At the Fireside--Volume 1 Page 5

  ‘It’s my wife, she is seriously ill and requires specialist treatment and I haven’t the money. But if only I could capture that Bank robber...’

  ‘I think we can rectify that situation’, said Scotty. ‘First let’s get the reward money straightened out.’ They set off to the bank.

  ‘I have certain information that could lead to the successful capture of the thief and the return of the money’, said Scotty, ‘but first we want a written undertaking that the £1 000 reward money will be paid.’

  The delighted bank manager drew up the document and signed it. Back at camp, Scotty gave his friend the copy of agreement saying that the money was as good as in his pocket, and informed his friend that he had robbed the bank, and that he should call the police and have him arrested.

  ‘Rubbish’, said his friend, ‘and even if you had, I would never turn you in.’

  Scotty, assured him that no gaol could hold him and promised him that he would remain behind bars only until the reward was paid out. In this way he persuaded his friend to turn him in. Scotty was sent to prison for robbery. The manager, however, would not hand over the reward because after searching Scotty’s lodgings, no money could be found. He visited Scotty in gaol and broached the subject of the missing money.

  ‘What have you done about the will?’ asked Scotty.

  ‘You were right’, was the reply. ‘The will was forged and the matter is now in the hands of the police. You did a good thing there, Scotty, the money really does belong to her, which makes it more incomprehensible as to why you stole it.’

  ‘It should be obvious’, said Scotty. ‘I have no faith in the law, and I was making sure that she received her just due, whatever happened.’

  Thereupon, they came to an agreement. Scotty, handcuffed, would show the bank manager where the money was hidden and the widow in turn would receive the money. Scotty led the manager to a mound of earth some distance out of town, slipped his handcuffs, overpowered the manager and tied him up seated on top of the mound. Climbing on to the manager’s horse, he said, ‘I have never broken my word, and I don’t intend to start now. You are sitting on top of the money and I will tell the first person I see in town of your whereabouts and you will be rescued.’

  He was true to his word, the bank manager was found and the money recovered. As Scotty had been arrested, the bank paid the reward money to the foreman whose wife could then have the treatment needed, and the widow received her inheritance.

  There was a countrywide hue and cry about the audacious gaol breaker, but Scotty was already riding hard for the north-west.

  In order to appreciate fully the antics of George St Leger Lennox, it is necessary to have a broad understanding of not only the territory but also the people, places, politics and events of the last quarter of the 19th century. The area we are talking about stretches from Kimberley, westward towards Klaarwater (now Griquatown), then north to Postmasburg and Kuruman, turning east to Mmabatho and Zeerust, south to Mamusa (the present-day Schweizer-Reneke), down to Bloemhof and then back to Kimberley. This is the area that later briefly would be known as the Republics of Goshen and Stellaland.

  Various tribes, all engaged in internecine warfare – wonderful pickings for freebooters and filibusters – occupied this area. In the northern part were the two Baralong rivals for power, the pro-British Montsioa at Sehuba and the pro-Boer Moshette at Kunana. In the south were their counterparts, the Batlaping Chief Mankaroane at Taung and the Koranna Chief Massouw at Mamusa. It was a troublemaker’s paradise. These various chiefs would hire the freebooters on the usual conditions – retention of half of the booty and half of the farmland taken from the chief’s rivals.

  But these mercenaries had drawn up a gentleman’s agreement amongst themselves, that if they faced each other in battle, they would deliberately aim high. This was so strictly observed, apparently, that only two white men were actually killed in these skirmishes.

  The Transvaal freebooters in the north were having a good time. The pro-Boer Chief Moshette had appointed Niklas Gey van Piftius as his agent and with his help, had inflicted a crushing defeat on Montsioa and burnt his capital, Sehuba. The land seized from Montsioa was used for setting up the Boer puppet-republic of Goshen.

  In the south, things had gone badly for the pro-British section.

  Massouw, the leader of the Koranna, was causing a great deal of trouble. The ancestors of these Koranna had originally lived near Table Bay, but European expansion had forced them ever further to the north-east. Their wanderings had resulted in an almost continuous battle for existence, with all the peoples of the interior viewing them as enemies. They eventually established themselves at Mamusa on the west bank of the Harts River, where they converted a natural hill into a stronghold with a stone fortification on the summit.

