To Hell with Cronjé

by Ingrid Winterbach, Elsa Silke (Translator)

"This unforgettable novel establishes Ingrid Winterbach as one of the most important novelists writing in Afrikaans."—Thys Human Two scientists, Reitz Steyn and Ben Maritz, find themselves in a "transit camp for those temporarily and permanently unfit for battle" during the Boer War. Captured on suspicion of desertion and treason—during a trek across an unchanging desert of bushes, rocks, and ant hills to help transport a fellow-soldier, who has suffered debilitating shell-shock, to his mother—they are forced to await the judgment of a General Bergh, unsure whether they are to be conscripted into Bergh's commando, allowed to continue their mission, or executed for treason. As the weeks pass, and the men's despair at ever returning to their families reaches its peak, they are sent on a bizarre mission... A South African Heart of Darkness , Ingrid Winterbach's To Hell with Cronjé is a poetic exploration of friendship and camaraderie, an eerie reflection of the futility of war, and a thought-provoking re-examination of the founding moments of the South African nation. Ingrid Winterbach is an artist and novelist whose work has won the M-Net Prize, Old Mutual Literary Prize, the University of Johannesburg Prize for Creative Writing, and the W.A. Hofmeyr Prize. She's also received the Hertzog Prize, an honor she shares with Breyten Breytenbach and Etienne Leroux. Elsa Silke translates from Afrikaans and was the winner of the 2006 South African Translator's Institute/Via Afrika Prize for her translation of Karel Schoeman's This Life.

Genres: South Africa, Fiction, Africa, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, War, Translated Fiction

234 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Also wrote as Lettie Viljoen.

Ingrid Winterbach is a South African author who primarily writes in Afrikaans. She is married to Andries Gouws and has two daughters. She lives in Durban.

She was born in Johannesburg in 1948. She studied Afrikaans, Dutch and Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand. Lettie Viljoen's first novel was entitled Klaaglied vir Koos ("Lament for Koos"), and was published in 1984. As Lettie Viljoen she published Erf 1986, Belemmering 1990, Karolina Ferreira 1993 (translated into English by the author herself: The Elusive Moth 2005), and Landskap met vroue en slang 1996. As Ingrid Winterbach she published Buller se Plan 1999, and Niggie 2002.

Reviews

[Ronald Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

“My friends,” he says, “the war has never been as close to being over as it is at this moment. No more than two months. End of May, beginning of July it will all be over.”
Ben nods. Reitz’s mouth is dry.
“The War is nearly over,” says Oompie--his eyes glazed over, his voice hardly recognisable, “but it’s not the end of the struggle by far. The struggle will not be over in your lifetime, nor in your children’s lifetime, nor in the lifetime of your children’s children.”
“Has the struggle been in vain then?” asks Ben. His voice is gruff.
Suddenly Oompie sits up straight. His ear no longer held to the jar.
“Yes,” he says in his normal voice, “the struggle has been in vain.”

Set in the final months of the second Boer War, To Hell With Cronjé follows a group of Boer soldiers as they attempt to accompany a shell-shocked fellow soldier home to his mother, as he is no longer fit to fight. They are waylaid in a camp under suspicion of desertion or treason early in the book, and most of the novel takes place there.

The book has a very Western feel to it, and provides a nice overview of the Boer War from the Boer perspective - both through the action of the novel itself and through the campfire discussions at the camp - it reminded me a bit of McCarthy and fellow South African Coetzee (in his more sparse, less enigmatic works).

Overall a solid read, about something I was wholly ignorant going in. Quick and moving, a recommended book.

[Joshua Finnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Library Journal Review:

Winner of the 2004 Hertzog Prize, the most prestigious award in Afrikaans literature, this novel traces the journey of two destitute soldier/scientists, Reitz and Ben, as they transport an emotionally shattered friend across the barren desert of South Africa during the Boer War. Along the way, the two scientists keep meticulous records of geological and entomological discoveries in their journals. Not just the process of travel but the conditions of travel are in the foreground as the novel narrates several precarious journeys, both physical and imagined, among the characters. Aware of their status as deserters in a futile war and eventually detained, the two protagonists find themselves creating surrogate familial ties with their captors while simultaneously following individual journeys of internal discovery. The simplicity of language here conceals a rich complexity of thought. VERDICT Although set during the Boer War at the turn of the 20th century, this novel is not so much a work of historical fiction or travel narrative as a commentary on desire. Winterbach consistently critiques and displaces rational discourses on the natural world, situating them within the irrational understanding of loss and yearning.—Joshua Finnell, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH

[Rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Near the end of this book I found myself dreading to see how it would end: I could see no way that it would end well, and all signs were pointing towards disaster.

