ON THE ROAD
The serialised version of Rob Burton's African Writings
PART THREE On the road - Rhodesia - 1976
This particular article is available as a podcast, you can listen to it here
Twelve months of working continental shifts in a massive South African steel works was taking its toll. Young marriages were feeling the strain because the men were continually at work or asleep. There was a lot of work and not much play. Some of the families just bailed, disappearing overnight, never to be seen again. I needed a Plan B to get out too.
The company, ISCOR, stood HP guarantor for everything we wanted to buy for our new lives in Vanderbijlpark a steel town in what was known the Transvaal in 1976 – this area of the country was mainly populated by the Afrikaans, the white South Africans of Dutch decent. It was an open secret that many of the would be ex-pat deserters would go around town and purchase high value but portable items such as jewellery, watches and so on to take home with them. Those who had them drove their cars to Jan Smuts airport and left them in the car park with the keys still in the ignition.
But I was looking for another way out. After all Africa was a big country and I was a highly skilled British engineer. I can’t remember how we actually found out the Rhodesian (Now Zimbabwe) Railway Company was looking for maintenance engineers. I had been an apprentice at a company in Somerset called Bristol Aerojets making bits of rockets and missiles and for one year of my training I had attended the Rolls Royce Technical College in Filton, Bristol. My mate, the other Rob, had been apprenticed at Westland Helicopters in Yeovil, Somerset, so we were pretty hot property.
The railway company was keen to interview us so a road trip was planned to Salisbury, (now Harare) the capital of Rhodesia. Pouring over the map and asking friends and colleagues it seemed that the drive from Johannesburg to Salisbury would be about fifteen hours, non-stop. We couldn’t rent a car locally so first we had to get to Johannesburg to pick up the Toyota Corolla we had chosen for the trip.
Our first destination was a place called Beitbridge because this was the border between South Africa and Rhodesia. We also had to get there because it was the place we had to pickup the armed convoy to get to Salisbury safely. We had to do this because black nationalist guerrillas were attacking travellers and killing them. So it was imperative that we drove hard and crossed the border in time to join the convoy.
Of course, we were late, and we missed the convoy. A soldier on duty told us it had only just gone and if we hurried we would surely catch up with it. We couldn’t miss it because it was a line of vehicles protected by British South African Police (BSAP) driving pickups (bakkies) with Browning heavy machine guns mounted in the rear. ‘Was it dangerous?’ We asked. ‘Not if we caught up to it quickly’, he answered. So we set off at a pace to catch it up.
We never saw the convoy. We didn’t overtake it and I had booted the car to try and catch up. I have no idea how we missed it. I have a vague recollection of seeing some vehicles in a café car park, but it was only a fleeting glance as we were going so quickly, maybe that was it? There was only one road to Bulawayo and we were on it. So with the naivety of youth and no questions about our own mortality we forgot about the convoy and drove on through the beautiful Rhodesian countryside.
And have no doubt Rhodesia/Zimbabwe is a beautiful country even when viewed through a dusty windscreen at speed. We flew through areas of bush dotted with rounded humps and with koppies in the distance. The red soils baked hard by the sun and mile after mile of hard driving which blurs the memory.
I have no recollection of staying anywhere for the night so we must have shared the driving to get to Salisbury. Rob and I, with our two wives Janet and Heather on the back seats piloted the vehicle along the long, straight and empty roads. We even stopped to stretch our legs and take photos at some of the obvious viewpoints. It was late in the evening when we eventually arrived in Salisbury (Harare).
On first impression Salisbury left a favourable impression. It was very ‘British.’ Plus, I remember the kindness of the locals summed up when a complete stranger gave us coin to use in the parking meters because we hadn’t any local currency.
The next day we went to see the representative of the railway company. When we recounted our journey he was gobsmacked. He couldn’t believe we’d made the whole journey and not been in the convoy. He was even more amazed that we’d stopped to take photos. He went on to tell us how lucky we’d been not to have been targeted by the guerrillas and have an RPG fired through our radiator––which was the standard operating practice of the guerrillas. It was only later when we were driving around Salisbury that we noticed how the locals would have their weapons stuck out through the open windows of their vehicles as a sign that they were armed and ready.
