Koos Sas

1 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

PUBLISHER | UITGEWER

2 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Contents PUBLISHER | UITGEWER .............................................................................................................. 2 NONGQAI: OORSPRONG & OOGMERKE ..................................................................................... 5 NONGQAI: ROOTS & GOALS......................................................................................................... 6 VOORWOORD | FOREWORD (AP Stemmet) ................................................................................. 7 VOORBLAD | FRONT COVER ........................................................................................................ 8 POLEMICAL ISSUES | POLEMIESE SAKE .................................................................................... 9 KOOS SAS SOON A MOVIE (will it promote reconciliation?) .......................................................... 9 Dr Willem Steenkamp ...................................................................................................................... 9 Johan Nelson: This is not the story I know. ................................................................................ 13 AP STEMMET: NOTES ON THE BALLAD OF KOOS SAS BY PIETER PRETORIUS ................. 13 What are the facts? .................................................................................................................... 15 Geography.................................................................................................................................. 15 Courts and Court Procedure....................................................................................................... 16 Factual errors ............................................................................................................................. 16 CLARIFICATION OF LAW BY DR WP STEENKAMP ................................................................... 17 Arrest warrant on charges of murder .......................................................................................... 17 Declaring someone an “Outlaw" ................................................................................................. 17 Do Koos Sas and Oudok Steenkamp fit well into the stereotyped roles of Robin Hood and the sheriff?........................................................................................................................................ 18 Who was Koos Sas? .................................................................................................................. 18 CONSTABLE DREYER’S ACCOUNT: MAJ WP STEENKAMP..................................................... 20 Who was Rev. W.P. Steenkamp (Oudok)?................................................................................. 21 Oudok is studying again – this time to become a medical doctor ............................................... 25 Oudok became independent member of parliament ................................................................... 26 "The Lion of the North-West" ...................................................................................................... 26 KOOS SAS BINNEKORT ‘N FLIEK (gaan dit harmonie bevorder?) .............................................. 30 Dr. Willem Steenkamp ................................................................................................................ 30 Johan Nelson: Dít is nie die Koos Sas-storie wat ek ken nie ...................................................... 33 AP STEMMET: NOTAS OOR DIE BOEK BALLADE VAN KOOS SAS DEUR PIETER PRETORIUS .................................................................................................................................. 34 Wat is die feite? .......................................................................................................................... 35 Geografie.................................................................................................................................... 36 Howe en Hofprosedure .............................................................................................................. 36 VERDERE KOMMENTAAR: DR WP STEENKAMP ...................................................................... 37 Arres-lasbrief op aanklag van moord .......................................................................................... 37 “Voëlvry verklaar” ....................................................................................................................... 38 Pas Koos Sas en Oudok Steenkamp in die stereotipe rolle van Robin Hood en die sheriff? ..... 38 Wie was Koos Sas? ................................................................................................................... 40 Konstabel Jurie Dreyer se weergawe deur Maj Willem Steenkamp ...................................................................... 41

3 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Oudok studeer weer: hierdie keer medies .................................................................................. 45 Oudok word onafhanklike parlementslid ..................................................................................... 46 “The Lion of the North-West”: ..................................................................................................... 47 NONGQAI TRUST | IT 002701/2018(T)......................................................................................... 49 THANK YOU! | DANKIE! ................................................................................................................ 50 NAWOORD | AFTERWORD (Brig. H.B. Heymans) ..................................................................... 534 SLOT | END ................................................................................................................................. 589

Distance / Afstand: Montagu – Springbok = 500km (as crow flies / soos kraai vlieg) 4 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

NONGQAI: OORSPRONG & OOGMERKE

5 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

NONGQAI: ROOTS & GOALS

6 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

VOORWOORD | FOREWORD

By Mr. Adamus P. Stemmet, lawyer and native of Montagu It is understood that a movie based on Pieter Pretorius' recent book: Die Ballade van Koos Sas, will soon be made.

Will it promote race relations in the RSA? Unfortunately, the contents of the book indicate otherwise. Both the Khoi and whites of that time are portrayed in a dim light in the book. Moreover, the book points to huge ignorance about the tragic events of that time. It is clear that the author has no knowledge of the circumstances and events of that time and that his knowledge of events and even the regions in which it took place is severely deficient.

That money is now being made from the unfortunate events and the tragic death of Koos Sas, is shocking. To now hawk a very weak book, beer mugs and T-shirts (on which the skull of Sas is depicted) is - to say the least - very insensitive.

Many Khoi descendants will rightly have serious objections to it.

In what follows, we will try to sketch the background of the events and determine the facts.

Deur Mnr. Adamus P. Stemmet, regsgeleerde en Montagu-boorling Dit word verneem dat daar eersdaags ‘n fliek gegrond op Pieter Pretorius se onlangse boek : Die Ballade van Koos Sas gemaak sal word.

Sal dit rasse-verhoudinge in die RSA bevorder?

Ongelukkig dui die inhoud van die boek op die teendeel. Beide die Khoi en witmense van destyds word in die boek in 'n swak lig gestel. Boonop dui die boek op reuse onkunde oor die tragiese gebeure destyds . Dit is duidelik dat die skrywer geen kennis van die omstandighede en gebeure van destyds het nie en dat sy kennis van gebeure en selfs die landstreke waarin dit afgespeel het erg gebrekkig is.

Dat daar nou uit die ongelukkige gebeure en tragiese dood van Koos Sas geld gemaak word, is skokkend. Om nou met 'n baie swak boek, bierbekers en T-hemde (waarop die skedel van Sas afgebeeld word) te smous, is – om die minste te sê – erg onsensitief.

Vele nakomelinge van die Khoi sal met reg ernstig beswaar daarteen hê.

In wat hierna volg, sal ons probeer om die agtergrond van die gebeure te skets en die feite te bepaal.

7 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

VOORBLAD | FRONT COVER

In 1922, Khoisan fugitive Koos Sas, who had an arrest warrant pending against him on a charge of murder, was fatally shot by a white policeman when Sas did not surrender when ordered to.

A series of events then unfolded - many of which do not sit comfortably with our modern sensibilities.

The body was photographed, and the photo was sold as a postcard to raise funds for welfare. In addition, the body was exhumed, the head was removed and the soft tissue boiled off, in order to use the skull for research. The skull then made its way to a medical school in the USA, back again to Stellenbosch University, and eventually ended up in a museum exhibit in Montagu (where the murder took place, and where Sas was notorious because of his long criminal record of burglary and stock theft). The story of Sas soon also began to grow tails. Latterly, it has inspired artists, from songwriter David Kramer, through Breyten Breytenbach to latterly Pieter Pieterse, on whose recent book a movie will now be based.

Many things are nowadays alleged about Sas' treatment, including that he had been declared an “outlaw” and therefore was hunted like a wild animal, with his body left for the predators and vultures.

Is this all true? What really happened, and why? Did Apartheid-style racial prejudice motivate some role players? We set out to put on record the facts, not thereby wishing to restrict writers' literary licence, but to make sure that fact and fiction are clearly distinguished. Incontestably the Coloured people of South Africa suffered severely under racial prejudice - but was Koos Sas truly a hero?

----------------------In 1922 is Khoisan voortvlugtige, Koos Sas, (wat 'n arres-lasbrief uitstaande gehad het teen hom op 'n klag van moord), noodlottig gewond deur ‘n wit polisieman toe Sas homself nie wou oorgee nie. 'n Ketting van gebeure het gevolg, baie daarvan uit pas met ons moderne sensitiwiteite. Die lyk is afgeneem en die foto is as 'n poskaart verkoop om fondse in te samel vir welsyn. Boonop is die lyk opgegrawe, die kop is verwyder en die weefsel afgekook, ten einde die skedel vir navorsing te kon gebruik. Die skedel het 'n draai gemaak by 'n mediese fakulteit in die VSA, toe terug na die Univ. van Stellenbosch, en uiteindelik na 'n museum-uitstalling in Montagu (waar die moord plaasgevind het en waar Sas berug was vanweë sy lang misdaad-rekord van huisbraak en veediefstal).

Die verhaal van Sas het gou-gou stertjies begin kry. Dit het kunstenaars inspireer, van die liedjieskrywer David Kramer, deur Breyten Breytenbach na Pieter Pieterse, op wie se onlangse boek 'n fliek nou gebaseer word. Vele dinge word gesê oor Sas se behandeling, onder andere dat hy voëlvry verklaar is en soos 'n wilde dier gejag is, met sy liggaam wat vir die roofdiere en aasvoëls gelaat is. Is dit alles waar? Wat het werklik gebeur, en hoekom? Het Apartheid-styl vooroordeel die rolspelers motiveer? Ons stel die ware feite te boek: nie om literêre vryheid te wil inperk nie, maar om te verseker dat feit en fiksie van mekaar onderskei word. Duidelik het die Bruinmense van SuidAfrika ernstig gely onder rasse-vooroordeel - maar is Koos Sas 'n goeie rolmodel vir 'n held?

8 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

POLEMICAL ISSUES | POLEMIESE SAKE

KOOS SAS SOON A MOVIE (will it promote reconciliation?)

Dr. Willem Steenkamp On the 7th of January 1917 a man in his middle-thirties showed up at a small shop, on the farm Hoek-van-die-Berg, outside Montagu in the Cape. He needed a job, he said. The owner of the store, a young man, son of a pastor, duly gave him a job. But, at the end of day one already, the owner decided he better dismiss the new employee. The man then returned and asked him for flour. Obligingly, the owner turned around to get the flour. At which point, from behind, he was beaten unconscious with a heavy scale-weight. And then had his throat cut with a pocketknife...

The murderer was soon identified as a notorious local criminal with a long record of housebreaking, theft and stealing livestock, as well as escaping from custody – committing these crimes and being convicted under different aliases, at various locations in the Cape. Thus, the Montagu magistrate on January 12, 1917, issued a warrant for his arrest on a charge of murder.

The district CID officer followed up the warrant by circulating a comprehensive flyer to police stations, complete with photos of the suspect and a description of him and his record. According to one version of the events that followed, the suspect was subsequently arrested and was due to appear in the Worcester Circuit Court, but escaped. According to another version, he was on the lose all the time, fleeing and hiding.

Five years later and 500 kilometres from the murder scene, a policeman on a routine farm patrol crossed paths with the fugitive, near Springbok in Namaqualand. A farmhand had taken the reins of the policeman’s horse to let it drink and lead it round so that it could cool down. The man looked vaguely familiar to the constable, but it took some time for the officer to properly realise who it was.

When his memory eventually correctly connected the farm hand to the flyer / warrant for the missing murderer, he immediately rushed back outside to arrest the fugitive. However, the man was no fool and by that time was already well on the run, heading for the kopjes (running being a talent for which the subject of the arrest warrant was well known).

The constable pursued him on foot, screaming for him to give himself up, otherwise he would be forced to shoot – as the law, as it then stood, granted law enforcement officers the right to do, as a last resort. The constable realized that, being quite far behind and having to lug along his service rifle, plus the fugitive's well-known exceptional running ability (it was said that he could run a horse to the point of collapsing) he would not be able to catch up with the man.

But then the escapee stopped, turned around and taunted the policeman with: "Look at me, for the last time. This is good-bye! Ha-Ha-Ha".

A fatal mistake…

9 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Because the policeman happened to be a crack shot, with his Lee-Enfield service rifle. Realizing that this would be his last opportunity, he aimed and fired once. Just one shot, which fatally struck the fugitive from justice, but which now echoes again in modern-day South African race politics...

The death of the notorious criminal at the time caused headlines in the Cape. People travelled to the farm and took pictures. The body was given a proper burial, there on the farm. When no one claimed the mortal remains, a respected local resident with an interest in medical science and Anthropology obtained the necessary permission from the magistrate at Springbok to dig up the corpse and preserve the skull for research purposes.

That skull then went first to a medical faculty in the USA, but was brought back to South Africa and donated to the University of Stellenbosch, which later donated it to the local museum at Montagu.

There it was exhibited until recently, along with the gun with which the fugitive was killed.

In 2021, the skull was formally re-buried in a sarcophagus in the mountains outside Montagu, during a ceremony that enjoyed wide press coverage and was obviously aimed at again underlining the harsh past of White Afrikaner oppression of, and racism against, the Coloured people (though it was devoutly proclaimed that the main theme would be "forgiveness, reconciliation and peace").

For the era in which it played out, this story doesn't sound extraordinary. Similar incidents occurred not only in South Africa, but also in other British colonies, such as Australia. Murderers' skulls had become the subject of great interest among medics (and the media) on the strength of what was then the leading theory in Neuroscience, i.e., Phrenology. This theory had been formulated by the father of modern Criminology, the Italian Cesare Lombroso, as well as Francis Joseph Gall. The theory postulated that people's brain shape (and therefore skull) was determinative of whether they would demonstrate criminal trends. Modern research eventually proved it to be a false assumption, but for a long time this was the valid scientific view (see this article for more on it, i.a. a press 10 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

description of doctors converging on a hanging in Australia to study the skulls of the executed: https://theconversation.com/natural-born-killers-brain-shape-behaviour-and-the-history-ofphrenology-27518) Anthropologists also studied the skeletons of different ethnic groups, as the well-known case of Saartjie Baartman testifies. The remains of the “African Venus” had, after years of touring Europe, ended up at the Museum of Mankind in Paris, and was not repatriated to South Africa until 2002 – and then only after fierce debate in the French parliament and objections from French scientists, including Philippe Mennecier (then assistant curator of the museum) who had highlighted the continued value of the remains for scientific research.

Which opportunity, according to him, would be destroyed by the funeral planned for her in her native land.

What, then, ensured that this Montagu case would in recent times make so many headlines again? To put it bluntly and brutally honestly: the murderer (now known as Koos Sas, but at other times as one Jacobs, or Erasmus or Olivier) described himself as "the last Bushman of Touws River". A brown man of Khoisan descent. He was shot by a White constable, Jurie Dreyer.

And the man who then dug up and separated his skull (and then boiled the flesh down in a soap pot and took the skull to the USA) was the White Afrikaner church minister of the platteland congregation of Springbok (my namesake great-uncle, "Oudok” - Dr. W.P. Steenkamp).

Thus, all the stereotypes of racial oppression and White Afrikaner heartlessness towards the socalled Coloured people, are present and encapsulated in one newsworthy case. With all the elements lined up to transform this event into a modern-day drama in which a freedom-loving Bushman who supposedly merely had persisted in the time-honoured tradition of his people of “appropriating livestock” as if animals of the veldt, versus a verkrampte, racist rural Afrikaner minister, are the symbolically typical protagonists – on the pattern of Robin Hood and the nasty sheriff of Nottingham...

A potential that did not go unnoticed by the well-known songwriter, the "Kaapse klong" David Kramer, when he saw the skull exhibited in the museum at Montagu in the 1980s. Which then led to his song called the "Ballade van Koos Sas", and subsequently became a play that was staged as far afield as in London.

For it is a fact that, in most nations' literature, there are stories such as that of Robin Hood and Billy the Kid, and with a little imagination and literary freedom, Koos Sas's story could be transformed into such a Cape version (Kramer never tried to hide that his lyrics and play were just very broadly based on the facts – he had added all sorts of characters and elements for dramatic effect, such as a grave digger and a love interest, named Lenie – Koos Sas's woman in real life was called Katrina).

Neither did aspiring writer Pieter Pretorius want to miss this particular bus. He started a social media campaign to raise money to fund his intended book, and is now in the process of making it into a movie with a foreign filmmaker. Here are two screenshots taken from the group's Facebook page, which makes clear the purpose and intended impact of this film: 11 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

The first photo shows Pieterse handing over a copy of his book to "King Khoisan" where he squats outside the Union Buildings in Pretoria; Photo 2's caption reads: "The truth about Koos Sas is spreading. The absolute abuse of the man during colonial times in South Africa must be exposed."

Since I am a writer myself, in principle I have no fault to find with David Kramer's taking of literary liberties with the theme. After all, there is simply no getting away from the harm that was done (especially after 1948) in the name of White Afrikaners, and for the sake of political self-gain, to fellow Afrikaans-speakers who were darker of skin. Such as the removal of their right to vote in the Cape with shenanigans such as the "high court of parliament", plus the Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act, and the ban on loving and marriage across the colour line, to name just some. These horrors can be dryly listed and dissected when dealt with in academic dissertations.