It is very rare that I care about a character to this extent; it has been a long time since I've been this invested in a story, or in the fate of a character. Longer still since I've actually teared up over a book - not because of a specific incident, but because of the strength of emotion that it brought out in me.

I read most of this book yesterday, and have not stopped thinking about it since. During the Anglo-Boer war, a group of Boer soldiers travel across the veld to bring a younger soldier to his mother after he's lost his mind, and to deliver a letter to one of the nearby commanders. They are brought to a camp where other soldiers declared unfit for service are left, where they wait for this other commander to see them. This waiting is devastating to Reitz, who is haunted by the memory of his dead wife, who he believes is trying to contact him; to deal with this, he takes extreme and ill-advised measures.

The first two thirds of this book take place at this camp, while Reitz and the others are waiting. I've read other books about war and waiting; my partner put it best when she it's bad enough to wait in real life, worse to read about it. But not here. The men at this camp are all suffering the effects of war, in a way that we might now be tempted to think of as trauma. But although this obviously is trauma, I appreciate that the pain is given a spiritual, existential weight, rather than focus on the clinical symptoms.

The writing here touches on an alienation that is so hard to convey: through Reitz's perspective, we see only a limited view of these other characters, but there is a real sense that each has his own complex inner life that never quite breaches the surface. I really appreciate Winterbach for finding the balance between showing us enough to get a sense of the damage that has been brought upon each of these men, but without ever giving the satisfaction of an explanation. While I don't have trauma from war, this alienation is something that I'm very familiar with: the alienation of finding a glass wall between myself with a glass wall between myself and anyone else.

The care that Ben shows to Reitz while he is in this state is one of the most touching depictions of love that I have ever seen written. Although Reitz is beyond the point where he can be reached by the kindness of the living, Ben remains patient and protective of Reitz in ways that are so easy to undervalue.

Having been loved like this myself, while I was past the point of being able to recognise this for what it was, I naturally was moved and desperate to see where this would go. The parallels between Reitz's failure to his wife and Ben's consistent love for Reitz could not be more obvious. I wanted Reitz to recognise what it is that Ben has been doing for him; failing this, I wanted to see the magnitude of his loss become evident. So when Ben is critically injured, surviving with permanent injuries, I was filled with a dread about how this would resolved: Would Reitz return to the world of the living and do the right by Ben, or would he repeat his failure to do right by his wife with Ben, who has loved him in the purest way?

Unfortunately, at this point the story fizzles out and nothing really comes together. The final section is just not as compelling: the writing drops in quality, from simple but effective enough to bring me to tears, to just a sketch of events with none of the same heart that was shown before. It reads like the author (or translator) got bored, and was hurrying to wrap everything up. New characters are introduced, a group of women who are an interesting contrast to the previous all-male cast, but they aren't given the same care and patience as all the others; the most compelling aspect is a follow-up to the hints of the supernatural that have been with us since the beginning, but if there was further meaning to this then it was lost on me.

Which is one of the most unforgivable parts of where this story goes. Many supernatural things occur, with hints of something appearing since the beginning, but the connections between these different events are weak and fall apart. I could make an extremely loose argument between Reitz's final fate and certain choices that he made earlier, but with so many elements simply abandoned it feels too much like a coincidence.

But I find the most disappointing thing to be the disintegration between Ben and Reitz. There are many circumstances where I could accept this: the combination of Reitz's personal failures and trauma, the sense of alienation that exists between people who should understand each other. Looking strictly at what happens, it makes sense that their relationship fizzles out. Unfortunately, with the weaker writing in the final bit of the story, it just didn't land; everything just happens, with no sense of resolution or even the pain of resolution denied. I'm really disappointed with that.

Despite this, I still remained moved by what is there. It takes a lot for a book with a weak ending to still hold my attention, but I haven't stopped thinking about this since I read it. Even though I'm dissatisfied with the ending, I know that I still will read it again, and probably soon. I should be lucky if I find another book soon that touches me the way that this one has.

[Madeleine]

I think I would really just like to read everything Open Letter has ever published.

[Fionnuala · Rating 4 out of 5]

I say this as a good thing: this book is so bleak, and so sad, and so hopeless, and it is a good thing because it's precisely what I would expect from a book about war. It's not about war as in, the drama and the excitement of it all, but more in the dull, dready drudgery of it, and the price it exacts from everything and everyone it touches.

This book has an incredibly slow pace, and in this it is possible to get a glimpse of the vast hopelessness its characters face. Not a single character in this book is untouched by the war: they are all traumatised, many are physically injured, others have lost everything or live in the uncertainty of doing so. The slow pacing of the story allows ample time for all of these things to sink in: there are no short-cuts, no escape of consequences. It is a story that sits with the reader and makes them feel every agonising second of it.

