Author: Peter Dickens

Let him drop!

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In a new endeavour to take things a little easier, I’ve also recommitted myself to being honest and cut through the crap – and nothing beats the usual crap on Boer War appreciation groups where we get people putting up a picture of poor old Gideon Scheepers, the ‘Yster’ (stand-up) man the ‘Volks-held’ (People’s Hero), the dreadful British shot him unfairly – the end of a beautiful, young and courageous life.

So, what’s with Scheepers that he gets an annual re-post on just about every Boer War social media group, and what’s with all the admiration – we know he sprang Boer prisoners from gaol and tied a Union Jack to his horses arse, what’s not to like … he epitomises the Afrikaner spirit! … or does he?

There’s good reason he was executed, not withstanding a court case – but his case was such that the retribution, the sheer hatred the ‘British’ (actually read ‘community’) felt toward him was both palatable and certain.

Let’s put it this way – the British made dead sure he would not get the honour of a coup de grâce, in that they used dum dum (expanding) bullets to kill him upfront1 – and the officer ordered that he was not to be lowered but “dropped” into the grave – like a sad mielie sack on the command ‘Let him Drop’!2. It even left one of the British soldiers witness to the burial sick to the stomach at the disrespect shown to Scheepers in his death.3 That, and he was not afforded a marked grave (and his grave site still has not been found). Simply put the British did not want a hero made of him – EVER.

Execution of Scheepers by a British firing squad, seated in a chair, 18 January 1902

Now, you have to ask yourself – why the retribution, why the disrespect? It seems a little extreme, and at the time it was, even by war and ‘Victorian’ standards.

The answer lies in what Scheepers did – he was racist murderer and murdered blacks and coloureds indiscriminately, whether POW or not – even in context of his time and history he was viewed much like the “wit wolf” Barend Strydom is viewed now – and like ‘Breaker’ Morant who faced the same fate, he was guilty – soldier he was not, murderer he was, post war Afrikaner Nationalist propaganda and romanticism aside.

At the time Gideon Scheepers was loathed as he conducted a marauding campaign all over the British Cape Colony, train-wrecking, looting, burning down public buildings and houses belonging to loyalists, and murdering native policemen solely because of their colour. Scheepers even attempted to rob the Murraysburg branch of Standard Bank, sjambokking the manager when he refused to cooperate.

He avoided pitched battle where possible and according to H.M. Wilson, he instead

‘…confined his attention to the more genial work of robbing, burning and devastating. In his operations there was no military object; he meant, he said, to make Cape Colony a desert.’4

Even as the British ‘hunts’ after him started to chase him down and began cutting up his raids and running his Commando to ground, Scheepers found time to commit atrocities. One famous incident involved two coloured scouts who were captured by Scheepers’ Commando. Scheepers decided to be judge, juror and executioner and to murder them, despite their being in uniform and unarmed (so officially classified as Prisoners of War and subject to those conditions). The two were forced to draw lots, and the loser was immediately shot. The other was beaten and released to stagger to the nearest British outpost to tell the story as a warning to other Coloureds and Blacks who had joined the British forces.5

As to all the romanticism, consider Scheepers’ own testimony and statements.

Gideon Scheepers’ last words on the issue:

‘Thirty accusations were brought against me of “murder”, seven of “arson”, “rough” handling of prisoners, “barbaric” treatment of kaffrs etc.’6

Scheepers was particularly incensed at the accusations that he had ill-treated blacks, and that blacks were allowed to testify in court and even act as gaolers. He wrote:

‘We Afrikaners, will never find justice under the English. Everything is for the kaffirs.’7

During his trial General Christiaan de Wet tries to intervene and stay the execution of Scheepers (and that of Hans Lötter who faced similar charges of murdering “blacks” and a firing squad). De Wet writes to Lord Kitchener requesting clemency for the Boer Kommandant’s executing of Black (coloured) soldiers and civilians out of hand as he had personally given the order, he wrote:

‘the ungovernable barbarity of the natives realises itself in practice in such a manner that we felt ourselves obliged to give quarter to no native and for these reasons we gave general instructions to our Officers to have all armed natives and native spies shot.’8

De Wet then said that if anybody was responsible for shooting natives it was himself and his government.

Kitchener rejected the appeal, replying to General De Wet that Boer officers were personally responsible for their actions, and he wrote:

‘[I am] astonished at the barbarous instructions you have given as regards the murder of natives who have behaved in my opinion, in an exemplary manner during the war.’9

Kitchener then notifies de Wet that Boer officers will face the full consequences for the murder of natives and Scheepers had been found guilty and had already been executed for the crime in any event.

Conan-Doyle would say of it in his book, The Great Boer War, that Scheepers was tried

‘…for repeated breaches of the laws of war, including the murder of several natives. He was condemned to death and executed in December. Much sympathy was excited by his gallantry and his youth—he was only twenty-three. On the other hand, our word was pledged to protect the natives, and if he whose hand had been so heavy upon them escaped, all confidence would have been lost in our promises and our justice.’10

It’s little wonder that the old National Party loved Gideon Scheepers – his mother spending years searching for the grave of her son, a heart rendering story if there ever was one, and he’s one of ‘them’ – a white supremacist giving no quarter to blacks from resisting their whites-only hegemony and God-ordained claim to absolute power. The Nationalists unveiled a memorial to Scheepers on 27 May 1978 near the place of his execution as part of the events to celebrate thirty years of Apartheid (the monument is still there). Prime Minister John Vorster was the guest of honour.

In his address, John Vorster said:

‘If we are asked why in 1978 a memorial should be erected for a man who died in 1902, then the answer is simple. The life and work of this man was such that history placed him in the heroes’ gallery and nothing and no one can deprive him of that place.’11

Prime Minister BJ Vorster and the memorial unveiled by the National Party to Scheepers

Problem is, John Vorster could not even stand the idea of TV as the ‘devils message’ from the ‘Devils Box’ – ‘liberal’ thoughts and access to information would be freely available outside of all the ‘bans’ he imposed – and a mere generation later they could not hold back the tide of critical thinking, especially as to the Boer War and their hegemony of white power and claim to absolute rule. I would hate to think what the average modern South African in the ‘Information Age’ thinks of Scheepers as an Apartheid ‘hero’ now, and whether he truly deserves his place in the annuals of Afrikaner heroes according to Vorster.

I also get it, Lord Kitchener calling General de Wet a murderer, this from a man many Afrikaners like to consider a genocidal murderer in any event. I do get the irony, but whatever we may think, there are some very clear cut cases in the Boer War historiography and Scheepers does not come up as a wholesome people’s champion for Afrikanerdom. He’s in the same category as Breaker Morant, no matter how much post war sympathy 120 odd years later and no matter how many attempts at historical revisionism, it’s not going to change the fact he was a racist marauding murderer.

In my mind it would be very handy if people really understand the history before re-posting all this hero worship all the while holding onto an BJ Vorster issued Apartheid security blanket thinking the people around them are either ignorant of “their” history or if they are “English” or “Black” they are naturally biased to it anyway (as if that somehow changes the facts).

Written and researched by Peter Dickens

Colourised insert picture of Gideon Scheepers thanks to Jenny B Colourising. Main pictures shows a Black Cape Colonial policeman of the Boer War period in uniform.

References:

HM Wilson. After Pretoria: The Guerrilla War. London: Harmsworth Brothers Ltd, 1901.

AC Doyle. The Great Boer War. London: Smith, Elder & Co Publishers, Revision 1902.

D Harrison. The White Tribe of Africa – South Africa in perspective. Los Angeles: Berkley California Press, 1981.

D Judd & K Surridge, The Boer War. London: John Murray Publishers, 2002.

C Ash. Kruger’s War – the truth behind the myths of the Boer War. Durban: 30 degrees South Publishers, 2017.

