SPRINGFONTEIN
When I was a kid and living in Trompsburg, we would sometimes drive through to Springfontein to attend the Anglican Church there, as there was no such church in Trompsburg. On one of these occasions, my baby sister decided to start walking, right there in the vicar’s house. Amazingly, many years later her husband was appointed manager of the branch and they spent a few very happy years in the village. Unhappily, despite a more active past, Springfontein barely clings to life now. During the Boer there was a concentration camp just outside the town and my family often picked over the old trash dumps at the camp site for interesting bottles and other old artifacts. In the era of steam, Springfontein was an important Railway junction and Railway personnel made up a fair proportion of the town’s population. Now all that has simply faded away and even the branch which the bank had there was closed some years back. Luckily the branch at nearby Trompsburg is currently still open.
HEILBRON
This was the second branch I visited when I first started on Audit. Peter de Villiers and I stayed at Tuckers Hotel, a Jewish owned hotel. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – a hotel owned by Jews guarantees you a good stay and a fine table and Tuckers was no exception. It is the only hotel I ever struck which had rollmops as an option to fish on the dinner menu. I had never eaten raw pickled fish before but a sample from Uncle Pete’s plate got me going. I must say I’ve not had any for years – time to remedy the situation.
The accountant of the branch was away during the audit. He was Eric Poalses who went on to do very well for himself in the bank’s service. He was an internal auditor for a number of years and just before I retired, he became Chief Internal Auditor and thus my boss. I don’t recall much about the audit at Heilbron but I’m sure it went well because Eric ran a tight ship. During his absence, one of the ladies was acting in his stead and many years later I returned to Heilbron to investigate a nasty bit of fraud which the selfsame lady had perpetrated. The money she stole went towards the lavish lifestyle she was enjoying and to my amusement, the detective who eventually took on the case admitted that he too had attended some of her popular parties.
HOBHOUSE
Hobhouse is a tiny village between Ladybrand and Wepener and it’s a mystery to me why the bank ever thought it necessary to be represented there. It was actually a sub-branch, with the Wepener manager being responsible for both branches. An Accountant-in Charge, a lady by the name of Alice Ackerman in the time I went there, effectively ran the branch with only the substantial advances being handled by the manager when he visited weekly or when a client needed to see him. It was an unwieldy system but saved a managerial salary and perks, never mind that it deprived a most competent lady of a chance to be a manager. At the time I was looking out for a person who would be interested in becoming an Internal Auditor and I really thought Alice would be a suitable candidate but alas she wasn’t really interested in the itinerant lifestyle. I have no idea what became of her and of course Hobhouse sub-branch no longer exists either.
The fellow who owned the miniscule hotel and bottle store in the town, hit upon the idea of selling liquor at rock bottom prices. His mark-up was way below what his competitors in nearby towns were charging . His idea was to increase his stock turnover by sacrificing some of his profit. He was actually doing quite well as word had got around and people came from far and wide to buy in bulk. I even bought a case of Red Heart rum there which was R2 cheaper per bottle than anywhere else. Then he made a mistake. In his quest to gain more and more customers, he started delivering in neighbouring towns but he must have left this overhead out of his calculations because before long, his handsome credit balance had become a growing overdraft. He went bankrupt of course but during the years he was top dog amongst the region’s bottle store owners, we boozers had a field day.
Remarkably Hobhouse even had a high school when I was at school in Ladybrand. I was in the school’s tennis team and we sometimes travelled down there to play tennis against them. I doubt whether a high school still exists but perhaps the township people are using it as a primary school now.
PRETORIA NORTH, PRETORIA
I had to travel from East London all the way up to Pretoria to join Dave Sharp at this branch. I didn’t know Pretoria very well so I cast around to find any hotel able to house me in that part of the city. I eventually found the Maroela Hotel. The kindest thing I can say about it is it was adequate, if not wonderful. Dave stayed somewhere else so I only saw him at the office. It was especially hot when I arrived there so I was wearing safari suits. I could not arrange for washing so I washed my own stuff and left it to dry on a hanger hanging from a window handle on a window which overlooked the roof of the kitchen. Imagine my dismay when one gusty evening, my safari suit jacket blew off the hanger and landed on the roof below. I contemplated this disaster for a while and then did my best “McGyver” stuff. I always carried a bag of spare cupboard locks, chains, double adaptors etc and a substantial length of ordinary flex. I then got a wire hanger out of the wardrobe and fashioned a sort of grapnel which I attached to the flex. A bit of determined fishing with my line and hey presto, up came my jacket, a little bit grubby from the kitchen roof but intact.