There is of course a paranormal element to this story, though its origins can be argued. Strangely, in a story that is otherwise straightforwardly realistic in most people's definition of the word, the paranormal is not out of place. Anyone who has been to a warzone understands that the rules are different there: life moves at a faster and much stranger place, and things happen that could not happen anywhere else. This book gets that strange feeling down very well, and it's possible to believe all of it. That these inexplicable events only compound the horror and danger of the war itself is inevitable, yet still surprising in its detail and depth of feeling.

My one and only criticism is that, on occasion, the writing seems too simplistic. In most of the book the simple style fits well to the matter-of-fact near-banality of the horror; it adds to the atmosphere and helps to present the horrific abnormal as the new normal. But there are some places where this does not seem to be what's going on, and the writing slips in quality. Until I read the original Afrikaans, I won't say for certain if it's a translation issue or not, but I do know that some of these examples would sound far smoother in Afrikaans so I will slightly hedge my bets that way. Even so, it's nowhere near enough to ruin the incredible pacing and detail, and the real sense of despair this book captures so well.

[Lisa the Tech · Rating 4 out of 5]

First impression: I might have more of a feel for this book if I knew anything about the Boer Wars. I know it was the British vs. the Boers. Are these the Afrikaners? I know I could do some quick research and get enough info to understand why the soldiers keep cussing out around the fire. There have been a few trippy moments so far - the Heart of Darkness event hasn't happened yet.

Final impression: Nothing to do with Heart of Darkness, but it's a fantastic meditation.

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The slow pace of this book was nice. The two scientists notice so much along with way that is so different from the war. It must be one of the messages of the book - that life goes on despite terrible circumstances and everyone is affected to some degree. I liked the different landscape and the starkness of the writing which matched the geography of South Africa. One image I loved was of the man weeping and leaning against the horse's patient flank for a while before continuing on. I have never read a book translated from Afrikaans before, and I learned a little about the Second Boer War reading this. It was a very touching book.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

slow jog through the outback of south africa during boer war. soldiers who don;t want to be soldiers anymore (scientists of nat hist and geol) but eventually get caught up, back up, with the malstrom. author won hertzog prize 2004 for this. hoping we will see more of winterbach
yea open letter press!

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another interesting book for #WITmonth!

To Hell with Cronjé is the sixth novel by South African author Ingrid Winterbach, who has also published five titles under the pseudonym Lettie Viljoen. It is a profoundly moving meditation on male friendship and the futility of war.

Two scientists, Rietz Steyn and Ben Maritz, forge their friendship during the Boer War (1899-1902), of interest to Australians because it was the first of multiple wars overseas that Australians have chosen to join.  I'd hazard a guess, however, that most Australians know little about our participation in this brutal war apart from inscriptions on war memorials and/or from the highly contested myth-making about Breaker Morant. (See my review of The Breaker by Kit Morant.)

 The AWM website) tells me that about 16,000 men from what were then Britain's colonies in Australia, fought (mostly) on the British side.  About 600 died, about half in action and the rest from disease or accidents. (This was from a population of less than 4 million in 1901.) Winterbach's novel is very revealing about the war that our young men volunteered for, but it was instructive to learn a little more after I'd finished reading the book because some knowledge of South African history and geography is assumed by the author.

From the British National Army Museum, I learned that

The origins of the Boer War lay in Britain's desire to unite the British South African territories of Cape Colony and Natal with the Boer republics of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (also known as the Transvaal). The Boers, Afrikaans-speaking farmers, wanted to maintain their independence.

Map of Southern Africa, c1899, source: British National Army Museum

Neither the novel nor the museum website admit that both sides were colonisers, fighting over land dispossessed from the original inhabitants.  What it does reveal is the 'gentlemen's agreement' that these bitter enemies had made, to ensure continued control over the Black population:

On the outbreak of war, the British made a tacit agreement with their Boer enemies that both sides would not arm the black population. As the war progressed, however, this stance proved difficult to maintain and they began employing armed blacks as scouts.

It is estimated that between 15,000 and 30,000 black Africans eventually served under arms with the British Army as scouts and sentries. Another 100,000 worked as labourers, transport drivers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, farriers and builders. (National Army Museum, scroll down to the heading, 'African and Indian role')

So this explains this exchange, early in the novel when the party come across some Xhosa:

At noon, their shadows hard upon their heels, they come across three black men on horseback.  The men are wearing hats and blankets.  One is clad in the threadbare tunic of a Khaki [i.e. British] uniform.  Another wears a feather in his hat.

