I walked down Jan Smuts Avenue in Irene this afternoon, past the giant regal gum tree someone had nailed a “Paintball!” sign to, down past the Weyers’ home, the Twin Rivers Estate, beneath the enormous oaks, poplars and plane trees that disperse shade and light, settling an air of peace over anyone who walks or drives slowly enough to absorb it.
Down to the little bridge crossing the creek, I stopped about ten meters before it as the trees create a dense cover. The ladies my mum and I pick up when we are driving often speak about the skelms* who steal their money or food, so I did a u-turn and headed back up the quiet road to the Jan Smuts property. It is such a place of peace, this Irene; mum says that’s what the word means, peace. This is the land that the former Prime Minister, Jan Smuts, lived on. The beautiful old corrugated iron house was originally built in India, but they dissembled it and brought it here, to this farm between Pretoria and Johannesburg. It is now a monument, housing the original furniture, his library and herbarium. If you’re feeling brave you can follow the Ou Baas trail up the koppie and do a loop to the entrance of the property. If you’re feeling brave or can build up a sound wall to the locals who warn of robbery and rape in these fair hills.
There are magnificent trees on the grounds – many indigenous ones planted by General Smuts, as well as oak, pomegranate, a variety of eucalypts and majestic pines that shed their needles and cones and the fine fragrance of their oils. I walked over this soft brown carpet towards the koppie, and then lay around the Place of Quiet, a shelter built in honour of Jan Smuts and the land he loved. The view from this monument to the north looks onto the next koppie, unfortunately now covered with Tuscan McMansions in the spanking new suburb of Cornwall Hill, or Irene Farm Villages, a bitter reminder that the suburbanites have now destroyed the farm and village surrounds.
The stately gum and pine trees create a bit of a filter to these vulgar developments, and I wonder how much longer there will be any free land here? Will any of the residents ever protest the rapid hemming in of the veld by these ‘burbs that blare “MONEY”!!! and must be a magnet for the violent crime wave that is sweeping the area?
At the border of the Smuts land, down below towards the creek and the graveyard of the Boers held in the British concentration camp, a small troupe of monkeys explored the pine cone needles. There are few creatures left here – some snakes, tortoise, a few buck and some lovely bird life. It is blissful to have a portion of nature to retreat to in the metallic intensity that is Gauteng.
Last evening I sat on the wall that encloses my mother’s laundry to watch the show – the spread of lightning from the south and west at sunset, creating clouds of palest dusky pink against a granite sky, some soft blue highlights flecking through. It was an epic storm that chased me inside, my beer and biltong hastily finished as the big drops hurled themselves down.
Today again, slate grey clouds came from the south and the air turned cold after a perfect Highveld day, an amicable 29 degrees. The first giant globules shattered on the brick driveway, and then it came down in sheets, massive drops, driving down. I love it, this, everything in Africa so big, booming thunder and lightning that cracks you out of your seat. I love how nature reminds us of her magnitude by the throaty booms that rattle the windowpanes, make you freeze for a moment, instantaneously grateful that you have shelter.
To the south and east people will be flooded again, shacks washed away, hopefully no-one dies tonight, but that’s unlikely in Gauteng.
There’s a brutality that exists here, in the elements, in the hearts of some of the people, which lives side by side some terrible vulnerability, like the beggars at the traffic lights, some blind some burnt, as I say, a terrible vulnerability that nonetheless seems to survive the fumes and fury of a city on its own private mission, lit up by skyfire and shaken by the surge of nature’s power. Tender deep inside and skin deep, we mere humans, like ants, on the surface of a rough African skin. Home again.
*thugs/crooks
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