Footnotes

  1. Correspondence with South African War historian Dr Garth Benneyworth – 20/6/2024 ↩︎
  2. Harrison, White Tribe of Africa. p 43 ↩︎
  3. Ibid. 43 ↩︎
  4. Wilson, After Pretoria: The Guerrilla War. p 78 ↩︎
  5. Ibid. 80 ↩︎
  6. Harrison, White Tribe of Africa. p 42 ↩︎
  7. Idid. 42 ↩︎
  8. Judd & Surridge, The Boer War. p 235 ↩︎
  9. Idid. 235 ↩︎
  10. Doyle, The Great Boer War. p 655 ↩︎
  11. Harrison. White Tribe of Africa. p 43 ↩︎

Churchill behind the mask

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Sir Winston Churchill the drunk? Nazi propaganda did a very good job painting Churchill as a drunk and glutton, in the Nazi Propaganda Ministry’s block buster of about the Boer War “Uncle Kruger” Ohm Krüger (1941), Churchill is depicted as a Concentration Camp Commandant, complete with bulldog, which whilst feasting himself he also feeds prime cuts to his bulldog, all the time whilst his Boer women and children in the camp are being starved to death.1

Churchill as depicted in Ohm Krüger (1941)

In another propaganda poster – this one from Serbia during World War 2, called ‘Churchill behind the mask’. After taking off his mask shown to the public, halo and all, a Jewish star now above his head and showing a drunken, haggard face and whiskey bottle in his pocket.

The poster falls part of an anti-Semitic campaign called ‘The Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition’, which opened in Belgrade, in occupied Serbia on 22 October 1941. Financed by Nazi Germans and opened with the support of collaborationist leader Milan Nedić. Although being anti-Masonic in its title, the primary purpose was to promote antisemitic ideology and intensify hatred of Jews – ironically Churchill was a Freemason for a short time, but that is coincidental.

A famous quote has also entered the lexicon of Winston Churchill as proof positive he was a ‘drunk’ (bear in mind its the only quote) – Churchill was accompanied Ronald Golding his bodyguard and whilst exiting the Parliament building and he was confronted by Bessie Braddock, a fellow MP, who said:

Bessie Braddock: “Winston, you are drunk, and what’s more you are disgustingly drunk.”

Churchill replied: “Bessie, my dear, you are ugly, and what’s more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly.”

A lush surely this Churchill fellow must be, he said so – right? Turns out Ronald Golding later admitted Churchill was not drunk that night, merely exhausted and unsteady. Being tired he gave Braddock both barrels, and what he quoted was from his rather photographic memory, and it was a W.C Fields character in the movie “its a gift” who when told he is drunk, responds, “Yeah, and you’re crazy. But I’ll be sober tomorrow and you’ll be crazy the rest of your life.” So, the Bessie Braddock encounter was really Churchill editing and reciting W. C. Fields.2

Was Churchill known for drinking? In fact no member of his family ever saw Churchill the worse for drink, they saw him drink yes, but never ‘drunk’. Richard M. Langworth spent 40 years researching Churchill and only found one reference of him been drunk … it came from a military staffer who helped Churchill and Eden on a wobbly walk back to the British Embassy in Teheran, this after a late-night of mutual toasts with the Russians.3

Whilst it is true that at the on-set of the South African War (1899-1902) – Churchill, the son of a Baron and part of British well-to-do society, aged 25 and acting as a correspondent on the Morning Post took with him 36 bottles of wine, 18 bottles of ten-year old scotch, and 6 bottles of vintage brandy. Such was the arrogance of aristocracy in addition to this booze cabinet he also took a valet with him to South Africa. However, if you step back from this and see that Churchill took with him a full year’s supply, then that ‘booze’ cabinet hardly makes a mark.4

With this Churchill became synonymous with two things according to modern writers – alcohol and war.

In one famous wartime episode during World War 2, when George VI set a personal example to the troops by giving up alcohol, Churchill declared the whole idea absurd and announced he would not be giving up drink just because the King had.5

He also became synonymous with excess when it came to food, cigars and alcohol, he was known to consume high degrees of relatively low ABV Champagne and watered down brandy. On the food front he detested the idea of the ‘French’ manner of serving seven courses starting with an aperitif and ending with a small dessert. On the ‘formal 7 course’ menu he would start with the meal he enjoyed the most and end on the one he enjoyed least.6

He started the day (every-day) with a small whiskey and water, his daughter would recall it as the “Papa Cocktail” – a smidgen of Johnnie Walker covering the bottom of a tumbler, which was then filled with water and sipped throughout the morning. This practice Winston Churchill learned as a Victorian habit – as a young man in India and South Africa (see My Early Life) he writes that the water was unfit to drink, and one had to add whisky and, “by dint of careful application I learned to like it.”7 Jock Colville, his private secretary would say of the ‘papa cocktail’ that it was so watered down it was akin to mouthwash.8

He however was renowned, not for drinking whiskey, but for drinking brandy and champagne both at lunchtime and dinner, and he was renowned for putting away copious amounts of it. He averaged on 500ml of 12.5% ABV Pol Roger Champagne for lunch and 500ml of Pol Roger Champagne for dinner along with a couple of diluted brandy glasses per day – in all this is estimated about 150ml AA per day. It certainly is ‘heavy drinking’ by any standard but in context of his time Russian delegations meeting him, thought of him as a ‘lightweight’ on this front. Having also said that, large amounts of adult population in South Africa still consume a bottle of wine and a couple of spirit chasers a day – 150ml AA. Only on reaching 76 years of age did Churchill decide to ‘cut down’ a little and said:

“I am trying to cut down on alcohol. I have knocked off brandy and take Cointreau instead. I disliked whiskey at first. It was only when I was a subaltern in India, and there was a choice between dirty water and dirty water with some whiskey in it, that I got to like it. I have always, since that time, made a point of keeping in practice.”9

Churchill would also not “nurse” a bottle of alcohol the way a alcoholic would, and seldom drank ‘neat’ spirits (preferring not to), unlike alcoholics he also did not drink randomly during the day, sticking to mealtimes instead, and even then none of his colleagues ever reported seeing Churchill the worse for drink. Thus Churchill’s famous quip:

“I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.”10

Very famously, Churchill was knocked down by a car New York in 1931 during the American Prohibition 1920 – 1933 on alcohol (he was looking the wrong way), Dr. Otto C. Pickhardt attended to him, actually issued a medical note that Churchill’s medical condition “necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at mealtimes,” specifying 250cc per day as the minimum. A little cheeky to overcome the rigours of Prohibition perhaps, but this is not a sign of dependency – 5 years after this incident in 1936 he took a bet with Rothermere that he could abstain from hard spirits for a year – which apparently he did.11

Churchill’s famous ‘Doctor’s note’

After World War 2, he developed a reputation for really enjoying food and drink, One visitor from the period noted: “There is always some alcohol in his blood, and it reaches its peak late in the evening after he has had two or three scotches, several glasses of champagne, at least two brandies, and a highball… but his family never sees him the worst for drink.”

That is the point with Churchill, he drank copious amounts of alcohol – no doubt, but he ‘held his booze’ remarkably well, he was never really totally inebriated or ‘drunk’ in fact he detested drunks and could not stand been out of control of his faculties and senses. He was raised as an aristocrat, he believed drunkenness to be contemptible and disgusting, and a fault in which no gentleman indulged.

He also had a very healthy mental appreciation for alcohol and remarked, “my father taught me to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.” adding to this he said that a glass of Champagne lifts the spirits, sharpens the wits, but “a bottle produces the opposite effect.”12 Here we also note that Churchill throughout his life kept his wits about him and kept them as sharp as ever.

Churchill with his favourite tipple – Pol Roger champagne

The image of excess is often even associated with Churchill’s disposition to smoking cigars. However very few people know that he seldom smoked more than a third of a cigar, allowing the cigar to burn itself out instead and if anything he took to chewing the end, using it more as image prop than anything else.13

On the physical health front, Churchill did have a heart attack during World War 2, how much of that was excess and how much of it stress is anyone’s guess, however he did recover remarkably well, Dr. Mather, his Doctor reported that Churchill’s blood pressure was a very healthy and very consistent 140/80 well into his eighties.14 In fact most of Churchill’s accompanying younger male military personnel and politicians complained that they could hardly keep up with him, his energy and pace, the speed at which he did everything was legendary. He lived to 90 years old, and died of a stroke – a very long and fruitful innings and not one marred by any alcohol related sickness like liver failure/disease.16

Was he an alcoholic? The general opinion amongst some medical practitioners and historians is that he was not. He demonstrated no real medical signs of a person associated with alcoholism. Did he ‘abuse’ alcohol in our 21st century understanding of excessive drinking and functional alcoholism – yes, no doubt in this context you would place him as someone who abused alcohol for his own edification and enjoyment (of course he would have no idea what you were talking about, as a Victorian born in 1874 faced with a 2024 definition of alcoholism – the modern-day idea simply would not compute).

