The History of South Africa and Apartheid

A Brief, but Telling, History of South Africa: 1488 - 1860

It seems that the man who said it was right: there are two kinds of people in this world: the victims and the perpetrators. A victim is someone who always gets off on persuading his audience that he has suffered unmentionable wrongs at someone else’s hands; a perpetrator is someone who just gets on with life and makes the best of it.

There has been an awful lot of tear-jerking waffle from various quarters about Archbishop Tutu’s claim that whites are not grateful enough. Well, at last, we whites will apologise. Here goes:

In 1488 Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape. It seems he tried to land but found the few inhabitants to be very unfriendly and nationalistic, so he up-anchored and cleared off.
In 1497 Vasco da Gama decided to see for himself and landed at St.Helena Bay, Mossel Bay, and then Natal (hence it’s name because he arrived there on Christmas day).
In 1503 Table Mountain was scaled for the first time by a white man. Then the Portuguese lost interest and carried on to Mozambique. Had they colonised this part of the world, history would have been entirely different.

In 1580 Sir Francis Drake rounded the Cape and was most impressed with its beauty. However, he saw little reason to stop over as there were no Sun International Hotels in those days.

In 1602 the Dutch East India Company was founded, and, like the British company of the same name, sought a sea-route round the Cape so that the spice trade could be opened up. The Dutch had already colonised the East Indies and frequently sailed the route through all kinds of storms, taking many weeks to make the trip and losing a considerable proportion of the crew to scurvy.
In 1652 Jan Van Riebeek was dispatched here with instructions to establish a victualling station at the Cape. The first horses in Southern Africa were imported from Java. For this landing and these horses we humbly apologise because it meant that vegetables would be grown in this part of the world for the first time and carts no longer had to be drawn by hand.
In 1657 the Dutch, being a people of the land, established the first farms in the Cape. We apologise for spoiling the emptiness of the area.
In 1658 the Dutch brought the first blacks to the area; they were slaves captured on board a Portuguese ship. I’m sure the Dutch will offer an apology for further despoiling the racial purity that existed in the Cape; they had already screwed those that they couldn’t kill out of the Hottentots, but they needed labour for the farms, so there we are. I’m sure they’re sorry.
In 1688 the Huguenots arrived and consumed more of the limited arable land. Sorry.
Until 1780 no indigenous black people were found in what used to be the Cape Province; they had not migrated this far south. Perhaps they should have stayed where they were, because their arrival caused no less than nine wars during the following century. I think they should apologise.
Until 1803 the Dutch continued to import slave labour from Madagascar, Mozambique and the East Indies; we unreservedly apologise for doing this because the Coloured People were the result of this miscegeny.

Perhaps the biggest mistake made by the Dutch was to end the sponsorship of immigrants from Europe in 1707 because this meant that additional slave labour had to be imported. Wrong. Sorry.
In 1795 Europe was in turmoil: the French Revolution was at hand, in England the Industrial Revolution was turning a land of farmers into a land of shopkeepers; in the Cape the Dutch began to revolt against what they perceived to be an unfairly draconian rulership from their home country.


In 1814 the Cape was formally ceded to Britain.
In 1820 the British settlers arrived and began establishing the system of representative government. We’re sorry, we made a mistake.
In 1834 the British spoiled the entire system by abolishing slavery. Sorry – we should have let it continue; it was very profitable.
In 1835 the Great Trek began because the Boers (as they had become known) hated to bow to any kind of law, especially British. Rumour has it that when they reached the Orange River there was a notice on the bank warning those who could read not to cross; they crossed, and that was the beginning of the Free State, once Mzilikazi and Dingane had been dealt with. Of course, the Trekkers should have laid down and died, so they’re sorry too.

In 1852 the Transvaal was given independence; the British didn’t want it. Had they known what was under the soil they would have kept it, of course.
In 1854 the Free State was also given independence; they didn’t want that either.
In 1860 the first indentured Indians were brought to Natal; sorry, we should have left them at home. The problem was that India was already ruled by the British and the Indians didn’t have enough to do; in Natal the sugar industry was just getting under way, so what simpler answer was there but to bring the labour force to the field? We were wrong, we should have left well alone and the world could have looked elsewhere for its sugar.

Until the mid 19th century the British had only sought more land (they had so little of it at home), and the Dutch more freedom to do their own thing and build their enormous, if rather ugly, churches; however, between 1867 and 1871 various rich deposits of diamonds were found on a farm in Griqualand West, causing the encroaching Dutch and the beaten natives to fight each other once more in order to secure the ownership of this hoard. The British stepped in and annexed Griqualand West to restore peace. Sorry, we shouldn’t have done it. It would have been better to wait until each side had killed off the other; we would have got hold of the diamonds anyway.

Sensing more trouble to come, the British then went on and annexed the Transvaal which led within three years to the first Boer War which broke out in 1880. At this stage, South Africa was undergoing dramatic changes, brought about by the discovery of diamonds. Railways were being built to bring diggers and prospectors to the fields, roads were hacked through what had hitherto been deemed impenetrable mountains; the country was no longer a smattering of farmers eeking out a living around the Cape and fighting their way into the interior; it was now heading towards becoming a land of mineral wealth and value to the rest of the world. We whites should have known better than to allow this to happen. We should have left there and then. We are sorry.
The African, having nothing to offer but his labour, came in droves to the diggings and, being smart despite his rural background, began to make his fortune. We should not have let this happen. We are sorry. It caused rifts in families, untold strife, and a huge human movement whose wave is still breaking on our shores today. We should have imported our own white labour for the diamond fields and allowed the African to continue to farm his cattle, eat his mealies, and sell his daughters.

Then, as if this was not enough, gold was discovered on the Reef in 1886. More African labour left the kraals in search of wealth and fortune. We are sorry. We should not have allowed it. We should have mined the gold on our own and taken the spoils with us when we left. After all, finders keepers!

Because of the greed of the colonialists the cities of Kimberley and Johannesburg were founded in the middle of nowhere; resulting from the cupidity of the native black, steps had to be taken to accommodate those who sought work in the cities, and so, temporary shanty towns for all races were allowed to mushroom out of the veld. We are sorry. It was the start of a new problem.

1902 brought the end of the second Boer war; it was the end of tremendous suffering for both British and Afrikaner and, in retrospect, achieved little other than to unite the whole of South Africa in the Act of Union in1910. One of Britain’s great mistakes was to beat warring factions into submission, establish law and order, and then give the land back to those from whom it had been taken. We apologise; we should have kept it all for ourselves and forced those who came before us to live under the British colonial yoke.

In 1913 the National Party was formed. What had hitherto just been various small groups of people living off the land, fighting with each other from time to time but largely keeping to themselves, had suddenly become a country and a population which required organising and governing, something that the British were particularly good at, and some sort of order needed to be established to avoid the anarchy and lawlessness of the Wild West gradually taking over. In order to protect the rights of the wandering blacks, 912 million hectares of land was put aside for their sole use. For the first time, the blacks actually had the legal right to occupy and farm this enormous area.

