I grew up in the dying days of Empire, that now fast receding period in history when the British nation spread out across the globe and ended up laying claim to and governing a substantial portion of it. Their motives for doing so were numerous, their impact (both good and bad) enormous. In terms of size and influence, it was the greatest empire of all time. As the historian, Niall Ferguson put it, in his critically acclaimed book Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World: “No other country in the world came close to exporting so many of its inhabitants…The Britannic exodus changed the world.”
For better or worse, I am a product of this mass exodus. My father’s grandfather, Harold Edward Stidolph, a musician, organist, composer and writer of verse, was among the countless many who decided to try their luck in the colonies arriving in Cape Town around 1884, ship unknown. Patriotic and devout (if his verses are anything to go by) and very much a man of his time, he took to South Africa with enthusiasm – among other things, touring the Cape Colony with Ede Remenyi, a popular Hungarian violinist who had worked with Franz Liszt.
There are Scots and Irish in my ancestry on my father’s mother’s side and their connection to this country goes back even further. In 1817, Benjamin Moodie, the last Laird of Melsetter in the Orkney Islands, facing ruin and a drastic decline in social status, led a party of indentured Scotsmen out to South Africa, on the ship Brilliant, with the intention of establishing a settlement in the Cape where he hoped to recoup his position and fortune. For various reasons – a separate story in itself – Benjamin’s feudal visions were never fully realised but he did end up buying land at Groot Vader’s Bosch near Swellendam which his descendants still farm to this day.
Not my side of the family though. For reasons unclear, Benjamin disinherited his firstborn son, James – from whom I am descended – which meant Groot Vader’s Bosch was left to his second son. It was a decision I had good cause to regret the moment I first laid eyes on the farm with its magnificent old house sheltering on the slopes of the beautiful Langeberg.
What is known is that James equipped with a wagon and a load of either timber or of saleable mixed goods decided, to head inland towards the Orange river to seek his fortune. He fell ill near the northern borders of the Cape Colony, got taken in by a Boer family, and was then nursed back to health by Sara Van Zyl (whose South African family tree dates back to the days of Van Riebeek) who he subsequently married.
She bore him eleven children one of whom, Thomas – or Groot Tom as they called him because of his size and amazing strength – would also uproot his extended family and take them off in search of pastures new.
The trek that he would lead – the Moodie Trek – was an experiment, in that it marked the first organised attempt to establish a European settlement from the south in Gazaland. The inspiration for it had come from George Benjamin Dunbar Moodie, a young adventurer from Natal who, having explored the area and realised its potential, put the idea to his uncle Thomas, then a wheat and maize farmer in the Bethlehem district of South Africa. Taken in by Dunbar’s glowing descriptions (”the prettiest country I have ever seen”) Thomas agreed to lead the trek. Hoping, like his grandfather before him, to create a new Melsetter in the wilds, he led a small delegation of interested farmers, in January 1892, to see Cecil John Rhodes.
It must have been a relatively easy sell. Rhodes’s interest in the area was well known and had, over the years, grown even greater (to say nothing of his grand plan to attach the whole of the continent to Britain). Realising the importance of establishing a European settlement in Manicaland to act as a buffer against the Portuguese who were actively seeking to resuscitate their ancient claims to “Monomatapa”, as well as outflank the Boers of the ZAR by claiming the territory north of the Limpopo, he readily agreed to the proposal once suitable terms had been arranged.
Having obtained the necessary backing Groot Tom returned home. There was much to be done before they could set off. Most important, he needed people. To this end, Groot Tom set about recruiting a group of mostly Afrikaans-speaking farmers to join him. In the end, the party that set off on this long, arduous journey was made up of 29 families consisting of 37 men and 31 women, with 17 wagons and 350 horses and cattle. Where they paved the way, others would follow.
Dunbar Moodie did not join the trek party but instead sailed up to the port of Beira, in Mozambique, and then travelled via Umtali to Salisbury before linking up with the trek in Fort Victoria.
On the 8th May 1892, cheered on by a crowd, the trek rumbled out of Bethlehem “with a great lowing of cattle, whipping and whooping”. They were joined by an ox wagon in which rode John Warren Nesbitt (the Nesbitts were of Irish extraction), his wife, Sara, and their very young daughter, Josephine – my grandmother – who had been born on the farm of White Hills near the old gold-rush town of Barberton (in present-day Mpumalanga).
The seeds of my future life in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe had been laid.
