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HENRY & ADA VICKERMAN, Ghanzi, 22 June 2016
Question: It is hard that things must change, but there is always joy to be found in the next stage as well. You said to us earlier that it was very different when you grew up, can you tell us more about the earlier days.
HV: It is a bit complicated, but I will make it as short as possible. My mother Martha originally came from Gordonia. I think they were the third trek and they stayed two years in Lehututu with the Camms and then trekked to Eersterus and the Camms trekked to Olifantskloof. When they were now at Lehututu, Teddie Gower had a trading store there, and he got married to Auntie Lettie, Edmund Gower’s mother, who was married to Oom Thys Taljaard. They stayed at D’Kar before the church acquired the land to put up the mission. My father met my mother through Aunt Lettie because he had a trading store at Mochudi and Teddy Gower had a trading store at Mochudi afterwards, and my mother would visit Aunt Lettie and that is how she met my father. My father died at an early age and then my mother brought us back to Ghanzi. My dad made the chap that bought Teddy Gower’s store in Mochudi, Billy Graham, our guardian. They had Mochudi trading store and my dad had Bakgatla.
My dad came from Yorkshire in England and was a member of the Sons of England. He came to fought in the Matabele wars in Rhodesia. When he came back he brought his family to Botswana. Billy Graham said to my mother that I must go to Johannesburg to school. I was about five years old or so when I was send of to the Sons of England Cottage Home in Johannesburg for school.
Question: And Oom Theuns at that stage?
HV: He was still in Ghanzi. My sister was born six months after my dad died, she was like posthumous. The Sons of England home only kept the boys until they were twelve years old, the girls they kept until they put them in a job and came independent and could look after themselves. The brother home to Sons of England was St Georges in Malvern, the boys all went to St Georges. I stayed in St Georges until I was over 21 years, took up an apprenticeship and qualified as a Moulder and I went and worked in Southern Rhodesia. My mother was in Ghanzi and my brother and sister came later to Johannesburg and got educated. Then we came and worked for Edmund Gower, he had the transport riding on the cream. We use to do the rounds, Eersterus, Uitkoms and all those farms on a Sunday collecting the cream. Monday we came through the Khutse block and take the cream to Gobabis to the creamery and then we collect all the cans again, do all the orders for the farmers and bring it back and load it off for them.
My brother and I decided to go back to Southern Rhodesia and Mr Burton said that we must come and see him. We went and saw him and he said to me he knew my father very well, they were great friends. At that time my father had a store in Kanye and Mr Burton and his brother had a store in Tshabong. We used to come to Kanye and buy all his goods and go back to Tshabong. So he says to us “I tell you what, I will give you Seribi farm and you can milk all the cattle there and everything and make a living, stay in Ghanzi instead of going to Southern Rhodesia”, because we have been here for two years already.
Question: At that point in time was your mother still alive?
HV: Ja, my mother was staying at D’Kar, in that house next to Cecil and Kotie Craill, that’s where we lived. Just going off the subject, when my mother and us came here, the community came together and they build that house for us. Oom Thys made the bricks, he did the building and Oom Booy did the thatching and all the farmers came and helped and settled us there at D’Kar.
Question: That is so beautiful. From the interviews we’ve had from Oom Thys Taljaard and so on your mother was a wonderful woman … She was very much loved, wasn’t she? A lot of people mentioned the story of her at that store with her brother Oom Jan Kotzè …
HV: Ja, she was a Kotzè, my mother … she had all those brothers, Oom Thys, Oom Booy, Oom Paul, Oom Jan and Oom Theunis … they were all the brothers and then Aunt Annie, Aunt Lettie and Aunt Mita were the daughters.
Question: They all mentioned your mother and the story of her staying behind with the shop when her husband died.
HV: Ja, my mother lived just short of a 100.
Question: So they came together and they build that house for her?
HV: Ja, they build that house for us. My mother stayed there and we came to the farm, Theuns and I, settled on the farm and milked and carried on. As time went on Mr Burton lend us money, he used to lend everybody money, and we started speculating, buying cattle and that is how we sort of made our living on the farm that Mr Burton gave us. Doing the rounds with the truck, we used to come pass Ghanzi. Ada had her eye on me you know and eventually we got married and we carried on farming, speculating and breeding cattle. And when the old man died Ada and I got farms and we consolidated all our farms over here.
Question: I remembered the four of you and your families as one unit. It was beautiful, I remember growing up thinking that is now true harmony, the two sisters marrying the two brothers and living together.
AV: It is actually still like that.
HV: Ja, we were very happy.
AV: We are still happy.
HV: I don’t remember us ever having a fight or an argument, we had a difference of opinion occasionally, but we used to sort it out and everything like that. The old saying says you must always settle your arguments at the breakfast table, when you’re all together, talk … If Ada and I ever had a difference we never went to sleep cross with each other, never. We grew up in that house and the kids too. We stayed like that for many years and never had any problems; we were so lucky and happy.
HV: Theuns and I took out cattle, we came from a town, we knew nothing about farming, nothing … and as we went along we just had to learn everything. Then when we got married Mr Burton use to give us his cattle, made them together and we used to take them out, he was just an exceptional person.
Question: We know very little about him, please tell us about him.
HV: You know, we get the cattle together, and he were so fair … those cattle were if we went and slaughter them or sold them maybe they were worth £20 or something like that. If a chap took out cattle they used to pay him 7 or 6 or 10 bob a head, and he’d say “Give me £12 for them, whatever you get over it is yours”. Sometimes we would get over £15 or £16 and instead of 6 or 7 bob a head we got £4 a head. That’s how he helped us all the time.
Question: And he himself, he came from New Zealand?
HV: Ja, he came from New Zealand, that’s another story … and that’s how we lived. And we had all the old people, there was old Oom Chrisjan and his son and then there was the Kotzè’s, Van Stadens, Du Plessis, all the old people. But there weren’t so many people, you knew every single person in the district, you knew every car. I think when I came in there were either five or six vehicles in Ghanzi. You knew every person, you knew his number, if you ride on the road and he comes from the front you‘ll say that is Mr Burton coming pass. Today there are so many blooming cars; people got two, three, four cars you know. Those days a car was so valuable. We used to go to Lobatse or Mafikeng by vehicle, it used to take us three days, we use to sleep 3 nights on the road to get there and we always considered Ghanzi the lost district of Botswana, cause nobody used to come here, the journey was to much for them, they wouldn’t come here. We never saw a government official or anything like that. We had a DC here by the name of Midgley; he was a wonderful guy …
Question: His daughter, Fay Pearson, got hold of us thru this history project on the internet and she has send us his account of his days in Ghanzi and Oom Dick also told us yesterday that he had such admiration for him.
HV: Him, and he had an assistant, a black man Tebape. I think he is still alive, he was an African but so approachable and he knew everybody. Whatever he could do for you he used to do for you, there was no racial tension or anything like that, we were equal, a real gentleman. Him and Midgley did a lot building this district up.
Question: Midgley build the road as well, he made sure there was a road?
