ALIWAL NORTH
The branch was described by one of my predecessors as a “rabbits’ warren” which was a bit harsh but originally the old sandstone building did not have much accommodation and all sorts of fixes were tried to remedy the situation. Mike and I were shoehorned into the office, the first time we were there.
I’ll remember the audit mainly for the nasty altercation I had with the senior lady who did securities. Mike had completed checking securities and was busy with the credit. The securities lady had corrected a number of exceptions and asked Mike to delete them so he delegated the job to me. She clucked impatiently and came and stood at my desk. I was typing and didn’t want to lose my thread and asked her to wait while I finished a sentence. Off she went in a huff! I quickly finished what I was doing and cleared my desk for her. “Ek is reg” I called and she replied, “Dis nou nie meer gelee vir my om te kom nie” . My Irish temper started climbing and I walked over to Mike to ask if he’d mind if I didn’t deal with the woman as she was making trouble and before I had finished talking, she interrupted me loudly and said that I had made her stand around and wait when she had work to do. WELL!! I let her have it with both barrels. Placing my face within inches of hers, I shouted her down and told her her fortune. Mike said he thought I was going to hit her! I damn nearly did!! That bitter, twisted old woman was the office bully and probably browbeat the manager as well, but she left me severely alone after that.
Mike and I stayed at the Windsor Hotel. Due to the popular hot springs, Aliwal North used to have a plethora of hotels. I was at my wash basin one evening after work, with my hand in the water and barefoot, when I found that my hand refused to grip. Thinking I was having a stroke, I stepped back and then noticed the flex wire for the bedside lamp which was connected to a plug across the room and which ran under the carpet, except for a bit showing at the basin. I picked up the brittle piece of flex gingerly and there protruding from it was a single, fine strand of copper wire. I went cold with fright. I had damn nearly been electrocuted. Luckily the single strand didn’t relay the full current otherwise I would not be telling you this story.
EAST LONDON
I first visited East London before we became regionalized and I joined Mike Darling and his team from the Western Cape. We all stayed at the Esplanade Hotel which for many years and many more visits became our “home from home”. I looked forward to staying with that team and sampling the Cape but no, off I went to Pretoria North which just wasn’t much fun at all.
During one of our audits, I was having problems with my neck and shoulder and I wanted my table raised a few inches to decrease my slouch. I asked the messenger to find me some bricks but instead, he went home and sawed blocks of wood to my specs. Mike de Villiers and Willie Coetzee were watching when the blocks were placed under my table’s legs. After a while, Willie, quite a small fellow wistfully said that he wished he had blocks like that. Mike was puzzled and wanted to know why he wanted his table raised. Willie had a twinkle in his eye when he said, “No, no. I want to place them under my chair”. I really appreciate a subtle sense of humour and Willie certainly had one. (Small he may have been but that nuggety little fellow had been a Paratrooper during his spell in the army!)
There was always a strong hardcore of staff at the branch. I think of Heather Frame who ran the crazily busy savings department for as many years as I can recall. It was close to impossible to find even a small fault in her department to which she was so dedicated – not as much dedication as that which she gave (And still gives) to her German Shepherd show dogs though. There was Phil Sutherland in charge of Forex (He patiently taught me everything I needed to know about things like foreign bills, letters of credit etc) Michele Klingelhoeffer in securities, Patsy Els in managerial, Bruce Wright, James Rusch, Margie Largue, Pete Dangerfield, Henri etc I can still see all those faces still but many of the names have faded. Sorry if I’ve not mentioned your name folks but I do recall your branch with much pleasure.
Our professional counterparts, the external auditors, weren’t happy that we were not leaving enough proof of what we had sampled and done in a branch and required us to produce working papers. The chaps in my team, me included were complete tyros when it came to computers so a couple of chaps from Cape Town joined us for an East London audit, in order to help us to get going on our laptops. These were the dark days of audit for me because suddenly, where we were spending no more than 20% of our time writing reports which were trim and easy to read, we were spending 80% of our time producing mountains of paper, which I was sure no-one wanted and no-one would read. As time went by, sanity prevailed and paper production again diminished but for a while, being an auditor was thoroughly unpleasant. Audit had started with Lotus and Word Perfect and we had got to grips with these….sort of! Then they dumped those programs for Lotus Smartsuite but before we were settled, the bank as a whole went the Microsoft route and we had to learn Word and Excel. Lotus notes was also brought in. Amidst all these constant changes we were expected to perform our normal audits and not spend more time doing them either. Looking back, I doubt whether that particular audit of East London achieved anything at all.
