The serialised version of Rob Burton's African Writings
PART TWO On the Road - Swaziland 1976
Wow, Bob Marley was coming to South Africa - and Jimmy Cliff. This was getting better and better. Reggae music was the sound track to my life and in the mid 1970’s Bob Marley and Cliff were big stars. It couldn’t be true. Surely these major stars would be boycotting the apartheid state where I had, in my naivety, emigrated. I was working in a large steel mill in Vanderbijlpark located in what was then known as the Transvaal.
But no, there was a poster listing other reggae musicians and they were not coming to South Africa after all, the music festival was going to be located in Mbabane the capital of Swaziland. Swaziland is the independent state surrounded, like an island, by South Africa on three sides and Mozambique to the east.
The festival was going to be held on Boxing Day, which was a stroke of luck because we had the Christmas holidays off. Very quickly seven of us organised the trip. The other Rob, my buddy, and I had befriended two British engineers who worked at the plant and as they both had cars and we didn’t it was a perfect match, despite one of them being a bit of an arsehole.
One of the downsides of being an expat is that one really doesn’t get to choose one’s friends. Just by being there you become de-facto mates with everyone and unless you are happy being Johnny No Mates then you have to put up with people you probably would not give the time of day to back at home.
One of the guys was called Rory and he was friendly, red-haired with a ruddy face, always grinning and interesting to talk to. The other guy, let’s call him Dick, was a long steak of cats piss, opinionated and a braggart. I didn’t like him much, but he had a car, and needs must.
Our wives, Janet and Heather were coming with us plus a guy I knew from back in Weston-Super-Mare called Pete. Coincidentally, when we first met him, before we left the UK, he told us he had a girlfriend in Vanderbijlpark and would be visiting her after we had arrived. It turned out that her father didn’t like him that much and had thrown him out and we had offered him a room for the rest of his stay. It also turned out that I didn’t like him much either, but that’s another story.
Mbabane was not too far away, about a five or six hour drive, some of which would be on dirt roads. We left early on Christmas day. We had packed cool boxes with Christmas dinner and beer, planning to stop somewhere en-route for our festive picnic.
I was in the lead car driven by Rory. My wife and I sat in the back seat and Pete was up front. It was a hot and dusty drive once we were off the hard top but the scenery made up for that. The ground and grass was scorched brown by the southern summer. We drove past many small compounds made up of rondavels, the traditional circular huts made from mud, dung and other local materials and topped with a thatch. A thorn bush hedge surrounded each little settlement we passed.
By lunchtime we were following a river and the bank seemed as good a place as any to enjoy our turkey and salad. We were out in the countryside and there were no signs of local habitation, but within minutes, we had a bunch of children watching us. This seems to be the norm in Africa. Stop in some out of the way place that looks uninhabited and pretty soon you will have an audience.
We let them share our food and we even risked swimming in the river. Bilharzia, a water-borne parasite, is found in the rivers and lakes of Southern Africa, but the water in the river was free flowing and we had been told that this was safe. The kids were swimming in it anyway so we did too. It was nice to cool off and have some fun.
It was during lunch that Dick’s obnoxious personality came to the fore, he started to get insufferable and loud. He was particularly rude to my wife and we had a stand up argument that almost came to blows. Our friends calmed us down and we got back on the road to the music festival.
The border crossing was uneventful as we all had British passports and we made our way into Mbabane where we found rooms in a local motel. Later that evening we went out to find food and a drink. We seemed to be the only foreigners (White) around but we ensconced ourselves in a bar that was playing good music and settled down with some cold beer.
Dick has cosied up to the bar and was chatting up a local girl and it was clear that it wasn’t going too well. He was drunk by this time and we could hear he was being his loathsome racist self. People had started to pay attention and as we were the only white faces in the place the situation could very quickly spiral out of control. We had to get him away.
As we were trying to get him out, into the street, he loudly announced that if he had a shotgun he could clear the bar of all the fucking kaffirs in it. This was incendiary language given where we were. We needed to do something so Rob and I jumped him and starting punching his lights out before the locals decided it was us that needed punching or worse. Some security turned up and they were toting shotguns. We dragged the idiot out into the street and told him to fuck off, as we didn’t want to be associated with him. I went back in an apologised to the woman as Dick disappeared into the night with Rory, and we finally retired to the safety of our motel beds.