TARKASTAD
Within striking distance of Queenstown, I elected to try the hotel in Tarkastad rather than travel in and out every day. There is a holiday resort on a farm resort called Blanco some 13 km from the town and in retrospect, that is where I should have stayed but nou-ja, it’s too late for tears now.
LYDENBURG
I accompanied Alex le Roux and his wife and Ray Pullen and his wife, to this branch. We all stayed at Morgan’s Hotel which had the distinction of being the hotel with the most comfortable bed I ever slept on. In my childhood, we had only coir mattresses, which after prolonged use became flat and hard. (In Trompsburg we had teams of black women who used to go around reviving coir mattresses by emptying out the coir and fluffing it all up again, before restuffing the slip. A mattress which went out flat as a biscuit, came in puffed up and a treat on which to sleep) I found the same mattresses in the army only theirs had NEVER been refurbished and were as hard as army biscuits. When I started living in hotels, I discovered inner spring mattresses. These ranged from comfortable to atrocious (See the Villiers Hotel) but Morgan’s Hotel had the perfect bed for my weight and size. Damn, I was sad to have to leave there.
The countryside around Lydenburg is very scenic and I remember with much pleasure, parking my car in a lay-bye on top of nearby Long Tom Pass (On the way to Sabie) on a Sunday and sitting there enjoying the view while looking through my Sunday papers. That has to be one of the finest views in all of South Africa.
I recall a fellow in the branch who spoke Afrikaans with an accent not unlike that of Jan Spies of TV fame. I think he was the accountant and routine exceptions were starting to pile up. Every time I handed him an exception for a reply, he would say forlornly, “O hete meneer, nog ‘n bokkop met ‘n “F””
STEYNSRUST
This is a non-descript village situated some 50 odd km from Kroonstad, on the road to Lindley. There was no hotel at the town so I had to travel across from Kroonstad daily. The only really noteworthy building in the town is the magnificent sandstone Dutch Reformed church. The manager was Arno van der Walt who stands out in my memory as a man who embraced computers at the very dawn of the computer age. When everyone else viewed computers as something we MIGHT encounter sometime in the future, Arno was very wisely getting to know and use the demon machine. I spent a few lunch hours happily playing simple computer games at his house! Arno and his lads were old hands and handled the machine so nonchalantly that they seemed like intellectual giants to me! I must credit Arno for piquing my interest in PCs. His was the very first PC I ever laid my hands on. It’s funny, now that my computer is the most indispensible thing in my house, to look back and think how ignorant I was and how complicated the infernal machine seemed to be.
PIETERMARITZBURG
Pietermaritzburg will always remind me of the day I had the temerity to argue a point with Mr Wilf Roberts. You might have read about about this “clash of wills” and its outcome elsewhere in my essays so I won’t repeat the story. Suffice to say that for me it was a really “tense” audit but I didn’t cave in despite Robert’s scary attitude towards me. Maybe it was just as well because I think he despised kowtowing even more than insubordination!
Staying up at the Hilton Hotel was as idyllic as I could ever have wished for. I liked just everything about that amazing old hotel and I wasn’t about the allow Roberts’ ire spoil my fun. It took a week or so before something happened to mar my stay. Mist descended on Town Hill and cut visibility down to zero. I was very proud of my Beetle to which I had fitted a pair of hefty extra Hella spotlights. Those halogens were like searchlights and showed the road far ahead as if in daylight. I had just started going up that hill, after a few toots in town with the rest of the lads when everything suddenly went white around me. My precious lights were reflecting off a pea soup fog and completely blinding me. I switched to dim but found I still could not see more than ten feet ahead. I geared right down to first and started that grueling climb hoping to heaven I would spot any slower moving car ahead in time. I luckily encountered none but equally alarming were the cars which were catching up with and overtaking me. I eventually got back to the hotel unscathed but thoroughly rattled. At the first opportunity, I added a pair of Hella foglights to the car to be prepared for a repetition yet I never had occasion to use those foglights in all the years I drove it. Mind you, that little car looked smashing with all those lights – just like a proper rally car! (Go on chaps, say it : WINDGAT !!)