GRAHAMSTOWN
The “city” of Grahamstown has always held fascination for me mainly I suppose, because my Mom went to school there and often spoke of the place in glowing terms. In addition, I have an unproven suspicion that some of my maternal family may have been Settlers, which would further spur my interest in the town. The typical and charming English architecture lends it an un-African air which I found only in places like Graaff Reinet and Swakopmund. I may be treading on toes now but I really don’t think the town’s name change is appropriate. The bloke Makhanda had blow-all to do with the founding of the town after all so why name it after him?
After the audit I described under East London, I elected to take the whole team into Grahamstown, so we could try out our computer “skills” and somehow try and help each other without outside help. I had Barry Greyling, Bob Bullock, Willem Coetzer, Reuben Ndaba and Brenton Williams on the team and we set about tackling the computers with gusto. After a day or two during which the six of us were totally engrossed in our laptops, Barry asked me to help him, as his machine was apparently faulty. It had reported that it had run out of space. While those early machines were quite limited in capacity, they were not THAT bad. The main template we had to work on was quite big but again, not THAT big. Then I realized that after opening and using the template, Barry would save but not exit the document and then would open another copy and work on that. Pretty soon he had a plethora of copies on his machine and no room for any more! At another branch later on in the year, Reuben had a similar problem but then I was ready with the solution. How we ever got through that audit I’ll never know but looking back, that was about the time the pace of change quickened to a degree that I disliked and I started thinking about putting away my green pen for good.
The branch had some famous customers. Prominent among them must have been the author, Andre P. Brink. I spotted him standing at the counter on several occasions. I had read several of his books and had enjoyed them and just wished I had a copy which I could have had him autograph. Another famous client was Guy Butler the poet. I’m not one for poetry I’m afraid but my old mom used to speak highly of the man.
Always on the lookout for unusual or funny names, I found probably the most outrageous woman’s name here. Looking through the savings data printout I found a Mrs FOKKELINA van Jaarsveld. I was sure it was a mistake so I called for the signature card but nope – that really was her name. I have pondered this name for years and have concluded that someone along the line misspelled the name because in 1938, the Afrikaners were seized with Nationalist fervor on the centenary of the Groot Trek and some unusual girls’ names were contrived to mark the occasion. Names like Eeufesia, Kakebenia, Ossewania and FAKKELINA, were given to some poor, innocent babes and I suspect that our antie was actually Fakkelina. I had a lot of fun with the name, especially when I started thinking about how it could be shortened for convenience. I’ll leave you, the naughty reader, to speculate on that.
Grahamstown is also the place where I once picked up the most spectacular overpayment of interest I had ever found. In the days before computers, the branch would maintain call deposits for a local building society. The amounts involved ran into millions so I was extra careful in checking the manual calculations. I think the large number of noughts involved in calculating figures like 10 000 000 bamboozled the clerk and her checker because a shift in a decimal resulted in an overpayment of more than R50 000. I double and treble checked myself and eventually agreed figures with the customer’s auditor as well who agreed that they had been overpaid. That paid my salary for a year!
CARLETONVILLE
Carletonville is home to a bewildering array of gold mines. It is an alarming place if you’ve not been forewarned of the constant mining sourced earth tremors. During my first night in my second floor room at the hotel, I awoke to my bed actually shuffling around on the floor, as the building shook and groaned. If you’ve ever experienced subsonics you’ll know all about that feeling of panic they create in one. (I’m reminded of a movie I saw in the Cinerama theatre once. It was called “Earthquake” and once the lights dimmed, I noticed several large wooden boxes being wheeled into the aisles, one right beside where I was sitting. I thought they might be speakers but thought no more about them until the first earthquake erupted on the screen. Those mighty speakers suddenly came to life with sounds which were barely audible but were violently palpable – down below the 20 hz range. I damn nearly got up and ran from that cinema in fright; that sound was simply terrifying.) These tremors became a part of daily life but I can’t say I got used to them. Sometimes you could actually hear the shockwave coming, like an approaching express train.