  In October 1881, Mankaroane and his white mercenaries attacked Mamusa but were defeated by Massouw, who then offered a farm and half the loot captured to every white man who would fight for him. The generous teiins attracted a mercenary army of 400 desperadoes under one Sarel Petrus Celliers, who then kept up constant raids on Mankaroane’s cattle herds. Poor Mankaroane had fallen out with the English and was also under threat from Gasibone, chief of another rival Batlaping tribe.

  To recoup his losses, Mankaroane attacked Massouw at Fourie’s Graf, but he suffered a crushing defeat and the very symbol of his power, a ship’s cannon, was captured, causing many of his tribesmen to desert him.

  This was how matters stood on the wild frontier when Scotty rode into the town of Taung. He was then about thirty-seven, sported a big red beard and had a striking personality. He summed up the situation pretty quickly and offered his assistance to Mankaroane. ‘We are too weak to drive the Boers out of our country’, Mankaroane told Scotty, ‘so we must stop them from settling down, we must raid their camps, we must steal their horses, and keep them shut up in their laager. We must steal their cattle, so that they will be so busy protecting their herds that they won’t attack us. When they find that they cannot remain peacefully on the farms, they will get tired and return to their own country.’ This I find a very interesting strategy, one not dissimilar from that employed by the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape frontier wars.

  Before long Scotty had recruited, organised and armed his own private army consisting of about thirty tough whites and sixty local tribesmen. Scotty and his band threw themselves wholeheartedly into the fray and on more than one occasion, made a clean sweep of the cattle in Boer encampments. He acquired aims and ammunition, clothing and provisions for his men. He had no scruples in breaking into some convenient store. It is known, for example, that he broke into Charles Daly’s store in Bloemhof. Daly, incidentally, was himself another interesting character. He had survived the wreck of the Birkenhead, was a good friend of Paul Kruger, and was the only man given a magazine licence by the Transvaal Government to supply its forces. However, he arrived one morning to find that the shop had been raided. Pinned to the door was a list of all the stores taken, with a note from Scotty saying that he would pay in due course. The strange thing about this man is that he always kept his word, and there are numerous incidents which proved this.

  Scotty’s lively band had their own war song, which went like this:

  Come saddle up my horse

  And strap my billy on

  To hell with the Lime Juice Parliament [referring to the Cape]

  We’ll fight for Mankaroane

  Now cheer boys cheer and never be afraid

  We’re marching in the ranks of the Stellaland Brigade

  As we march along, we’ll sing this little song

  And fight for good old Mankaroane!

  There were a few incidents that took place before Scotty formed his little army, and I feel that the following two, in particular, need retelling.

  On one occasion, Scotty was in a very tight corner, so hard-pressed by the police in fact that he actually abandoned his horse. By means of some ruse, however, he managed to escape and tr
ekked across the veld on foot. After some time he came across wagon tracks and overtook a few transport riders in charge of three wagons. Scotty asked whose outfit it was. They replied that it was Jan Coetzee’s and that he had ridden on ahead as they were so near to home. ‘I am Piet Coetzee, Jan Coetzee’s nephew’, said Scotty. ‘You must give me a lift.’ He climbed into the wagon, lay down under the tent and went to sleep, to be awoken later by the sound of horses approaching. Somebody asked the transport riders whether they had seen him. When they said they had not, the men turned their horses and rode away in a different direction. On reaching the farm, Scotty brazenly introduced himself to Jan Coetzee as his nephew. In those days most Boer families had so many nephews and nieces that Oom Jan did not doubt Scotty’s story at all.