As to the propaganda, the relentless drive by Hitler and his Nazi Propaganda Ministry to paint Churchill as a glutton and a drunk – rather surprisingly that is the legacy which carries to this day. As an example I once posted Churchill’s medals on a Boer War social media group, it was met with a particular nasty Anglophobic Afrikaner who warned users that Churchill was a rabid alcoholic and his alcohol addled, warmongering mind was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people – the devil reincarnate – and I should be ‘very weary’ of who I regard as ‘my hero’ or he would have a few more things to say about him.

Now, I’m a South African – the simple fact he thinks of Churchill as ‘mine’ denotes a massive bias on his behalf and ironically I fear alcohol in the form of far too much ‘branders’ has fuelled his outlook – however, it is interesting to note that in this grouping Churchill’s legacy is still viewed by some in the light of propaganda and not the actual historiography of the man.

Written and Researched by Peter Dickens

Footnotes

  1. H Steinhoff, Ohm Krüger (1941, Tobis Film, Screenshot from YouTube) ↩︎
  2. R Langworth, Drunk and Ugly: The Rumour Mill, International Churchill Society 10 January 2011 [accessed 12 August 2024] ↩︎
  3. Langworth, Drunk and Ugly: The Rumour Mill ↩︎
  4. PA Dickens, How South Africa Forged Churchill, 22 April 2018 [accessed 12 August 2024] ↩︎
  5. Langworth, Drunk and Ugly: The Rumour Mill ↩︎
  6. B Johnson, The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History (London: Hodder & Stoughton), 2015 ↩︎
  7. WS Churchill, My Early Life: 1874-1904 (London: Thornton Butterworth) 1930 ↩︎
  8. M Richards, Alcohol Abuser, International Churchill Society 29 August 2008 [accessed 12 August 2024] ↩︎
  9. Langworth, Drunk and Ugly: The Rumour Mill ↩︎
  10. Richards, Alcohol Abuser ↩︎
  11. Ibid ↩︎
  12. Idid ↩︎
  13. Ibid ↩︎
  14. Ibid ↩︎
  15. Johnson, The Churchill Factor ↩︎

South Africa’s top military medalists

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So, talking Olympics, but in a military context, who are South Africa’s greatest medalists?

Unfortunately we have to separate this into two sub categories as the National Party in 1948 decided that anyone fighting for the Allies under the banner of the “South African Union” was somehow “British” (so too their medals – the “Commonwealth” bit to these decorations mattered not a jot to the Nats) and anyone fighting for the ‘White’ Apartheid Republic they brought about in 1961 was somehow more “South African” – and they created a whole new set of medals in paramount to the “British and Commonwealth” ones – declaring these as “foreign” medals – which meant a simple peacetime SADF ’Skiet medal” (shooting proficiency medal) would be more senior than a Commonwealth decoration for wartime gallantry.

Naturally this caused a lot of distress for our WW1 and WW2 veterans at the time, some refusing to allow basic service medals to precede their hard earned combat medals – and it also caused lots of confusion. True, the Nationalists had to change them as South Africa was kicked out/left the British Commonwealth, no choice – but they did not have be sinister and give paramountcy over the Commonwealth medals.

Adding to this confusion is the current ANC dispensation who took the position in 2003 that medals awarded by the Apartheid Republic were for “Aparthied soldiers” and they created a whole new set to replace them for SANDF soldiers of a “democratic” South Africa – one thing they did right is they did not make them “paramount” to the SADF medals which maintain seniority (which the Nats did not do). To say this is a messy subject would be an understatement.

We also need to understand who is the South African with the “most” medals – like an Olympian who has won the most medals of any category – Gold, Silver or Bronze as opposed to the South African who has won the most “highest” medals for gallantry- again like an Olympian who has won the most “gold” medals.

Now to announce the winners:

The winner of the “most” medals i.e. the most decorated South African of the “Union” period is ….. Field Marshal Jan Smuts – here’s his rack:

Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts OM,CH,DTD,ED,PC,KC,FRS

  • Order of Merit (OM) – British and Commonwealth (WW2)
  • Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) – British and Commonwealth (WW1)
  • Dekoratie voor trouwe Dienst (DTD) – ZAR Republic (Boer War 2)
  • Efficiency Decoration (ED) – South Africa (Interwar and WW2)
  • Privy Council (PC) – British and Commonwealth
  • King’s Counsel (KC) – a legal appointment post nominal
  • Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS)
  • Bencher of the Middle Temple – a legal appointment
  • South African Republic and OFS War Medal – ZAR Republic (Boer War 2)
  • 1914/15 Star (WW1)
  • British War Medal 1914 – 1918 (WW1)
  • Victory Medal (WW1)
  • General Service Medal
  • King George V’s Jubilee Medal – 1935
  • King George VI’s Coronation Medal – 1937
  • 1939 – 1945 Star (WW2)
  • Africa Star (WW2)
  • Italy Star (WW2)
  • France and Germany Star (WW2)
  • Defence Medal 1939 – 1945 (WW2)
  • War Medal 1939 – 1945 (WW2)
  • Africa Service Medal 1939 – 1945 (WW2)
  • Order of Merit (U.S.A.)
  • EAME Campaign Medal – U.S.A.(WW2)
  • Order of the Tower and Sword for Valour, Loyalty and Merit (Portugal)
  • Grootkruis van die Orde van de Nederlandsche Leeuw – Netherlands (WW2)
  • Grand Cordon of the Order of Mohamed Ali (Egypt)
  • Grand Cross of the Order of the Redeemer – Greece (WW2)
  • Grand Cross of the Order of Léopold II – Belgium (WW2)
  • Croix de guerre – Belgium (WW1)
  • Légion d’honneur Croix de Commandeur – France (WW1)
  • La Grand Croix de l’Ordre de L’Etoile Africane Ster – Belgium (WW2)
  • King Christian X Frihedsmedaille ‘Pro Dania’ – Denmark (WW2)
  • Aristion Andrias Gold Cross – Greece (WW2)
  • Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts
  • Woodrow Wilson Peace Medal1

36 Total

Smuts is unique in the sense that his two Boer War Republican medals pre-date his Union medals.

Field Marshal Jan Smuts and ribbons

The winner of the “highest” medals i.e. the highest decorated South African of the “Union” period is …. Captain Andrew Beauchamp-Proctor – here is his rack:

Captain Andrew Beauchamp-Proctor VC,DSO,MC&Bar,DFC

Captain Beauchamp-Proctor
  • Victoria Cross (WW1)
  • Distinguished Service Order (WW1)
  • Military Cross and Bar (WW1)
  • Distinguished Flying Cross (WW1)
  • 1914 – 1915 Star (WW1)
  • British War Medal (WW1)
  • The Victory Medal (WW1)

Captain Beauchamp-Proctor is not unique in the sense that all his highest medals were earned whilst fighting in British military constructs as a South African Union citizen – which was perfectly acceptable then.

The South African winner of the “most decorated” South African in the “South African Republic” SADF period is ….. General Bob Rogers – here is his rack:

General Bob Rogers SSA, SM, MMM, DSO, DFC&Bar

General Bob Rogers
  • Star of South Africa (SSA) (South Africa)
  • Southern Cross Medal (SM) (South Africa)
  • Military Merit Medal (MMM) (South Africa)
  • Korea Medal (South Africa)
  • Pro Patria Medal (South Africa)
  • Good Service Medal, Gold (30 Years – South Africa)
  • Good Service Medal, Silver (20 Years – South Africa)
  • Union Medal (South Africa)
  • Distinguished Service Order (DSO) (WW2)
  • Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar (DFC and Bar) (WW2)
  • 1939–45 Star (WW2)
  • Africa Star (WW2)
  • Italy Star (WW2)
  • War Medal 1939–1945 – Mentioned in Dispatches (WW2)
  • Africa Service Medal (WW2)
  • Distinguished Flying Cross (USA)*
  • Air Medal Bronze with Oak Leaf Cluster (USA)*
  • Order of Military Merit (Korea) (Chungmu cordon) with Gold Star
  • United Nations Service Medal for Korea
  • Korean War Service Medal
  • Grand Star of Military Merit (Chile)
  • Army PUC Presidential Unit Citation (USA)*

*American awards issued to 2 SAAF Squadron members under their command in the Korean War.2

23 Total

Note: General Rogers’ medal set are a combination of SADF (Republican) and UDF (Union) medals and decorations, and like Smuts some foreign ones too.

