The Surgeon (II)

The article’s opening paragraph was unconventional. Maintaining that “there is a cause for everything”, The Surgeon speculated on the possibility of a divine link between the fall of the great French Emperor, Napoleon and his treacherous capture and imprisonment of Toussaint Louverture, the great leader of the Haitian slave rebellion. “Toussaint Louverture was sent to France to drag out his days in a dungeon, and the man who sent him thither was sent to rusticate on the rock of St. Helena.”

Leitlo le tswelwe ke leitlo, leino ke leino! To The Surgeon, slavery was the ultimate sin. Louverture’s armed resistance was thus consistent with Christian virtue. On the South African Highveld, the enemy was clear: