"Hounding of Mashona, evil keeps begetting itself, mills of God" Read the full letter
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Letter ReferenceOlive Schreiner: F.S. Malan 1000/4
ArchiveNational English Literary Museum, Grahamstown
Epistolary TypeLetter
Letter Date After Start: Tuesday July 1913 ; Before End: September 1913
Address FromDe Aar, Northern Cape
Address To
Who ToFrancois Stephanus ('FS') Malan
Other Versions
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Legend
The Project is grateful to the National English Literary Museum (NELM) for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner letter, which is part of its Manuscript Collections. This letter has been dated by reference to content.
1 De Aar
2 Tuesday
3
4 To F S Malan
5
6 My dear Friend
7
8 My heart is sore sorrowful. What are these things which you are doing
9up in the Transvaal? Could any one have dreamed 1899 that in a short
10space of 14 years a Boer Government in South Africa would turn British
11troops on to shoot down not merely men women & children but but
12Labuschagnes & Van der Merwes in their native land in defense of those
13mining magnates property; who have already plunged South Africa into
14bloodshed & made our soil reek with the blood of untold English
15soldiers & heroic Boer women. Don't think I blame you personally. My
16old love for you, & my deep faith in you may perhaps make me unjust in
17believing you can be to blame.
18
19 Unless I had it from your lips I couldn't believe that the prisoner of
20?Koberg has changed so utterly. As And I must say that as far as Sauer
21& Smuts are concerned they really intended what has happened when they
22called British ?hireling troops in to shoot down South Africans. I d
23believe that the truth - though it may never come to light as the real
24truths of the intrigues of the mining Houses against the Transvaal
25will never be known - that money (perhaps not in the form of hard
26cash) did flow like water in protection of the mining magnates
27property - & that the absolute disregard of human life to this end did
28not flow from only from yourselves.
29
30 You have been so near & dear to my spirit in the past, I have fixed
31such great hopes on you that I feel I cannot for this once remain
32silent without opening my heart to you.
33
34 Yours always
35 Olive Schreiner
36
37