Sinkholes are another hazard in the area. The occurrence in 1964 of a massive sinkhole at the Westdene Village belonging to the Blyvooruitzicht mine, swallowed the Oosthuizen family and their servant as well as their entire house. Not a trace was ever found of the house or the people. I have stood on the spot where this tragedy took place. The hole was simply filled in and a memorial stone erected on the spot.
During the first audit of the branch in which I took part with Bush Morley, the agency in the town was robbed and it might have been the quickest we auditors had ever arrived on the scene of a crime. When we arrived, the teller and cleaner were still locked in the toilet.
The manager was Jorrie Jordaan, a good manager and a most likeable man. We landed up at his house for a meal towards the end of the audit (Which had gone very well) and at the end of the meal, Jorrie hauled out a bottle of Schwarzer Kater liqueur and though we protested that we did not normally drink liqueur, he kept on until we had accepted a glass each. Blow me down if we didn’t jolly well finish off that FULL bottle between the three of us. Need I add that that was a BEEG BEEG mistake? Liqueurs taste wonderful but by golly, they cause the most wicked hangovers imaginable.
WOLMARANSSTAD
This was a pretty forgettable dorp. The hotel owner was happy to provide a bed but meals were just a blooming hassle to him. For two solid weeks, we ate nothing but T-bone steaks and I’m not a big red meat eater at the best of times. While we were battling to stay alive, millions of mosquitos were doing their best to drain us of what blood we had left. The hotel was right by a weir in a spruit which ran past the town. Those damn mossies even seemed to be attracted by Peaceful Sleep, with which I doused myself.
I was reminded of another week-end I spent there, when an old friend of mine married a girl from the town. Alan and I had been buddies at school and had promised to be Best Man at each other’s weddings. I couldn’t let him down but had serious misgivings about a wedding reception where no alcohol would be served. Luckily the town hall was right across from my hotel and under cover of darkness while speeches were on I slipped out for a quick double to fortify myself. I did this several times more as the evening drew on and created a buzz which saw me through the damn miserable evening. I don’t think anyone noticed I was considerably more cheerful than even the bride and groom! Alan has passed on but his widow sometimes calls so she bears me no grudges.
The manager was a nasty bit of work by the name of Roets – ran into him again many years later running a café somewhere. I hoped he had been fired but he explained that he had got tired of banking. Yeah, right!
BOTHAVILLE
I don’t seem to have any good memories of Bothaville. I used to walk a lot in those days and it was on one of my walks in the town that I experienced my first indications of approaching knee problems. A sudden sharp pain suddenly struck my right knee and I had the devil’s own job getting back to the hotel. It calmed down after a day or two but it was the start of the arthritis problem which makes walking well nigh impossible for me today.
Koos (His surname I can’t recall) was accountant at Bothaville. He had previously served in the same capacity in Ladybrand. He was rather an odd fellow, totally obsessed with Inspectors and Inspections and his top priority always was to achieve an exception free report. I used to send money home to my Mom and she would bank my cheque. Koos incurred my wrath when he dared to charge the old lady commission on my cheques – he started arguing with me when I protested and I promised him coldly that I would donner him myself if he did it again. He didn’t which was lucky because I really meant it.
Koos ended up in Bothaville – he actually earned a “clean sheet” from Wally Brown in his quest for perfection. Then he went and did the unthinkable – he had his hands in the cookie jar. I forget the details but I sent Bob Bullock to do the special. It was a difficult modus operandi to unravel as regardless of whatever else Koos was, he was an expert at routine. He was absent when Bob arrived and in the midst of the investigations, Bob noticed a pale looking traffic officer at the counter and he instinctively knew this was bad news. The cop revealed that Koos had taken the road to Parys, driving at lunatic speed and had deliberately swerved into the path of a huge Voermol truck and struck it head-on. People on the scene said that all that was still recognizable as human in that wreck was one of his hands.
Goodness only knows what drove Koos. I know few stories as tragic as this one and for that I am extremely grateful. Fanaticism is definitely not a healthy state of mind.
Comments