But the playwright, on the other hand, needs emotive symbols that can make the true impact of such dry legalise felt at a normal human level, and undeniably the incidents around Koos Sas do lend themselves to such emotionally impactful symbolic processing and embellishment.

Pieter Pieterse's book, however – despite the typical disclaimer on the inside page – is trying to pretend to present “the facts” (as the Movie team has already plainly averred, with reference to the "truth" that they want to "expose").

Since I have strong family ties with Oudok and can thus be alleged to be biased, I will leave it here to others (with more intimate knowledge of the places and events), to scrutinize the factual fidelity of this particular book and the movie that’s now being based on it.

You can then judge for yourself how much credibility can be attached to the fruits of Mr. Pretorius’s pen, in terms of historical accuracy, as well as elementary knowledge / sound research about the geography of the locations and the times in which it is set...

12 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

The first person to quote here, is Mr Johan Nelson, who wrote to Netwerk24 as follows:

This is not the story I know.

The report "Khoi-San's 'true story' told in this book almost a century later" by Dennis Delport (03.05) – about Pieter Pretorius's book The Ballad of Koos Sas – has reference.

Certain quotations in the book, presented as truth, prompted me to write this letter.

The events took place in 1922 on my grandfather's farm Droëdap, near Springbok in the Northern Cape.

My father, John Thomas Dixon, then 19 years old, was present on the farm when Koos Sas was fatally shot in a police action.

We grew up with the story and it was often recounted, including about the role that coincidence played in it.

My interest was further fuelled by a report in the early 1970s by Madeleine van Biljon in the Sunday Times. I had asked my dad a lot of questions, and he pointed out that, as things go with such stories and as time goes by, people who weren't present had added hearsay tails to it.

To the former writers, I would like to say the following quote in the article upset me: "He (Sas) was then hunted like a wild animal and shot dead near Springbok in the Northern Cape on 18 February 1922. His corpse was devoured by wild animals and vultures."

According to my knowledge (from my father's telling), the full remains of Koos Sas were buried on the farm.

The statement that wild animals tore his corpse apart and that it was plundered by vultures, raises many questions.

From what source was this quote confirmed?

I can only mention that vultures are not found in Namaqualand.

However, the corpse was later exhumed for research and then the skeleton may have been separated from the skull.

(Note: Droëdap is located about 20km., as the crow flies, south of Springbok).

A well-known lawman and former native of Montagu, Mr. Adamus Stemmet (familiar to regular readers of NONGQAI) commented on the book by Pretorius, as follows (for more information on Mr. Stemmet and his legal background, please check out the biography about him that appeared in the November 2021 issue of NONGQAI – Vol. 12 No. 11 – with him on the cover – it can be downloaded

by CLICKING HERE ):

Adamus P Stemmet: Notes on “The Ballad of Koos Sas” by Pieter Pretorius The aim is not to launch an attack on Pieter Pretorius' book THE BALLAD OF KOOS SAS. I write this not as a reviewer but as a Bolander who grew up in Montagu and also spent many years in Namaqualand. Thus, I know the areas where the events played out very well. In fact, I strongly suspect that Koos Sas's hiding place was on an impassable section in deep mountain gorges on our farm. From there he was able to easily reach large portions of the Montagu district as well as the vicinity of Worcester, Ceres and Touws River over terrain where he would be difficult to locate. These are the areas where he was in fact active. In Namaqualand, he happened to be shot dead on a farm that belonged to my family.

The author does not seem to have any knowledge of the relevant areas. Nor of the kind of people who had inhabited those parts at that time.

There is so much about the Koos Sas saga that is not clear and should still be researched. I was hoping that the book would bring some answers. Unfortunately, this it did not do. Being too much skewed for that.

13 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

I tried to read the book again and again, but later I became tired of all the mistakes and improbabilities. In my notes below, I'm only referring to a few, but I can say with certainty that there are even more.

My interest in the Coloured people stems from my mother's interest and work among them. I grew up in Montagu district with the children of Coloured people, not long after the events around Koos Sas, and can attest to the relationship that had existed between the races. This was by no means of the kind as projected in the book.

I grew up hearing the interesting narratives of my father, who apparently knew Koos Sas. Secretly, us children had an admiration for his ability to evade even the police bloodhounds, who could track very well. We laughed at the stock theft and at the man’s masterful evasions, but the murder was gruesome to us.

Some time ago I had already warned (even though I have an understanding and a lot of sympathy for the search for an own identity among these people, some of whom now use the artificial name Khoi and Khoisan), that they should be careful and not wrongly honour proven criminals in the process...

To refer to a criminal like Koos Sas as a San "chief" and San "ruler" as happened elsewhere (not by Pretorius) is ridiculous and does no good to the name and memory of Koos Sas. Neither does the book. There are too many mistakes in it for that.

The book does not do justice to Sas and the Coloured people. They really weren't that backwards at the time. Two neighbouring farms of ours, were actually well farmed by Coloured people.

After my conversations with Pieter Pretorius and our common interest in the Coloured people (whom he calls Khoi and Bushmen), I was really looking forward to something more authoritative about their history... However, the book is so full of errors and improbabilities that it would even make the fictional story laughable if it wasn't about such a tragic part of the history of our town and its surroundings. Even the disclaimer in front of the book is misleading, i.e. "The story is inspired by true incidents. Names and places have been changed to protect people."

Of the real incidents, I get little in the book. The only person in need of protection is Dr. W.P. Steenkamp of Springbok and this was done poorly. He was too famous as a minister and later as politician to be camouflaged. With respect, he may not deserve the protection either. The passage about Koos Sas's skull fills one today with revulsion.

There are many factual errors in the book, some of which I will point out. About the writing style and other errors that could have been pointed out by a seasoned proof-reader, I don't want to express myself.

Related to the book, there are also inaccuracies, such as in The Citizen of 3 May 2021, where Pretorius is quoted as saying (after the handover of the book to King Khoisan at the Union Buildings): "Sas was said to have been a notorious sheep thief, so we are told, who later killed a son of a minister. He was caught time and time again, but escaped again and again. Sas was never convicted of any offence in a court of law, yet was declared an "outlaw" by the then authorities.

“After that, he was hunted like a wild animal..."

14 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

What are the facts?

First: there is evidence that Koos Sas escaped only once before the murder. Not always. What he did well was to elude the police. My dad told us some interesting anecdotes. He was convicted and sentenced several times in courts under different names, e.g. as "Jan Erasmus" – Montagu 15.11.1908 One-month hard labour – theft Montagu 20.11.1908 7 days hard labour – prison regulations Montagu 01.04. 1908 nine months hard labour – stock theft Ceres 10.05.09 twelve months hard labour – house breaking & theft two counts + theft 4 counts Montagu 02.06.1909 six months hard labour Montagu 18.6.1909 twelve months hard labour – house breaking and theft George 21.-6.1910 3 months and 15 cuts – escape from custody Worcester 12.08.1912 one-month hard labour – theft (named Koos Olivier) Besides the name Jan Erasmus, he also used other names such as Koos Olivier, Jacobs, and so on. Eventually, he was shot with another name.

Second: whether the 1917 Criminal Procedure Act made “outlawing” possible, is doubtful but can be researched. That he was "hunted" is not true. He was simply sought like any criminal for whom a warrant for arrest was issued by a court. A warrant was issued on Ceres for his arrest for stock theft under the name Jacobs. To arrest, the police could legally use violence for certain crimes. But shooting upon the orders of a mayor after verbal communications? Unheard of. (p.13, 31). *See input by WPS on legal research, at the end of Mr. Stemmet's quoted notes.

Third: Sas was due to stand trial in the Supreme Court, but a preliminary investigation was required in a magistrate's court. Whether this occurred on Montagu or whether the Criminal Procedure Act in vigour before the 1917 Criminal Procedure Act required it (as I believe), would have to be researched (i.e., if the 1917 Act, which did require such a preliminary investigation, had not yet come into effect).

Unfortunately, the book reveals a lack of knowledge in many fields, including geography, the period in which the story takes place, about the courts and more. I'll name a few: • Bushmen in the 1900s in the Boland who still shoot with bow and arrow? (p2) • Slaves in the nineteen-hundreds? (p1 and p3 – "one of his slaves escaped from his farm") Was slavery not abolished in 1834?

• Guinea fowls and springboks in the Boland mountains? (p29) • Bushmen ("pestilence") must be eradicated, after 1900? (p36) • Department of Anthropology in Montagu Museum (which did not exist - p74).

The police came across Sas in Namaqualand, either by just happening to be there at the right time, or because the constable was alert and familiar with outstanding warrants for criminals. Curiously, however, “many people” there in Namaqualand are alleged to have remembered the murder five years before in Montagu, at a time when there was no radio and newspapers were scarce. Grossly unlikely.

Geography • • • •

Direct road between Montagu and Touws River? (Never existed.)

Touws River in Montagu Magistrate's District? (This is in Worcester's Magistrate's District, so the magistrate of Montagu could not hear any case originating from Touws River) White houses far south in Paternoster visible 200 kilometres from the top of the great river (Olifants River) near Citrusdal, Piekenierskloof???? (If it was South, he was in the sea then) Farmers in Paternoster? (p131 – probably farm with lobsters! – the author gets completely confused, between Paternoster and Piekenierskloof) 15 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

• • • • •

Mountains between Piketberg and Citrusdal? (p132) Knersvlakte near Kamieskroon? (Knersvlakte is North of Vanrhynsdorp and extends +-25 kilometres to Nuwerus) Pastor and son heard the shot about 200 miles away!

Drive for constable's inspection in the Springbok area (p133 - this brings him on horseback in Vanrhynsdorp 260 kilometres away!)

South of Gharies (sic) (p132).

Courts and Court Procedure Because I have a legal background, the truly rue the handling of the legal matters. In this field, the author is completely out of his depth.

• Title “landdros”? (p51 – at the time it was magistrate, which was not changed to landdros until 1957).

• Constable reports to preacher?

• Role of the Messenger of the Court? Taking the oath on an actual Bible? (p85) • "Magistrate" becomes a judge now? Trial takes place in a church hall in the absence of the accused, who is only later called in?

• Constable presents a statement to court, not testimony? (Sounds like a circus or concert) • Magistrate could impose death penalty? People clapping hands in court? (p113) • Jail in Montagu? (It never existed.)

• Court held in Worcester by magistrate who could impose death penalty?

Factual errors • • • • • •

• •

• •

“Hardekool” wood in the Boland? (pp 1 & 7) “Stud” springbok ram? (p1) Constable, arms dealer and also in charge of prison? (pp 13 & 17) Pastor instructs: "Shoot the satan, our prison is full?" Without warrant? Does he have power of life and death? (p13) Constable reports to mayor and is apparently employed by the city council, which eventually dismisses him as well!!!

Pastor attends dance in church hall, where drink was plentiful, and cursed like a sailor?

(Interestingly, the minister who was at Montagu at the time fought a battle against liquor and fiercely proclaimed that dancing was a sin; there was no church hall at Montagu either).

Guinea fowls and springboks in the Boland mountains? (p29) That Sas had a wife, Katrina, on a farm in Ceres and probably children too, we don't hear.

Her name and address were known. Lack of research? Instead, he does long for "little Kara in Montagu" (p131) Gunsmith at Springbok? Who magically transferred the magazine of a Lee-Metford rifle to a Lee-Enfield? (p129 – impossible) Writing with a stylus that uses ink? (p73 - I learned to write with a stylus, but on a slate. In The Laats River Primary School, Montagu – without ink, because it was impossible).

That Pretorius's book is not intended as a piece of research, I accept. The thought of a film makes me shudder, because it will only magnify the false image of racial relationships at the time (which is currently being transmitted worldwide again). I don't think the book was written for that purpose.

Poor knowledge of geography etc., no research (and here I am speaking especially of the period in which the events take place, etc.) sinks the book.

What has bothered me all along is the false image created of the people, their church and institutions. As a writer, Mr. Pretorius could have used the opportunity to promote reconciliation 16 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

between races. He does the opposite. He could easily do that if he kept to the facts. That's all I wanted to see: Facts.

Adamus P. Stemmet Durbanville

*Legal clarification by Dr. W.P. Steenkamp Since I myself (as the author of this article) am an experienced attorney and researcher, apart from having been ambassador, here are some supplemental research results on things that, as Mr. Stemmet rightly pointed out, justified further investigation:

Arrest warrant on charges of murder In addition to the pending warrant for arrest on charges of stock theft authorised by the magistrate of Ceres, die magistrate of Montagu on 12 January 1917 specifically had issued a warrant for Koos Sas's arrest, on the charge of murder. (At that time, the Cape Colony's Criminal Procedure Act of 1828, as amended, was still in force in that jurisdiction – the Union of South Africa's new consolidating Criminal Procedure Act, 31 of 1917, only came into force somewhat later.)

On the following page there is a copy of the original circular of the district detective inspector, in which Koos Sas's prior convictions (under the name Jan Erasmus) are listed; the Cape Colonial Police did make a start with a fingerprint registry in 1904, but the technology was still flawed according to their own reports, so that it was well possible for a criminal – especially during the under-manned years of the 1st World War – to be able to get away with using multiple names.

Declaring someone an “Outlaw" The legal concept of "outlawry" dates back to the Middle Ages in Europe. In the Netherlands and Germany, the name comes from the idea that someone is declared to be like a wild bird, thus that one and all were entitled to hunt him (and, if necessary, kill). The early legal term in English law was "caput lupinum" (make him the head of a wolf) which similarly meant that one and all could raise their hand against such a dangerous criminal — who, by choosing to be a fugitive, did not want to have himself adjudicated. Without there being any legal consequences for the perpetrator of the apprehension or killing.

Later, the English term "outlaw" was coined for such a person (strictly speaking, someone declared to be such by a competent court, but which later in the USA, in particular, began to mean anyone choosing to live outside the norms of the law).

The last known case of a formal declaration of "outlawry" in England was against one William John Banks, in 1841. In the British Empire, "outlawry" was reintroduced by law in Australia in the 1850s.

Such legislation had been promulgated in a number of Australian states to combat the problem of "bushranging" (highway robbery). The Felons Apprehension Act (1865 No 2a) of New South Wales determined that a judge, on evidence of sufficiently notorious conduct, could issue a special judicial bench warrant, which required a suspected person to subject himself to police custody before a given date, or otherwise then be declared an "outlaw". An "outlaw" could then be apprehended "alive or dead" by any of the Queen's subjects, "whether it be a constable or not," and without the apprehender being "liable for the use of any lethal weapon in order to have such detention effected."

Similar provisions had been adopted in Victoria and Queensland.

In the US, the posters of criminals being sought “dead or alive” were broadly underpinned by the same idea, but legal experts today doubt that in practice it really was as common as popular literature and films would suggest (it would have been on the initiative of individual local judges, who were in overall control of law enforcement in their local jurisdictions and often did as they saw fit).

17 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

In the Union of South Africa, there was no similar measure on the statute book. The standard procedure to apprehend a suspect was by way of the issuing of a warrant by a judicial officer, which then had to be executed by a law officer in compliance with his duties of office. In that era, such a lawman could indeed have used violence (if need be, deadly) against a fugitive person with a warrant outstanding, who did not obey a lawful order to surrender himself and was about to get away again — especially in cases of serious crimes, such as murder. Exactly as happened in the case of Sas. But really? Someone declared an “outlaw”, so that one and all could "hunt him, like a wild beast"?

Definitely not! On the contrary – it was precisely the British government's policy, after their second occupation of the Cape, to stop the use of “self-help” against suspected stock thieves (especially Bushmen); one of my own ancestors, Jan Harm Steenkamp, known as “Jan Slaai”, from the farm Zoutpan in the Onder Bokkeveld, after just such an incident in 1812, was imprisoned on Robben Island, having been made an example of by the British, to stress that the only recourse was the law.

