At the Fireside--Volume 1 (8 page)

The wreck of the St. John and the St. Jerome

The wreck of the
St. John
and the
St. Jerome

The first recorded shipwrecks on the South African coast occurred in 1552. The
St. John
and the
St. Jerome
had left Cochin in the East and were sailing for Portugal. Both were very heavily laden, the
St. John
being heaviest, as she was the biggest galleon in the Eastern trade at that time. They sailed together without incident until they reached the east coast of South Africa and a south-easterly wind tore into them. They turned tail and ran before this hurricane, which then veered suddenly to the north-west.

The
St. Jerome's
end came just north of the Umhlatuzi River (the forceful one), a little to the south of what came to be named Richards Bay. Beyond some flotsam and jetsam and wreckage dumped on the beach, she left no human survivors to tell her tale.

The
St. John
, dismasted and badly damaged, turned and ran southwards before the storm until 8 June 1552, when the crew finally managed to anchor in the vicinity of the Mthamvuna River, at present-day Port St John's, named after the galleon. Here they managed to land and spent three days conveying the people and cargo to the safety of the shore. They intended to run the galleon ashore at some appropriate place, dismantle her and with her timbers construct a caravel, in which they hoped to sail to Inhambane, then the nearest town, for this all took place 100 years before Van Riebeeck landed at the Cape. However, on the fourth night another fierce winter storm struck, flinging the galleon onto the rocks as if it had been a straw. One hundred and ten people were drowned and merchandise to the value of a million cruzados was buried at sea.

The survivors, numbering a little more than 500 (300 of whom were slaves), gathered in tents upon the beach. It was decided to divide into three groups and on 7 July, after a bit of local trading, they set off on the long walk up the coast to Mozambique, a distance, with deviations, of about 1 000 km. The expedition started boldly enough, with members of the crew carrying the wealthier passengers, who had the necessary means of payment. But as they travelled, fording rivers, pushing through sand, sleeping miserably in the rain and cold with scant food, people began to fall by the wayside. The first to go were the sick and then the weaklings and the rich, whose way of life had made them flabby and whose money now counted for nothing.

The company pressed on, fording those dozens of South Coast rivers, up the entire length of Natal. Local Africans snatched what pickings they could and a grim train of camp followers walked close behind – jackals and hyenas cleaning up the human debris.

Finally, in October 1552, some three months after being shipwrecked, 200 survivors stumbled into the kraal of the kindly Chief Nyaka, on the Bay of Mozambique. The other 300-odd souls had either found release from suffering in death, or had stayed to pour a variety of Asiatic and European blood into the veins of the descendants of the tribespeople who gave them welcome sanctuary along the way. Sufficiently rested, the survivors then pushed northwards towards Imhambane, the nearest European trading settlement.

Manuel de Sousa de Sepulveda, the Captain of the St. John, was a Portuguese nobleman of refinement and renown, and was accompanied by his highborn wife Dona Leonora and their two small children. Dona Leonora and the children had survived the journey to this point, but with hindsight, it might have been better had they gone down with the galleon. They came upon a tribe of hostile people who surrounded their little band and demanded that Dona Leonora be stripped of all her clothing. It is said that Dona Leonora fought them off with blows, as she preferred to die than to stand naked in front of these tribesmen. Her life would have ended right there had it not been for the intervention of Manuel de Sousa, who begged her to allow herself to be stripped, reminding her that it is the will of God that we are all born naked. So, while her children stood around her weeping, Dona Leonora allowed herself to be stripped naked.

She covered herself with her long hair and burrowed a pit in the sand, where she buried herself up to the waist, and never rose from that position again. Her children refused to leave her and they died of exposure in the cruel tropical sun, while her husband wandered off into the bush to die.

Of the rest of the company, some twenty-two in total eventually reached Inhambane, where a trading vessel found them some time later and ransomed them from the Africans for two pence farthing per person, and in this way the entire, terrible story of their epic journey was preserved.

What we fail to remember, I believe, is that the St. John was a slaver, that the local tribes recognised some of the crew, and that what they did to them was but a small revenge for the misery that the trade in human flesh had caused amongst the Mozambique tribes. For Dona Leonora was never touched, she was just left to die.

The footprint in Mpumalanga

The footprint in Mpumalanga

Near the southern tip of Africa, there are still unknown places, places that defy our knowledge and play games with our senses and beliefs, places that are sacred to the local inhabitants and of which we know dangerously little. One such place is situated in a forest on the eastern side of Mpumalanga. It consists of two special hills about three kilometres apart. I was privileged to be taken there by an old Zulu sanusi, that is, the ‘high priest' of sangomas, the one who trains others in the craft.