The next morning we were faced with the astounding news the music festival was off. The festival tents were up, the site was ready, but no one, it seems, had informed the musicians that they were meant to be there. It all seemed to be some sort of major cock up or scam. We were not sure – but what now?
We sat down to have a council of war to tell Dick that his behaviour the night before was outrageous and that if it happened again we would beat the shit out of him and leave him to his fate. We also needed to decide what we were going to do with the rest of our holiday now that the music festival was a bust.
Somehow, we found out about a place called Paradise Falls that was up the river. We were told it was a popular spot for the locals to hang out to swim. So now we had a plan and it didn’t take long for us to get on the right road to the falls. Once there some local guys who were very friendly wanted to chat with us. They also wanted to share some ‘beer’ telling us it was ‘mealie beer’. [Probably umqombothi – I Googled it for this article] They were insistent that we had a drink because it was Christmas and we needed to drink.
Wow, Bob Marley was coming to South Africa - and Jimmy Cliff. This was getting better and better. Reggae music was the sound track to my life and in the mid 1970’s Bob Marley and Cliff were big stars. It couldn’t be true. Surely these major stars would be boycotting the apartheid state where I had, in my naivety, emigrated. I was working in a large steel mill in Vanderbijlpark located in what was then known as the Transvaal.
But no, there was a poster listing other reggae musicians and they were not coming to South Africa after all, the music festival was going to be located in Mbabane the capital of Swaziland. Swaziland is the independent state surrounded, like an island, by South Africa on three sides and Mozambique to the east.
The festival was going to be held on Boxing Day, which was a stroke of luck because we had the Christmas holidays off. Very quickly seven of us organised the trip. The other Rob, my buddy, and I had befriended two British engineers who worked at the plant and as they both had cars and we didn’t it was a perfect match, despite one of them being a bit of an arsehole.
One of the downsides of being an expat is that one really doesn’t get to choose one’s friends. Just by being there you become de-facto mates with everyone and unless you are happy being Johnny No Mates then you have to put up with people you probably would not give the time of day to back at home.
One of the guys was called Rory and he was friendly, red-haired with a ruddy face, always grinning and interesting to talk to. The other guy, let’s call him Dick, was a long steak of cats piss, opinionated and a braggart. I didn’t like him much, but he had a car, and needs must.
Our wives, Janet and Heather were coming with us plus a guy I knew from back in Weston-Super-Mare called Pete. Coincidentally, when we first met him, before we left the UK, he told us he had a girlfriend in Vanderbijlpark and would be visiting her after we had arrived. It turned out that her father didn’t like him that much and had thrown him out and we had offered him a room for the rest of his stay. It also turned out that I didn’t like him much either, but that’s another story.
Mbabane was not too far away, about a five or six hour drive, some of which would be on dirt roads. We left early on Christmas day. We had packed cool boxes with Christmas dinner and beer, planning to stop somewhere en-route for our festive picnic.
I was in the lead car driven by Rory. My wife and I sat in the back seat and Pete was up front. It was a hot and dusty drive once we were off the hard top but the scenery made up for that. The ground and grass was scorched brown by the southern summer. We drove past many small compounds made up of rondavels, the traditional circular huts made from mud, dung and other local materials and topped with a thatch. A thorn bush hedge surrounded each little settlement we passed.
By lunchtime we were following a river and the bank seemed as good a place as any to enjoy our turkey and salad. We were out in the countryside and there were no signs of local habitation, but within minutes, we had a bunch of children watching us. This seems to be the norm in Africa. Stop in some out of the way place that looks uninhabited and pretty soon you will have an audience.
We let them share our food and we even risked swimming in the river. Bilharzia, a water-borne parasite, is found in the rivers and lakes of Southern Africa, but the water in the river was free flowing and we had been told that this was safe. The kids were swimming in it anyway so we did too. It was nice to cool off and have some fun.
It was during lunch that Dick’s obnoxious personality came to the fore, he started to get insufferable and loud. He was particularly rude to my wife and we had a stand up argument that almost came to blows. Our friends calmed us down and we got back on the road to the music festival.