The winner of the “highest decorated” South African in the SADF “Republic” period is …. Major Arthur Walker – here is his rack:

Major Murray Walker

Major Murray Walker HCG&Bar, SM

  • Honoris Crux (Gold and Bar) – South Africa
  • Southern Cross Medal – South Africa
  • Pro Patria Medal – South Africa
  • Southern African Medal – South Africa
  • General Service Medal – South Africa
  • Good Service Medal Bronze – South Africa
  • Zimbabwean Independence Medal 1980 – Zimbabwe
  • General Service Medal – Rhodesia
  • United Nations Medal (Mozambique – United Nations)

Major Walker is unique in that won the Honoris Crux Gold (HCG) twice – the only South African to have a “Bar” to a HCG.

Overall Winning Medalists

So, of these four great medalists – who are the winners of the “most” and the “highest” given the grade and total sweep of the medals on offer – the answer:

Field Marshal Jan Smuts is the overall winner of the “most decorated South African”.

Simply because he has more decorations and medals (36) than Bob Rogers (23).

Andrew Beauchamp-Proctor is the overall winner of the “highest decorated South African”.

Simply because he has a Victoria Cross (VC) and his raft of decorations for gallantry serve to qualify it further – his DSO, two MC and DFC, putting him ahead of the other South African VC recipients – the highest gallantry award for the SADF was the “diamond” Honoris Crux (HCD), it was meant to be on the same level as a VC (albeit not the same as the VC is a stand alone, there is graded degree of bravery as there is with a HC set)- and nobody ever received a “diamond” Honoris Crux (HCD) in any event, it was never awarded, and no one ever will, it has been discontinued.

Of the new SANDF “Highest” decoration is the Nkwe ya Gauta – Golden Leopard – it replaced the Gold Honoris Crux (HCG) and like the HC set it is part of graded gallantry decorations going up in importance and there is no “diamond” Leopard – whereas the Victoria Cross is still a stand alone decoration and has no equivalent – so Beauchamp-Proctor still remains the “highest” decorated – and will remain such well into our living memory. So far there have been 3 recipients of the Nkwe ya Gauta – Golden Leopard – all of them posthumous.

Proccy – bravest of the brave

Please note this is not meant to degrade any one over the other – all four of these men are great South Africans.

Written and Researched by Peter Dickens

  1. Jan Smuts by his son Jan Smuts, Heinemann and Cassell, 1952 – awards list ↩︎
  2. Bob Rogers – his personal story as told by Roger Williams ↩︎

‘Talking’ armbands

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I noticed a blog post today from a fellow historian who took a swipe at a Boer War photograph colourising Facebook page for allowing a user to compare a black armband being worn by Lord Kitchener and his staff at the Veereniging Peace Conference to end the South African War (1899-1902) aka Boer War 2, to that of the Nazi armband worn by Adolf Hitler and his cabal during World War 2 (1939- 1945). The armband in question was a common funeral black band, in this case it marked the death of Queen Victoria on 22 Jan 1901.

Whilst all highly amusing and clearly all either ignorant and (more likely) a blatant and very cheap attempt to brand Lord Kitchener a Nazi, it does bring up a real comparison – which is the armband used by the Commandant General of the Ossewabrandwag and that of the armband used by the National Socialists (Nazi) – Adolf Hitler and his cabal.

The Ossewabrandwag (Ox Wagon Sentinel) was the largest and most successful Afrikaner Nationalist organisation with pro-Nazi sympathies prior and during World War 2. The Ossewabrangwag was formed on the back of the 1938 Great Trek Centennial celebration – the centennial under the directive of the Afrikaner Broederbond (Afrikaner Brotherhood) and its Chairman, Henning Klopper, sought to use the centenary anniversary of the Great Trek to unite the ‘Cape Afrikaners’ and the ‘Boere Afrikaners’ who were deemed by Klopper as been separated by Boer War 2. He strove to unite “the two separate hearts” of white Afrikanerdom into a singular ‘Boer’ archetype under the pioneering symbology of the Great trek and to literally map a ‘path to a South African Republic’ under a white Afrikaner hegemony. The trek re-enactment was very successful, and Henning managed to realign white Afrikaner identity under the Broederbond’s Christian Nationalist ideology and its archetypal outline calling it a “sacred happening”.1

The Ossewabrandwag (OB) was tasked with spreading the Broederbond’s (and the Purified National Party) ideology of Christian Nationalism like ‘wildfire’ across the country (hence the name). The OB’s national socialist leanings can be seen in correlation with other world ideologies of the time, and specifically to that of Nazi Germany.2

Christian Nationalism, although grounded in ‘Krugerism’ as a ideology, can be regarded as a derivative of German National Socialism and Italian Fascism and was identified as such by OB leaders like Balthazar Johannes “B. J.” Vorster (a future National Party Prime Minister/President) who in 1942 said:

“We stand for Christian Nationalism which is an ally of National Socialism. You can call this anti-democratic principle dictatorship if you wish. In Italy it is called Fascism, in Germany National Socialism (Nazism) and in South Africa, Christian Nationalism.”3 

The leader of the Ossewabrandwag (OB), Dr. Johannes Van Rensburg as a Union Defence Force officer had met with Adolf Hitler and became an admirer, he then infused the OB with National Socialist ideology and the organisation took on distinctive fascist and Nazi ritual, insignia, structure, oaths and salutes. 

Merely ‘anti-British’ they were not. Ideologically speaking the Ossewabrandwag (OB) took on anti-communism, antisemitism, the Nazi creed of ‘Blut und Boden’ (Blood and Soil) in terms of both racial purity and historic bond and rights to the land, the ‘Führer Principle‘, a derivative of the Nazi creed of ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche‘ (Children, Kitchen, Church) as to the role of women and the role of the church in relation to state. In term of economic policy the OB adopted a derivative of the Nazi economic policy of expropriation of Jewish monopoly capital without compensation by adding “British monopoly capital’ to the mix .4

This image shows the militarisation and fascist leanings of the Ossewabrandwag – here’s a rare image not often seen – a Ossewabrandwag “Kommandant” in full para-military uniform with lapel badges, ‘crested eagle’ epaulettes and ‘lightning bolt’ cap badge insignia. In addition he is wearing a sam-browne belt and lanyard. His ‘green’ arm band signifies his rank – using the ‘crested eagle’ again and horizontal lines for scale of seniority.5

In adopting distinctive national socialist ideology and concepts as well as iconography and culture, Chief Commandant Hans van Rensburg went about ‘nazifying’ this ‘Cultural Front’ of Afrikaner Nationalism. The Broederbond had arbitrated a meeting between the National Party and the Ossewabrandwag agreeing to two clear lines of delineation between the two organisations – the National Party would look after the ‘political’ front of Afrikanerdom and the Ossewabrandwag the ‘cultural’ front – known as the Cradock Agreement it was ratified on 29 October 1940.6

Here is Hans van Rensburg complete with his high command Ossewabrandwag armband … note the Eagle iconography – the Ossewabrandwag adopted the Nazi Reichsadler – “Reich Eagle” – which replaced the German “Imperial Eagle” the Reichswappen.

As to Nazi German eagles, the Eagle and holder are the same, however symbology is given to the direction in which the eagle looks – the Reichsadler (Reich Eagle) looks left and the Parteiadler (Party Eagle) looks right.

Also, note the jodhpurs (horse riding pants), a firm militaristic and often fascist fashion statement – you can easily see his admiration for Hitler’s dress sense and iconography. However for all the Nazi iconography and ideology adopted by van Rensburg, after Nazi Germany lost the war, van Rensburg would quickly try and cover his tracks and the genocide committed by his heroes and say of them. 

“It was the greatest disaster in my spiritual life to realise suddenly that the people I had thought to be the heroes of a new era in western civilisation should in fact turn out to be just a band of murderers and nothing else.”

