The attack on Maqoma’s stronghold in the ‘Kroolie Mountains’
THE BOOK OF WAR by James Wyle (Jacana)
Defectors and heathens versus irregulars and settlers, with Fingo levies and Hottentots uncertainly deployed — these are some of the men carrying arms, opponents in this rather extraordinary novel that has been called “a rare feast” by William Kentridge (and I agree with him).
It is set during what is variously called the Eighth Frontier War, the War of Mlanjeni, or the War of the Prophet, which was fought from 1850 to 1853 in the deep mountainous territory of the Amatolas “that ranged away to the east and displayed their jagged edges like ancient artefacts whose listed purpose is slaughter”.
The war was a desperate attempt by the British colonial administration to evict the Xhosa under Chief Ngika and force them beyond the Great Fish River.
Many Khoi from the Kat River settlement, who had long been living there as farmers and Christians, joined forces with Ngika and other Xhosa chiefs to resist the British.
For anyone who savours the mystique of our history, has wondered what it might have been like to live out a life in the unspoilt terrain of the “hinterland” of South Africa when horses and oxen provided transport, when infections had to be survived (there were no antibiotics) and food had to be farmed or hunted, this novel will take you there and then some. It recreates the past with pungency and vivid detail and also examines the mind-set behind the confusing conflicts (which have still not really been settled).
A bitter and brutal series of expeditions, skirmishes, ambushes and, when these fail, burning of crops and kraals provides the action in James Wyle’s text. He tells the story through a handful of men whom he calls “irregulars”; a motley lot under the command of “the Captain”, only 22 and an agent for a new kind of rifle, the Minié.
Heart of the action
We follow the fate of these men, who barely have names and who are sketched in a few telling details. “The kid” is a 15-year-old, a ship’s boy left behind by mistake in Cape Town and a marksman of note — illiterate and ignorant but a thinking being nonetheless; Waine, a vicious lowlife, saved from prison; Providence, a Mfengu (indistinguishable in appearance and language from the heathen); and “the joiner”, a carpenter who goes against the general sentiment of a pub full of drinkers when he states: “When the white man came the Hottentot wore hide cloaks. They ran like greyhounds. They would hold a spear out at the height of your shoulder and any man in the company could leap clear over it from a standing position. They sent their cattle into battle against you. Commanded them by whistling.”
Overall command of the various forces lies with “the General”, Sir Harry Smith, now in the 15th year of his governorship, soon to be disgraced and recalled for his failure to subdue the Xhosa.
Though the reader hardly knows these fellows and thus may care little about them, one is thrown, like them, into the heart of the action, in a state of dread and fascination induced by the dire events, the pristine setting and the perfection of the writing.
The style is laconic, clear and elegant, embellished with archaic cadences and words no longer used in common English. Wyle also unsettles any notions of political correctness by using capitals only for Hottentots and Fingos, whereas settlers and heathens (instead of the insupportable k-word) get lower case.
Wyle’s “Disclosure” at the end of the book tells us that he has freely used two main contemporary sources to build on and has also “pillaged” Moby-Dick for some of the dialogue. Be that as it may (some readers will love to pursue this sort of thing), Wyle’s debt to Herman Melville may extend further than that.
Pages of battles and bloodshed
At various points the purpose of this colonial war is discussed by characters whose individual lives are swamped by it. A comparison may be made perhaps in that the bloody pursuit of the great white whale in Moby-Dick has a parallel in the remorseless hunting of the Xhosa — both campaigns that, today, may be considered to have been horrific, reprehensible and pointless.
And although Wyle drags the reader through pages of battles and bloodshed — and the high romance of endurance and bravery in wild and magnificent country — it is no glorification of war. He gives “the disordered missionary”, derisively called “Elijah” by a settler in a pub, the most powerful and prophetic speech in the book in which he concludes: “But you go up into the Kromme, you will reap nothing but a harvest of blood. You’ll not leave this country alive.”
And after one of the earlier skirmishes in which “the kid” has killed a man for the first time and he lies in some shock in his blanket next to the campfire, Wyle invokes Melville with this quote: “And he smelt the wild unspeakable hindoo odour which lurks in the vicinity of funeral pyres.”
This atmosphere permeates the book — as Wyle intended it — and subtly challenges the othering of savagery, which he clearly ascribes to fighters on both sides.
So be it; no one can undo it now, nearly two centuries later. Although the concept of negotiated conflict resolution has come some way, arms manufacturers and dealers are still out there. Many young men with few other options find themselves in the military.
This novel should galvanise those who know no history to read more. An excellent companion read to follow with would be The Dead Will Arise by JB Peires, an account of the Great Cattle Killing and a more detailed look at the War of the Prophet.