  He was immediately invited in, given food and drink and generally made comfortable. All went well until, as was customary, Coetzee and his wife tried to establish to which branch of the family he belonged. Scotty became more and more embarrassed until, cornered, he decided to put his cards on the table. He told them who he was and what had happened and ended up by asking Oom Jan for a horse. ‘I haven’t any money at the moment, but I promise you faithfully that I will pay you v-hen I can’, he said. Oom Jan agreed without question. ‘I have heard a great deal about you, Scotty, and how you have helped many people.’ True to his word Oom Jan saddled up a good riding chestnut, his wife gave Scotty a satchel of provisions and he rode away. Many months had passed and Oom Jan had forgotten the incident, when Scotty came up to him in Johannesburg Market Square one day and told him he wanted to pay for the horse. Jan Coetzee named a fair price and Scotty promptly paid him double!

  Scotty was a master of disguise and this got him out of many tight corners, for example when he was declared the South African Republic’s most wanted man, with a price of £500 on his head. Some of the leading Transvaal freebooters, such as Groot Adriaan de la Rey, Niklas Gey van Pittius and Gert van Niekerk were eager to claim the money and they all did their best, but to no avail. On one occasion Groot Adriaan, brother of the famous Boer War General, Koos de la Rey, in a determined effort to capture Scotty, assembled a commando of western Transvaal farmers and set out on his trail. Scotty soon heard about their plan and, instead of doing the sensible thing and going to ground until the danger was over, he decided to play a prank on the posse. After changing the colour of his hair and beard, he set out with a friend and came upon the posse near the village of Amalia. Riding up to the leader he enquired where they were going. ‘We are searching for Scotty Smith’, came the reply. ‘Oh!’ Scotty exclaimed, ‘my friend and I are also looking for the damned scoundrel! Do you mind if we join you?’

  Groot Adriaan agreed to this and so Scotty had the peculiar delight of taking part in a fruitless hunt for himself! This went on for two days. Then Scotty told the Boers that, as he and his friend were now a long way from home, they would have to start back in the morning. He thanked the commando for allowing him to take part in the search and said, ‘Every night you have taken it in turn to stand watch, and we’ve done nothing As it is our last night, we would like to do our share of guard duty so that you can all have a good night’s rest.’ The men were only too glad to accept this considerate offer and, needless to say, when they awoke at dawn the next day, not only had Scotty and his friend disappeared, but all the horses had vanished as well.

  Though our hero seems to have borne a charmed life, not all freebooters were so lucky. Close to the western border of the Transvaal, not far from Massouw’s camp at Manthe, is a deep ravine known as Honey’s Kloof. It was here that James Honey, one of the toughest and most reckless of the filibusters, met a sudden and violent death. Honey, a mercenary fighting for the Koranna chief, Massouw, had a bitter quarrel with his fellow adventurers over the distribution of the land and booty. Honey apparently tried to incite the Koranna against them and they decided to have their revenge. They captured him after a struggle and set off back home. It was an extremely hot day when they came upon the spring in the kloof and they went to rest the horses and quench their thirst.

  Honey also begged for water. They loosened the riem around his wrists and, as he knelt to drink, one of his captors shot him in the back of the head. Honey toppled slowly over into the stream, staining it red with his blood. The commando then threw his saddle down beside his body and rode away.

  African herd boys who found the body reported their find to the authorities and the matter was referred to Sir Charles Warren. As a result Sarel Petrus Celliers, the former commander of Massouw’s mercenaries, was arrested along with Gert van Niekerk and others, but owing to lack of evidence, all were later released. However, the story does not end there. According to local legend, shortly after the tragedy, a strange thing happened. To the amazement of the Africans living around Manthe, the eye of the spring began to recede gradually down the kloof until, a year later, it was fully sixty metres away.

  The locals swore that Honey’s ghost haunted the place and that every year, on the anniversary of the murder, a shot could be plainly heard in the area. ‘The spirit that inhabited the spring’, they told their children, ‘was very angry because the blood of the white man had defiled his waters. So he went to live in another place.’

  We leave Scotty himself now and take a brief look at what was happening in that area and how it was affected by larger political events. In July 1882 a peace treaty was drawn up between the Transvaal Government and chief Mankaroane, in terms of which a large portion of Batlaping land was taken away and used to establish the Republic of Stellaland, with Vryburg as its capital. In July 1883, amid great jubilation, the Republic was foiinally proclaimed by freebooter Gert van Niekerk and its flag – a white star on a green background – was ceremoniously hoisted. Stellaland and Goshen were now nominally independent states, with the Transvaal exercising a vague and ill-defined suzerainty over them.