HV: Midgley, on the quiet, secretly … Dusty Rhodes used to fly from Mafikeng to his farm here, Horseshoe Ranches. He used to ride straight from Kang to Ghanzi and give Midgley the bearing and Johny Burger was the bloke that chopped out the road. Midgley used to go up and give him the bearing right onto Kang. And when he arrived in Kang the Government only found out that he made a road. They were so upset with him doing it without permission and he said to them that it is the natural thing to do. The other road we used to take with the cattle was 500 miles, not kilometres, you go from this pan to that pan and then back to this one. It wasn’t a straight road and he put a straight road thru, at 260km to Kang, such a difference. He was a colonial, but so dedicated.
Question: That ‘s very interesting as we had his side on the story and it would be wonderful to add new information to it.
HV: No, He was a wonderful person and he knew what was going on. He came and visits me and Theuns on then farm one day, and we got talking politics, saying communist, communist … He said to us “Don’t worry about the communists, you got to worry about African Nationalism, it is sweeping down in Africa”. You could see he was just an exceptional person
Question: I wonder where we can get hold of Tebape?
HV: Tebape is from Serowe, but a perfect gentleman.
Question: It would be wonderful to have his story in addition to the white farmers.
HV: Ja, they ran this district on a fraction of the money that they give the councils today. He ran this whole district and knew everything that was going on, I mean just an exceptional person with an exceptional right-hand man Tebape, really.
Question: His daughter Fay will be so happy if we send this to her as she had a feeling that her father wasn’t really appreciated and that some people in Ghanzi were angry with him for some or the other reason?
HV: Definitely not. No, I admired him and respected him, I really did. He was such a good man, so fair. To my opinion that was the best DC and right-hand man that we ever had in Ghanzi, that is my personal opinion.
HV: Mr Burton as you know got the O.B.E. I’ve got it up in the room with the certificate, and he deserved it. He was the bank and I remember it used to always be like that. A chap would come to him and he would always lend him money and the family would say “Why, you will never get your money back” … and then another chap will come and lent money from him and the family would say he made a good deal. Then the chap he made a good deal with he never got the money back and then the bloke we all though is unreliable paid him his money back. He never wrote down people that owed him money, he wrote off thousand of pounds those days, money that he never got … but it never bothered him.
Question: But he was economically strong, wasn’t he? One interview said that his cattle went all the way over the district up to the Namibian border and that he had assets everywhere?
HV: He was an amazing person. Him and his brother and Beacham were New Zealanders.
Question: Beacham we’ve never heard of.
HV: Beacham was the third New Zealander; he was in partnership with Mr Burton. Ada’s father was Arthur George Burton and his brother was George Arthur Burton. Beacham eventually split partnership with them in Tshabong and went back to New Zealand and just the two Burton brothers had the store there. In 1918 George Arthur Burton came to Ghanzi and they got the farm Gnaitso, and that’s where they stayed, they were both bachelors. A wall of the building fell on George and I think he laid there for about three days before he died which was a very big blow to Mr Burton, cause they were also very close to each other. After that he was by himself and he got married to Ada’s mother Maria who was a Lewis. I heard that he did have a son, but the son died very early … at childbirth I think.
Question: Was this Mr Burton or his brother George?
HV: No, Mr Burton with Ada’s mom and then he had the twins, Ada was the oldest and Ivy was the second born and then Hilda who was the laatlammetjie. Hilda got married to Dick, Ivy got married to Theuns and Ada and I got married. I don’t know if I would have ever married her if she didn’t ask me to get married.
Question: I want to hear more about that story, the truth Tannie Ada. I can imagine these two young guys coming from Johannesburg having to learn how to live in Ghanzi. How did it happen in the old days, how did people socially connect and see each other. How did you get the chance to talk to each other?
HV: It actually started really when we got this farm. They used to go to Gobabis and go pass Theuns and me on Sunday when they take them to school. We would be right there on that road seeing them go pass, but there was nothing we could do. But later on we went and visited them and we asked if we could get engaged. They used to come to the house, Theuns and I had two rooms on the farm. They used to come up and clean the place, they got bucket full of flies and don’t know what you know, real bachelors’ quarters. Theuns took out a loan of cattle from Mr Burton and then Mr Burton and his wife and Ada and Ivy and myself, we were in the back of the bakkie, went to Lobatse to go and see the cattle being slaughtered. While the three of us were on the back of the vehicle, chatting to each other on the way, we decided to get married when we get to Lobatse. It has been quite a while that we have been seeing each other and it is time to get married. Theuns was out with cattle and he knew nothing about it, only the three of us. So eventually when we did arrive in Lobatse we broke the good news to Theuns that we are going to get married and then we had to tell mom and dad too. So we did get married in Lobatse with nobody there. We have a photo of only us and mom and dad just after we got married. We came back to Ghanzi and everybody was surprised that we got married.
Question: I think that enough time has passed and with Oom Theuns and Tannie Ivy no longer with us also, I want to know was there ever a point where there was doubt about who picks whom from this foursome?
HV: These two, Ada and Ivy, people often used to ask them that question. They said they know the difference because we both wear different pyjamas.
Question: There was never any jealousy, you knew from the beginning who likes who?
HV: Never, well I recon that was a perfect life … and that is freedom. I shouldn’t say freedom; I should say paradise, we were so happy then. If you didn’t experience it you can’t fathom it out to believe it that it could happen, I didn’t think it could, but it just happened. The big reason was that Ada and I was so close to each other. When Ivy and Theuns were down below and Ada was working in Gaborone and Ada and me stayed on the farm, Ada would walk to the radio telephone to phone Ivy and while she’s walking there, 131, 131 … Ivy calling her. There was such a close relationship. I also think if Theuns and Ivy lived here and Ada and I lived there we wouldn’t have been as happy as when we lived together. The children grew up together in the house. Theuns children were like my children, I could talk to them and reprimand them and Theuns could do the same with my children and it wouldn’t affect me or Ada because we knew they were doing it because they considered them as their children. I remembered that if small Ada got reprimanded she would run straight to me and jump on me saying “Don’t let them …” I just can’t explain it I honestly I can’t …
Question: But we could see it from the outside, people were all talking about the wonderful harmony of your togetherness. So that is a story in itself that is worth telling. This is a beautiful love story and family story that I think needs to be told.
HV: That was that part, how I left Ghanzi and came back and Mr Burton and the role he played in my life. I lost my father when I was very small, but Mr Burton was a second father to me, and I was lucky that I had my mom for so long and sometimes I really regret that I didn’t do more for her, because she offered and sacrificed so much for us three … can’t believe it. When they put up the school here, Aunt Lettie was the cook and my mother was the matron. One thing I’ll always remember, I‘ll never forget it, was when they wanted to send Willie (de Graaff) to school. He went to school and he cried so much that they took him out and kept him out for another year before he went back to school again.
