BLOEMFONTEIN
I visited old Bloemfontein branch on a number of occasions over the years. I always felt at home in that dignified old sandstone edifice. It always seemed to me to be the epitome of what a decent bank should be.
On one of my visits we were invited to the home of the Senior Manager, Mr Groenewald. Also present was Wouter Fouche, an assistant manager and his wife. Mrs Fouche soon became the focal point as she started regaling us with stories about their early days in the bank. She was a skilled raconteur who had us in stitches. She told of Wouter’s first appointment as accountant to a place called Paardekop. The town was hardly a dot on the map and the branch ceased to exist many decades ago. Accommodation was at a premium and they were forced to live in a house which had some corrugated iron walls and no hot water system whatsoever. Cooking was done on the huge coal stove and buckets and pots filled with water for baths, also crowded the top of the stove. Paardekop, near places like Volksrust and Standerton, is damn cold in winter and Mrs Fouche had got a huge pot of good, hearty bean soup going on the stove to help thaw out her late-working husband. When he was even later than anticipated, she went off to warm up under the covers in the bedroom, where she fell asleep. Wouter got home and wanted nothing more than to have a decent hot bath, so he grabbed what he thought was the pot of water off the stove. And yep, you guessed it, he emptied the entire pot of gorgeous soup into the bath. Poor Wouter went to bed without having had a bath and without that precious bowl of soup. Wifey was not impressed because that pot was meant to last for a week. And then you think you’ve plumbed the depths of despair!
Diagonally across the street from the old branch was a shop of the Bradlows group. In years gone by, the Bank of Africa had premises there while the bank manager lived upstairs. The building no longer exists but a brass plaque on the door of Bradlows commemorates the fact that the famed fantasy writer, A.R.R. TOLKIEN was born in the original bank building. Tolkien’s father was a bank manager. Even if you’ve never read his novels, you’re probably familiar with the films upon which they are based : The Hobbit and the Rings Trilogy.
BARKLY EAST
It’s quite odd – I can vaguely recall doing Barkly East but no details. That’s really weird because I loved that area and enjoyed being back there I’m sure. A chap by the name of Vorster was manager there and Vossie was married to a tiny Greek lady called Maria. She unwittingly started me on an item of cuisine which I love to this very day : Olives! I worked on the week-end so I could be in a position to attend the funeral of an old colleague, Charles Bailey. While I was sitting alone in the office, Vossie turned up with a big canned fruit bottle filled with pickled black kalamata olives for me. I had never tried olives much before – perhaps a stray one on a snack at a cocktail party. I wasn’t much impressed by the bitterness. I fished one out of that bottle with trepidation and chewed it reflectively. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised. The olives were from Greece and pickled in brine, vinegar and olive oil and the blend of flavours was quite amazing. Once I started I just could not stop! Despite my best efforts to stretch the bottle for as long as possible, after a week, alas, it was no more. But now, after all these years I still get an absolute craving for those tasty treats. Woolies has a line called Queen Olives and I have a bottle standing right here as I write. I’m seldom without this snack. Hail Maria, wherever you are!
Heck, I don’t know if that audit went well or if the hotel was acceptable but my taste buds remember Barkly East with pleasure.
BARKLY WEST
I had to stay In Kimberley and travel through every day when I audited Barkly West. Situated on the banks of the Vaal River, it is an area where a lot of alluvial diamond digging takes place, so much of the town’s economy stems from the trade in diamonds.
I used to drive through quite early and usually arrived there while the cleaner was busy. One morning while I was settling in, before the arrival of the rest of the staff, the cleaner called me to the front door because there were “important people” waiting to get in. I popped my head through the door opening and was surprised to find Barry Swart, the then General Manager and Billy Wellstead, head of the Rural Bank standing out there. I was happy to let them in of course but imagine the branch staff’s amazement when they arrived to find not only the dreaded auditor but half Head Office staff there as well! They were on their way to do some game hunting further on and were paying courtesy calls to branches on their route. It truly never rains but it pours sometimes.
The manager’s house had the distinction of being on the very banks of the Vaal River and it also had river water rights. The manager could actually pump water for his garden, directly from the river, a useful feature in that arid place. The thought crossed my mind that if I lived there, I would not be able to resist going down the banks of the river to search for the odd “klippie” or two.
Sadly, I remember nothing further about that audit or indeed, that branch!
DORDRECHT
Some time ago, someone asked when I was going to get round to talking about Dordrecht. Ever since then I’ve gone over the audit of the branch in my mind and although I have a detailed memory, nothing stands out as being worth a mention. We were there during a cold spell and boy, it gets flippin’ wickedly cold there. We had to stay in Queenstown and travel a tedious 76 km to get to the branch. On one occasion, we even ran into a little snow blizzard. But wait, I do recall something – Francois Booysen was with me and he went looking for lunch for us and found a little shop where one could buy fish and chips. What an amazing find that was – as far from the sea as you could get, we had some of the tastiest fried fish I’ve ever eaten. We were two very happy large guys, I can assure you.