In 1928 Iscor was formed. In order to prevent further strife between black and white, a form of segregation was attempted. It failed.

1929 saw the first National Party government come to power, but for various reasons it was a dismal failure, and in 1933 a coalition government was established under the then United Party. Because only a very small proportion of the land was arable and because both blacks and whites saw enormous wealth being wrested from the ground, large numbers of both races had abandoned the rural areas and descended on the cities, whose streets, they believed, were paved with gold. They both lived in incredible hardship and poverty – a situation which could not be allowed to continue.

1936 saw a further 6,2 million hectares of land added to the initial 912 million hectares for exclusive black use. We were wrong; we should not have allowed black legal tenure of any of the land and rather kept it for ourselves. Sorry.

By 1944 Jan Hofmeyr had lost a great deal of his support because of his promotion of the interests of black people in this country, and in 1948 the dreaded Nationalists came to power and Grand Apartheid followed soon after. We really are sorry about this one.

The dark years began with the coming to power of the Nationalists under D.F.Malan in 1948. Whereas previous governments had been interested in the welfare of all races, the Nationalists of 1948 were only interested in the furthering of Afrikaner interests and goals; anyone who was not Afrikaans (and that means the various black tribes, the English, the Indians, the Portuguese, the Italians, and the Jews) were all regarded as second-class citizens and all manner of horrible laws were passed to keep people in their place. The Afrikaner of those days was only slightly to the left of Hitler and we should, we now acknowledge, have stepped in once more and taken the country back under British rule. We are sorry we didn’t because out of this mistake came Apartheid and this country became more and more isolated as the years went by.

In the early 1950s Soweto (concertina name for South Western Townships) was laid out and established; it is still the largest black township on the African continent and was to serve as a huge dormitory area for Johannesburg. Much has been said and written about Sophiatown (most of it through the rose-coloured spectacles of time) and its untimely demise and the forced removal of its citizens to Soweto. Sophiatown was, in reality, a down-at-heel suburb of crumbling turn-of-the-century houses which were home to a great diversity of peoples; it was an area with its own vibrancy, but nonetheless an area where crime was rife and streets were ruled by gangs. Upon its demise the houses were raised and a new suburb, Triomf, was built to house the burgeoning Afrikaaner middle class.

In 1954 J.G.Strydom became prime minister. Much can be written about the Nationalists and their rise and fall; however, they can legitimately lay claim to certain interesting facts: they were the only government in modern times which had a penchant for erecting statues to people who were still alive and naming various projects (roads, airports, harbours) after their ministers. We had Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg, D.F.Malan Airport (overlooked by a rather frightening bust of the famous man looking like a large boiled egg with glasses) in Cape Town, Louis Botha (alright, he was dead) Airport in Durban; the Ben Schoeman Highway between Johannesburg and Pretoria, the Strydom Tunnel in the Eastern Transvaal, and so-on.

In order to alleviate the plight of the great unemployed masses of former years, the Nationalists created a massive, top-heavy, civil service. Whatever had to be achieved in their South Africa required books of paperwork to be completed; there were departments for this, for that, for everything under the sun. Every breath that the populace took had to be legislated; every movement required somebody’s permission in writing, and round every corner lurked an official, the Bible in one hand and the Might of the State in the other. It was bureaucracy gone mad. Every document was firstly and foremostly in Afrikaans, and every official behind every desk spoke only that language. Of course they did; it was the language God spoke, wasn’t it?

In 1958 H.F.Verwoerd came to power. We really are sorry for this one, for he, single-handedly brought about more damage than anyone else in the Nationalist hierarchy. The odd thing was that he wasn’t even South African. He had sufficiently aroused the ire of the British, so that in 1960 Harold MacMillan delivered his nail-in-the-coffin ‘winds of change’ speech in Parliament. For some years the colonial powers had been withdrawing from Africa and handing countries back to their local populations. Colonies cost an awful lot to keep going; they used manpower, a great deal of paper, and were very difficult to administer from far-away London or Brussels or Lisbon, so they were gradually given independence. After the required pomp and circumstance and the departure of the governor most of these erstwhile colonies immediately reverted to tribal warfare, rape, pillage, wanton genocide, and other little niceties that we, as whites, are very sorry to have caused by our departure. MacMillan’s speech was a warning.

By 1966 Verwoerd had become an embarrassment even here and so he was assassinated.
This brought B.J.Vorster to power; during his regency he managed the forced removal from District 6 (a slum area, much romanticised in plays, poetry and painting, where gangs ruled) and then its demolition; he established the Bureau of State Security, which watched over all of us in its safari suits and dark glasses, he allowed in a moment of extreme weakness the arrival of television some twenty years after it had been introduced to the rest of the world, and then was forced to retire iniquitously at the end of the 70s.

Whatever criticism we may throw in the direction of the Vorster administration, it was a time of great success financially for this country; so he must have done something right.
The amazing thing about the Nationalists was how, at each general election, they managed to be returned to power with a resounding majority. However on closer scrutiny it can be seen that they gerrymandered political constituencies in such a way that a small Afrikaans town had at least ten seats, whereas a large English-speaking area seldom had more than one. Of course, the ANC went one better when they introduced floor-crossing; there is no longer any need to win an election; they simply buy their support afterwards. We can’t apologise for that.

After Vorster came the Groot Krokodil and things went from bad to worse while he wagged an index finger at us through the TV screen. By 1990 most of the white population was armed to the teeth and in 1992, under F.W.de Klerk, came the famous referendum which brought about the end of Nationalist power. So in no uncertain terms the whites actually did say with a very loud voice how sorry they were for Apartheid and its attendant policies and harm.

The rest, as they say, is history. If you seek apologies from the Nationalists for what they did between 1948 and 1994, then you must go out and try to find one, because they all seem to have disappeared. Now we look forward to hearing Mad Bob’s apology, as he leaves Zim for the last time.

And that, in the words of John Vorster, is all about it.

Steam train excursions, trips and adventure - Blog Toplist

Steam train excursions, trips and adventure - Blog Toplist

The Train

It’s a cold, blustery morning with a hint of spring in the air; clouds hurry across a pale blue sky causing sudden showers to wet the pavements of the dull coastal town. It is the end of March 1959, a time when travel of any kind is still imbued with romance and excitement. Long distance air-travel is still something of a luxury for which the few still dress up; jets have recently taken the place of lumbering turbo-prop aircraft allowing destinations which were once a few days away to be only a few hours out of our increasingly busy lives. Each journey is preceded by days of anticipation and eager packing; there is still the sense of going somewhere, leaving and arriving amidst noise and bustle. We have not reached the stage of arriving at a huge sprawling airport with crush-proof baggage, dressed in jeans and running shoes, to join a long queue to have our papers stamped and then to be herded into cramped spaces numbered on our tickets. We are not transported from A to B, personal phones switched off and stowed in our hand-luggage; we are not force-fed with aircraft food off plastic plates, nor are we concerned with what movie may be playing to while away the few brief hours of our high-speed journey; we have not reached the stage of departing one side of the world and arriving on another within twenty-four hours, wondering how we arrived there or what we have missed on the way. In 1959 it is not the arriving that matters, it is the getting there which holds all the pleasure.

