The monstrous madness of Koert Spies in Eben Venter’s Trencherman.

- Ilse Groenewald, Dept of Afrikaans and General Linguistics, University of  Stellenbosch

(Paper delivered at Oxford, 14-17 Sept, 2009 at the 7th International Congress on Monsters.)

The South African author, Eben Venter's novel, Horrelpoot (which literally translated means clubfoot), is an apocalyptic view of post-apartheid South Africa. Last year, the English translation of Venter's novel appeared, translated by Luke Stubbs, under the title, Trencherman. For the purpose of this paper, I am using the Afrikaans version and the translations of relevant passages are my own.

Medusa in the Basilica Water Cistern, Istanbul




Venter explores this apocalyptic South Africa of chaos and mayhem (reminiscent of what has been happening in Zimbabwe over the past few years) from the point of view of Martin Jasper Louw (called Marlouw). Marlouw lives an ordered life in Melbourne until he is asked by his sister, Heleen, to go and find her son, Koert Spies, with whom she has lost contact in South Africa.

Horrelpoot becomes an Afrikaans Heart of Darkness. From the start of the novel, Venter activates the relationship with Conrad's turn of the century novella, almost a century later. Koert (Kurtz) has disappeared in the chaos that South Africa has become. Power stations have been blown up, the telecommunication network has collapsed, there is a plague of mice and people are dying of HIV/Aids. Marlouw has to go on a treacherous journey to the family's old farm, aptly named Ouplaas, or old farm, where Koert is reportedly living.

The reader's first introduction to Koert is the last e-mail sent to his mother in Melbourne from South Africa. In this e-mail, it is already apparent that Koert has descended into madness, as his language is an incoherent mixture of Afrikaans, German and English. He rambles on about power and his responsibility to the people.

Every chapter starts with a quote from Heart of Darkness and Marlouw‟s role as outsider is already highlighted at the beginning of chapter 2 with the quote, “A queer feeling came to me that I was an imposter”. He is physically different due to his club foot and now he is going on a jouney to a country where he feels he no longer belongs. Marlouw begins his journey to South Africa, via Fiji, as South African Airways aeroplanes no longer conform to International aviation standards and are not allowed in Australian air space.

He arrives at the chaotic airport in Johannesburg, to find that his connecting flight to Bloemfontein does not exist and the only way to get any form of answer or service amid the chaos is through the currency of bribary.

Venter equates Marlouw's ride in a taxi, when he has finally reached Bloemfontein, to the journey up the Congo river in Heart of darkness: “I am going to move down a river of people, they determine my route, push me downstream, even perhaps suspect what I have come for” (2006:43).


The fourth chapter's quote from Heart of Darkness reminds of the primordial chaos at the beginning of time: “Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginning of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and big trees were kings.” It is reminiscent of the Eden myth or the original, primordial jungle. According to Cirlot's A Dictionary of Symbols, the jungle or forest represents the unconscious (1995:112):

Forest-symbolism is complex, but it is connected at all levels with the symbolism of the female principle or of the Great Mother…Since the female principle is identified with the unconcious in Man, it follows that the forest is also a symbol of the unconscious…in contrast with the city, the house and cultivated land, which are all safe areas, the forest harbours all kinds of dangers and demons, enemies and diseases.

The city of Bloemfontein that is supposed to be structured and ordered, in opposition to the forest, becomes like a jungle and Marlouw experiences Bloemfontein in the same way as Marlow experiences travelling up the river in Heart of Darkness (2006:51). We forge ahead through a jungle of sensation: the smell of papaja and wet chicken feathers, of week old underarm and the flesh of mango, course salt and soapy fresh cloathing. There are all sorts of pinks and parrot oranges and anxious cries of little ones running after their mother's bottoms.

The countryside is described as “an outer darkness” (2006:67) and once the chaos of the city is left behind, Marlouw moves further into the dark unknown. The road outside Bloemfontein has no road markings or road signs and the farms and farmlands have been burnt down. It is now only scorched earth. On a Jungian level, any jouney can be equated to the process of individuation or self-discovery. Marlouw has to journey into this primordial chaos to confront his true self. As we will see, this confrontation takes place in his eventual confrontation with Koert.

Marlouw eventually reaches Ouplaas that his parents gave to the labourer family who had always lived and worked on the farm for the Louw family. He is met at the gate by a gun-wielding Pilot, the son of November and Mildred Hlongwane.

From the start Marlouw is kept away from Koert who has apparently inhabited the one half of the house. His quarters are guarded by men in balaclavas and the gates are kept locked. For days Marlouw tries to see him, but time and again het is denied access. He is only told stories about Koert or hears murmerings about him in town, thus building out the mythology around him. Pilot tells him that Koert is hugely fat and that his foot is stinking, green and rotting. Marlouw assumes that Koert has gangreen in his leg. In town he hears men talking about Koert and the words that reach him are Fat Pig, Fat Fucking Pig or just Fucker.

