Dave and Dad are…
Surrounded by racists and pedophiles.
Well, not really, or not entirely, but it’s a more dramatic opener if I forgo cultural sensitivity for sensationalism. And either way, we saw some pretty strange stuff today.
But what else would you expect on The Day of the Vow?
Some quick back-story. The Day of the Vow was a religious public holiday in SA till ’94 when they attempted to repurpose it as the Day of Reconciliation. It commemorates the supposedly (and it is now strongly believed that most of this is wildly exaggerated) famous victory by Andries Pretorius (guess what city he lent his name to) and a small Boer party over the Zulus.
The DotV has always been closely tied to Afrikaner nationalism, and so historically on this day Afrikaners have congregated at one of two locations to mark the day – the Voortrekker Monument outside of Pretoria and the memorial at the site of the Battle of Blood River.
The Battle of Blood River saw AP and 450 or so Boers, laagered in wagons (laager is a circle of wagons) route 10,000-15,000 attacking Zulu warriors to the tune of 3,000 killed to only three wounded Boers. This “epic” victory (the facts of which, especially concerning the number of attacking Zulu’s and their losses, are highly suspect) was seen as a sign of God’s intervention and the Boers’ divine right to exist.
So every year on the DotV, Boers come to the site of the Battle of Blood River (so named after the nearby river that ran red with Zulu blood) to camp out, make speeches, and in the past at least, reenact the victory (no easy task given that they can’t get people to play the Zulu’s so the attacking hordes were represented solely by voice over work broadcast over loudspeakers). And of course they all recite the Vow.
The Nationalist fervor used to be so strong that when Adam Hochschild went in the early nineties (an account of which was included in his excellent book The Mirror at Midnight) his guide wouldn’t allow him to speak for fear of serious physical violence should anyone hear him speaking in English.
Given all this, how could the Old Man and I not hit this up, especially considering how close we were to it? Close of course being relative as it took us a damn long time to drive over there this morning. We arrived a little late; the ceremony had already started by the time we pulled into Blood River. But, the guy taking money at the gate didn’t mark our car or anything when we spoke English so we figured we weren’t gonna die at least. Of course we weren’t going to learn anything either because not only was the entire event in Afrikaans, but so was the program. Damn.
Past the gate was an enormous (and hideous) granite monument of a wagon and a visitor’s center. We ignored it to park in as discrete a spot as we could, because of course we have a GIANT FUCKING ZULU SHIELD in the backseat, and didn’t want to draw attention to it.
The action was taking place in the middle of a large circle of wagons. In fact inside a large circle of life-size 64 ox wagons entirely cast in bronze, delineating the line of the original laager. In the middle, around what I guess is the main memorial plaque, were the day’s speakers backed by a long line of flags and an honor guard of a bunch of people on horses.
The Old Man and I drifted towards the back, climbing one of the wagons to get a view.
A view of which just confirmed our expectations – there are no black people here.
We must have missed more than we realized cause the ceremony ended not long after we got there, which was ok cause it wasn’t that interesting (and it was damn hot). And after a parade of the oddly dressed horsemen everyone headed for the campground and the weird vaguely submerged meeting hall place where the church service was going to follow.
We explored a bit more of the laager and eyed the action across the river where a rowdy celebration seemed to be going on at what had to be the Ncome Monument, built in 1998 in memory of the Zulu side of the story. Whatever they were doing to commemorate the day sounded a lot more exciting than the dour and monotonous styling’s of the Boers.
And that was what we thought before we sat through most of an hour of the Boer service. Holy crap must it be lousy to be a Boer. I though puritans were uptight. For an hour there was nothing but the quiet drone of a couple (presumably religious) speakers. No songs, no call and response, nothing to change it up, just white people sitting in chairs staring straight ahead listening to something that even while unintelligible to us, was clearly not exciting.
Finally we couldn’t take it anymore, we’d been sticking it out hoping to hear the Vow, but either they recited it earlier or they were waiting out the interlopers. They won. We could not handle it anymore.
On our way out though, as a form of protective camouflage, we did roll down our windows and put on Bok van Blerk’s Boerish call to arms – De La Rey.
We quickly turned if off though as we were only going as far as whatever party the Zulu’s were cooking up across the river. As if there was ever a starker illustration of the contrast between black and white in the new South Africa. Where across the river it was monotony of monotone monochromatic Puritanism, here it was a cacophony of celebration, albeit equally monochromatic. People were singing, racing horses, singing, hawking food, and, oh yeah, singing.
We hadn’t even made it to the memorial itself, much less whatever was going on in the tent behind it, before we stopped to watch what had to be a school group, all outfitted in traditional garb do a traditional Zulu song and dance. It was pretty awesome. It was a lot like the dancing and singing at the beginning of the movie Zulu and was really fun to watch.
What neither the Old Man or I realized until they got close is that in addition to the fact that large female contingent was topless, in true traditional style, but they were all WILDLY underage. Fairly discomfiting on one level, I mean the pictures we had been taking could get you added to one of those registries. Eight year olds, Dude, eight year olds. (Honestly I am pretty sure there is some cultural exception, nevertheless.)
(These photos are not the best ones of the dancing, just the ones that will put me at no risk of arrest on charges of pedophilia.)
When we got to the tent we realized the dancers were just one group of what was clearly some impressive Zulu equivalent to a band or dance team competition in the States. There were a number of school group looking teams, as well as some featuring older women. They all generally seemed to consist of more girls than guys, and the girls were the focus, doing elaborate and at times painful looking dance moves while the guys stood in the back beating drums and contributing to the singing.
The acts were pretty sweet and even though they were dancing with their backs towards us facing the judges’ tent we were enjoying the life and energy of celebrations so dramatically different from our morning with the Boers. It did lead to one unsettling moment though. At some point during the show a gentleman came over to invite us to come out of the sun and watch the show from the judges’ tent. Clearly this was purely because of our skin color, as the only other white people there, a group of about three older looking folks were being escorted up to the tent at the same time. The Old Man and I were not comfortable with the idea of that kind of special treatment and politely declined. I mean it was one thing to deal with that kind of treatment in Cameroon, it was still off-putting but more understandable on some level, but getting it in a country that claims such advancement and efforts at dealing with racism, especially right here where the line between races is so literally delineated by the “Blood River” was discouraging.
But again, the dancing was good, and we watched a few more groups before deciding it was time to hit the road. So at the end of the day it was Zulus 1 – Boers 1. They may have lost the battle but they definitely won the celebration.
Misc Notes:
• Found myself wondering while watching high school girls dance around topless surrounded by their male classmates/peers, how does that work? I mean when I was in high school seeing a female classmate’s boob would’ve been a tremendous deal. How’s it work when you get to see them all the time? What affect does that have on dating or courtship or gender relations or the generally difficulties of being a teenager?
• Seriously, if another day starts at 6am I am gonna cry. I am not built for the dawn.
• Apparently, I am not the only one as a short distance out of Eshowe we came across the remains of a Coca-Cola truck that had crashed covering the road in bottles of the stuff. Enterprising bystanders appeared to be collecting the unbroken ones. We settled for gawking and navigating around the broken glass.
• We called it an early day, stopping short of Swaziland at an unusually early hour. The fact is I was physically breaking down. Yesterday’s pot holes ended me. When we stopped my leg was shaking, cramped up to the point that I loathed having to brake because it required me to move my foot. Thirty thousand miles I logged in less than six months during my year of travel and I never felt anything like this. Oh how soft cruise control and paved roads have made the American driver.