Question: He always says he was actually a little Bushmen, he was raised like a little Bushmen and he has a lot of sympathy with the Bushmen children that ran away from school. He always says “whenever I had the change I would run away”
HV: My mother was very strict, hell she was strict with Theuns and I and Baby. Theuns was of course her favourite and she had reason for that, I will tell you that story later on maybe. When she punished them she said “You go into the dormitory and I will tell you when you can come out”. Two or three hours later she comes to the dormitory to let the bloke out only to find that he is already gone. Thereafter she decided that when she punishes them she will go with them and asked them to take off their clothes and give it to her, because they will not run away naked, and when the time came she will bring them their clothes and asked them to leave.
HV: My mother’s family, my grandfather and grandmother, I can’t even remember them because I was so small …
Question: This is now Oom Theunis Kotzè?
HV: When I came back from Johannesburg, I didn’t know that my mother had so many brothers and sisters. Then I only really started meeting them and getting to know them.
Question: I want to ask when Oom Henry was in Johannesburg with the Sons of England, were you send home for holidays ever, or did they just remove you
HV: They removed me and Ghanzi was such a remote area. I saw my mother the first time when she brought my brother and sister to Jo’burg. I think it was after five or six years, and when my mother came I didn’t recognize her. I knew I had a brother, I didn’t know I had a sister. They were complete strangers and it was a lost part of my life that I just can’t remember. I could not talk English, only Afrikaans. I had to stay for six months to start learning English a bit before I went to school. I always felt that I lost … I was in an orphanage for so long and I had an apprenticeship, I didn’t had a home life … my mother eventually joined the Army and when she came out the army we bought a house and lived there as a family together for the first time.
Question: Where was this now and when?
HV: This was in Jo’burg, I was still in Sons of England when she came, so I was most probably just about twelve years old, somewhere around there.
Question: She joined the Army in South Africa?
HV: Ja, she joined the Army in South Africa during the war, got DE mobbed and then we set up the house. That table outside was the first piece of furniture we bought, she sacrificed so much for us. She didn’t get married and struggled all by herself. She worked at the Transvaal Hotel in Zeerust before she joined the Army. When she came to Pretoria, I used to get leave the same time than her, she took us to the farm in Vryburg, to her brother Oom Isack, Andries and Karel Kotzè’s father, we use to go on holiday there.
Question: Oom Isack was also a son of Oom Theunis?
HV: Theunis, Jan, Paul, Isak, Gert and Booytjie Kotzè, those were the brothers and the daughter were Aunt Annie who was married to Oom Jan Burger, Semomo, and Aunt Lettie, my mother Martha and Aunt Mita who got married to Koos Taljaard died in childbirth when she had the daughter. She got married to Midgley (Midge), he was in the army too, he came here as an assistant vet. They were a big family and poor. All the people then were poor in Ghanzi, they were really poor. They used to go and shoot a steenbok for meat, there were no jobs and you had to struggle with your cattle because there was no market. They were really definitely a forgotten part of the community in Ghanzi.
Question: We got a beautiful quote from Oom Fanie Lewis where he said “We were poor, but we didn’t know we were poor”.
HV: Ja, they didn’t, because if you went anywhere and you didn’t go on at a persons house, that was an insult to them practically and if you left the house they always gave you something … where they got it from I don’t know, but they always gave you something. They were so kind, they were so different … it was a completely different community that lived in isolation actually and they all were integrated with each other. They had respect for each other, although they had a few family arguments, but those were minor things. They had different natures and different ideas of life, today everything is just pleasure and riding around and you haven’t got time to speak to your neighbour. People come and visit you and you don’t even switch off the TV. People don’t talk with each other anymore.
I always reckoned that when I came to Ghanzi, that late year, I always said that is freedom. We had proper freedom, freedom is not having the vote, freedom is when you can live a life of your own choice and nobody interferes with you or discriminates against you or punishes you for anything … you lived a clean, simple, happy life. That is what we actually lived here. We all knew each other, I knew every child in Ghanzi as he grows up. Today, I wonder how many people I know in Ghanzi, they are strangers now, before they weren’t.
Question: There are a lot of new South Africans that have moved in, that I also don’t know.
HV: Their way of life, their thinking is completely different to what we used to think earlier years.
Question: Therefore also we think that it is important to write this history now and to get it out in the public arena, because people interpret the whites in Ghanzi now as one group. Some new bad influences that moved in the old Pioneers “word nou oor die selfde kam geskeer”. The broader society must understand that there was a Pioneer history and now there is a new separate community that is different from the other one. I don’t know how we are going to show this to them, but …
HV: Ja, they are completely different. I always reckoned you must respect a man according to his position. If he is the DC and he’s a black man you must respect him, he’s got a position. You must also treat him like you would want him to treat you also, it goes both ways. Honestly, I got no racial feelings, to me a black man is a black man, he is a person and I respect him for what he is. I’ve got a lot of black friends. When Dick and I were on the council, probably for about 30years, Dick had one term more than what I did, I always used to say we must be represented on the council and we must do our part for, it is not Apartheid, but we are a different set of group and we got different values and different way of life, and we must still protect those views. We were very lucky that a man like Seretse allowed white people to be in positions like that and to have there say. Seretse, to tell you the truth, Seretse was a better man than Mandela, I really do.
Question: I haven’t met him unfortunately
HV: He was an amazing person too, really, but very strict on protocol. I remembered we had a meeting once in a hotel, he was talking to us and brought up gun licenses and do you think it is a good thing to have quotas on guns and we said “Yes we do”. A bloke stood up to leave and he asked him where is he going, he said to him “Sit down, you leave after I‘ve left”. In a political meeting an old guy stood up one day and said “What do you promises us?” He says we are a very poor country and the only thing I can promise you is hard work. He had very strong values and he was honest, very honest. He would have never allowed corruption to get to this stage that it is in Botswana. He would have booted the guy, he did boot one or two of his ministers on things they did wrong. That is going off the subject a bit; did Dick ever tell you the story of Mr Burton and the digging of the puts?
Question: No, we talked about how dangerous the digging of puts were, but tell us the story of Mr Burton.
HV: There was Mr Burton and his brother, they were New Zealanders. Beacham is a little bit later, not now, and then there was the two McIntyre brothers, they were Australians …
Question: We don’t know much about them too, how did they came here and why?
HV: They also came out of the Australian forces. They came out and fought against the Boers in the Boer War. Burton always said “I fought against the Boers and then I married a Boer girl”. They got De mobbed in Jo’burg, they didn’t go back to New Zealand and they took their money …
Question: That was now after the Boer War?
HV: Ja, this was now after the war when they were paid off and they were out of the Army after they have done their duty. Mr Burton, his brother, Beacham and the two McIntyre brothers … it was the five of them …
Question: What about Andy Malone?
