Droplets of Mercy

By Kitty G

This is a true story of a family whose humour and pain, trust and love, was the wealth that bound them together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: Dec 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781742841137

Kitty G

The author believes that the chronicle of her life is very similar to some ordinary people living today. People who are not so young but have the abundance of life experiences for others to learn from. Experiences which are rich and colourful.

Book preview

Arrival of the First Colonials

The first Huguenots from France arrived as refugees after 1688. They were given a small portion of land to divide equally amongst themselves.

When the French, Dutch and German pioneers arrived in South Africa seeking refuge, they had to become acquainted with large groups of Xhosa tribes that lived between the Cape and Natal provinces as well as with the Zulus that had already established themselves in Northern Natal and towards Mozambique in the East.

In Natal especially, our ancestors had to contend with numerous problems. The Native settlements surrounded the Boer people and therefore these Boer pioneers had to be constantly on the alert if they wanted to live in peace with their neighbours.

The name Boer (farmer) denoted to an Afrikaans person. Our direct ancestor was Pieter Pieterz Ploiyer of Netherlands. Three of his sons were Cornelisse, Heinrich and Simon, the Voortrekker. The name Ploiyer was changed after the third generation when they arrived in South Africa, to Du Plooy. Although High Dutch was already spoken, the Bible was translated in Afrikaans only in 1933. The lifestyle of the future Afrikaans people greatly benefitted from their contributions to religious and cultural matters.

Simon had 10 children and his youngest sibling was my grandfather Petrus Johannes du Plooy. At their arrival in South Africa, they settled in Stellenbosch in the Cape Province. Petrus had seven sons. One of his son’s was Adrian Nicolaas, my own Father born in 1885. When Petrus and his family moved to Natal, it was the time of the Zulu War.

Chapter 2

The Zulu War

In those days, both black and white people owned hundreds of heads of cattle and they were continually forced to spread themselves wider and wider on the land in order to find good grazing for their herds. This situation gave cattle rustlers plenty of plunder.

In a short time these workers increased by the millions. Cattle had already been a big profit to the Bantu people, because they could receive about 5 to 6 or even more cattle for each daughter that is born in the family. They call this labola. When a daughter is born, there would be a great celebration (makiti), because this meant great wealth for them.

Dingaan, the Zulu king, had come to an agreement with Piet Retief, the leader of the Voortrekkers. They would draw up a treaty that would give the Boers the right to settle in Natal. Negotiations for this treaty were almost finalized and everybody was feeling relaxed, when Dingaan gave his followers an order to murder the Boers with the assegais (spears) that the Zulus had hidden under the hay.

On that day, Piet Retief and his people were murdered. Thousands paid with their lives. Our ancestor, Petrus, also

suffered an assegai wound in his leg but he recovered so well that he was later chosen to serve in the Boer war as a Commandant.

According to my grandfather Petrus, there were two British traitors who were friendly with Dingaan and these two passed false information on to Dingaan about stolen cattle. A man named Sekonyella disguised himself with clothes worn by Boers. Wearing this disguise, and with the advantage of owning a horse, he could easily leave suddenly with a great deal of plunder. In this way, he stole many cattle not only from the Boers, but from his own people as well. Because Dingaan was given an inaccurate version of events, the king was under the impression that these thefts were the work of the Boers. For precisely this reason there were continual clashes and confrontations between the two groups.

Therefore the Voortrekkers decided to avoid the more southerly Bantu tribes and trek onwards to reach the Natal coastal plains. Only after 1835 did the whites for the most part move inland to where they could feel safer.

The two Bantu despots who ruled the Zulus at that time were Mzilikazi, a fleeing general, and Dingaan, the king of the Zulus. By this time many Colonials had already settled in Natal. My grandfather, Petrus Johannes du Plooy, was only 15 years old when he became involved in this war.

