BLOOD THICKER THAN WATER

The title sums up the attitude of Cornelis Broeksma (1863-1901) and it would cause the spilling of his own blood, in defence of that principle, on this day 30^th September,in 1901.

Born in the Netherlands in 1863, the young lawyer, moved to Bloemfontein, in the independent Boer Republic of the Orange Free State, in 1882, to work for a legal firm.

Later he opened his own practice at Dewetsdorp in 1893 before moving to the Transvaal where, four years later, he became a public prosecutor in Johannesburg.

During the Anglo Boer War, and the occupation of the city by the British, Broeksma took the oath of neutrality but  became appalled at the conditions in the Turffontein concentration camp, a place that included the wife and children of General Christiaan de Wet.

Apart from working to alleviate the conditions in that camp, Broeksma also determined the outside world would learn of such conditions and also the scorched earth policies of farm destruction.

He contacted Dr F.E.T  Krause who had been sent to Britain as an undesirable person and also the Transvaal’s diplomatic representative in Europe, Dr Willem Leyds, using a pseudonym and the American Consulate’s diplomatic immunity.

Interestingly, one of his dispatches was intercepted in the American Consulate in Rotterdam (that speaks volumes about the effectiveness of British Intelligence) and he was subsequently arrested in his home at Braamfontein.

Here was also found a clandestine pamphlet inciting others to violate their oath of neutrality and on 12 September he faced a special military court where he pleaded guilty to all charges.

Informed on 29 September that he had been sentenced to death by firing squad, the sentence was carried out the next day on Kitchener’s instructions.

He was hailed in the Netherlands as a hero and martyr with a fund being raised for his widow, Jacomina, and their children, whose guardianship  were placed in the care of the Rev. Herman van Broekhuizen- a spiritual mentor to exiled ZAR President, Paul Kruger, in Menton and Utrecht and a member of Danie Theron’s Scouts earlier during the war.

In Dante’s Inferno

In the Book of Ephesians we are told about having to wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers of darkness.

In fact, a South African police officer, Lt Colonel Schalk Visagie, did both, in scenes reminiscent of Dante’s ‘Inferno,’ an Italian poem of the 14^th century about  a hellish place on earth, created by those who have yielded  to bestial acts of fraud, violence and malice against their fellowman.

In arguably the toughest police beat in the world in the 1980s and 1990s such was the lot of a young family man who far too often lived out his daily occupation in such an environment of bombings, shootings and even massacres.

Even during the years when South Africa enjoyed a professional police force, instead of the failed service due to the incompetence of the ANC for the past 25 years, it was a distinctive entity compared to other countries.

Unlike Australia or the US and UK police forces the South Africans had para-military experience and were fighting terrorists in mechanised units as well as crime solving duties. Their training came during the long Border War (in SWA/ Angola) and the Rhodesian Bush War and 98 per cent of the terrorists who were killed in South Africa came from police fire.

The recent murders of Muslims at mosques, in New Zealand, would have brought back memories, for Visagie, of dealing with the traumatic St James Massacre, at Kenilworth, in the Cape (1993), when Christian worshippers were mowed down in the pews by racist criminal thugs.

It is one of the things he discusses in his aptly named new book Under Fire in South Africa. Other topics include his work on the bombing at Planet Hollywood, leading the Gang Investigation Unit to counter the terrorist and hit squad campaigns, including one aimed at him where he miraculously survived an ambush in 1999; his counter insurgency work; his years in the presidential protection service to PW Botha; his successful wooing of the president’s youngest daughter, Rozanne, while still a sergeant, his Christian faith, and much more, in a policeman’s typically understated style.

Yet the impact on investigators of such heinous attack as the St James Massacre (11 dead, 58 wounded) is made harrowingly apparent, including descriptions of individual acts of courage. The impact of that atrocity, on the writer, is apparent. After 24 hours on the job Visagie went home briefly for a shower and to get fresh clothes but said he had to pull over because of a surge of anger caused by the carnage he had witnessed and having to work in a charnel house since shortly after the attack. Visagie reveals the stress on home life and attending the funeral service of the victims. In his own case he sent Rozanne to her parent’s home during his investigation work.Team leader, Colonel Leonard Knipe, also led a solitary life at that time and most of the team were awake for 75 hours straight after the attack; while he mentions at the later funeral service for the victims a fellow investigator had to leave the church.This happened when the pastor-father of a victim, Richard O’Kill, was forgiving the murderers for the death of his son. Richard had died trying to protect two girls in the congregation.

