Outspanning With Cloete

There is probably some sort of moral to be drawn from the fact that Stuart Cloete, one of the few survivors of a once flourishing race of novelists who specialised in Africa, now lives in New Orleans.

Even more, perhaps, in that, for his latest novel {The Fiercest Heart ) he has to go back again to the 1830’s.

AFRICA has always had problems but those of the early 19th century were basically simpler for novelists, and others, to solve.

Cloete was born in France, educated in the United States, served in an English regiment during World War I, and then spent 15 years on the land in the Transvaal.

But in spite of this international background, he has chosen to write of Africa—occasionally of contem porary Africa, but more notably about the 19th century Boers and their long treks, vainly, as it turned out, to get away from the English, The Fiercest Heart follows the tradition of the three early novels with which he established himself as a writer of this type of fiction ( The Turning Wheels, Watch for the Dawn and Hill of Doves). It is a story of one group of families who took part in the great 1,000 miles Boer trek from the settled Cape Province, north into the wilderness of veldt and moun tain, to seek a new Promised Land.

Their leader was Willem Prinsloo and with him went his gigantic sister in-law, Tante Maria, who had the gift of second sight; and his teenage grand-daughter Francina, whose boyish behaviour and clothes were camouflage for total female within.

He led them for 12 months, and with them they took their flocks and their herds, their servants, their goods and their chattels. Ponderously, the trek moved on, five, sometimes 10 miles, a day; sometimes none at all as the waggons outspanned to rest people and beasts.

TTieir way was marked by the graves' of some; and children were conceived, born or died on the journey. Sickness, heat, fear, fierce natives and predatory animals, all had to be contended with. They

made history. But why did they go?

For some “trek Boers” this semi-nomadic life appeared to be an end in itself. But the great treks were not of these; they were, as Oom Willem said, solid men, with many beasts and rich farms.

But they chased that will-p’-the wisp freedom. “We want no more taxes”, said the Beyers brothers, “no laws but our own which are the laws of God. We wish to build a republic in the wilderness, where we can live in our fashion as farmers and hunters.

Just look at what the English have done. They have freed our slaves.

They have allowed servants to testify against their masters. They have taken away our language, and tax us for the land which we have tamed. And this is only the begin ning. First one law, then another...”

Figuratively, the Boers—the Afri kaaners of today—are still trekking; and although they have finally been quit of the English, it is only to find the whole world sticking its nose into their business.

They are people with long memories, and in case they forget, they have built that extraordinary Voortrekkers Monument outside Pre toria: A bas relief reproduction, in reinforced concrete, of the laager— the closed ring of tented-waggons into which the trekkers outspanned as a protection against the night, the natives and the wild beasts.

This is a fast-moving novel of ad venture, written with humour and insight and a sense of proportion. It is a story that can be read for itself; or for the answers to some of the whys that are asked about today’s South Africa—a land and a people who deserve more than they are probably now going to get. (THE FIERCEST HEART. Published by Wm. Collins. 22/6.)