What Oom Gert does not tell: Silences and resonances of C. Louis Leipoldt’s ‘Oom Gert vertel’

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to reconstruct the resonance of “Oom Gert vertel” at the time it was written. The story that Oom Gert tells is reread for its silences and unsaid things. Oom Gert’s reticence about his own story, his silence about the politics of the time and his partial view of the devastating effects of martial law are explored against the backdrop of Leipoldt's reports on the trials of Cape rebels in the treason court for the pro-Boer newspaper <em>The South African News</em> and of other reconstructions of the period. From this reading Oom Gert emerges as representing the complexities of the loyalty of Cape Afrikaners. It is postulated that the unsaid historical background, which would have resonated powerfully for Cape Afrikaners of that time, was written out of the poem so that it could fit better into the circumstances of its first publication. Appropriating the poem for Afrikaner nationalism is a misreading

The Prince and Afrikaners: The Royal Visit of 1925

“…The young journalist Markus Viljoen who travelled with the royal entourage and sought to provide measured coverage of the tour later recalled his distaste for the "hysterical" responses of his fellow South Africans, ridiculing the frenzied chase for objects like matches or cigarette ends cast off by the Prince, or bemoaning the fate of journalists who stood in danger of being trampled underfoot by crowds desperate to be close to the Prince. 50 It was not exclusively Afrikaner commentators and observers who found the cult of celebrity surrounding the Prince simultaneously unseemly and comical. The novelist William Plomer whose stock with the English-speakers of Zululand rose when his family relationship with the Prince's private secretary became known, remembered how "the whites in Eshowe, as elsewhere, ran after the Prince, staring and jabbering excitedly as if trying to round up a rare animal."…”

“…53 But, having made his peace with the vice-chancellor, he delivered what Markus Viljoen judged to be the only noteworthy speech of the tour. 54 Barbed, teasing, and ironic, he addressed the Prince: "We have come here to-day, your Highness because we like to see a man and we cheered because we know a man when we see one. Our presence here is intended as a tribute to your manliness, which the most persistent attempts of the whole world have not been able to spoil."…”

“…Going further, he suggested that misapprehensions about Afrikaner attitudes arose from the fanciful descriptions of cheering multitudes and transcendent ceremonies by journalists under constant pressure to produce fresh prose about a tour that was gruelling and mind-numbingly repetitive. 65 Added to the considerations identified by Viljoen is the point raised by Smuts: Hertzog and his followers, as holders of power and hosts to the royal visitor, had no choice but to fully embrace the visit. As Hertzog put it in response to M. E. Rothmann's objections, "the Government, as representative of the People of South Africa, receives the Prince as the future ruler as recognised by our constitution and by the National Party."…”