Ox Power

My early upbringing on a farm outside the capital was filled with pets and animals and particularly cattle. Ox power was the source of energy that ran most of the farms in those days - there were very few tractors. Oxen pulled the wagons that took the grain to town and oxen ploughed the fields. Without oxen there was no farming, and farm children like me were taught from a young age how to handle oxen. Chuni, our head driver was my tutor. The head driver on any farm was a much-respected man whose skills could make the difference between a good and a bad harvest.

The first thing Chuni taught me was Afrikaans. The language of the southern African trek ox was Afrikaans. Can you believe it! We had to learn a new language before we could drive an ox! All the oxen had Afrikaans names like Bosman, Bantam, Blesbok and Blaukrans and all knew their names and came forward from the herd, heads lowered for the yoke, when called by their drivers. Many of the oxen had Afrikaans nicknames that normally reflected some character trait of the ox - all these had to be learned, too.

All the tackle was also named in Afrikaans. You had to know what a disselboom, skey, reim and strop were used for before you could drive a span or team of oxen. And the instructions to the span were issued in Afrikaans, sometimes with little admixtures of Zulu and Chilapalapa, the language of the gold miners. You had to learn to shout out phrases like, 'Bok, Bok, regs na foro Bok - foro Bok, foro Bok.' Bok, of course, was Blesbok's nickname, which he also knew and 'regs na foro' was an instruction to move to his right into the plough furrow from which he had strayed. Bok's digression out of the furrow would be accompanied by the swish and crack of the whip inches from his left ear.

Chuni was a master with the whip and made me my own smaller version with which I practised for hours, often ending up with nasty welts across my back, legs and arms when I lost control of the long, hissing 'voorslag', the thin strip of ox-hide about four feet long that cracks and is attached to the end of the main whip thong.

Contrary to popular belief, the oxen were seldom struck with the whip. Once they had learned that the whip was a painful experience, the swish or crack was quite sufficient to ensure compliance. The art was to crack the whip near the head of an offender without touching him. I was sent back to whip school if ever I inadvertently struck an ox. At whip school Chuni hung the page of a newspaper in a bush. The object was to crack leaves off the bush getting closer and closer to the newspaper without touching it. It shredded if you hit it.

I heard stories of how drivers could pick a fly off the back of any ox with his whip. I certainly believed them when I saw Chuni at work. Once I saw him flick the shoulder of the 'voorlooper', the little boy who sometimes leads the front oxen, who had failed to leave enough space on the headland for the full span to turn. Recalcitrant 'voorloopers', unlike oxen, were fair game for the whip.

A full span consisted of sixteen oxen which required great driving skill to turn comfortably and accurately. The leading pair of oxen in the span were normally quite small and were chosen for their intelligence rather than their power. A good pair of leaders did not normally need a 'voorlooper', they knew intuitively how much headland to leave, when to start the turn, how tight to turn and how much over-shoot to allow for the plough to line up exactly on the start point of the return furrow or for the wagon to arrive exactly opposite the barn doors.

Oxen were normally paired for the duration of their working lives and often responded to their partner's names. Frequently, they would graze together when not working. The pairs always occupied the same position in the span; the left hand member of a pair could never be inspanned on the right and visa versa - that would cause chaos. The rear pair in the span were the biggest, heaviest and most experienced. They carried the disselboom of the wagon and knew exactly where the wheels would pass. They held the plough precisely on its course along the furrow no matter how much wandering occurred ahead of them. All this I was taught by Chuni.

He taught me where to walk alongside the span - always by the flank of the rear right hand ox, Bosman in our case. He demonstrated how, if you moved out of place, the oxen became confused because your voice was coming from an unfamiliar direction. When I was learning, I walked on Chuni's right hand side. I shall never forget the day when Chuni finally gave me control of the full span for the first time. I had become quite proficient at driving four oxen in the Scotch cart carrying maize bags from the fields to the barn and was awed by the way they responded to my Afrikaans commands and Zulu swear words, but I had never driven a full span in the plough. My little whip only reached as far as the front pair in the team of four but, barefoot like Chuni, I could get the Scotch cart home at the end of the day without a 'voorlooper' and could outspan and drive them to their night paddocks. The Scotch cart oxen were third or fourth team as far as Chuni was concerned, but he watched over me and gave advice, such as when to lay off the whip and whisper in their ears, or how to bite their tails when they lay down in idleness and where to stand to avoid being kicked to pulp.

When the great day came, I was in my normal position walking next to Chuni on his right with the flank of the huge Bosman on his left. He put me through my paces for a few minutes, cracking my whip and shouting commands, and then, judging me sufficiently competent, like a pilot instructor to his student on a solo flight, he laid his whip across his shoulder and walked away.

'They're yours,' he said - in Afrikaans, of course.

I scuttled into the driving position next to Bosman's huge and towering flank, glanced back at the plough to check its correct alignment in the furrow and marched on, full of pride. My falsetto, squeaky voice suddenly replaced the deep bass of Chuni's, but like a good mentor he didn't interfere from the sidelines. Never had I experienced anything quite like it, the sense of power was awesome. And like everything else I subsequently learned in life, driving the first team was infinitely easier than driving the second or third teams.

The moment I took over with my adolescent voice, Bosman tried to test me by lagging back to graze some grass in his path because he was always on the land side of the furrow and not on the plough side. If Bosman was out of line, the whole team was out of line and the plough was out of line. I had learned from Chuni that if Bosman required correction you poked him in the ribs with the butt of your whip. You could not physically whip the rear oxen because they were too close to you and the whip thong too long. I was so small that I could not prod him in the ribs either, but ducked down under his belly and prodded him in the area that had been his balls. Bosman leapt forward straining on his yoke; Chuni roared with laughter and clapped his hands. I was very, very proud.

Shortly after that I was allowed to take the full span with the wagon-load of maize to the co-op in town. That, too, was a very proud moment although, once again, it wasn’t as difficult as it sounds. It was simply a matter of walking in front of the lead oxen – they were trained to follow the ‘voorlooper’ if there was one in place. Once I’d set them going along the road to town, I was able to clamber up on the wagon and lie down amongst the maize bags. From this position of supine idleness, I could feel if the wagon was correctly aligned on the left hand side of the road. There was a discernible lean to the left on the camber and the right hand wheels rocked gently on the corrugations. On reaching the outskirts of town, I hopped down and walked to the front of the span where I took up the ‘voorloper’s’ position.

Our conversion from ox to tractor power occurred dramatically, violently and tragically one terrible Christmas Eve. Chuni had outspanned the oxen in the face of a gathering storm and was returning them to their night paddock after ploughing all afternoon when lightning struck as he held open the gate for the span to pass through. He was killed instantly along with six of our best oxen - two others died later. Bosman, my favourite, was amongst the dead. It was a devastating blow and I cried for days, for not only had I lost my friend and mentor but nearly the whole of my family as well - that's how I thought of them.

A week later we all stood around in little knots, marvelling, as a salesman demonstrated the prowess of the little grey Ferguson tractor. Sadly, there was to be no return to the ox age.