Few families own even one car and our towns and villages are not scored with enormous shopping centres and carparks; we take the bus to do the shopping, we go to work by train, we buy tickets instead of carrying credit cards for the purchase of petrol; we cannot plan our journeys by computer; we cannot press a button and have our tickets printed within a matter of seconds; the world we live in is much bigger, much more individual, its nooks a crannies still undiscovered and untrammelled by tourism; the age of the masses is yet to come.

England is still criss-crossed with minor railway lines which are still profitable; country stations still have tended flower beds and heated waiting rooms; we can still sit by the fire, and the art of conversation is still alive; we have not yet reached the stage where our lives are ruled by the television schedule, and we still regard the Sunday chicken as something of a luxury. We know who lives in our street and what they do, how many children they have; we still go to the cinema occasionally instead of taking in a movie; we dress for the theatre. It is 1959.

So it was that, on that blustery morning, the old black taxi deposited us and our various large, leather bags, at the steps that swept up to the main railway station. We had already bought and paid for our tickets and, unheard of as it is today, our seats were booked. We heaved the numerous bags up the steps and through the dark foyer onto the windswept platform to join the already large crowd of people waiting expectantly for the train. It is almost impossible to imagine today the smell of a railway station; in those far-off days there was somehow an odour of stale coal-smoke, damp clothes, the sea, and numerous other scents that whistled through the drafty entrance so fast that you were largely unaware of them. But they were there and they made up part of the excitement of going somewhere. Although nothing much was happening there was a constant buzz of hushed conversations, the occasional clang of a porter’s trolley as it unloaded someone’s luggage on the platform, the sound of a distant taxi arriving or leaving, but over all lay a kind of hushed expectancy, a waiting for something momentous to happen. The cold wind cut in eddies under the bridge and along the platform, causing us to hug scarves tighter and raise collars against departing winter. The large central clock beneath the sooty awning stood at eleven-forty-five and every few seconds we stole a glance beyond the bridge, round the curve of the line, hoping to see something.

Promptly at eleven forty-seven a hissing and clanking could be heard somewhere just out of sight, the other side of the bridge. This hissing grew louder and louder until it was overtaken by a kind of huffing roar; clouds of smoke began to appear through the arches of the bridge, and then, suddenly, with an almost deafening chuff, hiss, and clank, the enormous monster grew out of the bridge until it dwarfed the crowd on the platform. A belching funnel topped a mountain of dark green shiny paint and gleaming brass; massive silver pistons shot up and down, back and forth, a wave of heat struck us from the tender as it slid past, and then came carriage after carriage of dark red and gold, sweating from a recent shower, windows closed and slightly misted from the outside cold. Almost silently now, the enormous monster came to rest against the platform with a final hiss of steam as it curled up from somewhere underneath the carriages. Doors opened with a thud, leather straps waving in the wind, and the scramble to get aboard began. This was the beginning of a journey.

We manhandled our luggage into the corridor and left it by the door while we went looking for the reserved seats. Outside in the windy morning the announcer could be heard above the clamour and hiss reading out the stations of our journey; they were magical names even though they were distorted by the speaker-system and the amount of noise that the arrival of a large train always generates. “Chichester, Portsmouth, Yeoville, Exeter, Okehampton, Plymouth.” Inside, the carriages smelled of soot, steam, slightly of coffee, but most of all of going somewhere. The corridors were jammed with people walking up and down looking for reservations and the atmosphere was warm with the dampness of steam-heating. We found our reserved seats and heaved the luggage along to the compartment and then up onto the rack which stretched above our heads.

Our compartment was not full – there were still three seats vacant – but every seat had a little card screwed above it showing that it was reserved. The seats were of a dark red moquette with arms which pulled down between each place; the window was large and square and when you sat down it came to knee-level; the top section consisted of a ventilator which could slide along into the open position to allow a bit of fresh air to enter the compartment and each place was topped with a framed picture of some seaside spot. The air inside could only be described as a ‘fug’. We struggled out of our overcoats, folded them and put them up on the rack, for this was to be a long haul; we took our window seats and watched the platform expectantly, waiting for the inevitable whistle and the knowledge that, at last, the journey was beginning.

At ten years old it was the first time that I had been anywhere outside the routine of going to school or exploring the local woods and fields with my friends; it was also the end of an era of post-war greyness where life was depressingly the same, day in and day out. Around the corner, at the end of the year, was the beginning of the famous 1960s: the start of inflation, the end of the security of knowing just where we would all be at the end of each month, the era of free love, flower-power, and the end of many institutions to which we had all become accustomed. By the end of the coming decade many of the smaller railway-lines would be closed, steam would be largely a thing of the past, cars would be the rule rather than the exception, and people would begin to fly to ever more distant destinations, becoming more and more casual about it as time began to fly past for all of us. In a sense, 1959 marked the beginning of the end of innocence.

After precisely three minutes, the enormous twelve-carriage red and cream monster began almost imperceptibly to move, sliding out of the station away from the platform and pulled by this enormous streamlined relic of the early 1940s which belched and puffed great gouts of black smoke into the cloudy sky. The suburban back gardens began to slide past, at first slowly and then with increasing speed until one blended in with the next. Level crossings flew past outside the window, small stations caused the train to rock excitingly as it dashed westwards, and from each bridge under which we steamed small groups of children ran in and out of the cloud of smoke that marked our passing. We were finally on our way.

The grey of suburbia gave way to the sound of the click-clack of the wheels over the joins in the rail to the green of fields filled with new grass, shining with a recent shower of rain, and in the background we could see the hills and hedges of the South Downs which, in turn became once more a jumble of houses, gardens, and factories as we slowed into Portsmouth. Up and down the carriages bustled a man in uniform announcing that the first sitting for lunch was now open, so we stashed our bits and pieces and, as the train once more slid into motion, staggered along rocking corridors until we reached the dining car. This was a long saloon through which the passage led, seats arranged in groups of four on the left and two on the right, each seat facing a table set with a spotless white cloth on which was set the required number of places. Each place had silver cutlery, its own napkin and wineglass, and each plate, when it came, bore the insignia of British Railways. It was a heady experience to sit at such a table and be served good food while looking out of the window at total strangers who stood waiting for some other train, huddled against the cold and wrapped in raincoats against the chilly March showers.

As we left the big port cities of Portsmouth and Southampton behind us, the sun burst from behind the scudding clouds; occasionally the view from the window was hidden behind a streak of steam from the engine and the cutlery jangled merrily as we rocked and rattled our way through small country stations at speed. Like royalty we sat back and enjoyed our roast beef and our chatter as the rest of the world went about its daily business, shielded from us by a sheet of glass while we, in our normal indoor clothes (although somewhat smarter for the occasion) enjoyed the warmth and security of our isolation. The world outside was still turning, still doing its shopping, its farming, delivering post in suburban streets, but we were going somewhere; we had all the trappings of excitement and movement and the knowledge that this was a day unlike any other.