DOUGLAS
I know I’ve been to Douglas. I went there to do some preliminary exploratory work on a special for Bush Morley but I’m damned if I can remember if I actually did a full audit there or not. Best to assume I didn’t I guess. Douglas lies quite close to the confluence of the Vaal and Orange rivers and sometimes, when there are copious rains upstream, the flow of the more powerful Orange causes the Vaal to dam up and flood its banks. It might have been in 1988 when the country experienced floods all over the place and the river rose meters above even its highest previous levels. Douglas was seriously flooded and our branch found itself submerged up to counter level in water. When the water eventually subsided and it was possible to open the ABP safes in which security documents were stored, the safes were full of muddy water. Our old friend, the late Abel van Vuuren was sent there and authorized to buy ladies’ hairdryers and instructed to salvage as many of the ruined documents as possible. He sat there for weeks with the dryers, gingerly opening files and salvaging what he could. Not the most exciting job but knowing Abel, he would have given it his all. I don’t know what his success rate was but he deserved a blooming medal for that job.
I wonder if any of my readers can tell us the final outcome of that disaster?
BURGERSDORP (Addendum to An Auditor’s Diary Part 1)
NOTE : The first few paragraphs of this section have been previously published elsewhere but with the benefit of hindsight, I think this story fits better here. Don’t worry if you’ve read it before – there’s a surprise towards the end.
Mike de Villiers my boss, grew up in Burgersdorp on a farm and had his schooling at Queens College in Queenstown. His half brother Ronnie Roberts, still farmed on the old family farm and once when we audited Burgersdorp, I went out to the farm with Mike for lunch and met his most hospitable family. Ronnie had shot a baboon in his maize lands, not realizing it was a female with a baby and when they found the carcass, the little guy was still clinging to it and crying pitifully. So, they took it home and raised it like a human child and when I was there Bobos was a rangy teenager (still without his canine teeth) attached to a long piece of chain set in a tall tree. I thought he was quite tame and was a little shocked when I got up close and Bobos attacked and started biting me. But I soon realized his bites were just playful, so I sat down on a rock and he sat down companionably between my knees and started checking my socks and bare legs for fleas. Once done with my feet and legs, he checked my shirt, my beard and finally my hair. Having those strong but gentle little hands working me over, is one of the most amazing experiences I have had. Once he was done, he sat down in front of me with his back to me – it was my turn to groom him, which I dutifully did while he closed his eyes and dozed. Mike and the family had been watching all this and were guffawing loudly and joking about the two “brothers” making such a good pair. I’ll never forget looking into his eyes and feeling kinship with that distant cousin of mine.
2022 : I have just started reading the third book which Gordon Forbes the famous tennis player wrote. It is titled “I’ll take the sunny side” and was published in 2018, just before Covid claimed Gordon. I was amazed when Ronnie Roberts and his baboon popped up in the book. Gordon was a family friend and told about Bobos (Later also named Ronnie) being taken into the Jubilee Hotel pub in the town, to the delight of the other patrons. “Ronnie” would drink beer but it seems he preferred peppermint liqueur. I was chuffed because it slotted in so neatly with my own story. Reading on further, I was even more surprised to also find a substantial bit about my former boss and friend, Mike de Villiers. He was referred to as Mikey in the book and he was obviously still very young at the time. Mike was always an accomplished musician and it seems that he helped Gordon and his siblings (Jennie, Jean and Jack) while they were learning to play musical instruments. Mike never mentioned that he was friendly with the famous Forbes family so this was news to me. Gordon was most complimentary and I just wished Mike was still around and able to read those kind words.
JACOBSDAL
The south western corner of the Free State is not the most scenic or exciting part of our country. The small towns barely exist and depend entirely upon farmers to keep them going. Jacobsdal is a place with irrigation farms which were originally supplied exclusively with water from the Rietfontein Dam but after the Vanderkloof Dam was completed, a canal system was laid on which brought Orange River water to the scheme as well. The town was founded as long ago as 1859 and has the distinction of being the first town outside the Cape Province to have a wine cellar. The Landzicht Wine Cellar makes wine here and I was given a short tour of the cellar while I was there. I have read that the wine they make is well regarded. (It’s a pity I had sworn off alcohol by then. I once toured the KWV Cellars at Paarl and had a ball “tasting” their wine. I had joined a tour group which consisted mostly of ladies. There was an old chap too and we stuck together – he whispered that he wasn’t so much interested in tasting as just drinking the stuff! While the old ladies were sniffing, swirling, peering and spitting the wines on offer, we were drinking and going back for more! One of the few times I’ve been tiddly at ten in the morning.)