The wagon train struck out into the interior, heading across the open high plateau until they reached Zeerust. From there, they followed the route taken by the old hunters, missionaries, transport riders and, more recently, the Pioneer Column. For much of its length, it skirted the north-western border of South Africa, leading them across the dusty, flat plains until eventually, they sighted the waters of the Limpopo, glimmering in the distance. It is likely they crossed the river at a point, now known as Rhodes Drift, just west of its confluence with the Shashe River. From here they headed up into the Tati Concession area (now Botswana).
This is a harsh, arid country. In summer the sun hammers down relentlessly, and water is often hard to come by. Coming in fast, huge thunderstorms sweep across it, the lightning illuminating the landscape below in jagged flashes. There were other perils to be faced. Awareness of animals must have bought an awareness of details. One can imagine their senses growing attuned to lions, hyaenas and elephants, all of whom were common in these parts.
As often happened in these emigration stories, all did not go quite according to the script either. Groot Tom had hoped to complete the trek in four months but such were the hazards and hardships they encountered along the way it took them that amount of time just to reach Limpopo and then another four months to get to their final destination.
At Macloutsie, just over the border, there was an outbreak of foot and mouth disease amongst their cattle, many of whom grew so weak they were eaten alive by the hyena that prowled around their camp. This delayed them for another month. There were also attacks by lions and shortages of water. Snakes proved an ongoing problem with several of their dogs being killed by the fearsome, deadly, Black Mamba. Undeterred the party struggled on. Ahead of them lay more hills, more flatness.
They reached Fort Tuli on 12th September, Occupation Day where they were able to replenish their diminished supplies. They also organised a dance (“the jolliest I have ever attended” according to one of the trek members). One of their concerns for the next leg of the trek was the possible hostility of the Ndebele raiding parties who were active in the area. Apart from one or two small incidents, they got through unscathed.
They were to face more drama, however. Upon reaching the small settlement of Fort Victoria (modern-day Masvingo) a major falling-out occurred amongst the trek members when it was discovered in which direction their true destination lay. It would appear that a large number of the party had not been paying close attention when the objectives of the trek had originally been spelt out. Now they could not understand why, instead of following the wagon wheel marks up to Salisbury and the more healthy highveld, they were branching off into what looked like wild, untamed, malaria-ridden country. Or maybe they were just exhausted after months of trekking under the hot African sun and this caused some confusion in the mind…
Looming large amongst the group of dissidents was John Warren Nesbitt who, having been appointed correspondent of the trek, proceeded to pen an angry letter to the Tuli Chronicle, a newspaper, I must confess, I did not even know existed (considering that Tuli is in one of the most remote and isolated parts of modern-day Zimbabwe one wonders what its circulation figures were).
Unable to reach an agreement the party split up into two groups with one half continuing on to Salisbury while the other trekked on to their original goal, Gazaland and the Chimanimani Mountains.
Having written an equally indignant letter refuting John Nesbitt’s allegations, Dunbar Moodie decided to take advantage of the impasse by getting married to his cousin, Sarah Moodie. For their honeymoon, they chose the nearby, mysterious Zimbabwe Ruins, which were to become the subject of much contentious debate. They were, in all likelihood, the first European couple to choose this site to celebrate their nuptials…
The Gazaland-bound group set off on the last leg of their journey. It proved every bit as challenging an ordeal as what they had already been through. Before them stretched yet more miles of wilderness, the initial terrain was rough and broken, then flat but extremely hot. The party was afflicted with malaria, and their animals succumbed to horse sickness and other ailments. Reaching the Sabie River, with the Eastern Highlands now in plain sight, Groot Tom decided to stop and celebrate. The party gathered together under a large baobab and a demijohn of brandy was produced. The ragged survivors beneath it must have seemed like some ghostly apparition. As one account, now in the National Archives in Harare, put it “Our stricken folk and wagons presented a pitiful sight. The enthusiasm of the men under the circumstances brought tears to the eyes of the owner of the demijohn of brandy (Mrs Dunbar Moodie). The demijohn was brought to the light of day and added considerably to the zest of celebrations.” Dunbar put it more pithily. In his diary, he simply recorded: “Got squiffy – all of us.”
They crossed the river at what would subsequently become known as Moodie’s Drift, just south of the present-day Birchenough Bridge, then headed up the final steep stretch. Eight months after they had set off, the loyal remnants of Tom Moodie’s original group finally reached the rolling green hills and mountains of what would become the new “Melsetter”, still full of high hopes and ideas about how they were going to create an ideal rural society on the land. For the Moses-like figure who had guided them, there was to be no happy ending of rippling crops and pasture lands full of fat sheep and contented cattle. Within a year of pegging his farm, Waterfall, Groot Tom had succumbed to malaria and blackwater fever and was dead. You can see his grave still there to this day, by the side of the main tar road. Above his name is inscribed the dedication “For Queen and Empire”.
