My South African Heritage and Experiences

1. I can trace my heritage back to the 1820 settlers in South Africa many of whom came to the country as missionaries. They were involved in translating the Bible into Zulu as I understand things.

The question is: what role did the missionaries play in the colonisation of South Africa and indeed Africa generally?

2. 22nd January 1879, Isandlwana, Zululand, the first battle of the British Zulu war when twenty thousand Zulu impis completely devastated the British force, who were caught out in the open. Some twelve hundred died. The remnants of the British force retreated to Rorkes Drift, a comparative skirmish, featured in the film ‘Zulu’.

My great Grandfather, Charles Johnson, as a curate in the Church of England, was sent to the Isandlwana battle site together with many Zulu helpers, to bury all the dead, which he did whether they were British or Zulu. Today, the battle site is a tourist destination and there are dozens of whitewashed burial cairns covering the valley floor- exactly as Charles Johnson had left them.

He then went on to establish the nearby St. Augustine’s Mission, which is very much alive to this day. He was revered by the Zulus and is buried in the crypt of St Augustine’s. The Zulus insisted that his coffin had a window included so they could see his face. As well as introducing Christianity he introduced highly valued Western medicine, and, not so well-received education. The Charles Johnson Memorial Hospital in nearby Nqutu was erected to honour his name.

3. The British Zulu war was contrived by the activities of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the ‘Natal Native Commissioner’. Somseu to the Zulus- The self-styled ‘White Father of the Zulu People’. Shepstone, in December 1878, in a gathering on the Natal side, near the mouth of the Tugela River, the boundary between the fledgling British Colony of Natal and Zululand, announced to The Zulu King Cetshwayo, that Zululand would be annexed and that he, Cetshwayo had thirty days to disband his army and comply with British demands. The British had 18000 troops on hand. As already described the battle of Isandlwana occurred within weeks of that meeting.

The settlers in the fledgling Colony of Natal were nervous about the large, disciplined Zulu Army, although there had been no clashes under Mpande, Cetshwayo’s predecessor for the previous forty years. There was no possibility that Cetshwayo would willingly comply.

Six months after Isandlwana, Ulundi was the site of the final battle of the British Zulu war where the Zulu impis attacked the British on a narrow front and were devastated by dozens of British Maxim machine guns. The Zulu King Cetswayo was captured and sent to St. Helena. Zululand was split up into thirteen chieftainships, which later formed the basis of the Apartheid-inspired Zulu homeland.

The missionaries were there, in their own words, to ‘civilise’ the Native population, so their presence would unwittingly have helped the ‘colonisation’ process.

4. My Grandfather Walter had by then been ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church. In 1900 he volunteered to go to Zululand as a missionary priest. He married Ethel Johnson, Charles Johnson’s daughter and my grandmother. Apart from two years as a Chaplain with the British Forces in France during World War One, he spent most of the rest of his life ministering to the Zulus. All his five sons including my father were brought up on mission stations in Zululand and as a result, they all spoke fluent Zulu.

One may ask: what made Walter go to a place he knew nothing about? Zululand is remote in today’s terms; at the beginning of the twentieth century, before the development of roads and railways, it was remote beyond belief. The only way of ministering to his constituents was on horseback. At the time it was quite usual for British people to leave the dirty smokey unhealthy cities created by the Industrial Revolution and venture into the colonies. Walter was born in India where his father was a military officer. He was also one of the Hallowes family’s younger sons, so with the oldest inheriting everything using the concept of ‘primo geniture’ he had to make his way. So what he did was not unusual.

He certainly saw his role as uplifting the ‘Natives’ as he described the local population.

5. My uncle Ken after serving with the allied forces in the Western Desert, Italy, and Greece and after a spell at Oxford University followed in Walter's footsteps and was ordained into the Anglican Church in 1947. He spent his life ministering to the Zulus, eventually becoming Suffragan Bishop of Natal. He built dozens of churches in Zululand and other parts of what is now Kwa-Zulu Natal. Most of his services and sermons were delivered in fluent Zulu.

I suppose one of the questions that arise from the activities of the Christian missionaries in South Africa is: ‘unknowingly were they just the vanguard of the British colonisation of South Africa and many other parts of Africa’. ‘Did the missionaries create trust among the indigenous peoples, which the British and other authorities then exploited?’

