I did not work with Dave for very long. I had short spells of one or two branches with him – places like Piet Retief, Greytown, Mooi River etc and while he was an excellent, thorough auditor, I found his supercilious, rather theatrical and foppish ways irritating. He just wasn’t a “man’s man” the way Wilf Roberts and Bush Morley were. But he was kind and enjoyed a “spot” – perhaps not as wholeheartedly as Bush but still. He also smoked like a chimney but then, everybody did, myself included. He was a tall, spare man but always smart as can be, something one could attribute to the fact that his suits were tailor-made from the finest British cloth. They were mostly a dove grey and my old Rex Trueforms looked quite dowdy next to his. With his great height, magnificent attire, extravagant gestures, very precise English and schoolmasterly look, he was every inch everyone’s picture of a real Auditor.
He had excellent command of English and I always tried to get my exceptions past him without any modifications but I never did. The irritating thing was, he was always right! Still, in later years when I had a rank like his (S.I.A) I appreciated the lessons I had learnt from him and applied them to the chaps who assisted me. He would not hand any notes or exceptions to the branch which were not typed. He always used expensive Croxley, Irish-ruled notepaper for his “rough” work. That Adler typewriter stood on his desk all day and clattered regularly.
In our first branch together, Piet Retief, he immediately said I should leave the savings department to him. Gee, what a pleasure! But I discovered that pulling a savings department apart, right down to its component parts, was his pride and joy – something incomprehensible and insane to me. Soon after arrival, he would get hold of the blue ledger sheets and in tabular form, note down any shortcomings found on the pages e.g. Missing addresses, omitted ID numbers etc. Then, after the initial tick-off, he would take a boxful of Forms 134 - savings signature cards – back with him to the hotel and cross tick shortcomings on the cards with the ledger sheets. All this he did in his own time. I came in one evening from somewhere round about 10, passed his room where the door was ajar and Dave was head down on his table, fast asleep in the middle of checking the cards. When he was finished most savings sections would earn a general exception and he would hand the branch his neatly typed lists of all that was amiss. An accountant would need to just use the lists to make corrections and his department would be perfect.
I didn’t think much of this lunacy and cautiously voiced my doubts about the necessity for it. He then told me, his good friend Mr Ivan Rudman, who was Chief Internal Auditor at the time had got to hear about it and had warned Dave that he was wasting time and that what he did was unnecessary. Dave simply replied, “Ivan, what I do in my own time is my own business. I’m not using any of the Bank’s time to do this and I enjoy doing it.”
Another little foible which he had, was his inability to sleep if his hotel room wasn’t inky black dark. He always had a supply of heavy brown paper with which to blank out fanlights over doors and even windows, at night. A thick roll of masking tape would seal off the door edges if there was any light sneaking in from the passage. I too find too much light at night disturbing and I hate noise but I solve the problems with earplugs and eyemasks – I wonder why he never thought of that ?
He seemed to love shopping and on a Wednesday afternoon we’d toddle off down to Checkers or whatever and shop for shampoo, fabric softener and the like. Where most men would simply grab the nearest and cheapest product and get done with, Dave delighted in comparing prices and discussing with me, the merits of the various products. We were at a café one afternoon buying his cigarettes when he spotted fizzpops, which had just come on the market. He confessed that he loved sherbert but didn’t have the nerve to buy any so he asked me to buy a handful, which I did. The sad thing is, I don’t think he liked them much and was left, still longing for the days when he was a boy and sherbert was sherbert.
A good six months after his huge accident in Nambia (See below) I had to assist Dave at Oudtshoorn and where previously he had enjoyed life as an auditor, he had now become a real old moaning Minnie, complaining about everything. One day he kept spooning more and more sugar into his tea, stirring it vigorously and tasting it. It really was the last straw for me when he exclaimed that the sugar had no taste there in the Cape, unlike the sugar they got in Natal. I pointed out, by fetching the sugar packet from the kitchen, that it was the same damn sugar but he just snorted derisively and wouldn’t have it.