  This was Rhodes’ worst nightmare, as the famous Missionary Road seemed likely to be incorporated into the Transvaal and his ‘Cape to Cairo’ dream was fading fast. So imminent was the danger that Rhodes urged Her Majesty’s Government to annex Bechuanaland to forestall the designs of the Germans in South West Africa and the Transvaalers to the east.

  The man selected to help maintain peace and order in this unruly area was the Reverend John Mackensie. Mackensie was a zealous political missionary and took very little trouble in hiding his virulently anti-Boer sentiments. The new Commissioner arrived in July 1884 and took strong action immediately. He accepted Montsioa as a British subject, declared the area a British Protectorate, then promptly lowered the one-star flag and raised the Union Jack – all on his own authority. The freebooters went wild. They wanted to lynch him, and there was also huge resentment in the Transvaal Republic. Their Commissioner’s action took the British Government completely by surprise and they decided on a complete reversal of policy. They rapped him over the knuckles, ordered the lowering of the British Flag, the raising of the one-star and had him recalled, replacing him with none other than Cecil John Rhodes himself

  Rhodes arrived in Vryheid and, early one morning, went to Niekerksrest on the banks of the Harts River, where he met Van Niekerk, De la Rey and other Stellaland leaders. The Boer mood was very ugly. De la Rey particularly was spoiling for trouble, saying, ‘Blood must flow, blood must flow’. But Rhodes knew exactly how to handle this kind of situation. ‘Nonsense’, he replied. ‘I’m hungry. Give me breakfast first, and then we will talk about blood.’

  His appeal to traditional Boer hospitality did the trick. Over breakfast the aggression and suspicion gradually subsided and soon they were on friendly terms. Rhodes actually stayed in the Boer camp for a week and became godfather to De la Rey’s grandchild. Soon a deal was struck. Rhodes guaranteed the Boers’ possession of their farms and cattle and they in turn agreed to accept British rule. Once again the tribes, in this case the Batlaping, lost out on a deal struck between the British and the Boers.

  Further north in Goshen, Montsioa was
also getting the dirty end of the stick, eventually being forced to surrender practically all of his lands to the freebooters. Gey van Pittius took charge and declared the country Transvaal territory, whilst S J du Toit hoisted the Vierkleur in triumph. On the very same day, Paul Kruger boldly annexed Goshen to the South African Republic. This really put the cat among the pigeons. There was a tremendous outcry at the Cape and Rhodes asked for British military intervention.

  Sir Charles Warren set out from the Cape with a large force and arrived in Vryburg early in 1885. Those in favour of British rule were jubilant, but the Transvaal Government’s reaction was immediate and dramatic. President Kruger withdrew the annexation proclamation and Du Toit hauled down the Transvaal flag. The southern part of Bechuanaland, incorporating both Goshen and Stellaland, became a Crown Colony while the northern part became a British Protectorate. The short-lived, inglorious era of the freebooters came to a sudden end.

  Meanwhile, Massouw was still causing trouble to the north with his persistent cattle raiding, and the Transvaal government decided to take action. A force of nearly 1 000 men was raised, with the Commandant-General himself, Piet Joubert, in command. Joubert, always a cautious man, upon reaching Mamusa attempted to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Chief, but the younger members were itching for a fight and, led by one of the more impetuous young Commandants, Piet Cronje, they climbed the hill up to Massouw’s fort and demanded the Chief’s immediate surrender. A heated argument ensued – a shot was fired and bloody battle was joined. So fierce was the fray that within minutes ten Boers lay dead.

  However, by the end of the Battle of Mamusa, Massouw had suffered a terrible defeat. The Chief himself and all of his counsellors were killed. An extremely unfortunate aspect of the battle was that a large number of women and children were caught up in the crossfire and also perished. The Koranna tribe which, for more than a century, had trekked all the way up from Table Bay, was finally completely destroyed. Fewer than 100 people escaped with their lives that fateful day. They were dispersed among the surrounding tribes and soon lost their identity.