Ken was a wonderful man and did nothing but serve his constituents. He was revered by the Zulu. He became a target of the Apartheid-driven security police, with unpleasant visits at disruptive times like 2 am.

6. This blog is more about how we coped with what was the disastrous Apartheid nonsense.

The company I worked for (South African Breweries-SAB) was seen by the Apartheid Government as English-speaking and therefore hostile. The excise tax on beer was increased and almost eliminated wine (wine being seen as Afrikaner and therefore sympathetic to the Apartheid regime). Rather than fight the situation we engaged a professor from the Afrikaans-speaking Pretoria University who, with our help, provided the Government with a model that maximized the revenue from excise without destroying our business.

In the end, the attack on our business made us very conscious of how we operated and in particular, we instituted very strict cost controls and also decentralised much of the decision-making. The company was always very well run and compared brilliantly with a large British beer business that I also worked for that no longer exists This paid off handsomely and long after I had moved to Australia SAB eventually became one of the largest beer businesses in the world.

7. We hesitantly continued to cooperate with the Apartheid regime. One may ask why the regime was so hostile to its English-speaking citizens.

The British finally annexed the Cape Colony in 1806 and eventually, slavery was banned in all British Colonies in 1834. This led to ‘The Great Trek’, where large numbers of settlers of Dutch origin (Afrikaners) much of whose wealth was tied up in slaves, made the dangerous trek into the interior and set up their Governments in places out of reach of the British (in particular The Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal).

The discovery of Diamonds in Kimberley and Gold in what became Johannesburg resulted in the second Boer War of 1899-1902. Kitchener, the British commander instituted a scorched earth policy, destroying Afrikaner farms. He set up concentration camps to house mainly women and children, resulting in thousands of deaths from starvation scarlet fever and other ailments.

These resentments continue to this day.

8. I was not brought up in South Africa and speak no Afrikaans. To make a reasonable impression, if I had a chance, I used to say at the beginning of a meeting with Government people: Ek praat min Afrikaans. Kan ye asseblief Engels praat. (I speak little Afrikaans. Can you please speak English). I also said that I had not had the benefit of a South African education. This normally broke the ice.

We then had this brilliant idea (actually quite stupid) that SAB should invest in the Sorghum beer industry. The business industrialises a traditional African product, which delivers a low-alcohol, wholesome beer. The business in South Africa was almost totally controlled by the Local Administration boards and was run ‘For the benefit of the local African population.’ I found out it was a gravy train for the primarily white people who ran the business.

Anyway, my then-boss made an appointment with Minister Koornhof, who was a senior member of the Government, to discuss the matter. He gave us short shrift- deservedly so.

Although Koornhof was a senior member of the Government, his Oxford thesis ( I think he was Rhodes Scholar) was about why Apartheid could NOT work. Reinforcing the fact that the Government needed to do something about the black majority, but they didn’t know what.

9. To continue with SAB’s tentative relationship with the Apartheid regime. I was then introduced to Minister Meiring who was Minister of Commerce and the MP for the western Cape seat of Paarl. He helped me put together a dossier, which we presented to Government on what we (South African Breweries-SAB) would do for the Sorghum beer industry. For all sorts of reasons, the proposal was dead in the water from the very start. SAB had a virtual monopoly of the lager beer business and to think we would be allowed to gain a foothold in the Sorghum beer business was laughable.

I had several meetings with Minister Meiring who was in my estimation a decent man. Along with most others in the regime, he had no idea what to do about the political aspirations of the majority of the population.

His most famous remark as far as I was concerned: ‘Meneer Guy. God has chosen us to uplift these people (meaning the Black majority) and this is what we are doing.’ He didn’t seem to realise that what the Apartheid regime was doing was just the opposite of that.

10. I am quite certain that none of my missionary relatives had any knowledge or any hand in encouraging ‘white domination’ in South Africa and beyond. They were honestly just trying to ‘civilise’ the Zulus. Without a doubt, though their activities certainly helped the process by creating trust.

The Anglican Church did give South Africa and indeed the world Desmond Tutu, who became the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and who provided a bulwark against the Apartheid Government. Initially, I was personally somewhat sceptical of Bishop Tutu, thinking that perhaps he was just using his authority for his ends. I was to be proven entirely wrong.

