2nd September 2012

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2^nd September 2012

I am in a warm rondavel at Margsol, L’s family property – a charming guesthouse built at the turn of the twentieth century between Nelspruit and White River, hidden behind mango and cabbage plantations, the only hint of it an avenue of mighty poplar trees. This is where Eugene Marais wrote the Soul of the Ape, wonderful refuge from the world out there. 

I drove today from Wakkerstroom where I met my beloved for our fortnightly cocoon of love, rest and good food. I had driven through the coal belt of Carolina in Friday’s dusk, and noticed the charming old buildings as I entered Volksrust, once a bastion of Boer life. As you emerge from the dip beneath the railway bridge, classic old buildings of colonial South Africa line the streets – the general stores and shopfront homes of those days long gone. Like most South African country towns now, it looks shabby but I couldn’t quite make out the extent of it in the fading light. Volksrust was pumping as people adjusted their wigs and skinny jeans for a hot Friday night out on the town, no doubt.

Like most of the towns I drive through in my numerous travels around Limpopo and Mpumalanga, the signage is faded or non existent, or as in wretched Ermelo’s case, simply incorrect, leading me the wrong way, where even a traffic cop gave me the wrong directions. Hideous place, it has joined my lost of “towns to be avoided” ticking a few boxes like “smells appalling”, “can’t breathe here”, “visible pollution, “absence of soul”.

I finally found the correct turn to Wakkerstroom (signage clearly not a priority to the populace) and drove past the township, electrically lit up on one side and in deep darkness on the other. Like so many South African towns.

I met my beloved at a wonderful bistro in Wakkerstroom where the waitstaff  provided impeccable service as the chef got progressively shnockered and came out to chat, slurring and repeating herself. We humoured her, her blue chees and cabbage soup unsurpassed and her menu valuable currency for forgiveness, but lamented the state of her and where her addiction would inevitably take her.

The next day after an incredible breakfast of hardboiled egg salad on fresh bagels at Brie Street, another unspeakably stylish café in the two street town, we went to look for vegetables to cook for dinner. There was only cabbage and sad looking onions at the various road stalls, so my beloved suggested we head for Volksrust. He was keen to see the lovely old buildings I’d spoken of.  In the one o’clock light of Saturday, Volksrust showed itself unkempt, a latchkey kid only paid attention to for the express purposes of its residents, who appear to be profoundly disinterested in its wellbeing and upkeep. 

What a very sad state Volksrust is in – the old houses crumbling, or support for crude colourful advertisements for televisions and hire purchase furniture, cheap Chinese fashion and motor spares. Behind solid security bars in the centre of town stands an old black locomotive and signal pole – meaningful to someone who no longer lives there. In fact this was the place where the arms and ammunition for the Anglo-Boer war was delivered by rail.  A granite monument to the settlers is equally imprisoned in spiked fencing. All around is cheap stuff to buy, people trying to get a ride somewhere, people walking, month end shopping, people and unkempt urban mess everywhere.

This scenario got me wondering, what happened to the volk? What happened to the Broederbond and those who proclaimed Afrikaans’ superiority so loudly, who sang the glory of the Great Trek as a noble and honourable journey away from pale persecutors? What happened to those who built and promoted the Voortrekker monument, the rocks on the hill in Wakkerstroom celebrating 1838 – 1938 : why have they let the rural heartland go to ruin? Just about every South African town looks like this – as id people live there who have no sense of ownership of it, and no investment in its future. It is for NOW and only now. If it falls down, fuck it. Walk away and build another tin shack that serves for shelter and don’t worry about the crumbling wreck of a structure that holds not only solid design and heritage, granted, heritage that may be meaningless or even drenched in resentment or pain – walk away as the desperate and opportunistic strip it of roof tiles, window and door frames, floor boards, walk away as the shell gets left to stand testimony to a people who consumed and fled.

I imagine some of these live in the heartless and disconnected security villages in Centurion or elsewhere in Gauteng.

Today was probably the most depressing day of my time here in South Africa, driving north to Kaapse Hoop through Ermelo, Carolina, Machadadorp – through the reckless, rapacious, disgraceful rape of the coal mining companies and the filthy stink they spew out – the landscapes degraded beyond repair. The townships with their endless rows of RDP housing – badly built to collapse in a few years’ time, immorally conceived by design of paucity – small plots not big enough to grow a shade-providing tree on. Roofs held down with bricks, rocks or tyres weighting them. Rows upon rows of uniform little boxes, exactly like the apartheid government built, shimmering new roofs – speak of the stunted intellects who conceived, signed them off and produced them.

I cried for the country that was once beautiful and functional, once loved, maintained and cared for. I know I know – the coal mines  were in operation then, and the gold mines were devouring the earth and poisoning the water systems them. But …

But, the litter. The lack of care and maintenance. The cheap fixes.

Underlying my deep despair was the news I heard on Friday, that the National Prosecuting Authority had charged the 270 Marikana miners with murder, using an old apartheid law of “common purpose”. I could not believe that they would do this – so blatantly nudge an insurrection into place, possibly create so much civil unrest that we go to war. Who is the person who made this outrageous and provocative call? Who is the fool who sees profit in whatever chaos erupts, because no peace or civil order can come of this. My heart is breaking at what has become of my country. And this isn’t a straight up race whinge. Far from it. The Afrikaans people that are running captive breeding and canned hunting of wild animals are equally abhorrent, as the ANC chaos makers.

It’s a terrible disregard for all life and heritage, that is underwritten by a profit motive. It really does break my heart to see what we have created.