Dave was very proud of his Peugeot 504, in which he was caught speeding on a few occasions. Once he protested to the cop that his speedometer was faulty and could he have it tested in a specially set up trap. I’ll be darned if he wasn’t right but he still had to pay the fine. We were at Mooi River when this transpired and on a Sunday afternoon, as we lay kipping there was a loud bang on the roof, quickly followed by a second and a third, I rushed to my window, thinking to catch kids hurling rocks on the roof when I was greeted by the awful sight of tennis ball size hail crashing down on everything, including our cars. As they landed, it was like watching hand grenades exploding. Luckily they weren’t solid chunks of ice but more huge agglomerations of smaller bits of hail but they still managed to do plenty of damage. It luckily didn’t last long and when we went out to inspect our cars, mine, being a largely curved surface, had shrugged off the barrage with only minimal dents but the Peugeot’s long horizontal planes were severely dimpled. Poor Dave was devastated but I was quite smug about the superior quality of my bug.
Dave eventually retired and bought himself a flat up on the Berea in Durban. I was down in Port Edward one weekend, staying there while Mike de Villiers and I audited Bizana and I decided to drive up to Durban and pay the old guy a visit. I was greeted heartily, like an old friend and I felt a little ashamed that I had been irritated by his ways. He proudly showed me his large flat and retirement gifts which included a clock and a set of that awful cutlery which the bank dished out at one time. He was running the body corporate in which he participated and announced that he had carried out a much better audit of their books, than the official auditor had and had taken over running the books himself. The flats seemed to have plenty of retired ladies and gentlemen and he was really in his element at last.
I was a little sad to finally say goodbye because although he was pretty self absorbed like all bachelors are, he could be good company when in the right mood.
I was not overjoyed when in 1980 I received the awful letter which sent me to Namibia for at least 9 months and all in the company of dear old Dave/
We travelled the long, lonely road down to Luderitz through the Namib – me in my Beetle and Dave in his Peugeot 504, his favourite brand of car. One left Keetmanshoop in those days on a tar road and travelled a third of the way to a place called Goageb where the tar ended. Then came a lengthy stretch of very sandy dirt road which ended at a railway station called Aus, from where one picked up a tar road through the dune area of the Namib to Luderitz. I simply loved the desolation and unearthly silence along that last bit of road. Switch off the car engine, walk off into the dunes, sit down and just listen – the most perfect silence to be found in Nature. One eventually hears one’s own heart beating. A unique peril on this road is the drifting sand, veritable “walking” dunes which submerge the road surface in sand within minutes. Hit a dune and you’re guaranteed a skid and a serious accident.
Luderitz is an amazing and unique place, just like Swakopmund. The 19th Century German architecture in the most desolate desert landscape has to be seen to be appreciated. Quite startling is the drab, pointy little Lutheran Church, perched high on a rock above the town but it has a really magnificent stained glass window. The town has a very grim early history and is worth a read if you can find a source but my aim is to tell about Dave Sharp, so I’ll leave you to research Luderitz yourself.
Dave and I used up rolls of film in and around the town and nearby Kolmanskop, an abandoned diamond mining town with quite grand old houses slowly being ground back down to dust by the desert. We concluded our audit after about two weeks and were all set to move to Kalkrand, on the main road to Windhoek. Around midday, Dave was still faffing around with the report and I was bored to tears, so I asked him if I could make for Keetmanshoop, where we were to overnight. He protested as he had hoped we could travel together in case of trouble but I said convincingly, “I’d like to connect with some buddies in Keetmanshoop from last audit and anyway, I’ll come looking for you if anything untoward happens”. A prophetic choice of words as it turned out.
It is a tedious 357 Km from Luderitz to Keetmanshoop – the dirt bit in the middle (Now tarred) measured 111 Km. To exacerbate the tedium, we were in the midst of the worldwide oil crisis, the speed limit was only 80 kph and petrol stations closed at 6. I checked into the hotel and went straight to the pub because, man, I was dusty and dry. Chaps I’d met in 1978 remembered me and soon I was as happy as could be. When it got to 6 pm, I suddenly wondered why Dave hadn’t arrived and got on the phone to the manager at Luderitz and he confirmed that Dave had left not long after me. By 8 pm there was still no sign of him and I realized I’d have to get back on the road to look for him but I had no petrol ! I had to bribe a guy with a Landcruiser to let me have his petrol – at twice the pump price. I phoned the manager again and asked him to get on the road with the bank agency truck and start searching from his end. I left at 9, badly in need of sleep, starting to develop a headache from the beer and trying hard not to think of what I might find on the road. Goageb was 117 Km away and it was quite late when I arrived there. It is just a railway station but there is a small hotel there and the lights were all ablaze, even that late. I went into the pub and asked the barman if there had been any reports of accidents and he said “Oh hene meneer, hier was a helse ongeluk. ‘n Sekere Mnr Sharp het sy kar omgegooi en was vir drie ure binne die kar vasgekeer”. I nearly freaked but he went on to say that a diesel train coming up from Luderitz had spotted the wreck (The trainline and road run parallel across the desert) and had stopped to investigate. Walking round the badly smashed up car, the driver said, “Nee wat, die man is seker dood”. And poor Dave inside the wreck said in his broken Afrikaans, “Nee hy is nog nie dood!” The railwaymen loaded Dave onto the loco, radioed ahead to let the police know to come out to the wreck and took Dave as far as Goageb. The hotel people loaded him into the back of their station wagon and took him to a tiny hospital in Bethanie, a village some 30 Km away.