After the British Colonial Authorities at the Cape in 1828 had promulgated their English law-based criminal procedure and evidence act to establish these principles even more firmly, such a thing as formally declaring someone an "outlaw" would have been even more unheard of in the Cape.

Do Koos Sas and Oudok Steenkamp respectively fit well into the stereotyped roles of Robin Hood and the evil Sheriff of Nottigham?

When it comes to the entire modern-day exploitation of the Koos Sas saga (whether for money or partisan political gain), I realise all too well that one must be very careful to properly distinguish the forest from the trees – precisely so as not to stare too fixedly at the factual detail of the individual trees. Especially not, while the forest (being, the totality of the untold misery that European colonialism brought to the indigenous Khoi-Khoi and San populations at the Cape, right through to the end of Apartheid) then slips by one’s gaze, unnoticed by our Eurocentric eyes...

However, where it is averred that a book (and subsequent movie) is all about exposing the "truth" – then, surely, the facts are of prime importance. Especially, to verify whether the symbolic role models that are made to stand as protagonists in the modern drama version, do fit historicallycorrectly into those roles.

Because otherwise, if villains are made into heroes, simply because the manner in which they passed away can now be contorted into an exploitable, nicely emotional story because of today's evolved moral sensibilities, then the whole credibility of the exercise can later be called into question.

Particularly when the emperor (or be it the newly-anointed San "chief", our now revered “Oom” Koos Sas) is finally seen naked, for who and what he really was. A career criminal, house-breaker and thief, who in the end escalated to murder most vile, striking from behind an unsuspecting person who was about to gift him food…

Likewise, for making a real hero into a villain, simply as virtue-signalling on the part of the white Afrikaner author? And to fit today's desired political message, tapping into stereotyped biases, rather than to promote reconciliation by sticking to the (inconvenient) facts?

So, let's investigate who Koos Sas and Oudok Steenkamp really were.

Who was Koos Sas? It is convenient to keep describing the deceased with the name Koos Sas, because this is how he is now remembered. It also appears from oral tradition that this was the name under which he was notorious, to the extent that parents in that era allegedly threatened their naughty children with: "If you don't obey now, then Koos Sas will come and get you". It is logical, however, that after the murder and for five years on the run, Sas would NOT have used this then-familiar name.

18 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

It also falls to be noted that the list of crimes for which he was convicted as “Jan Erasmus”, happened over a period of just three years of his adult life, from 1910 to 1912 (he was 35 years old when he committed the murder in the Montagu district). After those three years as “Jan Erasmus”, he appears to have begun to use the name Koos Olivier. At one point also the surname Jacobs (under which the warrant in Ceres against him was still pending).

It 19 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

It would therefore have been informative – if only there had been a proper fingerprint registry in operation at the time – to see how many crimes, of what nature, "Koos Sas" had in fact made himself guilty of, in total, under all the aliases he had used during his crime career. For it is certainly logical to argue that those three years of his adult life would have been broadly representative of the other years as well?

The image now being portrayed is of Sas as an innocent "child of the African veldt" who supposedly (following the earlier Bushman tradition) had merely seen the farm animals belonging to others as also being wildlife that could be freely hunted. However, what stands out about Sas's previous convictions during those three years, was that they were not so much for stock theft, but for housebreaking and theft of property – and it would have needed to have been a particularly obtuse person (regardless of his ethnic origin) who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, did not know that the stuff inside another man's house is not for the taking...

And stupid, Koos Sas certainly wasn't. Quite the opposite…

"Oom" Koos Sas (as he is now called in veneration) was 35 years old when he murdered that young man, D.S. (Boetatjie) Botha – the son of the then well-known Rev. D.S. Botha of Stellenbosch (pictured alongside). A bit young for the honorific “oom”, for sure…

To say now that Sas was never convicted of this murder in a court of law is disingenuous – as good as saying Lee Harvey Oswald didn't kill President J.F. Kennedy – because, you see, Oswald was never convicted of it in a court of law either. For the simple reason that both Sas and Oswald died before they could be tried.

What is incontestable is that Koos Sas had a proven criminal record as long as one’s forearm for crimes such as housebreaking and theft. There's also no indication that he stole to hand out to others, as Robin Hood of old was said to have done...

And from where the alleged chiefdom of the San hails, nobody knows... (Because of the smallpox epidemics in particular, both the Khoi-Khoi and the San's tribal structures had been largely destroyed centuries earlier, and in any case the San were organized only in family groups, not in extensive tribes with overhead authority structures).

It is, incidentally, dangerous to play around lightly with the modern titles of Khoi and San, for what was known in the Old Cape as the Hottentot and the Bushmen populations, before the British came up with the concept of "Coloured". The name “San” for the Bushmen actually comes from the Khoina languages, in which it means "the thieves" (because of the Bushmen's traditional failure to respect the property rights of others, particularly with regard to livestock).

The circumstances of Koos Sas's death as now portrayed in the modern-day versions, are also very much being contested by those in the know, who had been there or had been privy to first handaccounts vouched to them by the actual actors such as police constable Jurie Dreyer himself. As Mr. Johan Nelson said in his letter to Netwerk24, ordinary coincidence played a vital role in it, with Constable Dreyer arriving on a routine farm patrol at the farm Droëdap.

CONSTABLE DREYER’S ACCOUNT: MAJ. W.P. STEENKAMP Here is how Constable Dreyer himself related the events to Oudok and his son, who had arrived there shortly after the incident (as later recounted by his father – Kleindok – to Major Willem Steenkamp – the renowned military historian and grandson of Oudok: pictured on the next page).

20 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Here it is, from Major Willem’s flowing pen: "Jurie Dreyer's story, as he told it to my father.

"Dreyer was on a routine farm visit, and when he arrived at the farm in question (can't remember which one) one of the farm hands led his horse away so the animal could drink and cool down. The labourer seemed vaguely familiar, but it was only when Dreyer entered the house that he realised the farm hand was none other than Koos Sas. He then rushed outside, but Sas already had his wind up and was escaping again — already kicking up dust in the distance as he was running away into the nearby kopjes. Dreyer grabbed his Lee-Enfield (service rifle) and pursued him on foot, calling for Sas to surrender, but Sas didn't pay him any heed, and of course Dreyer didn't have a hope in hell of catching up with him. Sas, being aware of this, then turned around, shouted and laughed provocatively at Dreyer, before turning again to run on. The stopping and laughing was a fatal error of judgment: Dreyer was a good shot and had seized the opportunity to himself stop, aim and shoot Sas down with a single, fatal shot."

Who was Rev. Dr. W.P. Steenkamp (Oudok)?

The first fact that I have to state here, is that "Oudok" Willem Steenkamp is family of mine (to put my possible lack of objectivity on record and under your eyes). He and my great-grandfather Casper were brothers. Because my great-grandfather and great-grandmother Harriet Sophia both died young, my grandfather Willem grew up at the home of his uncle, Oudok. So, the bond is tight. Here is a picture of great-greatgrandfather Willem and his three sons, with my great-grandfather Casper in the middle (he was the oldest) and Oudok Willem next to him, behind their mother.

With this admission properly on record, let's look now at the complex personality of Oudok: certainly not just your stereotypical “verkrampte plattelandse Afrikaanse dominee” of that era. Afrikaner patriot, naturalist, theologian, medical doctor, influential politician. And certainly not a racist — on the contrary, lifelong friend of the Bushmen and Khoi, and hater of Hitler and all that the latter had stood for. Not a Nat, and not a supporter of Apartheid either.

Oudok was popularly known by that honorific, to distinguish him from his son Kleindok – the surgeon Dr. W.P. Steenkamp – the latter being the late father of Major Willem, the renowned military historian and author (so that Major Willem Steenkamp in fact is Oudok’s only grandson).

Oudok often had told the story that he could not have been here on earth, nor would he have survived his childhood, had it not been for two Bushmen women.

21 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

The first incident (without which I would not have been here either) affects our common great-greatgreat grandmother, Mieta Pienaar, daughter of Veldkornet Piet Pienaar. The Pienaar family and Jager Afrikaner and his band of marauders had an altercation on Pienaar’s farm "Groot Toren" in the Hantam section of the Calvinia district. The whole Pienaar family was wiped out, with the exception of little Mieta, who was then nine years old, and her little brother Jacob.

Jager did not want to waste gunpowder and lead shot on them and tried to smash their skulls in with his rifle butt. Luckily, though, she fell unconscious behind the kitchen door, before Jager and his band went galloping off to cross the Orange River with the family’s wagons, animals and all, to establish a tribe in what’s now Namibia that later, under Witbooi, caused the Germans great trouble.

Little Mieta was found by a Bushman girl who had been hiding in a bed of reeds. She was brought round by her, and the two then were able to save the still-unconscious, badly injured Jacob as well.

The second incident occurred when, as a young boy, Oudok was drowning and his mother's then housekeeper, a fearless Bushman woman named Lena, jumped in and rescued him.

This is how he described Lena, with obvious appreciation and admiration, in an article written by him in his own old age: "Yet I still can see her in front of my mind's eye - short, four feet tall - the wrinkled old face, the sharp eyes, the big build-out from behind...

She was a dangerous runner and brave of action." The article in question appeared in the magazine "The Best" of June 1955. The title: "A bushman is also a human being".

In it Oudok defended the Bushmen against the very prejudiced image of them that had existed among South Africa's other population groups.

As a naturalist and amateur anthropologist, he had a lasting interest in the Bushmen of his native Namaqualand and their customs and traditions, as well as an appreciation for their talents as human beings. In the article (copy of the first page alongside) you will find, for example, the following: "The Bushman was considered and treated like a wild creature, but the fact that he is no wild 22 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

creature is evidenced by the Bushman drawings throughout the country. Truly, the life-like portrayal, the action, the accuracy of these, attest to the fact that the Bushman is a born artist.

"Where are rock-wall drawings by Hottentot and Native, or even by white people, to be found in all of the land? It shows that the Bushman has a soul, an eye for beauty and symmetry; He's a real artist."

This was not his only article about the Bushmen, either.

During the Second Anglo-Boer War, Oudok was interned by the British on the grounds of their fear that he would incite others in the Cape Colony to rebellion and their suspicion that he had helped the Boer forces. In addition, in the process of detention, he earned a British bayonet wound in the butt for his troubles...

During the Rebellion of 1914, he was put into a predicament by a confluence of circumstances: a messenger from the Western Transvaal was on his way back to Genl. Manie Maritz in the Northern Cape, from Genl. De la Rey, to not start an armed insurrection. However, the messenger could only get as far as Nieuwoudtville (Oudok's then congregation). Realizing that it was important to get this message against violence to Maritz with utmost urgency, Oudok then undertook to be courier for it.

On his arrival in Kakamas, however, it was too late – Maritz had already crossed the border into German South-West Africa and had started the Rebellion.

The message and Oudok’s persuasion had the positive outcome, though, that some of the rebels under Tobias Beukes then abandoned their dangerous adventure and returned to South Africa.

Despite his good intentions, Oudok (because he was spotted in conversation with the Maritz men) was arrested and summarily imprisoned for five months at the Castle in Cape Town, and then until 1916 in the Old Fort in Johannesburg, in chains with ordinary criminals – something that dealt his health a blow – until he was finally released without charge. The fact that, in 1939, he did not hold this against Gen. Jan Smuts but voted as MP for war to be declared against Hitler on moral grounds (thus for Smuts and against his friend Genl. Barry Hertzog), speaks volumes for Oudok's principled, moral behaviour – but more on that later. (Photo: Oudok as a young man).

Another example of Oudok's Afrikaner patriotism was the fact that he was the first person ever to write a doctoral thesis in the Afrikaans language. It was in the Netherlands, where he went in 1907 to continue his studies in Theology. Despite being fluent in High Dutch and English, he was able to persuade his promoters at the famous Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam to allow him to write the thesis in the language of his heart – a language that then was far yet from enjoying in South Africa itself, official status (the thesis dealt with the agnosticism of Herbert Spencer).

23 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

In his career as a minister in Namaqualand, Oudok was deeply struck by the poverty suffered by so many of the people there, White and Brown. He travelled extensively around his congregations, to make sure that he visited each family. On these trips, the Steenkamp family then camped in their "matjieshuis" typical of that area – it could be pitched quickly and easily transported (see photo left, where Oudok sits in front of the matjieshuis with his household, with his daughter Vivia at his feet).

Oudok became known as "the builder", for his fundraising campaigns to assist the poor and for projects to erect church buildings (such as the one in Springbok, where he was minister from 1919) and the establishment of a new town, the present Kamieskroon.

One of the fund-raising projects on behalf of the charitable work of the ACVV (the woman’s association of his church) among victims of the Spanish Flu (which chalked up even more victims after The First World War than the current COVID pandemic) was the sale of a postcard with a photograph of Koos Sas taken by Oudok's son Willem (the later Kleindok) with his Box Brownie, shortly after Sas had died of the gunshot wound.

I own a copy of the photo – at first, I was reluctant to publish it here (because our sensibilities in the modern era are more fragile than in those days), but upon reflection I realized that if I didn't share it here, then it could be said that I’m hiding negative evidence that’s highly relevant. Publishing the photo here (which I had coloured, for greater clarity) also has three other objectives: • First, the photo shows very clearly (when compared to the photos on the detective department's circular to police stations), that the person shot and photographed at Droëdap and the one in the police photo is definitely one and the same individual.

• Secondly, the framing of the subject in the photo and the focus on the face show that the idea was to capture the individual’s identity, which reinforces the suspicion that young Willem took it for the primary purpose of copying it to Rev. Botha in Stellenbosch.

• Thirdly it is clear that the photo was taken very soon after death, because rigor mortis had not yet set in – as can be deduced on the basis that Const. Dreyer had to brace the deceased's neck and head, and two others had to help hold him up (rigor mortis normally sets in faster after prior physical exertion, such as the running away, and also starts in the neck and facial muscles, so that it can be deduced that the photo was probably taken within two hours after death; the quick drive out to the farm, re-enforces the causal connection with Rev. Botha – seeing that the farm people would have realised that the local minister would have an interest and needed to be informed immediately).

The postcard's caption also stresses the fact that the deceased is the murderer of the son of Rev. Botha of Stellenbosch. Viewed in context this is understandable, given the pivotal role that ministers played in their communities in those days, and the fact that Oudok and Rev. Botha were obviously familiar with each other.

So, it was not strange at all that Oudok and his son Willem, immediately after having been informed, drove the short distance to Droëdap and that his teenage son would have taken the photo. It wasn't sheer morbid curiosity; there was a clear and logical nexus. Publicity norms those days were not like ours today, and publishing such a picture was therefore not extraordinary then – as it is in fact still done freely today in newspapers and on TV in regions such as Latin America and the rest of Africa.

24 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Pictured right: Constable Jurie Dreyer, who shot Koos Sas, posing the corpse for Willem jnr. to take the photo.

Note that the other bystanders have their hats in their hands, indicative that the photography had been undertaken with due respect.

Oudok is studying again – this time to become a medical doctor What had struck Oudok ever more forcefully was that his parishioners needed more than just the healing of their souls – they also needed medical care. So that he became increasingly convinced that he also had to qualify himself as a medical doctor. Shortly after the Koos Sas incident, he put thought to deed, resigned his calling as a minister and at the age of 44 he and his son Willem, later known as Kleindok, first went off to Louisville in Kentucky (USA) to study there, and then to the University of Leiden in The Netherlands, where they both qualified as medical doctors in 1928.

This passion for academia and science, and for the field of medical research in particular, together with his interest in Anthropology, explains why Oudok obtained from the magistrate at Springbok the official permission for the excavation and preservation of Koos Sas's skull, for research purposes (note – only after it had become clear that nobody had claimed the mortal remains). Oudok saw Sas as a very typical physical example of San physiognomy (and there was still the whole Phrenology dimension too, given Sas's long record of criminality) so that he then took the skull with him to Louisville, but thereafter took pains to see to it that he brought it back to South Africa and later donated it to the University of Stellenbosch. As previously stated, the skull was acquired only after it was clear that no one had claimed the corpse. Much is also now made, emotionally, about the fact that the skull was cleaned by cooking off the then-remaining soft tissue in a pot; however, this method is – for better or for worse – how it is done. Certainly, the whole project in those days was seen as a progressive, science-based one aimed at broadening knowledge – not as some form of humiliation.