The crux of the interview for the railway job was that they needed engineers such as ourselves and if we were willing to take the positions they offered us we would be working and living in Umtali (now Mutare). We asked where Umtali was. Over by the Mozambique border in the East of the country we were told. ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ We asked. We might have been naïve but we did know there was a war going on over there and the warning about the folly of our drive had hit home. No, we were told it’s not dangerous any longer––Umtali only got mortared about twice a week now.
That put the mockers on Plan B so we went to the Lion Park to be tourists instead. This was a local game park just outside of the city, where you could drive around to see the animals. Unfortunately, it only had dirt and sand roads and our little Toyota got stuck in a hole. We got out and tried to push it but it was stuck fast. We hadn’t seen any game and the place seemed empty, not that we could see much as we were surrounded by bush. Rummaging about for twigs and branches to put under the wheels I came across a large sheet of plywood. It was exactly what we needed to get us out of our predicament––until I turned it over. Stencilled on the other side were the heart stopping words BEWARE OF THE LIONS.
Janet was swiftly put on the roof of the vehicle as look out, as she was the lightest, while we quickly and efficiently got the car out of the pit. I know we didn’t see any lions nor any other wildlife come to that. We returned back to the city centre for a quiet walk and a look around the botanical gardens. It was nice but as we wandered back towards the car I realised I had lost the car keys. Panic. We retraced our steps and sure enough there they were sat in the middle of the path. But believe me my heart was racing. I’m not even sure that we were allowed to drive the car outside of South Africa–– we might have glossed over those details, as you do.
The next day we were faced with the fifteen-hour drive home. We had a deadline. The vehicle had to be back with the renters in Johannesburg so we would not be liable for another day and we also had to be able to catch the bus back to Vanderbijlpark where we lived.
This time on the return journey we would be sensible and use the convoy to get us back to the safety of South Africa. But the convoy was just too slow. We had that deadline and they kept stopping, eventually with a reluctant, ‘be careful’ they thought we were enough out of danger to let us go. I’d worked out we needed to average about seventy mph to get us to downtown Jo’burg to dump the car before the rental company closed. We made it with about thirty minutes to spare––that was some hard driving ––all I remember is the three of them sleeping and letting me get on with it.
Back home, in the flat at Vanderbijlpark, it was time to think about the future because I knew I wasn’t going to spend another eighteen months of my life in the maintenance department of the steel mill. In fact, this was the beginning of the end of me wanting to be a skilled machinist. But it would take at least another ten years for that to happen, in the meantime there was a whole continent to explore.
This particular article is available as a podcast, you can listen to it here
Twelve months of working continental shifts in a massive South African steel works was taking its toll. Young marriages were feeling the strain because the men were continually at work or asleep. There was a lot of work and not much play. Some of the families just bailed, disappearing overnight, never to be seen again. I needed a Plan B to get out too.
The company, ISCOR, stood HP guarantor for everything we wanted to buy for our new lives in Vanderbijlpark a steel town in what was known the Transvaal in 1976 – this area of the country was mainly populated by the Afrikaans, the white South Africans of Dutch decent. It was an open secret that many of the would be ex-pat deserters would go around town and purchase high value but portable items such as jewellery, watches and so on to take home with them. Those who had them drove their cars to Jan Smuts airport and left them in the car park with the keys still in the ignition.
But I was looking for another way out. After all Africa was a big country and I was a highly skilled British engineer. I can’t remember how we actually found out the Rhodesian (Now Zimbabwe) Railway Company was looking for maintenance engineers. I had been an apprentice at a company in Somerset called Bristol Aerojets making bits of rockets and missiles and for one year of my training I had attended the Rolls Royce Technical College in Filton, Bristol. My mate, the other Rob, had been apprenticed at Westland Helicopters in Yeovil, Somerset, so we were pretty hot property.