After lunch was over we returned to our compartment, warm and replete with good food and enjoyed the ever-changing scenery as the train steadily steamed westwards. Ploughed fields which had been brown in Sussex and Hampshire became red as we crossed Dorset; hills which had been low and rounded became higher, and roads which had been wide and flat became narrow and winding and edged with high hedges. It suddenly rained while we stood in Chard station but the sun soon shone again, somehow brighter this time, as we crossed into Devonshire and the shadows began to lengthen into late afternoon.

All was hustle and bustle at Exeter Central where we stopped for ten minutes or so, the loudspeakers on the platform telling us to change here for Dawlish and the southern towns, but we were soon on our way again, this time close to the wilds of Dartmoor with its barren hills and bare trees, and at the end of the afternoon we pulled gently into Okehampton. We gathered our bags from the luggage rack and walked down the corridor to the open door to the platform. Okehampton was a sleepy station whose only claim to fame seemed to be that it was the junction for the branch line on which we were to continue our explorations.

As the long cream and red monster huffed its way out of the station and into the darkening distance we crossed the platform to another smaller train, this time in the green livery of British Railways, which waited, four carriages behind a much smaller engine; small puffs of steam came from beneath each carriage and we seemed to be the only people on the platform. Opening one of the doors, we climbed aboard and stashed our luggage in one of the rear compartments, having been warned that the train would split at Tower Hill, the first two carriages taking the northern line to Bude while the remainder of the train would continue south-westwards to Padstow. Since there was an hour before its scheduled departure, my mother asked one of the men in uniform if we could leave our bags on the train while we went for a cup of tea.
“You’m leave ‘em where ‘e likes, m’dear. They’m quite safe,” he encouraged, as he walked down the platform.

As a ten-year-old who had never been anywhere, I couldn’t understand a word he said, but it was fine and we climbed the steps up the bridge and crossed the lines to the station cafeteria where we had a rather watery cup of British Railways tea served in apparently indestructible white china.

At just before six o’clock we climbed back into the train. Outside, the gas-lamps were already giving off their steamy, greenish glow, and the quiet countryside was disappearing into the approaching night. With a few creaks and groans the train began to move and soon we were slowly chugging our way along a winding track with the sound of the river Dart chattering away somewhere below us; we seemed to be virtually the only people on the train. The night air smelled of all the scents of spring: we could almost see the catkins on the trees and feel the whisps of mist which clung to the lower slopes of the moor.

Small country stations marked points of hesitation in our journey, and I remember clearly the brighter and larger appearance of Launceston as we stopped there for a few minutes. Seemingly in the middle of nowhere, dark now, we shunted back and forth at Tower Hill, and then we were on our way once more and into the unexplored wilds of North Cornwall as night finally wrapped us in our own little cocoon of electric light reflected in the dark window-panes of the compartment. I was tired and sleepy with all the excitement of the day, but I remember well the three stations where we stopped. I remember the strange names they bore: Egloskerry, Tresmeer, Otterham.

At Otterham, we gathered up our bags, opened the door into the quiet night, and stepped down onto the still platform. Owls hooted somewhere nearby and small insects buzzed around the gas-lamps as we walked slowly towards the station buildings where a small man in tweeds and a battered pork-pie hat waited for us. The three of us made up the entire complement of humanity on this rather deserted and lonely platform. The stranger ambled up to us and took our bags.
“You’m bin ‘itch-‘ikin’, m’dear?” he asked my mother as we walked into the building. For a moment she looked surprised – lost for an answer. Perhaps, like me, she didn’t understand him either.
“Oh, you mean ‘hitch-hiking’”, she laughed as we walked out of the building towards the green Austin Somerset which waited just outside the station. “No, why do you ask that?”
“Well,’ he said, ‘train’s late. I’m waitin for ‘e for more ‘n twenny minutes,” he grinned as he threw the bags in the boot and opened the doors for us.

As we drove off into the unlit night and down endless winding lanes of apparently empty countryside, past Tresparrat Posts, and other little hamlets whose names I completely forget, I nodded with sleep in the leather back-seat. Our journey, the first of many for me, had come to an end, and with it came the end of one of the most memorable days of my childhood, but one which I would never forget and which I would always strive to repeat.

The End of the Day

Outside all was quiet and peaceful; the garden slept in the deep heat of a summer afternoon and the pool burbled quietly away. Birds flew in and out of the sprinklers in the herbaceous borders, bees buzzed quietly in and out of the flowers, and the big dog slept against the sliding glass doors to the patio.

Inside he was putting the finishing touches to a painting, his thoughts far away as he brushed at the canvas. Although she had been dead less than five months, suddenly, the silence was broken by the sound of her voice calling him repeatedly from somewhere inside the house. The dog immediately rose up, skidding on the tiled floor, his hackles standing on end; he looked into the darkened house and barked softly. The painter got up from his painting and went to investigate – but there was nothing to be seen or found.

Some days later, after a bad night when he had lain awake for a long time worrying about this and that detail of the future, he heard, through the mists of sleep, the phone ringing. He looked at his watch; it was only 6.45 a.m. and so he curled up again and went back to sleep. At nine he woke up, stretched, and reached for the morning pill, realising from the congestion in his chest, that he had to get to the nebulizer quickly.

He staggered into the living room, loaded the nebulizer, switched it on, and put it to his mouth to take the first relieving breaths of the morning. Suddenly, his mouth was filled with something horrid – something that struggled and moved around, and eventually bit him quite hard in the left cheek. He coughed and spluttered and spat the offending thing out on the floor. It was a spider which had found its way into the mouthpiece of the nebulizer and now lay, dying, on the floor.

He paid it little heed at the time, finishing off his time on the machine before going to make the customary morning tea. His mouth felt a little numb and vaguely unpleasant, but he soon forgot about it as he went about the chores of the day – one of which was to see who had phoned so early in the morning.

It wasn’t until much later in the morning that he became aware that his mouth was still tingly and rather numb, and he idly wondered why. He walked out to the kitchen and started the washing-up from the day before, listening with one ear to the radio which blared out its usual hash of reggae and popular music of the day, interspersed with the occasional news bulletin and the same adverts that had been spewing forth for the last two weeks from the speakers. He didn’t really have the radio on to listen to it, more for the company as he went about his solitary day.

It was after lunch that he first realised there might be something wrong. His mouth still felt a little numb, but nothing to worry about, but now he felt how the glands under his arms were enlarged, and a kind of drowsiness crept over him in waves. He stood up from the computer where he was working and took a few steps towards the kitchen with the intention of making a cup of tea. Suddenly, without warning, he found himself lying flat on the floor of the passage. The door frames seemed to be all the wrong way up and the windows, where he could see them, were all upside-down. He was quite conscious yet he knew that he couldn’t move, couldn’t even reach for the phone in his pocket, let alone remember what numbers to dial. He lay like that for some time. The dog came and snuffled at his face, eventually lying down beside him because he understood that, somehow, his master couldn’t move properly. The only thing he could do was to lie there and see that no harm came to him. Outside the silence of the midday persisted.

