Gideon Scheepers Poem by Gert Strydom

There’s a Boer commandant
that proofs himself at Magersfontein
and help to beat the British there
and at Paardeberg on horseback,
rides right through them
and they cannot touch him.

When his commando
enters the Cape Colony
rail tracts are blown away
and British trains stand and wait
and there are many Cape Boers
that joins him
to fight against
the overwhelming British might.

The British give guns
to the black population
and send them to farmsteads
to murder women and children
and to rape
and to Gideon Scheepers it’s more than enough
and it hits him like a hammer blow
and every black man
that his commando catches carrying a firearm
is hanged.

Then it happens
that the British find Gideon Scheepers
lying ill in the field
and they execute him
and somewhere in the field
he is pushed into an unmarked grave
and even today
nobody knows where
Gideon Scheepers lies.

[References: The rank of Commandant is equivalent to that of Lieutenant-Colonel. The heroic story of Gideon Scheepers during the second Anglo-Boer war.]