To understand the novel To hell with
Cronje by Ingrid Winterbach, it helps to know a little something
about the Boer War(s). When I began
reading the book I knew next to nothing, so I watched this documentary on YouTube
to bring me up to speed: Boer War documentary.
In a simplification, the Boer Wars were
between the descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa who were primarily
farmers, and the next set of colonizers, the British. Before the war, the coastal
settlements of the English had expressed little interest in the interior farmlands.
That changed with the discovery of large deposits of gold in the Transvaal
region. With their superior numbers the
British won using a slash and burn strategy directed not only at military
targets, but also civilian. The Boers (the Dutch) however proved to be not easy
to defeat, maddeningly using a guerilla fighting strategy, inflicting a high
casualty cost on the invaders.
The book tells the story of two men, a
botanist and a geologist, who joined the civilian Boer fighters. Their
descriptions of the countryside throughout the book are fascinating and at
times beautiful. When the war began turning against the Boers, they like many
of the other volunteers, while adamantly anti-British, began to become
disillusioned. After one particularly horrific battle, they are assigned to escort
a young teen boy back to his mother’s house after he has witnessed the battle
death of his older brother. On the way they get encamped with another Boer
contingent who suspect they were not on assignment but are possibly deserters.
The topics covered in the book are many,
including post-traumatic shock, suffered not only by the boy, but by others. The impact of long separation from one’s family
and not be able to get word to them, or from them, also plays an important
subplot, as does the death of comrades who died protecting gold mines they did
not own, while losing their farms to the cause.
Foremost is the internal debate between those ready to give up the war,
and those who want to fight until the last death.
One of the more interesting subplots was
when the botanist and geologist are caused to give descriptions of their respective
fields of education (it was a mere 40 years since the publication of Charles
Darwin’s explosively controversial On The Origin of Species). They
were being called upon to explain evolution to men who were turning to religion
to get them through the chaos of war and had known only the creation story from
the Bible, which for many of them was the only book they had ever
read.
To hell with Cronje is decidedly a futility
of war book. Through my read of it I had a desire to contrast it with All Quiet on the Western Front, perhaps the most anti-war book ever written. It compares well, yet I found the extensive personal
subplots in To hell with Cronje more complete, and even more
frightening.
Recommendation: Yes.
Be forewarned, you will utilize the glossary in the English
translation version.