The inscription is hardly surprising. The Moodies lived in an era when many of those who had gone out to the colonies were conservative by nature and loyal to the crown. They saw themselves as emissaries of established imperial power, the bearers of a universal, unquestioned, order, part of a civilising force whose duty was to uplift the rest of mankind. The fact that the people they subjugated in the process did not always see it in quite such heroically romantic terms did not occur to them or else was conveniently overlooked.
A memorial to the trek was later put up in the centre of Melsetter. Because of its unwanted associations with colonialism, it was dismantled after Robert Mugabe came to power. The village was renamed Chimanimani, after the nearby range of mountains.
After Tom’s death, his wife Cecilia Moodie, returned to her relatives in South Africa where she died in 1905, She was buried on the farm of Rietvlei, today known as the Rietvlei Nature Reserve, south of Pretoria.
For many of the other emigrants, it would prove an equally, fragile, brief interlude. More died, others moved and moved on again leaving behind them an ominous hole. Soon there would be very few of the original trek members, or their descendants left.
For their part, the breakaway group had, in the interim, continued trundling their way towards Salisbury which, at that stage, consisted of little more than a village of tents, pole and dagga huts and a few brick homes sprawled around The Kopje. Bit by bit the town would spread out from this hill slowly engulfing the surrounding veld, vleis and acres of long, pale grass until eventually, it became the modern city of today with its concrete skyscrapers and buildings, just like metropolises all over the world.
The arrival of the dazed and travel-stained home-seekers amongst the bare scatter of buildings caused something of a stir. As was so often the case in frontier towns, the majority of the early white settler population was young and male, so this unexpected infusion of more women was a cause for great celebration (according to Sarah Susannah Nesbitt, who later wrote an account of her experiences, there were only eight women and a few children in the town when they arrived, not counting the Roman Catholic nuns and sisters).
Sarah’s daughter, Josephine Nesbitt, would go on to marry Alan Stidolph, the son of Harold, mentioned above. They had five children together, one of whom was my father, Reginald Neville Stidolph. Another piece in the family jigsaw had slotted into place.
During my youth, none of this meant much to me. It is only that I have reached an age when I am only too aware I am living on borrowed time and have started doing some serious stocktaking of my life it has assumed a much greater significance. Each generation passes something on to the other. If you want to understand the present, the best place to start is usually looking back.
I met none of the folk here described, not even my grandmother who died at a relatively young age, but – like my father before me (another adventurous spirit) – I think I have inherited a few of their traits. I possess something of their wanderlust, curiosity and desire to seek out new frontiers. I, too, like to test myself against nature by periodically returning to a harsher – and more simple – mode of existence than the more safe and sedentary one I live on a daily basis. I have never, admittedly, subjected myself to such an exhausting physical ordeal as they did on their long trek (in my case a hike in the Berg or along the Wild Coast usually suffices). For this reason, if no other, I find their achievements awe-inspiring.
I am aware, however, that not everyone views my ancestors’ achievements – their ‘opening up of the continent’ – in such a heroic light. I am equally aware that the legacy they left behind brings its own political, spiritual and psychological baggage. Through no particular fault of mine, I was born on the wrong side of history, under a now-defunct set of ideas and beliefs; a political system which denied basic political rights to others and led to an ever-widening turmoil in the sub-continent. A certain amount of guilt attaches itself to this, an awareness that British rule was not quite as enlightened as it often tried to present itself to be. It is not something that can be easily wished away; the best thing one can do is acknowledge, understand and learn from it.
History, as we know, abounds with ironies and this story has its little postscript too. The collapse of the former Rhodesia triggered a massive reverse trek as many whites, fearful of their future under Robert Mugabe’s hard-line, Marxist-style, regime, packed their bags and became part of a new diaspora. Many of their concerns appeared justified, too, when his government launched its chaotic and violent land grab which sent the economy into freefall.
I was part of this general exodus, swept along, by the turning tide from the country of my birth. In a sense, I had returned to the starting point, and the journey had gone full circle…
REFERENCES:
Many Treks Made Rhodesia by C.P. Olivier (Published by Howard B. Timmins)
The Scots in South Africa: Ethnicity, Identity, Gender and Race, 1772-1914 by John M. Mackenzie with Nigel R. Dalziel (published by Wits University Press)
Overberg Outspan by Edmund H. Burrows (published by Swellendam Trust)
Experiences of Rhodesia’s Pioneer Women by Jeannie M. Boggie (published by Philpot& Collins)
Many thanks to my eldest brother Patrick Stidolph whose research into our family tree I have also drawn on here.
Stidy's Eye 