In addition to the Ossewabrandwag other leading and influential Afrikaner Nationalists were forming German National Socialist movements with distinctive antisemitic and anti-communist leanings in South Africa. As a committed antisemite Louis Weichardt broke with the National Party on the 26 October 1933 and founded South Africa’s Nazi party equivalent – The South African Christian National Socialist Movement with a paramilitary ‘security’ or ‘body-guard’ section (modelled on Nazi Germany’s brown-shirted Sturmabteilung) called the ‘Gryshemde’ or Grey-shirts. In May 1934, the ‘Grey-shirts’ merged with the South African Christian National Socialist Movement and form a new enterprise called ‘The South African National Party’ (SANP). The SANP would all keep with the ‘grey-shirts’ as their dress and keep this identification and other Nazi iconography including extensive use of the swastika.7 Overall, Weichardt saw democracy as an outdated system and an invention of British imperialism and Jews.8

The SANP Grey-shirts loved armbands too, and their took two forms, one using the Hitler Youth Red and Black band and swastika and one which used the South African Flag’s colours at the time – Orange, White and Blue, and here they are:

Left to Right – standing outside the courthouse in Grahamstown in full SANP dress is Johannes von Strauss Moltke, Harry Inch and David Olivier. The alternate (OBB) Orange, White and Blue SANP armband is to the right.

Talking Boer War, not shy of nailing their colours to the mast and also linking their ideology to Boer War 2, ‘Die Waarheid/The truth’ – the SANP’s own newspaper, would claim a Jewish conspiracy as the cause of the war and Louis Weichardt would write:

“the disastrous Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 was deliberately brought about by the Jewish mine magnets who circumvented Rhodes and Kruger alike”.9

Luckily for the Afrikaner Nationals and the likes of Hans van Rensburg and Louis Weichardt, the National Party came into power in 1948 and in the same year issued a general amnesty to all Afrikaner Nationalists who had flirted with Nazism, joined the Nazi Party or directed supported Nazi Germany, either through local political organs like the Ossewabrandwag, the New Order and the SANP Grey-shirts (and many other splinter groups) or even directly collaborating with the Nazi Propaganda Ministry (Radio Zeesen), or the Nazi German Wehrmacht (military), or the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS and Waffen SS) or the Nazi German Abwehr (intelligence) service. 10

Written and Researched by Peter Dickens

Footnotes

  1. Harrison, David. 1981. The White Tribe of Africa – South Africa in Perspective. University of California Press. Pages 103 – 106. ↩︎
  2. D.P. Olivier, May 2021, “A special kind of colonist” : An analytical and historical study of the Ossewa-Brandwag as an anti-colonial resistance movement, thesis University of the North West ↩︎
  3. Bunting, Brian. 1964. The Rise of the Afrikaner Reich. Penguin Books. Page 88 ↩︎
  4. Bunting, Brian. 1964. The Rise of the Afrikaner Reich. Penguin Books, Nelson Mandela Foundation O’Malley Web Digital Library, Chapter 6 ↩︎
  5. Ditsong Museum of Military History. Saxonwald, Johannesburg – Ossewabrandwag Display ↩︎
  6. Fokkens, A. M. Afrikaner unrest within South Africa during the Second World War and the measures taken to suppress it. Journal for Contemporary History. 2012. Page 130 ↩︎
  7. A Perfect Storm – Antisemitism in South Africa 1930-1948 By Milton Shain pages 55 – 58 ↩︎
  8. Werner Bouwer, National Socialism and Nazism in South Africa: The case of L.T. Weichardt and his Greyshirt movements, 1933-1946. Page 18 ↩︎
  9. A Perfect Storm – Antisemitism in South Africa 1930-1940 By Milton Shain page 58 ↩︎
  10. Kleynhans, Evert. Hitler’s Spies: Secret Agents and the Intelligence War in South Africa 1939-1945. Jonathan Ball Publishers 2021 ↩︎

Sheer Luck and God’s Grace

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On the 80th anniversary of D-Day and witnessing the French President Macron awarding the Legion d’Honneur (LdH) to attending D-Day/Overlord veterans still with us. I am reminded of this very special South African. Albie Götze took part in D-Day as a Spitfire pilot seconded to the Royal Air Force, he later took part in Operation Market Garden as a Typhoon pilot. After World War 2 (1939-1945), he took part in the Berlin Air Lift as a Navigator (1948 to 1949), he later took part in the Korean War as a Mustang pilot (1950 to 1953) and finished his career as a General in South African Air Force and took part in the Border War (1966-1989). Albie was one of those very rare war veterans having survived all of that.

As South African Legion I was involved in the obtaining of Legion d’Honneur, the supreme award given by the French government to all surviving D-Day veterans and at the time South Africa’s only surviving D-Day veteran. Here I am (left) with Albie (on the right) and the French Ambassador, his excellency Christophe Farnaud (in the middle) on the occasion of his medal parade and receipt of his LdH on the 13th February 2018 in Cape Town. I also took he opportunity to also present Albie with a print of my Dad’s painting of a Typhoon.

Over time I came to know Albie well and heard many of his stories, I kept my promise to myself to buy any WW2 veteran I meet a beer, and Albie shared this story with me on one such occasion when he and I were hitting a pint of beer and oysters at the Quayside cabin in Hermanus (Albie loved oysters). It says a great deal about this wartime generation, the guts and courage of these young men, they truly are a generation apart.

During D-Day, Operation Overlord and Operation Market Garden Albie’s aircraft was hit on many occasions and he made a few crash landings with damaged aircraft. He recalled on such incident as if they were yesterday, this is a very brave account of combat flying, honest, harrowing and even a little funny – in the darkest manner of ‘military humour’.

“I got shot one day, as a matter of fact I was watching this guy shooting at me, with a 88 mm, he shot at me and I looked and I said to myself ‘this bastard is going to kill me’ … he shot me at the back of the fuselage, but, the 88mm did not explode for some unknown reason, God must have said ‘I not gonna put this fuse on’, But it did cut my trim-wire to my rudder and all it does is that your aircraft just rolls over and you go strait in, but fortunately I was able to ‘catch it’ (arrest the aircraft roll with opposite ailerons);

… but I could only fly at an angle a friend radioed and said ‘Albie are you in trouble?’, I said to him ‘yes’, I can’t see out, at this time as I got down into the cockpit and grabbed hold of the rudder bar in order to keep on flying, otherwise I would go down. He said “I will fly on top of you”, been down there you can’t see out of the cockpit, all I could see was up, he brought me home like that, him flying on top (as a visual marker), me underneath. When I did the crash landing, that scoop on ‘the typhoon’ is full of oil and it sparked and catches fire quickly, I was so scared, before the plane came to a stop, I was out of the cockpit and I ran so fast that the ambulance could not catch me”.

Wow, there’s everything in that story, drama, bravery, camaraderie, action and comedy … and this was one of many many similar stories Albie could relate, not just from WW2, but the Berlin Airlift, the Korean War and the Angolan Border War … this was a man who had truly seen life and death, he had endured some of the greatest blows in history and survived.

When Albie died in September 2018, I had the privilege of giving his eulogy and our local veteran associations, The South African Legion, The Memorable Order of Tin Hats and The South African Air Force Association all saw him off. A true warrior of the sky, and one of the very last of his kind. His humility as a combat pilot is best wrapped up in his own words to me:

‘I survived because of sheer luck alone … with God’s grace.”

Written by Peter Dickens, a privilege to share this story again – lest we forget.

To read a little more about Albie – follow this link:

Albie Götze’s Legion d’Honneur

Overlord to Thunderclap and back!

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It’s the 80th anniversary of D-Day and I’ve always upheld a small promise to myself, whenever I meet a WW2 veteran still with us, I buy him a beer.

A couple of years ago I was living in Bicester in the United Kingdom, and as South African Legion I was asked by the local Royal British Legion branch to attend a medal parade for this chap, he was been honoured by the French government with the Légion d’honneur for his involvement in D-Day.

From left to right. Peter Dickens, Patrick Churchill and Karin Churchill (nee Busch)

Meeting him was indeed an honour, and I bought him the beer – but equally remarkable was his wife, and it truly is eye-opening when you sit down and literally ‘touch’ history and hear it first hand. It is a tale which will take us from Operation Overlord to Operation Thunderclap and it has a very human ending.