After what seemed like a long time, he was able to get up again and walk shakily to the bedroom, where he lay down on the bed. The dog followed him, licking his face and snuffling against him, but to no avail, because the dog couldn’t speak English, or any other language. He only understood that something was wrong with his master, and he wasn’t going to move.

Some time later, in the mid afternoon it must have been, he found enough strength to get to the kitchen and switch on the kettle. His mouth was no longer numb and he was beginning to feel better; but hardly had he found a cup and poured the hot water into it on top of the teabag, than he was once more overcome with giddiness and tiredness, and it was all he could do to get as far as the bed and fall, noisily, on top of it. The dog followed him, knowing in his way that there was something wrong, but being quite unable to deal with it.

He must have slept for an hour or so, and when he woke up the tea was still by the bed and the dog was lying peacefully on the floor. He struggled up and took a couple of mouthfuls of cold tea and then lay back, exhausted, on the pillows. The room had begun to come and go again in his vision. One moment it was dark and quiet, the next it seemed full of light and he could hear many voices just outside his ability to understand what they were trying to say. These voices the dog couldn’t hear.

He must have lain there for several hours, because the next time he opened his eyes, the light had faded to twilight and the evening was well advanced. He had a vague memory of the phone ringing somewhere in the distance, but he wasn’t quite sure where, or what he had done with the instrument which he normally carried with him. The dog was now restless, because it was past his time for eating, and he was hungry, but the man on the bed could not find the energy to get as far as the kitchen and dig out the food.

Later, when he awoke again, it was fully dark outside, and the whole house was in darkness. He realised, with a certain sort of alarm, that he couldn’t really feel his feet, and that other extremities seemed to have gone to sleep. The dog remained curled up at the side of the bed, not wanting to leave his master for even one minute. He tried to lean over and touch the dog, to ruffle its head and say that all was OK, but he couldn’t do it. With a kind of resignation, he realised that perhaps he would never be able to get up off this bed again – but somehow it didn’t seem to matter.

The voices were coming nearer, but he still couldn’t understand what they were trying to say. At times the room seemed full of light and he could see faint shapes moving somewhere beyond his vision, but he soon gave up trying to see them or to understand what they were saying. He must have dozed off again because when he woke later, it seemed that the night was well advanced. He heard, in the distance, the sound of a clock chiming three. And then, suddenly, the room was filled with light and he could see people he hadn’t seen for many years and he could almost understand what they were trying to say. It was then that he remembered the spider and the calls in the quiet afternoon, and he lay back, exhausted, and allowed the people and the room to gradually swallow him up into their strange embrace. He breathed his last, stertorous breath, at 3.30 a.m. and then lay back and surrendered to those who had come to fetch him.

Three days later the cleaning lady came in and found him, dead on the bed, the dog still lying faithfully at his side on the bedside mat. She let out a piercing shriek and ran for help. The dog didn’t move because as long as his master was still there, this was his place and he was not going to forsake it for anyone.

Two hours later, the ambulance had come and gone on its last trip, and a friendly neighbour coaxed the old dog to his final resting place at the local vet. The past was now over – finished. Nothing mattered any more.

The Haunted House

In the autumn of 1970 my mother and I moved into a large house in Parktown; although not as ostentatious as some of the houses built by the Randlords in the last decade of the 19^th century, built in 1897 it was a very solid Victorian of typical appearance, single storey with gables to the front and one side joined by a covered veranda, and set in an acre of what had once been lush garden. It had an enormous lounge with a fireplace, an interleading music room looking onto the front stoep, a large dining room with a most interesting arched stained glass window which opened to the lounge, and several of the external windows were of etched glass. The lounge and music rooms both had intricate pressed-steel ceilings with a deep cornice and in the centre of each ceiling was a magnificent chandelier made of hand-blown Venetian glass. The floors, which at first glance appeared to be covered by lino, were made of the most intricate marquetry in a delicate pattern. It was one of the loveliest houses I have ever lived in.

The occurrences started as soon as we began moving in. The removal lorry was parked in the back garden and I gave directions to the men as each item of furniture was removed and taken into the house; in the meantime my mother was hanging pictures in the lounge and making sure each piece of furniture ended up in the right place in the right room. She was knocking a nail into the wall next to the stained glass window by the lounge fireplace and opening to the dining room but the nail refused to remain in position and kept on falling out. She clearly heard a voice behind her saying “What are you doing?” Thinking that I was in the room and had asked the question, she turned round to find herself alone in the house. When she looked out of the dining room window I was still outside with the removal lorry.

After I had been able to restore the living areas to their previous splendour (they had been painted in the most terrible colours by the previous occupants), we would sit by the fire in the lounge in the evenings quietly listening to the radio or to music on the hi-fi. We had at that time two cats which were never far away and these would curl up in front of the fire on the settee. However, sometimes, the cats, ever aware of their surroundings, would refuse to remain in the room; their hackles would rise and their fur would stand on end suddenly and, peering into the corner in the direction of the stained glass window, they would suddenly run out of the room. Sometimes if I looked up slightly I could see at the edge of my vision, a couple standing by this window and silently watching us. They were not malevolent, but they were definitely there. As time went by we became quite accustomed to sharing the sitting room with this nameless couple and so really ceased to notice them.

The front door opened into a large entrance hall next to the music room; the hall then led through an interior door into a passage which ran the length of the house between the living areas and the bedrooms to the door into the dining room. Outside the front door there was an electric bell which connected with a bell-pull in the main bedroom; neither of these appliances worked any longer and had probably failed with old age. However, sometimes and for no apparent reason, they would ring. My mother used her bedroom (she slept in the large front room) as a sewing room and often she would become aware of a woman in a long pink dress slipping through the closed front door and disappearing down the passage.

The piano was situated in the music room at an angle which permitted me to see both the front stoep and through the door into the entrance hall. Late one night I was trying to get my fingers round a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody when, suddenly, I became aware of someone standing behind my right shoulder; it seemed he was urging me to let him show me the right way to handle the music. Afraid and ‘spooked’ I jumped up, turned out the light and went to bed.

Even friends of ours who were avowed sceptics and who denied the existence of the supernatural would often refuse to stay in the sitting room because they felt uncomfortable there; they felt as if someone was watching them.

When we had lived in the house for about two years I was introduced to a clairvoyant; he was a strange elderly man who lived in a very grand flat in the centre of Johannesburg. Wearing a copper-coloured corduroy suit over a dark red jersey, I visited him for the first time one winter night. When I knocked on his door he called from inside the flat and told me to wait a minute. From the other side of the door, in which there was no peep-hole, he told me that I was tall and blond and was dressed in a mixture of coppery brown and red. I was amazed, but was even more surprised when, as we sat across the table from each other, he described accurately the house in which we lived, even going so far as to detail the stained glass window which seemed to be the centre of these ‘happenings’.

He also told me about the two people who stood by the window from time to time: apparently they were a couple who had lived in the house about 1920 and who had had some very memorable experience in that room, hence their returning there quite frequently.

