The insularity of a white English-speaking child’s life in the South Africa of the 1940s and 50s, not only in relation to the other ‘white tribe’, but more so when it came to black people, was almost absolute. My memories of early childhood carry only two black images: one was Mita Gongo, the Xhosa domestic worker in our Pretoria home, whose kind, lined face remains quite clear to this day; the other was roving bands of young black men, some of them playing mouth-organs, who were seen walking down Schoeman Street on Sunday afternoons. They were no doubt mostly employed in white homes and gardens, enjoying their only day off, but Mita Gongo called them ‘Amaleitas’ and there was something vaguely threatening about them, possibly because Mita didn’t like them. Other black persons touched my life in a tangential way, like the old man who drove the horse-drawn ice-cream cart down Schoeman Street, selling wafers for a tickey – threepence – but there is little other recollection of them, such was their place in our universe. My childhood memory is a parable of the general white experience. Black persons impinged on our lives only in a marginal and subservient role and things would have remained so had the Methodist Church not later intervened with the move to Kilnerton, taking our family out of its white bubble and locating us in the middle of a large black college campus.
Methodist ministers were paid very little, so outings and school holidays were severely limited, but we did venture occasionally to Johannesburg, 30 miles away, for a shopping day and maybe lunch at John Orr’s department store. En route we usually stopped on the side of the tree-lined road to pick mushrooms in the fields. Joburg had trams – red and cream behemoths that rumbled on tracks down the middle of the city streets. Every so often the spring-loaded arm that connected one of them to the powerlines above would jump loose, the tram would screech to a halt and the conductor would fish out a long pole from its tubular hiding place and juggle the arm back into contact – all in a shower of crackling sparks to entertain us.
Dad would sometimes swop pulpits with JB Webb and would preach in the Central Hall in Pritchard Street, the church where, in the 1920s he had first experienced the call to be a minister. The organist then was the famous Rupert Stoutt, who unbelievably would still be there when I entered that pulpit some 50 years later.
School holidays were usually spent with relatives, sometimes with Hector’s family on their farm near Warmbaths. The farm was a poor investment that never repaid their back-breaking work. Their humble farmhouse had rocks weighting the tin roof to hold it down. Cattle and peanuts or sunflowers were what they farmed and their life was hard. There was the heartbreak of one holiday, when anthrax struck Uncle Strett’s herd. Hector struggled to hold back his tears as he shot the doomed beasts and we retched with the stench of burning cattle carcasses. Uncle Stretton Thorne was a hard-bitten, pipe-smoking ‘bloedsap’ United Party supporter. The next farm belonged to the Tromp family, with old man Tromp a passionate Afrikaner Nationalist, full of bombast now that his party was in power. At night I used to lie on the carpet next to the crackling fire listening to the two of them almost coming to blows as they argued. However, the Tromp/Thorne feud was as much about pride as politics: whenever Tromp decided to plant sunflowers Strett would stubbornly plant peanuts, and vice versa – and Tromp seemed always to be right. He became more prosperous as Uncle Strett and Aunt Muriel sank deeper into debt. Those farm holidays taught me a deep respect for the farmers of our land, not to mention politics 101. I also learned something else: anxious to prove my manhood, I nagged Hector to take me hunting. He finally agreed and we set off with me proudly hefting the .303 rifle. It was a long, burning hike before we crossed some spoor. “You’re in luck,” Hector said, “that looks like kudu.” Sure enough, after another 30 minutes, there the beast stood in the bush: a magnificent bull, at the shoulders as tall as me, with long horns spiralling majestically skywards. The day was dying and the animal was silhouetted darkly, all except for the pink glow of his soft translucent ears against the setting sun. He seemed to be looking straight at us. “He’s yours,” Hector whispered, and then added, “if you want to kill him.” I was transfixed. I never even raised the rifle. I knew I could never kill something of such grace and beauty. The moment when that great animal won my heart stayed with me and I have never wanted to hunt again.
Another holiday venue I enjoyed was being packed off to my dad’s sister Beattie and her spouse Harry in Germiston. They had chosen a road less travelled by my Methodist family: Harry liked his whiskey, and Beattie was, well, very sexy. The house had some slightly risqué pictures and one or two charming art deco nude statuettes, all of great fascination to a pubescent boy. They also had the latest audio technology called a radiogram, combining a radio and gramophone in one piece of furniture. Cousin John’s latest vinyl record with Roy Rogers singing Don’t Fence Me In would play on the one side, until Uncle Harry walked in, flipped a switch, and immediately the radio took over on the other. Their home was so full of things.
Most of my wartime Christmas hand-me-downs – 1930s-era Hobbies Annuals, Dinky Toy cars, puzzles – had once been owned by John, and he had a Lionel train set which I loved to lay out and operate. Harry was an inveterate tinkerer and accomplished radio ham. I used to sit next to him as, with a whiskey in his left hand, with his right he delicately manipulated the glowing dials to pick up voices from thousands of miles away. His garage was filled with technical junk that provided an endless treasure-trove for me, and wonder of wonders, on the back lawn stood a full-size radar aerial discarded from one of the navy’s World War Two frigates. How this massive piece of hardware travelled the thousand miles from Simon’s Town to Germiston and into Harry’s yard remains a mystery.
It was while staying with Uncle Harry and Aunty Bea that I met Field Marshal Smuts. They took me to a United Party fête in the grounds of Victoria Lake, and there he was, in full khaki uniform with red cap band and tabs, medal ribbons from three wars, Sam Browne belt, and swagger-stick tucked under his arm. I clearly remember him leaning down to shake my hand, his kind, lined face with its white goatee beard close to mine. “How do you do, young man?” he asked courteously. I have no idea what I replied but my aunt preened with pride. And then, on Victoria Lake I fell in love for the first time with boats and boating, but the story of that romance belongs in another chapter.
When I entered Pretoria Boys’ High School (PBHS) in 1951 the impact of the National Party regime elected in 1948 had already been felt there. Before their more infamous legislation against black South Africans, they attacked those of their own kind whom they saw as anglophiles. PBHS was a favourite school for Afrikaans-speaking farmers who sent their sons to learn English and receive a more liberal education. The new regime put pressure on such families to end this practice and by the time I arrived, the hostels had been gutted of many stalwart Afrikaner boarders – often the backbone of the school’s gees (spirit) and its rugby prowess. They were transferred to Afrikaans Hoërskool across the railroad tracks. PBHS was weakened, its discipline became poor and my time there did not serve me well. Had I stayed, I think I might have ended up a problem to society. I was an inconsistent scholar, excelling only at English, History, Geography and Art, the last mentioned subject taught by the great and gloriously eccentric Walter Battis. I tried other languages but gave up uselessly on both Latin and German, settling finally on Geography as an escape. I had a handful of good school friends but because Kilnerton was so far from the Pretoria suburbs where they lived, I saw little of them after school.
The year 1952 saw the tercentenary of the landing at the Cape of Jan van Riebeeck and the first Dutch East India Company settlers and a handful of boys from PBHS would be selected to travel to Cape Town for the celebrations to be held on the new Foreshore, the reclaimed land outside of Van Riebeeck’s Kasteel de Goede Hoop. The Nationalist government