The Struggle for Freedom : Shakespeare on the Eastern Frontier

Abstract

In 1881, (or 1880 if the historian Heese is right) just at the time of the Anglo-Transvaal War, a play was published in London called The Struggle for Freedom or, The Rebellion of Slagters Nek, written under the pseudonym ‘Leinad’. Leinad is Daniel. He was the youthful John Daniel Kestell, then twenty-six, destined to become one of the cultural leaders of nascent Afrikaner nationalism. The young dramatist was the future “Vader” Kestell, theologian and pastor, devoted military chaplain to the Boer forces in the Anglo-Boer War, one of the Boer negotiators at the Peace of Vereeniging, founder and first Rector of Grey College, Bloemfontein, which was to become the University of the Orange Free State. A small town in the eastern Free State is named after him. He was also an enthusiastic Shakespearean. Partly of British descent, his grandparents on the father’s side were 1820 Settlers in the Eastern Cape. His father married into the Afrikaans community, serving as Deacon in his congregation. John Daniel was brought up and educated in Pietermaritzburg, that outpost of lovely Victorian architecture with Afrikaans street names, capital of the Colony of Natal.