Posted on January 19, 2011
"I was always interested [in the story of the family],"Â Helene told us during our conversation at their home in Somerset West on 7 December 2010. It is this interest that has sustained her lifetime's work on the story of the family. The story of the book begins with 17-year-old Helene keeping a diary. In the diary she recorded her thoughts and observations of happenings on the farm. She also asked her father questions about the family and recorded his answers in the notebook. At the University of Cape Town, where she studied Fine Art, she met Willem who was studying Chemical Engineering. They were married in 1953 and spent a few years living in Sasolburg and later in Pinetown before returning to their home in the Western Cape.
The writing part of Helene's project began in earnest in 1983, when she and her family returned to the Western Cape Pinetown and when her children were independent enough to allow her time to turn her attention to telling the story of the Retiefs. She found helpful oral sources in two of her uncles, Reitz Hofmeyr and Bertie Retief who fortunately lived close by. People in Wellington who had known her family were also a valuable source: Oom Jan Bosman in particular, whose grandfather and Helene's great grandfather had married sisters. Helen's stressed though, that her greatest source was her brother Dan Retief who owned Welvanpas, until he passed away in October 2010, Dan had a huge knowledge of the history of the farm and the region. With the oral stories recorded, her attention turned to the books. With Willem's help she found useful information in genealogical publications such as the Familia and the Capensis. Eily and Jack Gledhill's In the Footsteps of Piet Retief also proved a useful source of information, particularly in relation to Piet Retief's brother Daniel, who is a forebear of the Retiefs of Wellington. But “don't trust everything in the books," is Willem's advice, sharing an anecdote, a lecturer in the Medical School at UCT said, "Be very careful of these home doctors' books. You can perhaps die of a printing error'." Willem continues, "Ask questions, ask questions. If the grown-ups tell you, 'Get out of the room; it's grown-ups' time', then you go and hide behind a chair, and listen." Willem has trawled the Western Cape provincial archives in the process in search of information on Helene's family as well as his own. Documents in the Wellington Museum also contributed useful nuggets.
While many genealogists trace the agnatic line in their families, Helene has tried as much as possible to follow the women as well. As she started to write, she realised that she had to begin at the beginning. So the story goes all the way back to 1688 when the first French Huguenots arrived in the Cape. She began writing the book by hand in Afrikaans. She soon realised that her Afrikaans was not good enough, having grown up speaking both English, her mother's language, and Afrikaans. That made her brother Dan say the book was written in the wrong language! Learning to use the computer was another useful skill that Helene learnt with Willem's help in the process of writing the book.
There was another set of experiences that have come in handy: joining a non-governmental organisation and eventually becoming its archivist. In the process of working for the NGO Helene learnt to write reports as well as to archive. These skills have proved useful in arranging her narrative and in organising the mass of material she has collected. The book eventually took about 25 years to write. It ends with the funeral of Helene's mother in 2001 when she was aged 100. The process had been painstaking: an endless number of family members was consulted to verify facts, and to read sections of the manuscript and give feedback on whether memory had sharpened or distorted certain events. In the latter stages many were pressed to contribute photographs to be included in the book.
The Retief family history forms the backbone of the book, but the histories of the extended family, those of the families that they married into - the Hofmeyrs, the Lombards and the Coatons - as well as the histories of the families who have worked on the farm for generations thread through the narrative too.
Once the book was complete Helene and Willem's daughter Magda stepped in and helped to get the book ready for print. A donation was secured from members of the family to cover the costs of a print run of 150. Then came the proofreading: three or four rounds of going through over 700 pages with a fine-tooth comb. This was followed by the tedium of formatting the manuscript. After four years of intermittent work getting the manuscript ready, the book was finally published in 2008.
But for both Helene and Willem, the most remarkable change that has happened in the time that work on the book was in progress is digitisation. The ease with which one can find information in the records of the Archives today amazes them. The digitisation of family records might be a good way to preserve family records, especially given that when I asked what the Helene would do with all the documents and photographs they had collected while working on the book, she said she didn't know. This is a dilemma that we at the Archival Platform have encountered on several occasions.
Before we left Helene and Willem, they showed us another joint project that carries their family history, a doll's house. Willem has made most of the items of furniture in the doll's house, carefully crafting miniatures of the beautiful pieces that fill the Lombards' residence. Every piece tells a story; some pieces have been carved of wood from trees planted more than a hundred years ago on Welvanpas, and even the logs in the little fireplace were sourced from places of special significance, including the farm in Namibia where Willem was born.
Welvanpas remains safely in the hands of the Retief family, and is currently owned by Helen's nephew, Dan, the son of her late brother. Welvanpas is a place to which Retiefs have circled back for the past three centuries. Some of the many stories that have been spun by the place have finally been told through the remarkable feat of perseverance to which The Chronicles of Krakeelhoek is testament.
Mbongiseni Buthelezi is the Archival Platform Ancestral Stories Coordinator