The story of bacon is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s when most of the important developments in bacon took place. The plotline takes place in the 2000s with each character referring to a real person and actual events. The theme is a kind of “steampunk” where modern mannerisms, speech, clothes and practices are superimposed on a historical setting. Modern people interact with old historical figures with all the historical and cultural bias that goes with this.
The Greatest Adventure
Johannesburg, May 1890
Crossing the Vaal River, c 1890
Soon after I started my transport business, I married the daughter of a German immigrant who set up a blacksmith business, making wagon wheels in Port Elisabeth, Colin Beckmann. I met Julie at church. We fell in love and decided to build a life together. She was 20 and I was 26.
Her grandfather on her mother’s side was the British High Commissioner to Zambia and very English. My parents were delighted with our relationship. Not on account of the position of her grandfather but because they thought I would never find a wife!
My friend, David (Dawie) de Villiers-Graaff had a different focus. He told me many times whenever I brought the subject of marriage up that he will marry as soon as he made his millions. I thought about those words often over the years and wonder who was a millionaire at 25. Him with millions in the bank or me with my family with two kids. Then again, he created a wealth that will last many generations and engineered advantages for his children and successive generations. Looking back on my life, having children early is still a choice I would make 100 times over.
Very soon after our marriage, I was back on the road, hauling mainly food and building materials between the Cape and Johannesburg. Even when Julie was pregnant with our two children, Tristan and Lauren, I did not stay home very long, always being driven by a strange mix of a somewhat misplaced quest for adventure and a drive to care for my young family. When I was home we were happy together but being away from home had its toll on our relationship.
The Vijloensdrift Ferry, c 1900
On one of my trips in 1890, I was crossing Vijoensdrift. It is a few hours ride outside Potchefstroom and one of the best places to cross the Vaal River on your way to Johannesburg.
I was contracted by a certain Mr. Vincent Reeves to transport chickens to the Johannesburg market. Mr. Reeves, originally from Minnesota in the USA, purchased land in the Parys district and set up a chicken farm. He studied chicken farming intensely and was successful in Minnesota. Upon learning about the discovery of gold on the Rand, he conceived a plan to buy land in the Transvaal Republic, not far from Johannesburg to farm chickens for sale in the lucrative Reef market where gold mining was exploding. (1)
Mr. Reeves was, by all accounts, a very good chicken farmer but not well versed in geography. An unscrupulous fellow back in Minneapolis convinced him that Parys was closer to Johannesburg than it actually turned out to be. The reality is that Parys is in the Orange Free State and Johannesburg in the Transvaal – two different Boer republics. Nevertheless, he thought it was close enough, which it is, and forged ahead, setting up the farm. On this day I was trying to cross the Vaal river at Viljoensdrift with Mr. Reeves’ chickens on my ox wagon, taking them to the Johannesburg market.
It was after a particularly wet spell and the river was high. I was tired after a long journey, eager to get to Johannesburg and my exhaustion caused an error in judgment. I should have taken better notice of the speed and level of the river. We should not have crossed at that time.
Hans Viljoen had set up the ferry and by 1857 was taking travelers, their horses, and wagons across the Vaal River. Over the years, the crossing became known as Viljoensdrift. (2) This was where I was making the crossing.
Everything went according to plan. Just before we reached the Transvaal side of the river, one of the ferry anchors came loose. It tilted slightly to one side and dipped into the rushing current. As the ferry got pushed down, my wagons started rolling forward. Desperately I tried stopping it from the front but it was too heavy. On it was Mr. Reeves chickens, salt, maize, and building materials. I had little chance.
On the Transvaal side of the river, a Boer from the Potchefstroom district was waiting to cross himself. His name, Oscar Klynveld. He was sitting on the bank, on his horse, when the anchor rope came loose. With no hesitation, he spurred his horse on and raced towards the ferry while yelling to others on the bank to come and help.
Crossing the Vaal was not always smooth sailing. Here, an ox wagon got stuck crossing the Vaal river.
His horse plunged into the water. He kept feeling the depth of the water with the handle of his whip (5) with water swirling around his horse’s chin as it tried to keep its head above the water. The surging river caused the ferry to tilt dangerously and bags of grain dislodged from the wagon. Oscar jumped into the water and swam the last few meters next to his horse.
He pushed himself up onto the ferry. His trusted steed turned to make it back to the land. Oscar scrambled onto the ferry and grabbed hold of the one front wheel, shouldering back against the forward motion of the wagon. Together we held it. Tentatively.
He continued to scream at others to swim faster to get to us. Within the blink of an eye, there were five Boers on the ferry and we held the wagons back till the wagon was steadied. I saw Hans Viljoen running down to the landing site of the ferry, cursing and swearing at his workers who, by this time, re-fasten the anchor that came loose.
The ferry, my wagons and seven, very wet and cold, Boers made it safely to the Transvaal side of the Vaal River. That was how a friendship started that would last a lifetime.
Oscar invited me to his farm, not far from Vijoensdrift. I left one of my men in charge of the wagons and set off on my horse, Lady. Oscar was farming in the old Boer republic of Transvaal, in the Potchefstroom district. When I told him about Mr. Reeves and his chickens, he was eager to learn more since he heard similar stories about farmers in Europe and America who set up successful pig farms close to large cities. He was always looking for ways to expand his farming operation. What interested him about pork farming was how one sow produced many piglets compared to cows and sheep and you can take the pigs to the market sooner. There was already large chicken farms around Potchefstroom and he had no interest in competing with them.
On my account, I did not know much about farming, but I did know a great deal about Dawie, Uncle Jacobus and Combrinck & Co. who bought and slaughtered many pigs. They even farmed for themselves. They supplied the public in Cape Town, the passing ships at the Cape of Good Hope and had contracts with the Cape government to supply the navy and the army. (3) Oscar saw the opportunity to not only supply Johannesburg but as soon as the railway line is linked all the way from Johannesburg to Cape Town, why not sell the pigs to Combrinck & Co.!
Johannesburg markplein …1890. Photo supplied by Nico Moolan.
Oscar and I talked till late in the night. His wife, Trudie kept making us fresh coffee. We wondered about selling pigs. I, of course, knew how to dry cure bacon. It was, so to speak, in my blood from childhood. We could cure our own bacon! Of course, Uncle Jacobus already made and sold bacon using my dad’s recipe, but making it was a long and slow process that could only be done during the winter. As a result of this, Combrinck & Co. imported much bacon. The best imported bacon was produced by the Harris family in Calene, in Wiltshire, England. Oscar and I reasoned that if they can produce large volumes of bacon and sell it here in South Africa, why can’t we cure the bacon in Potchefstroom and sell it across the country? We could possibly even export it to other countries!
One thought led to another and as we spoke, a clear plan started to emerge that involved producing and selling bacon. Later that evening after supper Oscar and I transitioned from coffee to witblits (4). I told him about my misgivings about the future of the country and that I did not see riding transport as a long term occupation. Not only was I skeptical about the safety of such an occupation in a land which I saw becoming more divided by the day and racial prejudice and distrust increasing, I also expected the railway line between the Cape and Johannesburg to be completed very soon and there would be no more need for the transport rider. On his side he was eager to diversify away from cattle farming and the prospect of processing the meat further appealed to him.
That night I was not just a young man who cured bacon once a year on his grandparents farm. I was a master butcher who could do anything. Together, we saw ourselves as invincible and everything seemed easy. We knew the right people and had the right skills to farm, make the bacon and sell it. How difficult could it be?
Over the years we have many times thought back to the many similar discussions we had in the beginning. Little did we know what skill, knowledge, and capital it took to set up and run a bacon curing company. Especially to make good quality bacon like the Harris family with their Wiltshire cured bacon.
That night in Potchefstroom we had all the answers to life’s questions and it is right that young people should think like this. Otherwise, if tainted by the skepticism of experience, nothing new will ever be started. There are very few times when ignorance is a good thing but in this case, it really was. If we knew how difficult the voyage would be that we embarked on, we would never have done it! As it is, it turned out to be the start to the greatest adventures ever!
(1) Vincent H. Reeves from the Twin Cities, Minnesota was a chicken farmer and an entrepreneur in the 1890’s who owned a 10-acre farm in the Golden Valley. He made a careful study of the chicken industry and devised to use steam to do away with the hens altogether for incubation. (Saint Paul Globe, page 5)
Eben and Oscar met when Eben was the Johannesburg Depot manager for Goosebumps Frozen Foods and Oscar was the owner of Transwest Distributors, located in Potchefstroom. Oscar was a sub-distributor, used by Goosebumps to service farts of Gauteng and the North West province. One of the commodities that Eben and Oscar worked on together during this time was the distribution of frozen chickens. Oscar had Eben’s name saved on his phone for a long time as “Eben Chicken.”
(2) “It started with the drift, that is a river crossing over the Vaal. Hans Viljoen advertised in 1857 that he has a pond and is able to ferry people, wagons and live stock over the Vaal on his father’s farm Witkop…. Until a few years ago one could still see the steel post to anchor the rope. The crossing must have been active until 1927 when the road bridge (single lane) was constructed.” (ruralexploration)
(3) It is this tradition of supplying the general public, state departments and the navy of Combrinck & Ross (Domisse, page 26) that, I believe, laid the foundation of the future success of David de Villiers-Graaff with Combrinck & Co and later Imperial Cold Storage & Supply Ltd. They continued to supply the British army and won the contract to supply meat to the British forces during the Second Anglo-Boer war which contributed substantially to the wealth generated through the company.
Woody’s Brands was created in the first place to supply retail. This is a notoriously difficult market to enter but both Eben and Oscar had mainly retail experience and for them was a natural starting point. It was buyers at Shoprite and Pick ‘n Pay who motivated Eben to create the Woody’s Brands and who gave the company its first break. Retail remained the almost exclusive focus of the company during its first 5 years, until around 2015 when its own factory made it possible for them to enter catering and food services markets.
(4) Witblits or “white lightning,” similar to Moonshine is a brandy made from grapes.
(5) The image of measuring the depth of the water with a whip I got from a series of articles I did on the life of Petrus Pooe. “Petrus remembers that the Vaal River was in flood, and describes the difficulty experienced in crossing it above Lindequesdrift. “I had never seen such drama in my life,” he says. He remembers his father feeling the depth of the water with the handle of his oxen whip, his brother Samuel leading the oxen into the water until it was swirling around his chin, the surging river dislodging bags of grain from the wagons.”
The photo is Crossing the Vaal (at Vereeniging) published on the web by The Heritage Portal. The life and story of Perus Pooe is from, Facing the Storm: Portraits of Black Lives in Rural South Africa by Tim Keegan, 1988, published by David Philip, Cape Town.
References:
Dommisse, E. Sir David de Villiers Graaff, First Baronet of De Grendel. 2011. Tafelberg.
Saint Paul Globe (Saint Paul, Minnesota), 3 March 1890, Page 5, Chickens by Steam.
The story of bacon is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s when most of the important developments in bacon took place. The plotline takes place in the 2000s with each character referring to a real person and actual events. The theme is a kind of “steampunk” where modern mannerisms, speech, clothes and practices are superimposed on a historical setting. Modern people interact with old historical figures with all the historical and cultural bias that goes with this.
Drums of Despair
Johannesburg, December 1889
In 1889 my life was carefree! I was fully fascinated by the world I was born into. Riding transport between the Colony and Johannesburg allowed me to forge a bond with the disappearing natural world and my interactions with the people of the land allowed me to study the human condition up close. Both nature and the human mind were possible pathways to connect with the eternal. Nature is an obvious point of connection. It is our culture that carries our religion and since it is the primary human connection with the divine I wanted to learn more about it. Its up-close and intimate study was the unintended benefits of my first profession as a transport rider. When I later chose to take up meat curing as a profession it was this exact same drive that caused in me the desire to understand it completely.
I found that when I considered myself and life around me, I understood everything, including myself, to be temporal. My mind, however, perceived the eternal. Despite the fleeting nature of life and its ever-changing cycles, I continually searched for that which is permanent. The grandeur of Africa, I could see with my own eyes, to be very impermanent. A consideration of the human mind, likewise, did not bring me any closer to what is eternal. My experience at the Shambles brought about grave doubts if the human mind, despite the noblest mental inventions of language, writing and the evolution of constructs such as tribe, nation and religion, could stop humans from wandering into the most ghastly cruelty. It rather seemed to me that the exact same mechanics that build the mental worlds of algebra and trigonometry, language, nationhood and marriage, created cruel systems of torture and horror.
I kept on searching, but before I could make real progress, I had to understand the evolution of thought much better. In particular, I needed to see the mental devices of our enormous brains at work. It was when I looked into this that I, on the one hand, identified only turmoil and strife for our land’s future. The mind, I saw, give us the ability to build a complex set of assumptions that we aproach life with. The natural world is unaware of our tribal affiliations or our systems of faith. Without humans, these notions disappear completely. The biggest impact of our culture on nature is where culture leads to our manipulation of nature and, as is mostly the case, our destruction of it.
On the other hand, I saw that despite the evolution of thought, even the notions of gods and demons, heaven and hell, are unable to align the human condition with what is eternal and fixed. I saw that if anything, these concepts brought about greater strife on earth and increased our cruelty to one another and a continual destruction of nature. So overwhelming was the evidence of this that I completely gave up on it at a very young age. I later abandoned my quest to touch the eternal and fixed for practical reasons of earning a living. It was then that I ventured into meat curing. What follows is the final lessons I had to learn to become thoroughly disellusioned with our mental world and any notions of a peaceful future for southern Africa. It was the simple, age-old disciplines of the art of curing and the wonderful complexity of the mechanics underlying it which became the tool that took me by the hand and brought me to the answer of permanency in a temporary existence. The rest of my story gives the account how this unfolded.
Reports from the Church
Inquisitiveness was in my blood and at 20 I was eager to know what forces are crafting our world. I had to consider if riding transport, which allowed me to study nature and the cultures of our land, would bring me any closer to the answers I was looking for. Daniel Jacobs whom I had the pleasure to host at my campsite was a dedicated student of history. He was an author and a historian with a special interest in church and family history. He always travelled with his books. To him, they were his closest companions and it allowed him to read the most fascinating quotes to me. I became obsessed with tracing a story back to the very beginning and the first contact of Europeans with the people of southern Africa fascinated me.
These points of first contact showcased the different cultures and would uncover the true nature of human inventions to me, whether physical or mental images. I was too young to have been an eye witness to the first contacts but fortunately there exist many first-hand accounts from others. It was Daniel Jacobs. for example, who told me about the early years of the Cape Colony from the perspective of the Dutch Reformed Church. This was important since the Dutch Reformed Church became the dominant church in South Africa for many years and since it was the most important Boer church, its voice would be, if anything, biased to the Boer settlers. If it, therefore, paints the early colonists in an unfavourable light in its relation to the indigenous tribes, there is a great deal of credibility to the report. The night when we camped together, he read me some of his own poetry and when we spoke about the early history of the Colony, he fetched a book on the Dutch Reformed Church and read me sections from it. I was fascinated by an entry from 1795.
The DRC recorded how it saw the history, that “the colonists had been gradually spreading over the lands occupied by the Hottentot (1) and Bushman(1) tribes. These, too weak to make resistance, looked with no satisfaction on the arrival of the whites in their midst. As the latter were taking their lands, they retaliated by driving off cattle, and the Boers, taking up their long-barrelled hunting guns, exacted bloody and cruel revenge. The colonists ground down and oppressed by those in authority, spread themselves thus, heedless of the threats and admonitions of their government. That they did not spread more widely to the north and east was owing to the fact, that along their northern line the arid deserts skirting the Orange River offered little temptation to transgress the boundary, while at the eastern extremity they were fronted by the warlike and independent Amakoze Kaffirs (1), who, far from allowing any inroad into their territory, commenced a system of aggression upon the colonists.”
