Dear Edward by Jacana Media

PAUL WEINBERG

Paul Weinberg packs irony, empathy and an inquisitive l e n s o n h i s S A r o o t s t r e k . H e ’ s a m e n s c h . JONATHAN SHAPIRO

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This book is a personal journey into the family archives of photographer Paul Weinberg. Childhood sorties into an old black trunk uncovered family postcards, stamps, letters and photographs that excited his imagination about what lay beyond his South African world. These memorabilia connected Weinberg to both his grandparents’ roots in eastern Europe and his own roots in South Africa, and prompted an exploration of his family’s footprints through far-flung small towns in the interior of this country. In the form of postcards to his great-grandfather Edward, it is both a visual narrative of this journey and a multi-layered travel book, which pieces together the jigsaw of his family’s journeys and asks important questions about who writes history and who is left out.

DEAR EDWARD

fa m i ly f o o t p r i n t s

9 781431 405541

ISBN 978-1-4314-0554-1 www.jacana.co.za

P A U L

W E I N B E R G

DEAR EDWARD fa m i ly f o o t p r i n t s

P A U L

W E I N B E R G

The

inspiration for this book emerged from my sorties into an old black trunk that we had at home. I vividly remember, as a child, searching for family heirlooms and other secrets there. My searches were mostly for the elusive Penny Black and other valuable stamps to complement my growing collection.

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The letters, photographs and postcards that I found in the trunk connected me to a world that reached far beyond the borders of South Africa and the African continent. Collected there, emanating from the objects I shuffled in my hands, were a myriad crisscrossing paths and relationships. These were the things that linked my grandparents to their roots, and they would later spark off new discoveries as I journeyed to find my own roots.

The trunk was probably all my greatgrandparents had when they landed on the shores of South Africa. It was a symbol of an immigrant culture that had come to create new beginnings here, and it became the metaphoric well I would return to time and again as I tried to understand the parallel concepts of roots and routes.

I am very grateful to my grandfather Bernard, who was something of an amateur archivist. He kept everything from deposit slips to paper clippings. He, like his other brothers, was interested in stamp collecting, the hobby I continued into my early teens. But most valuable of all, he kept an album of postcards, as did my grandmother Frida. The postcards were the main way my family kept in touch as they made South Africa their home. I remember looking at the sepia picture postcards with a child’s fascination. Turning them over I would see words – in an old writing style, and sometimes in a language I couldn’t understand. On the top right-hand corner there was often a stamp from the Orange Free State Republic. The postcards were full of references to places, held values, spilled over with humour at times. They represented communications between four countries – Latvia, Russia, Germany and Belgium – as well as ‘our country of adoption’ – South Africa. They held the family’s connection to one another, kept it strong as the family changed and grew. My great-aunt Bertha, the only daughter in a family of six sons, wrote a family memoir that opens a

window to a world that was tinder for a child’s fantastical imagination. She said: It is not that my family ever attained great distinction in any field, or accomplished anything outstanding, but I do think as a family we were unique, having lived in four different countries, spoken seven languages between us, taken part in four wars, and thus contributing in some small way to the history of this country of our adoption. I am the direct descendant of Edward and Fanny Weinberg, originally from Riga, Latvia, who settled in the Orange Free State Republic in 1893. I am a fourth-generation South African, whose family has lived on the African continent for more than a hundred years. On my mother’s side my lineage can be traced to her father Harry Karpolowski, who arrived with his three brothers from Belarus to settle in Johannesburg in 1915. As a documentarian in the 21st century, I am only too aware that ‘history’ is the product of various and multiple narratives. Living in this country has informed me that ‘writing’ or ‘making’ history is

never a linear process, nor necessarily an equitable exercise. More pertinently, it is mostly written from a perspective of the victors – and next to the discourses of power, economic and politics, family history seems only a muted voice in a massive choir. But I am particularly interested in the concept of the ‘I’ in history and one’s own story in it. Who is its authentic voice? This is the question that has troubled and fascinated me most of my life. I am intrigued by how even a personal history is so layered with meanings and interpretations. This book contains a journal of my attempt to trace the roots my family laid down in the country of ‘their adoption’ – including my own visual record, modern day ‘postcards’ if you like. My family found a survival niche in the hotel business, and different branches of the family lived and travelled throughout the South African interior. My picture postcards take you to the towns my family settled in, along the route that members of my family followed to establish themselves here.

