Tes RogersWho Were They? Muddled Impressions
On my mom’s side we were Hollanders, or so I believed as a kid. My childhood impressions were that Anneke Lampen’s parents both came to South Africa at the end of the 19th century, so they had little to do with South Africa’s history. The Lampens’ origens were hardly ever spoken about while I grew up on the “very late” tail end of the five kids in the Wentzel/Lampen household in Lyttleton, just south of Pretoria. I did not even know what Ouma Lampen’s maiden name was until three years ago. I once asked my dad if “we were in the Groot Trek?” He said no, the Wentzels were “agtertrekkers”, those who trekked after the Voortrekkers were established in their new republics. So, my impression while growing up as a little Afrikaner kid in the primary school pressures of the 1960’s, was that my family was not really “anybody important in South Africa’s history”. Surely being more Hollander than Afrikaner (in my own estimation then), counted for something important, right? I guess going to Holland at 11 years old with my folks to visit family and even attending a little two-room school in Meliskerke, Zeeland, added quite a bit to this childhood identity. Of course high school and college years during the turbulent 70’s in South Africa changed those ideas completely.