The “matter-of-fact” commentary by the Dutch church in Africa startled me. It was the stories about this eastern frontier that my dad would later tell me in great detail, that convinced me that the Dutch church was wrong in painting the indigenous tribes as the aggressor. The real aggressor was the white people, as he was in the rest of the land. What I started to discover was not the facts of what happened. These are very well documented. I started to understand the thinking that was driving the action.
“The farms, particularly in the east, lay very remote from one another, and between them lived the Hottentots (1) in their miserable kraals and smoky huts,” Daniel continued. “They still went unclothed, only covered with a kaross. The governor had forbidden, under pain of severe punishment, that any Hottentot (1) should be enslaved. Still, it was frequently done, as slaves proper were dear to purchase. Many Hottentots (1) and slaves ran away from their masters, particularly if badly used, and formed themselves into bands to rob and murder, and make the outlying farms unsafe.” (M’Cater, 1869)
My own experience informed me that the church was right. So completely devoid of respect were the colonists of the African people that hunters could, in later years apply on hunting permits for animals to kill Khoi or Bushman. The level of brutality by invading Europeans towards the people, beasts and places of this land is hard to fathom or put in words. Not only the Dutch Boers, but the English also partook heartily in the orgy of violence. They shared in the most savage treatment of the Southern African tribes. My dad told me about the wars in the Eastern Frontier.
The Frontier in the East
The savagery of the English knew no bounds! I always stop myself when I say this to add that many English were fierce opponents of slavery and brutality towards indigenous peoples, motivated by the English Church. Oom Stefanus Jordaan who’s farm I once visited told me that the continuation of the practice of slavery in the Transvaal was the spiritual motivation for the English to annex it and for the Anglo-Boer war of 1880 and 1881. (2) From the same parliament in London, not only unspeakable evil emanated but also good!
Even in my lifetime, visiting Boer farms in the Transvaal left me with a bitter-sweet taste in my mouth and I could see that the attitudes of the farmers were steeped in a long tradition of oppression and destruction. On the one hand, these people were the warmest and heartiest people I knew. Rugged, industrious and hard working with a faith that almost moved mountains. On the other hand, I was angry to see the little black kids, indentured by people like the Jordaan’s on account of the fact that they were caught on their farms or captured when the Boers raided native villages or bought as “black ivory” on auctions like you would trade cattle. Slavery was alive and well in the independent Boer republics even after the Anglo Boer War and the treatment of black people in this way was a source of great anguish for me. It was and could never be right that any person treats another with such cruelty and disdain. This knowledge was one of my earliest childhood memories, the horror I felt when I saw people being mistreated.
The amaXhosa
In few other places in our land did the savagery of the English find a greater expression than in the eastern frontiers of the Cape Colony. The indigenous people they encountered here was the amaXhosa. The Xhosa nation never adopted the monarch as a powerful, centralizing figure such as the Zulus from Natal. In the Xhosa tradition, he was always viewed as the figurehead of the nation. The king, for example, do not appoint the chiefs. They are appointed by the people. When new chiefs secured the support of his people, the king would formally appoint them. In the same way, even the kingship itself was secured after a struggle between the possible heirs of the throne. The monarch would settle disputes and declare wars. The king ruled by the council of his chiefs.
The Xhosa developed a system called segmentation which allowed for the chiefs more aggressive and ambitious sons to depart and carve out an existence away from the ruler’s house, called the Great House. This was often the case with eldest sons from the Right Hand House which was a Xhosa invention to give status to the second favourite wife’s children, referred to as the right-hand wife and the accompanying Right Hand House. In this way, sons could splinter off their father’s house and establish new chiefdoms and still remain part of the amaXhosa.
The Colonial expansion to the east came in direct conflict with the Xhosa kingdom. The shadowy figure of Phalo set his Great Place from where the tribe would be ruled up to the west of the Kei River. The struggle for dominance between his sons would set the stage for another brutal war against the Cape Colony on its Eastward Expansion.
A short introduction to some of the key players in the drama is in order to set the stage. Gcaleka inherited the Phalo’s Great House with Rharhabe as his Right Hand son. When Phalo passed away in around 1775, Gcaleka was the heir of Phalo’s Great House. Rharhabe was his right hand son. In an ensuing battle for the throne, Rharhabe lost to Gcaleka and the former moved west of the Kei with his followers. The white Colonists would later call this region Ciskei. The region where Phalo resided with Gcalekas Great House later became known as Transkei.
Two dominant tribes now emerged. To the west of the Kei river was the amaRharhabe and to the east, amaGcaleka. This is important only to Xhosa people. As far as foreigners are concerned, they are all part of the amaXhosa. When Phalo died, Khwawuta succeeded him. West of the Kei, Rharhabe was killed in battle in around 1782 along with his heir, Mlawu. Mlawu’s son, Ngqika became hair apparent but since he was still underage, his uncle, Ndlambe was appointed till Ngqika would be old enough to rule. Ndlambe was the second son of Rarhabes Great House and Mlawu’s full brother.
Back to the east of the Kei River, Khawuta died in 1794. The heir in line as chief of the amaGcaleka was his son Hintsa who was also to be the ruler of the amaXhosa. Councellors would rule in his place till he come of age. This means that both houses to the east and west of the Kei were ruled by minors. As the minors grew up old scores had to be settled with other chiefs and more importantly, with the Cape Colony.
It would be the stories of the frontier wars in the East of the Colony that would provide me with the clearest picture of what the invasion by the colonists did to the psyche of the locals. It became my most vivid example of the development of the mental landscape in the minds of people, called religion.
I spoke to my dad about the Jordaans’ and what I learned from Daniel. He told me that the Boers religion gave them the justification in their eyes to “leave” the Colony where they felt marginalised and treated unfairly and trek to the promised lands where they had, according to the belief of many, the right to dispossess the heathens (as they saw them) who occupy it. It seemed as if they had their religious beliefs forever, but here, in the case of the amaXhosa, I could see the progression of a god concept and how it morphed almost in front of my eyes. It was the actions of the Boers and the English in particular which caused the development of a theology among native tribes which does not bode well for the future. Like the Jews developed their Messianic theology in slavery and the Apostle John penned the book of Revelations under intense persecution by the Romans, so the soul of the black African, desperately trying to make sense of the rape of his culture and the persistent onslaught upon his existence, found solace in their deep spirituality which was progressed to bring hope. In so doing, the drums of desperation and despair would be heard for generations to come in this magnificent land.
The Cruelty of the English and the Faith of the amaXhosa
My dad loved telling stories. A story, as I learned, must have a beginning, middle and end. My dad’s story began with the arrival of a new leader for the Colony at the Cape of Good Hope in Lord Charles Somerset, the second son of the fifth Duke of Beaufort, a direct descendant of King Edward III of England. He arrived in Cape Town on 6 April 1814 as the new governor. Emotions ran high on the eastern front of the Colony preceded by 4 bloody wars with the amaXhosa as the Colony expanded and continued to dispossess amaXhosa land. As Summerset arrived, war was again looming on the eastern front. To stabilise it, he first sorted out matters with the Boers. After a small Boer uprising was put down and the ringleaders dealt with, believing that he firmly entrenched English supremacy and their new rule over the Dutch, by 1816 he turned his attention to the amaXhosa.
In Summerset’s estimation, he had two options in dealing with them. He could either completely conquer the amaXhosa and rule over them as subjects of the Colony or they had to be driven out beyond its borders. The amaXhosa continued to raid farms into areas that previously belong to them. Somerset, from his English- and Eurocentric perspective, believed he could “civilize” them. He looked towards the missionaries to teach them improved agriculture and a more peaceful Christian existence. My dad told me that Somerset remarked to Earl Bathurst that through these interactions “civilization and its consequences may be introduced into countries hitherto barbarous and unexplored.” My dad, as a follower of Alexander von Humboldt, did not share Somerset’s English and Euro-centric view of the superiority of their culture and had great respect for the sophistication of the indigenous peoples and their technology which, according to him, was above all, more in balance with the natural laws governing our world.
In the end, Somerset chose intimidation as his first direct engagement with the amaXhosa as he tried to end their cross border raids. He arranged an audience with the chiefs who ruled to the west of the Kei River, Ngqika and Ndlambe with some minor chiefs. So I became familiar with two iconic figures in the life of the amaXhosa in King Ngqika and Prince Ndlambe. Somerset incorrectly assumed that they speak for the entire amaXhosa nation who were ruled by two houses since the time of Phalo, the son of Tshiwo, the son of Ngconde, son of Sikhomo, son of Nkosiyamutu, son of king Xhosa. Since the time of Phalo, there has been a Great House under his son Gcaleka and a right-hand house under his son Rharabe. It was Rharhabe who crossed the Kei River with a number of followers who fought a bitter war against the Khoi in the area over land and cattle and eventually killed their king Hinsati. He negotiated the sale of land for his tribe from the Queen, Hobo, between the Keiskamma and Buffalo rivers.
Like a complete fool, Summerset staged the meeting with Ngqika and Ndlambe as a theatre-like production intended to intimidate. Summerset was present with his soldiers in full arms while the chiefs had to leave their soldiers behind. Somerset sat on a chair while the amaXhosas had to squad on the floor. Ngqika was the senior chief present. Ngqika was the grandson of Rahrabe or the son of his great house. This gave him the rightful claim to the amaXhosa throne!, Still, in the Xhosa tradition, he could not make binding agreements on behalf of the other amaRharhabe chiefs. Ngqika tried to explain this to him but Somerset wanted none of it. He lost his temper and with gifts and threats coerced Ngqika into an agreement that the chief could not enforce. Confident that he solved the problems of the Eastern Frontier, Somerset returned to Cape Town.
There was another reason why Ngqika was the wrong horse to back in peace negotiations. In 1794 he attacked the great house of Gcaleka to the east of the Kei River. Hintsa, who was only 5 when his father died in 1794 was imprisoned by Ngqika, had by this time come of age and turned out to be a good and popular leader. Under his leadership, the Great House of the amaXhosa reestablished itself and was now intent on asserting control over the chiefdoms west of the Kei. Of course, this meant settling a score he had with Ngqika and he naturally supported Ndlambe as the chief of the amaRharhabe. This support from Hintsa and the new support he received from his powerful son, Mdushane gave Ndlambe great courage. The other encouragement he received was the support he got from a powerful war doctor, Nxele. In a sense, everything I told you about so far is only background information to set the context of this remarkable man who would have a profound influence on the religious life of the amaXhosa. It would be the gifted and spiritual Nxele that would become my eyewitness account of the development of religion and the mental images that binds cultures together.
The Gospel According to Nxele
Nxele was “spiritual”, even as a child. The great scholar, Tisani, a friend of my dad, says about Nxele that he “was a solitary, mysterious child, often wandering off by himself. When he grew older Nxele went to live in the bush for extended periods. He fasted there and on occasional visits home he refused food because, he claimed, it had become unclean during preparation through the sins of his people.” (Tisani, 1987) Early on in his life, he was already recognised as a diviner who called out the sin of his people.
He led the mourning ceremony after Chief Rharhabe and his son Mlawu passed away. Long before he learned about Christianity, he was a spiritual leader, at least in the same league as the Missionaries he would later encounter. His creativity would prove him to be not only on the same level but superior to them in his natural ability and perception of the power of the divine narrative.
These innovations of Nxele came in the context of a bitter war with the Colony. He experienced the treat of the Colony to his people on many levels. He started to meet the men whom Somerset relied on to bring about a peaceful British takeover, the English missionaries. He stayed with Chief Ngquika at Joseph Williams’s mission station for a week where he was exposed to elements of Christianity and its messengers. From the start, there was tension between Nxele and the missionaries.
Nxele was able to see through the intentions of the missionaries and still, to taker the good out of their message. He started to use concepts that he was exposed to by the missionaries and so he preached against witchcraft, theft, adultery and blood-shedding, decidedly Christian themes. At one point he chastised Chief Ndlambe for having more than one wife. He was not opposed to the total teachings of the missionaries and as a result of his influence, the missionaries were accepted among the amaXhosa.
Chief Maqoma. South African History Online. March 7, 2013.
He was able to identify the fault lines, not only in the Christian system of belief, but also the inconsistencies in the lives of its evangelists. At the heart of the missions of the whites was a belief that they were “better”. Their message, their God, their culture, their language, their music, their laws were in their mind “better” and in their view, the African was inherently inferior.
It disappointed Nxele greatly! Where he respected them for their spirituality and their pursuit of the good in humans, they did not reciprocate in attitude. The missionaries saw him as inferior to them. The “we alone are right” and “we are better” attitude of many Christians is something that I find odd to this day contrary to the heart of their message. Nxele’s respect for the Christian message and his disappointment in the messengers is something that I would experience myself in the years to follow. His profound disappointment resonates with me.
He correctly saw the Missionaries as equally zealous to proselytise the amaXhosa to the English culture and customs as much as to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In a direct response to the desperate plight of the amaXhosa in the face of the brutality of the English and the Boer, Nxele expanded on the belief system of the amaXhosa. From his deep spirituality, and no doubt, in an effort to give hope to the afflicted and to try and make sense of the brutality perpetrated against them, he progressed their theology and taught that there were two Gods being Thixo and Ndaliphu. According to his teachings, Thixo is the God of the Whites and Mdalidiphu, the God of Blacks. Mdalidiphu is superior to Thixo and the world was the battleground between the two – the age-old struggle between good and evil.
Nxele’s theology taught that Mdalidiphu would prevail against Thixo and punish him and his sinful followers. Nxele’s next progression reminds me of the sermon on the mount of Jesus when he said, “you have heard it taught of old, but I say to you. . .” In other words, I now give a new law thereby becoming a lawgiver myself as the son of God. Nxele did something similar when he said to the amaXhosa, “you have heard it said of old, but I say to you. . .” He too became a lawgiver. According to him, Tayi was the son of God and in an extraordinary move, like Jesus, he proclaimed himself as the son of God when he taught that he is the brother of Tayi. According to him, Tayi was killed by the white people and for this, they were thrown into the sea. They emerged from the sea in search of land, the abantu abasemanzi. Nxele was, therefore, the agent of Mdalidiphu and his son and it was he who would drive the white man back into the sea. His teachings were remarkable and powerful to a nation where the fabric of its society was being assailed on all sides.
One can see the comfort that his message brought to people, dispossessed from their lands and brutalised in every way possible. The hope that it inspired in the hearts of young and old reminds me of the hope the Messianic prophecies brought to Israel in exile in the land of Babylon. The fact that one people could inflict such suffering on another to precipitate a shift in theology stands as a testament to the cruelty of humans and at the same time, the resilience of the human spirit which is able to carve out hope amidst the most desperate situations! It speaks to the brilliance of Nxele! It also showcases a cultural device that oppressed people used, probably from the earliest time when the first cognitive and conscious humans roamed Africa, in which the human mind develops mythology to gives hope amid desperate circumstances. It connects us with the universal consciousness and allows us to look beyond our immediate circumstances. This is the exact same device that sprang Christianity itself and still, at this junction in the east of southern Africa, it was Christianity who brought about this unspeakable opression.
