Who Am I? And Where Do I Come From?

The Free State Towns of Bothaville and Viljoenskroon fall in the well known Maize Triangle of South Africa.  In good years there are kilometers upon kilometers of lands of maize or as we call them in South Africa, mealies fields, growing in profusion.  Farms belong to individuals or to large Co-ops and this is the food basket which feeds the country as well as many other countries in Africa.   It was in this area that I was born in 1933.

My father and some of his brothers joined the South African Army during World War 1 and after the war my Dad joined his father where they hired a farm in the Arlington district.   During the early 1920’s they were farming on hired lands in the Kroonstad district.   It was somewhere around 1922 or 1923 that my dad, Bert Whittal and his brother, Cecil, bought a farm between Viljoenskroon & Bothaville near Mirage Railway Station.   They were granted a loan from the Land Bank to do so.   The farms in that area were not fenced and were bare and dry.   They fenced the farm and divided it into camps for lands to cultivate and the keeping of stock.   There was no water or trees, and no house to live in, so they must have camped while digging a well, ploughing lands and then building a house.   Uncle Cecil did not live on “Maizefield”.   He was married and, as far as I know, was farming in the Heilbron district.

They believed that they would grow big crops of mealies so they called the place Maizefield.   My grandfather, John Henry Whittal, and his daughter Gertie, were living with my dad and helping him.

Maizefield was beautiful farming soil with no rocks or trees, so there was no natural material with which to build a house.   The next best thing was the soil itself, which was compressed in box moulds, moving the moulds to the next level and filling them with soil again, stamping it down to carry on the next day until roof height was reached.   The walls were covered with a soft mixture of soil and cow dung to waterproof it.   Wooden roof beams were erected from wall to wall and finally covered with corrugated iron sheets.   There was a pitched roof with a flat verandah roof running the length of the front of the house   The floors were also stamped earth mixed with ant heaps & cow dung and covered with black rubber tax.

It was to this very humble home that my father took his bride, Lydia Randall, on 21 January 1925, to live and work as a team for the next twenty years.

In the meantime a borehole was sunk and a windmill erected, a drinking trough for animals was built and an earthen dam was scooped out of the earth.  All this was done with a dam scoop, ox power, bare hands and the sweat of man’s brow.   Grandpa had built a cottage from baked bricks where he and aunty Gertie lived.   Each house had a flower and vegetable garden.   Fruit trees were planted and grapevines around the house.   A few thousand gum tree seedlings were bought and planted and watered with the greatest care.   There were fowls, geese, ducks and turkeys.   The stock comprised of draught oxen, cows, merino sheep, pigs & horses.   Cart and horses was their method of transport.   There were always cats and dogs.

So this was our happy family and then three little girls were born at regular intervals, Thelma in 1926, Bertha in 1927 & Daphne in 1929.   Uncle Cecil sold his share of the farm to their brother, Arthur, who had married my mother’s sister, Ivy Randall.   They lived there until after the birth of their second child and then sold their farm to my mother’s twin brothers, Jim and Arthur Randall, who moved there from Kroonstad with their widowed father, Dave Randall.

During 1928, Auntie Gertie married my mother’s cousin, Willy Foxcroft and went farming with him beyond Bothaville on “Mooihoek” where they lived, farmed successfully and reared their four children.

Other relatives in close proximity were my mother’s eldest sister, Aunt Sally Martin.   She and Uncle Fred were childless and they farmed on “Redhill”.   There were my mother’s cousins, Ben and Edgar Payne, and their families as well as their sister, Aileen, who was married to Arch Travers.   They all farmed nearby.

Then came the bad years with severe droughts and the depression.   How my parents survived can only be imagined as they never talked about it.   I reckon that 1933 was most probably the worst and what a time to have another baby!!!