The border crossing was uneventful as we all had British passports and we made our way into Mbabane where we found rooms in a local motel. Later that evening we went out to find food and a drink. We seemed to be the only foreigners (White) around but we ensconced ourselves in a bar that was playing good music and settled down with some cold beer.
Dick has cosied up to the bar and was chatting up a local girl and it was clear that it wasn’t going too well. He was drunk by this time and we could hear he was being his loathsome racist self. People had started to pay attention and as we were the only white faces in the place the situation could very quickly spiral out of control. We had to get him away.
As we were trying to get him out, into the street, he loudly announced that if he had a shotgun he could clear the bar of all the fucking kaffirs in it. This was incendiary language given where we were. We needed to do something so Rob and I jumped him and starting punching his lights out before the locals decided it was us that needed punching or worse. Some security turned up and they were toting shotguns. We dragged the idiot out into the street and told him to fuck off, as we didn’t want to be associated with him. I went back in an apologised to the woman as Dick disappeared into the night with Rory, and we finally retired to the safety of our motel beds.
The next morning we were faced with the astounding news the music festival was off. The festival tents were up, the site was ready, but no one, it seems, had informed the musicians that they were meant to be there. It all seemed to be some sort of major cock up or scam. We were not sure – but what now?
We sat down to have a council of war to tell Dick that his behaviour the night before was outrageous and that if it happened again we would beat the shit out of him and leave him to his fate. We also needed to decide what we were going to do with the rest of our holiday now that the music festival was a bust.
Somehow, we found out about a place called Paradise Falls that was up the river. We were told it was a popular spot for the locals to hang out to swim. So now we had a plan and it didn’t take long for us to get on the right road to the falls. Once there some local guys who were very friendly wanted to chat with us. They also wanted to share some ‘beer’ telling us it was ‘mealie beer’. [Probably umqombothi – I Googled it for this article] They were insistent that we had a drink because it was Christmas and we needed to drink.
Rob took a swig and then he offered me what looked like a cardboard litre milk carton. I toasted my new grinning friends and took a swallow. At the moment my friend, Rob, shouted out, ‘Ah, they’re taking the piss, it’s just vomit mate.’ And right at that moment that’s just what it tasted like. It had a lumpy, sour, soft porridge like consistency in my mouth. The vinegar notes on my tongue almost convinced my brain that it was vomit I was drinking. But by then it was just too late. I swallowed the mess and wished my friends a Happy Christmas whilst cursing Rob who was pissing himself laughing. No one else wanted a taste after that.
Then our new friends offered us a boat ride, which we accepted. Out on the river all was cool and calm and we enjoyed cruising up and down the river watching the scenery pass. It was then another bottle was produced. This time it was ‘berry beer’. It had a distinctly home-brew look about it with debris and other sediments floating around in it. But hey, it was Christmas, what else could we do? It was slightly better than the mealie beer, but not by much. Sour, with no hint of berries, but clearly alcoholic, I guessed we would be blind by midnight.
We eventually reached Paradise Falls. It was well named for at that moment it was truly paradise. The fast moving clear water meant that it was free of any nasty bugs and it was popular with the locals. The water ran swiftly over undulating rocks worn smooth by the rushing water. One could start at the top and slide down, dropping into cool pools before the next switch back ride to the bottom. It was one of those times when it was fun to be alive and adventuring in a foreign country.
Then our new friends offered us a boat ride, which we accepted. Out on the river all was cool and calm and we enjoyed cruising up and down the river watching the scenery pass. It was then another bottle was produced. This time it was ‘berry beer’. It had a distinctly home-brew look about it with debris and other sediments floating around in it. But hey, it was Christmas, what else could we do? It was slightly better than the mealie beer, but not by much. Sour, with no hint of berries, but clearly alcoholic, I guessed we would be blind by midnight.
We eventually reached Paradise Falls. It was well named for at that moment it was truly paradise. The fast moving clear water meant that it was free of any nasty bugs and it was popular with the locals. The water ran swiftly over undulating rocks worn smooth by the rushing water. One could start at the top and slide down, dropping into cool pools before the next switch back ride to the bottom. It was one of those times when it was fun to be alive and adventuring in a foreign country.