A Gospel of Peace or Eternal Struggle
If we now juxtapose the position of Pretorius and the fundamental Calvinism of the Boers who saw the land before them as a gift of God to be taken and from which all who do not serve their God must be driven with the teachings of Nxele, the clouds of war which I saw from the actions of the Boer and the Brit, becomes drums of war which declare the certainty of a bloody future. Locked up in the beating of the drums was a plea for recognition and humanity.
My dad did not have contact with tribes from the north and could not know their theological leanings, but he told me that he would not be surprised if the same fundamental religious developments were taking place in the black consciousness across the region as proud owners of the land, setting them up, in the most fundamental way against the colonial people and their drive to disposes the African tribes politically, culturally and in terms of land. Whenever I brought up the history of brutal attacks of Voortrekkers venturing into the interior by local tribes, my dad’s response was always the same. “What did they expect? How would they respond to invaders into their own lands?” My dad had only harsh words to Voortrekker icons, but reserved his harshest criticism for people like Summerseat and later Rhodes as the enemy of humanity itself and examples of the most wicked of humans.
The supernatural world had failed to deliver and the amaXhosa was faced with two options. Either they had to rise up against the white invaders with the help of the divine or they had to submit themselves to the new order as preached by the missionaries who laboured among them.
Two Roads
In the world of the amaXhosa, Ndlambe was recognised as the leader of the chiefs to the East of the Kai River and he had the support of the powerful Nxele. Each Rharhabe chief, however, had the freedom to choose his own spiritual counsellors and in reality, they did not all agree with Nxele. Chiefs chose councillors who mirrored what path they themselves favoured. This was nothing sinister or to be frowned upon. It was custom, and truth be told, in line with how these matters were being handled in Europe. Not that this matter as some kind of a higher standard, but it must be said for Europeans who would frown on this, forgetting their own history! It was the practice that the spiritual counsellor would limit his dialogue between the chief and the supernatural to what the chief was willing to accept.
King Sandile, Nienaber, C and Hutten, (2008) L. The Grave of King Mgolombane Sandile Ngqika: Revisiting the legend, The South African Archaeological Bulletin
The two rivals Ngqika and Ndlambe represented two opposing choices to the nation. Ngqika appointed Ntsikana as counsellor who was a Christian convert. His message was one of peaceful coexistence with Europeans through submission. Ndlambe, on the other hand, had the independent-minded Nxele who did not see himself as subservient to the Christian Missionaries; who was longing to see the awakening of black identity and prophesied that the amaXhosa would prevail against the white man. These notions were fundamentally part of the being of Nxele as we have seen from the theology he preached.
Nxele, patronised by Ndlambe grew in political power and wealth. He encouraged his adherents to, as it were, “go forth, multiply and fill the earth.” It is interesting that Boer leaders in later years would likewise encourage their people to have many children to strengthen the Boer numbers. Nxele taught that he would bring back to life the black people who had died and their cattle. He prophesied about a long and prosperous future for his people, built upon resisting the white invaders of their land!
Nxele served a useful purpose to Ndlambe in building support from other chiefs against Ngqika. Ngqika was married to Thuthula, Ndlambe’s wife whom he abducted and Nxele preached against him as an adulterer and their marriage as an incestuous relationship. This served the purpose of Ndlambe well.
In contrast to this was the theology of Ntsikana. He was driven by a vision he had to preach the Christian message in isiXhosa using Xhosa imagery and traditional forms of music. He used the image of God as a cloak that protects all true believers and the way to peace was by submitting to his will. Initially, he approached Ndlambe to be his patron, who wanted none of it. It was after this that he turned to Ngqika. Ngqika never converted to Christianity and never had a sizable following. Still, Ngqika saw his teachings in line with his own view of cooperation with the white colonists and appointed him as a counsellor. Ntsikana, in line with his theology, encouraged him to seek an alliance with the British. Ntsikana passed away in 1821 and his small group of followers were entrusted to the care of the British Missionaries.
This was the setting for another bitter war on the eastern frontier, the first where Somerset would be involved. So it happened that I was able to see the development of theology from the stories of my dad.
I discovered that not all good stories need to have a beginning, middle and end. That it really depends on what you want from the story and if you have what you wanted, sometimes it’s good to leave it there. So it is with this story. My intention is not to re-tell the story of the war. It is the development of the Black contentiousness in response to the colonial aggression which was the point my dad wanted to convey and the fact which informed my decisions about my future. It also taught me the valuable lesson that our religion exists only in our minds. It is our own creation. and as much part of our culture as our language and our technology. Without us, it does not exist. As such, it has no perminancy. It is not fixed, but ebbs and flows with the tide of human affairs.
Seeds of War on African Soil
Seeds of war were germinating in the soil of Africa. The exploits of the invader and the resister alike were being calcified through their religious belief systems and in a world where neither the white colonists nor the black people would disappear or annihilate the other, it signalled a long and bitter future of deep mistrust, hatred and bloodshed. I projected that true peace would not come as long as the traditional Afrikaans church represented the majority of the white population. That the time would have to come where a new religion must take hold which is not focussed on annihilating and dispossessing and killing, but where a positive message of hope and possibilities would prevail. I could well imagine a time when many will turn their back on a religion based on differences and what it is “against”. When others will not be demonised for being different and when respect would be mutual. This would signal the start of a true reconciled future where both black and white would live together as humans and will recognise the power in unity and freedom for all, represented by a new faith!
My Time to Play was Over
I knew my time was up to criss-cross this vast land and I had to seek out other opportunities. Apart from the nature of mental constructs and culture, I started to see science as a particular cultural development but built upon a completely different set uf presuppositions and an altogether more productive world view.
I am very comfortable with the image of science as many rivers feeding into the ocean of truth running down many different hills. These hills are African, Chinese, American, European. In fact, fevery culture on earth contributed to science. Science is the new religion that many turn to and as much as it is also a construct of the human mind, the outcomes of the entire enterprise is “better.” The one aspect of culture that I could wholehartedly ascribe to was science. So began one of the most thrilling adventures of discovery!
One day I embarked on another trip to the Transvaal from Cape Town. This would be the trip where a most fortuitous event would occur. A problem that would lead to a meeting that would lead to a plan that would result in the rest of my life. On this trip, I met the most interesting Boer from Potchefstroom, Oscar Klynveld.
Photo Credit: Hilton, T., Flickr
Notes
The words “Hottentot”, “Bushaman” and “Kaffirs” were used in the original publication and is repeated for the sake of accuracy. Today they are recognized as derogatory terms and the use of the term Kaffir are prohibited by legislation.
An article, setting out the case for the First Anglo-Boer War of 1880/ 1881 and the continued annexation of the Transvaal; published in The Times (London, Greater London, England), 22 Feb 1881, page 9.
Reference
Laband, J. 2020. The Land Wars. The Dispossession of the Khoisan and AmaXhosa in the Cape Colony. Penguin Randon House.
M’Cater, J.. 1869. Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa. With Notice of the other Denominations. A historical Sketch. Ladysmith, Natal. W & C Inglis.
The story of bacon is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s when most of the important developments in bacon took place. The plotline takes place in the 2000s with each character referring to a real person and actual events. The theme is a kind of “steampunk” where modern mannerisms, speech, clothes and practices are superimposed on a historical setting. Modern people interact with old historical figures with all the historical and cultural bias that goes with this.
The Shambles
Cape Town, December 1886
Unlocking the secrets of how bacon is made would soon become the single obsession of my life. The monumental discoveries that would elucidate the complex and altogether mesmerising set of chemical reactions responsible for producing the world’s greatest culinary delight would be revealed mostly from Europe and England. The history of unravelling the secrets of bacon became intimately connected with the greatest discoveries of humanity. Bacon was part of my life, yet I did not comprehend the all-consuming passion it would become. Producing the world’s best bacon on an industrial scale would become as much an obsession as would the mountains and the seas of our great land.
The Dilemma with Impermanence
It is in our minds where we live and breathe and have our beings. Our culture resides there. The first phenomenal mental development of humans was our ability to think in the 3rd person. We could think in the hypothetical. Our advanced brains allowed us the power to construct mental patterns and as the sophistication of these patterns evolves, we worship them.
Our ability to distil pictures into letters to form an alphabet is no more or less than the further ordering of language. In language, the nouns probably developed first. The ability to tell the tribe members about animals, water and warn them of danger. Humans developed verbs to indicate action. We developed techniques to be very specific in detail by the modifying power of pronouns and adjectives. As is the habit of humans, we worshipped our crowning invention, the spoken “word”. We poured into the mental image of a “word” mythical power. We imagined that through this powerful tool, the universe to be created and it to be the medium of our communion with the divine whom we imagined to be in control of all of reality.
Words, however, disappointed us because it was, as we found out, very impermanent. It is fleeting and exists only for as long as humans can accurately remember them. So, we limited the ultimate power of words to be what it can achieve in altering the physical world when the divine or human diviners utter them.
In the never-ending cycles of ever-increasing levels of sophistication and complexity, we made the progression from mental pictured contained in spoken language to the greater permanence of writing. We endowed the spoken word with the permanency we imagined true of the gods we worshipped by writing it down. First in images and then in letters which form words that carry meaning. For the first time, we were able to give thought greater permanence and so, as is the way of humans, we worshipped it. The written word became our god!
It is no wonder that Europeans equated the need to spread the technology of writing to the spread of the Gospel. From an early age, I understood this. I saw the different cultures of our land existing in the first place in the minds of the peoples of this great land, transferred from one generation to the next, not as something we are born with, but as something that we are taught from the moment of our first interaction with the outside world when we enter it as babies. I understood that the technology of the black tribes compared to the Europeans was not any different. Both were inventions of the mind; both were developed due to pressing needs in its environment. One may be more useful compared to the other in certain environments, but both stand on equal footing as being human inventions. By itself, one is not superior to the other.
One of the dilemmas of the humans experience is that we are temporary in our bodies but our consciousness perceives us as eternal. We are very impermanent and frail and still, we search for a tangible connection with our past and future generations in an attempt to connect with what lasts. Before I could discover the magnificence of bacon which is completely apart from any human intervention I had to be disappointed in what I thought was my connection with the ancients and the worlds to come.
I had to come face to face with the brutality of the human mind. This knowledge did not come from Oupa Eben but when I turned 18, I had my first introduction to the brutael man!
The Savage Human
At age 18 I knew that life was beautiful. Surrounded by a loving family and my own mountain and sea kingdoms to explore, I found myself in a happy spot. No other reality brought my romantic notions of humanity crushing down more dramatically than the Shambles.
While growing up, the city abattoir was at the bottom of Addely street on the beach. It was aptly named the Shambles after the famous Smithfield Market in London known by the same name. Years earlier, so my parents told me, the slaughter of animals happened all across the city and a formal city abattoir was only established in 1820. What was intended to be an improvement on home slaughter, the Shambles became a city eyesore. Cattle would be slaughtered and the offal left on the beach for the tide to take away into the sea. The offal not taken away by the tide was feasted on by stray dogs and leopards that came down from Table Mountain. In the sea, sand sharks gorged themselves on offal. They were so numerous that the bay was called Haaibaai (shark bay).
The stench from the beach was nauseating. On a hot and windless day in the bowl in front of Table Mountain where Cape Town was developing, a foul smell hung over the beach below the abattoir. It would hover over the sea and slowly envelop the city. I later learned that setting slaughterhouses up next to waterways for the exact reason to carry away the offal and blood to soak into the sand was a well known European and English practice, but in few locations did it have the dramatic effect it had in Cape Town. Sailers who know India well later told me that the only possible place on earth where the abattoir was more objectionable, was the city abattoir in Bombay.
As children, we avoided the abattoir but on one November day, after a week of uninterrupted rain, I found myself aimlessly wandered through the streets to get some fresh air. Suddenly I was on the outskirts of the city. Without realizing it, I started to follow the cattle route into town. Of course, I always knew it was there. Cape Town was not such a large city but I never went there.
That day, as I followed the cattle trails into the city, the air smelled fresh with the scent of fynbos (the local fauna biome). All nasty odours were mercifully washed from the air by the persistent Cape storms of the previous week. The usually dusty Cape roads turned muddy with pools of water everywhere. Droves of cattle were being herded into town. Curiosity took over. It was not so much that I decided to follow them as it was like an invisible hand pulled me, herding me along with the cattle.
The boys driving the cattle gleefully whistled for the animals to keep moving while they chatted amongst themselves and threw small rocks at animals who stopped to graze. As they approach the Shambles, the animals became weary but kept moving, spurred on by thirst and hunger until they reached the cattle pens. The animals were driven from the many farms that developed around Cape Town from as far afield as Piketberg and Worcester. I was intrigued by the scale of the sight before me as curiosity turned into amazement. (1) Cape Town was the tavern of the sea and the number of animals slaughtered had little relation with the number of souls living in the expanding city.
Cattle traders sold the animals to butchers who dispatched their apprentices to bring the animals to the slaughter. What I saw disturbed me greatly. As the apprentices herded the cattle from the holding pens the animals smelled the blood on the beach. They did not know what was happening up ahead, but they knew it was not a place they wanted to go. In response to their reluctance to move forward, the herders became brutal in goading them. They beat them mercilessly with wooden sticks. I was shocked that humans could inflict such cruelty on other creatures. From stress and fatigue, some of the animals collapsed in the mud just to be picked up by men pushing wooden carts who would pull them onto the carts and take them to the slaughter site.
The dreary sight of animals laying in the mud; the sound of the butcher’s apprentices beating them; the mud mingled with blood ahead and the foul smell of the offal and on the beach below the slaughtering sites made for a miserable picture. The sun was coming through the clouds and the sudden November heat did not improve the picture as the nasty smell developed and filled the air. Nearby, Uncle John Woodhead’s tanning business was boiling the last scraps of fat off skin and bones which did not help with the smell.
The end of the animals who were brought to the slaughtering sites by wooden carts and those who fearfully walked there by themselves were the same. Their hooves were tied together in pairs and all four pulled together till the animal fell. The butchers moved swiftly to slit the animal’s throat to bleed out. As soon as the animal is dead, the skin is removed on the ground and the intestines taken out and thrown onto the beach. Khoe (indigenous people), sitting on the outskirts of the killing area on their haunches collect it. To them, it is a delicacy.
Take at the Oko-Oba abattoir in Lagos, Nigeria
It was not the fact that the animals were killed that distressed me. I made peace with the fact that like other predators, humans have sustained themselves on the flesh of animals for millennia. The rhythm of birth and death was something that I recognized as being a fundamental truth of our existence. When it was a matter of life or death, humans have the innate character of predators. What I could not understand was how it was being manifested. The same drive for procreation developed almost in every human culture into something ordered and beautiful. We could reconcile our psychological needs with our physical needs in marriage or something similar in other cultures. I was abhorred that we invented ways to slaughter animals that were crueller than any predator on earth evolved into when killing its prey. In many ways, we did not treat the animal with respect! As if we not only killed to manage hunger but it seemed as if we derive some morbid pleasure from seeing fellow inhabitants of the earth suffer.
Combrink & Co.
The day I visited the Shambles shocked me. I decided to make the most of my visit and to look an old and dear friend of mine up. My friend was none other than David de Villiers Graaff who was running Combrink & Co for Uncle Jacobus. He was. however, not at his butcher’s shop. I stood in his shop, looking at large men, skilfully turning the carcasses of hogs, cattle, and sheep into meat cuts familiar to me. Much of the meat was packed with salt for preservation. Most were sold from the shop to the public. Those destined for the ships were packed in barrels. Combrink & Co. was a well run operation. It had meat wagons which they stocked for home deliveries. Their wagons were a feature of life in Cape Town and later they set up small retail outlets across town which they supplied from the butchery at the Shambles.