The railway company was keen to interview us so a road trip was planned to Salisbury, (now Harare) the capital of Rhodesia. Pouring over the map and asking friends and colleagues it seemed that the drive from Johannesburg to Salisbury would be about fifteen hours, non-stop. We couldn’t rent a car locally so first we had to get to Johannesburg to pick up the Toyota Corolla we had chosen for the trip.
Our first destination was a place called Beitbridge because this was the border between South Africa and Rhodesia. We also had to get there because it was the place we had to pickup the armed convoy to get to Salisbury safely. We had to do this because black nationalist guerrillas were attacking travellers and killing them. So it was imperative that we drove hard and crossed the border in time to join the convoy.
Of course, we were late, and we missed the convoy. A soldier on duty told us it had only just gone and if we hurried we would surely catch up with it. We couldn’t miss it because it was a line of vehicles protected by British South African Police (BSAP) driving pickups (bakkies) with Browning heavy machine guns mounted in the rear. ‘Was it dangerous?’ We asked. ‘Not if we caught up to it quickly’, he answered. So we set off at a pace to catch it up.
We never saw the convoy. We didn’t overtake it and I had booted the car to try and catch up. I have no idea how we missed it. I have a vague recollection of seeing some vehicles in a café car park, but it was only a fleeting glance as we were going so quickly, maybe that was it? There was only one road to Bulawayo and we were on it. So with the naivety of youth and no questions about our own mortality we forgot about the convoy and drove on through the beautiful Rhodesian countryside.
And have no doubt Rhodesia/Zimbabwe is a beautiful country even when viewed through a dusty windscreen at speed. We flew through areas of bush dotted with rounded humps and with koppies in the distance. The red soils baked hard by the sun and mile after mile of hard driving which blurs the memory.
I have no recollection of staying anywhere for the night so we must have shared the driving to get to Salisbury. Rob and I, with our two wives Janet and Heather on the back seats piloted the vehicle along the long, straight and empty roads. We even stopped to stretch our legs and take photos at some of the obvious viewpoints. It was late in the evening when we eventually arrived in Salisbury (Harare).
On first impression Salisbury left a favourable impression. It was very ‘British.’ Plus, I remember the kindness of the locals summed up when a complete stranger gave us coin to use in the parking meters because we hadn’t any local currency.
The next day we went to see the representative of the railway company. When we recounted our journey he was gobsmacked. He couldn’t believe we’d made the whole journey and not been in the convoy. He was even more amazed that we’d stopped to take photos. He went on to tell us how lucky we’d been not to have been targeted by the guerrillas and have an RPG fired through our radiator––which was the standard operating practice of the guerrillas. It was only later when we were driving around Salisbury that we noticed how the locals would have their weapons stuck out through the open windows of their vehicles as a sign that they were armed and ready.
The crux of the interview for the railway job was that they needed engineers such as ourselves and if we were willing to take the positions they offered us we would be working and living in Umtali (now Mutare). We asked where Umtali was. Over by the Mozambique border in the East of the country we were told. ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ We asked. We might have been naïve but we did know there was a war going on over there and the warning about the folly of our drive had hit home. No, we were told it’s not dangerous any longer––Umtali only got mortared about twice a week now.
That put the mockers on Plan B so we went to the Lion Park to be tourists instead. This was a local game park just outside of the city, where you could drive around to see the animals. Unfortunately, it only had dirt and sand roads and our little Toyota got stuck in a hole. We got out and tried to push it but it was stuck fast. We hadn’t seen any game and the place seemed empty, not that we could see much as we were surrounded by bush. Rummaging about for twigs and branches to put under the wheels I came across a large sheet of plywood. It was exactly what we needed to get us out of our predicament––until I turned it over. Stencilled on the other side were the heart stopping words BEWARE OF THE LIONS.