HV: He is in the family too, Andy Malone, not in the five, but they came to Mafikeng, the capital of Botswana. They probably, with the Boer War, been near Mafikeng fighting and got themselves a wagon or two and a lot of goods and they trekked into the Kalahari. Then they came to Sekhuma and started trading there with their goods and everything like that. They had oxen and they had to have water to feed their oxen, because they stayed there a long time, so they dug a put at Sekhuma. The water in Sekhuma Pan, there is a lot of puts there; the water there is very shallow. When they finished trading there they went on to Khakhea. At Khakhea they saw a chap in the pan, the pans had like “suigputs” that they used reeds to sieved the water into a bucket. They stopped there and there was no water and so they dug a put and got water. They also stayed there for a while trading their goods and so on. Then they went and they were going to Lehututu and about halfway they came to a pan, McIntyre’s pan, I think it is still called McIntyre’s pan today, and they started digging a put there. They dug a put there just over a 100ft, which is a hell of a distance for a put. They didn’t go on, or he didn’t tell me that they did, but then they went back to Kanye, Gaborone to replenish their stock. The resident Commissioner in Mafikeng was an Australian chap, they went and they saw him and said to him …
Question: Do you remember his name, it wasn’t Charles Fray?
HV: I can’t remember his name, but it was after the Boer War. Maybe he wasn’t the resident Commissioner, but he was like in charge of Botswana, Basutoland and Swaziland also. They said to him that they want to trade in Botswana, can they have permission to do so? They said that they wanted to dig three puts in Botswana, they will dig one at Sekhuma, one in Khakhea and one between Khakhea and Lehututu and you pay us a £100 a put, does not matter what the depth is and if its got water, and a £100 if it hasn’t got water and its got a depth of a 100ft. So he said yes and off they went again. They continued trading in Botswana and send old Bush McIntyre back to go and collect the money and tell them that they kept to their contract and dug two puts with water and one of a 100ft without water, so they gave Bush that money. Off Bush went. A week or two later he arrived at where they were and they asked him “Did you get the money? Yes. So where is it?” and he says that he drank it all out; he didn’t had a blooming penny. And that is where they actually split partnership, the Burton brothers and the McIntyre’s, each went their own way. Then the Burton brothers put up a store at Tshabong and they traded from there.
HV: During the German South-West war, Witbooi was one of the rebels in South-West. He camped in Botswana, in the Kalahari with all his people and they lived there on the Tsamas. Mr Burton’s brother George, he was one of the very few people that knew where they were and he used to go and trade with them. Mr Burton said that when they made peace, Mr Burton and his brother got hold of Witbooi and brought the Germans and they came together and came to a peace deal, they going to give Witbooi some things, but apparently Mr Burton says that they didn’t stick to the agreement, they gave him some of the things and the others things they didn’t give him. He knew Witbooi very well, Scotty Smith they new very well too. And then they new another chap, old McGetty, a one arm bloke that used to dig puts and of course there was Andy Malone which are buried at Ghanzi. He stayed at Mr Burton during his last years. I think he got Malaria, I’m not sure, but Mr Burton buried him, they were good pals. Andy Malone was in Kanye for a long time, he trained horses. He was a very good horse man, knew how to work with horses and trained them and was a very good mate of the two Burton brothers and later years he came and stayed with Mr Burton in Ghanzi.
Question: Very interesting, I wanted to ask how many of these men integrated into Botswana society, because I met a few McIntyre’s when I worked with the Bushmen in D’Kar. There were some coloured people coming from that era. Bush McIntyre, did he got himself a local wife and settled here or do you know …
HV: I know his one daughter, Gracious. She got a small business doing work – and resident permits and then Rammy, they got some Ramptons in Maun. The big thing is that you have to take circumstance into account, that most of these chaps were mostly traders. The traders actually opened up Botswana
Question: Even this route from Ghanziland to Namibia …
HV: All these traders, there were the Wetherills, the Frolicks, the Ramsdens, Blackbeards and Sharps. When they came into these remote areas none of them had wives and they were all single chaps that went out into the bush and opened up trading stores, but they not educated, but gave these black people the privilege of a shop that they didn’t need to walk for miles and miles to a shop. They lived all by themselves and took a black woman because there was nobody else. Some of them had children and some of them didn’t. Someone actually told me that if you go back in history, go down the line and go back into the past that you won’t find one South African family that haven’t got a black sheep.
Question: And the McIntyre brothers, where did they stay in Botswana?
HV: There was Bush McIntyre, he was married and stayed at Sunnyside. The other McIntyre brother, Jan Mac, he stayed in Kanagas area. He was a real miser and Joey Coetzee told me he bought cattle from him once or twice. He would never take a cheque or anything like that; you had to pay him in gold sovereigns. They had gold sovereigns those days. He stayed there and had a little notebook, and the reckoned from here right down to Bray, all the villages he had cattle. If you paid him he used to take that money and put it in a cream can or a bottle or anything and he would burry the money. Nobody knew how much he was worth. Mr Burton said that he must have been worth a lot of money. When he died, Desmond McIntyre which lived in Gaborone, which was his son, inherited everything. Desmond actually came with a metal detector and he traversed that farm from “hoek” to “hoek” looking for gold sovereigns, and didn’t find a blooming thing. But then after they recon it was practically common knowledge that he used to bury his money. So, whenever he sold cattle the Herero’s used to track him, watched him day and night to see where he buried the money, and then go and dig it up again … that’s the story that goes around.
Question: This was the McIntyre that the Burton brothers split up from Lehututu?
HV: They split from the two brothers, Bush and Jan Mac.
Question: Finally they did land in Ghanzi?
HV: Eventually they both landed in Ghanzi yes.
Question: To go back to your earlier story, you lived in Johannesburg with your mother then. By what time did you decided to move back to Ghanzi and when did they build that house for your mother in D’Kar?
HV: My mother got out of the army … I think it was in 1947 that the war ended, somewhere around there. We didn’t stay in Jo’burg very long; we stayed in Mallvern, a suburb of Jo’burg that is near Bedforview, Edenvale and Primrose. I didn’t like Jo’burg and I have been to the farm for holidays, and then I said let me try Rhodesia. I got a job in Rhodesia at a firm called Isolls in Bulawayo and then William McLaughlin, the chap that got married to my sister, they also went to Zimbabwe when I was working in Bulawayo, but they went to Harare. I was staying in a boarding house and they said to me why don’t you come to Harare than we all can stay together. My sister was staying at YWWCA and Mac was staying in a big double story house with some blokes that were also working. I went to Harare and they got me a job at Crushtes. Then my mother was in Ghanzi and in 1952 she wrote me a letter and said I must come to Ghanzi, she’s got a job for me with Edmund, that’s when I came to Ghanzi. Theuns were working on the mines in Jo’burg. I was probably working for six months or so for Edward and then we let him know Edmond said he wants another driver, he got another truck and we said to Theuns why don’t you come to Ghanzi. So Theuns and I were driving Edmonds two trucks. Edmond and Koos Snyman put up a little store at D’Kar, a corrugated building that was next to MTC. Then we stayed at that house in D’Kar until we got the farm from Mr Burton.
HV: Mr Burton always said to me that he buried Andy Malone, he wrapped him up in a blanket, which is how the old people buried them. The graves are there, they are close to the old road that went pass there. Hardbattle was buried in his cattle kraal and they used to move the kraals when it rained and so on, Ada said that she is not sure in which kraal he was buried in.