Ironically, without this decapitation and retention of the skull, there would have been nothing of Sas to re-bury in the Montagu mountains (as was recently done, with some fanfare) since the skeleton that had been buried in a pauper’s grave on Droëdap, would long ago have returned to dust.

Upon his return to South Africa as a medical doctor, Oudok began to practise as General Practitioner (Kleindok continued to qualify himself as a specialist surgeon). Contrary to the custom of the time, Oudok (and later also Kleindok) refused to keep separate consulting rooms/waiting rooms for the different races, believing that all humans were equal creatures of God. He charged a half-crown per consultation (even then, a bargain-basement rate) and treated many patients in need for free. He also at that time accepted a call to the Parow Congregation, healing both spirit and body, and again raising money to construct a fitting church building (the present Moederkerk there).

It should also be mentioned that Oudok was not a socially verkrampte minister. For example, he was not averse to taking a drink when appropriate (his preference was for gin and tonic) or to smoke a cigar. He was known for his temper and his inventively colourful own brand of strong language, (one of his favourite inventions was referring to individuals not of his liking, as “God-verneukers en tempel-skyters” – untranslatable) but what he would not abide, was blasphemy. Klaas Koegelenberg, a well-known character of the era, once famously related how Oudok (of not inconsiderable physical presence) had ridden into town on his horse and had become aware of a 25 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

lot of blaspheming reverberating out from the local canteen. After Oudok had literally cleaned up the place, chucking the blasphemers out on the street, Klaas is said to have remarked laconically: "Ja nee, when old White Hat comes riding into town, then every man better shove his mouth into his arsehole." (Oudok habitually wore a white hat, as can be seen on the earlier “matjieshuis” photo).

Oudok becomes independent member of parliament In 1929 the Great Depression struck and Oudok finally bid farewell to the pastoral ministry, to stand for election as an independent candidate for the parliamentary seat of Namaqualand, in order to advocate the plight of the poor in the Assembly. He was successful, against the two major parties (the Natte and the Sappe), and was the only member of parliament to be elected as an independent – thanks, among other things, to his support among the Coloured voters of the constituency (who were still able to vote those days, and obviously did not pay much heed to the episode with "Oom" Koos Sas – which now again is being blown up, out of historical context and proportion).

It is well remembered to this day by people from those parts, how Oudok as politician incurred the white-hot wrath of some verkrampte Nat voters when he proclaimed at a meeting that, if the white and brown Afrikaans-speakers were allowed to merge by mixing, then a very strong race indeed would be born (it is not realised by many, nowadays, that that wasn’t a fringe thought at the time either – it had struck me, when I had undertaken research for my Masters dissertation on the politics of the so-called Coloured people, that Prime Minister Barry Hertzog actually had draft legislation prepared to integrate the “Coloureds” into the constitutional structure; an initiative upon which time unfortunately ran out, due firstly to the unholy row between Brit and Boer about the flag issue, overtaken then by the all-consuming disaster that was the Great Depression.

In particular, Oudok advocated two causes in parliament – forming a government of national unity to best fight the impact of the Depression, and to abandon the gold standard. For the latter position, he was made out to be a communist — until it was finally done, with good result. His voters reelected him in 1933, against the formidable Dr. A. J. R. van Rhyn.

About those years his grandson (Major Willem) writes as follows in his biography of Oudok entitled:

"The Lion of the North-West" "He (Oudok) was the only independent MP in Parliament, and fearsomely independent he was, advocating two main causes - a national coalition of all parties and the combatting of the poverty caused by the Great Depression.

"He made political enemies by the score but did not care; he was too busy exhorting his fellow politicians, raising money for a plethora of good causes, helping people to find work or fight off the Land Bank, and for good measure doctoring his voters free of charge when this was necessary.

They liked what he was doing and in the 1933 election re-elected him against the doughty Dr A J R van Rhyn.

"Steenkamp made full use of his position to fulfil his self-imposed task. Among other things he was largely responsible for the crucially important irrigation dams at Clanwilliam and Vioolsdrif, nagged the Minister of Mines to let Namaqualand's poor into the diamond diggings, brought relief to the hard-pressed school and congregation of his old parish of Ermelo in the Transvaal and dove headfirst into bitter controversy by advocating a departure from the gold standard, which he rightly saw as essential to recovery from the Great Depression. When that finally happened, he received little credit for it, but he did not care.

"When the National and South African Parties formed a coalition, Steenkamp joined it, since he had long advocated such a step. Many of his supporters, not to mention his existing political enemies, 26 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

were outraged by his decision, and an unfortunate feud was born whose echoes linger to this day.

Nevertheless, his support remained strong enough to return him as the member for Calvinia in 1938.

"His membership in the new United Party was not always a peaceful one, his strongly-held convictions often clashing with party discipline. He was still there, however, when his greatest test came in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. The Prime Minister, General J B M Hertzog, advocated a state of armed neutrality, while his deputy, General Jan Smuts, believed that Nazism was so great a danger to the world that the country could not remain aloof, regardless of the fierce internal disunity that would erupt within the electorate. It was time for everyone in the UP to stand up and be counted.

"Thanks to his own reading and feedback from his son Willem, who had spent much time in Europe on clinical work while preparing to become a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Steenkamp was well-informed about Nazism, and his warm friendships with many of Namaqualand's "boerjode", the Jews who had made their home there and become an integral part of the community, made it clear to him what the only ethical course of action would be.

"Characteristically, he first communed with the Almighty and then consulted with the man he respected most in the world, Tobias Beukes of Modderfontein; they had met one another in 1914 under dramatic circumstances during Steenkamp's abortive attempt to stop Maritz from rebelling, and later his son had married Beukes's daughter, Huibrecht. Beukes, a reader and deep thinker, agreed with him that armed neutrality was not enough: it was necessary to destroy Nazism by force of arms.

"Hertzog lobbied for his vote. Steenkamp refused, painfully aware that it would be both the end of their long association and a thrust to the heart of the political career that was so important to him, that he frankly enjoyed so much and had used to such good effect in his fight against poverty, ignorance, and disease. So it was, and he did not stand again in the 1943 election. He deeply regretted this enforced rustication at the height of his powers and reputation, but not the decision that caused it. " The fact that Oudok on principle voted in favour of South Africa’s participation in the 2nd World War, so that Nazism may be eradicated by force of arms – despite his British internment and bayonet wound, despite Smuts having had him locked up during the Rebellion (without trial and actually completely unjustified), and knowing that this decision of his would cost him his political career, is indicative of his moral foundations, strength of conviction and character, and sense of duty.

What will hopefully be retained by you as a reader of this fact-based description of my great-uncle “Oudok” Dr./Ds. Willem Steenkamp, is that he certainly does not fit well into the role of the "Sheriff of Nottingham" in the modern "Koos Sas as Robin Hood" version now being produced. He was not a racist, as amply illustrated by his resistance against, for example, separate consulting rooms and against Hitler's racial doctrines, as well as him favouring an Afrikaner people not defined by race; he was a champion of the poor; an expert on, and an advocate for, the Bushmen; and last but not least – he was an Afrikaner patriot, most certainly, but he was neither a verkrampte (either socially or politically) nor a member of the National Party and certainly not a supporter of Apartheid.

All the typical baggage that the symbolic, stereotyped "rural White Afrikaner church minister" would thus subliminally contribute to the drama now being constructed, simply wasn't his baggage. On the contrary…

Whether the intended movie will bring out this truth, however, seems doubtful...

27 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

28 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

29 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

KOOS SAS BINNEKORT ‘N FLIEK (sal dit versoening bevorder?)

Dr. Willem Steenkamp Op 7 Januarie 1917 daag ‘n man op by ‘n winkeltjie, op die plaas Hoek-vandie-Berg, buite Montagu in die Kaap. Hy het werk nodig, sê hy. Die eienaar van die winkel, ‘n jong man met ‘n predikant as pa, gee hom toe werk. Maar, ná dag een reeds, besluit die eienaar hy moet die nuwe werknemer maar liefs ontslaan. Die man vra hom toe vir meel. Goedhartig draai die eienaar om, om die meel te kry. Net daar, van agter af, word hy met ‘n swaar skaal-gewig katswink geslaan. En toe keel-afgesny met ‘n knipmes...

Die moordenaar word geëien as ‘n bekende misdadiger met ‘n lang rekord van huisbraak, diefstal en vee-steel, onder verskillende aliasse, op verskillende plekke in die Kaap. Ook ontsnapping uit aanhouding. Die magistraat op Montagu reik op 12 Januarie 1917 ‘n lasbrief uit vir sy arres – aanklag: moord.

Die distrik-speuroffisier volg dit op met ‘n omskrywe aan polisiestasies, met fotos van die verdagte en beskrywing van hom en sy rekord. Volgens een weergawe word hy gearresteer en moet in die Rondgaande Hof in Worcester verskyn, maar ontsnap. Volgens ‘n ander, was hy heeltyd op vrye voet, aan’t vlug en wegkruip.

Vyf jaar later en honderde kilometer van die moord-toneel, kruis ‘n polisieman op roetine plaaspatrollie naby Springbok in Namakwaland en die gesoekte, se paaie. Teen die tyd egter dat die konstabel besef wie die plaaswerker is wat sy perd by hom geneem het om koud te lei, is dié al goed aan die hardloop, die rante in (‘n talent waarvoor die voortvlugtende goed bekend was). Die konstabel sit hom te voet agterna, skreeuend dat hy moet stilstaan, anders sal hy genoodsaak wees om te skiet – soos wat die wet toe aan geregsdienaars die reg vergun het om te doen, as laaste uitweg. Die konstabel besef dat hy, met sy agterstand, plus geweer om te dra en die voortvlugtende se bekende hardloop-talent (daar is gesê dat hy ‘n perd kon flou hardloop) die man nie sal kan inhaal nie. Maar toe stop die ontvlugter, draai om en tart die polisieman met: "Kyk vir oulaas na my, ek groet jou! Ha-Ha-Ha".

Nou die polisieman was ‘n knap skut, met sy Lee-Enfield diensgeweer. Met die besef dat dit sy laaste geleentheid sou wees, mik hy en skiet een skoot. Wat die ontvlugter noodlottig tref.

Die dood van die berugte misdadiger het opslae verwek in die Kaap. Mense het na die plaas gereis en fotos geneem. Die lyk is daar op die plaas begrawe. Toe niemand die lyk op-eis nie, verkry ‘n gesiene inwoner met belangstelling in die mediese wetenskap en Volkekunde, die nodige vergunning by die plaaslike magistraat om die lyk op te grawe en die skedel vir navorsingsdoeleindes te bewaar. Daardie skedel het toe draai gaan maak by ‘n mediese fakulteit in die VSA, maar is teruggebring Suid-Afrika toe en aan die Universiteit van Stellenbosch geskenk, wat dit toe later aan die museum op Montagu geskenk het. Waar dit tot onlangs uitgestal is, saam met die geweer waarmee hy gedood is.

30 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

In 2021 is die skedel formeel herbegrawe in ‘n sarkofaag in die berge buite Montagu, tydens ‘n seremonie wat wye pers-dekking geniet het en kennelik ten doel gehad het om weer die ongure verlede van Blanke Afrikaner onderdrukking van, en rassisme teen die Bruinmense te onderstreep (al is vroom verkondig dat die hoof-tema “vergifnis, versoening en vrede” sou wees).

Vir die betrokke era waarin dit afgespeel het, klink dié storie nie buitengewoon nie. Soortgelyke insidente het voorgekom – nie net in Suid-Afrika nie, maar ook in ander Britse kolonies, soos Australië. Moordenaars se skedels het die onderwerp van groot belangstelling onder medici geword (en die media) op sterkte van wat toe die leidende teorie in die Neuro-wetenskap was, nl. die Frenologie. Geformuleer deur die vader van die moderne Kriminologie, die Italianer Cesare Lombroso, asook Frans Joseph Gall. Die teorie het behels dat mense se brein-vorm (en dus skedel) glo bepalend is vir of hulle kriminele tendense sou demonstreer. Dis ondertussen as vals bewys, maar vir lank was dit die geldende beskouing (sien hierdie artikel vir meer daaromtrent: https://theconversation.com/natural-born-killers-brain-shape-behaviour-and-the-history-ofphrenology-27518 ) Ook antropoloë het die skelette van verskillende volksgroepe bestudeer, soos die bekende geval van Saartjie Baartman getuig. Die “Hottentot Venus” se oorskot het in die Museum van die Mensheid in Parys te reg gekom, en is eers in 2002 na Suid-Afrika gerepatrieer, na heftige debat in die Franse parlement en besware van Franse wetenskaplikes, waaronder Philippe Mennecier (assistentkurator van die museum) wat die voortgesette waarde van die oorskot vir wetenskaplike navorsing beklemtoon het, welke geleentheid volgens hom vernietig sou word deur ‘n begrafnis.

Wat het dan gemaak dat hierdie Montagu-geval nou weer soveel opslae maak? Om dit nou maar baie kort en brutaal-eerlik te stel: die moordenaar (nou bekend as Koos Sas, maar op ander tye as ene Jacobs, of Erasmus of Olivier) het homself beskryf as “die laaste Boesman van Touwsrivier”. ‘n Bruinman. Hy is geskiet deur ‘n Blanke konstabel, Jurie Dreyer. En die man wat toe sy lyk opgegrawe en onthoof het (en toe die vlees in ‘n seep-pot afgekook het en die skedel meegeneem het VSA toe) was die Wit Afrikaanse dominee van Springbok (my eie groot-oom, “Oudok” Dr. W.P. 31 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Steenkamp). Dus al die stereotipes van ras-onderdrukking en Blanke Afrikaner harteloosheid teenoor die sg. Bruinmense. Met al die elemente vir optooi vandag in ‘n drama waarin ‘n vryheidsliewende Boesman-veedief en ‘n verkrampte plattelandse Afrikaner predikant die simboliestipiese protagoniste is – op die patroon van Robin Hood en die nare sheriff van Nottingham... ‘n Potensiaal wat nie ongesiens by die bekende liedjieskrywer, “Kaapse klong” David Kramer verbygegaan het nie, toe hy in die tagtigerjare die skedel-uitstalling in die museum op Montagu gesien het nie. Wat toe eers uitgeloop het op sy liedjie genaamd die “Ballade van Koos Sas”, en daarna ‘n toneelstuk geword het wat tot in Londen op die planke gebring is. Want sien, in meeste nasies se literatuur is daar verhale soos dié van Robin Hood en Billy the Kid, en met ‘n bietjie verbeelding en literêre vryheid kon Koos Sas se verhaal in só ‘n Kaapse weergawe omskep word (Kramer het nooit doekies omgedraai daaroor nie dat sy lirieke en toneelstuk net maar baie breedweg op die feite gebaseer is – dit het allerlei karakters en elemente bygewerk vir dramatiese effek, soos bv. ‘n graf-grawer en ‘n opgetowerde liefdesbelangstelling, genaamd Lenie – Koos Sas se vrou in die werklike lewe se naam was Katrina).

Ook nie by die aspirant-skrywer Pieter Pretorius nie. Hy het begin met ‘n sosiale media-kampanje om geld in te samel om sy beoogde boek te befonds, en is nou in die proses om dit saam met ‘n buitelandse filmmaker tot fliek te maak. Hier is twee skerm-grepe geneem uit dié groep se Facebook-blad, wat duidelik maak wat die oogmerk en inslag met dié film is:

Die eerste foto toon Pieterse wat ‘n eksemplaar van sy boek oorhandig aan “Koning Khoisan” waar dié plak buite die Uniegebou in Pretoria; Foto 2 se byskrif lees: “The truth about Koos Sas is spreading. The absolute abuse of the man during colonial times in South Africa must be exposed.”

