La gente olvidada

I come upon many ruins and abandoned farm houses on my trips through the country and apart from the photos I take for archiving, I also try to solve the human puzzle. I wonder who lived there, and where they went.

Sometimes the structure of the buildings and their placement tell a story about the man of the house. Even ruins can tell a story. Sometimes the stone used in building were meticulously carved and shaped, carefully placed and the mortar or clay chosen for endurance. Most often stones of a particular shape were chosen without the need to cut or shape and the binding method merely mud mixed with gravel or grass.

The first rule of Private Investigators is most propably still; check the trash. This is no different if you want to find out more about the lives of the people who once lived in these farm houses and dwellings, on what was once open grasslands.

I walk in an ever widening circle around the 'house' and eventually I'll come upon a hole or semi-hole, often hidden by trees or bushes. There were no Pikitup's back in the day, and almost all farms had a hole or walled area where the trash was dumped or burned. The leftover food went straight to the pigs,cows or whatever farm animals were raised.

You'll have some difficulty finding these 'dumpyards' at buildings or ruins more than a hundred years old, but most of the ruins in our area are only 50 to 80 years old. Nevertheless, all kinds of different items can be found from old softdrink bottles to 'ancient' perfume canisters and even tools and kitchenware. I've found everything from a rusty sickle blade(minus handle) to a penknife, from which the wooden outer had rotted away.

I imagine how the farmers made a living, often finding worked soil not too far from the outbuildings, indicating crop fields and such. Almost always there are fruit trees clumped around the house/ruin itself and generally the household seemed well sustained. A kraal nearby might have held cows or sheep and smaller holdings, chickens or other fowl.

The scene paints a picture of a homestead well maintained and buildings placed in an orderly and well planned manner. At one such place I even found a water canal, built from a nearby levee at a water run off area, all the way to the farmhouse.

It is not too difficult to understand why many of these places now stand in ruin. Perhaps it was the discovery of Gold on the Rand which tempted many a farmer in search of fortune. Or maybe their offspring were not as keen to toil in the fields and manage the hardships, instead opting for the promise of wealth in the fast growing financial capital of Johannesburg.

Years before, War was of course the other factor which played a great part in the laying to waste of farm and crop. During the second war of independance, under the command of Kitchener, Milner and Roberts, more than homesteads and farms belonging to Boer people were plundered and burned down. Animals belonging to the Boers were killed in the cruelest ways possible while the women, whose men were on the battlefield, had to watch helplessly.

The motive behind this action was the destruction of the farms in order to prevent the fighting burgers from obtaining food, and to demoralise the Boers by leaving their women and children homeless on the open veld.

It certainly did the trick and apart from the hardy few who continued the guerilla conflict for another two years, few farmers returned to their land to rebuild their farms.

After an outing like this I'm left feeling drained emotionally, but at the same time with an undeniable feeling of pride in the Afrikaner of yore, and then again a certain sadness at what we'd become. Just another displaced people.

It makes it easier to understand how the indigenous tribes must have felt from the first day the Europeans landed on their soil, and how they had to endure oppression for more than 350 years before attaining their freedom.

Will we again be displaced? Will some fellow also walk my fields in the future, and wonder what became of us, sifting through my trash finding the old cellphone i threw out the other day.