It was in this branch where I met my old friend Clive Killerby and his wife Heather. Our paths crossed several times over the years – amongst others, in Walmer, Port Elizabeth and in Local Head Office where he was Administration Manager. I used to call him “Killer” which was ironic in the extreme as you’d have a hard time finding even a smidgen of malice in Clive. Heather I encountered at the PE Computer /Processing Centre that used to be and she was equally nice. Then the unthinkable happened: Heather had been working for Pick & Pay after retiring from the bank and she tragically perished in a storeroom fire at the shop. How Clive has managed to overcome that trauma only he knows and I would just like, in this small way to pay tribute to his courage and his ability to accept without bitterness, his terrible loss. You’re a strong man Clive.
KEMPSTON ROAD, PORT ELIZABETH
Long before I came to make my home there, being able to call on any of the Port Elizabeth branches was a pleasure for me. Kempston Road branch had a big, airy banking hall and a happy, welcoming staff.
While I had previously been on a course with Dick Bryant and had visited his previous branch, we really struck up our lasting friendship at Kempston Road. We sat talking in his office during a lunch hour and the conversation inevitably turned to music. I used to tote along several boxes full of music cassettes, whenever I travelled and to underline my enthusiasm for bands like Poco or CSNY, I offered to lend him one of my boxes, so he could sample what I was going on about. We even went out to my car which had a respectable sound system, in order to listen to some tracks. This initial cross pollination set us both on courses which have persisted to this very day. We started accumulating vinyl madly, after agreeing not to duplicate effort by going after the same albums. I eventually decided to dispense with vinyl but Dick still has his own collection as well as mine which he took over. Most of my collection is now stored electronically in MP3 format – literally millions of tracks.
I remember very little about that audit itself to be honest. Being able at last to enthuse about my favourite subject with a kindred spirit much relieved the tedium of the audit. Dick went on to other managerial appointments in East London and now lives in Durban but we are still friends and still share our music collecting hobby.
STERKSPRUIT
I have been putting off writing about Sterkspruit in this section because so many of my past stories were about the town and I didn’t want to repeat myself. However, as Sterkspruit was the first solo audit I had to do, I have to say something. I actually asked for this one and Mike was only too happy to let me have it. The roads to and from Zaston and Lady Grey were in shocking condition due to non-maintenance so I thought I’d give the old Hilltop Hotel a try. Piet van Heerden had long since handed over the hotel to a chap by the name of Baduza and he had spent a considerable amount expanding and improving the building. I was assigned a comfortable room and ventured out in the crowded public areas for something to eat. The milling crowds of people gawking at the lone white face in their midst was a little unnerving but I had lived in the town for 7 years and wasn’t particularly fazed by the crowds. The food, when it arrived, was singularly unappealing – a brutally tough piece of steak and some limp chips. I went back to my room for a nice hot bath but alas, no hot water. I tried to take the chill off the water by means of my little immersion heater but could not even get the temperature to lukewarm! The next night saw me go through pretty much the same process except that this time there was no water at all. By then I had been in touch with Charlie and Carol Mather, who had a shop in the town but lived in Lady Grey. They travelled through daily in their Kombi and offered me a lift, so I booked out and went to the Mountain Shadows Hotel in Lady Grey. Baduza was not charmed that I had elected to no longer support his hotel but hey, I can put up with a lot but I must be able to wash myself properly every day.
Going back to “my” branch was a strange experience. Viv Swartbooi was the manager and he occupied the bank house. (Some years later, Viv was gunned down by an unknown assailant, one night at his front door. As he was rumoured to have a high rank in the then banned PAC, a political assassination was suspected). He was a pleasant, well spoken man but an inexperienced lender who had a number of lendings on the books which were not supported by any documentation. Such advances tended to be donations rather than lendings. The routine of the branch seemed pretty chaotic compared to what I had known when I was accountant there but considering the unprecedented pressure the staff were under, it was a miracle that it functioned at all.
Submitting my first ever audit report was quite nervewracking. I needn’t have worried though because the Head Office bosses were most complimentary. Mike even gave a copy to long retired Wilf Roberts and he went through it with a fine-tooth comb, chuckling and mumbling all the while. He was happy with it and that was the biggest morale booster of the lot.
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