Question: Tell us about Hardbattle.
HV: When my father was still alive … when he died he had that farm in Gaborone which is the agricultural farm now.
Question: Sebile?
HV: Sebile, that is where we actually lived when my father passed away. We always called it Sebile, but the farm’s name I think was Content. That is where he died; he had a little store there and we had a double story house. I took Ada and Wendy and all of them to go and have al look at the house once and it is completely dilapidated, but it is fenced in, and they just left it like that. The little store is still there and he had a blacksmith shop there. Hardbattle was a policeman in Mochudi, that’s where he met my father. Then he was transferred. He was also a Yorkshire man, he came from Yorkshire and was in the metropolitan police in England and my father was also a Yorkshire man. Hardbattle was transferred to Ghanzi then and they kept in contact with each other. Then they decided, my father said he is going to drill a role of boreholes from Molepolole straight thru the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to Ghanzi. Hardbattle would buy the cattle and they will send them thru and my father had the farm Content and he would get rid of the cattle. But then my father died before they could do that.
Hardbattle retired as a policeman and started farming and when he died he had about six farms, and he got rid of most of his cattle. He also bought farms in South Africa. Him and another bloke I can’t remember the name of, he used to send him the money and he would go and buy the ground. He had a hell of a lot of ground there and then this bloke yipped him and Hardbattle had nothing, he lost everything, he was completely bankrupted. Then Mr Burton helped him and he got right on his feet again. He had six farms, he had two farms at Okwa and it is right outside the Ghanzi block.
HENRY & ADA VICKERMAN
When Dick surveyed the farms and Rhodes dream, whatever it was, came true that the farm were surveyed, I think there was only one original person, a Drotsky, that was still alive, old Martiens Drotsky. Nobody got a free farm; they all had to pay for them. A free farm if I remembered correctly was promised to them. When Dick surveyed this area, if you had a farm here you had first option on the farm adjoining you, or if you had another farm somewhere else on quit-rent you could transfer that farm into your name. If I remember right I think you paid 7 and 6 for the farms. This farm which adjoins Seribi which Theuns and I got the house on Mr Burton had first option on, but he was not interested and Theuns and I bought it.
Question: What is a quit-rent?
HV: The quit-rent system was sort of a scheme where government gave you a farm. The government gives you a document, a quit-rent document. They used to pay £5 a year for their farm and it had to be renewed every year. Some people, and I said that the people in Ghanzi were poor, could not even pay the £5. They had to borrow it and work it off, that is how they got those farms. If you had a farm on quit-rent you had the option to buy it. If a farm adjoined you, you had the option to buy it. That was when they were surveyed and the Colonial government gave them out on freehold. Mr Burton and Hardbattle had quite a few farms and that’s how they got most of their ground. They all had it on quit-rent and kept up paying the quit-rent it and when they got surveyed one day they got freehold title. That is the general idea of a quit-rent. When we could buy the farms I think they went for 10 bob, I’m not sure. We then applied to government and got them on a 15 year repayment system with no interest. People complained because they just didn’t have the money and the market wasn’t very good. That is how they got title deed and government changed the lease to 25 years … they didn’t change the price but they gave a longer lease.
Question: Why did Oom Henry said earlier on that the market wasn’t very good?
HV: When we used to take cattle out to Lobatse, before the BMC (Botswana Meat Corporation) was established, we used to take out oxen to the Johannesburg abattoir. There was an embargo on those cattle of a £1,000. The weight had to be a 1000 pound to be able to go to the Johannesburg market.
Question: How did they get there, by train or… ?
HV: No, they used to trek them and put them on a train at Hildavale. It wasn’t a case of exactly a 1000 pound, if you had an ox of 970 pound they would let it pass thru or if it was over a 1000, it’s life weight. That was the only market, legal market. Then the BMC was established and the people took their cattle to the BMC. If you took out say 300 oxen, there are massive oxen in Ghanzi, people used to let them grew up on account of the embargo. But when the abattoir came in again you could bring different weights because they classed and graded them. You had a bigger option at the BMC to take cattle to the market. Then again you could not take a small tollie to the market because you would get nothing for him. If a chap took out say 300 oxen that were going to the BMC, got his quota there was never a problem with the quota. If you wanted a quota for 300 cattle you will get the quota say for the 21st of June, you put them in on the 20th, 21st they have slaughtered them, 3days later you get your cheque, finished … they run very efficiently. The other market was when you trekking thru and you come to the villages you give a bloke 2 tollies or two heifers or a tollie and a heffer for a big ox, you swopped him out and then he grows those up again. So that was a second market and then you had the speculators. Those days a lot of the speculators were Jewish chaps, Shapiro, Steinberg, Sidney Sacks, Glagmann and a few Afrikaans chaps. Then there was also Brink, Lundt and so on. In my experience, I’m not running anybody down; I used to sell to the Jewish chaps. People don’t think very much of Jews, but they are very good businessmen and very honest.
Question: Were they now down in Lobatse?
HV: They were mostly sown in the Lobatse area. You never made a contract with a bloke, you bring them, he pays for them, you shake his hand and finished. You bring the cattle and take them to Hildavale, they count them and the next day you collect your cheque. When you are coming on the road, you are about three quarters of the way, the speculators come and see you and ask what you want for your cattle. I just use to leave them and go to the Jewish chap, no problems … they were very honest chaps and also opened up the cattle industry. We had the BMC then after the embargo came and we had this other market where we could swop out two for one and also the other market over the border. They had all the South African farmers’ ploughing maize. Those days very few farmers had tractors, they all used to plough with oxen. You will have a middle man, maybe a speculator, and you sell him a hundred treks, not tollies. Treks stayed higher than a tollie and they were bigger too, because they had to trek the plough. The speculator puts them over the border and takes them to the farmers who spans them in, ploughs his fields where after he puts them on a piece of ground, fattens them up and slaughters them. Next year he wants another lot of treks, so that was a continues market. That’s the markets we had, we were so isolated that it was very difficult to sell cattle those days.
Question: I always knew of the beestrekke from Ghanzi, but never knew what happened afterwards and how the economy of Ghanzi managed to survive before the BMC was established.
HV: But those years I must admit that the BMC abattoir was run very efficiently. Today the abattoir is just being subsidized all the time. That money should being used for the poor people and schools. Talking about schools, we had one school in Ghanzi, an old brick and mud building with a thatched roof in Kalkfontein. We had no schools in Ghanzi, all the children went away to school. We had no doctors, no banks … well the only bank we had was Mr Burton and we struggled. I didn’t come in during the very early days when those people really struggled. When I came at least there was a semi-attached market where you could get something for your cattle. Those years they use to allow cattle from Ngamiland to come in, they didn’t have the cordoned fence. We use to buy cattle from the Greeks or from NTC and bring over the border. One thing that is very true and actually unique … I would go to Ngamiland and buy a 1000 tollies from Kiriakis the Greek and bring them here, they all had these big horns and half of them weren’t castrated. We will then castrate them, dehorn them and fix them up. But, the ones that were castrated and fixed up we should take them straight out and we keep the others back. Say we get 500 hundred out of the 1000 that can be marketed straight away; we take them out straight away. When I get the cattle from Kiriakis I will give him a cheque and then I will come here and get those 500 hundred out, sell them and put the money in the bank before he changes his cheque, because it was such a rigmarole for him to get that cheque to Mafikeng. We would give a cheque knowingly that we will have these cattle sold before he get there for his cheque to be paid out.