32 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Siende dat ek self skrywer is, het ek in beginsel nie fout te vind met David Kramer se neem van literêre vryheid met die tema nie. Daar is eenvoudig tog nie weg te kom nie van dit wat (veral na 1948) in naam van Blanke Afrikaners ter wille van politieke eiegewin gedoen is aan medeAfrikaanssprekendes wat donkerder van vel was. Die wegneem van die stemreg in die Kaap, met slenters soos die “hoër hof van die parlement”, die Groepsgebiedwet en die verbod op liefde en huwelike oor die kleurskeidslyn. Dit kan só droog in akademiese dissertasies gelys word, maar die dramaturg het simbole nodig wat die impak duidelik maak op gewoon-menslike vlak, en die insidente rondom Koos Sas leen hulself tot sulke simboliese verwerking en aanvulling.

Pieter Pieterse se boek egter – ondank die tipiese ontkennings op die binneblad – probeer gewis voorgee om die feite weer te gee (soos die Fliekspan nou ook reeds hoog opgee oor die “truth” wat hulle wil “expose”).

Siende dat ek familie-gewys eie verbintenis het met Oudok, sal ek dit hier oorlaat aan andere (met intiemer kennis van die plekke en gebeure), om die feite-getrouheid van die boek en wat daaromheen geprojekteer word, onder die loep te neem. U kan dan self oordeel oor hoeveel geloofwaardigheid daaraan geheg kan word...

Die eerste persoon om aan te haal, is Mnr. Johan Nelson, wat soos volg geskryf het aan Netwerk24:

Dít is nie die Koos Sas-storie wat ek ken nie Die berig “Khoi-San se ‘ware storie’ byna ’n eeu later in dié boek vertel” deur Dennis Delport (03.05) – oor Pieter Pretorius se boek Die ballade van Koos Sas – het betrekking.

Sekere aanhalings in die boek, wat voorgehou word as die waarheid, het my genoop om hierdie brief te skryf.

Die verhaal het in 1922 afgespeel op my oupa se plaas Droëdap, naby Springbok in die NoordKaap.

My pa, John Thomas Dixon, toe 19 jaar oud, was teenwoordig op die plaas toe Koos Sas in ’n polisieoptrede noodlottig geskiet is.

Ons het met die verhaal grootgeword en dit is gereeld oorvertel, ook oor die rol wat toeval daarin gespeel het.

My belangstelling is verder aangewakker deur ’n berig in die vroeë 1970’s deur Madeleine van Biljon in die Sunday Times.

Ek het baie vrae aan my pa gevra en hy het ook genoem dat, soos dit met sulke stories gaan en soos tyd verloop, het mense wat nie daar teenwoordig was nie, hoorsê-stertjies bygelas.

Aan eersgenoemde skrywers wil ek sê die volgende aanhaling in die berig steek my dwars in die krop: “Daarna is hy soos ’n wilde dier gejag en op 8 Februarie 1922 naby Springbok in die Noord-Kaap doodgeskiet. Sy lyk is deur wilde diere en aasvoëls verslind.”

Volgens my wete (vanuit oorlewering van my pa) is die volle oorskot van Koos Sas op die plaas begrawe.

Die stelling dat wilde diere sy lyk verskeur en dit deur aasvoëls geplunder is, laat vele vrae.

33 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Uit watter bron is hierdie aanhaling bevestig?

Ek kan ook net noem dat aasvoëls nie in Namakwaland voorkom nie.

Die lyk is wel later opgegrawe vir navorsing en toe is die skelet moontlik van die kopbeen geskei.

(Droëdap is so 20km soos kraai vlieg suid van Springbok geleë).

AP Stemmet: Notas oor boek “Die Ballade van Koos Sas” deur Pieter Pretorius ‘n Bekende regsman en oud-boorling van Montagu, Mnr. Adamus Stemmet (goed bekend aan gereelde lesers van NONGQAI) het soos volg op die boek van Pretorius kommentaar gelewer (vir meer inligting oor Mnr. Stemmet en sy regsagtergrond, kan u gerus kyk na die biografie oor hom wat in die November 2021 uitgawe van NONGQAI verskyn het – Vol. 12 No. 11 – met hom op die voorblad – dit kan afgelaai word deur HIER TE KLIEK ): Notas oor die BALLADE VAN KOOS SAS deur Pieter Pretorius Die doel is nie om ‘n aanval op Pieter Pretorius se boek DIE BALLADE VAN KOOS SAS te loods nie. Ek skryf hierdie nie as ‘n resensent nie maar as ‘n Bolander wat in Montagu grootgeword het en ook baie jare in Namakwaland deurgebring het. Ek ken dus die terreine waar die gebeure afgespeel het baie goed. Trouens, ek vermoed sterk dat Koos Sas se skuilplek op ‘n onbegaanbare gedeelte in diep bergklowe van ons plaas was. Daarvandaan kon hy groot gedeeltes van die Montagu-distrik asook die omgewing van Worcester, Ceres en Touwsrivier maklik bereik oor terreine waar hy moeilik opgespoor kon word. Dit is die gebiede waar hy bedrywig was. In Namakwaland is hy toevallig op ‘n plaas wat aan familie van my behoort het, doodgeskiet.

Dit lyk nie of die skrywer enige kennis van die betrokke gebiede het nie. Ook nie van die soort mense wat die betrokke gedeeltes destyds bewoon het nie.

Daar is soveel oor die Koos Sas saga wat nie duidelik is nie en nog nagevors behoort te word. Ek het gehoop die boek sal ‘n paar antwoorde bring. Dit het ongelukkig nie. Daarvoor word te veel skeefgetrek.

Ek het die boek weer en weer probeer lees maar werklik later moeg geword van al die foute en onwaarskynlikhede. In my notas hieronder verwys ek net na ‘n paar maar ek kan met sekerheid sê dat daar nog meer is.

My belangstelling in die Bruinmense spruit uit my moeder se belangstelling en werk onder hulle. Ek het in die Montagu-distrik saam met die Bruinmense se kinders grootgeword, nie lank na die gebeure i.v.m. Koos Sas nie en kan getuig van die verhouding wat tussen rasse al daar bestaan het. Dit is hoegenaamd nie die verhoudings soos weergegee in die boek nie.

Ek het grootgeword met interessante vertellings van my Pa, wat Koos Sas blykbaar geken het.

Heimlik het ons kinders ‘n bewondering gehad vir sy vermoë om selfs die polisie se bloedhonde, wat goed kon spoorsny, te ontduik. Oor die veediefstal en sy meesterlike ontduikings het ons gelag, maar die moord was vir ons grusaam.

Ek het reeds ‘n tyd terug gewaarsku dat, alhoewel ek ‘n begrip en baie simpatie het vir die soeke na ‘n identiteit van hierdie mense, waarvan sommige nou die kunsmatige naam Khoi en Khoisan gebruik, hulle versigtig moet wees en nie bewese misdadigers in die proses verkeerdelik vereer nie... Om na ‘n misdadiger soos Koos Sas as ‘n San “chief” en San “ruler” te verwys soos elders 34 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

gebeur het (nie deur Pretorius nie), is belaglik en doen die naam en nagedagtenis van Koos Sas geen goed nie. Die boek ook nie. Daarvoor is daar te veel foute in. Die boek laat nie reg geskied aan Sas en die Bruinmense nie. Hulle was werklik nie meer so agterlik daardie tyd nie. Op twee buurplase van ons het Bruinmense geboer.

Na my gesprekke met Pieter Pretorius en ons gemeenskaplike belangstelling in die Bruinmense (wat hy Khoi en Boesman noem) het ek werklik uitgesien na iets meer gesaghebbend oor hul geskiedenis... Die boek is egter so vol foute en onwaarskynlikhede dat dit selfs die fiksieverhaal belagwekkend sou maak as dit nie oor so ‘n tragiese deel van ons dorp en omgewing se geskiedenis gaan nie. Selfs die VRYWARING voor in die boek is misleidend, nl. “Die storie is geïnspireer deur ware insidente. Name en plekke is verander om mense te beskerm.”

Van die ware insidente kry ek min in die boek. Al mense wat beskerming nodig het, is Dr. W.P. Steenkamp van Springbok en dit is swak gedoen. Hy was te bekend as predikant en later politikus om gekamoefleer te word. Met respek, verdien hy dalk ook nie die beskerming nie. Die gedeelte oor Koos Sas se kopbeen vervul ‘n mens met weersin.

Daar is baie feite-foute in die boek, waarvan ek sommige sal uitwys. Oor die skryfstyl en ander foute wat deur ‘n gesoute proefleser uitgewys kon word, wil ek my nie uitlaat nie.

Buite die boek is daar ook onjuisthede, soos bv. Die Burger van 3 Mei 2021 waar Pretorius na die oorhandiging van die boek aan Koning Khoisan by die Uniegebou soos volg aangehaal word: “Sas was glo ‘n berugte skaapdief, so word ons vertel, wat later ‘n seun van ‘n predikant doodgemaak het. Hy is keer op keer gevang maar het telkens ontsnap. Sas is nooit in ‘n hof aan enige misdryf skuldig bevind nie, maar tog deur die destydse owerheid ‘voëlvry’ verklaar. Daarna is hy soos ‘n wilde dier gejag...”

Wat is die feite?

Eerstens: daar is bewyse dat Koos Sas voor die moord net een keer ontsnap het. Nie telkens nie.

Wat hy wel goed gedoen het, was om die polisie te ontwyk. Hieroor het my Pa ons interessante staaltjies vertel. Hy is verskeie kere in howe onder verskillende name skuldig gevind en gevonnis, bv. as “Jan Erasmus” – Montagu 15.11.1908 One month hard labour – theft Montagu 20.11.1908 7 days hard labour – prison regulations Montagu 01.04. 1908 nine months hard labour – stock theft Ceres 10.05.09 twelve months hard labour – house breaking & theft two counts + theft 4 counts Montagu 02.06.1909 six months hard labour Montagu 18.6.1909 twelve months hard labour – house breaking and theft George 21.-6.1910 3 months and 15 cuts – escape from custody Worcester 12.08.1912 one-month hard labour – theft (onder naam Koos Olivier) Behalwe die naam Jan Erasmus het hy ook ander name gebruik soos Koos Olivier, Jacobs, en so meer. Uiteindelik is hy met nog ‘n ander naam doodgeskiet.

Tweedens: of die 1917-Strafproseswet VOËLVRY VERKLAAR moontlik gemaak het, word betwyfel maar kan nagevors word. Dat hy “gejag” is, is nie waar nie. Hy is doodeenvoudig gesoek soos enige misdadiger waarvoor daar ‘n lasbrief vir arrestasie deur ‘n hof uitgereik is. Daar was ‘n lasbrief op Ceres uitgereik vir sy arrestasie vir veediefstal onder die naam Jacobs. Om te arresteer kon die polisie vir sekere misdade wettiglik geweld gebruik. Maar skiet in opdrag van ‘n burgemeester na mondelinge meedelings? Ongehoord. (p.13, 31). *sien inset deur WPS oor regsnavorsing, aan einde van Mnr. Stemmet se aangehaalde notas.

35 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Derdens: Sas sou in die Hooggeregshof verhoor word maar daarvoor was ‘n voorlopige ondersoek in ‘n magistraatshof nodig. Of dit op Montagu plaasgevind het en of die Strafproseswet voor die 1917-Strafproseswet dit vereis het, soos ek glo, sal nagevors moet word (d.w.s., as die 1917-wet, wat dit wel vereis het, nog nie in werking was nie).

Die boek openbaar ongelukkig gebrek aan kennis op vele terreine, o.a. op geografie, die tydperk waarin die verhaal afspeel, howe en meer. Ek noem ‘n paar: • Boesmans in die 1900’s in die Boland wat nog met pyl en boog skiet? (p2) • Slawe in die negentien-honderds? (p1 en p3 – “een van sy slawe het ontsnap van sy plaas af”) Is slawerny nie in 1834 afgeskaf nie?

• Tarentale en springbokke in die Bolandse berge? (p29) • Boesmans (“pes”) moet uitgeroei word, na 1900? (p36) • Departement Antropologie in Montagu-museum (wat nie bestaan het nie - p74).

Die polisie het toevallig, of omdat die konstabel wakker was en bekend was met uitstaande lasbriewe vir misdadigers, in Namakwaland op Sas afgekom. Eienaardig onthou baie mense daar egter van die moord vyf jaar terug op Montagu, in ‘n tyd toe daar geen radio was nie en koerante skaars was. Erg onwaarskynlik.

Geografie • • •

• • • • • •

Direkte pad tussen Montagu en Touwsrivier? (Bestaan nou nog nie.)

Touwsrivier in Montagu landdrosdistrik? (Dit is in Worcester se landdrosdistrik, en die magistraat op Montagu kon dus geen saak afkomstig uit Touwsrivier aanhoor nie) Wit huisies ver suid in Paternoster sigbaar 200 kilometer vanaf boloop van groot rivier (Olifantsrivier) dus naby Citrusdal, Piekenierskloof???? (as dit Suid was, was hy toe in die see) Boere in Paternoster? (p131 – boer seker met krewe! – die skrywer raak heeltemal deurmekaar, tussen Paternoster en Piekenierskloof) Berge tussen Piketberg en Citrusdal? (p132) Knersvlakte naby Kamieskroon? (Knersvlakte is Noord van Vanrhynsdorp en strek +-25 kilometers tot by Nuwerus) Predikant en seun hoor die skoot ongeveer 200 kilometers weg!

Ry vir konstabel se inspeksie in die Springbok-omgewing (p133 - dit bring hom te perd in Vanrhynsdorp 260 kilometers vêr!)

Suid van Gharies (sic) (p132).

Howe en Hofprosedure Omdat ek ‘n regsagtergrond het, gru die hantering van die regsaangeleenthede my. Op hierdie terrein, is die skrywer heeltemal uit sy diepte uit.

• Titel landdros? (p51 – destyds was dit magistraat, wat eers in 1957 na landdros verander is).

• Konstabel doen verslag aan predikant?

• Rol van die Bode van die Hof? Op die Bybel eed aflê? (p85) • “Landdros” word sommer nou ‘n regter? Verhoor vind in ‘n kerksaal in die afwesigheid van beskuldigde plaas, wat eers later ingeroep word?

• Konstabel lê verklaring aan die hof voor, en nie getuienis nie? (Klink soos ‘n sirkus of konsert) • Landdros kan doodstraf oplê? Mense klap hande in die hof? (p113) • Tronk op Montagu? (het nooit bestaan nie).

• Rondgaande Hof in Worcester gehou deur landdros wat doodstraf kan oplê?

36 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Feite-foute: • Hardekool-hout in die Boland? (pp 1 & 7) • Stoet springbok-ram? (p1) • Konstabel, wapenhandelaar en sommer ook in bevel van die tronk? (pp 13 & 17) • Dominee gee opdrag: “skiet die satan, ons tronk is vol?” Sonder lasbrief? Hy het dus mag oor lewe en dood? (p13) • Konstabel doen verslag aan burgemeester en is blykbaar in diens van die stadsraad, wat hom uiteindelik sommer ontslaan ook!!!

• Predikant woon dans by in kerksaal, waar drank volop was en vloek soos ‘n matroos? (Dit is interessant dat die predikant wat daardie tyd op Montagu was juis ‘n stryd teen drank gevoer het en kwaai beweer het dat dans sonde was; daar was ook nie ‘n kerksaal op Montagu nie).

• Tarentale en springbokke in die Bolandse berge? (p29) • Dat Sas ‘n vrou, Katrina, op ‘n plaas in Ceres gehad het en seker kinders ook, hoor ons nie.

Haar naam en adres was bekend. Gebrek aan navorsing? Hy verlang wel na “klein Kara op Montagu” (p131) • Geweersmid op Springbok? Wat ‘n magasyn van ‘n Lee Metford oorplaas op ‘n Lee Enfield? (p129 – onmoontlik) • Met ‘n griffel skryf? (p73 – met ink???? Ek het met ‘n griffel leer skryf, maar op ‘n lei. In die Laerskool Laatsrivier, Montagu – sonder ink, want dit was onmoontlik).

Dat Pretorius se boek nie as navorsingstuk bedoel is nie, aanvaar ek. Die gedagte aan ‘n rolprent laat my sidder, want dit sal die vals beeld van rasse-verhoudings destyds (wat tans weer wêreldwyd skeef oorgedra word) net vergroot. Ek wil glo dat die boek nie vir daardie doel geskryf is nie.

