Valuable ledger on Boer war

A prominent attorney and later the first mayor of Heidelberg when the government of Paul Kruger, President of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR), was seated in southern Gauteng, Van Geusau kept a careful record of the three-year war between Boers and Brits during the turn of the previous century.

Through his law practice he had direct access to the ZAR’s most notable figures including Kruger himself, then State Attorney Jan Smuts, and other high-ranking officials such as Johann Rissik, first clerk from the surveyor-general’s offices.

Documents, legal papers and other ephemera were passed on by Van Geusau to his younger associate whose family still runs the law firm – now three generations strong – that Van Geusau started well over a century ago.

Leafing through the ledger and many other Africana-type artifacts in the boardroom of the Heidelberg practice, time evaporates and an important period from the past unfurls from its musty confines.

The ledger, in particular, is something to cherish.

During the first, official period of the Anglo Boer War, before the Boers resorted to hit-and-run, guerilla-style tactics, the ZAR-government printed daily bulletins containing both “war news” and “oorlognieuws”, in both English and Dutch.

These Van Geusau collected with unflinching fervour, carefully and meticulously pasting the bulletins into a ledger, in chronological order.

As a result the ledger serves as an exceptional, journalistic record of wartime movements, skirmishes, battles, other deve-lopments and, most importantly, listing the names of those who paid the heaviest price for their role in the three year war.

“There is nothing that can be compared to it”, says Chico da Silva, managing member of Consolidated and custodian of the company’s artifacts project.

“It is, without a doubt, a prime collector’s piece and we’re honoured to have its current owner bringing it to us when we have our artifact auction on December 1.”