Racheltjie de Beer

Scattered in the bushveld there are dozens of termite heaps hundreds of mounds of colonies of termites living off the scarce vegetation.

Aardvark (Ant-eaters) in turn break into the mounds and live off the termites with very long tongues as food, so that the natural balance is kept restored, together with weathering the mounds are soft and break down easily with time.

Voortrekkers

They came over the Drakensbergen, barefeet in winter and snow, trekked with ox-wagon to be freed from English oppression.

The first Afrikaans pioneers who lived in the Southern African interior called themselves the Voortrekkers (front/first track/movers) they were of Dutch ancestry and from the Cape colony, bringing cattle, and weapons as primitive muzzle loaders and gunpowder used mainly for hunting.

On horseback and their laden wagons whips with teams of oxen the Boers came into this wilderness with this their “Sanna” under the one arm, and the Bible under the other.

Traditionally the Boers made a “potbread” which was in a hole in the ground buried with the fire and coals on top, the dough and yeast inside a cast-iron pot for the bread to rise, the hole itself was inside a large termite heap. It takes long for the bread to bake in this way, and it is delicious.

The Blizzard

The story of Racheltjie de Beer tells of an Afrikaner child hero, Racheltjie was a little girl of pioneer stock, “Voortrekker bloed” her little brother Jannie was four and she barely eleven.  Their dad was not a rich farmer.

One night as approaching storm with dusk when the cattle were rounded up and were counted and the wooden gate closed in the stone corral they found a calf was missing, the children's pet, she and her little brother went to look for it, everyone returning but the children didn't.

It was a dark night of snow sleet and biting cold blizzards workers and family searched through the night calling shouting for the children storm lanterns light through the darkness and night. Only the weeping wind answered they were lost in the storm Jannie complaining scared hungry cold and tired she realised she knew they were lost and would not survive.

The children stumbled on a large termite heap broken open, with stones they dug and hollowed it. Early that morning with daylight the workers discovered her small frail body cold and lifeless stiff and completely naked but Jannie was found unharmed alive inside the mound.

Racheltjie had took off all of her clothes covered Jannie inside the hollow dug out mound and at the opening sheltered  him with her own small body, she protected him she died a child heroine sacrificed for her little brother of the exposure to the wind and bitterly freezing cold.

The White Ant

A writer who lived around the times of the Boer Wars, Eugene N. Marais is commonly regarded among Afrikaans people as a folk hero and academic genius, journalist, poet, natural scientist, he studied in England in Medicine and Law.

Of his greatest scientific work and breakthrough was a study on termites, “The soul of the white ant” in which he considers a colony of termites (ants, bees similar?) as functioning as a single living organism.

This research was shamelessly plagiarised in full Marais never fully recovered of the disappointment. The story of his life is a very tragic one he was addicted to morphine and committed suicide.

He was famous as anthropologist too, where he had lived amongst a tribe of baboons in the Waterbergen of Northern-Transvaal, having managed to be accepted as one of a troop among themselves, he undertook scientific study with acute observations and accurate recording as of inherited group behaviour, instinct, hypnoses and regarding the subconscious mind.

A seminal work in psychology and major contribution culminating in a masterpiece “The soul of the ape” as first published as a series of articles on people of the mountains, “burgers van die berge”.