The leads, the intuition of another fellow police officer, Sgt Casper Rossouw that led to arrests are all covered in this chapter.

What clearly disappointed Visagie was the reaction to the crime, of those who should have known the truth. The contrast to Pastor O’Kill was the Methodist Bishop (and later PAC president) Stanley Mogoba who lauded the guilty man, Gcinikahya Makoma, as a ‘hero’ rather than despicable jackal he and his accomplices were.

Released after serving some five years of his 23 years sentence by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission pardoning of Apartheid crimes, Makoma returned to the streets to kill others before being jailed again.

APLA (Azanian Peoples Liberation Army) criminals were also responsible for murdering four students in the Heidelberg Tavern, in Observatory, in much the same the same cowardly fashion.

When three of Makoma’s accomplices were arrested later they had achieved officer status in the new army. This was a telling illustration of how Africa’s most professional army had undergone a rapid deterioration under ANC government. That decline would continue in both defence and police services with the bar and restaurant bomber, Robert McBride being just one of the criminals to achieve high police officer status with the new regime.

During McBride’s service in the armed wing of the ANC, Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK), he was responsible for the bombing of a bar and restaurant that claimed the lives of three women with 69 others injured. Given amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission his ‘service’ against civilians was apparently deemed

 worthy of recognition by the SANDF, being awarded the Merit Medal in Silver and the Conspicuous Leadership Star, presumably for military actions against civilians! Today, 32 senior SAPS officers have criminal records, as do 4,174 in the ranks (Politics Web 8/4/89).

Schalk Visagie does not make such critical references as above but he describes the integration of ANC personnel, with the old regime, from 1994 onwards. During this era Visagie, by then a Lt Colonel, had moved from Security Branch to Covert Intelligence, the Gang Investigation Unit and finally to being in charge of the PAGAD unit (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs), by mid 1997.

This last mentioned unit was formed because of the rise in vigilantism. PAGAD would organise huge marches to the homes of gangsters and drug bosses after gaining information about them. However, the potential to settle private scores with innocent people falling victim in the process, also resulted. Shootings and burnings became the modus operandi and the group also took on a distinctive Islamist hue.

Visagie’s unit was therefore deemed “oppressors,” a familiar catch-cry used by Islamists to any who oppose them. The slide into constant murders, bombings, shootings etc became a regular occurrence in the new South Africa. From PAGAD marching on police stations to actually brazenly stealing arms from them, at gunpoint, to stand-offs with the police in suburban streets is all told by this officer, then at the cutting edge, as an agent of a secular state despised by PAGAD.

While it makes for riveting reading, the slide from the old regime to the new was alarming and the drama of policing was infinitely different than that of the 1960s.

While the murder of nine SAP officers, (five of them black), at Cato Manor (24/1/1960) remains unparalleled, in those days it was death by the panga. In the 1990s the police were confronted by an arsenal of the most sophisticated kind, including, having hand grenades thrown at them!  

The stand-off at Athlone, while protecting a businessman from the suburban Jihadis of PAGAD had all the potential of turning into another day Cato Manor but was averted narrowly, by wise policing not to open fire. Even so it required Caspir armed vehicles and riot police in the Cape suburb.

The bomb attack outside his office was another brazen act of contempt and a reminder of how callous and indiscriminate criminals and religious zealots are in their total lack of concern for the lives of ordinary people who happen to be near their target. Nolu, the shoe vendor, was such a person. Minutes earlier Visagie had asked her to get a pair of shoes ready for his daughter, Shanna. He told the vendor he would return soon and get them. He then went into his office. If he had stayed and waited he would have died with Nolu.

It is the scale and constancy of the bombings and shootings that is striking to an international reader. Australians were shocked by the parcel bomb killing of a Perth Detective-Sgt Geoffrey Bowen at the National Crime Authority building, in Adelaide (2 March 1986), and by the callous ‘bushwhacking’ Wash St  killings of two Victorian constables, Steven Tynan (22) and Damien Eyre (20), in October 1988. However, much of the shock was because such violence was a rarity, whereas in South Africa it was becoming a regular occurrence.

Indeed, The bombings continued in Cape Town and just after terrorist attacks in Tanzania and Kenya, at US embassies, the Jihadis also targeted Planet Hollywood, in Cape Town. The photo taken of the senior officers Schalk Visagie, Leonard Knipe, Kerrie Heyliger, outside the restaurant, is one of utter despair as they waited for clearance by the bomb squad. But worse would follow with the assassination of Captain Bennie Lategan, from Murder and Robbery Squad. He was the target of a professional hit on 14 January 1999.

