A century ago, one of the five most recognizable names in the world
was arguably that of Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal
Republic-a small Southern African country inhabited by a white
tribe-who took on the overwhelming superiority of the mighty
British Empire in defense of his people's sovereign independence.
It was a David and Goliath story. As most of the world-including
the US-cheered the Boers on, they fought a desperate war to the
bitter end (1899-1902) against colonialism, until their country lay
smoldering in ruins and an estimated 27, 929 Boer women and
children, as well as an untold number of blacks, had died in
British concentration camps.Yet within little more than half a
century, those same Afrikaners had squandered their political
capital and gone from being the world's favorite underdog to one of
the most reviled names in history. Their subsequent social
engineering project known as apartheid became an abhorrent concept
in the eyes of the international community. Bernard Botes Kruger is
a fifth-generation descendant of the wartime president, Paul
Kruger. He is an Afrikaner who lived most of his life in the
turmoil and conflict that has dominated his country's history. His
new historical novel, A Battlement of Spears, tells the remarkable
story of how not only the Afrikaners, but also the many other
former sovereign nations within the redrawn borders of the postwar
South Africa struggled to come to terms with a common identity,
often with devastating consequences. "What cruel twist of tectonic
irony caused the deepest scar on the earth's surface across the
face of that continent that would also suffer the most appalling of
human tragedies?" the author asks. Set against the backdrop of the
timeless mountain called in Zulu uKhahlamba (Barrier of Spears), a
dramatic geographic boundary that divided nations throughout
history, A Battlement of Spears is an epic story spanning
twenty-four years and two continents, of two young men with similar
interests but vastly different cultural backgrounds who become
unlikely friends. In a tragic series of events they will discover
what sacrifices are exacted from those who would dwell in the
symbolic no man's land of the summit, where fog often obscures the
vision and deprivation dulls the senses, until it becomes all too
easy to drift into hostile territory or stumble into the jaws of
the precipice. In the process they will become separated, spending
a lifetime before finding each other again a world away, on a
different continent. But in the course of their respective
journeys, they will also learn that barriers are not always what
they seem, and that choices are sometimes inevitable, with
far-reaching consequences. In that hauntingly beautiful land it is
never merely about survival, but about the things that make it
truly worthwhile, such as loyalty, friendship and honor, regardless
of the price. Written in a style that endeavors to entertain while
enlightening the uninformed about South Africa's long road to
democracy, the book provides extensive background explanations
(yes, footnotes) to those interested in the historical,
anthropological or linguistic aspects of a 'rainbow nation, ' which
today recognizes eleven official languages and several royal
families, besides a multitude of unofficial languages and dialects.
And while A Battlement of Spears is a work of fiction, based,
according to the author, on "countless true stories," it becomes
evident within the first few pages that many of the events
portrayed are too detailed and specific not to have been
experienced by someone. Some elements of the story are unmistakably
autobiographical, but much of it simply represents the collective
consciousness of a people struggling to find solutions.
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