Shorelines

by Chris Marais

  He started taking the workers’ wives as hostage, extorting clothes, tobacco, candles and other supplies from them. Every now and again he would steal a sheep from one of the surrounding farms. His cave had a narrow entrance, which he could easily defend. Besides, when life became too harrowing for him there, Februarie would decamp to another cave at Kathoek in a kloof to the south-east. The farmers were upset about their stolen sheep and decided to do something about it.

  Jules was reading this out aloud to me while the rain pounded on the roof. I was soon caught up in the story.

  “So what did the farmers do?”

  “They caught him one night while he was climbing over the wall of a kraal,” said Jules. “They beat him up and dragged his body off to the nearest aardvark hole and stuffed him into it.”

  Rough justice. So back to Biddy Anderson, my hero of the moment. The ebullient Biddy was a double Springbok, starring in both rugby and cricket in the late 1890s. I found a newspaper clipping, a sports report written by one Paul Dobson detailing a game played on 5 September 1896:

  “Tommy Crean won the ball for the British Isles at a lineout and fed Louis Magee, the brilliant Irish half-back. Magee passed to Sydney Bell of Cambridge, who was in their fly-half position. Bell passed to Fred Byrne of Moseley, who was playing centre.

  “Then it happened. Ferdie Ashton of South Africa sailed into Byrne who crashed to the ground. Biddy Anderson darted in, snatched the ball from Byrne’s grasp and set off for the British goal line. Only one opponent blocked his way: Newry Meares, an Irish forward who was chosen at full-back that day. But Alf Lerard, the South African half-back, was up with play. Anderson drew Meares, and Lerard took the pass to score under the posts. Tommy Hepburn converted after the tourists had protested against the try and South Africa went into a 5-0 lead. It was also the final score.”

  “Yawn,” said the cruel Jules. “So what?”

  “So what? So what?” I had to tickle her and chase her around the little museum. “That was the first time South Africa ever won a rugby Test match – that’s what!”

  “Sport. Schmort.” But I would not be daunted by girlish ignorance, and read to her from Biddy’s obituary, written by Percy Twentyman Jones (who the hell calls anybody Twentyman Jones these days? That’s so Twickenham) in the Cape Times of 11 March 1926:

  “So long as Rugby football is discussed in South Africa the name Biddy Anderson as the prince of South African three-quarters will keep cropping up. The players and spectators of the present day have no conception of the remarkable genius lurking behind his every movement on the field of play .… [W]hen he closed one eye and drew up one side of his mouth as he glanced in his partner’s direction, his pleasantly plain features – for he was not exactly handsome – scintillated with mischief for his opponents.”

  I rooted around the scrapbook and found a cutting that recorded a cricket match between Cape Town and some place called Alma, in which Biddy Anderson scored an unbeaten century with the bat and claimed six wickets with the ball. But by then I had lost my wife, who had found the Death by Oysters story.

  It was the tale of the “hapless Mrs Cloete”, who was given a huge oyster by her husband at their wedding feast. She choked to death on the oyster in front of all the guests and her horrified husband, who blew his brains out with a shotgun shortly afterwards. The oyster shell was mounted above the front door of the old house on the homestead.

  The records hint that the ghost of the “hapless Mrs Cloete” used to dance in the attic, while the ladies of the Anderson family danced below in their bare feet to the stirring concertina tunes played by one Oom Frikkie. These festivities were, apparently, made even more memorable by the cask of sweet wine that a certain Oom Serfaas would bring over from Wellington from time to time.

  Jules continued to read, and the sport cuttings fell from my fingers as storm darkness fell outside and we mind-tripped back in time.

  “The young daughter of one of the past owners of De Hoop was in love with the son of the owner of an adjoining farm, but he was not thought to be good enough by her parents. The two young lovers consequently disappeared together.

  “Ten years later, an axe and some blonde hair were found in a hollow by labourers cutting milkwoods for fuel, suggesting a suicide pact. The ghosts of these two ill-fated young people are said to haunt the homestead.”

  I found another Boys’ Own story.