Paul Weinberg

‘… the task is not only to remember but to remember strenuously – to explore, decode, and deepen the terrain of memory. Moreover what is at stake is not only the past but the present.’ EVA H OF F M AN , SH T ET L

L e ft We i n b e rg fa mi l y, Mo sco w . ci rca . 18 9 0 A b o ve We i n b e rg fa mi l y re u n i o n , Dra k e n s b e r g , Kw a Z u l u -Na t a l , S o u t h A fri ca . 2000

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Mu i z e n b e rg , De ce mb e r 2008

Dear Edward I have been meaning to write to you for quite some time now. You and Fanny came to South Africa over a hundred years ago, so there’s a lot to catch up on. I’ve been trying to put some pieces together – like where we come from, the reasons for your coming here, the early days and so on. The memoirs written by your daughter Bertha (my great-aunt) have helped me a lot, and the pictures, letters and family albums have all been great. But it was mainly the postcards you all sent each other that captured my imagination. I’m about to start a journey that will take me to all the towns you lived in, here in South Africa. You might ask why I am pursuing this exercise? Some people would certainly see my writing to you about it as a meaningless task … a conversation with the dead! Well, I don’t see it that way. A lot of Africa has rubbed off on me. The tradition of talking to your ancestors is strong here in ‘our country of adoption’, and it is one I was happy to absorb. That’s how my thinking started, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that

knowing where you come from is a cross-cultural thing, a human need. One’s family and one’s ancestors are really important in how you turn out in life. For better or for worse, they are the cards that are dealt to you at birth ... though of course, it’s up to you how you play them. Also, I am very grateful for what you did. You showed initiative and vision in leaving a country that was oppressing you. Because of that courageous decision, you missed the truly ugly, tragic affair that some people call the Second Great War. I am enormously grateful to you all for giving your children ... and their offspring ... a chance. If you don’t mind, I’d like to send you the occasional postcard from my journey ... keep you posted, if you like, up to date and connected. I think a lot has changed! Here is a postcard from Muizenberg, which you once visited, where I now live with my wife, Heleen, and son Joe.

Fondly, Paul

‘A land where milk and honey flowed, and even the pigeons flew about ready roasted with a fork and knife in their backs, just waiting to be eaten.’ GR E AT- AU N T BE R TH A’S MEMOIRS

P HI L I PPO L I S NO-MAN’S-LAND AND NUWELINGS

y family first arrived in the ‘sleepy hollow’ – as my great-aunt Bertha described it – in 1893. Philippolis was the first town in the Orange Free State, founded in 1826 by Reverend John Philip of the London Missionary Society (LMS), for Bushmen and the Griqua communities. Over a hundred years later it is still rather sleepy – one of those small towns struggling to find its way in the new South Africa. The Dutch Reformed Church still looms large at the end of the Voortrekker Road. Its gothic steeple gazes on the town. Just a stone’s throw away from the church are the abandoned canons that belonged to Adam Kok III, given to him by the LMS, and now positioned on a small hill aiming at an imaginary enemy somewhere in the sky.

Driving slowly through the main street, I register, fleetingly, the beautiful old Karoo houses that speak to this past. An elderly white woman is sitting drinking her coffee on her stoep, watching the traffic go by; a Pakastani tearoom owner is warming himself in the early morning sun, puffing on his cigarette as he waits for his customers; the sign at the Jan van Riebeeck Park, with its slides and swings, has lost one of its letters; the Philippolis Lodge lies empty and abandoned. At the end of the street the Shalom Church tells you that Jesus loves you, in glass mosaic. Nearby, a large hand-drawn portrait of Laurens van der Post, one of the town’s most well-known and controversial sons, advertises the museum that has been established in his honour. Opposite, a

young Chinese boy plays in the street, watched by his father. A kaleidoscope of early impressions. I settle on the Van der Post Museum as a starting point. I am familiar with who he is, and we have a common interest in the Bushmen.