There was also, from time to time, a terrible smell of death which hovered around the second bedroom from the front door; on conducting some research I found out that an elderly man had been killed in the house by robbers who believed he had hidden a large sum of money under the floor. This happened in 1956, or thereabouts.

Say what you will, houses collect the feelings and scents of those who have lived in them, a bit like a piece of clothing absorbs the scent of the person to whom it belongs. Sometimes these spirits are downright evil and need to be removed so that we can enjoy peace but on other occasions they are merely the ghosts of those who once were who return to visit a place of importance to them from time to time. They mean no harm and we should learn to live with them.

Real Estate in South Africa

For more information about properties for sale in the Cape, go to: www.countryplaces.co.za

A Few of my Paintings (for those who want to see them!)

Riversong Oaks

Muratie

Cosmos

Richtersveld

Kolmanskop doorway

Evening train (Kenya)

Crossroads

Red Alder tree in our garden

If you want to see more, just let me know and I will post them with titles.

WHERE WILL YOU BE WHEN JZ BECOMES PRESIDENT?

(I wrote this article in September 2006, but it is interesting to look back now on things as they were then.....)

I must appeal to all your readers, as ordinary Sethafricans, many of whom no doubt think that ‘circumstance’ is spelt ‘sirCUMstance’, to help us get rid of the self-servers in our government who invariably put themselves above both the law and the will of the people. While I must take off my proverbial hat to our financial moguls, who alone seem to be doing the right thing and keeping their noses clean into the bargain, I am thinking of the likes of our Ministress of Health who insists on spouting absurdities publicly (and looks like some sort of a smiling root tuber beneath an acrylic tea-cosy), her predecessor who is now Ministress of Foreign Affairs (please note most of these ladies have given themselves hyphenated names to announce their importance), our good Ms Fraser-Moleketi (hyphenated, of course) who manages to use a great many words in saying very little (bullshit baffles brains), the ridiculous antics of one Tony Yengeni who is enjoying the luxury of prison just 20 kms from myself, and the frightening (if not laughable) Jacob Zuma with his perennial rent-a-crowd and endless court appearances. Not only does he spout inanities publicly – not his fault, I suppose, because he was somewhere else when education was being dished out – but he has the nerve to invent wicked little ditties about machine guns and the lack of shame to actually get up and sing these songs in public.

Does he realise what will actually happen if he manages to make the Supreme Court go away, enters the race for State President, and finally gets elected?

I can tell you: the majority of Sethafricans will pack up and go to New Zealand, or somewhere far enough away that they will not have to witness the catastrophe that this country will rapidly become. While graft and corruption in high places is a problem at the moment, it will, under his presidency, become the norm; we shall be able to achieve nothing unless the right palm is greased with the correct amount of cash. To this end we are probably doing the right thing to keep our famous Ministress of Health because all we shall need in order to guarantee our safety after sex is a shower to wash away any little viruses we may have contracted. We will safely be able to do away with the judiciary (they will in any case have left, if they have any sense) because, with large enough crowds in the streets, we shall be able to disregard their findings with impunity.

You think that things are bad at the moment? Baby, you haven’t lived.

I can assure you of one thing: if Cde Zuma becomes the next president, my bags will be packed and I will be joining the queues at the airports (we don’t know what they will be called because they keep changing their names to remind us of various little political upheavals) for any flight, anywhere but here. His ascendancy to the presidency will herald the commencement of a new era in this country: the Age of the Comrade. Any old Tom, Dick, or Themba, will be able to seat himself in a palatial office and become a millionaire overnight, whilst the poor and dispossessed throng the streets with their begging bowls, if they haven’t died of AIDS, that is.

When P.W.Botha warned us of a future ‘too terrible to contemplate’ I think he must have meant just this; lucky man, dishonoured and forgotten in his house in Wilderness, he will probably have had the good fortune to die before his awful prediction comes true.

But seriously, before it’s too late, lets get rid of these mamparas from our halls of government; lets show the rest of the world that we are indeed a thinking and responsible people (even though we live in Africa), and, for pity’s sake, lets try to shut the stable door BEFORE the horse has bolted.

Otherwise, our future will be too terrible to contemplate.

The End of Innocence

Where Was I on June 16th 1976? The End of Innocence.

On that fateful day in 1976 I was living in the Northern suburbs of Johannesburg and working as a medical rep in the Jeppe St area, calling on all the specialists up and down the street. I had been living in Johannesburg since 1968, when I arrived on holiday from UK and simply never went home! In fact South Africa was such a wonderful place in those days that the thoughts of going back to the dreariness of suburban England with its memories of Harold Wilson creeping onto our television screens like some ante-deluvian mollusc and delivering a speech through his nose were too awful to contemplate.

Although my generation, who had never been further than the boundaries of their own towns, decried South Africa as a police state and were all consummately knowledgeable about our every misdemeanour, often refused even to discuss this country with me, and although we lived here in the shadow of Apartheid, South Africa was a wonderful place to be. I can hear the murmurs off-stage of ‘only if you were white’ and the echoes of today’s trades unionists warbling about ‘The Struggle’ and about how dreadfully the blacks suffered at the time, but let me tell you: unemployment was much lower than it is today and relatively few people ever went to bed hungry.

Anyway, the purpose of this article is not to raise the issue of the unfairness of the system or the behind-the-scenes brutality of the Bureau of State Security (the head of which was an erstwhile client of mine); it is perhaps to debunk some of the outpouring of white guilt that we have seen in the last ten years, and to give the lie to those who mistakenly equate Apartheid with the Holocaust. We were not afraid to speak our minds (although only those of us who courted disaster on a regular basis would have shot off our mouths too loudly or too publicly) nor were we afraid to live our lives as we thought best.

Coming from a relatively liberal background, I had always seen and treated people as people and not judged them purely by the colour of their skins; for the first couple of years in this country we even had maids – until we became tired of being constantly ripped off by them and their families. I personally had many friends who were ‘not the right colour’ and was a frequent illegal visitor to Soweto where I enjoyed a freedom of spirit and a generosity which was certainly lacking in the white areas. The same people often came to my house unhindered, joined in our merrymaking, and were free to come and go as they chose.

However, all that came to an end from June 16th 1976 onward. By the end of that day my house had become more of a refugee centre than a home as cousins and siblings of friends arrived begging for asylum from the madness which had gripped Soweto. They were not politicos; they were simply children who ran away from what was beginning to look more and more like a war-zone; they were running to somewhere where they would be safe.

Perhaps June 16th 1976 was really the end of innocence for so many of us; almost overnight everything became politicised, from the language you spoke at home to the colour of your skin. Although the Apartheid system had imposed a whole raft of legislation about where you could and could not go, depending on what colour you were, we had always been relatively free to go where we chose and associate with whom we chose – provided, of course, we didn’t fornicate with them in the streets! I soon learned that public fornication was limited to the pillars of society of the day who would run across the border to Swaziland every few weeks to assuage their wicked desires! Let any visitor to Mantenga Falls show me a car with a registration number that did not belong in Randfontein, Pretoria, Krugersdorp, or Ventersdorp, and I would truly be surprised.

