RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION
Something that amazed me at Sterkspruit was the number of churches and sects which had proliferated in the district. Every cluster of homes with a “Bantu Community School” at its heart also had at least one church. Furthermore, while the occasional congregation seemed to stem from say Methodist or Catholic roots, the majority of the churches had the most elaborate names ever. “The Church of Pleasant Living in Zion” or “The Holy Apostolic Christian Blood of Jesus” – you name it and it was out there. What is more, most had a Bishop in charge and the most detailed dresscode for members.
I suppose that in the very earliest days when Christian missionaries were about, missions were set up and whatever creed the missionary supported was preached but as years went by, congregations became independent of the parent church as both charlatans and misguided zealots, decided to impose their own ideas on the simple, rural people. I think that while these sects would claim to nominally preach Christianity, they were in fact odd mixtures of traditional ancestor-worship and bits and pieces from the Bible. The trappings of a church like the Catholics, such as robes and candles, seemed to be well worth adopting. We opened savings accounts for most of these churches. Our formalities called for a written constitution, something which many did not seem to have but in some cases pages from school exercise books listing rules in shaky handwriting and equally shaky English, is what we were handed. Sadly, the emphasis seemed to be less on the Creed of the church and more on the physical appearance of the congregants.
Of course, many of the so-called “Bishops” were probably charlatans who saw an opportunity to feather their own nests by imposing tithes on their congregants. Any flock of sheep will have the odd wolf hanging around its fringes, waiting to grab the unwary! I suppose the price we pay for sentience is our awareness of our mortality and to cope with this awful reality, we have been given genes which help us create religions. It is so much easier to cope with the spectre of self extinction by shifting the worry load up to a being on a higher level, than to cope with it all on your own. Simple rural people are no different to sophisticated city dwellers in this respect. Only the occasional “deep thinker” might think about the Creed of the church but the majority would find most comfort in the trappings like dress, chants, songs, slogans, lit candles, incense, gongs and bells etc . My attitude is, ‘Whatever gets you through the night’ is fine by me and however you face eternity is your business, not mine.
Naturally, superstition and the veneration of ancestors are and will probably always be part of black culture. The healers, the Sangomas, are no different to the “mediums” many white people consult in order to communicate with the dear departed. There was a deep-rooted respect for the people who had gone before and neglect of the needs of the ancestors had pretty dire consequences. No different to “Honour thy father and mother” I suppose.
I ran into odd beliefs at times. I recall my cleaner telling me about the huge snake which had devastated several houses in the area where he lived. He told me that it came out of the sky and was an angry spirit which twisted about and made a strong wind. Turned out it was a small tornado but no amount of ridicule would change Jeremiah’s belief in that super snake. Another kind of greatly feared snake lives in the deep dark pools which sometimes form in mountain streams. There is an isolated valley in the upper reaches of the Telle River, (Border with Lesotho) known as Dangershoek. Getting there was quite a process on the primitive roads but one was rewarded with a beautiful picnic spot next to a deep pool, under a huge rock, if one took the trouble to go there. A spring fed the pool and the water, although quite deep, was clear as crystal, clean down to the bottom. We swam in the pleasantly cold water on hot summer days and thought nothing of it, but isolated herders and people living deep in the valley, had an absolute fit when they passed by and saw us splashing around. They firmly believed a huge water snake lived in the pool and that we’d be attacked and eaten before long. They actually begged us to stay out of the water. We pooh-poohed the warning but I think we all looked at the pool with new eyes after that because little further swimming took place!
Of course, the passing of a person into the spirit world was always an occasion marked by the most elaborate and expensive send-offs. I was never able to compare the black version of the spirit world with that of the white man’s but it seemed to me that someone departing to go and be an ancestor was as much an occasion to rejoice and celebrate as to mourn. Funerals could go on for days while everyone presented their eulogies, sang and danced and generally had a jolly good time. I’ve no idea if your life here on earth affected your status on the other side – did one perhaps get good and bad ancestors? Was access to “ancestorhood” conditional, something like our “heaven” concept and if so, what was their equivalent of hell? I just don’t know but I guess I’ll find out when the trumpet finally sounds for me.
VIOLENCE AND CRIME
A real shock to me was the prevalence of violent crime, seemingly bubbling just under the surface and on the point of bursting out in the open, at any given moment. I was witness to ugly, almost casual viole3nt crimes which shook me rigid. I watched some teenagers armed with wicked looking knives, slashing at each other down the main street in running battles, on a couple of occasions.