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The museum brochure directs me to a labyrinth: ‘It has been a powerful healing tool for all mankind… a panacea, a pattern for recovery… take a few deep breaths and then follow the path… it changes inner questions and despair, often bringing a state of peace, comfort and wellbeing, and answers… when you reach the centre, the all-embracing centre of LOVE, sit for a while… when you have rested take a few breaths and start off on the return journey.’

With these first small steps into the labyrinth, I truly begin my journey into my family’s past. I am retracing a well-travelled path filled with hidden and forgotten stories, uncovering layers as I walk. I hold in my mind respect for my ancestors, and my thoughts gravitate towards the figure at the centre of my family’s history here, my greatgrandfather Edward.

My great-grandfather had a paint business in Moscow in the 1880s, but he was expelled by an edict of the Tsar that forbade Jews under a certain income level to live in the city. I am only too aware of how my family and their descendants were airbrushed from history during those turbulent years and what followed in the 20th century. The parlance of the new South Africa is replete with terms like ‘previously advantaged’, ‘privileged’ – but I resist the notion of being airbrushed from history again. I owe it to my ancestors to tell this story – both theirs and mine. During the struggle for South Africa’s interior in the 19th century, Philippolis was never far from the action. The expansionist aims of the trekboers from the Cape Colony, the aftermath of the Difaqane, the Great Trek of 1832, the aspirations of the LMS and the British Government’s territorial ambitions all conspired to make the southern Orange Free State a contested melting pot. The Bushmen, the first people both of Africa and South Africa, had over two centuries become tragic victims of the greed for land, increasingly driven off their ancestral grazing areas and away from the waterholes that sustained their nomadic huntergatherer existence. In response, Dr John Philip of

the LMS created Philippolis in 1826, in an attempt to protect the Bushmen of the area. Philippolis was simultaneously a mission centre, a refuge for Bushmen and a homeland for the Griqua and their followers. Naïvely, and rather patronisingly, the LMS assumed that the Griqua, and other Khoisan groups like the Bergenaars, Waterboers and Korana, themselves the victims of land dispossession and oppression in the Colony, would rally to protect the Bushmen. However, the Bushmen were the victims of concerted genocide by both white and black settlers. There are a number of early references to atrocities waged on the Bushmen by the Griqua and their followers soon after they settled in Philippolis. One eye-witness, James Howell, testified at the Bloemhof Commission that he saw 30 Bushmen murdered by a Griqua party who slit their throats. Another account describes Bushmen being thrown into a big fire. As a Griqua leader was later to declare, ‘Ons het die Boesmans uitgeroei en Dr Philip ons die land gegee.’ (We chased away the Bushmen and Dr Philip gave us the land.) By 1827 all the Bushmen except those who remained as servants had left Philippolis for Bethulie.

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The Griquas of Philippolis, through a process of creolisation that still maintained their strong connections to their indigenous roots, had become consumate survivors: nomadic pastoralists, excellent horsemen, hunters and traders. Among them were free slaves and Motswana refugees, as well as detribalised descendants of pastoral Khoi tribes of the Cape Colony – ‘Basters’, offspring of the union of the Khoikhoi and whites, who survived on cattle theft and plunder. Adam Kok, the founding father of the group, is believed to be the son of Claas Kok, a runaway slave.

Although the role played by the LMS might have served them to a degree, it also worked increasingly to undermine their cultural heritage. True Christians were to abandon traditional dancing, trancing and other cultural practices that were perceived as heathen. In Philippolis, under the authority of the LMS, they became acculturised to the African landscape, and significantly, they spoke Dutch. However, they were also fluent in a number of African languages. Their own language was called Xiri or Nama. Increasingly, Boer encroachment into the TransOrange area resulted in farms being leased or land

illegally claimed from the Griquas. In a prophetic letter to the Cape Governor, Hendrik Hendrickze, a highly articulate and literate spokesman for the Griqua people, wrote: You will have heard Sir, that three or four years ago the Boers had gone everywhere in this country. They said first it was on account of the drought; but now there is so much grass within the Colony, we see another aim and we have become suspicious. They say it is Bosjesmen land and therefore they have a right to occupy that country. I say also that it is Bosjesmen land. But Sir, where is it not Bosjesmen land? From here all along the Great River to the great sea ocean is Bosjesmen land and Graaff Reinet and everywhere the Boer resides is also Bosjesmen land. Where are we to go now and not live in other men’s land? In 1848 the Trans-Orange was proclaimed to be land under British sovereignty. In 1854 the British negotiated with the Boers of the region and withdrew sovereignty, and the Republic of the Orange Free State was established. By 1861 the Griqua people of the Trans-Orange had lost much of their land to Boer encroachment and despite appeals to the Colonial authorities, claims to their land were ultimately not enforced. They were instead offered a new area that became known as Griqualand East, with its capital, Kokstad.

