Fighting for Freedom

Chapter 1 – The CaveIt is December holidays in South Africa and seventeen year old Petro Le Roux is alone on her parent's farm, Nuwe Hoop (Afrikaans for New Hope), located just north of Komatipoort in the Eastern Transvaal . Her father, Gert Le Roux, bought the cattle farm five years ago. He grew up on a cattle farm near Rustenburg and farming has always been his passion. After school he went to university for a while, until his father informed him that the farm was not doing well and that he needed him to come back to the farm to help turn things around. Gert worked on his father’s farm for five years before Petro's grandfather informed him that he has sequestrated himself and that the farm will be sold by the liquidators. Gert knew that his father went to Sun City on a regular basis to gamble, but he did not know that his gambling addiction was at a level where he gambled away the farm. At the age of twenty-four, he was without a job and with no prospects so he took the first job he could find as an apprentice on a platinum mine. His work ethics paid off and he climbed the corporate ladder in a hurry and at the age of twenty-seven he was making enough money to move out of the mine’s singles quarters and into a flat in town. He met his wife, Elna, on the day he moved into his flat. Elna and a friend were sharing a flat on the same floor and her roommate noticed him and brought him a glass of lemonade, hoping to get to know him better. He accepted her invitation to have dinner with them that night, but when he saw Elna, he only had eyes for her and her roommate soon realised that she was a fifth wheel. Elna lost a friend but gained a husband as they got married two years later. At the age of forty-five her father heard about a farm in the market for a good price and he invested all their savings into buying Nuwe Hoop. His love for farming and hard work soon paid off and after less than five years of farming, he was in a position to buy another piece of land between Nuwe Hoop and the Kruger National Park. His plan is to let this piece of land rest for a couple of years before he starts introducing kudu, gemsbok, eland and a few other antelope species for hunting purposes. Hunting farms have become big business in South Africa and he wanted to cash in on this. Gert and Elna do not leave Petro alone on the farm often and she decides to use her freedom to go explore the new land her father bought last month. When her brother, Gerhardt, was still home the two of them often explored the farm on horseback. Since he was called up for his two year military service, her father has not allowed her to go into the veld (uncultivated farmland) by herself. Her father was very secretive about the reason for their visit to Johannesburg today and Petro gets the feeling that the trip to Johannesburg has something to do with her, but she has no idea what it could be. Her only obstacle today is to make sure that Sanna, their domestic worker, does not tell on her when her parents get back from Johannesburg. Luckily, she has some dirt on Sanna as well. Sanna likes wine a lot and she has caught her a few times while smuggling one of her parent’s wine bottles out of the house when she goes back to her house for the weekend. The workers’ houses are a distance from the farmhouse and none of them will notice when she leaves, but Sanna is still in the house. Petro takes a bottle of wine and goes to the kitchen where she finds Sanna washing the dishes. ‘Sanna, until what time are you working today?’ ‘Kleinmies, I have to work until Baas Gert and Mies Elna gets back.’ ('Mies' and 'baas' means female and male boss. 'Klein' means small,) ‘I don’t think you have to be here the whole day. I will clean up before they come back.’ ‘No Kleinmies Petro, Mies Elna told me to look after you.’ Petro is frustrated by this and decides to play her trump card. ‘I have seen you taking wine from the house, but I will not tell my mother if you do me a favour. I want you to tell my mother that I was here the whole day.’ ‘Where are you going Kleinmies?’ ‘I just want to go for a horse ride in the veld. I will be back long before my parents get home.’ ‘The veld is dangerous Kleinmies.’ ‘I will take the Point 22 rifle with me. You know that I can look after myself.’ Sanna looks doubtful and Petro plays another trump card. She puts the bottle of wine down on the kitchen table. ‘I will give you this if you promise to tell my mother I was here the whole day.’ Sanna takes the bottle. ‘Thank you Kleinmies Petro. I promise.’ Petro saddles her horse, Vonk (Afrikaans for spark) and steers him in the direction of the new piece of land her father bought. She does not push Vonk hard as they have a journey of more than ten kilometres through the veld. She stops regularly at water troughs installed for the cattle. When she reaches the fence between the cattle farm and the new piece of land, she gets of Vonk’s back and leads him along the fence until she finds one of the gates her father installed between the farms. She opens the gate and leads Vonk through before she mounts him and steers him in the direction of a hilly area she sees in the distance. It takes Petro about an hour to reach the hills and she fastens Vonk to a tree next to a pool of water as she wants to explore the hill on foot. Petro climbs the hill and finds that the fence of the Kruger National park is just on the other side of the hill. She scans the park to try and see any wildlife in the area, but after fifteen minutes she gives up on it and looks back at Vonk who is happily munching on the grass around him. Petro scans the area on their side of the hill and she can see something that looks like vehicle tracks about three hundred metres from where she is. She walks in that direction on top of the hill and as she gets closer, she can clearly see that it is indeed vehicle tracks. They carry on into the distance, but seem to start at a bushy area underneath her and she makes her way down to explore further. The tracks are quite old and it does not seem that anybody was here for a while. She is curious why the tracks lead to this bushy area though, so she carefully makes her way through the bushes and is surprised to see an opening in the side of the hill, with a small stream of water flowing from it. Her interest is piqued and she decides to go into the cave, but after about five metres it gets too dark to see, so she turns around. She is upset with herself for not bringing a torch and follows the small stream of water coming from the mouth of the cave back to where it flows into the pool of water where she left Vonk. Petro decides that she has to come back with a torch to explore the cave and to investigate why the vehicle tracks lead towards it.