Accompanying us on our laborious climb up the hill was a Hopi Indian sham-an, whose totem was the eagle. We sat on the hillside and the shaman began to chant. I felt quite embarrassed, having a Red Indian bopping around and yelling his traditional chant. But soon my embarrassment turned into astonishment and the hairs on my arm rose. The air appeared to become charged and it pulsated all around us, with an inwards and outwards movement. I looked up into the sky and there, coming over the ridge, was a pair of black eagles, flying towards us as if they had been summoned. High over our heads they soared, once, twice and then slowly disappeared in the direction from which they had come. The shaman stopped chanting and I saw that the old sanusi was in a deep trance.

Gesturing down the hillside, the sansui drew my attention to a massive boulder, one that, when I looked at it, appeared strangely out of place with its surroundings. ‘According to our beliefs', he told me, ‘this rock was brought and placed here by the ancient peoples, who would come and conduct ceremonies and prayers at this most holy site.' When I enquired why this particular place was holy, he rose up and led me gently down the hill, and there, behind the boulder, I was shown ‘The Footprint'.

Imprinted in solid rock, embedded about 20 cm deep, was a perfect imprint of a human being's left foot. One can see clearly all the individual toemarks, looking just like that of someone who had walked over wet beach sand, from the way the toes had gripped and scoured the sand. I could see the ball of the foot, the raised portion of the instep, and the heel. Nothing too unusual there – except that the footprint is just under 2 m in length, the footprint of a giant, approximately 11 m tall!

The footprint has defied all expert analysis. Baffled geologists have put forward different opinions, some saying that it is too perfect to be caused by natural weathering, others saying it's a natural footprint left in the sands hundreds of thousands of years ago, before it solidified into rock. If you look closely at the imprint, you will notice that the big toe is firmly tucked into the the rest of the toes. This is an indication that the owner did not spend all his – or her – time barefooted, as the big toe in such a person splays out from the rest of the toes for balance.

‘To whom did this footprint belong?' I enquired respectfully of the sanusi. He replied that the local legends refer to the owner as the ‘Heavenly Princess' – and that the only reference the white people have is that part of the Judeo-Christian Bible which refers to the time when giants walked upon the Earth.

The old sanusi then pointed across the valley, to the opposite hillside. ‘This hill is also considered a sacred place by our people. Many years before', he told me, ‘a white man with long black hair came riding down on the back of an unknown animal. He wore a skin of iron and had slits for eyes.' I immediately recognised that he was referring to a man dressed in a suit of armour, riding upon a horse which was, of course, unknown to the old black people. ‘The man carried a sword strapped to his side', the sanusi continued. He was known as ‘Juanna'. Juanna, was greatly feared by the local people, and they decided to kill him as quickly as possible. They persuaded his young, impressionable black aide to betray him. And so, in the middle of the night the aide crept up upon Juanna as he slept, took his sword and threw it deep into the forest. He then gave the signal and the people fell upon Juanna and killed him.

What the old man was unaware of was that, by the purest coincidence, I was at that time researching an extraordinary historical figure. He was known as Trester John' and, to this day, historians know very little about him. What we do know is that he was a European adventurer of the 15th century, and that he spent many years exploring Africa. Prester John had written to various Kings of Europe, telling them about the enormous wealth of gold and silver in Africa and also offering his personal armies to help them in war. Nothing more was ever heard from him and he disappeared without trace.

The search for Prester John became something of a crusade in the 15th century – particularly for a group of men who called themselves ‘The Knights of Christ'. The Knights of Christ were, in a way, successors to the Knights Templar, a holy order of warrior Knights, who had led the capture of Jerusalem during the Crusades. What exactly the Knights Templar found in digging under the Dome of the Rock is not known, but what we do know is that they fell out with the Pope at Rome. He excommunicated them, stripped them of much of their property and many were killed. But Portugal found a novel way of keeping the Templars alive. They were disbanded to appease the Pope and ‘The Knights of Christ' immediately came into being, inheriting the lands and wealth of the Temp lars.

The Knights of Christ wore the red Maltese cross emblazoned across their chests. The great voyagers, such as Vasco da Gama (and also his patron, Henry the Navigator) were all Knights of Christ. When Vasco da Gama set out from Portugal, it was not only to discover the sea-route around the tip of Africa. His brief was also to search for the elusive Prester John. The Portuguese name for John is Juan, very close to what the Africans called the man in armour.

An entry in Vasco da Gama's ship's log mentions that when he anchored off the coast of what is now Mozambique, the local tribes told him that ‘Juanna' was in the hinterland. Da Gama became extremely excited by this and sent out a search party to make contact, but to no avail. Despondently he returned to Portugal.