Marlouw cannot understand how the fit, healthy man who left Australia is the same person he is being told about. When he asks how Koert became so ill, Esmie Phumzile, Koert's supposedly pregnant girlfriend, tells Marlouw (2006:175): “It's the madness of this country. And the madness Koert carries in his own head.” He started supplying the abattoirs with meat and realised the power meat had. It became his power, until the sheep started dying and Koert became ill.

When Marlouw finally manages to get to Koert's window unhindered, he sees a figure that he assumes to be Koert: “There, concealed beind the curtain partition, an unwieldy shape emerges like that of a huge boar, it slowly moves further back until I can no longer see anything, except perceive a grotesque formlessness.” (2006:183). His skin is further described as larva white, which intensifies Koert's unhumanness.

One night, Marlouw is fetched by two men in balaclavas. They blindfold him and take him to Koert. The darkness around him is impenetrable as they move between furniture and unidentifiable obstructions, the final stage of his journey having begun. The labyrinthine route that he is taken on resembles the final decent into the unconcious and the primordial chaos. He has decended into the abyss and is about to confront the monster. When they remove his blindfold, he is in the garage or Koert's quarters, the light is dim and everything around him is described as shadowy figures.

When he confronts Koert, he faces a huge figure on a double bed, wrapped in a blanket. Marlouw describes him as a living mass, vibrating under the blanket. His head is cyclopic, emerging from the thick neck and what is left of his mouth, nose and eyes is distorted by seethrough white mounds and bumps. He starts speaking his virtually incomprehensible giberish, a mixture of German, Afrikaans and English. His language has disintegrated.

On a symbolic level, language represents order, the male principle or the Logos. Cirlot defines the Logos as, “the light and the life, at once spiritual and material, which combats both death and night. It is the antithesis of disorder and chaos, of evil and darkness.” (1995:191). On a Jungian level, the masculine principle is associated with rationality and conciousness. Koert's rational thought and language is breaking down, as is his body, indicating his descent into the unconcious, the Primordial chaos or madness. As Koert raves on, he describes himself as the bête noir, the black beast. According to Jung, the bête noir takes on the role of the shadow (Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey:58)

In Jungian terms, the shadow is a figure appearing in dreams, fantasies, and outer reality that embodies qualities in ourselves which we prefer not to think of as belonging to us, because to admit to these would tarnish our image of ourselves. So we project these seemingly negative qualities onto someone else…Getting to know and accept our shadow as an aspect of ourselves is an important first step towards self-knowledge and wholeness. Without our shadow we would remain but two-dimentional beings, paper thin, with no substance.

In Tarot symbolism, the Magician's bête noir is the Devil. On a personal level, he becomes the shadow of Marlouw and even to a certain extent Grandma Zuka, the umtakhati, or witch who can be seen as the African version of the Magician and will be discussed shortly. On a collective level, the bête noir becomes the shadow of society and as Esmie Phumzile said of Koert, he represents the madness of the country.

Koert has become the monster, the bête noir.


According to De Vries, the monster represents the predominance of the baser forces in man, to which his "finer" side is sacrificed and are fought by his spiritual side (often represented by the knight). Marlouw is supposed to take on this role of the knight who is sent to save Koert and return him to his mother, his home, his “finer side”. From the start, however, the hero is flawed. He lives a simple, sterile life in Melbourne, selling expensive cookware to restaurants (the two-dimentional being that has not confronted his shadow) and he is physically flawed in that he has a club foot.

The knight or hero is supposed to be noble on his quest to overcome the primordial darkness. The foot is symbolic of the soul, as it supports the body and serves in keeping the body upright and by implication, spiritually upright. In Greek legends, lameness is usually a sign of some defect of the spirit or some essential blemish. Our hero, then becomes an anti-hero, an already blemished character due to his physical disability.

The question remains how Koert became this monster. How did the healthy, educated, refined male transform and descend into madness and monstrosity? This transformation is attributed to Grandma Zuka, the umthakathi or witch.

Ubuthakathi means to do harm or destroy and the umthakathi is the one doing the harm. Grandma Zuka has been banished from the homsestead and moved into the mountains.


All the problems on the farm are attributed to her witchcraft. It is said, by those who have seen her, that she has started walking on all fours like a baboon and she is repeatedly referred to as a baboon (2006:121):
“Where is Grandma Zuke then?” I ask to hear what they have to say.
“She had to go into the mountains, she lives there now.” Mildred nods towards the mountain ridge that lies to the north west of the yard. She takes me to one side. “Koert told Ouma Zuka she must leave the yard (loop hier van die werf af). He said she is a witch, she just makes trouble. We never, never see her anymore. Every Monday I send the little ones with food. Now Ouma Zuka walks on her hands like a baboon, they come and tell. And they mock her: imfene, imfene, but I hit them if they mock her like that.”

