for the people and some years the surplus is shared with the people – last time people got £4-500 each.

That must be why the fought a war of independence to be free of England. They won that war with the help of slaves and non english immigrants. It was a prussian general that trained them into a force that was finally able to defeat the superior trained British army of the time.

It was natives that taught them how to survive in the early days. It was many nationalities that built the railroads. It was slaves that were the backbone of alot of their exports. America still has an edge over other economies because she can absorb ideas and talent the world over.

What is that exactly? All great powers borrow extensively from other cultures. The law was greatly influenced by Romans. The religion was not english. Many common food crops came from the New World. Many medications come from abroad. Things like tea, gunpowder came from China.

North Korea is what you end up looking like if you want to reject foreign things. END OF QUOTE.

Just see the rank backstabbing attitude of this rascal, whose parents arrived in England, in a different mood. The un-understood item in the above quote would be that the moment the Chinese man is pushed back to China, the native-Chinese will take care of his arrogance. When he remains in England, it is the native-English who have to bear it.

Also, the reader should note that if this type of fiends is pushed out of current-day England, the nation will not convert into North Korea. Instead it would revert back to pristine-England.

QUOTE from the above words: this was to correct Britains trade deficit due to her love of tea, silk and porcelain. END OF QUOTE

Only a silly gullible England would believe all this nonsense mouthed by a person who has barged into England. He has no more right to sit inside England than any other Chinese individual. He speaks of tea, silk and porcelain as if they had been stolen from the seabed. China sold it to England and reaped a profit. In India, the opposite is mentioned. England sold Manchester made textiles to India and thus looted India! The fact is that there was no India then and trade is not looting. Looting is what takes place when a common man of India enters an Indian government office. The Indian officials are literally pickpockets.

For more on the above Chinese man’s words, check my book: An urgent appeal for ENGLISH RACISM – Chapter three.

QUOTE: This disagreement became the pretext for the suppression of the missions ; the fieldcomet Van der Walt was against the missions, and had reported unfavourably about them to the landdrost. No specific charges appear to have been made, nor was any investigation instituted. A kind of general assertion was advanced that the collection of so many savages so near the colonial border was a menace to the peace of the colony.

END OF QUOTE

Here we see the general attitude of the Boers – Dutch and German.

QUOTE 1: We can imagine this unfortunate Bushman, surrounded by armed men, signing away of his own free will the birthright of his tribe for a riding horse and some threescore sheep !

QUOTE 2: Yes ! purchased, a riding horse and seventy fat-tailed sheep, valued in those days at some four shillings and six-pence each, for upwards of two and a quarter millions of acres of land ! What a premium for fraud and forgery !

END OF QUOTEs

It is a sample of how the Boers and the Griquas slowly pushed out the Bushmen, with a semblance of legality.