Czechoslovaks in South Africa
By Vladislav Bouček.
Czechs began to come into what is now the Union of South Africa with the first Dutch immigrants in the middle of the 17th century. Many exiled Czech Protestants were settled in Holland, and some of them joined the first group that went to South Africa under Van Riebeck. Among the first preachers of the Dutch Reformed Church is mentioned in 1655 the Reverend Leonard Bonits of Bory—a name purely Bohemian. Among others with Latinized names were probably several Czechs who followed the prevailing fashion of latinizing their surnames. It was inevitable that these early immigrants lost their original speech in the second or third generation, and sooner or later lost all consciousness of their Bohemian origin. But there was an exception, to be mentioned later.
In the second half of the nineteenth century two well known Czechs strayed to South Africa, Dr. Holub and William Paclt of Turnov. Dr. Holub returned home and died there, but Paclt rests after a stirring and restless life on the banks of the Orange River.
Toward the end of the last century individual Czech emigrants landed frequently in South Africa and settled in various places. There were several of them in Capetown and more in Johannesburg. In the Boer war there was a number of Czech volunteers on both sides, according to where they happened to have settled. When the war was over and the Johannesburg gold mines entered upon a period of prosperity, more Czech individuals and families came to Johannesburg, among them a Czech from the United States, so that one could speak of a Bohemian settlement in this city.
Practically all of them were workingmen without any means, and their chief aim was to secure a living; and that takes several years in case of immigrants without knowledge of the language of the country. There was thus no real social life in this small settlement, and relations were limited to occasional calls or assistance in emergencies.
The leader of the Bohemian settlement—one might call him the Czechoslovak consul ad honorem—was a genuine Africander of Czech descent, Mr. P. R. C. Dornik-Plotner, who in 1908 was assigned to police service in Kimberley and since then was the official host at Kimberley to all visiting and resident Czechs. His case is really quite unusual.
Dornik-Plotner is descended from an old Bohemian family which after the battle of White Mountain had to flee from the country before the vengeance of the Hapsburgs. One of his female ancestors was Eliška of Wartenburg who was related to the Lords of Rosenberg, so that the blood of some of the greatest families in Bohemian history circulates in Dornik-Plotner’s veins. His ancestors fled from Bohemia to Holland and from there emigrated to the Cape; but the remarkable thing is that for the space of three centuries Bohemian speech maintained itself in this family amid strange surroundings and strange language of neighbors. The present representative of the family was born on a small farm in the western part of Cape Colony; he learned English and Dutch in school, Bohemian at home. His parents instilled into him a love for the Czech nation, and he himself made a trip to the distant country in 1908; he read Bohemian newspapers and books and maintained a correspondence with the old country.
In 1914 the world war found us unprepared and unorganized. We were registered as alien enemies, and after the sinking of the Lusitania those who were not naturalized were interned. Among governmental officials in the whole Union of South Africa there was not a single one who knew anything about the Czechs, and we were classified as Germans or Austrians. Mr. Dornik-Plotner became our champion, by writing about us to the newspapers and sending letters to the authorities, particularly General Botha. He sent articles to the Dutch papers in Capetown and to English papers in Johannesburg, telling about the sentiments of the Czechs and their age-long fight with the Germans. In that short period of time between the Austrian declaration of war on Serbia and England’s entry into the war, the Austrian consul at Johannes-
