Daar was verskeie Smit-stamvaders, en ons is nie seker aan watter familie Hendrina behoort het nie.

Stamvader
Jacques PINARD

Terug na bo
 

Dr Willem Petrus Steenkamp - called the "The Lion of the North-West" by his numerous friends, and considerably less flattering names by a considerable body of political enemies - passed to his reward in 1956, but memories of this prominent son of the Hantam exist to this day, although he and all his contemporaries have been dust for almost half a century.

Bitter political struggles in his later life have tended to obscure the range and depth of his achievements, but they were many. By the time he died at 77 he had been many things: a spell-binding preacher who was invited no less than 58 times to minister elsewhere - surely still a record; an equally spell-binding political orator; a respected naturalist; a best-selling author; an expert on Arabian horses; twice a political prisoner; a big game hunter and world traveller; a fighter for the Afrikaans language; and a medical doctor with a huge practice among the poor.

Yet he never forgot who he was: a farmer's son, strong in his faith, full of determination and an innate self-respecting humility that made him at home in any company, whether sitting on a log at a shepherd's camp-fire or walking with the great and mighty of the world (as he did more than once).

He was a man of contradictions. He could indulge in learned discourse, and yet relish meeting with his boyhood friends. He enoyed the good things of life, yet would literally take the shirt off his back to give to a man who had none. He believed in turning the other cheek, but did not hesitate to take physical action (on one celebrated occasion he actually assaulted a fellow parliamentarian).

He was a keen hunter, yet revered wild creatures and plants. He could be rock-like in his determination, yet privately wracked by self-doubt. He knew little physical fear, but was not ashamed to weep at moments of high emotion. He would never blaspheme, but was not afraid to let rip with a curse or two. He never doubted the Bible, yet he was not afraid of examining Darwin's theory of evolution with scientific objectivity (he found it wanting, and proposed a theory of his own).

He believed fervently in peace, but had a volcanic temper. He was a genuine populist who believed in the innate wisdom of the ordinary man, but once he had made up his mind he would cling stubbornly to his personal convictions, reckless of the cost - and sometimes the cost was heavy.

But there was no ambiguity about his two great constants: his love for his wife, Antonetta (born Erlank), and his unshakeable faith in God, with whom he communed daily till the day he died.

His early years shaped him as a sculptor's chisel carves a boulder. He was born on 14 February 1870 on the farm Elandsfontein in the Calvinia district, just after his father had been thrown from prosperity to abject poverty by a swindler from Cape Town, a state of deprivation so great that for a period the family lived in a derelict old stone rondawel measuring barely two metres by two metres.

By hard work and forward vision his father returned to prosperity in time to enable his son to study, and after matriculating at Calvinia in 1896 Steenkamp entered the theological seminary at Victoria College (now Stellenbosch University), where he graduated in 1902 in spite of being arrested for suspected espionage under the Anglo-Boer War martial law, and bayonetted in the process.

He graduated with his intellect honed razor-sharp and his life's aim clearly defined. No-one should be so poor that they had to depend on the mercy of others, he believed; therefore he must fight poverty in all its forms. It was an aim that was to take him through many twists and storms.

As an assistant and later ordained minister he served in the Northern Cape and Transvaal, but his thirst for knowledge remained unslaked and in 1907 he went abroad for further study. Three years later the Free University of Amsterdam awarded him a doctorate in theology; in typical fashion he achieved this the hard way by somehow persuading his professors to allow him to write his thesis in Afrikaans, which did not then enjoy any official status whatever.

He spoke and wrote fluent High Dutch (and English), but Afrikaans was the language of his heart, and he reasoned that it would not be accepted till there was evidence that it had matured enough for a learned work to be written in it. The result was a dissertation on the agnosticism of the philosopher Herbert Spencer that remains a landmark in the history of Afrikaans.

Then he returned and became the incumbent at Nieuwoudtville, where he spent five years – a time of high adventure, great personal tragedy and wonderful achievement. Among other things he rescued Nieuwoudtville's beautiful church from a staggering debt of almost 13 000 pounds, raising so much money that there was about 5 000 pounds left over, which later paid for a new church at Loeriesfontein; he spent almost a year in detention at the Fort in Johannesburg after trying unsuccessfully to stop General Manie Maritz from prematurely going into rebellion in 1914; and his infant daughter Immanuela died of complications from a cold, a loss he mourned to his dying day.

In between he ministered with ferocious energy to rich and poor alike, making frequent trips by horseback so that even his most distant parishioner would see him at least once a year, and continued to raise funds for various good causes. His principle in the latter pursuit was quite simple: since everyone would benefit from the cause concerned, everyone must contribute according to his means. A rich man pulling 50 pounds out of his pocket, a poor man giving a goat or a pauper humbly offering a single ox-riem he had made himself: all was grist to the mill.

In January 1919 he accepted a call to Springbok. In between his parish duties he nagged the government into building a high school in the town, raised 20 000 pounds to build a church and manse and - possibly his most unusual exploit - founded a new town (today's Kamieskroon). This last he accomplished by obtaining 1 000 morgen of land and persuading all concerned to build a new church there (for which, naturally, he raised funds) to replace the dangerously dilapidated one at nearby Bowesdorp, which was short of water and, in any case, unsuitable for expansion.