The murder of Lategan saw changes in the Serious Violent Crimes Unit with Heyliger taking over the Murder and Robbery Squad plus PAGAD (or Crimes Against the State unit) while Visagie went back to Gangs, as head. Lategan’s death should have been a flashing red light as police personnel changes meant little to hoodlums and fanatics. Visagie’s turn was coming a month later.

The ‘hit’ on the senior detective is covered in depth and makes for grim reading in his book. In fact, the attack would make most law abiding readers very angry that a young family man in his 39^th year should be assailed in such a fashion. Some 26 shells were recovered from the highway scene and by the laws of statistics he should never have survived. Although badly wounded, as the medical report revealed, no vital organs were destroyed. But it was a close run thing and the neck and leg wounds would have killed most people.

Schalk, although stricken and in shock, remembers praying that his small children would continue to have their father with them. Far away in the Karoo town of Calvinia his devoted mother, at 3.15 pm (the time of the attack), was led to pray for her son and did so fervently.

The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much, (are the words of James 5:16) and according to the surgeon, Arend Louw, Schalk received God’s abundance in the hospital theatre on 19^th February 1999.

If Calvary informs us of the Son telling the Father ‘it is finished’, in a role reversal it was now his earthly father, a retired policeman, also telling Schalk that policing was finished for him. He had ‘lost enough skin’ in the game.

Indeed, Schalk Visagie, had given enough of himself in the fight against powers and principalities but at least his time in the inferno was over.

In resisting the temptation to write a political book, despite his knowledge of Presidents Botha and Mandela, and to show humility towards God, Schalk Visagie has primarily written a policeman’s tale that deserves to be read by people who respect those who serve in the increasingly dangerous thin blue line.

END

INDO-PACIFIC CONFERENCE IN PERTH

Former chief of the Australian, Army Peter Leahy, believes the lessons of World War 2 about having a substantial defence presence in WA has been largely lost by defence planners centred in the East.

Now a professor at the National Security Institute (University of Canberra) he has called for a more serious approach to being an Indo-Pacific country.

Leahy, writing recently in the WA Defence Review, said that while the Navy ‘have got it about right, although being positioned well to the South….the RAAF and Army are in the State in limited numbers.’

The recent Defence Conference in Perth, at the end of October, run by the Perth US Asia Centre brought a number of political, military, business and academic figures together to discuss the emergence of the Indo-Pacific as an area of importance.

The Chief of the RAN, Vice Admiral Michel Noonan said that the $1.6 trillion Australian economy depended on the security of international trade routes.

Accordingly the Stirling base would remain a major fleet base and would see a the introduction of a larger submarine base , Hunter class frigates and Offshore Patrol Vessels, leading to an increase in infrastructure construction and upgrades as well as greater sustainment activity associated with larger and more complex vessels. New capabilities would be added to the base, including simulation training facilities and class specific support facilities.

As Gordon Flake (CEO Perth USAsia Centre) identified, strategic thinkers are now thinking of the Indo Pacific primarily to integrate India into the Asia Pacific and as WA has 78 per cent of its trade with the countries of the Indo Pacific it is positioned to capitalise further as an integral part of the region,

Kim Beazley, WA Governor and a former Defence minister, said in opening the conference, WA is already a defence state, industrially and militarily and must become a focus of defence strategy as force majeure has come to the fore, as evident by China’s South China seas ambitions.

India was an important part of the economic and defence equation in the region “as a fellow democracy,” Richard Marles, the Opposition Defence spokesman, said. “We also loom large in the consciousness of Mauritius and Seychelles and there is a huge opportunity for Australia in deepening our ties with Africa.”

That theme was echoed by Senator Linda Reynolds (Liberal, WA) who said that African nations are working on becoming the largest free trade zone in the world. “WA has 168 ASX-listed mining and METS companies operating across 33 African nations and our ability to contribute is only as limited as our vision.”

However, Marles was critical of a $100m allocation to WA, in February 2017, (prior to WA State Election) on defence because it lacked specificity. “There was a certain contempt in that announcement, WA needs a proper narrative.”

Perhaps part of that ‘proper narrative’ should be overcoming Labor’s blinkered view on nuclear submarines.

