The Oak Tree was Huge: Reading Koppie's Story at the Hoek

Koppie's Story is the unpublished manuscript of a novel written by Frances Cope, a colonial farmer's wife, in the early 1880s. It begins in 1879, a pivotal year in terms of the catastrophic socio-environmental impact of the colonial government's invasion of Zululand, and ends in 1880 when the railway from Durban reached Pietermaritzburg on its way into the Interior. By this time the imperialists had effectively won a decisive round against the local inhabitants, and as the territory started to be opened up for industry and agriculture, things were in place to do battle with the land. In the novel, this framing story is seen from a domestic vantage point. Koppie, the protagonist, is primarily concerned with home, that complex world of eco-social relationships that her family built. In this essay, I read the manuscript on the farm where it was written, and am drawn into the contemplation of animals wild and domesticated, the intimacy of an inhabited veld, the resilience and tenderness of people, and of seeds. Each thing in this world of the farm seems to bear the imprint of wars of occupation.