BATTLING on the CAPE

I DIDN’T know there was such a team as Emerging Ireland, but there is and they’re off to South Africa. I’ve read that one of the teams they’re playing are called the Griquas. Well. This took me right back to my last visit to South Africa. In the Cape province they have four definable seasons, unlike any other part of Africa. This has a very historic significance. When the warrior-like Bantu people expanded across Africa they were adept farmers as well as ferocious hunters, and a match for anyone. But being used to only two seasons a year, when it came to colonising the Cape, four seasons didn’t suit their crops or their lifestyle. They moved on. So the Cape came to be settled quite sparsely, and not by a warrior people. So when the Europeans arrived — and the Cape was one of the first areas where significant European incursions took place — resistance was minimal.

I remember late one evening in the Tsitsikamma Mountains, with the sky looking as if the universe had just been created, our guide, George, was prevailed upon to give our press group a spot of vernacular culture.

Profiled against the setting sun, he told us quietly about the Griquas tribe, his people, and how they had embraced Christianity. But things went badly, and on the eve of a battle with the Afrikaners in 1876, Koq, the leader of the Griquas, prayed to God.

George recited Koq’s prayer of intercession: ‘Despite a great many prayers to You we are continually losing our wars. Tomorrow we are fighting a battle that is truly great. With all our might we need Your help, and that is why I must tell You something: this battle tomorrow is going to be a serious affair. There will be no place in it for children. Therefore I ask You not to send your Son to help us. Come Yourself.’

We know now, that in the long run there was no heavenly intercession, and the indigenous people of South Africa had to wait a long time to get their land back.

Which in a way made the prayer even more moving.