'A motley crew,' Ben mutters.

The two groups come to a halt, facing each other.

'What do you want?' Willem demands. 'I trust you're not helping the Khakis.'

The men confer in Xhosa.  The leader raises his hand in what appears to be a peace sign.

He and Willem bow formally.

The group passes them without further greeting.

'Tonight they're be joining General Pettingale,' Ben says.

'At least they're unarmed,' Willem says, 'and rightly so.' (p.7)

Rietz and Ben find themselves in the company of another of these Black Africans of ambiguous military status when they encounter Ezekiel in a Boer transit camp under the control of Gert Smal.  Smal detains them because he doubts their story that the erratic General Senekal sent them as escorts for the postmaster-turned-soldier Willem, who is returning a very young shell-shocked soldier called Abraham to his mother.  Ezekiel is the only character who has any dignity, despite being ordered about by Smal and used as an amusement because he has a freakishly good memory for Biblical quotations and facts about the war. All the others are clearly traumatised by the war, though they behave in different ways:

To read the rest of my review please visit
https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/08/24/t...

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not as familiar with the Boer War as with other events (ie European and American) circa 1900, nor with South African history pre-world wars, and after reading this I want to seek out some historical writings of the period. Or namely, I only learned briefly of the conflict from a British/Euro history perspective, and this novel is revelatory to gain a fuller perspective of the conflict. Winterbach chooses to depict the end of the war through the eyes of disillusioned, semi-AWOL (the situation is explained early on) and certainly shell shocked (to varying degrees) soldier-scientists but really scientists (surveyor of species, naturalist, geologist-type) turned soldiers by default as often occurs throughout history sadly. The men are honorable and crushed and lost and confused, and they encounter similar castoffs on their journey to bring a traumatized friend to a safer place as the war reaches its endgame at a distance yet all around. It is an honest and naturally flowing sequence of events, and it is war, in which great or small (the war and the induced questions of what happened to so-and-so at such-and-such place), questions greatly exceed answers. And the search for answers takes varying degrees of dangerous and futile forms and continues long after fighting ceases.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

For its English translation, Niggie has been retitled To Hell with Cronjé in reference to a minor general in the Second Boer War. To many Boers this was the War of Liberation, or Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, fought from 1899-1902 between the British Empire and the independent Boer nations of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. Following the discovery of gold and diamonds within their respective borders, the Boers faced a massive influx of uitlanders, their name for migrant workers mostly from England. The subsequent demographic shift led to conflict with British expansionists ostensibly concerned with expatriate rights. When President Paul Kruger of the South African Republic (also known as Transvaal) refused Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain's ultimatum for full equality of the uitlanders, a war was declared whose reverberations are still felt in South Africa today. Not only did the Boers lose their independence but the British "scorched earth" policy devastated their agrarian culture. Human rights abuses against both the Boers and black Africans (mainly Xhosa, Bushmen, and Khoikhoi) were widespread. The infamous phrase "concentration camp" was used for the very first time in Western history to refer to the "refugee camps" set up by the British for the civilians whose farms and homes they destroyed.

To Hell with Cronjé is set in the last months of the Second Boer War. A sense of hopelessness is settling in which may be another, unconscious motivation for Reitz Steyn and Ben Maritz to request leave from Commandant Senekal's wagon laager. They are accompanying Willem, a gentle and deeply religious man, on his journey to return young, shell-shocked Abraham to his mother in Ladybrand. Several weeks into their journey, the small group is detained, on suspicion of desertion and treason, by Gert Smal, the leader of a transit camp for those declared unfit for battle. Other residents include Japie Stilgemoed, who can't stop talking; Kosie Rijpma, found wandering in a daze; Reuben Wessels, who is missing a leg; a slow, hare-lipped teen known only as Seun; and Ezekiel, Smal's black servant. The fate of Reitz, Ben, Willem, and Abraham is left to General Bergh, who is said to be a reasonable man. But the long war has taught them that nothing is certain - only the slow passage of time and endurance of nature.

Reitz and Ben, a geologist and a biologist, have bonded over their shared love of the natural world and lifelong preoccupation with documenting its infinite variety. The mute immensity of the South African landscape is as much a character as any of the humans whose bloody skirmishes mean nothing to the ancient rock formations and the perpetual evolution of plants and animals. The clash between Reitz and Ben's scientific backgrounds and the obstinate Christianity of their comrades is emblematic of the modernist outlook that was coming into being throughout the Western world at this time. As American writer and naturalist Joseph Krutch later articulated in the essays that make up The Modern Temper (1929), science was unlocking an amoral universe where humankind and its struggles no longer have the cosmic significance that characterizes, say, Hamlet or Inferno. Reitz, however, is not immune to the pull of the old spiritual order, as seen in his use of a witch doctor's potion to contact his dead wife and interest in omens revealed through dreams. The primary theme of To Hell with Cronjé is not so much war as it is humanity's changing perception of itself in an era of rapid advances in secular knowledge.