In 1944 – 1945, we were taught this history at school in Harrismith, which was in the province, Orange Free State. It came as a revelation to me that the people of that time had been forced to endure such great suffering and fear. It had never occurred to me that our grandparents went through such sorrow. The worst of their experiences had never been told to the schoolchildren. One such incident involved a man whose wife was still in bed with a newborn baby. While this man was away, helping to defend his neighbours, the mother and baby were pierced with an assegai. Her breasts were severed and the dead baby was left lying on her blood soaked breast. Another man was also murdered and his private parts were cut off and stuffed in his mouth. His body was later discovered, in that condition.

Petrus du Plooy, had to suffer great sacrifices during the Basuto War, but expressions of hatred were never to be heard from his lips. For this very reason, he was greatly loved in Zastron, where he later served for many years on the city council, for many of those years, as mayor.

The Voortrekker Monument

After Piet Retief and his people perished a group of five Zulus decided to make peace with the Boers. They negotiated for peace with the Voortrekker, Andries Pretorius. Pretorius said as long as Dingaan, the king, ruled and was alive, there would never be peace. One of the five Zulus with the name of Saposa decided upon himself to murdered Dingaan. Saposa’s friend Umpanda was then installed as king of the Zulu’s instead of Dingaan. There was a long period of peace right up until the death of Umpanda.

From this, let us heed the lesson; that false rumours can have drastic consequences and create mistrust, that in its turn, results in hatred and complete alienation. After the Zulu war, Petrus returned to his mother who was fortunately still living in safety and longing for this return. She was there to comfort him. Petrus held his mom in great respect and admiration as she treated his assegai wound with her gentle and loving hands.

Chapter 3

The British War 1899-1902

These experiences were jotted down in a pocket notebook kept by my own father, Adriaan du Plooy. As a young boy he and other boys of his age, decided after the war was declared to enlist with their fathers, who had hastily left their farms and been conscripted into 1899 Boer War.

Britain and South Africa became involved in a dispute, and the discovery of rich gold and diamonds was a strong enticement to the British Government. The rich gold in the Transvaal drew people from everywhere, and the long-standing dispute between the two countries led eventually to a war against South Africa, which left both the bodies and the spirits of the citizens shattered.

In 1867 diamonds was already discovered in Griqualand-West and at the same time there were alluvial diamonds found in the Vaal River. In addition, there were many diamonds exploited at the Kimberley mines at the time that attract thousands of fortune hunters.

When the Boers received news of the war, they were forced to leave their farms in great haste. The police helped to commandeer as many citizens as possible to fight. On arrival in Rouxville, Petrus, P.J.J, du Plooy, was selected as a deputy Commandant, at the same time that the rumours reached them that the British soldiers had broken through. Here, General J.H. Olivier called all the citizens together and announced his intention to go no further with hostilities, but instead to return home. Many other Boers joined him and turned homeward. There were now far fewer men to flee to Dewetsdorp with Grandfather. These few men also had to take responsibility for the wagons and Krupp cannons that accompanied men to war in those days. With so little manpower, it was hard going.

Suddenly there was chaos on the farm. On 11 October, my father was only 14 years old. The young boys were heart-broken and astounded at such an unexpected event in their lives. Their fathers and elders had suddenly disappeared, and their mothers and sisters had been taken into concentration camps against their will. Farewells were taken with tear-filled eyes.

The black people were also taken away to act as spies for the British soldiers, and many of them were conscripted by their captains in Basutoland. The enemy took many of the animals for their own use, especially the horses that were useful as transport in the uneven areas, and any animal good for food was hunted. Animals that seemed useless to the enemy were summarily slaughtered. The unfortunate animals were killed on the spot, maimed or simply pierced through. Bullets were too precious to be wasted on animals.

Once things had grown quieter, the lads who were too young to be conscripted, had to stay behind and started digging pits in the ground in order to hide some of the harvested grain, before the soldiers visited the farms, which had now been razed. Any flammable object was set alight. Burnt out wagons and pony-traps (chariots) were seen everywhere, but the only recognizable part of them were the ashes.