I was called all the way from Upington to help Derek Venter finish this, his last branch before leaving internal audit, as he had a deadline on his new appointment. I had previously met Derek and his wife in Namibia and enjoyed his acerbic wit and mock bluff manner. I’ve always taken great pride in my spelling so imagine my indignation when he told me I was misspelling accommodation. I argued because I spelled the word as it appeared on one of our department’s claim forms and he said they were wrong too. He had to pull out a dictionary before I would very shamefacedly relent!
Poor Derek Venter lost his wife shortly after he left audit. He had hardly begun his new job when he woke up one morning to find that she had passed on during the night right next to him.
KOFFIEFONTEIN
Koffiefontein is a diamond mining town located quite near Jacobsdal. Over the years, the town’s fortunes have fluctuated in line with the worldwide demand for diamonds. The town, which also serves a large farming community, has in the past sunk back into obscurity when the mine had to close when diamond prices and production costs became skewed and the mine did not make a profit. Like nearby Jagersfonein, the mine has produced diamonds of very high quality and is likely to still be in production. A big hole was created at one time which went down 670 metres. Not as big as Kimberley or Jagersfontein but impressive enough.
A farm in the district was the home of famous Afrikaans writer, Etienne leRoux. I was still at school when the so called “Sestigers” arrived on the Afrikaans literary scene and as I worked at the Ladybrand public library for a bit of pocket money when I was a schoolboy, I was aware of writers like Andre Brink, Breyten Breytenback, Jan Rabie and of course, Etienne leRoux. I felt myself very “with it” and cool when I took home “Sewe dae by die Silbersteins” to read. My verdict of the book : A load of codswallop! I could not make head or tail of it. I’m sorry if I have disappointed any intellectuals among you but the sestigers were just hype where I was concerned. Ummm, maybe not Andre Brink – I read his ‘Die Ambassadeur” and enjoyed it – well it did have some quite racy sex in it and I WAS still a schoolboy!
The town had two little hotels – neither much to write home about. I stayed in the Koffiefontein Hotel which seemed the better of the two. I had a few moments of panic when having my first bath because the bath was actually recessed into the wall so that it had no ledge on the wall side. I was in the habit of resting my hands on the edge of a bath and then lifting myself up, when exiting a bath. I had no inside ledge to rest on and was thus well and truly stuck. I struggled manfully for a while, eventually rolling over onto my tummy and rising to my knees. That was “benoude oomblikke” folks. I’m surprised I wasn’t put off bathing for good.
I chuckled at a sign outside a little amusement arcade which proclaimed their gaming attractions – one of them was a JUTE box. I suppose there is a very remote chance that there is some hessian covered videogame but I prefer to incline towards a JUKE box. Who knows what goes on in these small towns.
LOUIS TRICHARDT
I can’t figure why it has taken me so long to dredge up some memories about this pleasant town. I KNOW I loved being there because my brother-in-law was working at Thohoyandou but staying in Louis Trichardt, so for all my off hours there, I found my way to their house and enjoyed the company of my sis and my niece and nephews. Their house was rather small and I could not board with them so I stayed a few km outside town at the pleasantly named Cloud’s End Hotel. On weekends we’d drive up into the forests and plantations at the foot of the Hanglip rock formation and have a picnic in some really idyllic surroundings. The Air Force had a radar station on the top of this flat topped rock. The Soutpansberg Hiking Trail also started at the foot of Hanglip and in the company of my swaer and his kids, we followed the trail for a short distance. I found it extremely heavy going and right there made up my mind never to try any more hiking trails!
While there, I decided to buy a decent camera so I could start to keep a photographic record of where I had been. Off I went to Solly Noor’s shop and splurged on a neat Pentax K1000 which served me reasonably well over the years. My little niece was at a very cute stage in her life so I eagerly started “shooting” her at every opportunity. Imagine my delight when some of my earliest efforts turned out to be excellent photos , some of the best ever taken of the kid. (Now grown-up with a teenager of her own!) I also toted the camera on our expeditions into the forests but somehow never came up with the quality of photos I wanted. I used it a lot in Namibia and occasionally came up with a decent snap or two, but my interest started waning when at least 80% of my snaps were poor and the rest just passable. The cost of developing and printing spoiled it for me. Might have been a lot different if I had one of the digital marvels they sell today.
I recall that the manager had a gold coin collection which he kept in the strongroom, which must have been worth many thousands. I think his surname was Meyer and he had box upon box of proof coins in his collection. Highly polished and exquisitely well minted coins are certainly beautiful but I’d rather not have a collection of anything excessively precious because the worry of looking after such items would spoil the pleasure of ownership completely for me. No, it’s not sour grapes either!
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