The drive back was uneventful, as are all return journeys. Time loses the elasticity of the outward journey and solidifies into something much shorter and direct. Conversation is stilted as people drift in and out of sleep. The driver is focused on the road and trying to keep his eyelids open as night falls. Rory and I shared the driving and all too soon the smoking inferno of the steel mills hove into sight and we were home.
PART ONE On the Road – South Africa 1976
My first experience of South Africa was stepping into Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg and wondering why all the policemen had machine guns. This was around 1976 and I had gone through the process of being accepted for emigration and no one thought to tell me, a politically naïve twenty-two-year-old, about apartheid.
I travelled with my wife of a few months to our new life in Vanderbijlpark in the Transvaal. I had found work in the steel mills of ISCOR the states massive Iron and Steel Corporation. This was to be my first experience of living abroad.
Everything was arranged by the recruiting department of ISCOR. Our first night in South Africa was in a hotel with other recruits who had been on the same flight. A new challenge was the meal. It was a steak in a monkey gland sauce. Monkey Gland Sauce? What? Real Monkey? It was Africa after all and I’d never seen this on the menu at my local Berni Inn. The waitress explained that no monkeys were harmed in the making of the sauce and to celebrate we all got slightly drunk on the over large bottles of Castle beer. At five thousand feet above sea level alcohol works very efficiently on the brain.
We moved in to our new flat furnished with brand new furniture we were encouraged to buy at the local shops on HP. The company stood as guarantor. Vanderbijlpark was a company town through and through––the person with us who took us around the shops provided each of the vendors with our work number and department. We also had a generous ‘settling in’ allowance burning a hole in our pockets. We’d all signed three-year contracts, which underlined the penalties of breaking said contracts. Mainly, it was to do with paying back all the monies the company had shelled out to get us there including our allowances. I never once, during my time in S.A., questioned why the company was being so generous. Similar enquiries to move to Australia uncovered the fact that once moving there one was pretty much left to one's own devices to find work and housing. So S.A. was an easy decision for me––a man of very little brain I am sure you are thinking.
The steel plant was straight out of Blake’s vision of Dark Satanic Mills. I was lucky, as a highly skilled centre lathe turner I worked in the maintenance department. Hard-bitten expat engineers and steelworkers from all around the world kept the mills running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, no time off for good behaviour. Apart from fulfilling the regular maintenance work––making new bits for the plant to keep it running––there was also the drama of some frantic guy turning up at 2 in the morning with a mangled piece of steel in his hand demanding a ‘new’ one asap so production wouldn’t be held up.
They ran continental shifts, which was new to me. This meant I worked six in the morning until two in the afternoon. The other shifts were two until ten pm., and ten until six am. Weekends were twelve-hour shifts while one shift had a day off. Tuesday was the other day off. But that meant the ten till six crew had to be back at work at two until ten. They had glossed over this back in the U.K. so it came as a bit of a shock.
Long hours of hard, dirty work meant I crewed up with two characters I will call Jock and Paddy. One was from Glasgow and the other from Northern Ireland. Both older and grizzled, both had impenetrable accents. They would speak and I wouldn’t know what they were saying–– good job they were not my bosses.
Most of the shift foremen were local South Africans––Afrikaners. There was no love lost between the Afrikaners and the Brits for historical reasons. We soon learnt the bad things to say to the hulking brutes, swear words such as voetsec and son of a bitch, which seemed to rile them but to the normal Brit factory worker were quite mild. This antagonism came about during the shift switch. We would come in ready to work on machines that the outgoing guy should have cleaned down and made ready for the new guy. This rarely happened even though the white worker would have a ‘boy’ to do his work, hence the ill feeling.
I was an ill feeling that had far reaching consequences. One guy, a Boer, but friendlier than the rest as he was on my shift, apologised to me telling me he could not invite me to his house because his grandmother wouldn’t tolerate it and would not speak to me. Such is the power of cultural memory I was to learn later.