Operation Overlord

Shortly after 6am on 6 June 1944, Patrick Churchill (the chap been honoured sitting next to me), was a young Royal Marine commando. He described how he waded past the floating corpses of his comrades on Sword beach in the grey dawn of D-Day.

Thinking he would be in trouble for discarding his Mae West jacket as a bullet had just gone through it rendering it useless he eventually made it to shore and took cover.

Film still from the D-Day landings showing Royal Marine commandos aboard a landing craft on their approach to Sword, 6 June 1944.

Patrick was a signaller attached to a Free French Marine Commando unit coming ashore in the first wave of the landings – he later earned the Croix de Gurre for bravery from the French, his unit was cut off by intensive enemy fire entering a French village. Patrick ran into German sniper fire to hoist a radio antenna on top of a statue in the open village square and let accompanying forces know his unit’s position.

Operation Thunderclap

A mere eight months later, in another part of Europe, a 14-year-old German girl, Karin Busch (Patrick’s wife sitting next to him), ran into a sea of flames on the streets of Dresden. She led her screaming twin brother, blinded by the British fire bombing of the city during Operation Thunderclap. Their mother had just been swallowed into the burning wreckage of their home and she witnessed her burn alive. Her story was especially touching and no less brave.

The destruction of Dresden after Operation Thunderclap, the British bombing caused an uncontrollable fire vortex (firestorm) which destroyed more than 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) of the city centre on the night of 13/14 February 1945.

And Back

Patrick and Karin met whilst Patrick formed part of the occupation British forces in West Germany a couple of years after the war, they fell in love and married, eventually moving to England. Proof positive that the human condition of love will always prevail over animosity and hatred.

Truly a generation apart, both believed the Dresden bombing was unnecessary and incredibly tragic, but both believed in the necessity for the liberation of Europe and the sacrifice it took.

A privilege to share their story, written by Peter Dickens

The Torch: Lecture and Talk – Simonstown

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The Observation Post will be taking the circuit lecture and talk on the history of the Torch Commando to Simonstown next. It will be hosted by the Naval Officers’ Association of Southern Africa at the Seven Seas Club in Simonstown. It is a closed session for members of the Seven Seas and Naval Officers’ fraternity, their partners and invited guests.

Peter Dickens – B Soc.Sc. (Rhodes) PG Dip (UNISA) – will be presenting the lecture on the Rise and Fall of the Torch Commando, he will be joined by fellow discussant Capt (SAN) Graeme Plint – MMM MMil. (Stell). Graeme’s 2021 Masters thesis “The influence of Second World War military service on prominent White South African veterans in opposition politics 1939 – 1961” will add significant gravitas to the discussion on The Torch Commando and Sailor Malan, the South African war-time Battle of Britain ace.

Titled ‘An inconvenient truth’ it is an in-depth look at The Torch Commando, South Africa’s first mass Anti-Apartheid protest movement and the politics of returning South African WW2 veterans.

Topics to be covered include:

  • The Nazification of the Afrikaner Right
  • The Returning War Veterans Action Committee
  • Sailor Malan
  • The Steel Commando
  • The rise and fall of The Torch Commando
  • The smoking gun to the ‘white’ struggle against Apartheid

Date: 14th May 2024

Venue: Seven Seas Club, Simonstown. 

Time: 11:30 am start.

Who: Naval Officers’ Association members, their partners and invited guests.

Lunch: Optional at own expense. 

In Vlaandere se Velde

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This is the Afrikaans text version of the landmark WW1 poem “In Flanders Fields” written by Lt Col John McCrae as translated into Afrikaans for the 100 year anniversary of The Battle of Delville Wood and the Somme Offensive in July 2016.

As the Battle of Delville Wood involved South Africans of both British and Afrikaner origin, and it was the battle which forged the young Union of South Africa’s identity, it was felt that it would be appropriate to translate ‘In Flanders Fields’ into Afrikaans and read it at the centenary ceremony.  The poem up to that point had already been translated into a variety of languages, but not Afrikaans.

This Afrikaans translation is the result of a dedicated collaborative effort.

In Vlaandere se Velde – Deur Lt. Kol John McCrae

In Vlaand’re wieg papawers sag
Tussen kruise, grag op grag,
As bakens; en deur dit alles deur
Die lewerikke tjilpend in dapper vlug,
Skaars hoorbaar bo die grofgeskut van kanonne.

Ons is die Dooies.
Dae gelede het ons geleef
die dagbreek en sonsondergloed beleef.
Was bemind en was verlief,
nou lê ons in Vlaandere se velde.

Veg voort my Kind met alle mag;
neem uit my hand die lig,
met krag moet jul die fakkel dra, met eer.
Wie durf Ons dood verloën, onteer –
ons sal steeds dwaal, ons sal nie slaap,
solank papawers groei in Vlaandere se velde.

P62__BYTOWN_MUSEUM_28891023

The original English version, composed by Colonel McCrae after he buried Alexis Helmer, a close friend, who was killed during the battle of Ypres. McCrae performed the burial service himself, at which time he noted how poppies quickly grew around the graves of those who died. The next day, he composed the poem while sitting in the back of an ambulance at an Advanced Dressing Station just outside the town of Ypres. This location is today known as the John McCrae Memorial Site.

Here’s what he wrote:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

supporting-poppy-appeal

The poem was kindly translated into Afrikaans by Hendrik Neethling and Walter E. Vice as a collaboration on behalf of the South African Legion and The Royal British Legion.  It was arranged and read by Karen Dickens at the Legion’s Centenary Service of the South African sacrifice on the Somme and the Battle of Delville Wood.  This landmark occasion was held at the Thiepval Memorial to the missing in France on 10th July 2016.

14543699_1834103853485271_4069071103849507555_o

Posted in memory of the co-author of this translation – Hendrik Neethling, may he Rest in Peace.

Written by Peter Dickens

My thanks to Theo Fernandes for the image and my wife Karen Dickens for her dedication in translating ‘In Flanders Field’ into her Mother Tongue.

Related Links and Work

Springbok Valour Some 100 dedication – Thiepval Memorial 

‘Springbok Valour’… Somme 100 & the Delville Wood Centenary

Where’s Breaker?

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Recently, a Boer War historian, Chris Ash published some interesting works on Breaker Morant on his blog, and it’s not what you may think of this hero to some and villain to others, ultimately executed for the murder of unarmed Boers during the South African War 1899 – 1902. It was not his trial, or the murders he committed or controversy around his execution by the British, nor the controversy of nationalists making a hero of him in latter years – simply because they saw him as a British scapegoat. It was also not the repeated attempts by current Australian social activists trying to embolden Morant as a National Australian Hero and their repeated and unsuccessful attempts to get the British government to issue a “pardon” for him and apologise for shooting him. Nah! None of that … turns out Breaker Morant was an accomplished poet – and Chris Ash simply published some of his poems.

I wrote to Chris Ash on one of the published poems and stated that it remained ironic, for all the hullabaloo over Breaker Morant and calls for his reinterment on Australian soil as a National Australian hero .. his grave in Pretoria was in fact empty, there’s nothing in it. This came as a surprise to him – and to others I’m sure as its a very little known fact.

Lt. Harry “The Breaker” Harbord Morant

Empty! Huh – no Morant, what happened and where the hell is Breaker? Well, here again there’s a little more controversy to this very controversial man.  

A while back in early February 2024 I published an Observation Post on the Boer War 2 titled ‘War is Cruelty’ War is Cruelty – a very esteemed Australian based historian, Gordon Mackinlay wrote some of the content and he wrote to me to say, according to his research, Breaker Morant was gone – so too Hancock buried with him, the result of a grave robbery in the 80’s – the grave site near the hallowed acre of Afrikaner heroes in Pretoria had been tampered with – detectives found no bodies, so they put it down to a grave robbery for African “Muti” purposes. The conclusion that the bones of men executed held mystical powers and of value to practitioners of traditional African “Muti” medicine. The Australian government sponsored a nice new slab for the grave in the knowledge that neither Morant or Hancock are in it.1

On the Observation Post’s scuttlebutt Facebook group, this question was again raised, along with Danie Theron, the famous Boer Scout, whose grave was also robbed. A good friend, fellow historian and regular contributor to the Observation Post, Johann Hamman gave us some fresh insight.