The majority of Griqua people, resident in the western and northern parts of the Cape, were now relocated hundreds of kilometres further to the east to what was more aptly described as noman’s-land. Philippolis was officially sold in 1861 for a mere 4 000 pounds as the Griquas trekked to new pastures. Not far from the canons and the church in Philippolis is Oom Japie se Huis, a gallery and restaurant and reputedly the largest bookstore in the Karoo, run by Richard Proctor Simms, a retired diplomat and a recent nuweling (newcomer). He and his wife Viola do their best to encourage tourism. He has a love for heritage, memorabilia and history. ‘There have been 5 000 tourists in the last five years,’ says Richard in his Oxford-English accent, ‘Fifty per cent of them are foreigners. We hope Philippolis will get there, but at my age I don’t have much time. I’ve signed a 30-year lease.’ He shows me a beautiful old album of photographs of India from the mid-19th century, which he hopes will do well in an upcoming auction. In 1972 the N1 diverted traffic from Philippolis, severing the town from the national economic artery and turning it into an off-the-beatentrack destination. ‘But the road is another of the challenges. People are keen to get off the N1 to

visit Philippolis for pleasure and curiosity but not for potholes,’ he bemoans. ‘And now they have just closed down the only bank in the town.’ Richard is a self-declared and ardent Van der Postian, and was the first curator of the museum dedicated to him. I buy one of Van der Post’s classics, Venture into the Interior, and make my way another stone’s throw away to visit Mark Ingle who lives in the original Van der Post home. Parallel paths and contested histories seem to run deep in this small town. A nuweling like Richard, Mark Ingle is not an ardent Van der Postian. His intimacy with Van der Post’s past and memory has brought him different insights. He was principal researcher on a book called The Storyteller, which recently blew the lid off the myth of Van der Post’s closely guarded legacy. The Storyteller describes him as a ‘Bushmen mythologist’ and a ‘master fabricator’. While Van der Post was clearly a highly accomplished raconteur and some of his books are captivating, his writings were ‘often a complex web of truth and lies’. A keystone of Van der Post’s public persona was his representation of himself to Britain (in particular the Establishment) and the First World as an authority on ‘Africa’

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and the ‘Bushmen’. With regard to his Bushmen knowledge, he borrowed spectacularly from the Bleek and Lloyd’s Specimens of Bushmen Folklore published in 1911. For Mark Ingle, one of Philippolis’s most famous sons was ‘much loved outside this country but derided in his own’.

When I say that I am in search of my own connection to Philippolis and its past, I am directed to the local museum. Although the official building is closed, I find Elize Pienaar, its director, in a house on an adjacent street. She generously shares with me her knowledge and insights. I enquire about the Jewish connection to the town, hoping to glean some records of my family’s history. She speaks affectionately of Uncle Moritz Jacobson, whose family still live and farm in the district, and kindly gives me a transcript of an interview with him. It is here that a number of synchronicities happen in the most unexpected way. The Jacobsons, I discover, were invited by a cousin, Joseph Orkin, to come to Philippolis. This was the same person who – according to my greataunt Bertha – placed her on his knee, inviting the family to come to South Africa (Philippolis) ‘where

