Sword in the Sand

What happened to Gideon Scheepers, the gallant twenty-three-year-old Boer fighter who was executed by a British firing squad some months before the Anglo-Boer War came to an end? Though nobody knows, since his body was never found, this young heliographer became an almost legendary figure in the South African history and his name sacred to many Afrikaners. As he was considered innocent and had become an idol because of his daring exploits in the Cape Colony, Scheepers’ execution caused a great outcry throughout the world.

Despite his tragic end and the public interest aroused by the secret and apparently clandestine circumstances of his death, very little is really known about his exact movements and experiences. As a result of this the author envisages Sword in the Sand not so much as a biography of Gideon Scheepers, “but rather a fragment of South African history centered around a key figure.”

Of special interest is, above all, the translation of Scheepers’ diary — notes written up to hours before his execution. The execution itself has now generally been condemned by Boer and Briton as a disgraceful act, but its consequences were more far-reaching than anyone could have foreseen at the time: Gideon Scheepers took his place in the martyrology of Afrikanerdom.