That night I could not sleep. Of course, I did not describe everything that I saw that day, choosing to rather forget some of the detail. Not all the butchers were good butchers and some were in too much of a hurry to start removing the skin before the animal was dead.
When I got home I told my dad what I saw. He saw everything as ordered under the sun and in the centre of it all is an almighty God who orders and assigns a role to every creature. The lion does not feel pity for the buck that it hunts. The buck feels no pity for the grass that it feeds on. It is God’s decreed order in life. “In the same way,” my dad explained, “God gave us animals to sustain us through their milk and their flesh. It is God’s way.” He did, however, not like the brutality. The animals, my dad believed, should meet their end swiftly and cleanly and should not be mistreated on their way to take their place in the circle of life. He did not like that we made a sport out of death at all and he reminded me that the San Bushman, as they were called, have the greatest respect for the animals their hunt.
My dad drew parallels between the brutality towards the animals and to people. He told me that we can not expect people who enslaved other humans and traded them like commodities to show any mercy to the domesticated animals nor to the wild beasts of the field. He maintained that people who do not treat the indigenous people of this great land with respect will likewise not treat animals with dignity. Europeans, according to my dad, lost their own humanity and replaced it with arrogance. They do not respect themselves, yet they lord it over others and impose their views and beliefs as if they alone possess knowledge. Like Uncle Jakobus, my dad abhorred the straight lines of the Dutch and often said their thinking can be seen in their architecture and city design. My dad sometimes referred to the straight lines of the Dutch as being evidence of their cruelty!
I learned for the first time that night that my dad was an abolitionist. He told me how, as a young man of law, he vigorously campaigned for the freedom of slaves and the equality of all. We spoke about a vision for a world where we would live in harmony with all and show the same respect for our domesticated animals as the Khoe has towards their cattle and fat tail sheep and the San shows towards the wild beasts of the field.
The Khoe
The Khoe was the first pastoralists in southern Africa. They called themselves Khoikhoi (or Khoe), which means ‘men of men’ or ‘the real people’. This name was chosen to show pride in their past and culture. The Khoikhoi brought a new way of life to South Africa and to the San, who were hunter-gatherers as opposed to herders. Both groups had ancient traditions based on respect for animals.
My dad told me that an old Khoe captain once told him, referring to his own people as the real owners of the land, that the Europeans are “the greatest slaves in the world with our so exactly fixed and precise way of life.” (2) The Khoe and San, according to my dad, are the truly free people while we are prisoners to a merciless culture with no heart.
Moving the Abattoir
The Adderly Street Abattoir was ordered to move soon afterwards in 1883. It was done as part of a general campaign to clean up the city. Instrumental in this campaign was my friend, David de Villiers Graaff, then only the 22-year old. It was this event of closing the Shambles that prompted Combrinck & Co. to install their own slaughtering line.
In 1883 a lawsuit was brought against the city on the basis that the Shambles was a public disturbance and had to be removed. Sir Henry de Villiers who was chief justice led a full bench of the supreme court to hear the case. An in-person inspection was carried out one morning after the slaughter of animals. The judges and lawyers walked the beach; sewerage was flowing into the sea; the stench was unbearable. Late in 1883 Justice de Villiers delivered judgment and said that the least the city could do was to slaughter the animals elsewhere. This sealed the fate of the Shambles and it was moved. David de Villiers Graaff and Lord/ Sir John Henry were close family. (3)
Meat Quality and Stress
One day I related my experience to Dawie (David). He grew up in the Shambles and I was keen to get his perspective. He told me something that piqued my interest. That the animals with the best meat quality are animals who not only had the right feed but were not exposed to stress before slaughter.
It begins by feeding them well on good grass, months before they are brought to the abattoir. Then, once at the abattoir, the animals must be properly rested before slaughter. Stress destroys good meat. David later showed me their new slaughtering lines and explained to me how stress either creates dark and dry meat or, especially in pork, meat that is pale, soft and characterized by exudate. Unbeknownst to me, this became my first chemistry lesson related to bacon and I was intrigued. Despite the cruelty underlaying the lessons, the experience of the butchers fascinated me.
That good bacon comes from good meat and good meat comes from happy animals. I wondered why the meat from game was not as soft as the meat from domesticated animals since, in my estimation, the wild animals were the happiest. I would question my teachers in school about these matters, but they had no real answer. It would be years before I understood the chemistry of meat. Still, a seed was planted. An interest in meat production that would become an all-consuming obsession and in the end, the facts I learned here in Cape Town would become the cornerstone of producing the best bacon on earth.
Events soon transpired in my life that would set the stage for me to travel to Europe on the most exciting learning adventure ever. Similar to the cruel treatment of animals which lead to the discovery that happy animals have the best meat, the impetus which moved me to leave the shores of Africa to study the art of bacon was dark, disturbing and altogether alarming.
I was still looking for permanence in the wildlife of Africa and the people who came to call her shores, “home”. Bacon would replace all of these and lead me to uncover the true art of living. Before this could happen, I had to know humans better and how we create myths and legends in our mind and how close we are in our developed psyche with the cruellest of human instincts. I first had to understand the depth of the problem before I could thirst for an answer! All this happened just after my 18th birthday!
(1) The experience comes from visiting the largest abattoir across Africa, where time stood still.
(2) François Valentijn (1726), quoted by Mansell Upham.
(3) Three De Villiers brothers came to South Africa with their wives. They were Abraham and his wife Susanne, Pierre and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of the hat maker of Thierry in the province of Bri and Jacob and Susanne’s sister, Marguerite. The three sons’ father was Pierre de Villiers from La Rochelle in France.
The second son, Pierre and his wife Elizabeth had a son, also called Pierre. Young Pierre married Hester Roux and in 1725, they had a son. Since French as a language was dying out at the Cape, the named him Pieter. Pieter married twice. With his first wife, he had nine children and with his second wife, eight. The biographer of Lord de Villiers, Eric A. Walker called him a “notable parent” which is probably an understatement! 🙂
Jacob Nicolaas was born to them in Paarl in 1786. He married Suzanne Maria Bernhardi and named their oldest son Carl Christiaan who, in 1834 married Dorothea Elizabeth. They had nine children and the fourth son was John Henry de Villiers. He signed his name, not as John Henry, but as Johan Hendrik. He was born on 15 June 1842.
Sir David’s father was Petrus Novbertus Graaff and his mother was Anna Elizabeth, daughter of Pieter Hendrik de Villiers. This has definitely been traced somewhere, but it is fun working it out for oneself. It seems that Anna’s father was the brother of J. H. de Villiers, which then makes Lord de Villiers, the uncle of the wife of Petrus Graaff, the father of Sir David de Villiers Graaff. Whichever way you look at it, there is a rather close family relationship between Lord/ Sir John Henry de Villiers and Sir David de Villiers Graaff.
Photo Credit:
Khoi cattle and sheep:
Cattle in holding pen before slaughter. Eben van Tonder
To view the page listing all articles related to memories, visit “My Memories.”
On Monday, 18 March 2019 I started working at Van Wyngaardt in Johannesburg. Here are my memories of the company.
Arrival early 2019
I drove my car up from Cape Town on the weekend of 15 March 2019. I was appointed as sales manager, but the factory was in such a state that it demanded urgent and detailed attention.
Paul, the Van Wyngaardt team and I embarked on a turnaround strategy and the following received urgent attention: hygiene, food safety, recipes; SOP’s (Batch Companions); re-doing spice make-up; equipment maintenance; factory capacity; staff discipline; accounting; product costings; plant refrigeration; client base and business model; suppliers; deboning; production plans; packaging; QC program headed by a competent QC manager; aligning with the right micro laboratory; outsourcing R&D; re-evaluate the product offering; software packages and IT integration; linking sales and operations; distribution; competitive strategies and products; dispatch procedure; revamping night shift. Before we could seriously look at sales, these all had to be addressed.
It took us till the end of July 2019 before the majority of these received sufficient attention for us to shift focus to evaluate and adjust the business model in order to establish a commercially viable operation.
The first order of business was to understand the current business model. We did promotions at existing clients which helped to give us the insight we needed into the reasons why they are actually doing business with Van Wyngaardt. The current business model became clear. There was a big problem in that it did not align with the objectives of the shareholder.
In order to develop a new strategy which is in line with the hopes and dreams of the owner, for myself, I first had to find the soul of the company and the region. Nothing without a soul is ever worth pursuing.
I turned 50 on 13 April 2019 which I celebrated on Eastwick Stud Farm. By itself, this was very symbolic – indicative that something profound is developing. I came from the Western Cape – an area replete with soul and substance. Johannesburg is notoriously soulless and devoid of substance. Why was I here? How did this happen? Previous business partners stole and destroyed the soul of my previous project, Woodys Brands. They killed it! Why did the universe bring me here to Johannesburg?
Glimpses of the answer came to me on the day I turned 50. My introduction to Van Wyngaardt was very rough. A shock to the system, to state it mildly.
Etienne gave me an introduction to his Nguni cattle; I climbed to the top of the Magaliesberg mountains; I discovered old ruins. When this occurred, I took notice. Slowly but surely I started seeing a vision. Nguni cattle showed me their soul and introduced me to the ancient inhabitants who took me in and my eyes were renewed. The haze of the violence done to Woodys by my previous partners lifted and I started seeing clearly. I fell in love with the concept of this company, Van Wyngaardt.
Enforcements
In my heart has always been one certainty: together with colleagues and loved ones we will achieve the impossible! Paul and I headed the turn-around team. Carlo joined us from Cape Town as production manager. Jaques was appointed to head Food Safety and QC. Johann continued to ensure that staffing is done correctly; Hennie took over electrical work; Jonothan made dispatch his own. Julian’s staff from Johannesburg took over the refrigeration plant with Lu as the point man. Slowly but surely a new model started taking shape in our collective mind. Tristan, Minette, and Lauren continued to be instrumental in motivation and encouragement.
Inspiration
A new concept was first suggested by Frank from Castlemain; a year later precipitated by Haresh Keswani and Etienne Lotter. Concepts that started in Cheviot and Gorde Bay in New Zealand around Manuka huney now distilled. Etienne and Christo continued preaching a very focussed vision. I hiked the ancient ruins while my family remained pivotal. The Van Wyngaardt vision started turned into reality. Cherise, Nicole, Jocelyn – they all became custodians of the future of something remarkable! Carlo with Stephen by his side continued to improve on the basics of our growth and transformation, the factory itself.
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Back at the factory key aspects of running a meat plan were addressed. We were all given heart and soul to the project! After one deep clean I landed up in the emergency unit with severe breathing difficulty. Some colleagues left us but even more importantly was the ones who joined us. The team grew in its ability. Dr. Francois Mellett re did all our functional ingredients and continue to work closely with the team.
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A New Concept
Product quality took a major step forward. This was another foundation of a new strategy. In August 2019 a new way of marketing the range was launched. A conduit for high-quality German, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Belgium, and English cured and fermented products. The quest for its African soul continued. The goal was and is nothing less than to create something authentic which will celebrate the great culinary heritage of our land.
Years of research started bearing fruit. There emerged evidence of a great heritage of smoked, fermented and cured meat, born from the African soil. Dr. Henry Lichtenstein describes a scene in his book, “Travels in Southern Africa” that conjures up the heart of Van Wyngaardt. He writes that when their party traveling through South Africa approached the Winterhoek Mountains in the Cape, they met an old German who once worked for the East Indian Company and who is a veteran of the Esterhazy’s regiment. For the greater part of the year (he) saw no Europeans, lived among his African friends and sustained himself almost entirely on dried mutton and biltong.” The Guardian (London, England), 21 July 1952, page, from the article, “Biltong for the Arctic.”
I imagine his surname to have been Van Wyngaardt. He knew how to prepare the best German cured and fermented dishes but was clearly influenced by African tradition. By drying the strips of meat, he created biltong which is an African dish, influenced by North European practices of adding vinegar to their hams.
This is the heart of the spirit of Van Wyndaardt! It takes the best from Europe and fuses it with homegrown African dishes and curing methods. The influence comes from all the people and tribes of this land. From Boer to Brit, German to Italian and Spanish. From Tswana, Sotho, Venda, Swazi, Xhosa, and Zulu. From the Khoi to the San Bushman.
Just after we launched the revamped concept in Jasmyn, Lauren joined me in Johannesburg to lend a hand in rolling out the new strategy. It was in its infancy and we needed to think on our feet.
Paul crunch the numbers and kept us all focused on the bottom line. A master of good practices, he diligently patrolled the fences and worked on the strategy.
The ancient voices spoke to me from the technology they embraced, the cities they built, the lands they walked and the food they prepared. I am not sure where any of this will end, but I am convinced that the universe has uniquely gifted and prepared the group of people, assembled for the task to give the manifestation of a grand vision.
In the Natal Midlands, on the banks of the Boesmans river lays the largest bacon plant in South Africa, that of Eskort Ltd.. A few months ago I visited Wynand at the factory. I was 30 minutes early and instead of reporting to reception, I decided to drive a few hundred meters further and up the hill, right next to the bacon plant to Fort Dunford. The Fort is situated exactly 500m away from the bacon plant which is nestled between the Boesmans River and the Fort.
It was built by Dunford in response to the Langalibalele Rebellion in 1873. The location of the old military site at Bushmans River drift, overlooked by Fort Dunford is where the Voortrekker leader Gert Maritz originally set up camp along the river.
The curator, Siphamandla, saw me driving up. I was the only visitor and he came running up to give me a proper welcome. I told him I will be at Eskort but when we are done, I’m coming back to see the Fort.
While waiting in reception at Eskort, I took a photo of a stone that was laid by J. W. Moor in 1918. He was the first chairman of “The First Farmers Co-Operative Bacon Factory Erected in South Africa”, the Eskort factory. I was intrigued!
I saw Wynand, visited the Fort briefly and was on my way back to Johannesburg. As soon as I got home I started digging through piles of information on the subject of Eskort and an amazing story emerged. All the information was firing through my mind as connections started to form between the new facts I learned and old history. When I finally fell asleep, I kept waking with every new connection made. Bits of information jolted me from deep sleep to a light slumber. Here is what I discovered.
Introduction
The origin of the Eskort Bacon factory is tied up with the story of the development of the Natal Midlands in the mid-1800s to the early part of the 1900s. It is embedded in the broader context of the existence of a very strong English culture in Natal. The Natal colony was created on 4 May 1843 after the British government annexed the short-lived Boer Republic of Natalia. A unique English culture continued. This bacon factory became one of the cornerstones of the creation of a meat industry in South Africa and contributed materially to the establishment of a meat curing culture in the country. The historical importance is seen in the fact that the South African roots of large scale industrial meat curing are English and not German.
The broader international context of its establishment in a cooperative can be traced back to Peter Bojsen who created the first cooperative abattoir and bacon curing plant in the world in Horsens, the Horsens Andelssvineslagteri, in 1882 in Denmark. By 1911 the first such cooperative factories were built in England, namely the St. Edmunds Bacon Factory, modelled in turn after the factory at Horsens. The 1918 development in Estcourt, Natal would, no doubt, have been a continuation of the model.