By ‘boy’ I mean black workers who did the menial tasks around the factory. Helping with the heavy lifting and the cleaning. The ‘machine boys’ were mainly Xhosa. This is because even in the factory there was a tribal hierarchical system going on. The Zulu’s had the best work because they were top of the heap. Then it was the Tswana people, the Swazi’s and at the bottom the Xhosa. The Zulu guys job was to sweep the factory floor. He did this with an air of authority and quiet majesty. He would stop and chat telling us of his three wives back at his homestead.
I'd come to understand what was happening politically in South Africa through the simple expedience of experiences such as getting on a local bus and being told I wasn’t allowed to ride on it because I was white, living in white only areas and becoming aware of the situation very quickly.
The black guys in the factory liked us Brits because most of us were used to doing the heavy work and cleaning ourselves and during the night shift (and the day time) we would let them get their heads down in some quiet corner. We were also useful in making knobkerries or fighting sticks on the lathe, which were very much in demand. We took payment in the form of matchboxes full of grass so everyone was happy.
Social life in Vanderbijlpark revolved around the club. The bar was a rough and ready place, a bit Wild West if you will. It was the preserve of MEN––rough, tough men––steelworkers. Women had to sit in the lounge and to go in there the male partner had to wear a shirt and a jacket. It was in the men’s bar that my friend and I had to crawl out on our hands and knees, like in a movie, because there was a full-blown punch up going on––just like in the Western movies on TV.
Other social events included braai (BBQ) on the Vaal River and hanging out at other peoples homes, especially if they had a pool. But this didn’t happen too often because of the shift systems we worked. For the young stay at home wives this was not much of a life as they barely saw their new husbands, as we were always at work or in bed asleep. Most of them strayed and marriages split up with the female partner often fleeing back to Britain. Mine lasted until we both arrived back in the U.K, but that’s another story.
At home I’d travelled abroad on holidays, France, Spain, Majorca, but now I was on another exciting continent. A continent, the best man at my wedding had piqued my interest about having been bought up in Zambia. I wanted to see more. So with my pal, another Rob, we purchased a Landrover and went exploring.
*****
How does this relate to writing you might ask? I believe in the adage write what you know. Since my adventures in Africa I have travelled to many countries and lived in a few––I am currently living and working in China. These experiences influence in some way or other what I write. I use my experiences and the people I have met along the way to give my writing depth and colour. So if a young writer were to ask my advice I would tell them to take Jack Kerouac’s advice and get On The Road.
My first experience of South Africa was stepping into Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg and wondering why all the policemen had machine guns. This was around 1976 and I had gone through the process of being accepted for emigration and no one thought to tell me, a politically naïve twenty-two-year-old, about apartheid.
I travelled with my wife of a few months to our new life in Vanderbijlpark in the Transvaal. I had found work in the steel mills of ISCOR the states massive Iron and Steel Corporation. This was to be my first experience of living abroad.
Everything was arranged by the recruiting department of ISCOR. Our first night in South Africa was in a hotel with other recruits who had been on the same flight. A new challenge was the meal. It was a steak in a monkey gland sauce. Monkey Gland Sauce? What? Real Monkey? It was Africa after all and I’d never seen this on the menu at my local Berni Inn. The waitress explained that no monkeys were harmed in the making of the sauce and to celebrate we all got slightly drunk on the over large bottles of Castle beer. At five thousand feet above sea level alcohol works very efficiently on the brain.
We moved in to our new flat furnished with brand new furniture we were encouraged to buy at the local shops on HP. The company stood as guarantor. Vanderbijlpark was a company town through and through––the person with us who took us around the shops provided each of the vendors with our work number and department. We also had a generous ‘settling in’ allowance burning a hole in our pockets. We’d all signed three-year contracts, which underlined the penalties of breaking said contracts. Mainly, it was to do with paying back all the monies the company had shelled out to get us there including our allowances. I never once, during my time in S.A., questioned why the company was being so generous. Similar enquiries to move to Australia uncovered the fact that once moving there one was pretty much left to one's own devices to find work and housing. So S.A. was an easy decision for me––a man of very little brain I am sure you are thinking.