By the time the Kamieskroon church was inaugurated in 1924 Steenkamp was long gone. At the age of 44 he had decided to become a medical doctor, the better to serve. Some of his parishioners thought him a lunatic, but he paid them no heed. He and his son Willem obtained their MD degrees at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, studied in Europe and in 1928 qualified as physicians at the University of Leyden - the first father-and-son graduation in its 300-odd years of existence.

For a short while they practised together in Cape Town, but then parted company. His son wanted to specialise in surgery, but Steenkamp's aim was to be a general practitioner. Unlike other doctors, he did not maintain separate rooms for patients of different races: everyone came to the same place, because in his view everyone was equal in the sight of God, whether he was a prince or a pauper.

He was not a sophisticated doctor. He prescribed affordable basic remedies where possible, always told patients exactly what was wrong with them and carried out house-calls at half-a-crown a time - rock-bottom, even in those days. Within a few years he had an immense following of all races. In between he also heeded the call from a new and cash-strapped congregation in the suburb of Parow and not only ministered to its members but helped to raise funds for a church.

He relinquished this last ecclesiastical position in 1929, when he successfully ran for election as the independent candidate for Namaqualand. He was the only independent MP in Parliament, and fearsomely independent he was, advocating two main causes - a national coalition of all parties and the combatting of the poverty caused by the Great Depression.

He made political enemies by the score, but did not care; he was too busy exhorting his fellow politicians, raising money for a plethora of good causes, helping people to find work or fight off the Land Bank, and for good measure doctoring his voters when this was necessary. They liked what he was doing and in the 1933 election re-elected him against the doughty Dr A J R van Rhyn.

Steenkamp made full use of his position to fulfil his self-imposed task. Among other things he was largely responsible for the crucially important irrigation dams at Clanwilliam and Vioolsdrif, nagged the Minister of Mines to let Namaqualand's poor into the diamond diggings, brought relief to the hard-pressed school and congregation of his old parish of Ermelo and dove into bitter controversy by advocating a departure from the gold standard, which he rightly saw as essential.

When the National and South African Parties formed a coalition, Steenkamp joined it, since he had long advocated such a step. Many of his supporters, not to mention his existing political enemies, were outraged by his decision, and an unfortunate feud was born whose echoes linger to this day. Nevertheless, his support was strong enough to return him as the member for Calvinia in 1938.

His membership in the new United Party was not always a peaceful one, his strongly-held convictions often clashing with party discipline. He was still there, however, when his greatest test came in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. The Prime Minister, General J B M Hertzog, advocated a state of armed neutrality, while his deputy, General Jan Smuts, believed that Nazism was so great a danger to the world that the country could not remain aloof, regardless of the fierce internal disunity that would erupt. It was time for everyone in the UP to stand up and be counted.

Thanks to his own reading and feedback from his son Willem, who had spent much time in Europe on clinical work while preparing to become a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, Steenkamp was well-informed about Nazism, and his warm friendships with many of Namaqualand’s “boerjode”, the Jews who had made their home there and become an integral part of the community, made it clear what the only ethical course of action was.

Characteristically, he first communed with the Almighty and then consulted with the man he respected most in the world, Tobias Beukes of Modderfontein; they had met one another in 1914 under dramatic circumstances during Steenkamp's abortive attempt to stop Maritz from rebelling, and later his son had married Beukes's daughter. Beukes agreed with him that armed neutrality was not enough: it was necessary to destroy Nazism by force of arms.

Hertzog lobbied for his vote. Steenkamp refused, painfully aware that it would be both the end of their long association and a thrust to the heart of the political career that was so important to him, that he frankly enjoyed so much and had used to such good effect in his fight against poverty, ignorance and disease. So it was, and he did not stand again in the 1943 election. He bitterly regretted this enforced rustication at the height of his powers and reputation, but not the decision that caused it.

There followed three years in the political wilderness, a time of bitterness and financial hardship, because he had never used his political career to feather his nest. Nevertheless he wrote a slim but powerful treatise entitled "Is the South West African Herero committing race suicide?" In 1946 there was a short return to politics when he became a UP senator, but only after a bitter wrangle within the party between his supporters and detractors. The following year he wrote "I Conclude", a combination of autobiography and philosophical exposition, which swiftly became a best-seller.

He remained a senator till 1948. Then his political career was over after 19 stormy but satisfying years. He remained as active as ever, corresponding with a variety of thinkers at home and abroad, visiting his beloved heartland in the North-West, riding along the slopes of Table Mountain every day, visiting his patients and completing his final work, entitled "The instinct of animals and evolution".

Death came to him with dramatic suddenness. One Friday morning in July 1956 he went riding along the mountain, as always; the next day he suffered a blockage of the intestine, underwent an operation on the Sunday and on the Monday died of post-operative shock. It was a shock to his many friends, because somehow he had seemed as ruggedly immortal as his native mountains.

His ashes lie buried on Oorlogsfontein, the small farm he bought near Vanrhynsdorp in his years of political exile. With him sleep his infant daughter, his son Willem and daughter-in-law Huibrecht, child of his old comrade Tobias Beukes and mother of two of his grandchildren. Above the farm is the Kobeeberg, the magnificently craggy western edge of the limitless plains and dramatic mountains where he was born and formed, and from which, in his heart, he had never departed.

If the above is not as objective as it might have been, I ask the reader’s pardon. You see, in my childhood I did not know him as “Dokter” or “Oudokter”, or any of the other names by which he was known. To me he had only one name: “Oupa”.
 

E-mail Anna annasteenkamp@yahoo.com