  “Listen to this one. It’s about all the German U-Boats that used to sail around Cape Infanta during World War II. Disguised as fishermen, the crews would come up the Breede River in rubber dinghies and shop at Port Beaufort.”

  The German seamen would stock up on food and diesel for their U-Boats, which were doing damage to Allied shipping around the Cape at the time. They lay in the waters of both the Indian and Atlantic oceans like waiting wolves. But after a while the fuel gauge started dropping, the breakfast milk turned sour and the Chief Engineer had scoffed all the sausage in the galley. When the going got tough on the U-Boat, the U-Boat guys went shopping.

  South Africa was in two minds about World War II. While some citizens were ‘fighting the Hun’ in North Africa, others were ‘all for the Führer’ and the complete Hitlerisation of the continent, complete with jackboots, swastikas and rather large rallies.

  The most famous South African Hitlerite was one Robey Leibbrandt, a champion boxer, who met the Führer at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. He became an instant Nazi and underwent extensive training in Germany to help overthrow the Smuts government of South Africa and install a Hitler-friendly regime.

  Leibbrandt returned to South Africa by U-Boat in 1941, came ashore on the West Coast in the Kleinsee area and made his way through the diamond fields and finally down to Cape Town. He formed a gang called The Stormtroopers and they began a sabotage campaign that eventually led him to within an inch of the gallows. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in December 1943. Five years later, when the Nationalists came to power, Leibbrandt was released. They say he was one helluva boxer.

  That was the mood in South Africa back then. So when someone from a U-Boat came strolling up the high street dressed either as a tourist or a fisherman, the shopkeeper didn’t always report the sighting to the cops. In fact, when the shopkeepers saw just how much the German seamen were willing to pay for goods, they shut the hell up and took the money.

  But the police and, subsequently, Jan Smuts’s government came to hear of these unscheduled tours of the Agulhas plain. So they sent in government agents “also dressed as holiday-makers” to snoop around. Can you imagine all these lumpy-eared types trying to act all nonchalant around tiny Port Beaufort?

  I read:

  “Pypie, a local shepherd, witnessed men coming ashore from a German U-Boat and was sworn to silence. Terrified that his family would be killed, he kept the secret for at least 30 years.”

  Then there was the story about a German officer whose body was found washed up on the shore. In the inner pocket of his uniform were two used tickets for a performance at Cape Town’s Alhambra Theatre.

  We sat up till late that night, reading about De Hoop. Then we opted to share one of the single beds and lay down together under our open sleeping bags. There was an interesting squeal of protest from beneath us, as though we had trapped an unfortunate African penguin that was now braying in full voice. We bounced a bit in enquiry and suddenly the whole bed gave way under us.

  “That’s it,” I said, disgustedly. “We’re officially on diet.”

  The next morning, I slunk off to Reception to ’fess up about the bed. The conservation officers nodded gravely, said don’t worry and managed to keep straight faces. As I walked away, I heard them explode with laughter. Like I said, we were now on diet.

  On the way out of De Hoop, I fell into a fynbos funk. I was now an official lover of fynbos, because once you’ve seen it up close you know why it’s called a Floral Kingdom. You also realise just how much of it all along the Garden Route has been destroyed i
n the interests of ‘development’. But more about that later. Just so you know: I think insensitive developers should be lined up against a wall and throttled to death with their Sunday newspaper ads selling you bullshit off-plan. Which, around here, normally means taking out the fynbos and throwing up something silly (they like the words ‘low maintenance’) in face brick.

  We stopped – as is our wont – at an ostrich farm, because the females were batting their large eyelids at us and sashaying up and down and rearranging their wings like self-conscious cabaret queens. A 10-seater van stopped next to us.

  “Hi there. We’re looking for a place called De Hoop [pronounced ‘dee hoo-ep’],” came an American accent from the passenger in front. He hauled out a really crappy road map that must have been last used by a distracted U-Boat shopper.

  “That’s not a map,” I said, sounding like Crocodile Dundee as I hauled out my personal road atlas and gave it to him. “This is a map.”