The steel plant was straight out of Blake’s vision of Dark Satanic Mills. I was lucky, as a highly skilled centre lathe turner I worked in the maintenance department. Hard-bitten expat engineers and steelworkers from all around the world kept the mills running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, no time off for good behaviour. Apart from fulfilling the regular maintenance work––making new bits for the plant to keep it running––there was also the drama of some frantic guy turning up at 2 in the morning with a mangled piece of steel in his hand demanding a ‘new’ one asap so production wouldn’t be held up.
They ran continental shifts, which was new to me. This meant I worked six in the morning until two in the afternoon. The other shifts were two until ten pm., and ten until six am. Weekends were twelve-hour shifts while one shift had a day off. Tuesday was the other day off. But that meant the ten till six crew had to be back at work at two until ten. They had glossed over this back in the U.K. so it came as a bit of a shock.
Long hours of hard, dirty work meant I crewed up with two characters I will call Jock and Paddy. One was from Glasgow and the other from Northern Ireland. Both older and grizzled, both had impenetrable accents. They would speak and I wouldn’t know what they were saying–– good job they were not my bosses.
Most of the shift foremen were local South Africans––Afrikaners. There was no love lost between the Afrikaners and the Brits for historical reasons. We soon learnt the bad things to say to the hulking brutes, swear words such as voetsec and son of a bitch, which seemed to rile them but to the normal Brit factory worker were quite mild. This antagonism came about during the shift switch. We would come in ready to work on machines that the outgoing guy should have cleaned down and made ready for the new guy. This rarely happened even though the white worker would have a ‘boy’ to do his work, hence the ill feeling.
I was an ill feeling that had far reaching consequences. One guy, a Boer, but friendlier than the rest as he was on my shift, apologised to me telling me he could not invite me to his house because his grandmother wouldn’t tolerate it and would not speak to me. Such is the power of cultural memory I was to learn later.
By ‘boy’ I mean black workers who did the menial tasks around the factory. Helping with the heavy lifting and the cleaning. The ‘machine boys’ were mainly Xhosa. This is because even in the factory there was a tribal hierarchical system going on. The Zulu’s had the best work because they were top of the heap. Then it was the Tswana people, the Swazi’s and at the bottom the Xhosa. The Zulu guys job was to sweep the factory floor. He did this with an air of authority and quiet majesty. He would stop and chat telling us of his three wives back at his homestead.
I'd come to understand what was happening politically in South Africa through the simple expedience of experiences such as getting on a local bus and being told I wasn’t allowed to ride on it because I was white, living in white only areas and becoming aware of the situation very quickly.
The black guys in the factory liked us Brits because most of us were used to doing the heavy work and cleaning ourselves and during the night shift (and the day time) we would let them get their heads down in some quiet corner. We were also useful in making knobkerries or fighting sticks on the lathe, which were very much in demand. We took payment in the form of matchboxes full of grass so everyone was happy.
Social life in Vanderbijlpark revolved around the club. The bar was a rough and ready place, a bit Wild West if you will. It was the preserve of MEN––rough, tough men––steelworkers. Women had to sit in the lounge and to go in there the male partner had to wear a shirt and a jacket. It was in the men’s bar that my friend and I had to crawl out on our hands and knees, like in a movie, because there was a full-blown punch up going on––just like in the Western movies on TV.
Other social events included braai (BBQ) on the Vaal River and hanging out at other peoples homes, especially if they had a pool. But this didn’t happen too often because of the shift systems we worked. For the young stay at home wives this was not much of a life as they barely saw their new husbands, as we were always at work or in bed asleep. Most of them strayed and marriages split up with the female partner often fleeing back to Britain. Mine lasted until we both arrived back in the U.K, but that’s another story.
At home I’d travelled abroad on holidays, France, Spain, Majorca, but now I was on another exciting continent. A continent, the best man at my wedding had piqued my interest about having been bought up in Zambia. I wanted to see more. So with my pal, another Rob, we purchased a Landrover and went exploring.
*****
How does this relate to writing you might ask? I believe in the adage write what you know. Since my adventures in Africa I have travelled to many countries and lived in a few––I am currently living and working in China. These experiences influence in some way or other what I write. I use my experiences and the people I have met along the way to give my writing depth and colour. So if a young writer were to ask my advice I would tell them to take Jack Kerouac’s advice and get On The Road.
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