Terrible fires have burnt the Overberg this month. This is the part of the Western Cape where I live and while we’ve been seeing close up what the fires mean, the resulting dense smoke plumes could even be seen in satellite pictures, drifting 300 km north of the actual flames.
We are learning a new summer reality. Ash dust covers furniture, laptops, clothes; helicopters regularly chug overhead on their way to fight the next blaze and communities respond to calls for help from exhausted firefighters. Wine farms have been destroyed and many villages have been under threat.
There have been equally terrifying fires in other parts of this province as well as in the Eastern Cape. Local farmers and firefighters say these are the worst they have seen in their lifetime, and our local newspaper, the Suidernuus/Southern Post, quotes Cape Nature as saying that more than 90 000 ha has burnt since the start of the fire season. There have been more fires, far more land burnt, since that estimate.
Experts worry that the ferocity of the fires, the fact that they began so early in the season – meaning it will be months before the arrival of rehabilitating winter rains – and that the fires have occurred too soon after the last burns, could all foreshadow ‘a complete ecological disaster’, including plants that could now become extinct, critically endangered bird species brought to the edge.
True cause?
Each year there’s debate, always inconclusive, about the true cause of the problem.
It’s true that some fire is a normal process for this part of the world, but it’s also true that fires are tending to be bigger, more ferocious, more frequent, more devastating. Is it climate change, people wonder, a situation made worse because of alien vegetation that negligent landowners should have removed? There’s also concern about arson, and that fires might be set for some malicious purpose.
Sometimes there’s even photographic ‘evidence’ published on social media to show the means by which arsonists allegedly start fires, though what I’ve seen posted has so far turned out to be inauthentic, and often more than unhelpful.
There are occasional arrests however, and the latest edition of the Suidernuus/Southern Post reports that three people are to be charged in connection with a fire that started in the Stanford cemetery. The fires – fighting them and the subsequent repair work – are costing landowners, local businesses and affected municipalities a fortune, and the Overstrand municipality, for example, has offered a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of arsonists.
Slave trial records
All of this has been in my mind over the last few days as I’ve been re-reading some fascinating – and horrifying – legal records. They are transcripts of documents related to the trials of enslaved people in the Cape during the 18th century, collected in a book called, ‘Trials of Slavery‘. The records are horrifying because of their reminder of the cruel and constricted life of enslaved people – and the fiendishly cruel punishments routinely carried out against them.
Among the records I found one case in particular that’s strangely relevant to the fire problems of the last few weeks.
The transcripts, collected and published by the Van Riebeeck Society for the Publication of South African Historical Documents, were edited by Nigel Worden and Gerald Groenewald.
There are several cases involving fires, mostly affecting buildings, and, introducing the trial record of Julij van Bengalen, a trial held in Stellenbosch during 1741, the editors note that fire was ‘a particular danger in a community where wood was used extensively in building, and detailed measures were taken to punish those who caused it, either deliberately or by accident.’
Whipping, rope – and the gallows
Just what these ‘detailed measures’ were can be seen in the punishment imposed on Julij van Bengalen – though his case involved an accidental fire in the veld rather than a fire that set buildings alight – and the threats of what would happen to him if he ever again caused a fire.
The translated records reads:
Today, 6 February 1741, Julij van Bengalen, bondsman of the widow of Jurgen Radijn, confessed to us that, some days ago now, he was in the veld with the sheep of his mistress and, because he wanted to roast the fish which he had in his knapsack, he made a fire in a porcupine hole, as a result of which the veld caught fire heavily. This slave Julij was then, in the presence of the honourable landdrost and us, the undersigned deputised heemraden, severely whipped …, while the honourable landdrost also advised this slave Julij to refrain in future from making fire in the veld, or, if he did not, to be punished, in accordance with the plakkaat, with the rope on the gallows until death follows.
Done at Stellenbosch, the date as above,
[signed] Jacob Cloete, G v d Bijl.
In my presence, [signed] A Schephausen, secretary