Military historian, and a former naval officer, Tom Lewis, has argued that ‘the Australian public has been sucker- punched by the green movement into not understanding nuclear power,’ (The Spectator,17/11).

Lewis argues that the US Navy’s Virginia-class submarines would cost about half of the $50billion French Barracuda re-model (using diesel engines) and that the immense speed and ability to stay under the surface gives them a clear advantage.

The US, France, Britain, China, Russia, India all have nuclear subs and Pakistan will  have them soon.

As the likely minister after the next federal election, Marles said WA should be the premier place for maritime servicing with Henderson being a global centre. “Patrol boats and small vessels should be Perth based and that WA should be a centre for military exercises. “It needs considered thought not just money thrown at it,” he said.

Indeed, the WA Government under Premier Mark McGowan is keen to advance the defence sector in the state. The Premier had slammed the Federal Coalition Government earlier in the year for WA’s minor share of contracts when it was announced that the $35 billion frigate program would be built in Adelaide.

In a clear swipe at Defence Minister Christopher Pyne (Liberal SA), McGowan said, at the time, that “Western Australia, has the only internationally competitive shipbuilding industry in Australia but the Federal Government is giving it to South Australia.”

McGowan launched his six point strategic plan at the conference that included the case for WA to be the principal location for the maintenance and sustainment of frigates; expand industry capability beyond the maritime area to focus on industrial, educational, and financial resources onto new defence procurement activities; developing strategic infrastructure and a defence science centre; a workforce plan and supporting veterans.

However, while the Navy and ships featured prominently at the conference  Professor Leahy’s written arguments about greater army numbers, both in WA and nationally, needs greater attention. Leahy has argued that with the growing operational use of Helicopter Docks these big ships can provide joint force capabilities and need support and sustainment which includes embarked troops.

The call for a greater spread of army resources is backed by Guy Duczynski (Strategic Defence Advisor, Edith Cowan University) who believes ‘meth consignments’ on lonely NW beaches has proved beyond the capacity of law enforcement to solve. Reservists are not the answer but rather regular forces in the North are needed.  

Orange Years 

In the European winter of 1947 Jack Seely, the 1^st Baron Mottistone, was depressed.

A Second World War had ended less than two years ago with Britain again victorious, albeit impoverished, and his own life drawing to a close too he suspected.

No doubt then the tributes would flow to him for his career in the military and politics that led him to being a General, Secretary for War and a career politician. His career had been impressive with the usual highs and lows that those of authority have.

He also had had no regrets about backing the appeasement policies in what proved a futile attempt to prevent Hitler’s aggression. The earlier South African War against the Boers, had convinced him that the stand-and-deliver tactics belonged to highwaymen and not diplomacy. Indeed, Lord Alfred Milner’s diplomacy, then, had been akin to Dick Turpin and had convinced Seely of the need for moderation in the 1930s.

Ironic that Milner, as the British Governor at the Cape, in that earlier era, had received support from his hawkish political master, Joseph Chamberlain, whereas  the Colonial Secretary’s son, Neville, as PM in 1937-40, had been the exact opposite, a dove, striving to placate Hitler and keep Europe at peace.

Indeed, even though he believed in British Imperialism when he thought back to that Anglo-Boer conflict on the veld, of 1899-1902, he felt that his country had been diminished by the aggression against the farmers and their families.

As a British Captain, at the time, he vividly remembered the raid on that house where he demanded information from the young 10 year old boy, called Japie Greyling.

Seely was sick of Boers and their sullen hatred displayed against the army as he chased these  elusive ‘orange pimpernels’ over the Orange Free State on frequent occasions before the day when he confronted that Boer boy at the farmstead.

Tipped off by an Afrikaner National Scout, Captain Seely had arrived at the farm to see the small Boer commando, led by Barend Greyling, galloping away.

Left behind was his family and he wanted information from them–and quickly.

“You will give the information of where your father and the commando are going,” Captain Seely had thundered, grabbing the frightened boy by the shoulders.

“I will not tell,” replied Japie Greyling.

“You will, or you will be shot,” Seely roared.

“I will not tell,” the young Greyling replied.

Barking at his young lieutenant, who had turned a lighter shade of pale, Seely ordered him to form a firing party and young Japie was placed at the farmhouse wall.

Moving alongside the younger officer, Seely quietly said he was not to fire, while Japie’s mother, Susanna, became hysterical at the thought of her young son’s imminent death. However, he continued to press the boy for information.

“Last chance to tell me where they have gone, lad,” Seely snapped.