On another occasion, I happened to be standing on the stoep of the Hilltop Hotel when at a short distance down the hill a one-sided battle broke out between the black barman from the hotel and a group of youths. The barman, a big muscular chap, was being mercilessly peppered with stones by at least six opponents. Bits of rock as big as tennis balls were bouncing off the fellow and must have hurt. Rooting along the edge of the road, he came up with a full brick, with chunks of masonry attached to it. Roaring like a raging bull, he flung that massive missile at his nearest antagonist, hitting his head with appalling force and a sickening crack. The youngster dropped as if poleaxed and lay still. His friends suddenly melted away while the barman turned on his heel and walked off muttering. Sickened, I turned back into the bar for a double brandy. I was shaking as I told Piet that I had just witnessed a murder. A bit later, I walked out again and the police were on the scene, loading the still figure into their van. He was pronounced dead when he arrived at the hospital. As far as I know, nothing came of it – the barman was never prosecuted as far as I know.
My flat overlooked the Sterkspruit river and there was a steep slope down to a clump of poplars on the riverbank. One Sunday morning I looked out to see police busy with something down in the trees. I heard later that a young girl had been found secured to a tree by means of a man’s trouser belt. She was dead, probably strangled and the murderer had tried to cremate the body by making a fire under it. The criminal was quickly apprehended as his fancy belt was relatively new and a dead giveaway. He had bought it from a local shop just that week.
Today, this sort of thing is dismayingly common everywhere but back then, to a boy who grew up in small rural towns where a fist fight at school was a rarity, such casual violence was a huge shock.
The most hectic time for us at the bank was always the fortnight leading up to Christmas. Queues formed out in the street long before opening time and did not shorten, until well after closing time. One could not move in that small banking hall. On one occasion, a drunken lout came staggering in and started pushing and pulling at people standing peacefully waiting to be served. I was the ONLY white man in that office but I decided to act before a bloodbath erupted. Walking out of the manager’s office, I found a path opening up for me and I headed for the chap. I thought to grab him by the collar and the seat of his trousers and simply march him out of there, but I grabbed him a little harshly and with the shock the bloke simply passed out flat on the floor. That crowded office went dead quiet and I was sure I was done for then as it must have seemed as if I had struck him. Well, I couldn’t very well leave him lying there so I grabbed him by his arms and dragged him out of the front door, down the steps and cement path and into the gutter, where I left him. I walked back into the office still expecting the worst but the crowd was still silent and unmoving and I walked back through them unscathed. Only then did the babble of many voices erupt. I sat in the office trembling, willing my heart to slow down a bit. Down in the gutter, the drunk’s friends were hauling him to his feet and taking him home.
Compared to the jungle we’re experiencing in South Africa today, those were gentle times. We handled large amounts of cash which we cleared almost weekly. There were no security guards or SBV services back then and we simply packed the excess notes into cardboard boxes, wrapped them up neatly in heavy brown paper and walked the parcels down to the Post Office. We were incredibly vulnerable but it never worried us that we were. After Christmas, we sometimes had as many as ten boxes full of banknotes to dispatch and in all the 7 years I served there, we never had a moment’s trouble. I wonder how long it would take to have us robbed and blown away today, under the same circumstances.
Even white collar crime, so prevalent at all levels today, wasn’t anything to write home about. I was most aware of the possibility of an attempt in my busy office, so I ran the show strictly by the book. The routine of a branch was so set in those days that anyone with a bit of savvy could exploit the regularity with which things were done and I realized that. To counter the threat, I developed my own secret routines, too random and unexpected for any clever staff member to be able to predict. So it happened that one of my clerks suddenly arrived for work in a decent secondhand Escort car. He was my waste clerk at the time. He had “bought” the car in Aliwal North and paid the deposit by cheque, despite his not having any money in his account. I believe he thought that he would be the first to handle the incoming cheques and would be able to remove his cheque and replace it with one or more customers' cheques out of the filing cabinet. What he didn’t know was that before handing on the batch of cheques, I would riffle through them for staff cheques. When he walked in I hauled him straight into the manager’s office, closed the door and angrily confronted him with his cheque. Boy, was he shocked but he managed to stammer out that his brother in Umtata branch was going to assist him. We phoned the brother who denied any knowledge of the transaction and said he would never lend him any money in any event. Local Head Office was informed and seemed inclined to give him a chance but I was adamant that were he to stay, I would most definitely resign!
Our swift action had a salutary effect on his former colleagues. No taking chances with ol’ “Redbeard” around………
Comments