Verraaiers: A reflection

Abstract

Verraaiers: A reflection. 2013. Directed by Paul Eilers, produced by Bosbok Ses Films in collaboration with Spier Films, White Heron Pictures and Film Factory, 122 mins. This short essay is a reflection on a recently made film called Verraaiers. It centres around war and its tragic consequences, and is set over a century ago in the old Transvaal Republic or ZAR [Zuid-Afrikaanse Republiek]. A recent viewing of Verraaiers (translated as 'traitors'), directed by Paul Eilers, had me lifting layer upon layer off of perceptions about 'the Afrikaner'. What unfolded was a revised history, a story that did not fit into the rigidly adhered-to memories that had channelled their way through my youth. Written for the screen by Sallas de Jager, Verraaiers is based on a 2010 work 'Boere verraaiers: teregstellings tydens die Anglo-Boere oorlog' by Albert Blake that, according to its publicist, is a 'gripping account of Boer treason during the Anglo-Boer War'. Working from diaries and field reports, Blake told a story of Boer turning on Boer when farmers joined the British forces, or found themselves caught up in the maelstrom, forced to provide provisions, i.e. helping the British. The publishing notes tell of little-known accounts of executions by firing squad and the trauma inflicted on both the executioners and the families of the executed. Out of this book, De Jager crafts a story of Kommandant Van Aswegen and his sons who, in the last months of 1900, on learning that Kitchener was about to lay waste to farms in a desperate attempt to choke Boer resistance and cut off their supplies, decided to throw down their weapons, declare themselves neutral and return to farming. The film credits reveal that the story is based on true events, thus an audience member understands that what is to follow will be an allegory, an 'Everyman' type of film. When General Kitchener proceeded with the campaign of rural devastation in the Boer republics, the bloody, skirmish-driven war had entered its second year. For Kommandant Van Aswegen--who, the narrative tells us, had fought many battles beside General Cronje--the war was not winnable, and the loyalty and love he felt for his family far exceeded his desire to martyr himself on the battlefield for what he knew was a lost cause. The film is a nuanced work of betrayal, integrity and tenderness, all of which structured the story layers into an inevitable tragedy, in all its intimacy. The startling events depicted in the film cut a deep gorge through hardened and concretised 'official' version of Boers on commando and from my 'perch' on the outside looking in, the allegory began to take on meaning much greater than a family's suffering. There appeared to be an attempt to unlock long-secured memory chests and reveal what, for many Afrikaners, could be distasteful and awkward truths. And here was the epiphany: instead of being confronted with a story that would feed my stereotyped understanding of the Afrikaner--an understanding that had been shaped by faceless apartheid shepherds--rolling before my eyes was a world that occupied another dimension entirely. As a child of the 1960s, I was brought up under the yoke of fierce Afrikaner nationalism, though my own household held views that many now, and then, would term 'liberal', and was distinctly of British lineage. Not having any Afrikaner blood myself (at least not in the bloodline I am attached to), Afrikaners were 'the other', living across the national road in the village. One did business with them, but did not fraternise. The local school to which I could have gone was Afrikaans medium and, as such, as the child of a solidly English-speaking household, was denied me. As a result, I learnt about Afrikaner history from a distance. I had a sketchy knowledge of the two Boer Wars and the formation of the Union in 1910. As a child growing up at the peak of apartheid, the literature explained that it was the scorched-earth policy of General Kitchener that sowed the seeds of Afrikaner hatred for the English which, over the first four decades of the 20th century, forged the ultra-nationalist National Party(1) which, under Daniel Francois Malan, pipped Jan Christiaan Smuts at the polls in 1948--not with votes, but via constituencies. …