The publisher's copy compares To Hell with Cronjé to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. But this is more for marketing than anything else: there are other surface similarities in their dark tones and landscape as character, but that's pretty much the extent of it. There is further divergence in how both authors portray African itself. Winterbach's veld is still and indifferent and represents the immeasurable eons in which human existence is but a flicker. Conrad's jungle is an active agent, a "thing monstrous and free" that is said to have literally "consumed" Kurtz, "its spoiled and pampered favorite." It should be further noted that the influence of the African wilderness in Heart of Darkness derives from its threatening alienness, whereas To Hell with Cronjé was written by an African about Africans in their homeland.

Moreover, To Hell with Cronjé has no singular Kurtz-like figure (you can maybe make a case for Gert Smal but it's a long shot) and the difference in prose styles is considerable. Ingrid Winterbach is stark but evocative with a vaguely dreamlike ambiance: "While at first he peered eagerly into their eyes, he now stares steadfastly over their shoulders and seems to be directing his words at a spot somewhere behind them - so that neither Reitz or Ben can resist the temptation to steal a backward glance once or twice at what Oompie observes in the distance when he is talking" (37). Conrad, by contrast, has sentences like, "It survived his strength to hid in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart." Generally speaking, the two books are really quite distinct from one another.

Both novels do reintroduce women into their all-male cast towards the end, and it is here in its final 1/4 that I think To Hell with Cronjé starts to drag a bit as Reitz and Ben spend too long with a Boer family. Still, I found To Hell with Cronjé to be a haunting, lyrical, and ultimately heart-breaking meditation on war, friendship, and faith.

Review Copy

Original Review

[Desiree · Rating 3 out of 5]

I more often than not struggle with translated works. If I don't like it, could it be the translation that doesn't work for me? Or is it the underlying story? No way to tell, I suppose. I also didn't know much about the Boer War, also known as the South African War, so maybe that takes away from the interest (although I read a lot of books about topics I don't know much or anything about, so I don't think this is it). But it was a decent consideration of the (usually) unexplored consequences of war, and if you want out, are you a deserter or are there acceptable reasons? And when you have one thing you are using as the light of hope and that no longer exists, what then?

[Christo Snyman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this novel set in the time of the Anglo-Boer War. Its appeal lies in the cast of rather philosophical characters through whose eyes you experience the action. One of the main characters struggles with his grief on a daily basis, having recently lost his wife. He's driven to drinking a potion provided to him by a questionable man in order to get closer to her.

I would love to get my hands on a copy of the Afrikaans original (Niggie) and re-experience this rather wry take on a piece of South African history.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful important novel.

[personne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great story about the emotionally destructive effects of war and the experiences of people who live in the anarchic state of conflict. I really enjoyed the relationships explored between the main character and his best friend and then his saviours.

Great description of the South African landscape, too, with pretty good comedic moments as well.

August 19, 2023

[Loraine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nie mal hieroor nie

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ingrid Winterbach's "To hell with Cronje" tells the story of Reitz and Ben, scientists who are reluctantly drafted into war. Together they attempt to get their fellow soldier (who is suffering severe PTSD after watching his brother's brutal death) return to his mother in the hopes he will recover. On the surface a simple novel, it becomes an exploration of lasting friendship, grief and the search for love, and the devastating waste that war leaves in its path.

[Chad Post · Rating 3 out of 5]

DISCLAIMER: I am the publisher of the book and thus spent approximately two years reading and editing and working on it. So take my review with a grain of salt, or the understanding that I am deeply invested in this text and know it quite well. Also, I would really appreciate it if you would purchase this book, since it would benefit Open Letter directly.

[Margot Uys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chilling account of the effect of war - in this book the Anglo Boer war - on people and relationships. It is a gem, I read it in English but would love to read it in Afrikaans as well. I grew up with many stories of heroism from the war, this one markedly different.

[Mariana Celliers · Rating 4 out of 5]

The atmoshpere that the author devised is quite remarkable as well as the sub-text.

[Kit · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a while to warm to this novel, but I'm glad I read it, even if it is written (the translation anyway) in the present tense, which I can't stand in fiction.

[Regardt Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the book. One of the best descriptions of the futility of war and the transience of life I've read.