“I will not tell,” the worried boy replied.

Seely saw clearly in the stand-off that the boy was prepared to die rather reveal the whereabouts of his father and the other Boers and he was not prepared to give such an order.

“At ease men,” the captain said to his troops before approaching Japie. “I hope I meet you again one day as you are the bravest young man I have met.” The British then departed in another forlorn search for their intended prey.

Seely reflecting on the courage of Japie Greyling that day flicked the pages of his memoirs. His current reflection was mirrored in his words of yesteryear.‘As long as I live I shall never forget that love of father, home and country triumphed over certain death. Never shall I forget the expression on the face of that Boer lad when with his eyes brimming with tears he said, “I shall not tell.”

Yet it would not be the last time that the citizen of the Orange Free State would rebuff him.

The General’s conscience had pricked him at the way he had treated the young boy and he had tried to make amends years later after the publication.

He remembered the words of a famous actor, ‘never share the stage with children or animals as they would always upstage you.’ He had shared a very large stage with both and the actor was right with his comment.

It was remarkable that a Boer boy and his famous horse, Warrior, of the Great War should to him epitomise the best and finest, the most courageous of all.

There was a knock on the door, and his son David entered.

“Hullo pater you are looking pensive,” he said.

“Just reflecting on the courage of a person and a horse, David” the Baron replied.

“Who, Winston and Warrior,” David asked?

“Well you are half right but no, not your godfather, rather a young Boer boy I met in the South African conflict,” the General quietly said to his son.

As the only child from Seely’s second marriage, David was well aware of the esteem his father had for Warrior his famous war horse, the steed the Germans couldn’t kill, and his great friend and colleague, Winston Churchill, whose paths continually crossed in war and politics.

David had been thrilled, as a boy when he had read of the exploits of his father’s heroic charge, on Warrior, at Moreuil Wood on the banks of the Avre River in France. With 1000 Canadian cavalry behind the British general the securing of the river bank had helped to stem the German Spring Offensive of 1918.

Seely remembered the mad adrenalin rush, the pent up anger akin to what he had experienced chasing the Boers during the ‘Orange Years’ on the veld, yet different, somehow more honourable than the war waged on farmers. He also remembered the utter relief at having survived the charge and experiencing the same nervous anxiety in the aftermath of the charge as he had experienced after dealing with Japie. No wonder. A quarter of the men and half the horses had been lost that day at Moreuil Wood.

Fortunately for Warrior he went lame and couldn’t be ridden in another battle, the next day, when the Major-General, had had two horses shot from under him and suffered from gassing.

By the end of the Great War they had survived four years of shell and bullet and the mud and slime of Passchendaele. It was no mean feat.

Seely’s reverie on his favourite steed was broken as he was aware his son was pressing him on the Boer boy and the aftermath of their dramatic farmhouse meeting.

“I went looking for him in South Africa in 1931, but he did not want to see me. However, I subsequently sent my lieutenant, Hawkins, out there and through Greyling’s lawyer, who made the arrangements, they talked. Hawkins presented him with my book, Fear and Be Slain, and it was interesting what he found out from him.”

“What happened?” David asked.

“Well, apparently Greyling’s boy, also Japie, found out about his father’s wartime clash with me from his teacher who had a book on child heroes featuring his father. When his boy went home, thrilled about his father’s courage, he had asked him about the matter but Greyling simply said to his son, “you have read about it already.”

“Greyling sounds like a very modest, decent chap,” David said.

“There was a quality about him. In the boy I saw the future man. He now farms quietly in the OFS, at Bethlehem. He is very modest and told Hawkins that he did not want his story being used as propaganda against the British and that people do things in war they would not normally do. I was touched by that because I think he was reaching out to me for an episode that I have always regretted.”

Pausing, Seely said to his son, “I write in the foreward of my book that the old adage ‘safety first’ is a vile one. Japie could have done that but he would not betray his father, or people, to me despite having such pressure placed on his young shoulders.”

“He sounds like a character out of Kipling,” David said.

“Perhaps he was a South African version of Gunga Din, the Indian water carrier, David. Both were savers of life, in their different ways, and both prepared to give their own. Some of our politicians looked down on the Dutch as uncouth and uncivilized. They were wrong those people had a quiet dignity and decency about them,” the Baron replied.

Shortly afterwards David excused himself from his father’s presence, leaving the study to prepare for dinner, as the Baron continued his private reflections of a war he was involved in as a young officer.