Janet was swiftly put on the roof of the vehicle as look out, as she was the lightest, while we quickly and efficiently got the car out of the pit. I know we didn’t see any lions nor any other wildlife come to that. We returned back to the city centre for a quiet walk and a look around the botanical gardens. It was nice but as we wandered back towards the car I realised I had lost the car keys. Panic. We retraced our steps and sure enough there they were sat in the middle of the path. But believe me my heart was racing. I’m not even sure that we were allowed to drive the car outside of South Africa–– we might have glossed over those details, as you do.
The next day we were faced with the fifteen-hour drive home. We had a deadline. The vehicle had to be back with the renters in Johannesburg so we would not be liable for another day and we also had to be able to catch the bus back to Vanderbijlpark where we lived.
This time on the return journey we would be sensible and use the convoy to get us back to the safety of South Africa. But the convoy was just too slow. We had that deadline and they kept stopping, eventually with a reluctant, ‘be careful’ they thought we were enough out of danger to let us go. I’d worked out we needed to average about seventy mph to get us to downtown Jo’burg to dump the car before the rental company closed. We made it with about thirty minutes to spare––that was some hard driving ––all I remember is the three of them sleeping and letting me get on with it.
Back home, in the flat at Vanderbijlpark, it was time to think about the future because I knew I wasn’t going to spend another eighteen months of my life in the maintenance department of the steel mill. In fact, this was the beginning of the end of me wanting to be a skilled machinist. But it would take at least another ten years for that to happen, in the meantime there was a whole continent to explore.
PART THREE On the road - Land Rover to Lesotho
Taking the caffeine tablets to help me drive was a mistake. I realised that as the Land Rover drifted sideways, on two wheels, down the dusty bank and into the storm drain at the side of the road. In my hyper state I had missed the turning but decided to try and make it anyway. The have big storms in South Africa so the storm drain was big and wide and not too deep and the vehicle came to a halt crashing back onto all four wheels. Fortunately, we lived, but my passengers, my friends Rob and his wife Heather, were none to happy about it as the yells, screams and curses from the back indicated. It was the culmination of a disastrous trip into Lesotho, the landlocked kingdom surrounded by South Africa.
The other Rob, my buddy, and I decided that we needed to buy a car and what we really needed was a Land Rover so we could go ‘on safari.’ We managed to find a beat up Land Rover Series 2 long wheelbase pickup advertised for sale locally so we went to have a look. It seemed to work fine as we drove it up and down some steep banks near to where the seller lived. An added bonus was that it had the aluminium back that we could bolt on to make it a ‘Safari.’ We handed over the cash.
We were both skilled engineers working for ISCOR the South African Iron and Steel Corporation in Vanderbijlpark, a steel town just south of Johannesburg, in what was then the Transvaal, so we were pretty confident that we could iron out any problems that popped up when we got it home. We checked it over, changed the oil and filters, put new brakes on it and learnt how to bleed them so they worked when we needed them to. We bolted on the rear cab and bought second-hand seats that we riveted to the floor inside.
After a couple of weeks’ work, we were set for a new adventure and our sights turned to Lesotho. Our plan was open ended as we had packed camping equipment so that we could stop where we wanted to. We had a vague commitment to travelling to Maseru the capital, but our first stop was going to be Butha-Buthe––about a four-hour drive away. The reasoning for this was there was a mountain there called Butha-Buthe Mountain and on the map it looked like there was a track we could drive up.
We were young and looking for adventure and what better way than driving up a mountain to see what was there? The drive from Vanderbijlpark was uneventful, Rob and I sat in the front while the two wives, Janet and Heather were relegated to the aluminium box on the back. It wasn’t great but it was the best we could do. The Land Rover performed well as we drove down the main roads through the spectacular South African countryside. I cannot remember the border crossing but as always it was probably just a formality as we had British passports – the blue ones – that allowed us to go everywhere in those far off days.
