Some months after I arrived in Sterkspruit, the manager, Tom Wiggett was transferred. Tom had opened the branch and had done a wonderful job bringing banking to the thousands of unbanked people in the area and expanding the bank’s business. He often went off to remote villages on a Sunday to open savings accounts and he was much loved throughout the district. One community after another arranged farewells for him. These usually took the form of endless flowery eulogies and entertainment in the form of choir singing. I went to a few but this one was the most memorable.
Bensonvale High School was situated some ten k’s outside of town and was run by the Methodist Church. Rev S.S. Seane was the rotund, bespectacled minister in charge of the school and he wanted the school to say farewell to Tom and laud him for his efforts in the community. Relieving at the branch was Lukas Scheepers and he came along and joined Tom and his wife and her sister, and myself, in attending the farewell.
We were shown into the Seane lounge where we enjoyed a cup of tea with them. We were all rather stiff and awkward and conversation didn’t exactly flow and then we were shown into the school hall, where what seemed like a million black faces awaited us. A storm of clapping and cheering broke out as we made our way to our seats, right in front of the stage. All the teachers banked with us and it was a relief to see some familiar faces. Mr Makgato was the music teacher and he stepped up proudly to join his choir, which had made its way onto the stage.
Black people seem to be born with choral ability and they all instinctively know exactly where they fit in a choir. Singing harmony is a well developed ability in each and every black person and the way they slide into their parts in a song is just marvelous. You can take any ten black folk off the street, old and young, male and female and you can be sure you’ll have a choir which will sort itself out. I saw that when a member of the staff at Sterkspruit branch was killed in a motor accident. The staff formed a memorial choir amongst themselves with no outside help and upon hearing them practicing during their lunch hour, for the forthcoming memorial service, I could hardly believe they weren’t professional choristers.
Those kids sang like angels, never for a moment taking their eyes off Makgato, conducting away energetically in front of them. Luckily there weren’t that many speeches interspersing the choral pieces but I think Tom had to cringe a bit at the extravagance of some of the praises heaped on him. Eventually Tom went up and spoke his farewell and thanked them for a wonderful evening’s entertainment, which from a musical point of view, it most surely was. Seane came back on when Tom finished and announced, “We have two handsome young men with us here tonight and we ask them to stand so that the school can see them”. Lukas and I sheepishly got to our feet and Seane shouted, “No! No! Please turn round so that the people can see what you look like!” We dutifully turned round and faced many hundreds of wildly cheering kids. It was a small taste of what it must be like to be a pop star facing adoring fans. As we were walking out, Lukas whispered that if his Dad could have seen all those wildly cheering kids applauding his son, he simply would not have believed it.
I spent 7 years in Sterkspruit and always felt safe and at home there. There was plenty of goodwill and mutual respect but it started changing after I left with infernal politicians turning hearts and minds against the few whites who worked there. If Bensonvale still exists, I doubt whether I’d accept any invitations to go there now.
While I was at Sterkspruit, quite a bit of cross border dagga smuggling from Lesotho to South Africa was happening. On one occasion a car with Sterkspruit plates believed to be carrying contraband was being chased by the police between Burgersdorp and Norvalspont. The police were closing in when the criminals decided to try and elude them by switching off their lights and heading down a little dirt road which led in the direction of the upper reaches of the Gariep dam. They eluded the police but what they didn’t realize was that the road was a temporary track which had been in use while the dam was being built and that it lead straight into a deep part of the damn. Not having their lights on, they must have crashed through the fence which was supposed to block off the road and plunged into the dam. And there they stayed, three smugglers drowned and invisible in the sunken car.
In the dry season, the level of the dam dropped and lo and behold the car reappeared. It was dragged out by the police and the corpses identified by what was found on them. They were from Sterkspruit and the cadavers were returned to their relatives for burial, as were their personal effects. Among these items were a few hundred Rand in notes.
This is where the bank came in. The relatives of those deceased brought those reeking bank notes in to deposit to their accounts. My teller, Anderson Hlalukana, was a bit green around the gills when he came and complained that he was not able to stomach handling those notes. I really didn’t blame him – they smelled absolutely dreadful. We stuffed them individually into plastic coin bags and the reek subsided but how to clear them?
I took the pile of notes round to my flat where I dumped the whole lot into a strong solution of Dettol and left them to soak for a while. I tested one cautiously and all I could smell was Dettol so I naturally assumed the problem was solved. A sheet of blotting paper absorbed most of the moisture and I had my charlady iron the lot with a warm iron, until completely dry. I quite reasonably believed that I had solved the problem but I had just delayed it a bit because once the smell of Dettol had evaporated, the original ghastly smell of death returned.
Back into the coin bags they went and I cleared them amongst the soiled notes that way. I often wonder what the Reserve Bank thought of that lot.
My fourth Beetle was a pretty turquoise car of which I was intensely proud. It stood in the garage attached to the bank, which presumably was built for an agency vehicle which never materialized. On one month-end which fell on a Saturday, we were putting in overtime to get all the balancing done. Jeremiah the cleaner came to tell me that my car’s rear tyre was flat so I left the clerks to their work and went to change the tyre. All went well and I was tightening up the wheel nuts by hand after fitting the spare, when I was called to do something in the office. I got involved and never gave the wheel another thought.
On the Sunday following, I decided to drive up to the top of a hill on the way to Zastron. Going up the car didn’t feel right and an intermittent clatter came from the rear end but I just put it down to the bad road surface. I didn’t stop but drove on and turned to go back home again. I had just started crawling down the hill when with a violent jerk, the left rear wheel came off and went rolling down the embankment. Thank goodness I was not up to speed yet and I was able to stop without overturning the car. I looked out to see where the wheel had gone and was just in time to see it vault the fence and speed its way down the hill, into a little valley below. By the time I had got out and made my way to the fence, that wheel was going at top speed, every now and then leaping up out of the grass like a springbok. It was a long slog to get to the damn thing and tough going climbing back up to the car carrying it. Those 15 inch Volkswagen wheels were damn heavy. Remarkably, the hubcap was still on the wheel and three wheel nuts remained inside it.
When I eventually got to the car, pretty exhausted from the climb, I discovered I would not be able to slip the jack under the car to jack it up. Luckily a strapping fellow walked by and I got him to lift the car up far enough for me to slide the jack in. I was pretty shaky by the time I eventually got back to town and started realizing what a close brush with death I had had.
Looking back, I really pushed my “guardian angel” hard in those days. I regularly drove blind drunk but never put a foot wrong. Beetles were unforgiving little swines which punished silly mistakes usually by rolling – people spoke about “German Rollers” but I seemed to become an ultra careful driver when drunk. I once drove to Zastron in pouring rain and on a desperately bad, slippery road with three other guys in the car, so drunk that I have no recollection of it. I was assured though that I had driven immaculately in second gear all the way! I certainly wouldn’t recommend mixing alcohol with driving today but when I speak out against the dangers I really feel a bit of a hypocrite. Perhaps I had nine lives.
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