So, at 11 pm, I got back on the road to Bethanie and arrived in a town with no streetlights, on a moonless night. I had no idea where to start looking for the hospital but after a while I spotted lights way at the edge of town and this was the hospital. Dave was lying in bed, trussed up like a mummy, high as a kite from goodness knows what drugs. His right arm was a complete mess, broken in several places and swollen to body builder size. He must have thought I was an apparition because he was amazed and exclaimed “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE??” I jokingly replied that I was just keeping my promise to go looking for him in case of an accident. Typical of Dave, he directed me to his briefcase which he had insisted had to stay with him to the hospital and asked me to take out the envelopes with the Luderitz report and make sure they were mailed the next day in Keetmanshoop.
The hospital was ill equipped and not able to provide much more than first aid, so they had arranged with the Goageb lady, to transport Dave to Keetmashoop hospital, in the morning. I got back on the road at about 1 am, half asleep. About 10 Kms outside of Bethanie, I nearly hit a donkey, which was standing sleeping in the road. Only the reduced speed limit which I was heeding, enabled me to stop in time. That adrenalin rush woke me up pretty effectively and I got to bed at around 3 am. Up early, I rushed round to the Keetmanshoop manager’s house and got him to allow me access to the branch phone so I could phone Mr John Holding and Dave’s sister in Durban. It became clear that, after putting the phone down, Mr Holding had gone straight to Bob Aldworth’s office and said that one of his men was down in Namivia and could he fetch him. Mr Aldworth ordered that an appropriate rescue plane be chartered and sent to Keetmanshoop and that a registered nurse should also be taken along.
When Dave turned up in his “ambulance” I was able to tell him that the Bank was coming to fetch him. By this time, Dave looked and felt terrible and despite medication, was in terrible pain, yet he understood that a plane was coming out to fetch him because he asked very weakly if it had one or two engines because there was no way he’d board a single engined one. I assured him that it was too far for a small plane and mollified, he slipped into a troubled sleep. All the hospital could do was make sure his dressings were OK and try and ease his pain.
Meanwhile, the Luderitz manager turned up, with the contents of Dave’s car in the back of the agency van. Everyone at the branch was astounded by the amount of stuff which came out of that Peugeot – stationery and working papers for a full 9 month tour! Only his beloved Adler typewriter with its unique typeface was crocked – it had been flung out of the car by the impact. Damn! He loved that thing. We found out from the airport that the aircraft was expected at about 4 pm so we took his clothes out to the airport in the van. An ambulance brought him out and he was ready when the plane landed. While the plane was being refueled I tried to cram some of his clothes into the baggage compartments but the pilot had weight concerns so only about half his beautiful suits went home with Dave. That plane took up quite a bit of runway before it lifted its wheels because, by golly, it was heavy.
Dave was rushed to a Johannesburg clinic upon arrival and a lengthy operation to reconstruct his shattered arm was carried out. While he was there, he had a heart attack as well – a fortuitous place to have one. It took him a good few months to recuperate but he eventually came back to work.
I took the following day off with Mr Holding’s approval and caught up on sleep. I carried on to Kalkrand and for a week, worked alone, eventually being joined by Mike Darling Des Templer replaced him on the tour in due course.
AFTERTHOUGHT : The Bank was led by gentlemen in those days who cared about the staff. I wonder if, in these pitiless, profit focused times, a staff member would receive the same consideration in an emergency as Dave did. After seeing how easily staff failing to achieve “targets” are dispensed with these days, I rather doubt it.
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