Swak kennis van geografie ens., geen navorsing (en hier praat ek veral van die tydperk waarin die gebeure afspeel, ens.) sink die boek.

Wat my die hele tyd gepla het, is die vals beeld wat van die mense, hulle kerk en instellings geskep word. As skrywer kon Mnr. Pretorius die geleentheid gebruik het om versoening tussen rasse te bevorder. Hy doen die teendeel. Hy sou dit maklik kon regkry, as hy by die feite gehou het. Dis terloops al wat mens wou sien: Feite.

Adamus P. Stemmet Durbanville

*Opheldering oor die Reg: Dr. W.P. Steenkamp Ekself (as skrywer van hierdie artikel) is ‘n deurwinterde prokureur. Hiermee enkele aanvullings oor dinge wat, soos Mnr. Stemmet tereg uitgewys het, verdere navorsing geregverdig het:

Arres-lasbrief op aanklag van moord Benewens die hangende lasbrief vir inhegtenisneming op aanklag van veediefstal gemagtig deur die magistraat op Ceres, het die magistraat op Montagu op 7 Januarie 1917 spesifiek ‘n lasbrief uitgereik gehad vir Koos Sas se arres, op die klag van moord. (Op daardie stadium was die Kaapkolonie se Strafproseswet van 1828, soos gewysig, nog van krag – die Unie van Suid-Afrika se nuwe konsoliderende Strafproseswet, 31 van 1917, het eers later van krag geword.) Op die volgende bladsy is ‘n afskrif van die oorspronklike omsendskrywe van die speur-offisier, waarin Koos Sas se misdrywe (onder die naam Jan Erasmus) gelys word; die Kaapse koloniale polisie het wel in 1904 ‘n begin gemaak met ‘n vingerafdruk-register, maar die tegnologie was volgens hulle eie verslae nog maar gebrekkig, sodat dit goed moontlik was vir ‘n krimineel – veral gedurende die onder-bemande jare van die 1e Wêreld-Oorlog – om te kon wegkom met die gebruik van veelvuldige name.

37 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

“Voëlvry verklaar” Die regsbegrip “voëlvry” dateer uit die Middel-eeue in Europa. In die Nederlande en Duitsland, kom die naam van die idee dat iemand verklaar word om soos ‘n wilde voël te wees, wat dit een en almal vry staan om te jag (en desnoods te dood). Die Engelse regsterm was “caput lupinum” (maak hom die kop van ‘n wolf) wat insgelyks beteken het dat een en elk sy hand kon lig teen so ‘n gevaarlike krimineel – wat, deur voortvlugtig te wees, nie homself wou laat beregtig nie – sonder regsgevolge vir die dader.

Later het die term “outlaw” vir so ‘n persoon posgevat (streng gesproke, iemand deur ‘n bevoegde hof só verklaar, maar wat populêr later in veral die VSA, begin beteken het enigeen wat kies om buite die norme van die reg te lewe). Die laaste bekende geval van ‘n deklarasie van “outlawry” in Engeland was teen ene William John Banks, in 1841. In die Britse Ryk is “outlawry” in die 1850’s in Australië weer per wet ingestel.

Sulke wetgewing is in ‘n aantal Australiese deelstate geproklameer om die probleem van “bushranging” (struikrowery) te bekamp. Die “Felons Apprehension Act” (1865 No 2a) van NieuSuid-Wallis het bepaal dat 'n regter, op bewys van voldoende berugte optrede, 'n spesiale regbanklasbrief kon uitreik, wat vereis het dat 'n verdagte persoon homself voor 'n gegewe datum aan polisie-aanhouding moet onderwerp, of andersins dan verklaar word tot ‘n “outlaw”. 'n “Outlaw” kon dan "lewendig of dood" deur enige van die Koningin se onderdane aangekeer word, "of dit nou 'n konstabel is of nie", en sonder om "aanspreeklik te wees vir die gebruik van enige dodelike wapen ten einde sodanige aanhouding te bewerkstellig het." Soortgelyke bepalings is in Victoria en Queensland aangeneem.

In die VSA is die plakkate van misdadigers wat gesoek word, “dead or alive” (soos in Cowboy-flieks gesien) breedweg deur dieselfde idee onderlê, maar regskenners twyfel vandag of dit in die praktyk werklik so algemeen voorgekom het as wat populêre literatuur en films te kenne wil gee (dit sou op inisiatief van individuele plaaslike regters gewees het, wat in oorhoofse beheer was van wetstoepassing in hulle plaaslike jurisdiksie en dikwels maar gedoen het soos hulle goed dink).

In die Unie van Suid-Afrika was daar nie enige soortgelyke maatreël op die wetboek nie. Die geykte prosedure om ‘n verdagte aan te keer, was by wyse van die uitreik van ‘n lasbrief deur ‘n geregtelike beampte, wat dan deur ‘n geregsdienaar ten uitvoer gebring moes word in die nakoming van sy ampspligte. In daardie era kon so ‘n geregsdienaar wel geweld gebruik het (desnoods dodelik) as ‘n voortvlugtende persoon met ’n lasbrief teen hom, nie ‘n wettige bevel om homself oor te gee gehoorsaam het nie en op die punt gestaan het om weer weg te kom – veral dan in geval van ernstige misdade soos moord. Presies soos wat met Koos Sas gebeur het.

Maar iemand voëlvry verklaar, sodat Jan Alleman hom kon “jag, soos ‘n wilde dier”? Bepaald nie!

Inteendeel – dit was juis die Britse owerheid se beleid, na hulle tweede besetting van die Kaap, om die gebruik van eie reg teen vermeende veediewe (veral Boesmans) stop te sit; een van my eie verlangse voorsate, Jan Harm Steenkamp, bekend as Jan Slaai, van die plaas Zoutpan in die Onder-Bokkeveld, het na só ‘n insident in 1812 op Robbeneiland in die tronk beland, synde tot voorbeeld gemaak deur die Britte. Na die Britse koloniale owerheid in 1828 aan die Kaap hulle Britsgebaseerde strafproses- en bewys-wet geproklameer het om hierdie beginsels nog stewiger te vestig, sou so-iets soos “voëlvry” nog meer ongehoord gewees het.

Die Polisie-omsendskrywe Dit is dan ook duidelik dat die distrik-speuroffisier se omsendskrywe aan al die omliggende polisiestasies, met al Sas se vorige veroordelings (soos bekend) en fotos, heeltemal standaard was.

Gewis was daar geen melding daarin dat Sas “voëlvry” verklaar was nie! (sien op volgende blad).

38 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

39 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Pas Koos Sas en Oudok Steenkamp onderskeidelik in die stereotipe rolle van Robin Hood en die wrede Sheriff van Nottingham?

By betragting van die hele hedendaagse uitbuiting van die Koos Sas-sage (hetsy vir geld maak of politieke gewin) besef ek maar alte goed dat mens baie versigtig moet wees om die bos en die bome deeglik te onderskei – om dus nie te puntenerig in die detail van die individuele bome vas te kyk nie, terwyl die bos (synde die ellende wat Europese kolonialisme vir die inheemse Khoi-Khoi en San bevolkings aan die Kaap meegebring het, reg deur tot met die einde van Apartheid) asof onopgemerk by mens se Eurosentriese oog verby gaan...

Waar dit hier beweerdelik oor die “truth” gaan, is die feite egter tog deeglik van belang – veral om te sien of die simboliese rol-modelle wat as protagoniste in die moderne drama-weergawe staangemaak word, histories-korrek by daardie rolle inpas.

Want anders, as van skurke helde gemaak word omdat die manier van hulle heengaan tot ‘n uitbuitbaar-lekker emosionele storie opgetooi kan word i.t.v. vandag se morele oordele, dan kan die hele geloofwaardigheid van die oefening later in twyfel getrek word, wanneer die keiser (of dan die nuut-gekroonde San “chief”, die eerbiedwaardige “Oom” Koos Sas) uiteindelik nakend gesien word vir wat hy werklik was.

Net so vir die maak van ‘n werklike held tot die skurk, bloot om vandag se gewensde politieke boodskap te pas en by stereotipe voor-oordele in te kan tap...

Laat ons dus nou objektief-histories kyk na wie Koos Sas en Oudok Steenkamp werklik was.

Wie was Koos Sas? Dit pas om die oorledene te bly beskryf met die naam Koos Sas, want só word hy nou onthou. Dit blyk ook uit oorlewerings dat dit die naam was waaronder hy berug was, tot die mate dat ouers in daardie era glo hulle stout kinders gedreig het met: “As jy nie nou gehoorsaam nie, dan sal Koos Sas jou kom haal”.

Dit is egter logies dat Sas, na die opspraakwekkende moord en vir vyf jaar op vlug, allermins hierdie bekende naam toe langer meer sou gebruik het.

Dit val op dat die lys misdade waaraan hy as Jan Erasmus skuldig bevind is, oor ‘n periode van net drie jaar gebeur het, van 1910 – 1912. Daarna het hy die naam Koos Olivier begin gebruik. Op ‘n stadium ook die van Jacobs (onder welke van die lasbrief in Ceres teen hom nog hangende was).

Dit sou dus insiggewend gewees het – as daar destyds maar tog net reeds ‘n behoorlike vingerafdruk-register in werking was – om te kon sien aan hoeveel misdade, van welke aard, “Koos Sas” in werklikheid hom skuldig gemaak het, in totaal, onder al sy aliasse. Want dis seker logies om te redeneer dat daardie drie jaar van sy volwasse lewe breedweg verteenwoordigend sou gewees het van die ander jare ook?

Anders as die beeld van Sas as “kind van die veld” wat in die Boesman-tradisie ander se plaasdiere vir wild aangesien het wat vrylik gejag kon word, val dit op dat Sas se veroordelings in daardie drie jaar nie soseer vir veediefstal was nie, maar wel vir huisbraak en diefstal.

Dit sou tog ‘n besonder stompsinnige persoon moes gewees het (ongeag sy etniese oorsprong) wat aan die begin van die twintigste eeu steeds nie geweet het nie dat die goed in anderman se huis, nie sommer vir vat is nie...

En dom was Koos Sas beslis nie.

40 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

“Oom” Koos Sas (soos wat hy nou eerbiedwaardiglik genoem word) was 35 jaar oud toe hy vir die jongman D.S. (Boetatjie) Botha vermoor het – die seun van die destyds alombekende Ds. D.S. Botha van Stellenbosch (foto hiernaas). Om nou te sê dat Sas nooit in ‘n hof hieraan skuldig bevind is nie, is net so goed as om te sê Lee Harvey Oswald het nie vir president J.F. Kennedy vermoor nie, want sien – Oswald is ook nooit in ‘n hof daaraan skuldig bevind nie. Vir die eenvoudige rede dat beide Sas en Oswald dood is voor hulle verhoor kon word.

Wat soos ‘n paal bo water staan, is dat Koos Sas ‘n bewese kriminele rekord so lank soos ‘n voor-arm gehad het vir misdade soos huisbraak en diefstal. Daar’s ook geen aanduiding dat hy gesteel het om uit te deel, soos Robin Hood van ouds gesê was om te gedoen het nie...

En vanwaar die hoofmanskap van die San, weet nugter... (as gevolg van veral die pokke-epidemies het beide die Khoi-Khoi en die San se stam-strukture eeue tevore al tot niet gegaan gehad, en was die San in ieder geval slegs maar in familie-groepe georganiseer, nie in stamme met oorhoofse gesagstrukture nie).

Dit is terloops gevaarlik om ligtelik rond te speel met die moderne betitelings van Khoi en San, vir wat in die Ou Kaap bekend gestaan het as die Hottentot en die Boesman bevolkings, voordat die Britte met die begrip “Kleurling” gekom het. Die naam San vir die Boesmans is afkomstig uit die Khoi-Khoi tale, en beteken daarin juis ”die diewe” (a.g.v. die Boesmans se tradisionele versuim om andere se eiendomsreg op veë te respekteer).

Oor die omstandighede van Koos Sas se dood word ook heelwat aangedik. Soos wat Mnr. Johan Nelson in sy brief aan Netwerk24 gesê het, het gewone toeval ‘n wesentlike rol daarin gespel, met Konstabel Jurie Dreyer wat op ‘n roetine plaas-patrollie op Droëdap aangekom het. Hier is hoe Konstabel Dreyer self die gebeure vertel het aan Oudok en sy seun, wat kort na die insident daar opgedaag het (soos deur sy vader – Kleindok – oorvertel aan my grootneef Majoor Willem Steenkamp – die bekende militêre historikus en kleinseun van Oudok: foto links onder).

Konstabel Jurie Dreyer se weergawe, deur Maj. Willem Steenkamp Hier is dit, uit Majoor Willem se vloeiende pen: “Jurie Dreyer se storie, soos hy dit aan my pa vertel het.

“Dreyer was op ‘n roetine plaasbesoek, en toe hy by die betrokke plaas aankom (kan nie onthou watter een nie) het een van die plaasarbeiders sy perd weggelei sodat die dier kon drink. Die arbeider het vaagweg bekend gelyk, maar dis eers toe Dreyer die huis binnegaan dat hy besef die arbeider is niemand anders nie as Koos Sas. Hy haas hom toe buite-toe, maar Sas het snuf in die neus gekry en is skoonveld – hardloop dat die stof staan tussen die nabygeleë koppies in.

Dreyer gryp sy Lee-Enfield (diensgeweer) en sit hom te voet agterna, roepend dat Sas hom moet oorgee, maar Sas het nie notisie geneem nie, en natuurlik het Dreyer nie ‘n kat se kans gehad om hom in te haal nie. Sas het dit opgemerk en hom uitgejou, en toe verder padgegee. Die uitlag was ‘n fatale oordeelsfout: Dreyer was ‘n goeie skut en het hom net daar met een skoot platgetrek.”

41 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Wie was Ds. W.P. Steenkamp (Oudok)?

Die eerste feit wat ek moet konstateer, is dat “Oudok” Willem Steenkamp, familie is van my (om my moontlike gebrek aan objektiwiteit op rekord en onder u oë te kry). Hy en my oupagrootjie Casper was broers. Omrede my oupagrootjie en oumagrootjie Harriet Sophia beide jonk oorlede is, het my oupa Willem, groot geword aan huis van sy oom, Oudok. Die band is dus nóú. Hier is ’n foto van oor-oupagrootjie Willem en sy drie seuns, met my grootjie Casper in die middel (hy was die oudste) en Oudok Willem langs hom.

Met dit nou behoorlik op rekord, laat ons kyk na die komplekse persoon van Oudok: bepaald nie sommer maar net jou tipiese verkrampte plattelandse predikant van daardie era nie. Afrikaanse patriot, natuurkundige, teoloog, mediese dokter, invloedryke politikus. En bepaald nie ‘n rassis nie – inteendeel, lewenslange vriend van die Boesman, en hater van Hitler en alles waarvoor dié gestaan het.

By vele geleenthede het Oudok (soos hy in die volksmond bekend was, om hom te onderskei van sy seun Kleindok – ook Dr. W.P. Steenkamp – lg. die pa van Majoor Willem) vertel dat hy nie hier op aarde sou kon gewees het nie, en ook nie sy kinderdae sou oorleef het nie, as dit nie was vir twee Boesman-vroue nie.

Die eerste insident (waarsonder ek ook nie hier sou kon gewees het nie) raak ons gemeenskaplike oor-grootmoeder, Mieta Pienaar, dogter van veldkornet Piet Pienaar. Die Pienaar-gesin en Jager Afrikaner en sy bende het slaags geraak op hulle plaas “Groot Toren” in die Hantam-gedeelte van die Calvinia-distrik. Die hele gesin is uitgewis, met die uitsondering van klein Mieta, wat toe nege jaar oud was, en haar boetie Jacob.

Jager wou nie kruit en lopers op hulle mors nie en het hulle met die geweerkolf probeer doodslaan, maar haar in werklikheid net katswink agter die kombuisdeur laat lê voor hy met die gesin se waens, diere en al vort is oor die Grootrivier, om daar in Suid-Wes die stam te gaan vestig wat later onder Witbooi vir die Duitsers soveel moeilikheid besorg het.