milk and honey flowed, and even the pigeons flew about ready roasted with a fork and knife in their backs, just waiting to be eaten’. Could we be related? What part of Eastern Europe are the Jacobsons from? They came from Klikol, a shtetl on the border of Lithuania and Latvia, and my family were from nearby Riga, in Latvia. Old man Jacobson arrived in Philippolis soon after my great-grandfather Edward did and began working as a smous (pedlar) for Orkin, visiting the surrounding farms in the southern Orange Free State. His actual surname was Nowensenitz but because the Afrikaans farmers struggled with this pronunciation, they preferred to call him Jacob Jacob, which then morphed into Jacobson. After the Anglo-Boer War, he became a general dealer. Andries Lubbe, Laurens van der Post’s uncle, was an established farmer and a customer of Jacobson’s. He would regularly enquire when old man Jacobson’s wife and family were coming to live with him. ‘When I can afford it,’ was his standard reply. ‘How much will it cost to bring them out?’ Lubbe enquired one day. ‘About 150 pounds,’ said Jacob. Soon thereafter Lubbe turned up at the store with a bag containing 150 pounds, which he had acquired from the sale of some farms, emptied its contents

on the counter, and said, ‘Daar’s honderd en vyftig pond, laat die vrou dadelik kom.’ (There’s a hundred and fifty pounds, get your wife here immediately.) According to Bertha’s memoirs and some of my grandfather Bernard’s notes, Edward Weinberg also began working with Joseph Orkin and then opened a bakery and a butchery. A beast would be slaughtered once a month, recalled my grandfather, and one of the town’s highlights would be when the best riflemen of the town were invited to exercise their skills on the luckless animal from some distance away. My family quickly integrated into the community, attending school, playing with farm children, and pursuing their music interests. Their house, according to Bertha, was also a home for the community of Jewish smouse who would spend weekends at the house and stay during the high festivals. It is here my family would have crossed paths with old man Jacobson. With some excitement I head off to the farm to connect with these long-lost relatives. I drive through their farm gate as the sun begins to set, leaving the wagon-wheel gate silhouetted against the orange sky. Windmills

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and the occasional hill punctuate an undulating landscape. I meet Benji and Karen Jacobson and their sons, who are visiting. They live with Benji’s sister and mother on an adjacent farm, called Boesmanfontein. Benji is the grandson of Moritz Jacobson and the great-grandson of Jacob Jacobson, who arrived in Philippolis soon after my family in 1895. As I pull up he is getting out of an old diesel Land Rover. He is comfortable in his dirty overalls. Aside from his rabbinical looks, he is a farmer in every sense of the word and easily switches between English and Afrikaans.

earlier enrapture with the landscape he continues, ‘It’s not romantic living on a farm, you know. It’s a business and you’re up against a lot of things – the elements, the bank, the government. My brother lost six lambs in a night to jackals and my neighbour 300 sheep to Rift Valley fever because there’s been too much rain and apparently the vaccine doesn’t work. As I get older, the more I work. I haven’t been able to afford a holiday in four years. I told my kids – I don’t want you to fucken farm – 42 farms have been bought out in the district.’

Their house has trappings of a Jewish ancestry. There’s a menorah in the lounge, a portrait of a rabbi and Karen’s own paintings of her children. During my visit Benji tells me it is three years to the day since his father passed away on the farm. The sense of family resonates strongly. ‘Every little dorp around here had a Jew. The Levis in Jaggersfontein, the Goldstucks in Trompsberg, the Ballons in Edenberg. In the late 1980s there were 22 families in the district. We’re the last of the Boere Jode (Jewish Afrikaners) here,’ he says, tugging at his beard.

On my way through the town earlier in the day I saw a newspaper headline, ‘ANC wil Witgrond inperk’ (ANC to curb white land ownership). This refers to the government position that 30 per cent of all white commercial land should be transferred to black ownership by 2014. I think of Julius Malema’s threatening overtures to take white farm land, the controversy of the Dubula Amabunu (Shoot the Boer) song, and of how it translates in this landscape. Our conversation inevitably drifts there. ‘What are they (the government) going to do on my farm?

I enquire how the farm is doing. ‘It’s been a good year. The best wool price in 15 years – but it’s very tough. Costs have gone up.’ Almost sensing my

