Uncle Dudley, my father’s brother, was one of the main "manne" in Theunissen in the Free State back in the day. Besides being politically active (and connected), he was mayor at some stage, and he was also president of the local Agricultural Society. Above all, he was a larger than life figure who commanded a great deal of authority.
There came a time, however, when his authority was challenged, and this was when he discovered that there was some poaching taking place on his farm, The Beacon. It was not huge-scale poaching by any means, purely because there was little to poach, but rabbits were in plentiful supply, and at night he could hear the rifle shots going off across the veld.
Determined to put an end to it, and being involved with the local authorities, he contacted the local police chief who agreed to help him catch the poachers red-handed. With strict instructions to immediately arrest the perpetrators, with no leniency to be applied at all, the police officers parked their vehicles at the three different entrances to the farm. Uncle Dudley and I joined one of the officers in a separate vehicle, and we lay in wait in the pitch blackness of the night.
Sure enough, shots were heard in the distance, and shortly after that, we spotted a vehicle’s lights bouncing along the farm road, making its way to one of the exit points. With the order being to lock the poachers up for the night, I knew we were in for some fun and games. The moving vehicle eventually arrived at the gate, and somebody stepped out to open it. With the gate open and the driver having driven through to the other side, Uncle Dudley jumped out shouting, "Surprise! Surprise!"—only to discover that the two perpetrators were, in fact, his two grandsons, Henry and Dudley. With his policy of no-leniency and no bending of the rules, he said (rather loudly) to the policeman, "I think we should lock them up for the night," and then, taking the officer aside, said, "Let’s leave them in the cells for an hour or two, and then I’ll come and let them out," adding, "Hopefully it will be the end of their disobedience."
The two young boys were dutifully locked up in the cells, wide-eyed and not knowing what was going to happen to them. They must have been twelve or thirteen at the time, driving without a license and using a weapon in a poaching environment—actions that could have taken an entirely different course had they been anyone other than Uncle Dudley’s grandchildren.
As a postscript, their jail time did little to put an end to their nightly shooting—Henry and Dudley were simply more strategic in their choice of exit gate, and were never caught again.