The Rand Club: The Rhodes Room

The Rand Club (1887-2015)

The British South Africa Police (BSAP)

Items in my Rhodesiana collection acquired in South Africa and England

The Last Domino (South Africa Border War)

Boerboel

When I lived in Namibia (South West Africa) many of my neighbours had such dogs patrolling their fenced compounds. These creatures were very aggressive--though, not towards me. What I was told is that they were trained to respond aggressively to the wood-smoke scent of Africans. As events progress in the US, these dogs will become more popular.

Agent Kruger

Or, as he's also known in the film, Agent 32--a direct reference to South Africa's famed special forces unit, 32 Battalion, known by their enemies as Os Terriveis, or, The Terrible Ones. I knew several of these chaps during my time in Southern Africa. Big, burly, bearded guys from South Africa, Rhodesia, Australia, and Portugal who didn't take shit from anyone. The attitude, beard, shorts, braai, weapons skills, and accent in the movie are accurate depictions of these men. After the fall of the country in 1994 some of them joined private security firms operating in other parts of Africa, namely Angola. They're still around waiting for new work. Activate Kruger !

Quatermain

"Well, it's eighteen months or so ago since I first met Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, and it was in this way. I had been up elephant hunting beyond Bamangwato, and had had bad luck. Everything went wrong that trip, and to top up with I got the fever badly. So soon as I was well enough I trekked down to the Diamond Fields, sold such ivory as I had, and also my wagon and oxen, discharged my hunters, and took the post-cart to the Cape. After spending a week in Cape Town, finding that they overcharged me at the hotel, and having seen everything there was to see, including the botanical gardens, which seem to me likely to confer a great benefit on the country, and the new Houses of Parliament, which I expect will do nothing of the sort, I determined to go on back to Natal by the Dunkdd then lying in the docks waiting for the Edinburgh Castle due in from England. I took my berth and went aboard, and that afternoon the Natal passengers from the Edinburgh Castle transhipped, and we weighed anchor and put out to sea.

Among the passengers who came on board there were two who excited my curiosity. One, a man of about thirty, was one of the biggest-chested and longest-armed men I ever saw. He had yellow hair, a big yellow beard, clear-cut features, and large gray eyes set deep into his head. I never saw a finer-looking man, and somehow he reminded me of an ancient Dane. Not that I know much of ancient Danes, though I remember a modern Dane who did me out of ten pounds ; but I remember once seeing a picture of some of those gentry, who, I take it, were a kind of white Zulus. They were drinking out of big horns, and their long hair hung down their backs, and as I looked at my friend standing there by the companion-ladder, I thought that if one only let his hair grow a bit, put one of those chain shirts on to those great shoulders of his, and gave him a big battle-axe and a horn mug, he might have sat as a model for that picture. And, by the way, it is a curioas thing, and just shows how the blood will show out. I found out afterwards that Sir Henry Curtis, for that was the big man's name, was of Danish blood. He also reminded me strongly of somebody else, but at the time I could not remember who it was.

The other man, who stood talking to Sir Henry, was short, stout, and dark, and of quite a different cut. I suspected at once that he was a naval officer. I don't know why, but it is difficult to mistake a navy man. I have gone shooting trips with several of them in the course of my life, and they have always been just the best and bravest and nicest fellows I ever met, though given to the use of profane language.

I asked, a page or two back, what is a gentleman? I'll answer it now : a royal naval officer is, in a general sort of a way, though, of course, there may be a black sheep among them here and there. I fancy it is just the wide sea and the breath of God's winds that washes their hearts and blows the bitterness out of their minds and makes them what men ought to be. Well, to return, I was right again ; I found out that he was a naval officer, a lieutenant of thirty-one, who, after seventeen years' service, had been turned out of her majesty's employ with the barren honor of a commander's rank, because it was impossible that he should be promoted. This is what people who serve the queen have to expect : to be shot out into the cold world to find a living just when they are beginning to really understand their work, and to get to the prime of life. Well, I suppose they don't mind it, but for my part I had rather earn ray bread as a hunter. One's half -pence are as scarce, perhaps, but you don't get so many kicks. His name I found out— by referring to the passengers' list—was Good—Captain John Good. He was broad, of medium height dark, stout, and rather a curious man to look at. He was so very neat and so very clean shaved, and he always wore an eye-glass in his right eye. It seemed to grow there, for it had no string, and he never took it out except to wipe it. At first I thought he used to sleep in it, but I afterwards found that this was a mistake. He put it in his trousers pocket when he went to bed, together with his false teeth, of which he had two beautiful sets that have often, my own being none of the best, caused me to break the tenth Commandment. But I am anticipating."

H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines (1885)

Afrikaner Blood

SA Special Forces Brigade: Second To None

Shooting Practice

I'm in love--with my new handgun. I went shooting this morning, partly in commemoration of the savages for whom this day has been set aside by the American authorities and the traitors who advocate for them. I used a Wilson Combat .45 ACP. I was--according to my companions--extraordinarily accurate, a 'natural' as they put it. Almost all of my shots hit home. I haven't used a handgun since my South African days 13 years ago. As I've mentioned before, in my late 20s I lived in Pretoria, South Africa, after travelling around Southern Africa, and trained with a local cadre of Boere Nationalists. (Hoe gaan dit my vriende?). When I was a boy I had a BB-gun and sometimes used a .22 with a friend's dad in the woods of New York and Connecticut. When I say 'shooting' here I'm referring to firing handguns and rifles at a local shooting range--not targeting pheasants, deer, neighbourhood moggies, and university students, which in the US is called 'hunting'. It's all very confusing. But I'm sure you knew that. Using a firearm gives one a measure of real power, which, given the general trajectory of things, might be of benefit to you and yours.