Look at Zimbabwe when the war veterans took the land – it went to ruins.’ Benji is very agitated and tugs at his beard. ‘I’m not going to farm in the Congo or Mozambique. I paid for this land – it doesn’t belong to the blacks, it belongs to the Bushmen who were here first.’ He tells me 15 farms were bought for local black farmers in the area. ‘Only one is still working and they want to take the land from successful functioning farmers … and then Julius calls us criminals and threatens to kill us!’ Life is fragile in this landscape. The next morning I leave early, as the sun rises. I tell him that my research into the family makes us far-distant cousins and possibly only by marriage. Benji is carrying a gun. His eyes are twinkling. ‘I’m looking for jackals and springbok,’ he says, and I watch his Land Rover and dust trail disappear. Later that day, I visit Boesmanfontein and the natural spring that has such symbolism in the socio-political landscape. Today there is a sheepshearing shed nearby. It was here that the LMS first established a settlement before Philippolis was developed in 1816. It was here that 30 Bushmen were reputedly massacred. It was here that Laurens van der Post often spent his childhood days and here where his uncle hung himself on a tree. I watch the workers collect wood and hear the soft gurgling

spring as it slowly meanders through giant wattles. On my way back to town I pass Simon Tile, one of Benji’s workers, on his bicycle. He has very strong Khoisan features. I wonder how much he knows about Boesmanfontein and the hidden histories of his ancestors and this landscape. I reserve these questions for Jane Metekan who lives in Bergmanshoogte, where a small community of remaining Griqua inhabitants live on the opposite side of the town. I introduce myself and say that I have just come from the Jacobson’s farm. ‘The Griqua had to hide away like kereltjies (young boys),’ she says, in beautiful and poetic Afrikaans. ‘The Jacobsons were one of the few farmers who really helped us. My grandfather worked for old man Jacobson. They gave us a camp for cattle. My mother in return worked for them as a gesture of goodwill.’ There is a gathering in her house of the Griqua community from all over the district. People are dressed in their smartest clothes – men in ties and jackets, women in their Sunday best. They have come to do a census to show that they have a real claim to the land here and to establish their lineage to Adam Kok. She brings up the issue of

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the 15 farms that Benji had spoken to me about. ‘It was only black people who benefited and not us who are of Khoisan descent. We can show our lineage back to Adam Kok. The land authorities said the cut-off date was the 1913 Land Act.’

The meeting begins with a prayer. Jane leads, ‘I am nothing before you Jesus … I surrender myself to you.’ Their strong links and Christian faith have remained despite the overwhelming failure of the LMS to cement their claims to Philippolis and the greater area. An elder tells me, ‘The early missionaries took the land with the gun and the Bible. We stayed with them. We have always been Christians from that time back. We tried to work things out with them.’ There is an underlying sense of desperation in this gathering which echoes its past. ‘Nelson Mandela is one of us,’ says another elder, ‘he’s got Khoi blood.’ The Griqua dispossession in Philippolis took place despite their commitment to becoming Christians and their negotiations with the colonial authorities. The Griqua, like the Khoisan and the Bushmen, are the forgotten descendants of this landscape. Jane and her support group are still struggling for

recognition and rights, much like her ancestors before her. As I leave, Jane asks me, ‘That Jacobson relative of yours… does he not have land for us?’ I decide to leave Philippolis on a high note, and do what many do when they come to town – visit its latest nuwelings, the endangered Chinese tigers. Their sanctuary, much like Philippolis, is also contested – there are in fact two tiger sanctuaries now. One is run by well-known filmmaker John Varty and another by Li Quan, an international fashion icon. Li Quan’s project sets out to preserve the pure species, while Varty’s sanctuary interbreeds with other species. I choose to be a purist and travel along farm roads through an electrified fence. Here I get to see King Henry, Tiger Woods and other magnificent animals in their spacious pens. These are the last of only ten South Chinese tigers in the wild. ‘Their breeding has been very slow in the ten years the sanctuary has been established,’ says Vivienne, the curator. ‘These tigers are very picky and don’t necessarily mate with just another nearby female.’ The idea of the project is to build up a sizeable population of the species and relocate them back to China. The sanctuary, developed by buying up 17 local farms, is a massive 330 square kilometres.

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Farm, n e a r P hi l i p p o l i s

Cr os s i n g t h e O r ange Riv er

DEAR EDWARD

PAUL WEINBERG

Paul Weinberg packs irony, empathy and an inquisitive l e n s o n h i s S A r o o t s t r e k . H e ’ s a m e n s c h . JONATHAN SHAPIRO

D E A R E DWA R D

9 781431 405541

ISBN 978-1-4314-0554-1 www.jacana.co.za

P A U L

W E I N B E R G