Taking the caffeine tablets to help me drive was a mistake. I realised that as the Land Rover drifted sideways, on two wheels, down the dusty bank and into the storm drain at the side of the road. In my hyper state I had missed the turning but decided to try and make it anyway. The have big storms in South Africa so the storm drain was big and wide and not too deep and the vehicle came to a halt crashing back onto all four wheels. Fortunately, we lived, but my passengers, my friends Rob and his wife Heather, were none to happy about it as the yells, screams and curses from the back indicated. It was the culmination of a disastrous trip into Lesotho, the landlocked kingdom surrounded by South Africa.
The other Rob, my buddy, and I decided that we needed to buy a car and what we really needed was a Land Rover so we could go ‘on safari.’ We managed to find a beat up Land Rover Series 2 long wheelbase pickup advertised for sale locally so we went to have a look. It seemed to work fine as we drove it up and down some steep banks near to where the seller lived. An added bonus was that it had the aluminium back that we could bolt on to make it a ‘Safari.’ We handed over the cash.
We were both skilled engineers working for ISCOR the South African Iron and Steel Corporation in Vanderbijlpark, a steel town just south of Johannesburg, in what was then the Transvaal, so we were pretty confident that we could iron out any problems that popped up when we got it home. We checked it over, changed the oil and filters, put new brakes on it and learnt how to bleed them so they worked when we needed them to. We bolted on the rear cab and bought second-hand seats that we riveted to the floor inside.
After a couple of weeks’ work, we were set for a new adventure and our sights turned to Lesotho. Our plan was open ended as we had packed camping equipment so that we could stop where we wanted to. We had a vague commitment to travelling to Maseru the capital, but our first stop was going to be Butha-Buthe––about a four-hour drive away. The reasoning for this was there was a mountain there called Butha-Buthe Mountain and on the map it looked like there was a track we could drive up.
We were young and looking for adventure and what better way than driving up a mountain to see what was there? The drive from Vanderbijlpark was uneventful, Rob and I sat in the front while the two wives, Janet and Heather were relegated to the aluminium box on the back. It wasn’t great but it was the best we could do. The Land Rover performed well as we drove down the main roads through the spectacular South African countryside. I cannot remember the border crossing but as always it was probably just a formality as we had British passports – the blue ones – that allowed us to go everywhere in those far off days.
We arrived at the mountain in the early afternoon and set off up the dirt track towards the summit. I had been taking advice on how to tackle the baked washboard dirt roads. The hard ridges were created by vehicle suspensions pounding up and down compacting the dirt into bone shaking bumps and ripples. The key, I was told, was to drive at around 70mph and then the vehicle would ‘float’ over the washboard surface. And it does work. The problem was, halfway up the mountain, the clutch gave up the ghost.
When the clutch goes the first indication is a horrendous burning smell and then you start to lose forward momentum as the engine starts to race. Although Rob and I were top class engineers we were not motor mechanics, we had no spares and we were in the middle of the bush in Africa. There is no AA rescue service. We managed to turn the vehicle around and coast down the hill. Fortunately, we had enough clutch left to get us to the Crocodile Inn.
I have no idea why it was called the Crocodile Inn because we were nowhere near a river and there were no crocodiles – but hey, that is Africa for you. We parked the truck in the car park and hunted out the owners. We told them of our situation and got permission to put our tent up next to our stricken vehicle. We also asked if there was a local mechanic that could give us a hand.
Of course, we were big news locally and as we started to set up the tent a crowd of people came to watch us. A few guys came over to chat and ask us what’s what. Everybody was very friendly but we were sure we were being scoped out so we tried to keep everything shipshape and under control. Our audience was still there after night had fallen and having cooked ourselves a meal on the camping stoves, we shared some of the food with our guests.
We also met a guy who claimed to be a Land Rover mechanic in Johannesburg and that tomorrow he would come and help us out. After he disappeared into the night we guessed that far from being a Land Rover mechanic he was probably the actual Land Rover mechanics ‘boy’. This was a derogatory term used by white South Africans to label the grown black men who did the basic, hard, and dirty labour for them. We had also fallen into that racist linguistic trap.