My decision to leave Johannesburg permanently (and never to this day to go back) was made first thing in the morning on June 17th 1976 when I had to duck into several doorways to avoid volleys of rifle fire in the central city. I made up my mind there and then that nowhere was worth that kind of sacrifice and so, very shortly afterward, I flung a few things in the car and left permanently for Cape Town. It was the civilised thing to do.

Since that time, despite whatever has happened over the years, we as a society have become more and more politicised; we have grown further and further apart; we have been divided into ‘us’ and ‘them’. Yes, for the sake of peace and the future of this country, those of us with any sense voted ‘yes’ in the referendum of 1992, and peace reigned, but it turned out to be a peace which allowed a small group to rise and become super-rich while their compatriots (they would say ‘comrades’) continued to suffer; it was a peace which heralded the dreaded ‘affirmative action’ whereby those with the knowledge and experience were forced into early retirement or exile whilst those without either of the former rose to prominence in our country; it was a peace which paved the way for crime to blossom and corruption to flourish, a peace which turned our South African world on its ear; the age of innocence ended for all of us on June 16th 1976 and that is why the day should be remembered with sadness – nostalgia for values which have now become lost and totally forgotten.

Freedom was certainly anything but free.

Child Molestation

Our Favourite Hobby-Horse

Well, here we go again! On the e-tv news tonight (19/6/06) there was a story about two eleven-year-old girls in Cape Town who were picked up by a paedophile. Yes, you got it – Child Molestation par excellence. It seems that the great and heinous dereliction of duty was on the part of the SAPS who, despite the matter having been reported to them, have so far done nothing.

Now, if I understand correctly, the complaint was lodged by these two delightful children, not because they had been molested (e-tv’s word not mine), but in the end because one girl had been paid R5 more than the other for her services.

It is quite clear, therefore, that these children were not complaining about the terrible things done to them or the amount of physical suffering they were made to endure, but the cause of their complaint was simply that they had not been fairly paid for their services.

I can only say that, under the circumstances, the SAPS have my full support in ignoring the complaint altogether.

Child molestation is South Africa’s favourite hobby-horse, and, it seems, one that will be flogged way past the point of death. These two girls knew full well what they were getting into and, it seems, were none the worse for the experience; they were quite happy to accept money for indecent acts and the illegal use of their bodies. The only reason that the story ever saw the official light of day was that one was paid slightly more than the other.

It is high time that we re-evaluated what we consider to be a child; these were not children in the sense of the word that you or I might understand; they were prostitutes, plain and simple. They were quite prepared to sell themselves in return for a small financial reward and were not in the least concerned how their story would impact on the life of the perpetrator – the lonely man who picked them up, took them home, no doubt bathed them (I sincerely hope so), had his wicked way with them, and then paid them. This scenario had not happened once but quite a number of times without any complaint.

Now, bleeding hearts, come out of the woodwork and start chaining yourselves to railings and waving placards in front of police stations complaining that the police are not doing their jobs. Whilst I am no proponent of sex with under-age children, I am certainly not so silly as to believe that the guilty party is always the adult. In this case, the ‘children’ should be found guilty of entrapment and engaging in under-age prostitution and should be punished accordingly.

Let’s get it right just for once and allow the police to get on with the job of preventing real crime and arresting real criminals.

The Curse of Modern Telecommunications

In these times of high-speed communication in all spheres there is one system that makes all our lives difficult: the Automated Voice Answering system.

In a country with a remarkably high rate of unemployment, one would think it sensible to employ human beings to answer telephones, especially when most large concerns now have these awful things called ‘call centres’. However, it seems that this is not the case. The greatest form of frustration that most large organisations subject us to goes like this:

You dial the number (generally prefixed by 0860) and, after two rings, a machine picks up the line and says:

“Good day; you are now connected to Grabitallandspring Banking. If you would like this message in English please press one, in Afrikaans press two, in Zulu press three, in Xhosa press four, in Sotho press five, in Shangaan press six, in Ndebele press seven, in Pedi press eight, in Tswana press nine, in Siswati press ten” and so-on.

You press a number. The machine begins again:

“For account enquiries please press one, for debit orders press two, for stop orders press three, for investment banking press four, for savings accounts press five, for transmission accounts press six,” etc. You press a number.

The machine continues:

“If you know the number of the extension to which you wish to speak please press it now; if your enquiry is of a general nature please press one, for our accounts department please press two, or hold for the next available operator.”

Uncertain of what to do now, you hold. The machine once again begins to speak:

“For security purposes this call is being recorded.” Some sort of canned muzak now takes over the line, punctuated every now and then with “Your call is important to us so please hold for the next available operator”. You wait. The voice begins again:

“Grabitallandspring Bank offers you the best and widest option of home loans available on today’s market.” You hold.

“Did you know,” the machine continues, “that over 500 000 people subscribe to our on-line newsletter explaining how to exhaust the public’s patience without us paying one single employee or using one extra man-hour?” The muzak is back for a few moments.

“Your call is important to us, so please hold for the next available operator.”

Nine minutes (yes, I’ve counted them) have now passed and I have yet to speak to a human being; I have almost forgotten why I phoned this number in the first place. Eventually, if I keep the connection open long enough and if I haven’t run screaming into the street, a human being whispers in an almost inaudible and usually incomprehensible voice “You’re speaking to Thandi; how can I help you?”

“Could you please speak up; I can hardly hear.” The voice continues to whisper and you press the phone into your ear so hard that it nearly comes out the other side of your head.

“I need to know to what address you are sending your statements because I have not received one for some months now.”

“What is your account number?”

“123456789”

“Please hold.” The muzak is back, the advertising is back; you can almost hear the tape machine whirring. Minutes pass before the line clicks and the voice once more begins to whisper.

“What is your identity number?”

“I’m sorry; I can’t hear you. Please speak up.” The voice repeats the question in a slightly louder whisper. Perhaps it is you who are going deaf?

“What is your identity number?”

“123456789”

“Please hold.” The line clicks and you are back with the muzak and the advertising. Two minutes pass.

“What is your address?”

You give the address and once again the muzak cuts in. Two minutes pass.

“Thankyou for holding. What sort of account is it?”

You have now been on the phone for at least fifteen minutes and have achieved nothing; the person at the other end of the line is probably in Calcutta because wages are lower there and the only body gaining from this exercise in frustration is Telkom, so, in sheer frustration and annoyance, you slam down the phone and decide it would be better for you to drive thirty kilometres to the nearest branch where you can wait in line and, eventually, speak to a living, breathing, understanding human being who at least knows what he/she is doing.

You may consider this absurd, but I can assure you it’s not. What you have read above is a verbatim transcript of a call to a well-known bank in an effort to obtain a statement on a particular account. To date no such statement has been provided; I have taken approximately five years off my lifespan, and Telkom has become immeasurable richer.

Perhaps we should all go to Mauritius and let the machines take over our lives back home; who knows, they may even learn to talk to each other?

