Cederberg Publishers
Publishers in Cape Town

From Deneys Reitz to C Louis Leipoldt, our authors carry the weight and beauty of South African history. Our books capture the adventures and lives of some of the most prolific South Africans.

Publisher of C Louis Leipodt's trilogy of historical novels, The Valley, written in English, and several other titles by this versatile medical doctor, poet and connoisseur of food and wine, all of which are a wonderful 'Leipoldt collection' expressing the soul of South Africa. The newest addition to our stable, Edward Carson QC, is the story of one of the greatest of all advocates. Several of his cases had links to South Africa, others involved well known names (the most famous being the tragic case of Oscar Wilde) and all present lessons in advocacy that will fascinate lawyers, inspire law students and intending lawyers, and interest all who appreciate well-written biography and Anglo-Irish history. And he said that until liberty came to his country he would notreturn. The eldest has reached Holland from his prison camp in India, and the other is still in Bermuda awaiting release. We have been on an expedition far down into the Sakalave country, to see whether we could settle there. General Gallieni provided us with riding-mules and a contingent of Senegalese soldiers, as those parts are still in a state of unrest. But for all its beauty the island repels one in some intangible manner, and in the end we shall not stay. Stricken with malaria, this letter turned his thoughts strongly homeward, and after an adventurous trip home he managed to make his way back to Pretoria. Deneys Reitz went on to become the commander of a Scottish regiment in the First World War; then he became a cabinet minister, first under Botha, and later under Smuts; he was Deputy-Prime Minister during the Second World War; and when he died in London he was South Africa’s High Commissioner in London. How fortunate we are that it did not get lost along the way, as might so easily have happened. The skill lies in its apparent simplicity and in its understatement. As many who have tried will know, it is very difficult to write with such compelling simplicity that the reader is spurred on and finds it difficult to put down a book that reads more like an adventure story than a catalogue of war. He had not been to university, nor had he done a course in creative writing, such as is now offered at many universities. F W Reitz himself was an early writer of popular Afrikaans poetry and, as already mentioned, there was an enjoyment and an appreciation of literature in the family home. Part of Commando’s charm, if that is the right word, is the fact that it is written so entirely without rancour. His tone is almost nonchalant, but the tragedy of war was certainly not lost on him. He refers in passing to the herding of Boer women and children into concentration camps, and states that this, the burning of farmsteads and the killing of livestock, only stiffened the resolve of the fighting men to continue the guerrilla phase of the war. But the pace of the action carries the reader past that aspect of the war, and it is mostly on reflection that the extent of the destruction becomes manifest. Probably the most riveting story in Commando is Reitz’s account of his chance meeting with Smuts’s commando, and their incursion into the Cape Colony in the dead of winter, harried by British troops trying to head them off and stop them in their tracks. The head of the family, a patriarch of seventy, insisted on acting as my guide during the first stage of the journey and firmly refused to waive the right in favour of his sons, who offered themselves. At different times of the war, Reitz encountered or served under Generals Botha, de la Rey, de Wet, Hertzog and Smuts, amongst many others. Reitz literally saved Smuts’s life during one particular episode during their incursion into the Cape, and these heartfelt remarks of one whose life was saved by a young comrade on commando echo Reitz’s own that General and Mrs Smuts were the two people to whom he owed most in the world. The poem is called Pharsalia and is about the civil war fought between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great.