Today I do evaluations and I go round to a lot of the farms, since independence. I got a document from the High Court where they asked me, because we had nobody here … nobody would came here to do evaluations for estates. When I came here there were no fences, no farms were surveyed, these cattle of ours use to go and drink water at Ted Flattery maybe and then two days later they will come and drink at Seribi pan where they were born. When the farm were surveyed all of us got a shock when we actually fenced our farms and saw how small they were after we had miles and miles of open grazing. There was never a shortage of grass, veldfires used to come thru, people didn’t used to really worry about them and the farms weren’t as bushed as they are now which is a problem in the whole of Botswana now…
Question: Maybe it would have been ecologically better not to have ever fenced these farms …
HV: Ja, but everybody wanted to fence their farms, and then again we had the security which was an advantage at the banks again … but our banks were in Lobatse. It was only later on that we had banks and everything in Ghanzi.
Question: What can Oom Henry tell us about Charlie Sharp?
HV: Charlie Sharp’s father was a prisoner of war, must have been the Boer War I suppose, and was sent to St Helena Island. Apparently he got married to a St Helena woman. They always said that the Sharps were coloured, but that was not so. They settled in Kanye and opened a store in Kanye. Charlie Sharp had one or two brothers and a sister Madeline that I know of and I think he had a sister Flora too. Madeline sort of ran the business in Kanye. Then there was Charlie, Tom and Frank. I think Frank had a bottle store on the station or hotel, I think it was in Phahalapye or maybe Mahalapye, it was on the railway somewhere. Sharp came to Kalkfontein, opened up a store and started trading and eventually had another store in Ncojane which I wanted to do an evaluation for somebody, but the store have sort of collapsed. The other Sharp was Jimmy Sharp’s father … Jimmy Sharp that use to stay and farm at Happy Valley. The one Sharp brother were his father, not sure which one, but he comes from the Sharp family. He had two sons, Neels and Tom. Charlie Sharp had three stores, but I can’t remember where the third one was. The story goes that when he first came to Kalkfontein as a young man there wasn’t a big Kalahari village there … the Africans came in to Kalkfontein and Karakubis and Ncojane after the white people have settled here, they weren’t here then, the Bushmen were here and at Makundu where the Herero’s are. Strange enough Ncojane, Ukhwi and Kalkfontein were Kalahari villages and Makundu is a Damara village. If you say they naturally segregated themselves they recon you are racealistic, but nobody told them to live separately from each other, they did that by themselves. Coming back to Charlie at Kalkfontein again, it is a small village and a lot of people stayed out in the bush and had some goats … the Kalahari’s are very good with goats. The story goes to say that he made a big pot of coffee every morning and invited the people to have a cup for free and gradually they came more and more and some of them even settled in Kalkfontein and it became a village eventually. It’s got a big pan that there and when it rained it was usually full of water, and they also got puts in there … usually in a big pans like that the water is quite shallow although it’s not very strong. They recon he addicted the Kalahari’s to the coffee and then stopped giving them coffee for free and eventually they ended up buying coffee from him. That’s how the story goes but how true it is I don’t know. He also traded amongst the farmers in Ghanzi with his lorry or scotch car because there was no shop here. Eventually a shop came where they say the “old winkel” here … Bush McIntyre used to work in that shop one time. The shop belonged to klein Chrisjan (Lewis), he opened the first store or shop you could say in Ghanzi and Bush ran it for him. I saw the building but never when in the shop when I came here. I don’t know if the shop was actually open, it might have been, but I never went and see what stock they had. Then afterwards Hollandia Stores of Mma De Graaff opened later.
Question: But they not take over Chrisjan’s shop when he died?
HV: Klein Chrisjan build that shop and I think he ran it for a while and then Oom Albert and Aunt Lena had it and then Nelie took over the shop. I think she has closed it now because she is most probably close to her 90’s already and not in good health. That whole area where the house is and the butchery, shop and those stores … I don’t know how Chrisjan acquired that ground, but on his ground he had the first sale kraals we had in Ghanzi, but they broken down already. We all used to have the sales there … farmers would bring their cattle there. Klein Chrisjan, Toekie’s father, he build those kraals there and then opened the store and the butcher shop … at first it was just a bakery. Later when Braam, Nelie’s husband took over, he took over the butchery I think and then Wiena turned it into a shop afterwards and Nelie went into the other shop. Charlie Sharp was “smousing” around the farms which as I said the traders opened up a lot of the country in Botswana, Charlie Sharp was one of the chaps that had a hand in opening up Ghanzi and a big hand in opening up a store in Ncojane right in the blooming bundus ... there is nothing around there and he employed quite a few Ghanzi people, Jimmy Sharp Ted Flattery worked for him. He did a lot for Ghanzi also. He was a very good chap, Charlie Sharp. A lot of these farmers had nothing and he helped them by giving them credit, he would take a sheep here, a goat there and a tollie here. He had a cattle post at Kalkfontein where he used to put the cattle in and sell them and get cash again. He had a daughter and two sons and I think he send them to school in Bloemfontein and educated them, one was in Windhoek at one time and he’s sons was in Charles Hill. His daughter got married and did very well.
Question: I wanted to ask if there was a time that “smouse” came to the farms with their goods and wagons to trade with the farmers before the shops opened in Ghanzi? How did people get goods? You mentioned that …
HV: That is what Charlie Sharp used to do, go from farm to farm and sell his wares and he would take a sheep or a tollie or they bring it to him later on, but he use to take stock as payment at times too. He mostly sold material and groceries. Charlie Sharp use to “smous” before they opened the other shop. When we lived in Jo’burg he actually came to our house and stayed there a day or two to do all his shopping wit a big truck.
Question: And he was also the first person who brought a truck into Ghanzi, or a car …
HV: I think Charlie Sharp had the first car because he was BPI 1 and BPI 2, Mr Burton BPI 3 and Ted Flattery was BI 6. You used to keep those numbers, if you sold your car and bought another car you just put that number on your car too. Ghanzi was BPI and Maun was BPJ. Those days you knew every blooming car on the road.
Question: Talking about the Flattery’s, please tell us how did they end up in Ghanzi and the role they played and also the Marnewicks, Bruwers and Joop, Piet and Koos Lewis?