Johann is a leading Afrikaans battlefield historian and I generally sit up and listen to him. The feedback as follows:

The remains of Danie Theron had indeed been stolen from his grave. 2He had been taken by two Afrikaner Weerstandsbewegin (Afrikaner Resistance Movement – AWB) members from Carltonville, but his remains had since been recovered. He was re-buried and the site was re-secured at Eikenhof. The AWB men robbed the grave of his remains because they did not want their ‘white’ Boer hero to lie among the ‘Black’ Africans buried in the same cemetery from the nearby modern township.

On Breaker Morant – he is most certainly not present in his grave anymore, however, according to Johann it is not because of any Muti-theft in the 80’s – the detectives are mistaken. When Morant was buried they poured two bags of unslaked lime on top of him, and what they buried there is no longer there as a result. There is nothing to steal.3

Johann Hamman and Gerald Leach among others, researched Morant as thoroughly as possible, and they blocked an attempt to have him pardoned as an Australian hero by Queen Elizabeth twice. 

The argument was that Morant, Handcock and Taylor had been responsible for the murder of at least 36 people, of whom the youngest were Boer children of 11 years, they were murderous and their execution justified. Morant himself admitted to 12 killings at his court-martial, one was the Reverend Heese, who was the great-grandfather of Johan’s friend – the late Hendrik Neethling.4

Just to note, the British poured unslaked lime on everyone they executed in Boer War 2, Cape Rebels and Boers wearing British Khaki uniform included. There has been some research on whether unslaked lime speeds up decomposition or in fact aids preservation of the corpse, however even here school is out, some medical journals and specialists specify preservation others demonstrate the opposite – rapid decomposition.

Now, I’m pretty sure that the case on Morant is forever open to endless debate, especially in Australia, but the general conclusion most historians come to is regardless of legalise, and whether Morant was even an Australian – he was by all accounts a maverick from the get-go, his execution an inevitability and for very justifiable reasons (many in fact just conclude that ‘he had it coming’). There are countless Australian heroes from their statutory forces over the years, and to be honest they can find amongst them far more suitable candidates to honour than Morant.

Either way we cut it, whether the bones were stolen, whether they are completely destroyed by unslaked lime – or not – Breaker Morant is not there, the grave is empty. 

Written by Peter Dickens 

Referenced Observation Post: https://samilhistory.com/2024/02/04/war-is-cruelty/

Referenced poetry by Breaker Morant – Westward Ho:

Westward Ho!, by Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant
Westward Ho by Breaker Morant
Butchered to make a Dutchman’s Holiday, by Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant
Butchered to make a Dutchman’s Holiday by Breaker Morant
At the River Crossing, by Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant
At the River Crossing by Breaker Morant

With thanks to Johann Hamman, Robin Smith, Dirk Lombard, Gordon Mackinlay and Chris Ash.

Footnotes

  1. Correspondence Gordon Mackinlay and Peter Dickens – February 2024 ↩︎
  2. Boer hero’s remains stolen by Annie Olivier – News 24, 21 Feb 2003 ↩︎
  3. Correspondence Johann Hamman and Peter Dickens 2 May 2024 ↩︎
  4. Ibid ↩︎

SA Jewish ‘Struggle’ history … continued!

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Lately, and especially in my little town of Hermanus is a complete storm in a teacup over a very likeable young man by the name of Benjamin Rattle – Ben to his mates. I’m in the beer brewing game, so too is the Rattle family so we interact with them often as part of the three main ‘local’ beer suppliers to Hermanus.

Now, Ben finished high school not long ago and was pretty much part of the young millennial crowd in Hermanus, well liked in the surfer circles, working briefly for his Dad’s brewing company, he – like many of his age set out to discover the world and being Jewish figured a good start would be to resolve his Israeli citizenship and do his national service in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). An option open to Jews the world over and perfectly legal and perfectly legitimate in a recognised statutory defence force abiding by all the international conventions – which whether some believe it or not the IDF falls part. 

Whist performing his national service, he – like other dual national Jewish South Africans in a similar situation with commitments in the IDF, suddenly found his country under attack and he was deployed to Gaza for counter offensive operations. All good so far, he’s not some religious nut-job whose bolted to the Middle East to exterminate Arabs in some fanatical sense of wiping them off the planet … he’s a simple national serviceman performing his duties, and whilst in service his circumstances changed and have led him to war.

Like any national servicemen, and many of us in South Africa who have military experience as being National Servicemen will know – pride in service is central, so too family in support, and Ben’s Dad served in the South African Army as a conscript, and like all military vets he knows the importance of this – so like thousands of national servicemen before him, Ben took to a couple of photos of himself on duty and some with his folks whilst he’s in uniform (his parents obviously proud and concerned for their son at the same time) and put these images up on his social media accounts.1

Now, back in his ‘Old Country’ in South Africa a small muslim action group named the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) enamoured with the South African government’s open sympathy with Palestine and armed movements like Hamas whose stated intention is the annihilation of jews, took to pressing charges of genocide and illegally serving in a foreign army against Ben Rattle at a local Cape Town Police station … using his Instagram and social media pictures in the public space as ‘proof’ positive of his “crime”. 2

This in turn pricked journalists to get hold of Ben, who allegedly told them to hop it, as a Jew in defence of his country he’s doing nothing wrong and that the South African government should focus on its own problem of millions of its own destitute Africans living in shacks in similar if not worse conditions than Palestinians, and should stop meddling in affairs that don’t really concern them 3 Ben’s alleged position no different from that of the Israeli government – so nothing new here. 

All this, and a silly petition calling for South African soldiers in the IDF to be prosecuted with only 1,200 signatures –  spun our very partisan African National Congress government into action, and Nadeli Pandor, our Minister of International Relations and Cooperation for South Africa, who was in the USA urgently trying to convince them not to sanction South Africa for its “covert” but very overt sympathies and support of Russia and other rogue and terrorist states and organisations – and for the Americans this also includes Hamas and Iran.4

Pandor’s line with the Americans is that South Africa is just a leader in human rights and supports arbitration and negotiation for conflict resolution, our Mandela magic ethos and we are ‘neutral’ that’s all – and the Americans aren’t buying it, and she can’t figure out why. However a few weeks earlier in March, she declares all South Africans who are on dual national status serving in the Israeli Defence Force (and that includes Ben) will be arrested the minute they re-enter South Africa – on the basis that there is legislation outlawing South Africans from serving in “foreign” armies without “permission”. 5

Nadeli Pandor, our Minister of International Relations and Cooperation for South Africa nailing her colours to the mast.

Somehow the ANC thinks that’s the morally good thing to do, leaving their senses again as they fail to recognise that by our shared history and perfectly legitimately, there are literally hundreds of thousands of South Africans who have held dual British and South African citizenships and have served in the British Armed Forces and many of her Allied forces from 1910 – through two world wars and continue to do so to this day. There are thousands of South Africans of Jewish decent who have served in the Israeli Defence Force from its inception, over 500 WW2 military veteran South Africans were recruited to fight in the Israel War of Independence in 1948 alone 6 and Jewish South Africans continued to serve in the IDF and still do so to this day. 

Not even by birthright mind, there are even thousands of South Africans who have obtained dual citizen status after serving in the British Armed Forces (BAF) under the Commonwealth agreement after 1994 and South Africa’s re-admittance to the Commonwealth, many recently serving in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars – and many still in service in His Majesty’s Armed Forces. Most of them serving in the BAF because it simply offered better career growth opportunities for someone seeking a military career than the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) could ever offer, and I can almost guarantee none of them got permission from the ANC government to serve in the BAF.

There are entire groupings of South African’s in the current British Armed Forces, they even have a honour roll of South Africans who died in action in British uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan and there are current South Africans who have received high accolades and British bravery decorations – their families very proud of them. 

As the President of the South African Legion of Military Veterans in the UK, I personally know of five close friends of mine who served in both the South African and British militaries, and not just Britain, I’ve a close friend who served in the South African Navy and is now an Admiral in the Royal Australian Navy and as to the diaspora of South Africans the world over  – one of my Australian nephews is currently in the Australian Navy serving as a Ensign with the very Aussie surname of “van der Merwe”.