Later that night we were tucked up in our sleeping bags. All four of us were sharing one big tent. The ground was hard so we tried to drink enough beer to numb the pain. Nevertheless, we were sleeping fitfully so the noise of someone or something moving around outside our tent alerted us to a prowler of some sort. There was a clinking of metal on metal which had the other Rob and I out of our sleeping bags and grabbing handy weapons to protect ourselves and our wives. By the time we were out of the tent having made enough noise about it the intruders had gone, taking with them some of the tools we had stupidly left out––another hard lesson learnt. Fortunately, most of the tools had been stolen in the first place from the various workshops we worked in, so no great loss.
The next day, good to his word, the mechanic turned up with his own tools and we set to stripping the Land Rover down to get at the clutch. To do this in the middle of a field in Africa with no jacks or ramps meant getting at the bell housing from the top. This involved taking the seats out and then removing the floor of the cab. As we were all dab hands at wielding spanners for a living it was a job soon done.
While we were working another bunch of people turned up. We were a bit worried as some of them were in police uniform. It turned out that it was the local mayor and his retinue who had come to visit us and check out what was happening. We had a friendly chat the outcome of which was an invite by the police officer to have a ride that afternoon on the police horses. Meanwhile, the mechanic had, with some help from us, removed the drive shafts, got the bell housing off, and stripped the clutch plate out. Now all we needed was a replacement. The mechanic jumped in his car to go and find one.
In the meantime, we decided to have a walk around the locality. We also needed to find some food to cook. As we wandered around we came upon a butchers. It was a rondavel hut, the building was circular made of the local red mud and topped off with a grass roof. This one had the carcass of a sheep hanging outside. The bloodied fleece was neatly put to one side while the guts and entrails of the unfortunate creature lay on the ground under it’s nose. Actually, it didn’t have a nose as the head had been placed on the blood stained tree trunk that served as a chopping block.
We decided on a barbecue that evening so all we had to do was choose what cuts we wanted. This left our wives dumbstruck. The meat they usually bought was nicely wrapped in cellophane on a nice polystyrene plate, from the supermarket. They had never been faced with a whole animal to choose from. After some discussion we decided to go for ribs. People put ribs on barbeque––didn’t they? We also thought that by barbequing the meat the heat would probably kill anything the multitude of flies buzzing around the corpse had left behind.
The deal done the butcher set to hacking up Larry the lamb and producing for us a bloody newspaper wrapped parcel to carry home. When we returned to the Crocodile Inn the mechanic had returned and it was not good news. He couldn’t find a replacement part locally, but there was one a couple of hours drive away and if we could pay for his petrol and give him the price of the part he would go and fetch it for us. The deal was done and we watched him drive off down the dusty track with our money, wondering if we would see him again.
The police horses were bony old nags but they were sure footed across the dusty veld. We turned up, as arranged at the police station and hauled ourselves into the saddle. None of us were horsemen but it was a chance not to be missed. As we rode away from the building there were shouts and whistles which attracted our attention. Hands were waving at us out of the barred windows of the prison cells, the inmates were wishing us well.
We rode around for about an hour through the spectacular countryside which was more than long enough for my sore backside and aching legs. These horses had plodded along but for inexperienced riders like ourselves we needed to get off and down a few beers to ease the pain away. Back at our camp we started to organise our barbeque, under the ever watchful gaze of people who would wander up and stand about three or four yards away and just watch. It is unnerving at first because one is never quite sure what they want. And after having some of our belongings stolen and people creeping around out tent the night before we were extra suspicious.
A couple of the guys we met on the first day came up and sat down with us. We gave them a beer and chatted away. They told us, quite openly, they were diamond smugglers. And they regularly smuggled diamonds out of the kingdom. This was not beyond the realms of possibility because the Letseng diamond mine was only about two hours south of Butha Buthe. Notwithstanding their claims, the way they were dressed seemed to suggest they were not doing so well in the diamond smuggling trade. But we all have a story to tell over a few beers don’t we?