In terms of curing technology, the bacon plant produced its bacon in the most sophisticated way available at the time, using the same techniques employed by the Harris Bacon operation of Calne in Wiltshire. Following WW1, its curing techniques progressed from the Wiltshire process of the Harris operation (and through Harris, to Horsens where the technique was developed) to the direct addition of sodium nitrite to curing brines through the work of the legendary Griffiths Laboratories.
The great benefit of the dominant English culture of the Natal Midlands was in the fact that they had access to the Harris operation in Calne and the St. Edmunds Bacon Factory more so than the fact that the English population of the Midlands could have provided a possible market for their bacon. The population in Natal at the time and even in South Africa remained relatively small and the goal of creating such a sophisticated operation was to export.
In terms of access to local markets, I have little doubt that they relied heavily on the Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Company Ltd. of Sir David de Villiers Graaff (1859 – 1931) who was a contemporary of JW Moor (1859 – 1933). They were born a mere 6 months apart with David in March 1859 and John (JW Moor) in September of the same year.
One can say that David with his Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Company in Cape Town was a follower of Phillip Armour in Chicago with the establishment of refrigerated rail transport and cold storage warehouses throughout Southern Africa (just as Phil Armour did in the US). David probably met Phil in Chicago in the mid-1880s and possibly again in the early 1890s, who, in all likelihood, showed him his impressive packing plant and gave him the idea of refrigerating railway carts. John (JW) Moor, on the other hand, was in technical detail and broad philosophy, a follower of the Dane, Peter Bojsen in his creation of the first farmer’s coop for slaughtering and production of bacon and its marketing in England and the English operations of C & T Harris with their Wiltshire bacon curing techniques.
The location of the plant in Estcourt is in all likelihood closely linked to the existence of Fort Dunford and the close association with the military of the Moor family as is evident not only through the heritage of their grandfather but through their close involvement in the schooling system and the introduction of cadet training. The possible involvement of the Anglo Boer War hero, Louis Botha is fascinating.
The context of its creation is, more than anything, to be understood by two realities. One was the first World War. The second, the Moor family of Estcourt with a wider lens than a focus on JW Moor. To understand the Moor family, we must understand their heritage and how they came to South Africa.
Immigrating to South Africa
Immigration back then was done, as it is today, through entrepreneurs who made money by facilitating movement to the new world and who sold their products through colourful displays and exciting tales of success and a new life. Between 1849 and 1852, almost 5000 immigrants arrived in Natal through various schemes. One such agent was Joseph Byrne, who chartered 20 ships to ferry passengers to Natal between 1849 to 1851. One of the 20 ships was the Minerva, which set sail on 26 April 1850 with 287 passengers from London. A festive atmosphere must have prevailed on the voyage to Natal and the promise of a new life. (Dhupelia, 1980)
On 4 July 1850, they arrived in Durban and the Minerva was wrecked on a reef below the Bluff. All occupants and cargo ended up overboard. Two of the passengers aboard were Sarah Annabella Ralfe who was travelling with her family and Frederick William Moor. (Dhupelia, 1980)
Romance and Settlement
F.W. Moor lifted the young Sarah Annabella Ralfe from the waters and carried her to the safety of the shore. It is not known if they were romantically involved before this event, but romance bloomed afterwards and the couple was married in June 1852. (Dhupelia, 1980) They settled in the Byrne valley, which Byrne cleverly included in the total package he was selling back in England.
The Moors and the Ralfes were interested in sheep farming, and the wet conditions at Byrne, close to Richmond, were not favourable. In 1869 F.W. Moor moved to a farm Brakfontein, on the Bushman’s River at Frere close to Estcourt. Here the conditions were more suitable. “The farm was some five miles (8 km) southwest of Estcourt, and he obtained it from the Wheeler family in settlement of a debt. This farm has some historical interest. It was the site of the Battle of Vecht Laager in 1838 when Zulu impi of Dingaan clashed with the Voortrekkers who had settled there. It was on this farm that F.R. Moor and his wife settled on their return to Natal, his father having moved to Pietermaritzburg. Moor and his wife stayed for some years in a house built by the Wheelers until he built a larger house which he called Greystone. It was on this property that Moor’s seven children were born and it was here that he carried out his adventurous farming activities.” (Morrell, 1996)
Sara and FW, in turn, had 5 children. Two of these were F. R. Moor, born on 12 May 1853 in Pietermaritzburg and J. W. Moor born in September 1859 in Estcourt.
Strong Military Traditions
The Moor family had strong military connections going back to the father of F.W. Moor (FR and JW’s grandfather). FW was the youngest son of Colonel John Moor. Col Moor was an officer in the Bombay Artillery in the service of the British East India company. FW was born in Surat in 1830 and returned to England after the death of his father. “He and his mother settled first in Jersey and later in Hampstead while he trained to be a surveyor and, not entirely satisfied with his position in England, he decided to emigrate to Natal.” (Dhupelia, 1980) His mother followed him to Natal and passed away in 1878 on the farm of FW, Brakfontein, aged 85. (The Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, Ireland; 18 Oct 1878)
The military connection of the Moor family is highlighted when one considers that when FR Moor was in high school, he and other students considered it desirable that the school should have a cadet corps. FR attended the Hermannsburg School situated approximately 15 miles (24 km] from Greytown and founded in the early 1850s by the Hanoverian Mission Society.
Moor, as a senior student at the school, was deputed to write to the Colonial Secretary seeking permission for the school to initiate the movement. Permission was granted and in 1869 a cadet corps of 40 students, between the ages of 14 and 18 years, was formed with a teacher, Louis Schmidt, as the captain and 16 years old F. R. Moor and John Muirhead as the first lieutenants.
Moor thus played a role in the establishment of the cadet movement and in giving Hermannsburg School the distinction and honour of being the first school not only in Natal but in the British Empire to have a cadet corps. Though the Hermannsburg cadet corps lasted only until 1878 its example was followed by Hilton College and Maritzburg High School in 1872. Yet another pupil of this first boarding school in Natal who was to make a name for himself in politics and was to be later closely associated with Moor was Louis Botha.” (Dhupelia, 1980)
Initial Capital
The Moor family became one of the large landowners in the Natal Midlands. Some of these families brought wealth from England and some, as was the case with the Moor family, made their money in other ways. The two most likely ways to make a fortune in those days were in Kimberley on the diamond fields or riding transport between Durban and Johannesburg.
After school, in 1872, the young FR Moor went to Kimberly to make his fortune. JW was still in school when FR left for the diggings where he remained for 7 years. The 19-year-old Moor made his first public speech on behalf of the diggers while in Kimberley “standing on a heap of rubble”. “Later he was twice elected to the Kimberley Mining Board which consisted of nine elected members representing the claim holders for the purpose of ensuring the smooth and effective running of the mines and diggings. This experience probably gave him confidence as well as experience in public affairs.” (Dhupelia, 1980) He later served as Minister of Native Affairs between 1893–1897 and 1899–1903. He became the last Prime Minister of the Colony of Natal between 1906 and 1910.
“While FR Moor was in Kimberley he met Cecil John Rhodes, another strong personality with outstanding leadership qualities. There is some indication that the two men were closely associated during these years for the Moor and Rhode’s brothers belonged to an elite group of 12 diggers who were teasingly named “the 12 apostles” and who associated with each other because of their common interests. Moor’s daughter, Shirley Moor, claims that her father would not have associated with Rhodes for he disliked him and in the 1890’s he abhorred Rhodes’ role in the Jameson Raid and held him responsible to a certain extent for the Anglo-Boer war of 1899.” (Dhupelia, 1980)
“After Moor got married, he felt that there was no security in remaining in the fields. He consequently sold his claims to his brother George, and returned to Natal in 1879 to take up farming has been very successful financially at the diamond fields.” (Dhupelia, 1980)
Dhupelia states that FR was “later joined (in Kimberley) by two of his three brothers.” As far as I have it, he had only two brothers with his siblings being George Charles Moor (whom we know took his diggings operation over); Annie May Chadwick; John William Moor and Kathleen Helen Sarah Druwitt. (geni.com) If both brothers joined him, this would mean that JW also spent time on the diggings. (This needs to be corroborated.) It would explain why JW shared the wealth that his brother obtained in Kimberley.
Success in Farming
FR’s success in farming related to JW, the main focus of our investigation, in that they conducted many of their farming activities as joint ventures. This is why I suspect that JW joined FR for a time on the diggings. Morrell (1996) states that “Moor displayed a considerable initiative and a pioneering spirit in his farming activities, making a name for himself as had his father who was one of the first in the colony to introduce imported Merinos from the valuable Rambouillet stock in France. Estcourt was one of the four villages in Weenen County and most farmers kept cattle, sheep, and horses. By 1894 Moor, in partnership with his brother J.W. Moor, was engaged in farming ventures over an area of 20 000 acres [8097,17 ha]. Their stock consisted of 6000 to 7000 sheep and they were among the largest breeders of goats in Natal possessing 1200 goats. Moor, in fact, acquired the first Angora goats in Natal where the interest in the mohair industry was considerable in the 19th century. In addition to the sheep and goats, Moor engaged in ostrich farming, for he believed there was a good market for the sale of ostrich feathers. He also kept horses and cattle and imported Pekin ducks.” (Morrell, 1996)
The British Market in Crisis
Walworth reported that by 1913 in the UK, “imported bacon had largely secured the market.” This was according to him one of the reasons for a rapid decline in the pig population with a 17% reduction in numbers from 1912 to 1913. (Walworth, 1940) Conditions in 1917 and 1918 were desperate in the UK with meat supply falling by as much as 30%. Stock availability increased prices, and war rationing all played a role. Canada responded to the shortage of pork in 1917 and their export of bacon and ham increased from 24 000 tonnes to 88 000 tonnes in 1917. Corn was in short supply during the war, but it was in reaction to meat shortages that rationing was finally introduced in the UK in 1918. (Perren) The 1918 situation related to bacon in England was reported on by The Guardian (London, Greater London, England), 6 July 1918. The meat situation was generally better than it has been in a while. In the article, they report that Bacon is being imported into the country in large quantities and that the import “will be maintained at the same rate throughout the year.” It is interesting that the article also reports that “the intention is to build up a big reserve of bacon in cold storage for later use.” (The Guardian, 1918, p6) The article oozes with planning and deliberateness happening in the background.
It is clear that the two countries well-positioned to respond were Canada and South Africa. New Zealand was focussing on exporting frozen meat, as was Australia. Walworth leaves the South African response to bacon shortages out (except one comment that South Africa was one of the countries that eventually responded) but it is clear from the Estcourt case that the response was there.
The immediate context of the establishment of the bacon company is the war but in the early 1900s, the pork industry in the UK was in a bad state in terms of industrializing the process of bacon production. Producers were unable to compete in price or quality with imports. The reasons are interesting. Much of the curing in the UK was done by small curing operations or farmers who used dry curing. A large variety of pig breeds made it difficult. Small volumes or a large variety of pigs vs a large variety of a standard pig – the latter suits an industrial process. Fat was highly prized in many of the curing techniques, as it is to this day, but for lard to be cured takes a year. Again, it does not fit the industrial model. The main reason for the high-fat content in bacon was due to imports from America who generally produced a much fatter pig on account of its diet. (Perren)
Market trends moved away from fat bacon and a leaner pig was required which the UK farmers were unable to deliver in the volumes required. The consumers also called for a milder bacon cure that was achieved with the tank curing method. The predominant way that bacon was cured in the UK was still dry curing which resulted in heavily salted meat.
In April 1938, at the second reading of the Bacon Industry Bill before the British Parliament, the minister of Agriculture Mr W. S. Morrison summarised the conditions in the bacon market in the UK pre-1933 as follows. “As far as the curers (in the UK) are concerned, lacking the proper pig as they did, and a regular supply, they could not achieve the efficiency in large-scale production and the economies which were within the power of their foreign competitors. Nor could they achieve adaptation to the changed taste of the public, and the change in taste was, indeed, largely the result of the foreign importation.” The change of taste he was talking about was a movement away from fatty bacon to lean bacon and a milder cure (less salty). The solution in terms of fatty bacon was to breed fewer fatty pigs but the UK market failed to deliver such pigs. My suspicion is that this was not due to a technical inability or ignorance of the British farmers, but due to the deeply entrenched nature of the specialized, small scale dry-curing operations. Having gotten to know butchers from the UK, now in their 70’s, who stem from such traditions, I understand that they hold their trade in such high esteem that they would rather amputate a limb than compromise the dry curing traditions they were schooled in.
The fact is that for whatever reason, the UK pork and bacon market pre-1933 was fragmented and Morrison stated that “the factories in this country worked to a little more than half of their capacity with consequently high costs. The cheaper and quicker process of curing bacon (i.e. tank curing) made little headway and the whole industry was in a very weak position to stand competition even of a normal character.”
In response to the enormous size of the UK bacon market and the inability of local curers to convert to tank curing, foreign curers moved aggressively to fill the void. This aversion of the British to convert from dry curing to tank curing did not disappear after the war and would continue to be the basis of bacon imports into the UK following 1918 when the war ended. Mr Morrison continued that “what was in store for the industry was not competition of a normal character. In the years 1929 to 1932, there ensued a scramble for this bacon market.” “In 1932 the importation rose to 12,000,000 cwts. or more than twice as much as it had been in the five-year period preceding the War.”
The British market started to respond after major government programs to change the bacon production landscape in the UK and tank curing was adopted to a large extent. Even though I have little doubt that the potential to export to England was a major driving factor in the creation of the company, as it was in Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Canada, and the USA, a further mention must be made of the very robust local bacon market. An interesting comment was made in an article published in The Gazette (Montreal, Canada) on 24 January 1916. In the article entitled “Trade for Canada in South Africa”, the comment is made about bacon that “good business can be worked up in Canadian bacon brands if attention is paid to the packaging.” The first interesting point to take from this comment is that the demand for bacon in South Africa by 1916 was sizable and, secondly, that the standard of packaging was very high, pointing to high technical competency.
Agricultural Operations and the Establishment of a Bacon Cooperative
Back in Natal, farmers saw the benefit of various forms of cooperation precisely due to their small numbers and the fact that cooperation gave them access to larger markets and more stable prices. The children growing up in the Natal Midlands were encouraged after completing their schooling, to join one of the many farmers’ associations (FA). “The “reason for being” of these agricultural societies was to hold stock sales. As Nottingham Road’s James King (founder member of the LRDAS in 1884) said. “The worst drawback was the lack of markets”. (Morrell, 1996). It was this exact issue that JW addressed with his bacon cooperative.
“Their function was thus primarily marketing and their fortunes were generally judged by the success or failure of sales. The sale of stock differs markedly from that of maize (the product which sparked the cooperative movement in the Transvaal). In Natal. the market was very localised with local butchers and auctioneers generally dealing with farmers in their area.” (Morrell, 1996)
“A variety of factors increased the importance of cattle sales particularly in the late and early twentieth century. Catastrophic cattle diseases, particularly Rinderpest (1897-1898) and East Coast Fever (1907-1910) reduced herds dramatically making it all the more important for farmers to realise the best prices available for surviving stock. The number of cattle in Natal was reduced from 280 000 in 1896 to 150000 in 1898. This amounted to a loss of £863 700 to farmers.” (Morrell, 1996)
“It was only in the area of stock sales (sheep, cattle and to a lesser extent, horses) that cooperative marketing operated. Foreign imports began to undercut local products, particularly once the railway system was developed. In 1905, on behalf of the Ixopo Farmer Association, Magistrate F E Foxon objected to the government allowing imported grain.” (Morrell, 1996)
In other domains (such as dairy and ham products), cooperative companies were formed. These were joint-stock companies, generally headed by prominent and prosperous local farmers (JW Moor and George Richards of Estcourt, for example), who raised capital from farmer shareholders. The members of the Board were generally the major shareholders. Farmers who joined were then obliged to supply the factory/dairy with produce, in return for which they got a guaranteed price and, if available, a dividend.” (Morrell, 1996) This was the basis of the operation of the Farmers’ Cooperative Bacon Factory.