Over and above that the French Foreign Legion which has seen South Africans join it over the years to obtain French and EU citizenship and even in the USA, there are many dual National South Africans currently serving in their armed forces.

So, somehow the ANC and the hapless Nadeli Pandor have just managed to put thousands of South Africans world over in statute and legitimate forces under threat of arrest  if they visit or emigrate back to South Africa based on some obscure and previously ignored legislation – and knowing military veterans and their families – to a man they will in all likelihood stand behind a fellow statutory force military brother like Ben Rattle and tell the ANC and Nadeli Pandor to ‘hop it’ (its a military thing – a value we all share).

What the ANC, and Nadeli Pandor did by bringing genocide accusations against a legitimate and mandated statute military is they “took a side” and stepped away from the ANC’s only real legitimacy as the worlds even handed “reconciler” and peacemaker – a reputation reached by Nelson Mandela in 1994 when he stood up and accused F.W. De Klerk and the National Party of been in an “illegitimate and internationally discredited government”, and this reputation of Mandela is now utterly in tatters in 2024, with an ANC heading up a corrupt kleptocracy and becoming more “discredited” in the international community by the day – certainly in all the “western” European democracies and NATO countries.

So what happened next, to demonstrate just what thin ice Nadeli Pandor is on, the United States of America’s government turned around to her and her cronies and warned South Africa that if they so much as arrested one South African serving in a legitimate foreign statute force and specifically in the Isreali Defence Force, South Africa would face sanctions and severe “consequences”. 7 This coming from one of South Africa’s largest trading partners, it’s as if the ANC just have no conception on how an economy works and besides electricity we can afford yet another significant assault on it – so much for addressing poverty, unemployment and wealth gap issues which beset the economy and are critical issues crippling the country.

On a personal level, the ANC and their Muslim cabal are acting like a bullies, taking on simple soldier like Ben Rattle, a man who does not even hold a commission or non-comm warrant and plays no part whatsoever in the IDF’s military planning – strategic or operational, he’s merely doing his duty on a tactical level and what is commanded of him – and he has no moral quandary with that, it’s his ‘religion’, his ‘people’ and his ‘country’. In addition he plays no part in Isreali politics and yet finds himself thrust into the limelight. Unhinged individuals living in his hometown of Hermanus have even taken to targeting his Dad’s brewery business calling for boycotting it and its product.

Unhinged, because many years ago Germany’s elected government decided to blame Jews for the world’s woes, and the result was that their ‘mass’ population took to targeting Jews and Jewish business – because the government tacitly agreed with their actions and supported them – suitably empowered this eventually led to a proper genocide, millions of Jews murdered by ordinary Germans who had completely lost touch with their perfectly reasonable religious values and adopted state sponsored socialist ones instead. Our ANC government does not seem to understand the sweep of history very well – and as socialists themselves they are empowering our ‘masses’ to so the same – same as the Nazis did, no different – and its starts with accusing normal law abiding Jews of committing crimes against ‘society’ as they define it – which is exactly what has just happened.

As to the sweep of history – the ANC seems to have lost its senses completely, Jews in South Africa, as a persecuted peoples under Afrikaner Nationalism, played a key role in ridding the country of Apartheid – from within the ANC and external to the ANC, and their involvement is much bigger than you think.

As South African Jewish World War 2 military veterans –  Joe Slovo, Wolfie Kodesh and Rusty Bernstein even founded umkhonto we sizwe (MK) – Joe Slovo becoming MK’s Commander in Chief, other South African WW2 Jewish veterans became Zionists and actively resisted Apartheid, Leo Kowarsky (a founder of the Torch Commando and then the Progressive Party – the modern day Democratic Alliance), Cecil Margo (Margo  a WW2 SAAF bomber pilot goes on to become a founder of the Israeli Air Force and returns to South Africa eventually to become a Supreme Court Justice), Gerald Gordon, Leo Lovell, Jock Isacowitz – who becomes a founder of the Torch Commando and then the Liberal Party of South Africa along with fellow Jew, military veteran and liberal – Leslie Rubin.8   

Not just military veterans, as a result of the Police raid  on Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia in 1963, alongside Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Ahmed Kathrada – also arrested are two predominate Jewish MK members Dennis Goldberg (a “mensch” to his people) and Arthur Goldreich – Goldreich a devout Zionist in addition. They both land up in the dock and eventually in prison alongside Nelson Mandela charged with High Treason.9

Other Jews are also key anti-apartheid activists, Jews like Ronnie Kasrils, Hymie and Esther Barsel, Eli Weinberg, Yetta Barenblatt, Ray Alexander Simons, Hilda Bernstein, Ruth First, Ronald Segal, Norma Kitson, Baruch Hirson, Brian Bunting, Harry Schwarz, Sam Kahn, Isie Maisels, Arthur Chaskalson, Sidney Kentridge, Joel Joffe, Shulamith Muller, Denis Kuny, Jules Browde,  Ray Alexander, Benny Weinbren, Solly Sachs, Leon Levy, Harold Wolpe, Ben Turok, Paul Trewhela, David Bruce, Pauline Podbrey, Raymond Suttner and even the die hard life long anti-apartheid democrat and campaigner that was Helen Suzman.10

SAJBD President Gerald Leissner and Chairman Mervyn Smith (pictured here with ANC President Nelson Mandela, SAJBD National Congress, 1993) were instrumental in the Board’s taking a decisive stance against apartheid during the 1980’s. Reference SA Jews under Apartheid – A very old debate resisted by David Saks.

According to the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) – Jews made up just 2 percent of the white population of apartheid-era South Africa, but they constituted at least half of the country’s white anti-apartheid activists. Given this extraordinary history, the ANC have really not only lost a sense of their own history but also a sense of who has traditionally supported them and the South African history of the “struggle” completely. 

It is absolutely disgraceful that South African Jews and their children, who have a long and proud ‘struggle’ history in South Africa, now find themselves a marginalised and targeted group in South Africa again – even by our own ‘democratic’ government.

Regardless what we think of the current Palestinian and Isreali war and our individual politics – regardless whether we support Muslims or Jews in our personal lives, we must stand by our values as the world’s miracle nation – the reconcilers and peacemakers, and to do that we need to lead by example and we cannot “take a side”. With that in mind we as South Africans, and even as military veterans, can do a lot better than the current ANC, its cabal and especially its hapless, conceited, ignorant and frankly dangerous foreign minister.

Written by Peter Dickens

Footnotes

  1. Middle East Eye: South African activists file criminal complaint against citizen accused of fighting for Israel – PSC submitted 13 images from what they claim to be Benjamin Rattle’s Instagram accounts (MEE/Instagram)  ↩︎
  2. Ground-up: Criminal complaint lodged against Benjamin Rattle, a South African serving in the Israeli military -Rattle’s social media posts appear to show him standing in front of destroyed buildings and rubble in Gaza. 4 April 2024 | By Matthew Hirsch on-line reader: https://groundup.org.za/article/criminal-complaint-lodged-against-benjamin-rattle-south-african-serving-in-israeli-military/ ↩︎
  3. Ibid ↩︎
  4. Daily Maverick: Naledi Pandor is treading the Pit Botha path to diplomatic oblivion: 7 April 2024 on-line reader https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2024-04-07-naledi-pandor-is-treading-the-pik-botha-path-to-sas-diplomatic-oblivion/ ↩︎
  5. Naledi Pandor: “South Africans fighting for Israel will be arrested” Africa News – on-line reader 14 March 2024 ↩︎
  6. The influence of Second World War military service on prominent White South African veterans in opposition politics 1939 – 1961. A Masters submission to Stellenbosch University – 2021 by Graeme Wesley Plint ↩︎
  7. Daily Maverick: US legislators threaten ‘consequences’ if SA arrests citizens for serving in Israeli army – By Peter Fabricius 17 April 2024 ↩︎
  8. The influence of Second World War military service on prominent White South African veterans in opposition politics 1939 – 1961. A Masters submission to Stellenbosch University – 2021 by Graeme Wesley Plint  ↩︎
  9. Dr. Garth Benneyworth “Trojan horses” Trojan horses ↩︎
  10. South African Jewish Board of Deputies – SA Jews under Apartheid – A very old debate resisted by David Saks – 02 January 2020 ↩︎