  “Thanks man. Now where’s Dee Hoo-ep?”

  “It’s here,” I said, pointing at a spot on my map. Eight sets of eyes peered keenly at it. “But you shouldn’t go there today. They’re firing off missiles.”

  Eight sets of eyes grew round like small saucers. Missiles. I could see these Americans, a senior bunch, were in no mood for missiles.

  Then the entire van erupted in uproarious laughter. They got it. I was joking. Nice joke. Now where’s Dee Hoo-ep?

  “I’m serious,” I said. “Listen, why don’t you guys all come to Malgas?”

  “What’s there?” These curious Americans.

  “The only working river pont in South Africa.”

  They were up for it, and we next saw them at the section of the Breede River where the Malgas Pont is located. Originally from Oregon and Washington, the four couples were doing a slow road trip from Cape Town to Zululand.

  “You know how we can afford to travel? We’re still married to our first wives!” said one guy. And they all broke up laughing again. The Comedy Store on Wheels. Like Saturday Night Live – for pensioners.

  We eased our vehicles onto the pont, manned by ferryman Anthony Mgongo and his assistant, who each wore a harness and held a length of chain he would expertly twirl around the pont cable. Then they would both walk the length of the pont, untwirl their chains and come back. The grand old codgers on tour thought this was marvellous and asked to join in. A few grunts and groans later they gave up and declared they were starving.

  We parted company and headed to Witsand beach, where we found an old man feeding his young puppy milky tea from a saucer. We stopped to admire the eager animal, a Labrador-Alsatian cross totally absorbed in his treat.

  “I had to think long and hard about taking on this puppy,” said the old man in a grave tone. “I didn’t want the pain that comes over you when they die. But I have high hopes that this one will outlive me …”

  Chapter 20: Mossel Bay to Knysna

  “Rasta Don’t Play Golf”

  We’re tooling down the N2 highway in the heart of the Garden Route past Mossel Bay towards the great Tsitsikamma Forest and there’s not much of a fynbos fiesta going on. Recent developments, including the great fires of 2005, have begun to threaten the region. fynbos loves a bit of flame, however – that’s how it regenerates every decade or so. But it cannot withstand the peri-urban creep of the ‘little white ball’ – the mushrooming walled-off golf estates where rich folk of all colours and nationalities have come to make their last stand.

  Before the golfing community takes up its designer pitchforks and lava lamps and comes hunting me down, please understand that I just don’t get it. Except for nine half-drunken holes at the Grahamstown Golf Club in my student days, I’ve never raised a putter in anger. I don’t empathise with golfers. Where they see a fairway to heaven, I see a boring expanse of over-irrigated grass.

  You know when you’re trying to explain the glorious concept of five-day cricket to an American and his eyes glaze over? Well, that’s what happens to me whenever someone goes chittering on about golf. I am a Golfing Gobi Desert. But I do want to enquire of the Tiger Woods Wannabe Society:

  “Dudes, who stole my Garden Route?”

  I also want to put that question to whoever is behind the boom in squatter camps down here. And those developers who build their ticky-tacky look-alike holiday homes and flog them to upcountry suckers who use the place once a year for barbecues and pissups by the beach. They could have stayed home, switched on the sprinkler and had an even better time for much less than the fortune they just forked out for a flawed dream. It’s just not good enough for my Garden Route.

  We weren’t all supposed to move down and live on the Garden Route, for heaven’s sake. We were supposed to preserve its pristine state for generations to come, visit it occasionally in a managed way and then head home again.

  So, as an outsider driving slowly along the so-called Garden Route, what I saw looked less and less garden-like and increasingly tacky. There were about 18 golf courses and the developers wanted to build more. And every year the grubby, sprawling squatter camps and the crime rate grew larger. There were golf balls rattling into tin cups to your right. And beggars rattling tin cups to your left. And here we were, as middle class as you could get, not really welcome on either side. Just keep on trucking up that N2, folks. There’s nothing for you here.