Strange the impact that particular war had on men. He thought of Kitchener. At one stage K had said that the Boers only had a thin veneer of civilisation, yet he came to respect the Boer Generals, particularly Louis Botha. If Milner hadn’t vetoed discussions on the Transvaal and Orange Free State independence, between the two generals, in February 1901, the final guerilla phase of the war could have been avoided. Instead there would be another 15 months of fighting, ending on his 34^th birthday, on 31 May 1902, with the Treaty of Vereeniging.

 By that time the death roll of Boer women and children was close to 28,000, over 30,000 farms had been burned to the ground and 3.6 million sheep destroyed. As a consequence K had become utterly reviled by the Boers with relations between the two white groups in tatters for generations to come because of the ‘methods of barbarism’ employed.

The Boers may have lost the war but they had won the peace. With the formation of the Union of South Africa, on another last day of May, 1910, the era of   Afrikaner generals, as prime minister, began, Botha, Smuts, Hertzog and Smuts again, the latter having again been at the helm since 1939.

Winston of course had come and gone. From being exiled on the government backbenches during the 1930s he had, like a shooting star, returned to successfully lead the nation, at war, before being consigned to being Leader of the Opposition, courtesy of the voters, in the last election, as they had moved en masse to support Clement Attlee and the Labour Party.

It was a different world, the Baron mused. His era-the Imperial era- was over, globally. The age of socialism, both democratic and totalitarian, had begun.

It was time to go downstairs for dinner. The Baron poured himself a sherry and raised his glass. “Here is to you Japie Greyling. You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”

************************************

Japie had heard the news of the death of his British bête noire from a neighbour, just before Christmas.

 The Baron had died on 7^th November 1947. As Japie had told Hawkins, years previously, he did not bear Seely any malice and he now regretted not receiving the General in 1931, when Seely had come looking for him.

Greyling could hardly hate English speakers, as a group, because he seen how many of  the English speaking officials turned out in defence of their beloved country when the fall of Bloemfontein, the Orange Free State capital, was imminent. Men like Braine, Brebner, Roberts, Fraser, MacHardy had joined their fellow burghers in the field- against invaders who may have shared their tongue but not their sentiments or loyalty.

Greyling had remembered General Barry Hertzog- perhaps the most famous Free Stater- recalling those facts during his long term as Union prime minister, (1924-39). He also recalled how his parents had said President Brand, during his record 24 years as OFS president, had developed good relations with the British and a deep friendship with Sir George Grey, who had been a Cape Governor before fulfilling the same role in New Zealand and later becoming PM of that country.

No, hate had never been part of the Greyling family make-up and he had taught his two children, Japie and Martha, to be of the same mind, despite the general bitterness that the South African War had engendered.

The title of Seely’s book was strange. Greyling remembered he had been afraid, very afraid, on that day yet he had survived. The teachings of his parents and his dominee had helped. The words of Deuteronomy 31:6 had flashed through his mind at that grim moment and he had determined that just as God had promised not to forsake him so too would Japie neither betray his Heavenly Father nor the father he loved on earth. He believed his love of God and volk had saved him.

Reflecting some more on the Baron, Japie realised he had clearly been a brave man, as displayed with that famous charge at the head of the Canadians that would have required him to overcome gut wrenching fear. Yet that same man had clearly been troubled by the war in South Africa, as reflected in his words, despite the fact of having gone a long way, in his life, as a servant of the greatest empire the world had seen.

Japie had also seen military and political giants in his home country and he believed he was privileged that he could always say he had been a citizen of the Orange Free State, the model Boer Republic, whose president and people had given loyalty to the bigger ZAR –the South African Republic - in her hour of need.

He missed the country of his childhood and even though the OFS continued as one of the four provinces of the Union of South Africa it was not the same as being an independent nation. The past was another country.

While the defeat of the two Boer Republics had been traumatic there was much to sustain the Boerevolk for their historic role in those dramatic years. His own father had managed to elude the British, as had, more famously, President Steyn and General de Wet, despite some hair raising adventures across the high veld, including the President riding away from the British in his night gown, like a latter day Wee Willie Winkie.

De Wet’s Christmas Day victory, of 1901, at the Battle of Groenkop, had also thrilled him and reminded him of George Washington’s victory on another distant Christmas, at Trenton, as the Americans won a surprise victory against the British redcoats.

But above all his own mother and father had loved him deeply as he had his wife and children.

 It was enough.