Die klein Mieta is gevind deur ‘n Boesman-vrou wat in ‘n lap biesies weggekruip had. Sy’s deur haar bygebring, en die twee het toe die steeds-bewustelose, erg beseerde Jacob ook kon deurhak.

As jong seun was Oudok aan’t verdrink toe sy moeder se destydse huishulp, die Boesman-vrou Lena, ingespring en hom gered het. So het hy vir Lena met ooglopende waardering en deernis beskryf in ‘n artikel deur hom geskryf in sy eie oudag: “Nog sien ek haar voor my geestesoog : kort, vier voet lank – die gerimpelde ou gesig, die skerp oë, die groot uitbou van agter... Sy was ‘n gevaarlike hardloper en dapper van daad.”

Die betrokke artikel het verskyn in die tydskrif “Die Beste” van Junie 1955. Die titel: “’n Boesman is ook ‘n mens”.

42 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

In die artikel het Oudok die Boesman verdedig teen die drogbeeld wat oor dié volksgroep bestaan het onder Suid-Afrika se ander bevolkingsgroepe.

As natuurkundige en amateurvolkekundige het hy ‘n blywende belangstelling in die Boesman en sy tradisies gehad, en waardering vir hulle talentvolle mens-wees. In die artikel (kopie van die aanhef hiernaas) sal u bv. die volgende vind: “Die Boesman is soos ‘n ongedierte beskou en behandel, maar die feit dat hy geen ongedierte is nie, blyk uit die Boesmantekeninge oral in die land. Waarlik, die lewe, die aksie, die akkuraatheid hiervan getuig dat die Boesman ‘n gebore kunstenaar is.

“Waar is daar in die ganse land rotswand-tekeninge van Hottentot en Naturel, of selfs van wit mense, te vinde? Dit wys dat die Boesman ‘n siel het, ‘n oog vir mooiheid en simmetrie; dat hy ‘n ware kunstenaar is.”

Hierdie was ook nie sy enigste artikel oor die Boesmans nie. In die vyftigerjare het hy gereeld oor hulle, en sy geliefde Namakwaland geskryf...

Gedurende die Tweede Vryheidsoorlog is Oudok deur die Britte geïnterneer op grond van hulle vrees dat hy ander Kapenaars tot rebellie sou aanhits en die Boeremagte behulpsaam was.

Boonop het hy in die proses van aanhouding, ‘n Britse bajonet-wond in die sitvlak op die lyf geloop.

Gedurende die Rebellie van 1914, is hy in ‘n penarie geplaas deur ‘n sameloop van omstandighede, plus sy eie sterk pligsbesef en wens om broeder-geweld te probeer vermy: ‘n boodskapper was naamlik van die Wes-Transvalers (Genl. Koos de la Rey) terug onderweg met ‘n dringende boodskap aan Genl. Manie Maritz in die Noord-Kaap om nie met wapengeweld te begin nie – maar het net so vêr as Nieuwoudtville (Oudok se toentertydse gemeente) kon kom.

In die besef dat dit van kardinale en dringende belang was om hierdie boodskap teen geweld so gou moontlik by Maritz te kry, het Oudok toe dit op homself geneem om koerier daarvoor te wees en dit per motor verder te neem.

43 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

By sy aankoms daarmee in Kakamas, was dit egter te laat – Maritz het reeds die grens na Duits-Wes oorgesteek gehad en die Rebellie begin.

Die boodskap het darem die positiewe effek gehad dat van die rebelle onder Tobias Beukes toe teruggekeer het na SuidAfrika en die gevaarlike avontuur gestaak het. Ondanks sy goeie bedoelings was Oudok toe aan die korste ent, want hy is bemerk in gesprek met die Maritz-manne en is summier vir vyf maande opgesluit in die Kasteel in Kaapstad, en toe tot 1916 in die Ou Fort in Johannesburg, in kettings saam met gewone misdadigers – iets wat sy gesondheid ‘n knou gegee het – totdat hy uiteindelik sonder aanklag vrygelaat is. Dat hy in 1939 nie hierdie teen Genl. Jan Smuts gehou het nie maar as LV op morele gronde vir oorlog teen Hitler gestem het, dus vir Smuts en teen sy vriend Genl. Hertzog, spreek boekdele vir Oudok se beginselvastheid – maar later meer daaroor. (Foto: Oudok as jong man). ‘n Ander voorbeeld van Oudok se Afrikaner-patriotisme, was die feit dat hy die eerste persoon ooit was wat ‘n doktorale proefskrif geskryf het in die Afrikaanse taal. Dit was in Nederland, waarheen hy in 1907 is om sy studies in die Teologie voort te sit. Ondanks die feit dat hy Hoog-Hollands en Engels vlot magtig was, het hy sy promotors by die beroemde Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam kon oorhaal om hom toe te laat om die proefskrif te skryf in die taal van sy hart – ‘n taal wat toe nog lank nie in Suid-Afrika self, amptelike status geniet het nie (die proefskrif het gehandel met die agnostisisme van Herbert Spencer).

In sy loopbaan as predikant in Namakwaland, het Oudok diep onder die indruk gekom van die armoede van soveel van die mense daar, Wit en Bruin. Hy het sy gemeentes deurreis, om seker te maak dat hy elke lid besoek. Op hierdie reise het die gesin dan kampeer in hulle “matjieshuis” tipies van daardie omgewing – dit kon vinnig opgeslaan word en maklik saam vervoer word (sien foto links, waar Oudok voor die matjieshuis sit saam met sy huishouding).

Oudok het bekend geword as “die bouer”, vir sy fondsinsamelingsveldtogte vir bystand aan die armes en projekte om kerkgeboue op te rig (soos dié op Springbok, waar hy van 1919 leraar was) en die stigting van ‘n nuwe dorp, die teenswoordige Kamieskroon. Een van die fonds-insameling projekte ten behoewe van die ACVV se werk met slagoffers van die Groot Griep (wat na die Eerste Wêreldoorlog nog meer slagoffers neergevel het as die huidige COVID-pandemie) was die verkoop van ‘n poskaart met ‘n foto van Koos Sas geneem deur Oudok se seun met sy Box Brownie, kort na Sas aan die skietwond oorlede is.

Ek is in besit van ‘n kopie van die foto – aanvanklik was ek huiwerig om dit hier te publiseer (omdat ons sensitiwiteit in die moderne era meer fragiel is as in daardie dae), maar by nabetragting het ek besef dat as ek dit nie doen nie, dan sal gesê kan word dat ek negatiewe getuienis verberg het...

Die plaas van die foto het ook drie ander oogmerke: • Eerstens toon die foto baie duidelik (wanneer dit vergelyk word met die foto’s op die speurafdeling se omsendskrywe aan polisiestasies), dat die persoon wat op Droëdap geskiet en gefotografeer is en die een op die polisie-foto, beslis een en dieselfde is.

44 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

•

•

Tweedens wys die posering van die foto en die fokus op die gesig, dat die idee was om die identiteit vas te lê, wat die vermoede versterk dat die jong Willem dit geneem het met die primêre doel dat dit na Ds. Botha op Stellenbosch gekopieer kon word.

Derdens is dit duidelik dat die foto baie kort na dood geneem is, want rigor mortis het nog nie ingetree nie – dit kan gesien word aan die hand daarvan dat Konst. Dreyer die oorledene se nek en kop moes stut, en nog twee ander moes help vashou (rigor mortis tree normaalweg vinniger in na voorafgaande fisiese inspanning, soos die weghardloopry, en begin juis ook in die nek- en gesigspiere, sodat afgelei kan word dat die foto waarskynlik binne twee ure na dood geneem is; die vinnig uitry na die plaas toe, bring weer die konneksie met Ds. Botha na vore – siende dat die plaasmense sou besef het dat die plaaslike predikant ‘n belang sou hê en dadelik ingelig moes word).

Die poskaart se byskrif is ook oor die boeg daarvan dat die oorledene die moordenaar is van die seun van Ds. Botha van Stellenbosch. In die konteks is dit verstaanbaar, gegewe die spilpunt-rol wat predikante in daardie dae in hulle gemeenskappe gespeel het, en die feit dat Oudok en Ds. Botha uiteraard met mekaar bekend was. Dit was dus nie snaaks nie dat Oudok en sy seun Willem dadelik na die nuus bekend geword het, die entjie na Droëdap uitgery het en dat sy tiener-seun die foto sou geneem het. Dit was nie pure agieagtigheid nie; daar was ‘n duidelike en logiese koppeling. Publisiteit norme daardie dae was nie soos ons s’n vandag nie, en publiseer van so ‘n foto was toe dus nie buitengewoon nie – soos dit trouens vandag nog vryalgemeen in koerante en op TV in streke soos Latyns-Amerika en die res van Afrika gedoen word.

Foto links: Konstabel Jurie Dreyer, wat vir Koos Sas geskiet het, poseer die lyk vir die neem van die gewraakte foto (wat ek ondertussen laat kleur het vir groter duidelikheid). Let op dat die ander bystanders hulle hoede in hulle hand het, aanduidend dat met respek opgetree is.

Oudok studeer weer: hierdie keer medies Wat Oudok toenemend getref het, was dat sy gemeentelede meer nodig gehad het as net die bearbeiding van hulle siele – hulle het mediese hulp ook nodig gehad. Hy het dus al meer oortuig geword daarvan dat hy homself ook as mediese dokter moes bekwaam.

Kort na die Koos Sas-insident het hy toe daad by die woord gesit, sy beroep bedank as predikant en op 44-jarige ouderdom is hy en sy seun Willem, later bekend as Kleindok, toe eers na Louisville in Kentucky (VSA) om daar te studeer, en vervolgens na die Universiteit van Leiden in Nederland, waar hulle beide in 1928 as mediese dokters gekwalifiseer het.

45 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Hierdie passie vir die akademie en wetenskap, en vir die veld van mediese navorsing in besonder, tesame met sy belangstelling in die Volkekunde, verduidelik hoekom Oudok op Springbok by die magistraat toestemming gevra het vir die opgraaf en bewaar van Koos Sas se skedel, vir navorsingsdoeleindes. Hy het nl. vir Sas gesien as ‘n baie tipiese fisiese eksemplaar van die San (en daar was nog die hele Frenologie-dimensie ook, gegewe Sas se lang rekord van kriminaliteit) sodat hy die skedel toe met hom saamgeneem het na Louisville, maar wel daarna toegesien het dat hy dit terugbring na Suid-Afrika en dit toe aan die Universiteit van Stellenbosch geskenk het. Soos voorheen gesê, is die skedel eers bekom nadat dit duidelik was dat niemand die lyk opgeëis het nie.

Daar word ook veel gemaak, emosioneel, oor die feit dat die skedel skoon-gekook is in ‘n pot – dit is egter teen wil en dank hoe dit gedoen word. Gewis is die hele projek in daardie dae gesien as ‘n progressiewe, wetenskap-gefundeerde een gemik op die verbreding van kennis – nie as die een of ander vorm van vernedering nie; bepaald nie van ‘n onverklaarde hoofman van die Boesman-adel nie...

By sy terugkeer as mediese dokter, het Oudok begin praktiseer as Algemene Praktisyn (Kleindok het voortgegaan om homself as Sjirurg ook te kwalifiseer). Anders as wat die gebruik was, het Oudok (en later ook Kleindok) geweier om aparte spreekkamers / wagkamers vir die verskillende rasse aan te hou, op grond van sy geloof dat alle mense skepsels van God was. Hy het ‘n halfkroon per konsultasie gehef (selfs toe, spotgoedkoop) en baie pasiënte in nood gratis behandel. Hy het gelyklopend ‘n beroep na die Parow-gemeente aanvaar en beide gees en liggaam be-arbei, en boonop nog geld ingesamel om ‘n paslike kerkgebou op te rig (die huidige Moedergemeente daar).

Dit moet ook genoem word dat Oudok nie ‘n sosiaal-verkrampte dominee was nie. Hy was byvoorbeeld nie ongeneë om ‘n drankie te neem nie (sy voorkeur was jenewer en tonikum) of om ‘n sigaar te rook nie. Hy was bekend vir sy humeur (dat hy nie nonsens gevat het van kabouters nie), en ook vir sy kleurvolle nuutskeppings as dit gekom het by sê-dinge. Een van sy gunsteling sê-goed, met verwysing na mense met wie hy nie oog-om-oog gesien het nie, was om hulle as “Godverneukers en tempel-skyters” uit te kryt. Wat hy nie kon veel nie, was die lasterlike gebruik van die Here se naam. So word oorvertel dat Oudok met sy gebruiklike wit hoed op (soos gesien op die foto van die matjieshuis) eendag die dorp te perd binnegery kom, terwyl erge godslastering uit die plaaslike kantien opklink. Dit word vertel dat Oudok (wat nou nie fyntjies van postuur was nie) daarop: “...onmiddellik moer getrek het. Hy klim toe net daar af, gaan die kantien binne en na ‘n skermutseling waai die lasteraars een vir een soos velle in die straat in”. Een van die karakters van daardie wêreld, Klaas Koegelenberg, het die petalje rustig agter sy brandewyntjie sit en dophou, en toe Oudok weer op sy perd klim en wegry, toe sê hy glo so ewe droog: “Ja nee, as ou Withoed in die dorp aangery kom, dan moet elke man maar sy bek in sy gat steek”.

Oudok word onafhanklike parlementslid In 1929, met die Depressie wat toegeslaan het, het Oudok finaal die pastorale bediening vaarwel toegeroep en hom as onafhanklike kandidaat vir die parlementêre setel Namakwaland verkiesbaar gestel, ten einde in die Volksraad die lot van die armes te kon bepleit. Met alles oënskynlik teen hom, was hy tog suksesvol, teen die twee groot partye (die Natte en die Sappe), en was hy daardie jaar die enigste parlementslid wat as ‘n waarlik onafhanklike verkies is – onder andere danksy sy steun onder die Bruin kiesers van die kiesafdeling (wat daardie dae nog gekwalifiseerd kon stem, en hulle kennelik nie gesteur gehad het nie aan die episode met “Oom” Koos Sas, wat nou so uit historiese verband uit opslae maak).

Dit word tot hede en vandag toe goed onthou, deur mense van daardie dele, hoe Oudok as politikus vir homself die witwarm woede van sommige verkrampte Nat-kiesers op die hals gehaal het toe hy op 'n vergadering verkondig het dat, as die wit en bruin Afrikaanssprekendes toegelaat word om saam te smelt deur vermenging, dan sou 'n baie sterk ras inderdaad gebore word.

46 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Min mense besef deesdae dat hierdie destyds nie so ‘n aweregse (of awelinkse?) gedagte was nie - dit het my opgeval toe ek navorsing gedoen het vir my Meestersverhandeling oor die politiek van die sogenaamde Kleurlinge, dat Eerste Minister Barry Hertzog in der waarheid konsepwetgewing laat voorberei het om die "Kleurling" in die grondwetlike struktuur te integreer; 'n inisiatief waarop die tyd ongelukkig uitgeloop het, eerstens weens die onheilige rusie tussen Brit en Boer oor die vlag-kwessie, en toe terstond oorval deur die alles-oorheersende ramp van die Groot Depressie.

Oudok het veral twee sake in die parlement bepleit – die vorming van ‘n regering van nasionale eenheid om die impak van die Depressie ten beste te kan beveg, en ‘n afstap van die goudstandaard. Vir laasgenoemde is hy as ‘n kommunis uitgekryt – totdat dit uiteindelik met goeie gevolg gedoen is.

Sy kiesers het hom in 1933 herkies, teen die gedugte Dr. A. J. R. van Rhyn.

Van hierdie jare skryf sy kleinseun (Majoor Willem) soos volg in sy biografie van Oudok, getiteld:

“The Lion of the North-West”: “He (Oudok) was the only independent MP in Parliament, and fearsomely independent he was, advocating two main causes - a national coalition of all parties and the combatting of the poverty caused by the Great Depression.