The following day the mechanic turned up with the replacement clutch plate. It was the work of a couple of hours to replace it and then bolt the floor and seats back in. We paid the mechanic the money he asked for as it was a fair price for what he had done for us and was probably a nice windfall for him, it certainly didn’t break our bank. As we had to get back to work we set to breaking our camp and getting ready to leave. We had to turn our backs on the mountain adventure and the capital of Lesotho.
Back on the road to Vanderbijlpark we stopped at a truck stop for coffee and as we were paying I noticed some caffeine tablets for sale at the till, they were the drug of choice for the long distance truck drivers, so they were good enough for me.. As I was tired from sleeping on the hard ground for two nights this seemed like a good idea to perk me up. That is, of course, until I missed the junction and put the Land Rover up on two wheels trying to make it. My mate, the other Rob, took over the driving and I was relegated to the back seats with my wife.
The was the first and last adventure we took in the Land Rover, today over forty years later, I have no recollection of what happened to the vehicle––I assume we sold it on. And for both Rob and myself our days in South Africa were numbered. We would soon go our separate ways back to the U.K. to new lives. But for myself and my wife Janet the next few months would see us traveling through the deserts of Botswana in a five ton, bright blue, ex-army truck.
When the clutch goes the first indication is a horrendous burning smell and then you start to lose forward momentum as the engine starts to race. Although Rob and I were top class engineers we were not motor mechanics, we had no spares and we were in the middle of the bush in Africa. There is no AA rescue service. We managed to turn the vehicle around and coast down the hill. Fortunately, we had enough clutch left to get us to the Crocodile Inn.
I have no idea why it was called the Crocodile Inn because we were nowhere near a river and there were no crocodiles – but hey, that is Africa for you. We parked the truck in the car park and hunted out the owners. We told them of our situation and got permission to put our tent up next to our stricken vehicle. We also asked if there was a local mechanic that could give us a hand.
Of course, we were big news locally and as we started to set up the tent a crowd of people came to watch us. A few guys came over to chat and ask us what’s what. Everybody was very friendly but we were sure we were being scoped out so we tried to keep everything shipshape and under control. Our audience was still there after night had fallen and having cooked ourselves a meal on the camping stoves, we shared some of the food with our guests.
We also met a guy who claimed to be a Land Rover mechanic in Johannesburg and that tomorrow he would come and help us out. After he disappeared into the night we guessed that far from being a Land Rover mechanic he was probably the actual Land Rover mechanics ‘boy’. This was a derogatory term used by white South Africans to label the grown black men who did the basic, hard, and dirty labour for them. We had also fallen into that racist linguistic trap.
Later that night we were tucked up in our sleeping bags. All four of us were sharing one big tent. The ground was hard so we tried to drink enough beer to numb the pain. Nevertheless, we were sleeping fitfully so the noise of someone or something moving around outside our tent alerted us to a prowler of some sort. There was a clinking of metal on metal which had the other Rob and I out of our sleeping bags and grabbing handy weapons to protect ourselves and our wives. By the time we were out of the tent having made enough noise about it the intruders had gone, taking with them some of the tools we had stupidly left out––another hard lesson learnt. Fortunately, most of the tools had been stolen in the first place from the various workshops we worked in, so no great loss.
The next day, good to his word, the mechanic turned up with his own tools and we set to stripping the Land Rover down to get at the clutch. To do this in the middle of a field in Africa with no jacks or ramps meant getting at the bell housing from the top. This involved taking the seats out and then removing the floor of the cab. As we were all dab hands at wielding spanners for a living it was a job soon done.
While we were working another bunch of people turned up. We were a bit worried as some of them were in police uniform. It turned out that it was the local mayor and his retinue who had come to visit us and check out what was happening. We had a friendly chat the outcome of which was an invite by the police officer to have a ride that afternoon on the police horses. Meanwhile, the mechanic had, with some help from us, removed the drive shafts, got the bell housing off, and stripped the clutch plate out. Now all we needed was a replacement. The mechanic jumped in his car to go and find one.