“The small size of the local market put pressure on farmers to export. The capacity of Natal’s manufacturing industries was minuscule. It began to expand around 1910 yet by 1914 there were no more than 500 enterprises in the whole colony.” “So it happened that many prominent farmers were also directors of agricultural processing factories.” (Morrell, 1996)
Generally, it seems that as FR’s political involvement increased, his attention to farming decreased and he relied increasingly more on JW to take care of their farming interests. JW himself was politically active, but never to the extent of FR. JW Moor became MP for Escort while he was director of Natal Creamery Limited and Farmers’ Cooperative Bacon Factory.”
It is interesting that, as was the case around the world, pork farming followed milk production. This was what spawned the enormous pork industry in Denmark and to a large extent, sustaines the South African pork farming industry to this day.
“It was Joseph Baynes, a Byrne settler and dairy industry pioneer who established a milk processing plant in Estcourt under the name of the Natal Creamery Ltd. where JW was a director. “This factory was located adjacent to the railway station. Baynes died in 1925 and in 1927 the factory, which by this time was owned by South African Condensed Milk Ltd. was bought by Nestlés. Today the factory produces Coffee, MILO and NESQUIK.” (Revolvy)
In 1917 a group of farmers, including JW Moor, met in Estcourt to discuss the establishment of a cooperative bacon factory. The Farmer’s Co-operative Bacon Factory Limited was founded in August 1917 and the building of the factory started. When the plant opened its doors, it was done on 6 June 1918 by Prime Minister General Louis Botha. We can not overstate the massive symbolic nature of the leader of a country in the midst of war opening a food production facility.
The products were marketed under the name Eskort. It takes about a year to get a factory up and running and it was no different in the plant in Natal. When they were ready to supply the UK, the war was over but not the shortages. In 1919 the factory started exports to the United Kingdom. The honour went to the SS Saxon who carried the first bacon from the Estcourt plant exported to the United Kingdom, in June 1919. The products were well received.
A fire in 1925 caused significant damage to the factory. Production was relocated to Nel’s Rust Dairy Limited in Braamfontein, Johannesburg while renovations were being done at the plant. Despite this, the company still won the top three prizes at the 1926 London Dairy Show. (openafrica.org)
They were ready with streamlined efficiency when the second World War broke out and supplied over one million tins of sausages to the Allied forces all over the world and over 12 tonnes of bacon weekly to convoys calling at Durban harbour. (Revolvy) “Early in 1948 plans for a second factory in Heidelberg, Gauteng, were drawn up and the factory commenced production in September 1954.” (openafrica.org) In “1967 the Eskort brand was the largest processed meat brand in South Africa. In 1998 the company was converted from a cooperative to a limited liability company.” (Revolvy)
An interesting side note must be made here. This is the story of my travels to Denmark and the UK to learn how to make the best bacon on earth. The purpose of the venture was to export the bacon and supply the Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Company. The similarity of what we did to prepare for our own bacon production in Woodys and how the bacon plant in Estcourt came about is striking. To raise capital for the venture we relied on investors while I rode transport between Johannesburg and Cape Town. Without any knowledge of JW Moor, by simply looking at the Southern African context of the late 1800s and early 1900s, their course of action was logical. (2)
Technological Context
The technical aspects behind the curing technology employed at the new plant are of particular interest. The establishment of the operation in 1918 placed it right in the transition time when science was unlocking the mechanisms behind curing and an understanding developed (beginning in 1891) that it was not saltpetre (nitrate) that cured meat, but nitrite through nitric oxide.
The second technical fact of interest was the form of cooperation that was chosen to house the bacon plant. From Denmark to England farmers saw the benefit of the cooperative model to solve the problem of “access to markets” and this was no different in South Africa.
Tank Curing or using Sodium Nitrite
In terms of curing brines, the scientific understanding that it was not saltpetre (nitrate) curing the meat, but somehow, nitrite was directly involved came to us in the work of Dr Edward Polenski (1891) who, investigating the nutritional value of cured meat, found nitrite in the curing brine and meat he used for his nutritional trails, a few days after it was cured with saltpetre (nitrate) only. He correctly speculated that this was due to bacterial reduction of nitrate to nitrite. (Saltpeter: A Concise History and the Discovery of Dr. Ed Polenske).
What Polenski suspected was confirmed by the work of two prominent German scientists. Karl Bernhard Lehmann (1858 – 1940) was a German hygienist and bacteriologist born in Zurich. In an experiment, he boiled fresh meat with nitrite and a little bit of acid. A red colour resulted, similar to the red of cured meat. He repeated the experiment with nitrates and no such reddening occurred, thus establishing the link between nitrite and the formation of a stable red meat colour. (Fathers of Meat Curing)
In the same year, another German hygienist, one of Lehmann’s assistants at the Institute of Hygiene in Würzburg, Karl Kißkalt (1875 – 1962), confirmed Lehmann’s observations and showed that the same red colour resulted if the meat was left in saltpetre (potassium nitrate) for several days before it was cooked. (Fathers of Meat Curing)
This laid the foundation of the realisation that it was nitrite responsible for the curing of meat and not saltpetre (nitrate). It was up to the prolific British scientist, Haldane (1901) to show that nitrite is further reduced to nitric oxide (NO) in the presence of muscle myoglobin and forms iron-nitrosyl-myoglobin. It is nitrosylated myoglobin that gives cured meat, including bacon and hot dogs, their distinctive red colour and protects the meat from oxidation and spoiling. (Fathers of Meat Curing)
Identifying nitrite as the better (and faster) curing agent was one thing. How to get to nitrite and use it in meat curing was completely a different matter. Two opposing views developed around the globe. On the one hand, the Irish or Danish method favoured “seeding” new brine with old brine that already contained nitrites and thus cured the meat much faster. (For a detailed treatment of this matter, see The Naming of Prague Salt) The Irish and the Danes took an existing concept at that time of the power of used brine and instead of a highly technical method of injecting the meat and curing it inside a vacuum chamber, a simple system using tanks or baths to hold the bacon and regularly turning it was developed which became known as tank curing.
The concept of seeding the brine did not develop from science around nitrite, but preservation technology that was a hot topic in Ireland’s scientific community at the beginning and middle of the 1800s. Denmark imported tank curing or mild curing technology in 1880 from Ireland where William Oake invented it sometime shortly before 1837. Oake, a chemist by profession developed the system which allowed for the industrialisation of the bacon production system. (Tank Curing was invented in Ireland)
A major revolution took place in Denmark in 1887/ 1888 when their sale of live pigs to Germany and England was halted due to the outbreak of swine flu in Denmark. The Danes set out to accomplish one of the miracle turnarounds of history by converting their pork industry from the export of live animals to the production of bacon (there was no such restriction on the sale of bacon). This turnaround took place in 1887 and 1888. They used the cooperative model that worked so well for them in their abattoirs.
They were amazingly successful. In 1887 the Danish bacon industry accounted for 230 000 live pigs and in 1895, converted from bacon production, 1 250 000 pigs.
The first cooperative bacon curing company was started in Denmark in 1887. Seven years earlier, in 1880, the Danes visited Waterford and “taking advantage of a strike among the pork butchers of that city, used the opportunity to bring those experts to their own country to teach and give practical and technical lessons in the curing of bacon, and from that date begins the commencement of the downfall of the Irish bacon industry. . . ” (Tank Curing was invented in Ireland)
This is astounding. It means that they had the technology and when the impetus was there, they converted their economy. It also means that Ireland not only exported the mild cure or tank curing technology to Denmark but also to Australia, probably through Irish immigrants during the 1850s and 1860s gold rush, between 20 and 30 years before it came to Denmark. Many of these immigrants came from Limerick in Ireland where William Oake had a very successful bacon curing business. Many came from Waterford. A report from Australia sites one company that used the same brine for 16 years by 1897/ 1898 which takes tank curing in Australia too well before 1880 which correlates with the theory that immigrants brought the technology to Australia in the 1850s or 1860s.
Tank curing or mild curing was invented without the full understanding of the nitrogen cycle and denitrifying and nitrifying bacteria and the chemistry of nitrite and nitric oxide. Brine consisting of nitrate, salt and sugar were injected into the meat with a single needle attached to a hand pump (stitch pumping). Stitch pumping was either developed by Prof. Morgan, whom we looked at earlier or was a progression from his arterial injection method. (Bacon Curing – a historical review and Tank Curing Came from Ireland)
The meat was then placed in a mother brine mix consisting of old, used brine and new brine. The old brine contained the nitrate which was already reduced through bacterial action into nitrite. It was the nitrite that was responsible for the quick curing of the meat.
Denmark was, as it is to this day, one of the largest exporters of pork and bacon to England. The wholesale involvement of the Danes in the English market made it inevitable that a bacon curer from Denmark must have found his way to Calne. (Bacon Curing – a historical review)
A major advantage of this method is the speed with which curing is done compared with the dry salt process previously practised. Wet tank-curing is more suited for the industrialisation of bacon curing with the added cost advantage of re-using some of the brine. It allows for the use of even less salt compared to older curing methods. (Bacon Curing – a historical review)
Corroborating evidence for the 1880 date of the Danish adoption of the Irish method comes to us from newspaper reports about the only independent farmer-owned Pig Factory in Britain of that time, the St. Edmunds Bacon Factory Ltd. in Elmswell. The factory was set up in 1911. According to an article from the East Anglia Life, April 1964, they learned and practised what at first was known as the Danish method of curing bacon and later became known as tank-curing or Wiltshire cure. (Bacon Curing – a historical review)
A person was sent from the UK to Denmark in 1910 to learn the new Danish Method. (elmswell-history.org.uk) The Danish method involved the Danish cooperative method of pork production founded by Peter Bojsen on 14 July 1887 in Horsens. (Horsensleksikon.dk. Horsens Andelssvineslagteri)
The East Anglia Life report from April 1964, talked about a “new Danish” method. The “new” aspect in 1910 and 1911 was undoubtedly the tank curing method. Another account from England puts the Danish system of tank curing early in the 1900s. C. & T. Harris from Wiltshire, UK, switched from dry curing to the Danish method during this time. In a private communication between myself and the curator of the Calne Heritage Centre, Susan Boddington, about John Bromham who started working in the Harris factory in 1920 and became assistant to the chief engineer, she writes: “John Bromham wrote his account around 1986, but as he started in the factory in 1920 his memory went back to a time not long after Harris had switched over to this wet cure.” So, early in the 1900s, probably between 1887 and 1888, the Danes acquired and practised tank-curing which was brought to England around somewhere around 1911 if not a bit earlier. (Bacon Curing – a historical review)
The power of “old brine” was known from early after wet curing and needle injection of brine into meat was invented around the 1850s by Morgan and others. Before the bacterial mechanism behind the reduction was understood, butchers must have noted that the meat juices coming out of the meat during dry curing had special “curing power”. It was, however, the Irish who took this practical knowledge, undoubtedly combined it with the scientific knowledge of the time and created the commercial process of tank-curing which later became known as Wiltshire cure when the Harris operations became the gold standard in bacon curing. Their first factory was located in the English town of Calne, in Wiltshire from where the method came to be known as Wiltshire cure. Its direct ancestor was however Danish and they, in turn, capitalised on an Irish invention. (Bacon Curing – a historical review)
It is of huge interest that the Eskort brand of bacon, to this day, bears the brand name of Wiltshire cure. Wiltshire is an English county where Calne is located which housed the Harris factory. (C & T Harris and their Wiltshire bacon cure – the blending of a legend) There is no doubt in my mind that the same curing was practised in Estcourt in 1918, as was done in the Harris factories in Calne and that this is the historical basis for the continued reference on the Eskort bacon packages as Wiltshire Cure. A facinating subject for further inquiry is if Eskort used Auto Curing.
At a time before the direct addition of nitrite to curing brines, the only two ways to cure bacon was either dry curing or tank curing with auto curing being a progression of tank curing. Dry curing requires about 21 days as against 9 days for tank curing. The bacon marketing scheme officially established tank curing in the UK. (Walworth, 1940)
It would not have been possible for the plant to use sodium nitrite in its brine in 1918. Where the Danes and the English favoured tank curing, the Germans and the Americans liked the concept of adding nitrite directly to the curing brines. This was however frowned upon due to the toxicity of sodium nitrite. In America, the matter was battled out politically, scientifically and in the courts. It became the standard ingredient in bacon cures only after WW1. The Germans used it during the war due to a lack of access to saltpetre (nitrate) which was reserved for the war effort and the need to produce bacon faster to supply to the front. The American packing houses in Chicago toyed with its use due to the speed of curing that it accomplishes.
The timeline, however, precludes its use in the bacon factory in Estcourt in 1918. In fact, Ladislav Nachtmulner, the creator of the first legal commercial curing brine containing sodium nitrite, only invented his Prague Salt, in 1915. Prague Salt first appeared in 1925 in the USA as sodium nitrite became available through the Chicago based Griffith Laboratories in a curing mix for the meat industry. (The Naming of Prague Salt)
In Oct 1925 in a carefully choreographed display by Griffith, the American Bureau of Animal Industries legalised the use of sodium nitrite as a curing agent for meat. In December of the same year (1925) the Institute of American Meat Packers, created by the large packing plants in Chicago, published the document, “The use of Sodium Nitrite in Curing Meats.” (The Naming of Prague Salt)
A key player suddenly emerges onto the scene in the Griffith Laboratories, based in Chicago and very closely associated with the powerful meatpacking industry. In that same year (1925) Hall was appointed as the chief chemist of the Griffith Laboratories and Griffith started to import a mechanically mixed salt from Germany consisting of sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite and sodium chloride, which they called “Prague Salt.” (The Naming of Prague Salt)
Probably the biggest of the powerful meat packers was the company created by Phil Armour who gave David de Villiers Graaff the idea of refrigerated rail transport for meat. More than any other company at that time, Armour’s reach was global. It was said that Phil had an eye on developments in every part of the globe. (The Saint Paul Daily Globe, 10 May 1896, p2) He passed away in 1901 (The Weekly Gazette, 9 Jan 1901), but the business empire and network that he created must have endured long enough to have been aware of developments in Prague in the 1910s and early ’20s. (The Naming of Prague Salt)
Drawing of David de Villiers-Graaff in his mayoral robes. The drawing appeared in a newspaper in Chicago on 11 April 1892 when he was interviewed at the World Exposition. He travelled to Chicago for the first time in the mid-1880s when he probably met Armour.
There is, therefore, no reasonable way that the bacon factory in Estcourt could have used sodium nitrite directly in 1918. If Armour’s relationship was with JW Moor, this could have been a possibility since I suspect that Armour was experimenting with the direct addition of nitrite to curing brines as early as 1905, but his relationship, if any, would have been with David de Villiers Graaff, who was a meat trader at heart and did not have any direct interest in a large bacon curing company until ICS acquired Enterprise and Renown, long after the time of David de Villiers Graaff (the 1st). Besides this, where would they have found cheap nitrite salts in South Africa in 1918? This takes the 1918 establishment of the company back to the technology used by the bacon curers in Witshire which was mother brine tank curing, the classic Wiltshire curing method which was later exactly defined in UK law.