“He made political enemies by the score but did not care; he was too busy exhorting his fellow politicians, raising money for a plethora of good causes, helping people to find work or fight off the Land Bank, and for good measure doctoring his voters free of charge when this was necessary.

They liked what he was doing and in the 1933 election re-elected him against the doughty Dr A J R van Rhyn.

“Steenkamp made full use of his position to fulfil his self-imposed task. Among other things he was largely responsible for the crucially important irrigation dams at Clanwilliam and Vioolsdrif, nagged the Minister of Mines to let Namaqualand's poor into the diamond diggings, brought relief to the hard-pressed school and congregation of his old parish of Ermelo in the Transvaal and dove headfirst into bitter controversy by advocating a departure from the gold standard, which he rightly saw as essential to recovery from the Great Depression. When that finally happened, he received little credit for it, but he did not care.

“When the National and South African Parties formed a coalition, Steenkamp joined it, since he had long advocated such a step. Many of his supporters, not to mention his existing political enemies, were outraged by his decision, and an unfortunate feud was born whose echoes linger to this day.

Nevertheless, his support remained strong enough to return him as the member for Calvinia in 1938.

“His membership in the new United Party was not always a peaceful one, his strongly-held convictions often clashing with party discipline. He was still there, however, when his greatest test came in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. The Prime Minister, General J B M Hertzog, advocated a state of armed neutrality, while his deputy, General Jan Smuts, believed that Nazism was so great a danger to the world that the country could not remain aloof, regardless of the fierce internal disunity that would erupt within the electorate. It was time for everyone in the UP to stand up and be counted.

“Thanks to his own reading and feedback from his son Willem, who had spent much time in Europe on clinical work while preparing to become a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Steenkamp was well-informed about Nazism, and his warm friendships with many of Namaqualand’s “boerjode”, the Jews who had made their home there and become an integral part of the community, made it clear to him what the only ethical course of action would be.

47 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

“Characteristically, he first communed with the Almighty and then consulted with the man he respected most in the world, Tobias Beukes of Modderfontein; they had met one another in 1914 under dramatic circumstances during Steenkamp's abortive attempt to stop Maritz from rebelling, and later his son had married Beukes's daughter, Huibrecht. Beukes, a reader and deep thinker, agreed with him that armed neutrality was not enough: it was necessary to destroy Nazism by force of arms.

“Hertzog lobbied for his vote. Steenkamp refused, painfully aware that it would be both the end of their long association and a thrust to the heart of the political career that was so important to him, that he frankly enjoyed so much and had used to such good effect in his fight against poverty, ignorance, and disease. So it was, and he did not stand again in the 1943 election. He deeply regretted this enforced rustication at the height of his powers and reputation, but not the decision that caused it.”

Die feit dat Oudok op beginsel-basis besluit het om te stem daarvoor dat Hitlerisme met die wapen uitgeroei moet word, ondanks sy Britse internering en bajonet-wond, ondanks dat Smuts hom tydens die Rebellie (sonder verhoor en eintlik heeltemal ongeregverdigd) laat opsluit het, en wetende dat hierdie besluit van hom vir hom sy politieke loopbaan sou kos, is aanduidend van sy morele inbors, sterkte van oortuiging en karakter, en pligsbesef.

Wat u as leser hopelik uit hierdie feite-beskrywing van Oudok Willem Steenkamp sal oorhou, is dat hy bepaald nie inpas in die rol van die “Sheriff van Nottingham” in die moderne “Koos Sas as Robin Hood” drama wat nou verdig word nie. Hy was nie ‘n rassis nie, soos wat sy verset teen bv. aparte spreekkamers en teen Hitler se doktrines aandui; hy was ‘n kenner van, en pleitbesorger vir die Boesman; en les bes – hy was nie verkramp of ‘n lid van die Nasionale Party nie en ook nie ‘n ondersteuner van Apartheid nie. Al die tipiese bagasie wat die simboliese, stereotipe “verkrampte plattelandse Blanke Afrikaner dominee” dus subliminaal tot die drama wat nou konstrueer word sou bydra, was dood eenvoudig net nie sý bagasie nie.

Of die beoogde fliek hierdie waarheid sal uitbring, is egter te betwyfel...

48 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

NONGQAI TRUST | IT 002701/2018(T)

49 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

THANK YOU! | DANKIE!

50 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

51 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

52 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

NAWOORD | AFTERWORD Brig. Hennie Heymans More than a decade ago, we (re)started the Nongqai. Our cornerstone has always been to record our national security history, with photos, for our children and grandchildren and thus preserve it for posterity. Our litmus test is to present history objectively, honestly and without any malice. We prefer to make use of eyewitness accounts. preferably in their own words. We try to state no more than the plain facts, so that you – the reader – will be the person making the judgments. Should we dish up trash history, we will soon lose our credibility because documentary and other primary evidence will expose the opposite of our story. With the Koos Sas case, we clearly would risk having a potential future problem, if we should present the facts incorrectly or in a distorted manner.

A notorious and proven house-breaker and thief – in fact also a murderer – by the name of Koos Sas, is one of the main character in this polemical case, which has become celebrated of late. He was a man of colour, of Khoisan descent. The murder in which he was involved was committed during 1917, after which he had fled. Five years later, during an official farm patrol, a mounted police constable arrived on a farm. Arriving there, one of the farm hands took the police horse from the rider, with the aim of letting it cool down and drink, as was common practice at the time.

Belatedly, Constable Jurie Dreyer realized that the farm hand was none other than Koos Sas... (On 31 July 1916 there were several Dreyers in the Force – the following Dreyer may well be Jurie Dreyer: No. 1686 Mounted Constable CJJ Dreyer, stationed at Tulbagh in 1916; he had joined the Cape Police during 1906 and, since he had been stationed at Tulbagh during 1916, he would have been aware of Koos Sas' existence, since police stations received crime circulars from the CID).

Despite proper and lawful warning, Sas fled and was subsequently fatally wounded. A scienceminded minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, Rev. W.P. (later known as “Oudok”) Steenkamp, was given permission to retain the skull of the unclaimed corpse for research purposes. The pastor and his son both become physicians. Oudok's charitable actions and welfare work among all races are well known in that region. He did not apply "apartheid" in his consulting room, having maintained just one such for all races, since everyone was equal to him: Creatures of God. He also incurred the wrath of verkrampte Nats by voting for war against Hitler (whose ungodly policy of brute racism he abhorred) and by declaring that, if brown and white Afrikaans speakers would be allowed to grow into in one nation by mixing, a very strong race would be born. In no way can Oudok thus justly be portrayed as fitting the stereotypical caricature of a racist, ultra-conservative white Afrikaner “platteland dominee” – no matter how much literary licence is employed.

I can only mention that the police themselves, when it came to crime, were "colour blind" – criminals are arrested without regard to the person – yes, even white people who did not obey the police's orders were chased, killed or wounded in an attempt to arrest them.

At the opposite pole, a district commander, Captain BM van Heerden, was shot dead while on duty, during a search for a dangerous coloured man who was wanted for murder.

53 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

To make Koos Sas out today as an actual hero, seems to defy common sense. Yes, with poetic licence, a ballad was indeed written about Koos Sas, and later sung and performed as a play. But the particular lyricist always was up front about the fact that his drama was only loosely based on the facts, with a number of characters and events added for dramatic effect. With which one cannot find fault. But, should subsequent books and film attempt to portray these myths as “exposing the truth”, they would be historically incorrect and rendering a grave disservice to national reconciliation.

In our South African history, we have many people of colour who indeed were heroes. Think of Herrie the Strandloper; Simon van der Stel, probably our most famous Cape Governor; one of the first veterinarians in South Africa was a man of colour. The “Hottentotse Ligte Infanterie” fought side by side with the Dutch against the English, distinguishing themselves at Blaauwberg with their bravery. They were also members of the Cape Mounted Rifles. During the Anglo Boer War, many Cape Coloured people remained loyal to the British and fought against the Boers. Coloured people joined the SA Police and volunteered for the Union Defence Force during both world wars. Many people of colour served with distinction in the police and the SA Army! And yes, there were also Coloured people who had rebelled against the South African government and the German authorities (the latter, in what’s now Namibia).

It is important to dig into history to highlight those who were worthy and deserve to be immortalized as heroes. In this regard, Oudok’s grandson, Major Willem Steenkamp, the military historian, has done valuable work, since our South African historiography has fallen short in this field.

I fully understand and respect that the “Brown” people of today are looking for own heroes (and that it is for them to decide), but I would suggest that those heroes should meet the definition of a hero…

---------------Meer as ‘n dekade gelede het ons die Nongqai her-loods. Ons hoeksteen was om ons nasionale veiligheidsgeskiedenis, met foto’s, vir ons kinders en kleinkinders aan te teken en so vir die nageslag te bewaar. Ons lakmoestoets was en is om die geskiedenis objektief, eerlik en sonder enige haat of venyn aan te bied. Ons verkies om van ooggetuieverslae gebruik te maak en verkieslik in diesulkes se eie woorde. Ons poog om die feite te stel, sodat u, die leser, die persoon is wat die oordeel vel.

Sou ons prul-geskiedenis opdis, sal ons gou ons geloofwaardigheid verloor omdat dokumentêre en ander primêre getuienis vroeër of later die teendeel van ons verhaal sal ontbloot. Met die polemiese Koos Sas-geval sou ons dus potensieel ‘n toekoms-probleem hê, indien ons die feite hier verkeerd en verdraaid sou aanbied.

Koos Sas, ‘n berugte en bewese huis-breker en dief – in werklikheid ook ‘n moordenaar – is die een hoofkarakter in hierdie tafereel. Hy was ‘n Bruinman, van Khoisan afkoms. Die moord waarby hy betrokke was, is gedurende 1917 gepleeg, waarna hy op die vlug geslaan het. Vyf jaar later, tydens ‘n amptelike plaas-patrollie, kom ‘n berede polisiekonstabel op ‘n plaas aan, net suid van Springbok in Namakwaland. Daar neem een van die knegte die polisie-perd by die ruiter oor, met die doel om die dier koud te lei en te laat drink, soos dit destyds algemene praktyk was1.

Na ‘n paar minute tref die besef vir konstabel Jurie Dreyer dat daardie kneg, niemand anders is nie as Koos Sas. (Volgens die amptelike rekords was daar op31 Julie 1916 verskeie Dreyers in die Mag; hierdie een, mag dalk wel Jurie Dreyer wees: No 1686 Berede-konstabel CJJ Dreyer, wat op daardie datum (e Tulbagh gestasioneer was – hy het gedurende 1906 by die Kaapse Polisie aangesluit en indien hy gedurende 1916 te Tulbagh gestasioneer was, sou hy van Koos Sas se bestaan bewus gewees het, aangesien die speur-tak gereeld misdaad-sirkulêres uitgestuur het.) 2

Vyf jaar later kon konst. Dreyer van Tulbagh na Springbok verplaas gewees het – HBH. Wat Konstabel Dreyer betref: Tulbagh se distrik lê direk langs die van Ceres en Worcester. Trouens van Worcester afbeweeg jy deur ‘n deel van die Tulbagh - distrik verby Wolseley na Ceres. Sas het in daardie gebied 1 2

54 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

Ten spyte van behoorlike en wettige waarskuwing, het Sas bly vlug en is hy noodlottig verwond. Die predikant van die NG Kerk op Springbok, Ds. W.P. (die latere “Oudok”) Steenkamp, ‘n akademikus, navorser, en belangstellende in die natuurkunde en antropologie, kry toe toestemming formele toestemming van die magistraat daar, om die skedel van die onopgeëiste lyk vir wetenskaplike doeleindes aan te bewaar. Die predikant en sy seun albei kwalifiseer aanstons as mediese dokters.

Oudok, wat later tot onafhanklike parlementslid verkies is (onder andere danksy die steun van Bruin kiesers, wat toe nog gekwalifiseerd kon stem) se gemeenskapsdiens en welsynswerk onder al die bevolkings is goed bekend in dié geweste, tot vandag toe. Hy het bv. glad nie “apartheid” in sy praktyk toegepas nie, met net een spreekkamer vir almal – want almal was vir hom gelyke Skepsels van God. Hy het homself ook die gramskap van verkrampte Nattes op die hals gehaal deur te stem vir oorlog teen Hitler (wie se godlose beleid van brute rassisme hy verafsku het) en deur te verklaar het dat, as bruin en wit Afrikaanssprekendes toegelaat sou word om saam te groei as een nasie deur vermenging, daar ‘n baie sterk ras gebore sou word. Daar is dus nie ‘n manier waarop dit geregverdig sou kon word om vir Oudok te projekteer as tipies van die stereotipe karikatuur van die “konserwatief-rassistiese plattelandse wit Afrikaner dominee” nie – ongeag hoeveel literêre vryheid aangewen mag word.

Ek kan net noem dat die polisie, as dit by misdaad kom, “kleurblind” was, – misdadigers is sonder aansiens des persoons aangekeer en gearresteer – ja, ook witmense wat nie gehoor gegee het aan die polisie se wettige bevele nie, is gejaag, gedood of gewond in ‘n poging om hulle te arresteer. As teenpool hiervan, kan bv. genoem word dat ‘n distrikskommandant, Kaptein BM van Heerden, tydens ‘n soeke na ‘n gevaarlike Bruin moordenaar in sy ampspligte noodlottig gewond is.

Om vir Koos Sas nou as ‘n held uit te maak, lyk strydig met die feite en gesonde verstand. Ja, met digterlike vryheid is wel ‘n ballade oor Koos Sas geskryf en gesing en later as toneelstuk opgevoer.

Maar die liedjieskrywer het baie duidelik gemaak dat sy weergawe net maar baie ligweg op die werklike gebeure gebaseer was, met heelparty karakters en gebeure fiktief bygewerk vir dramatiese effek – waarmee niks verkeerd is nie. Om egter hierdie mites te perpetueer in latere boeke (en flieks) en dit as die “ontbloting van die waarheid” aan ‘n niksvermoedende publiek voor te hou, is histories vals en dien nie nasionale versoening nie.

In ons Suid-Afrikaanse geskiedenis het ons talle Bruinmense wat inderdaad helde was. Dink maar aan Herrie die Strandloper; aan Simon van der Stel, een van ons bekendste Kaapse Goewerneurs; aan Jan Baantjies, senior Voortrekker-figuur en latere sekretaris van die Transvaalse Volksraad; ook aan een van die eerste veeartse in Suid-Afrika, wat ‘n Bruinman was. Die Hottentotse Ligte Infanterie-korps het sy aan sy saam met die Hollanders teen die Engelse geveg een hulself onderskei deur hulle dapperheid; Bruinmense was ook lede van die Cape Mounted Rifles. Tydens die Anglo Boere-oorlog het baie Kaapse gekleurdes lojaal aan die Britte gebly en teen die Boere opgetree. Bruinmense het by die SA Polisie en as vrywilligers by die Unie Verdedigingsmag aangesluit tydens albei wêreldoorloë. Talle Bruinmense het met onderskeiding in die polisie en die SA Weermag gedien. Ja, daar was ook Bruinmense wat gerebelleer het teen die Suid-Afrikaanse en Duits-Wes owerhede. Dit is nodig om in die geskiedenis te delf om diegene wat dit waardig was, uit te lig en as helde te verewig (waarin ons Suid-Afrikaanse geskiedskrywing te kort skiet – dit is juis Oudok se kleinseun, die militêre historikus Maj. Willem Steenkamp, wat op hierdie terrein baanbrekerswerk doen).

Ek het begrip daarvoor dat ons Bruinmense na helde soek, wat hulle reg en keuse is, maar ek meen tog dat dit wys sal wees as daardie helde aan die geykte omskrywing van ‘n held sou voldoen.

geopereer. Springbok is ongeveer 400 km van Tulbagh af en as dit dieselfde Konstabel Dreyer was, moes hy na Springbok verplaas gewees het – AP Stemmet e-pos gedateer 15 April 2022

55 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

56 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

BR REKENMEESTERS

Die imposante Moederkerk op Springbok, opgerig deur "Oudok" Ds. WP Steenkamp

57 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas

SLOT | END

58 Nongqai Vol 13 No 5E – Koos Sas