In the meantime, we decided to have a walk around the locality. We also needed to find some food to cook. As we wandered around we came upon a butchers. It was a rondavel hut, the building was circular made of the local red mud and topped off with a grass roof. This one had the carcass of a sheep hanging outside. The bloodied fleece was neatly put to one side while the guts and entrails of the unfortunate creature lay on the ground under it’s nose. Actually, it didn’t have a nose as the head had been placed on the blood stained tree trunk that served as a chopping block.
We decided on a barbecue that evening so all we had to do was choose what cuts we wanted. This left our wives dumbstruck. The meat they usually bought was nicely wrapped in cellophane on a nice polystyrene plate, from the supermarket. They had never been faced with a whole animal to choose from. After some discussion we decided to go for ribs. People put ribs on barbeque––didn’t they? We also thought that by barbequing the meat the heat would probably kill anything the multitude of flies buzzing around the corpse had left behind.
The deal done the butcher set to hacking up Larry the lamb and producing for us a bloody newspaper wrapped parcel to carry home. When we returned to the Crocodile Inn the mechanic had returned and it was not good news. He couldn’t find a replacement part locally, but there was one a couple of hours drive away and if we could pay for his petrol and give him the price of the part he would go and fetch it for us. The deal was done and we watched him drive off down the dusty track with our money, wondering if we would see him again.
The police horses were bony old nags but they were sure footed across the dusty veld. We turned up, as arranged at the police station and hauled ourselves into the saddle. None of us were horsemen but it was a chance not to be missed. As we rode away from the building there were shouts and whistles which attracted our attention. Hands were waving at us out of the barred windows of the prison cells, the inmates were wishing us well.
We rode around for about an hour through the spectacular countryside which was more than long enough for my sore backside and aching legs. These horses had plodded along but for inexperienced riders like ourselves we needed to get off and down a few beers to ease the pain away. Back at our camp we started to organise our barbeque, under the ever watchful gaze of people who would wander up and stand about three or four yards away and just watch. It is unnerving at first because one is never quite sure what they want. And after having some of our belongings stolen and people creeping around out tent the night before we were extra suspicious.
A couple of the guys we met on the first day came up and sat down with us. We gave them a beer and chatted away. They told us, quite openly, they were diamond smugglers. And they regularly smuggled diamonds out of the kingdom. This was not beyond the realms of possibility because the Letseng diamond mine was only about two hours south of Butha Buthe. Notwithstanding their claims, the way they were dressed seemed to suggest they were not doing so well in the diamond smuggling trade. But we all have a story to tell over a few beers don’t we?
The following day the mechanic turned up with the replacement clutch plate. It was the work of a couple of hours to replace it and then bolt the floor and seats back in. We paid the mechanic the money he asked for as it was a fair price for what he had done for us and was probably a nice windfall for him, it certainly didn’t break our bank. As we had to get back to work we set to breaking our camp and getting ready to leave. We had to turn our backs on the mountain adventure and the capital of Lesotho.
Back on the road to Vanderbijlpark we stopped at a truck stop for coffee and as we were paying I noticed some caffeine tablets for sale at the till, they were the drug of choice for the long distance truck drivers, so they were good enough for me.. As I was tired from sleeping on the hard ground for two nights this seemed like a good idea to perk me up. That is, of course, until I missed the junction and put the Land Rover up on two wheels trying to make it. My mate, the other Rob, took over the driving and I was relegated to the back seats with my wife.
The was the first and last adventure we took in the Land Rover, today over forty years later, I have no recollection of what happened to the vehicle––I assume we sold it on. And for both Rob and myself our days in South Africa were numbered. We would soon go our separate ways back to the U.K. to new lives. But for myself and my wife Janet the next few months would see us traveling through the deserts of Botswana in a five ton, bright blue, ex-army truck.
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.
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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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