At the demise of the Harris operation, many of the staff were taken up into the current structures of Direct Table which is, according to my knowledge, one of the few remaining companies in the world that still use the traditional Wiltshire tank curing method for some of its bacons. It undoubtedly is one of the largest to do so. In the Eskort branding of its bacon, the reference to Wiltshire cure is a beautiful reference back to the origins of the company which pre-dates the direct addition of sodium nitrite.
The Griffith Laboratories became the universal evangelist of the direct addition of nitrite to curing brines. They appointed an agent in South Africa in Crown Mills. Crown Mills became Crown National and Prague Powder is still being sold by them to this day. It could very well have been Crown Mills who converted Eskort from traditional tank curing to the direct addition of sodium nitrite through Prague Powder.
It must be mentioned that the butchery trade was well established in South Africa long before the cooperative bacon factory was established in Estcourt. Bacon curing was one of the first responsibilities of the VOC when Van Riebeek set the refreshment station up in 1652. Swiss, Dutch, German and later, English butchers were scattered across South Africa. The largest and most successful of these companies in Cape Town was Combrink and Co., owned by Jakobus Combrink and later taken over by Dawid de Villiers Graaff who changed the name to Imperial Cold Storage and Supply Company. I suspect that most of these operations used dry curing which was not suitable for mass production.
Peter Bojsen and cooperative Bacon Production
The second technical aspect is the form of cooperation that was established and a few words must be said about Peter Bojsen for those who are not familiar with him. Cooperative bacon production was the buzzword in the early 1900s, but where did this originate?
It started in Denmark. The Danes were renowned dairy farmers and producers of the finest butter (Daily Telegraph, 2 February 1901: 6) They found the separated milk from the butter-making process to be an excellent food for pigs. The Danish farmers developed an immense pork industry around it. (Daily Telegraph, 2 February 1901: 6) The bacon industry was created in response to a ban from England on importing live Danish pigs to the island. The Danish farmers responded by organising themselves into cooperatives that build bacon factories that supplied bacon to the English market. (Daily Telegraph, 2 February 1901: 6) This established bacon curing as a major industry in Denmark.
“On 14 July 1887, 500 farmers from the Horsens region joined forces to form Denmark’s first cooperative meat company. The first general meeting was held, the land was purchased, building work commenced and the equipment installed.” (Danishcrown.com) “On 22 December 1887, the first co-operative abattoir in the world, Horsens Andelssvineslagteri (Horsen’s Share Abattoir), stood ready to receive the first pigs for slaughter.” (Danishcrown.com) The first cooperative bacon curing company was also established in 1887. (Tank Curing came from Ireland)
The dynamic Peter Bojsen (1838-1922) took centre stage in the creation of the abattoir in Horsens. He served as its first chairman. He created the first shared ownership slaughtering house. In years to follow, this revolutionary concept of ownership by the farmers on a shared basis became a trend in Denmark. Before the creation of the abattoir, he was the chairman of the Horsens Agriculture Association and had to deal with inadequate transport and slaughtering facilities around the market where the farmers sold their meat at. (Horsensleksikon.dk. Horsens Andelssvineslagteri) Peter was a visionary and a creative economist. The genius of this man transformed society.
In 1911, the St. Edmunds cooperative bacon factory was opened in England in Elmswell, with Danish help. It is clear that the concept of the Horsens plant crossed the English channel. It is plausible that its creation reached the ears of a group of farmers in a very “British” part of the empire, in Estcourt, Natal not just with the Wiltshire Tank curing of the Harris operation, but the cooperative movement in bacon production from St. Edmunds in 1911.
Early Success for Eskort
An article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales), 2 June 1919, p7 entitled “On Land, Livestock in South Africa – Further Competition for Australia.” The article reports on pork production that “pig breeding has been taken up systematically and while in the year before the war imports of bacon and hams were valued at GBP368,112, last year they were reduced to GBP31,590, and there is good reason to think that soon these articles will be exported.” One may think that the reduction in import is due to the war and that in general South African producers were stepping up to the plate to fill the void, but the trend of the article is that something is happening “systematically” and there is a trend that projects that soon the GBP368,112 import figure will completely be supplied by South African producers and that surplus bacon will be exported.
The farmer’s cooperatives were founded in 1917 in Estcourt. Moor laid the cornerstone in January 1918, the report in the Sydney Morning Herald appeared in June 1919, the same month when the first exports of Eskort bacon to the UK took place. Export may have taken place before the local market was completely saturated. Regardless of the actual circumstances, the export of bacon to the UK was not just a major achievement and competing nations took notice. I also suspect that Eskort managed to supply a sizable portion of the 1913 import figure of GBP368,112 in 1918 and that the article may elude to exactly this.
Pulling the Military Connections Together
The location of the Estcourt plant is of interest virtually right next to Fort Dunford, between the fort and the Bushman’s river. My suspicion is that the land belonged to the army and that Moor, either JW or with the help of FR, secured rights to purchase it. This could have been done only by a family who had very cosy relationships with the military and had friends in high places in the persons of Louis Botha and FR Moor himself.
Fort Dunford is indicated with the red marker. Take note of the position of the Boesmans River, the Eskort plant, the Fort and the Hospital.
Just look at the defences of the Fort. There were three defences. The first would have been the Bushman’s river. Secondly, there was a moat around the fort, 2 meters deep and 4 meters wide. Then, one part of the staircase could be pulled up in case two of the defences were bridged. It is clear from the map that even the hospital was strategically located to be within the general protection of the Fort and the Boesmans River bend.
There is a second interesting contribution that the military post could have made to the establishment of the bacon plant. It is known that men from Elmswell and Wiltshire were drafted into service in South Africa. Could it have been that some of these men actually contributed their knowledge to the cooperative bacon plant in Elmswell? These records can quite easily be checked and will be worth the effort.
Strong circumstantial evidence, however, points to more than just a coincidental relationship between the location of the plant and the military establishment. Probably more important than the affinity of Moor family for the military was the fact that FR Moor was the political leader of the Natal colony until the Union of South Africa was created in 1910 and the fact that the old school friend of FR, General Louis Botha was in 1918, the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa. Whichever way you look at it, it is hard not to recognise the close proximity of the Eskort plant to the military installations. What could be the uniting thought that pulls all these facts together? (Of course, in part, predicated on the fact that the factory is in the original location)
Looking at the state of the British Empire and wartime circumstances in the UK, I believe offers the answer. The military context goes much deeper than schoolboy comradery, family nostalgia or friends in high places. 1918 was the beginning of the last year of the Great War. On the one hand, it is hard for us to imagine the unified approach that the Empire had towards the war and every citizen in every Empire country. The empathy and support that the war elicited in South Africa generally, but especially in Natal, so closely linked with the UK in spit and culture was enormous. One source reports that in Estcourt school staff subscribed a portion of their salary monthly to the Governor-General’s Fund in support of the war. (Thompson, 2011) It is outside the scope of this article to delve deeper into the unprecedented effort that was being expended by the South African population and the people in Natal in particular in support of the troops but reading the accounts of what was being done in Natal is quite emotional.
On the other hand, directly responding to wartime shortages in the UK was an international effort. Bacon, in those days, was not just a luxury. It was a staple food. The production of bacon was a matter of national importance debated in parliament. It was a key food source sustaining the British navy. Many people only had bacon as food every day. They would boil the bacon before eating it. The parents who had to work the next day had the actual meat and the kids only had the water. Eduard Smith made the remark in his landmark work, Foods (1873), that in this way both the parents and the children went to bed “with a measure of satisfaction.” Bacon had strategic importance to the military and in the first world war, spoke to the general food situation in war-ravaged England.
The fact that the bacon company was established in Estcourt in 1917 shows clearly that South Africa was ready to step in to prop up meat and bacon supply in particular to the UK. Was there direct involvement from the South Africa leader, General Louis Botha who possibly passed on a request from London to all Empire states to assist in the supply of meat and bacon in particular? It is a matter of conjecture, but a tantalising possibility. These are speculations that can be corroborated by looking at the correspondence of Botha. FR Moor himself had direct communication with London and Botha may have simply opened the factory in support of the idea. FR’s letters along with that of JW have to be scrutinised for leads. The one reason that makes me suspects that there may have been a direct request from Botha or some early support for the venture is the location of the factory, right next to the Fort. In my mind, it swings the possibility for direct involvement from Botha from possible to probable. (Facts from correspondence should solve the matter)
Supplying the British market may have been done to build up South Africa, just as much as it was done in support of the Empire. I suspect that the former may even be more of a driving force than the latter. On 13 June 1917, an article appeared in the Grand Forks Herald (Grand Forks, North Dakota), reporting from London that “Developments on an enormous scale are expected in South Africa after the war and plans in this connection are being made as regards the export of food. It is confidently predicted that so far as meat is concerned the Union will be in a position to compete very soon with any other part of the world and in order to assist the expansion of the industry all the steamship lines propose, it is understood, to increase their refrigerated space very considerably and to place more vessels in service.” This report came out in the year when the Cooperative bacon Company in Estcourt was formed. It oozes with deliberateness and purposefulness from the highest authorities.
One person who was clearly involved in the “deliberateness and purposefulness” becomes clear from a pamphlet that was published in that same year. In a document dated 12 Jan 1917 about the South African meat export trade, compiled by A. R. T. Woods to Sir Owen Phillips, chairman of the Union-Castle Line who by this time was carrying meat from South America to Europe in their Nelson Line of Steamers, the following interesting quite is given by Gen. Louis Botha. The background is the delivery of what is described in the document as “by universal consent,. . . probably the best specimen of South African meat (beef) yet placed upon the London market” delivered by the R. M. S. “Walmer Castle” to the Smithfield market in London and inspected by a group from South Africa featured below in 1914. (I will give much to know the names of the men below. Will there be the name of one JW Moor?)
The party travelled to London by invitation from The Hon. W. P. Schreiner, High Commissioner of South Africa and Mr Ciappini (the Trades Commissioner). The South African meat was deemed comparable to frozen meat produced in any part of the world. The letter was a motivation that the South African meat trade was mature enough to be taken seriously and some helpful advice was given based on experience in South America.
He quotes Gen. Louis Botha who advised farmers that “so far as mealies are concerned the export should not develop, but that the mealies should be used to feedstock in this country, and that the export should be in the form of stock fed in South Africa on South African Mealies.” There is, therefore, good evidence of Genl. Louis Botha involving himself in the details of the establishment of the meat trade from South Africa and, I believe that it is in part this general encouragement that JW Moor followed in creating the Cooperative Bacon Curing Company in 1917.
I located this pamphlet among documents in the Western Cape Archive of J. W. Moor and his farmers Cooperative where they apply for permission to erect an abattoir and a bacon curing company in East London on the harbour. It is interesting that one of the recommendations given in the pamphlet is that abattoirs and chilling factories be erected in Ports, “along the quays where the ocean-going refrigerated steamers load” as it was done in Argentina. The influence of Botha’s encouragement of Moor can be well imagined.
The application for the abattoir was lodged in 1917, the same year when the Farmer’s Co-operative Bacon Factory Limited was founded in August 1917. It is possible that members of the Natal Farmers Co-operative Meat Industries and the Farmer’s Co-operative Bacon Factory Limited were the same people. Or that the one owned the other. Whichever way you look at it, John Moor was a key figure in both and the establishment of a bacon company in East London was directly in line with the proposals set out to boost meat exports. It is very interesting that both occurred in 1917 and that only the Eskort factory survived. As someone who established such a venture myself, my initial thoughts were that having a curing company at two such geographically distant sites as East London and Estcourt would have been impossible to manage, especially since both were new ventures. Further documents show that the factory was built on the proposed site and it is telling that only the Estcourt site survived.
East London’s harbour at the mouth of the Buffalo River. In the absence of facilities ashore, the vessel SV Timaru, fitted with cold chambers, was moored here by the East London Cold Storage Company for an extensive period early in the 20th century. (From Ice Cold in Africa). The businesses of David de Villiers Graaff and Moor were intertwined and mutually dependent.
The stone in Estcourt was unveiled by JW Moor on January 7, 1918, almost a full year before the Armistice. The Farmer’s Co-operative Bacon Factory Limited was founded in August 1917, 16 months before the end of the War. The factory was opened on 6 June 1918 by Prime Minister General Louis Botha, 6 months before the Great War ended. This is remarkable.
The shortages in the UK in 1917 and 1918 were dire. The end of the war was not in sight and calls went out across the Empire to assist. Meat supply, at this time, diminished by 30% in the UK. In this context, it is easy to see how military land was either made available or that it would have been strategically prudent to locate such an installation close to a military site, but again, it would have required high-level support (involvement?).
For the South Africans, the call for help would have been close to home. Delville Woods took place in 1916, a year before the company was created. In the month when it was founded, August 1917, Lieutenant-General Sir Jacob Louis van Deventer had just taken over command of the mostly South African troops involved in the German East African campaign. His offensive started in July 1917. The entire East African region remained very active for the duration of the war.
When the fighting was all done almost 19 000 South Africans lost their lives. The madness of the time can best be described by the opening sentences of Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair… Such would have been the experience of the men and women involved in the war while setting up the Farmer’s Co-operative Bacon Factory on the banks of the Boesmans River in Estcourt, Natal. (1)
The Best Bacon on Earth
The Farmers Cooperative Bacon Factory at Estcourt has been producing the finest bacon on earth since its inception. The first international endorsement for the quality of the Farmers Co-operative Bacon Factory in Estcourt, Natal came in 1920 at the British Dairy Farmers’ Association Show in London.
Almost right from the start, the show became the platform where the best produce from around the world was exhibited alongside the best from England. The British colonies used this as a platform to sell into the lucrative English market. The first British Dairy Show was held in Islington in London in 1876. It was initially called the Metropolitan Dairy Show. “At this show, the British Dairy Farmers’ Association was formed and in the following year the first Dairy Show was held at the Agricultural Hall, Islington.”(Pasfield, 1961)
The Guardian, London, Tue, Oct 19, 1926
It was never only about dairy. The 1876 show included competitions for Jersey, Guernsey, Shorthorn, Ayrshire, Kerry, Brittany, and any other breed of dairy cow, based on inspection. These were however banned “by order of the Privy Council owing to an outbreak of cattle plague in the country. However other livestock such as goats, donkeys, mules and poultry were exhibited at the first show, together with dairy produce, roots, grain and hops.” (Pasfield, 1961) Bacon soon became a standard feature at the show where they catered for the farming trade as well as the consumers. By 1893, there were 43 bacon and ham exhibits.
The Morning Post (London) of 19 October 1897 reported on the influence of foreign producers. “So much is heard nowadays of the versatility and ability of the foreign producer that attention has been largely diverted from home production and opinion educated to regard as of secondary merit butter, cheese, and other articles emanating from British dairies.” The report stated that “the prominence attained by the imported article is due mainly to the moderate price at which it can be produced, together with admitted uniformity in quality.” The journalist was writing about butter, but for sure, it applied to other produce, including bacon.
The Union of South Africa, which was created in 1910, was represented at the show and was particularly successful in 1920. An advertisement in The Times newspaper from October 1920 indicated that South African bacon was part of the Union Exhibit at stand 121, Gilbey Hall, at the Royal Agricultural Hall, Islington.
The Times, Wed, Oct 20, 1920.