  Jules and I seethed and decided to visit some officials in the know, to find out just how bad things were on the so-called Garden Route. We arrived in George, found the town’s tallest building and Jules went up to see them while I car-guarded the Isuzu and its contents. What they had to tell her was no food for comfort, either.

  “Where’s the Garden?” she wanted to know from Dr Steve du Toit and Niel Lambrechts, who worked for the Western Cape Provincial Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning.

  “It’s slipping away from us, thanks to these developments,” said Steve. “The problem is that up until now there has been no overall plan or policy protecting the Garden Route from development, nothing that actually safeguards what tourists have come to see. The developers arrive with a vision, but the authorities haven’t had a coherent counter-vision.”

  There were 12 big developments pending, each one with a capital cost of at least R500 million. The average project involved more than 500 houses, one or two golf courses, a shopping complex “and an optional runway for private planes”.

  “And you know what gets me more than anything else?” demanded Steve. “These guys come from the city to the coast, and all they do is carry on watching satellite TV. They don’t even look at what is around them. How do you explain that?”

  In December 2005, the Western Cape government finally came out with development guidelines to control urban creep and the development of golf and polo estates along the Garden Route. But they may as well have been throwing a mouse to the vipers. A true range war was on the boil. Developers and rich residents were squaring up to an alliance of nature lovers and landless people.

  And to make matters worse, most of the developments seemed to have a tame politician in their pockets – or the relative of one.

  The biggest issue concerned water. Each golf course used about two million litres of water a day – enough for 80 000 people at the daily minimum of 25 litres. All the major rivers in the region were stressed, according to a national river-health assessment report. All surface water was overcommitted, with barely enough to enable Nature to function properly.

  In a state of shock, we went off to stay with an old mate, Rod Hossack, in his Victoria Bay guesthouse called Land’s End. We always loved waking up in this Cape Cod-style house, where the former owner’s wife was now a ghost who had her own breakfast table laid for her every morning. Rod also consulted the ghost-lady on major issues in his life. The sight of those Vic Bay waves breaking on the rocks in the moonlight had always been one of the enduring joys of a visit to the Garden Route.

  “You Jo’burgers,” Rod said, semi-ser
ious. “What have you guys done to control development up in your neck of the woods? Me, I’d rather see a golf course than a smokestack – any day.”

  He was right. But did it always have to come down to that: smokestacks or golf courses?

  “Yep, Jo’burg – now there’s a place for you,” he continued, ironic twinkle in his eye. “I went there recently for some medical treatment (after taking a tumble while surfing in Bali) and boy, the billboards! They’re the best scenery you’ve got. I can understand why you lot want a piece of this world.”

  But when we started talking about the poverty-wealth gap along the coast, Rod grew serious.

  “It’s a volatile situation,” he said. “Imagine you’re a poor person, suffering from cold night after night under a leaking roof. But over the hill are empty holiday houses, used for maybe a month or two every year, containing every comfort you can possibly imagine.” It didn’t take rocket science to figure out the rest.

  The water shortage in the area? Was that not a natural deterrent to over-development?

  “These guys are so rich they would not be able to comprehend that a simple lack of water stands between them and their golf course,” said Rod. “They’d just say: find the water, ship it in somehow, bugger the cost. The stakes are high, my friend. Money’s on the move and the rates are low. Everyone wants to play golf. Why, they tell me there’s a town in Spain surrounded by 64 golf courses.”

  Yes, but did that Spanish town have a Floral Kingdom? Or such a first-rate forest system as ours? Did it have a chronic water shortage? And if they had 64 golf courses already, then why didn’t everyone go chase their little white balls up in Spain, already? Sorry. No empathy.

  The next day, we entered Knysna, where my jaunty hero François le Vaillant came a-wandering back in the late 1700s in search of a decent elephant-foot breakfast and a specimen of Knysna turaco. He was shocked to see how the colonists lived in their buffalo-skin-roofed huts when they could have built timber palaces. But when he arrived at a place called Pampoenskraal, Le Vaillant fell in love with the forest and built an open-air dwelling for himself.