HV: Coming to the Lewis family again, I heard a story that the old Lewis, Chrisjan that was married to Aunt Lena, his father was actually in Ghanzi, but how true it is I’m not sure. It is a rumour I just heard lately. There were three brothers, Chrisjan, John and Louw Lewis. Old Chrisjan had one son which was klein Chrisjan and five daughters, Ada’s mom Maria, Aunt Lena who was married to Oom Albert (Lemcke), Aunt Grieta who was married to Oom Hugo (Lemcke), Aunt Sannie who was married to Joey (Lewis) and Annie who was married to Mr Watcham, who spend most of their time out of Ghanzi. As a young girl Annie went to school in Zeerust and got married and stayed most of her life in Jo’burg and I think she died there too. The other brother John Lewis’s sons were Manie, Chrisjan, Joey and another son too which died (Jan Lewis) and his daughters were Elize and Santjie.
Then Louw Lewis was the father of Fanie, Piet, Joey and Koos Lewis. Those were the three Lewis families with their first children, naturally after that they grew into a very big family and a whole lot of them left Ghanzi.
HV: The Flattery’s again, they were mad Irishman, they were Irish and very proud of it too, they came from Lobatse. Ted and David came and stayed in Ghanzi. Ted was our next-door neighbour and David was next-door to Ted again. They had the farms adjoining us. David was a speculator and very good with cattle and Ted was the elder brother and he also farmed and took cattle out. He used to spend a lot of time with the Ramsdens. They had another brother who was cripple and in a wheel chair whom the mother looked after and there was also a sister, Mary who was a nurse. The son in the wheelchair and Mary never really came to Ghanzi, just the two brothers that stayed there. The mother stayed on a small holding in Lobatse with the other children.
Question: When I was a student I spend a night there waiting for a transport truck at the Flattery house in Lobatse. I remember the house very well.
HV: She was a very nice old lady, I really liked her, she nursed that child day and night, he was everything to her and then she died before him. The son was send to a nursing home in Jo’burg after her death. Ted is still alive, he is older than me and still live in the same house you went to in Lobatse.
Question: Edward is Ted’s son or David’s son?
HV: Ted never got married. Edward is David’s son, and his daughter Jane works for Stanbic in Maun, and another son we used to call “tjorts”. I think he had another daughter too if I remember right. He was married to Johanna who was Jimmy Sharp’s daughter. That’s all I really know about them, they lived and farmed in Ghanzi and trekked cattle out too. They also had no relatives amongst the original Ghanzi people, only Johanna who had half a connection being born a Sharp.
Question: Susan Flattery has sent us some photos, so we wanted to know where we fit them into the history of Ghanzi. Is think I saw Edward at Oom Cecil’s funeral …
HV: Yes, freckle face … the Bushmen used to call him leopard.
Question: Is he still in Ghanzi?
HV: He still farms in Ghanzi, he’s not our next-door neighbour, but the next farm. He’s got two sons and a daughter and married to a girl from Rustenburg.
Question: I’m also interested to understand the social currents of Ghanzi. You knew all the English people so well, was there a different social live among the English groups, the Doppers, the Kotzè families, the Lewis’s who were more NG Kerk families? I know everybody was very good to each other and cared for each other, but there seemed to have been some small sub-cultures in Ghanzi that we didn’t know much about. When you spoke about all these people I realized that when I grew up here amongst the Afrikaans group we never had any information about them and we didn’t really mix with the English people. Did the English people meet each other in some way or the other?
HV: Well, I think at Christmas time they all used to come together on somebodies farm and stayed for about a week. They dance and chat and ride horses, but that was in the very early days. When I came here the second time, I was too young the first time, Oom John Lewis used to arrange most of the parties for the young people. He was the one that arranged most of the entertainment for the young people those days. We would go to his house for a dance and then the old people would sit in the lounge and have a shot or two. They didn’t use to get drunk or anything, they would drink moderately, never really any arguments or fights out there. It all went very well and he enjoyed the young people’s company. He was a very nice person and interested in young people.
Going a bitt off the subject, he was mauled by a Leopard when he was young which left him a bit blind in the one eye and his hands were scarred from the attack. That didn’t use to worry him. When I used to ride the cream truck we sometimes use to come over Kalkfontein and other times over Rietfontein. He knew that the cream truck is coming back Tuesday and will be at his place maybe at about 5 o’clock in the morning and he used to stand in his door and see the lights of the truck at Rietfontein, probably very high there, and then he knew the truck is coming.
Then of course they had the yearly horseraces as well, and then we camped out at whoever gave the races for two or three days.
Question: Can you remember how or when did the horseracing started in Ghanzi, because when I arrived it was an annual event in Ghanzi?
HV: I can’t remember
Question: When we arrived in the 60’s it was a tradition and there were some dispute about half-blood and full-blood horses racing against each other.
HV: Ja, that’s right, that was a big argument. The same as with the show … You’ll breed a bull and a bloke goes and buys a bull for P40 000 and you haven’t got a blooming hope and the same with the horseracing. You bring your farm horse that you bred to the race and some bloke brings his thorough-bred horse and argues like hell that it is not a thorough-bred, those issues did come up. But they don’t have those traditional horseraces anymore.
Question: I remembered we had it at your farm once or twice.
HV: Yes, we had it at our farm once and the people, out of their own, use to bring stuff like meat and vegetables and things like that you know, and all the women get in and cook, and organize and we will have a dance at night. It was very pleasant … an enjoyment. It sort of more or less fallen out and I think one of the reasons why it has is the argument about the horses. But now they seem to have the big horseraces in Maun now and apparently the council are going to build a racetrack. It’s going to be a big thing, so Ghanzi will probably join in later on and do the same, maybe it will come in again.
Question: There seems to be a difference of opinion on who brought the first horses into Ghanzi.
HV: A lot of horses came from Namibia. When they had the war the Germans had a lot of horses for the soldiers to move around on and to pull the cannons and when they left many horses were left behind on the farms and a lot of those horses just got wild. We used to go to South-West, and mostly on the German farms you’ll find these horses, lovely horses. You could buy those horses for £2 or 3£ a horse, but you had to go and catch them and get them together. Then you get a permit of course to bring them over into Ghanzi and then they used to take them to Ngamiland to Lake Ngami where they were sold off to the Damaras, who liked horses, for about £25 per horse, but it was a lot of work to bring them in. There was the border fence between Namibia and Botswana, a portion of it wasn’t fenced, it just had the beacons on the line and soon as it rained these horses would go back right to where you bought them from and then we had to send our workers to go and fetch them again. If you had a horse with horse sickness, and he was salted, he was very valuable and you get a hell off a good price for him. I think the original horses came from South-West from ex-German Army stock.
Question: They worked without horses in Ghanzi in the early years because there wasn’t enough water and a horse couldn’t trek as far as an ox could.