Tribal Customs and the Spread of Aids

At last someone has managed to hit the nail on the head (Why AIDS cases are so high in Africa – Mukaronda). A great deal of hot air and paper have been expended on various campaigns which hope to do something to arrest the spread of this terrible virus, and so far without success. It is heartening to read that someone has indeed tried to tell us that one of the main reasons these campaigns have failed is because African men are supposed to enjoy more than one partner at a time and that the use of condoms is strictly against cultural principles.

So now we have the main reason that these campaigns have failed; we have the cause but seem to be far away from any kind of solution. If you look back in history you will see just how short-sighted and foolish many of these customs are (the story of Nongause is a perfect example) and how they are at total odds with life as it is today. However, changing the beliefs and mindset of an entire continent is going to be very difficult indeed.

We have been regaled on a daily basis with the events of the Zuma rape trial and, while I have no axe to grind for either side, the incredible ignorance of both Zuma and the complainant is staggering. The judge has tried to apply European thinking to both parties, but I feel this is wrong. The complainant was probably utterly unaware that unprotected sex with any partner could expose her to a fresh infection because there are many forms of the virus; she probably thought that, once infected, she had nothing further to lose; Zuma’s attempt at hiding within cultural norms and thinking is also completely foolish, although he would not be at such risk as the complainant, unless the activity in which he indulged was so strenuous as to cause him injury. In any case, he had the good sense to shower afterwards! Ho hum!

In a country where the erstwhile Minister of Health advocated a diet of beetroot and African potato in preference to anti-retrovirals, despite the fact that the latter have been proven to be beneficial in lengthening the life-span of those infected with the virus, while the former is nothing more than a home remedy, speaks for itself.

We Europeans have learned, over many centuries, that certain behaviour is not only highly dangerous but also total anathema to today’s way of life. Once upon a time we also engaged in sacrifices and believed in appeasing our ancestors; the ancient Egyptians were always buried with their most treasured possessions and they even had food in their sarcophagi in the belief that they would need it to sustain them on their journey to the afterlife. We have come a long way, but it has taken us thousands of years to do so, and to believe that a people who were not exposed to the same history as ourselves could change their customs literally overnight is absurd.

As with the people who followed Nongause’s advice and slaughtered their cattle, bringing upon themselves terrible consequences, so with tribal custom and modern medicine. The one simply serves to negate the other and will continue to do so until a sufficient number of people have died, the race is decimated and people begin to wake up and see that perhaps a change in custom and behaviour is necessary in order to solve the problem.

Hopefully, Mukaronda can show the way and start to effect the changes in thinking that are long overdue. Only when one has had the misfortune to watch someone close die of this terrible syndrome can you begin to urge the living to do something positive to save themselves, and that something, unfortunately, consists of a great deal more than merely resorting to home remedies and ‘boereraat’. There is no place for ignorance in these enlightened times of 2006.

The Wild West in South Africa

Democracy notwithstanding, we still live in the Wild West.

For those of you who have read and who remember your history lessons The Great Trek took place in the early part of the 19th century. As I understand it, the Trek took place because the stout patriarchal Afrikaner was loath to live under the unwanted yoke of British law and order, so in order to continue his lifestyle of bible in one hand and gun in the other, he upped stumps and sought pastures new out of reach of the stifling authorities of the day.

Despite many intervening years which should have acted as a poultice on this wound of unruliness, it would seem that old habits do indeed die hard.

The story I am about to tell all took place, in the Cape, between February and May this year.

On two occasions since my arrival here in 1968 I have had the somewhat chilling experience of driving along and seeing one of my rear wheels overtaking me. The first time I had this experience was in Durban on a late afternoon in spring when I had just fetched my car from the garage which had repaired the rear brakes. I was in the usual heavy traffic in West St when suddenly I saw one of my rear wheels pass me on the left and flatten a queue of people waiting for a bus.

The second occurrence was in February this year; I had just retrieved my vehicle from the garage which had repaired the rear brakes and was on my way home. Suddenly, in the middle of the N7, the left rear wheel and half-shaft of the vehicle bounced past me, crossed the road and sailed over a fence into a field of ostriches.

That was on a Friday; the towing service was called and the vehicle was returned to the garage responsible. However, they refused to accept delivery and instead instructed that the car be sent to an engineering shop a few blocks away. The engineering shop refused to accept the vehicle and so, when I went in search of same on the Monday morning, I found the car in the yard belonging to the local scrap dealers who are also the towing service. I paid for the tow and returned to the garage responsible for the repairs and suggested that they sort the matter out.

The following morning I learned that the car had been taken back to the engineering shop and, when I asked for an estimate for the repairs, I was told that these had already been finished, although I had given no authorisation for any work to proceed. However, because of other damage which occurred when the wheel parted from the vehicle, the car could not be started.

We now jump about six weeks to just before Easter when I once more retrieved the repaired vehicle from the garage. After driving the 22 kms back home, I discovered that the other rear wheel was overheating and that there seemed to be a problem with the gear linkage and the brakes on that side.

Another mechanic was called and ten days later the matter was sorted out. Although I had paid for the original repairs and the towing, no invoice had been received from the engineers.

At the end of April I received a phone call from the engineers asking why they had not been paid. I asked them to fax me an invoice and promised payment in due course. The invoice arrived almost immediately and was so enormous as to warrant further investigation. I immediately faxed a letter to the engineers asking them to explain how they could charge me more than three times the amount that the final garage had been paid for the same work to the opposite rear wheel. There was no reply.

Once more, last week the engineers phoned and asked when they could expect payment; I referred them to my letter, which they claimed not to have received. When I checked the fax number in the phone book with them, it appeared that this number was incorrect and I was given another number to which I immediately faxed the letter. Their invoice bore no phone numbers at all. I then made an appointment to go in and discuss the matter with the owner of the engineering business last Friday.

When I arrived there was no owner in sight; however, after a phone call he duly appeared. It was abundantly clear that he had not read the letter (he probably couldn’t read English anyway) and soon became even clearer that he had no interest in its contents whatsoever. His only interest was in being paid the full amount immediately.

When I attempted to discuss the matter he simply walked away, shouting over his shoulder that he had parked directly behind my vehicle in his yard and that I could not leave his premises until the amount had been settled in full. Any attempt to discuss the matter further or to remonstrate with him was in vain.

So there I stood, in a cold and windy shed at the end of the industrial area, without any means of departure, unable to offer him a cheque because he had made it quite plain that this was not acceptable, unable to pay with a credit card because he had no facilities with which to accept this, and with a mere R40 in my pocket.

I should be grateful, of course, that he didn’t hold me at gunpoint; I quite expected he would. Eventually I was able to talk my way out of the situation with one of his employees, who kindly removed the vehicle blocking my exit and allowed me to leave.

It seems that the old saying ‘The more things change the more they stay the same’ applies here. I am now laying charges of extortion and demanding money with menaces with the local police. It seems we are still living in the Wild West and that the old story about only those who couldn’t read crossing the Orange River was just that: only a story.