Is it just possible that the final resting place of this enigmatic character, Prester John, lies at the foot of this most sacred hill? Maybe someday we will know.

Today, in the city of Port Elizabeth, there stands a monument near the City Hall, which was erected by the Portuguese government. It is dedicated to all those brave Portuguese seafarers who risked life and limb – in the search for Prester John!

The old Sanusi was tired. He had made, in his old age, his last visit to the holy place and it was time to go. A million questions were racing around in my head, but my better judgement told me to leave the subject alone, and keep what I had learned and experienced to myself.

Modjadji

Modjadji

Should you stand on the top of Pypkop Ridge near Duiwelskloof and cast your eyes over the forest-clad folds of the Walowedu Mountains, you would be gazing at the ancient lands of Modjadji – ‘The Transformer of the Clouds' – ‘She who must be obeyed'. And as you stand and watch the mists and the greenery of those ancient mountains, you have to keep blinking, for you tend to slip away into an ancient time, a time in which Rider Haggard immortalised a Queen called ‘She'.

It is told in the legends that there was a time long ago when there were no people in this part of the world, only the beasts of the forest. The hoarse bark of the baboons, the soft sighing of the winds, and the roar of tumbling waters, were the only sounds. All the people lived away to the north, in ‘Monomotaba'. Among those tribes there was one whose priests told of their origins near ‘the great waters that had no end'. These priests and chieftains wore around their necks, blue beads, the sacred ‘Uhulungu ha madi' or ‘beads of the sea' – the emblem of royalty and relics of a culture possibly older than that of the Phoenicians.

And in the forest depths, parents told their children tales of fierce warriors and ancient cities, and a lost race who lived in the land of their forefathers – a white race, whiter than the Arab slavers who pillaged their cities. But time and the bush had swallowed this race of white people, and the people of the blue beads were called the ‘BaVenda' – ‘people of the world'.

One day there came from West Africa a warlike tribe, pillaging and looting, and the people were forced to flee southwards to the mountains now called the Walowedu. Amongst the tribes who fled were the ‘Lovedu', led by a woman who, it was said, was a white woman. Her name was Modjadji.

Who was this woman? Was she the daughter of some captive white woman, or of one of the tribes from that far-off land near the waters that have no end? Was she the descendant of some noble house, with the blood of Semitic kings in her veins? Or was she a waif, thrown up on some remote slave market? Modjadji, on the rocky heights, her priests guarding her from prying eyes, and weaving an aura of mysticism and dread power of the spirit world around her, to such effect that, when the white people arrived, they called the area Duiwelskloof – ‘The Valley of the Devils'.

It was said that Modjadji's lovers were either killed or became her slaves and that her male offspring were all put to death. Only a female child, who had to be conceived incestuously, could inherit the mantle of tribal rule. Whatever the land and people who bore her, Modjadji had the blood of conquerors in her veins and, as her tribesmen were not great warriors, it was by the fairness of her body, the cunning of her mind and the savagery of her heart, that she created and moulded a great kingdom out of the tribes who settled in that area.

So great was the fame of this sorceress that chiefs of the Basuto, the Shangaans and others came to pay her homage and bought gifts of young girls as handmaidens to the queen. Even Shaka, the great Zulu king, who feared no man, dreaded the magical powers of Modjadji and sent a deputation headed by Dumisa, his own personal sangoma, to propitiate the Rain Queen.

When Modjadji reached old age, she would announce her successor and retire into a cave, take a special type of poison made from the spine of the Ngwenya (crocodile) and then die alone. Her people believed that she was immortal and that her spirit entered into the younger female, thereby ensuring a continuous reign. What we do know is that the whiteness of her skin slowly, over generations, grew darker and darker.

Then in 1894, came the white man, with guns.

Modjadji suffered her first major setback at the hands of Commandant-General Piet Joubert of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, and the reigning Modjadji died by her own hand, after the Commandant had broken her power.

It is said that until then, no white person had ever seen Modjadji and the old woman who shuffled out and spoke to Piet Joubert was a fake. The real Modjadji had been taken away to safety. The tribe was severely punished for deceiving General Joubert and later the real Modjadji was dragged into his presence. After this ignominy, she took poison, and died the ritual death of her ancestors.

The present Modjadji still resides in that area, but receives visitors and can be seen in her kraal by all and sundry. A strange and interesting rider to this story is that the latest DNA testing has proved that the Lemba – a subgroup of the BaVenda, do actually spring from Semitic stock – makes one wonder doesn't it?