My Mother and the above-mentioned Uncle Ken and his wife were always invited to Zulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi’s annual talkfest where the said Chief was want to regale the assembled throng for a few hours with all the supposedly good things that had been accomplished for the Zulu people during the previous year. They always sat with the Tutu family; Bishop Tutu being a colleague of Ken.

11. When I expressed my doubts to Mum about Bishop Tutu’s motives I got a severe ‘flea in my ear’. ‘Bishop Tutu’s faith is absolutely real and unbreakable, you are just talking nonsense, he has no interest in anything except the welfare of the church and the people of South Africa,’ was what she said.

This was later born out when Nelson Mandela was released, Bishop Tutu immediately handed over the leadership to Mandela of what was called the Democratic Alliance which was a collection of some thirty anti-Apartheid organisations which Desmond Tutu had gathered together. Tutu was also instrumental in starting and participating in the ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ Commission where people from both sides of the racial divide could come and fully admit their misdeeds. If they did that they were exonerated from prosecution, which meant that ‘revenge trials’ were almost non-existent in post-Apartheid South Africa.

12. On moving to Botswana I found that our distribution Manager was what is known in Southern Africa as a ‘Coloured’. i.e. a man of mixed race. The Coloured population, mainly based in the Cape, are the result of the original Dutch Settlers mixing with the local Hottentot population. Their language is Afrikaans.

When the Afrikaner Nationalists gained power in 1948 one of their dastardly pieces of legislation was ‘The Mixed Marriages Act’ where it was illegal for marriage or sex to occur between races. i.e. Whites were only allowed to marry Whites, Coloureds could only marry Coloureds and so on.

One of the consequences of this act was that the marriages of people across the colour line, which had already been approved by the previous regime, were now disavowed. i.e. they were now illegal.

Our very competent Distribution Manager was the product of such a union. It tore the family apart. His father was no longer permitted to live with his mother. Our employee moved with his own family to Botswana where the President was married to an English woman.

Our employee, as a result, had an enormous chip on his shoulder and this affected his performance since he regarded every slight change to his duties as an imposition…

13. Why we left South Africa.

In August 1984 the Apartheid Government introduced what they termed as the ‘Tri-Cameral Parliament’. There was to be a Parliament for the Indian Population, and a Parliament for the Coloured Population, both of which were beholden to the existing White parliament. i.e. Any legislation the Indian or Coloured Parliament passed had to be approved by the White Parliament. And what about the Black majority, you may well ask. ‘They are already entitled to vote in their areas’ was the answer. This referred to the eleven ‘Homelands’ scattered around the country, which were already overcrowded dustbowls housing a relatively small proportion of the black population. Most blacks lived and worked in the ‘White’Urban areas. I had paid a visit to almost all these ‘Homelands’.

The townships just exploded in frustration. The army was called in. We saw eighteen-year-old armed National Servicemen standing one hundred metres apart in all the various black townships around the country.

Also at the time, there was talk of a ‘right-wing coup’ led by Andries Treurnicht and supported by the military.

At the time the Government was coming to its senses and was already talking to Nelson Mandela. We did not know that of course.

14. We were on holiday at Hermanus, a two-hour drive on the coast east of Cape Town when we decided to migrate to Australia. We collected the appropriate photos not telling the kids anything and we applied. We received the appropriate permissions in July 1985. I spent six weeks in Australia in September and October of that year, making sure we were doing the right thing.

We, that is Diana and the four children aged 17, 14, 11, and 2 and me, eventually arrived in Sydney in January 1986 in the middle of a rainstorm, having spent an emotional last Christmas with Mum and the rest of the family in Hilton, near Pietermaritzburg. We had to travel to Sydney via Harare, in Zimbabwe as South Africa was under all sorts of boycott arrangements at the time.

Whilst it was one of the most difficult things we did, clearly it was the right thing. South Africa has gone from bad to worse. One of my early impressions was when turned on the TV on the first morning after arrival Australia was playing India at the SCG. We had at last rejoined the real world. We both had jobs within three weeks and while it wasn’t all plain sailing, we would not be anywhere else.