HV: You’re right, that is another thing, people talk about poaching … Earlier years the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and even Ghanzi had tons of game. If you went to the Laagte, for example, to shoot an Eland or a Gemsbuck, you went on horseback or two or three families will maybe go with ox wagons and park them there and the men go out and bring in the buck right to the wagon and they will shoot him there. Then the woman will work them and take the fat to make soap later on, the hides get cured for “riems”, all of this is done in the veld. The big thing is that a horse can’t go without water as long as a beast can. If the men went out hunting on their own in the Kalahari, without the woman, two or three men will take their horses and ride out, but you could go only so far because the horse must have enough stamina to carry the meat back again. Animals that are beyond that line is safe and they breed and the animals that are on this side of the line are the ones that got shot. You could only go a certain distance to shoot or poach animals and that was the reason there wasn’t so much poaching and the game increased. The cordoned fences also had a lot to do with game numbers as they ran into these fences on their way to water they knew and then they died of thirst again. When the Land Cruiser game in and people started buying them they could go 300km into the game areas from where they camped. The Land Cruiser actually decreased the game and made it easily available and ruined it out. That is one of the big reasons, my own opinion, why there isn’t such a lot of game anymore, because it is so easily accessible with a Cruiser. Before you had to have a good horse to go and shoot and come back all that distance again.
Question: Everybody was driving old Bedford’s and Ford’s and they couldn’t go where the Land Cruisers went.
HV: That’s just my personal opinion I think why game has diminished, but the cordoned fences had a lot to do with it too. Hundreds of animals used to come up against the fence and die of thirst, but the advantage of the cordoned fence again is it would allowed the control of the foot and mouth and we were still allowed to sell cattle. If we were closed permanently and there weren’t any fences and the whole country was closed it would have been a blooming catastrophe. The original farmers that came here looked after the game, they knew they had to have game to survive also. They looked after and conserve the game, they didn’t just go mad and shooting any blooming thing that they saw.
Question: Although Oom Henry, it looked to me from those original interviews and from some of the description of the early explorers and traders that hunting was the economic activity of that time. How much off that was still going on when you came in? Did people still sell hides and skins and horns?
HV: if you read these old books about the old hunters, they shot hundreds of elephant, hundreds
Question: You cannot think … Hendrik van Zyl for instance shot a hundred elephant at a pan in one day.
HV: They had no idea of conserving, but the original farmers that came here they were conservation conscious because it was very important to look after the game because they were dependent on the game. When I came here we used to have Springbuck and Kudu when it was unfenced of course and every year there used to be a migration of Wildebeest and the Hartebeest used to come through Ghanzi in the thousands, not the hundreds.
Question: I still saw that at Phuduhudu, south of Kang they moved over to road to the Central.
HV: Yes, and then they put the Ngamiland fence up and that stopped the migration again, they could only come as far as Ghanzi. They used to come every single year. If you ride the old road there was a pan that had water, that pan was teaming with game, can’t believe it.
Question: I can remember just after my parents moved here we were invited on a hunting trip where we must have seen this migration because the horizon was black from the one side to the other with Blue wildebeest.
HV: When the migration came, our neighbours, the Du Plessis used to go out with a donkey wagon and came back loaded, they had these empty drums full of meat. They used to give that meat also to their servants
HV: The other thing was schooling. When I came they had that mud and brick building in Kalkfontein, but then here at Klein Kgoutsa there was a school too.
Question: Is that were Oom Albert (Lemcke) lived?
HV: That’s right, they had a school there also and a lot of the European children went to school there. I think at one time Aunt Annie Watcham was a teacher and man later on too, I can’t remember his name. When that school closed they opened the school at D’Kar. Oom Thys and Aunt Lettie used to take all the children around there and looked after them; they all stayed at D’Kar where the mission is today. There must have been 25 children in that school. They used to take them away for the weekends and bring food and meat for Aunt Lettie to feed the children and as far as I know they didn’t charge anything, it was all done for free. Those two people that took that responsibility on, I couldn’t believe it.
Question: Some of the interviews also mentioned Aunt Lenie taking in children and looking after them. There must have been a few “mothers” like that?
HV: Some of the people stayed at Oom Tinkie’s farm with old Koba Craill.
Question: Tinkie Craill’s wife was Koba who later married Oom Appel Kuhn. Was she the mother to Adam and Cecil?
HV: No, the first wife was the mother. Old Taljaard’s daughter married Tinkie Craill and Cecil and Adam were all Craills.
HV: And then they build the school in Ghanzi and a lot of the children went to school there and afterwards to Gobabis.
Question: Was that Midgley’s doing, the school in Ghanzi?
HV: I think the farmers gave a certain percentage and the government subsidised it and it was build by a government contractor. The first principle was Karel Weyhe who was married to Elize and then it was Van der Walt who was married to Michau’s daughter, a family in South-West.
Question: But your children never went to any of these schools, you had your own tutors.
HV: We had tutors for our children, this was the old school too, Gavin and Vicky build this school and then Ben and Flattery’s children … We had two tutors and when the second one left we send the children to school. Gavin and Vicky did the same and there were six children from around here
Question: Until about what age, and then where did you send them too?
HV: Took them right from when they started school, I think when Ada & Vicky when to school Ada was standard 5 and Vicky standard 4, but at least we had them home for quite a while. It made a big difference. One teacher we had, Margaret, she was a good old soul, quite elderly, they had scouts and cups and guides and she will take them to Ghanzi and take them to the post office and showed them everything, take them to the prison and showed them around, very inquisitive.
Question: Where did you get your teachers from and how did you recruit them?
HV: We advertised and went and got them from South Africa.
AV: One was from Jo’burg and the other one was from somewhere in the Free Sate.
HV: When she was in the Free State she was teaching on a farm there too.
Question: Oom Henry, what can you tell us about the Marnewicks?
HV: The Marnewicks used to live on farm Sunnyside and Mr Burton eventually bought those farms. He was also one of the early people that stayed here. When they left, all the Molepo farms were given out on the river and Johny Marnewick got one of those farms, Hereford, it’s where the customs offices are when you go over the border. I know he’s got a few sons and a daughter. The one son, Johan, owns Kang Service Station and the other sons I don’t know much about them because most of the time they were in Bray. I don’t know there history very much. There was a Lundt there too, he stayed two farms away from the Marnewicks and his father was one of the cattle speculators.
Question: Johan Marnewick said to me he’s mother is still alive ….
HV: Really, she must be pretty old. He had a sister in Mafeking and she was married to a Mr Cross. I don’t know if he died or not, but then she married a Mr McClung, he worked for the railways. When I used to go on holiday to Vryburg I stayed with her. Her and my mom was very big friends. She lived in railway houses in Mafikeng, very good old woman too. I always used to stay with her and catch the cream train to Vryburg and it stopped at every siding to load cream off. At Vryburg there was one taxi that used to meet this train and we used to take him. Andries Kotzè, his sister stayed in Vryburg, then we sleep the night in Vryburg and her husband was one of the railway busses drivers, then he’ll come along and I jump on and he’ll go and load me off on the farm, maybe it was 20 or 50 miles away. They worked for a chap called Freeman, they looked after his farms and transferred them around. I’ll always go there on my holidays and that is where I sort of get to like the farm and hate the city.
Interview of Henry & Ada (Burton) Vickerman by Willemien le Roux