Occasionally, a horse, a sheep or a few antelope would flee into the plains. The terrified boys tried to take cover. They would try to find the strayed animals to bring them somewhere to shelter. They had to be constantly on the alert, because at short intervals free commandos would come in raiding parties and destroy everything in sight. The youngsters found it difficult to come to terms with being completely alone. All around them, the houses had been reduced to ruins, and they could still hear, ringing in their ears, the entreaties of their mothers and sisters as they were being taken away.

My father was now 14 years old. He and some of his friends were driven by their fury onto a reckless course of action. They defiantly resolved to run away to war, even though they were all little more than children.

We're going to take by storm this enemy that has devastated our lives, was their resolve. They left their now barren farms and joined up with a commando unit. They could never have anticipated the terrible trials and tragedies that awaited them around the nearest corner. They survived as well as they could in the ridges and ravines, but the food they had with them was nowhere near sufficient to keep body and soul together. Before too long, the food was all gone, and because of the hunger he had to suffer, father developed a stomach disorder, which worsened with time until, later in life, it became so severe that it caused his premature death at the age of 64.

These young lads had grown up with the custom of gathering after dinner in the evening in huge farm kitchen and, together with the farm and domestic workers, closing their eyes and opening their hearts to hear the Word of God. Suddenly they found themselves in the middle of a war, having to help their parents to salvage everything they had saved and worked at for a lifetime against their old age. The woman and young girls were devastated when they were ushered onto already overloaded trucks.

According to my grandmother there were thousands of young people under the age of sixteen and about twenty thousand woman and children died. Some tried to escape but they were simply caught and overpowered. It was heart rending to learn that many expectant mothers died with their unborn babies. During the bumpy transit, some went into labour and had no alternative but to give birth on the jostling trucks as they made their way to the concentration camps. Many babies were also born in the most unsanitary and unsterile of conditions in overcrowded tents with no running water.

In this war, nobody was spared, including pastors, elders, deacons, doctors, professors or even expectant mothers or mothers with tiny babies. Black people, both young and old, were loaded onto trucks to be taken to overcrowded tents.

Surely the concentration camps were not meant to be a place of suffering but because of the shortage of water, sanitation and firewood and medication it was a sad situation.

Many people fled the camps on their ox wagons. When the stray British soldiers started to visit the farms, the woman hid their children in outbuildings or sometimes in an outside bread oven. Here and there was an elderly, that was too weak for the war or the concentration camps, so they became spies for the woman and let them know when soldiers is close by so they could flee. These women bought a lot of condensed milk and tinned food beforehand and store that in the ox wagons. These women sometimes got a hold of a stray animal that they would cook in hollowed out ant’s nests, with a little bread.

Not all the houses were set alight immediately. When the soldiers reached an empty house, they would stay overnight or a few days and only when all the food was finished, would they set the house alight. Then they moved on to destroy the animals, fruit trees, out buildings and even the crops of the black people.

My father, Adriaan, was soon weakened from the lack of food and water, and became nauseated whenever he tried to take food. His father somehow came to hear of this and stealthily tried to track his child down. This was obviously an exceptionally difficult task, but his faithful old father succeeded, even though the boy by this time was dangerously weak. He decided there and then to take the boy the next morning and join a patrol heading with a white flag towards the enemy in AIiwal North. There he hoped to get permission for Adriaan to join his mother as soon as possible in the concentration camp so that he could receive proper treatment.

No! Please, anything but that! He begged his father with outstretched arms not to send him to the camp. Let me rather die here, so that they can tell my mother later where my grave is, at least. If not, no one will know where I’m buried or where my body lies, because who knows whether or not I’ll be murdered on the way? Therefore, he flatly refused to go, and slowly, by the Lord’s grace, he gradually grew stronger under the ministrations of the adults.

Later on, it had become aware that in the headlong dash to escape the enemy, no one had given a thought to the dogs. As a result, the dogs that had not died of hunger had to be shot to relieve their suffering. The farmers also realised that, the supplies they