In Xhosa an imfene is a baboon that harms the cattle. The umthakathi (in both Zulu and Xhosa) is a person that is believed to have the ability to harm others. They are said to be able to shape-shift, fly and work their witchcraft (abathakathi) at night, employing the use of both familiar spirits and animals in harming others (Leff, 2007:4). The imfene is one of these mythical spirits.

The umthakathi is said to cause diseases in both people and animals, even illnesses such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. When the sheep on the farm die because of hunger, lack of water and dirty drinking troughs, it is blamed on Grandma Zuka and they report to Marlouw, “Now there is the problem with the sheep.” (2006:116).



Even Esmie Phumzile‟s HIV/AIDS infection is blamed on her, as Pilot tells Marlouw (2006:135):
She makes all the trouble for us. She makes Esmie sick, she makes Koert obstinate during the day and at night, when everyone is sleeping, he gets angry, you don‟t want to see him. Grandma Zuka, it's her. She makes all the trouble come to the yard. Ihilihili, that's her, the person that aimlessly roams around. She now has many names, Marlouw, you wouldn't know about that. Everyone has a different name for her, because she has something with everyone. Some nights when my father can't sleep because of his rheumatism that bothers him, he hears her coo, he call her ohobe, that's the turtle dove.



When they find a dead lizard on the porch one morning, this is said to be Grandma Zuka trying to poison Koert (2006:149):
“That is Grandma Zuka. It's the idliso, the black poison.” Pilot walks to and fro. “I told you, but nobody listens. She came from the mountain last night and put that thing at Koert‟s door. It‟s the idliso to make him sick. To make the sheep sick. We are all still going to suffer under Grandma Zuka, you don't listen to me.” Esmie looks at her brother and slings the dead lizard at him.

The idliso is used to cause illness with malicious intent by the umthakathi, usually via the medium of food. It is usually physically placed on the food (2006:1083). In this case, the physical placement of the lizard at Koert's door is supposed to cause illness in him.

In the same way, the most deadly idliso to a person is made up of parts of that person's body, such as finger-nails, hair or their excrement (Veenstra, 2006:28).

This is seen one morning when Marlouw cuts his nails outside. Pilot asks him where his nails are and tells him to go and check his comb for loose hair. He tells him that his nails are gone and that all the loose hair has been removed from his comb. Headman collected these “parts” of Marlouw to take to Grandma Zuka so that she can make the idliso from them.

On Marlouw's final night on Ouplaas, Koert announces that they will have a big party. There is meat and beer and the people gather around the fire whilst they beat drums.


By ten o'clock, Koert has not yet emerged. Grandma Zuka appears, holding a stick with a porcupine head mounted on it. She has blood on her and blood runs down the stick. She is walking upright and no longer on all fours. They give her wine and to the sound of drumming, they call Koert to join them and with only a loin cloth around his waste, he shuffles and scrapes his beastly body forward.

Grandma Zuka shouts that Koert is the mzungu, the outsider or white man that does not belong there (2006:306):



This mzungu is a monster that has come to live in your human yard. He's hungry, deep inside his stomach the hunger makes him mad, and day and night he has to have meat. You have seen it with your own eyes.


Then Koert cries out: “De horror. I am de horror,” as a man in a balaklawa moves forward and stabs him in a scene reminiscent of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. The knife is passed from person to person and each one stabs Koert.

Finally, as he is about to die, Koert says, “Die horrel, die horrel”, that semantically sounds like the infamous words from Heart of Darkness, “the horror, the horror”. In Afrikaans horrel on its own does not actually exist. It is part of the word horrelpoot, or club foot. It will therefor mean the club, or claw, or symbolically, the flaw. Koert has become the club foot. His gangrenous foot makes him cripple and his madness and monstrosity makes him the psychological cripple.

David Gilmore opens his book Monsters:Evil Beings, mythical beasts and all manor of imaginary terrors with a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche from Beyond Good and Evil: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look in the abyss, the abyss looks back into you.”

One day Marlouw sees himself in a mirror whilst he is still on Ouplaas and he “steps back in horror at the image with its hollow cheeks, blue lips and confused expression” (2006:232). When he returns to Australia after the death of Koert, he starts drinking heavily, he feels insecure, can no longer eat meat without seeing things crawl out of it and he says “this exodus has left me permanently unsettled” (2006:269). He has not had his hair cut that has grown wild and tangled and he has a beard. He has nightmares of a hairy, floating sack and he can only assume that it has something to do with Esmie Phumzile's fetus, Koert's monstrous offspring.

The final chapter, begins with the quote from Heart of Darkness: “Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddah.” Both Marlouw's are changed due to the abyss having looked back into them, or perhaps having recognised the monster within themselves.

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