Author: Lionel FrostPublisher:
ISBN: 9781521191590
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
In January 1896, the author's second cousin (thrice removed) embarrassed the British government when as a Boer Commandant he thwarted the attempted overthrow of the Transvaal Republic by a column raised in Cecil Rhodes' company-run colony of Rhodesia. The resulting scandal forced Rhodes to resign as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony.Four years later, in February 1900, a Boer army led by the same cousin (now a general) held off an onslaught by overwhelming British, Canadian and Australian forces for eight days before surrendering in a capitulation which proved to be the turning point of the war, and which still rankles in the hearts of Afrikaners.This memoir chronicles the ebbs and flows in the fortunes of the author's Huguenot and English forebears during their migration northward from the Cape of Good Hope into the African hinterland, and goes on to tell the story of his own Rhodesian childhood. In the early 1960s, the country was enjoying the fruits of a two-decade economic boom; the future looked bright, and the early stirrings of African nationalism were not to be taken seriously.