Recces !

The Endless Summer (Cape St. Francis, South Africa)

Wine & Africana

The Last Days of South Africa, With Pints of Bitter at Kavanagh's Afterwards

Following my career as a quasi-mercenary in South Africa in the late 1990s (about which I will write more later), I ended up back in London, where I obtained a one-bedroom flat on Queen's Gate in South Kensington. It was within crawling distance, I happily discovered, of Kavanagh's, a dark Irish pub under the hotel across the street.

In it worked a beautiful Mexican woman, Carmena, a graphic artist for a Mexican newspaper who was travelling around the world with her husband, who also worked in the pub. Carmena's aquiline nose, noble face, and long flowing black hair immediately attracted my notice. Every night, whilst I sipped my pints of bitter, I looked for her nose plowing through the cigarette smoke and crowd like a ship's bow. She made fun of the accents of the Spanish people working there.

Also working in the pub was Dermiod, an Irishman, a tall, thin, balding figure, with a crimson face the colour of the insoles of my Grenson brogues. He was 35 and claimed to have been born in Queens, but his family returned to Ireland when he was small. His sudden absence from the pub one day, he later confided to me, was due to his appearance in Portsmouth on charges of hitting a woman. He told us he was bisexual. He was caught drinking behind the bar. We never saw him again.

Another worker was a small Spanish girl with a slim, boyish figure and a freckled, upturned nose, not at all like the aristocratic Spanish, Mexican, and Brazilian women I had met. When I mentioned my interest in Franco, she mock spit on the floor in disgust. She told me she wanted to work in America. Her English professor at university in Spain told her she didn't have to know English to work in America, because the USA would soon be a Spanish-speaking country.

The Transvaal, South Africa

In the course of my wanderings around Southern Africa in the late '90s, I met a young man who lived with his family at the foot of the Soutpansberg mountains in the Transvaal in South Africa. Jannie was 21, with long blonde hair, and managed the family farm. Discovering I was from London, he said he wanted to immigrate there for work. He grew up on his uncle's farm. His uncle was an eccentric who liked to hide in the bushes and take pot shots at the black farm workers with a homemade slingshot. The family kept as a pet a tame warthog which they had raised from a piglet. The warthog behaved just like a dog, chewing on an old tire hanging from a tree and swinging from it by its teeth. It also chased cars, the sound of which would cause it to run clickety-clack into the kitchen, its little hooves invariably slipping out from under it as it slid on its back across the smooth wooden floor. It was eventually run over by one of the big 18-wheeler trucks rolling north towards Zimbabwe.

Holiday in Pretoria

By 1999, I had achieved a successful Wall Street career in the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market. But I wanted a break. So I went to South Africa, a move I had been intending to make for years. I went in part to write, to conduct academic research, and to pursue paramilitary training. And, to be perfectly honest, to look for adventure. South Africa was then, as it is now, undergoing a process of black-on-white crime and ethnic cleansing, and I thought I could play a part in addressing it. Shortly before I arrived in the country, a white Namibian female student at the University of Pretoria had been abducted and raped by a dozen or so local blacks. It was horrific events such as this that, to me, called out for a direct response.

I settled in Pretoria. Through some contacts in Afrikaner political circles, I rented a large villa in Hatfield, a Pretoria suburb. I traded in my Brooks Brothers shirts, J.Press suits, and Alfred Sargent brogues for khaki bush shirts, fatigues, moleskin jeans, and Veldschoen. I grew my hair long and stopped shaving. I tanned and my hair became blonder in the African sun. I took Afrikaans lessons from pretty blonde girls at the University of Pretoria, where I also attended seminars at the Institute for Strategic Studies.

A short walk away was McGinty's, a bar popular with local residents and University of Pretoria students. There I got to know the bartender, a short, muscular white guy with a thin moustache. He had once worked in the mines, he told me, where he had led a mine gang. He said his blacks were lazy workers with a mañana attitude and constantly complained about racism. Tending bar was a better job. One afternoon, as a group of rowdy students was making noise and irritating customers at the bar, I saw him calmly walk up to the biggest, tallest student in the group and lay him out flat on the ground with a right hook to the nose. Blood and broken glass were scattered about the floor. I was impressed.

At McGinty's I met a short, well-built, shaven-headed Irishman in a short-sleeved shirt and brown boots. He said he was an ex-soldier. He looked it. He had moved to South Africa as a young boy in the mid-1980s with his parents, who had wanted to escape the Irish troubles. They must have realised later, I thought to myself, that things were much worse in South Africa. He had served in an artillery unit in the SADF and had seen fighting in the border war in Namibia and Angola. He sounded bitter. He asked me what tourist sites I had visited and I told him most of them. He said I should visit some of the farms east of the city. "Right-wingers are storing nuclear weapons in underground silos on those farms," he told me.

V & A Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa

In a sports bar brimming with rugby fans I met a floppy-haired Irishman, Andy, and his South African wife, Catherine. Small, dark, sweet Catherine. Andy came from a good family. From his accent and demeanor I surmised he was public school educated. He owned a landscaping business in Cape Town and had married Catherine, he explained to me, so he could stay in the country. Andy liked to drink, so we got on well. While he explained to me the different beers to be found in Southern Africa, I glanced at his wife and noticed her gazing at him with what can only be described as a look of love in her dark, shining eyes. I wondered if Andy had noticed. His business was doing well, he said, but he was having trouble with some of his black workers who were often drunk or in gaol. Andy and Catherine recently had spent a few months travelling in a van, camping and sight-seeing on the way to Namibia. They brought along a loaded pistol.