John Masefield - "The Old Front Line"

John Kirtland, ed. - "Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles"

Richard F. Burton - "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2"

Various - "Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

On the Heels of De Wet

T >> The Intelligence Officer >> On the Heels of De Wet




_Brigadier._ "Wake up, you coves, and come and have some dinner. We
have lost ole man De Wet; but that is no reason for you all to behave
as if we were in for a funeral. Thank Heaven that you are alive. You
would probably have all been scuppered if we had got up with the ole
man. He would have fought until he was blue in the face!"

_Brigade-Major._ "I've got the orders out, sir. Start at 3 A.M.!"

_Brigadier._ "That's all right, but we won't see any more of De Wet.
We were too hot on him to-day. All we shall find when we cross the
Riet at daybreak to-morrow will be _spoor_ leading in every direction.
They will dissolve to a certainty. But though we have failed, we have
had a run for our money, and finished a d----d good second. But no
maps and no guide are big things as penalties go, and, all considered,
I think that the 'crush' has run devilish well. What have your
prisoners got to say, Mr Intelligence?"

But Mr Intelligence, having drunk his soup, was sound asleep in his
blankets....


FOOTNOTES:

[40] Another curious episode in this strange campaign can be observed
here. We had been in nominal possession of the Southern Free State for
many months, during a considerable period of which the local
administration had been administered by British agents. Yet throughout
this period Boer landrosts were also appointed, and whenever a commando
strong enough to assert the Orange Free State authority was in the
vicinity, immediately took over their duties. Often, it is believed,
the same men acted for both belligerents. When Judge Hertzog made his
tour of the South-Western Free State immediately before entering upon
his invasion of the Colony, he reinstated the Boer administration in
all the southern townships.

[41] De Wet never moved without an advance-, flank-, and rear-guard,
removed from him to a distance of about six to eight miles. This screen
always gave him ample notice of any British troops in the vicinity,
thus enabling him to change his direction and suit his action with
calmness and deliberation. These screens were always composed of picked
men.




L'ENVOI.


With the crossing of the Riet the history of this De Wet hunt ceases,
for everything came to pass precisely as the brigadier had foreseen.
The brigade arrived at Kalabas bridge before daybreak, prepared, if a
tangible enemy was still in front, to take up the running again and
pursue the line to an end, no matter the cost.[42] But the soft ground
on the far side of the river gave evidence of thirty trails. The
commando had scattered to the winds, and as, with cunning foresight,
De Wet and his following had removed every living soul, Boer or
Kaffir, from the vicinity of the bridge, no evidence of his presence
remained. To pursue a fugitive in a solitary Cape cart with a brigade
would have been absurd, and so, when five miles on at Openbaar there
was no sign of the solitary tracks again converging, the chase was
abandoned, and the brigade halted to await the arrival of its mule and
ox convoy. That evening Plumer, who had detrained at Jagersfontein
road, crossed the Kalabas bridge and reported Haig to be in rear of
him at the Spitz Kopjes. It will be seen therefore that Plumer was
twenty-four hours too late,--through no fault of his, be it said, but
simply because he made the journey from Orange River station by train.
Plumer pushed on upon the conjectured De Wet trail, which he still
considered hot enough to follow. He lost it, as the brigadier had
foreseen, in the vicinity of Abraham's Kraal. The new cavalry brigade
moved more slowly into Bloemfontein by way of Petrusburg and the
historic field of Driefontein.

At Bloemfontein some changes took place in the staff and composition
of the brigade, and the writer of this narrative, to his infinite
regret, severed his connection with the brigade. He had been promoted
into a new battalion which was being raised at home, and after twenty
months his turn had come to say good-bye to the veldt. As the
brigadier bade him farewell in the Bloemfontein Club he clapped him
good-naturedly on the back, saying, "I believe that it is all a hoax
this story of yours about instructions to proceed home by the first
transport. I don't believe that you will ever get farther South than
that farm at Richmond Road!"


THE END.


FOOTNOTES:

[42] The orders issued this night to the brigade were very instructive,
and showed what a real soldier the brigadier was. If he considered that
the circumstances demanded an effort he was prepared to take any risk
and to make every sacrifice. The orders stated that if it became
necessary to pursue, the convoy would be sent back by the shortest
route to the railway, that the mounted men would have to live on the
country without supply, and such men whose horses gave in would have to
walk east against the course of the sun, which line, after 20 to 25
miles, would bring them to the railway, where they could stop the first
passing train.


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+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Typographical errors corrected in text: |
| |
| Page 195: Dewetsdrop replaced with Dewetsdorp |
| Page 257: directy replaced with directly |
| |
| On page 321, the word battue is not a typographical error.|
| A battue is a hunt in which beaters force the game to |
| flee in the direction of the hunter. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+

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