The Age, October 20, 1920, reporting on the poor Australian representation, calls the South African exhibit “magnificent” in all classes of produce. It states that the Union’s exhibition is the “finest of its kind ever seen at the dairy show.“
The Age, Wednesday, October 20, 1920
A report from The Age, the next day, on 21 October, reported that South Africa won all prizes for cheese and bacon produced in British colonies.
The Age, Thursday, October 21, 1920
British newspapers did not directly report on which South African bacon producers were so successful in 1920, but E. G. Hardy, Assistant Superintendent of Dairying, Pretoria, writing for the Journal of the Department of Agriculture, gave us the detail when he reported on the South African exhibit at this show in 1921. In the category of bacon from a British colony, four sides of bacon had to be entered per participant. “There were nine entries, all from South Africa except one from New South Wales. The Farmers’ Co-operative Bacon Factory, Ltd., Estcourt, Natal, secured the gold medal, scoring 92 points.” This, by itself, is a stunning achievement, but he then compares it with even greater success from the previous year. “This company (The Farmers Co-operative Bacon Factory from Estcourt, Natal) therefore repeated their success in the previous two years. Before we look at the 1920 results, he mentions that in 1921 “Messrs. Sparks and Young, Durban, was placed second and awarded the silver medal, their exhibit scoring 90 points, and the Estcourt Factory were third with another exhibit scoring 87 points.” (Hardy)
Above is the gold medal awarded to them in 1921 by the Royal Agricultural Society of Natal.
The results from 1920 in this same category received his attention. He wrote that “he was given to understand that the quality of the South African (our) exhibits was hardly up to the high standard of last year (1920), when the Estcourt factory’s winning exhibit scored 100 points.” Part of the blame for the poorer showing in 1921 was “to some extent at least, due to faulty smoking of the bacon in London.” (Hardy)
The scorecard of 1920, when the Farmers’ Co-operative Bacon Factory, Ltd., of Estcourt, Natal, achieved 100%, proudly hangs in their Irene Head Office boardroom.
This is the earliest and clearest endorsement of the superior quality of the bacon that was produced at the Estcourt Factory. It is a tradition that was repeated at subsequent shows stretching well into the 1950s and which is still part of the ethos of this remarkable company. I am planning a separate page where all the achievements from these shows will be detailed.
Subsequent Awards
The Dairy Show in Islington, London, remained the primary showcase of agricultural products in the British Empire. The company continued to win first prizes at this prestigious show. In 1926 they again won the category of bacon produced in British colonies and were awarded this beautiful rose bowl cup with lion masks and rings.
On 21 October 1926, The Age, London, reported on this win.
A trophy won at the Royal Agricultural Show in Natal for the best exhibit of Hams and Bacon.
The London show remained important for the emerging South African economy for many years and the Co-operative Bacon Factory in Estcourt (Eskort Ltd), remained one of the pillars that the South African drive for international recognition was being built on.
In 1950, the Farmers Co-operative Bacon Factory achieved second prize at the show.
As happened many times before, they not only won first prize, but also a second prize.
In 1953 they again won first prize at the British Dairy Farmers’ Association Coronation Dairy Show. The fact that it was called the “Coronation Dairy Show” refers to the ascension of Princess Elizabeth to the throne, upon the death of her father in 1952. She was formally crowned Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953.
Finally
The Eskort factory is a historic site where many interesting cross-currents meet. Its uninterrupted existence from a time before nitrite was directly added to brine makes it unique in the world! Apart from Danish Crown and Tulip, I know of very few other companies.
Besides this, tied up in the story of its creation is a romantic immigrant, a family, defining themselves through diamond digging and making powerful friends; re-investing its fortunes in farming and establishing a food company that exists to this day. We see the use of tank curing which predates the direct addition of nitrite to curing brines. The global influence of Griffiths probably converted Eskort to an operation using the direct application of nitrite to curing brines following WW1. We see the influence of the Danish Cooperative system, probably through the St. Edmunds Bacon Factory. Besides any of these, we see hard work, imagination and high character and particular response to a specific call for help.
What is the purpose of this study? Besides the fascinating context of the Eskort operation, is there anything we can learn from the past? I offer a few suggestions.
1. Stay on top of the game. Use the best and latest technology available to stay well ahead of the race. A 1914 US newspaper article, from the Deming Headlight, called the Danish cooperative bacon factory “the last word as to efficient scientific treatment of the dead porker.” The article was entitled A Cooperative Bacon factory. (The Deming Headlight (Deming, New Mexico), Friday 8 May 1914, Page 6.)
2. Use the best corporate structure, appropriate for the time.
3. This point probably dovetails into the previous one – ensure that the business is well funded.
4. Think big! No, think massive! By no account was any of the plans of JW Moor or any of his brothers or their father ever small!
5. The factory was built with a specific market in mind. “It was built for exports”, even though saying it like this may be too specific. Let’s state it this way – “technology was chosen to attract the right clients.” A modern-day example may be investing in a tray ready packaging line for fresh meat for the retail trade or cooked bacon for the catering trade.
6. Things are not as bad today as they were during the world wars. If anything, we have more opportunities. No matter what is happening in our country, this can be our age of wisdom, our epoch of belief, the season of light and our spring of hope!
The last comment must be made about the legacy of the bacon plant. There can be little doubt that it had a large impact on the meat processing landscape in South Africa over the years. It provides a fertile and productive training centre for many men and women to later either set up their own curing operations or work at other plants across the country, thus transferring the skills inherent in the Estcourt plant to the rest of the country. In this regard, the impact of the visionary work of the Moor family is volcanic. It is interesting to talk to executives in Eskort and to realise how many people in top positions in curing operations across the country started their careers at the Eskort plant in Estcourt in the Natal Midlands.
These are some of the obvious lessons I take away from the study. This is insanely exciting!
Aftermath 1:
Back row, left to right: Gen JBM Hertzog, H Burton, FR Moor, Col. G Leuchars, Gen JC Smuts, HC Hull, FS Malan and David de Villiers Graaff. Front: JW Sauer, Gen Botha and A Fischer.
Gen. Louis Botha was the man who pushed for the development of the meat industry in SA. Of course, he found a great ally in David de Villiers Graaff who created ICS. At the end of 1934, the company was in serious financial trouble following the Great Depression. Anglo-American corporation was the largest investor and as it invested more money in the company, while the company worked ever closer with Tiger Oats, which was another Anglo subsidiary. In March 1982 Barlow bought a large share of Tiger Oats and the controlling share in ICS. In October 1998 Tiger Brands (Tiger Oats Limited) bought Imperial Cold Storage and it was taken up in the portfolio of this company’s brands.
Look at this old photo I found. In 1910 the Union of South Africa was created uniting the Transvaal, Free State, Natal and the Cape. Botha was asked to become Prime Minister. Here is a photo of his first cabinet. David was a member of this cabinet. He is in the back row on the right.
FR Moor is 3rd from the left, back row, looking to his right. His younger brother, JW Moor, was the chairman of the farmers cooperative that became Eskort. Botha opened the Eskort factory in Estcourt, Natal shortly before he passed away. The complete list of men on the photo and members of the first Union cabinet is: Back row, left to right: Gen JBM Hertzog, H Burton, FR Moor, Col. G Leuchars, Gen JC Smuts, HC Hull, FS Malan and David de Villiers Graaff. Front: JW Sauer, Gen Botha, and A Fischer.
In a way, both Eskort and Enterprise (at least Tiger Brands) were represented. The individual photos are of De Villiers Graaff and Moor.
The history and impact of bacon, men and women, run deep! What a story!
Aftermath 2:
Arnold Prinsloo, the CEO of Eskort, sent me a message. He has a present for me, a book commemorating the first 100 years of Eskort, Ltd..
It was a day when Paul Fickling, my partner in crime at Van Wyngaardt and I decided to follow Christo Niemand’s advice to stand back a bit and think about our strategy with the business. I was glad that Paul was with me so that I could introduce him to one of the legends in our industry.
What I never had was an image of JW Moor. Arnold showed me his photo.
JW Moor
Finally, I am looking for the legendary first chairman of the First Farmers Cooperative Bacon Factory to be established in SA in the eyes. We spoke about the history and the Moor family; the industry at large and then Arnold gave us a bit of information that is invaluable to our quest. “Build your company on quality! Nothing less than that will exist for 100 years.”
At home, I could hardly wait to page through the book. Here I saw so many of my friends.
Wynand Nel who worked with me at Stocks Meat Market, Arnold Prinsloo, Melindi Wyma, Bob Ferguson – I know his son, Alex who is heading up Multivac.
This morning Paul Fickling was telling me about a small hotel they stayed over in Natal the previous week, Hartford House. It turns out that the house was owned by JW Moor. Arnold elucidated us and suggested we get in contact with Mickey Goss, the current owner of the estate, for an in-depth discussion of the history of the region and the Moor family.
I will definitely send Mickey correspondence and arrange for a visit to his famed estate. I am thrilled to be part of this incredibly rich history, humbled by the gesture of Arnold and the coincidence of Paul and his family staying at the exact house a week ago. Well, that is just strange!!
Aftermath 3:
I received a mail this morning (14 June 2020) from Bruce, Sally and Phyllis. Bruce writes that “having spent time growing up playing along the Bushman’s river at the back of the bacon factory, your story would not be complete without the mention of Harry Lambert.” He attached an old newspaper clip which reads:
“H. W. Lambert is a man who has watched Estcourt grow from “half-a-dozen” andone house and a handful of wood and iron shops and homes.” It was in 1920 when H. W. Lambert immigrated from Edinburgh, Scotland to take up an appointment with the Farmers Co-operative Bacon Factory.
“Only a small part of the town today resembles the Estcourt of 1920. Mind you, what was then used as the farmers’ hall is still in use as the civic offices.” When Mr Lambert joined the bacon factory, the killing of 300 pigs a week was considered “quite something.”
He was responsible for starting the manufacture of sausages at the factory and, by the time of his retirement a few years ago, he had overseen its growth to a point where 2500 pigs were being processed each week. “
Estcourt has plenty of “local legends,” says Mr Lambert. “One that intrigues me is the belief that the author Rider Haggard used to sit in the saddle between two hills just outside the town, working on his stories. He is said to have written his book “King Solomon’s Mines” at this spot, and the two hillocks have been aptly named ‘Sheba’s Breasts’.”
In 1920, he recalls, Estcourt had no regular street lamps and only the roughest of footpaths.
“Those were the days of horses and traps and wagons. The chief social function of the townspeople was to watch the mail train pass through once a night.”
When sausages were first made at the factory, Mr Lambert remembers how school children would irk the employees by sticking their heads in when they passed and shouted “sausage town” in derogatory tones.
He has given a lifetime of devoted service to Estcourt and spent nine years on the Town Council – two as mayor. One of his chief pleasures was a game of snooker at the club.”
(1) 1917 and 18 were very interesting years besides for the creation of the bacon plant in Estcourt. On 8 June, two days after the start of production, the South African financial services group Sanlam was established in Cape Town. 1917/ 1918 was the year when the RAF was founded with another interesting South African connection. On 17 August 1917, General Jan Smuts released his report recommending that a military air service should be used as “an independent means of war operations” of the British Army and Royal Navy, leading to the creation of the Royal Air Force in 1918. (Hastings, Hastings, 1987)
(2) In reality, I did go to Denmark to learn bacon curing. The interesting thing is that Tulip is a Danish company, wholly owned by Danish Crown and a direct outflow of the creation of the cooperative curing plant at Horsens. In the ’70 and ’80, the Danish abattoirs and large processing companies consolidated and formed Danish Crown. The Danes created Tulip in England to, in a way, set up their own distribution company in England for the vast quantities of bacon they produced in Denmark. Essentially, they created their own client. In later years Tulip became involved in every aspect of the pork industry in England and currently is the largest pork farmer in the UK. Exactly as it was logical for my path to lead to Tulip, so, it was logical for JW’s path to lead to the Harris operations and a cooperative bacon plant. Given the same set of variables, the best choices are obvious to all, no matter how far in the future you look back at decisions of the past.
Dhupelia, U. S.. 1980. Frederick Robert Moor and Native Affairs in the Colony of Natal 1893 to 1903. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of History in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Durban-Westville. Supervisor: Dr. J.B. Brain; Date Submitted: December 1980. Download: Dhupelia-Uma-1980
Dommisse, E. 2011. First baronet of De Grendel. Tafelberg
The Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, Ireland; 18 Oct 1878, p1.
The Guardian (London, Greater London, England), 6 July 1918, p6.
Max, Bomber Command: Churchill’s Epic Campaign – The Inside Story of the RAF‘s Valiant Attempt to End the War, New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987, ISBN0-671-68070-6, p. 38.
Morrell, R. G.. 1996. White Farmers, Social Institutions and Settler Masculinity in the Natal Midlands, 1880-1920. A Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Economic History. University of Natal. Durban, March 1996
The Morning Post (London, Greater London, England) · 19 Oct 1897, Tue · Page 2
Pasfield, J. The Royal Dairy Show. Brit. vet. J. (1961), 117, 373, Horsham.
Perren, R. Farmers and consumers under strain: Allied meat supplies in the First World War. The Agricultural Historical Review. PDF: Richard Perren
The Saint Paul Daily Globe, 10 May 1896
Thompson, P. S.. 2011. Historia Vol. 56, no. 1. The Natal home front in the Great War (1914-1918) On-line version ISSN 2309-8392; Print version ISSN 0018-229X. The Historical Association of South Africa c/o Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of Pretoria.
Walworth, G.. 1940. Feeding the Nation in Peace and War. London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Best Bacon System on Earth
By Eben van Tonder
8 January 2018
Background
Almost four years ago I started working with transglutaminase. I outsourced the manufacturing of my custom blend to a reputable company in China.
We embarked on designing a system that is optimal for bacon production from a manufacturers perspective.
Unique Features
The features that were important to us were the following:
It had to be easy to use
The grids should not bend when dropped, even if they are full
The seams should not split. High pressure will be applied to the meat to ensure that air is removed from the meat matrix that will interfere with the binding.
We opted NOT to stack bellies on top of each other – it does not work well.
It had to be cost-effective
Trolleys had to be fitted with durable wheels, able to pivot.
Unsurpassed Benefits
Slicing yields of 98%
Consistent production yields
Bacon is perfectly consistent in shape
Superior Engineering
USP
The complete system is produced in South Africa at a price that is almost impossible to match in any other country.
Safety/ Food Safety Features
The system was designed with European safety and food safety features in mind.
Two sizes:
480mm long for Treif-type slicers and 900mm long for high-speed slicers.
Other Bacon Components Available
A Unique Bacon Brine:
I designed a brine with all the features and benefits required for excellent bacon at a fraction of the price of bacon brines from regular spice companies.
Baking Paper
After intensive tests, we opted to stay with a specialized, perforated baking paper.
Consulting and recipes
I have extensive experience in bacon production and developed a number of custom recipes such as excellent catering bacon. If you buy the system from us, I will happily share most of these recipes with you.
Batching system
A German Master Butcher developed a batching system that works hand-in-glove with the total bacon production system.
Hydraulic Press
After extensive testing, we designed a hydraulic press to deliver the pressure required to remove air from the meat system and greatly enhance the binding and restructuring of the meat. It also ensures consistency in the final bacon shape.
Full Automation
The entire system is designed with full automated loading and offloading in mind. These features are currently being designed.
All Bacon Cuts
The system is ideal for processing belly, loin, leg, shoulder, catering bacon.
Conclusion
Over the years I had the opportunity to work with most other systems available on the market. We took the best features from everyone and worked hard to eliminate the defects. The result is a superior system with no equal.
