Harry's Tales: Tale Of A Skaap
When you are trying to survey the site of a stock watering dam on a South African farm make sure there are no inquisitve sheep around, as Harry Wroth reveals. By the way, skaap is the Afrikaans word for a sheep.
In 1950 I was a Technical Assistant Grade 2 in the Department of Agriculture, Division of Soil Conservation, in the Winter Rainfall Area. I was the only English-speaking member of the staff in the area surrounded by Afrikanerdom.
After a brief training in the use of a simple dumpy level, I was posted to Worcester, Cape. My duty was to apply the Soil Conservation Act of 1946, which largely meant the specification and inspection for subsidy purposes of small earthen dams, water reservoirs, contour diversion ditches and some other conservation works on farms.
A farmer in the Kouebokkeveld Soil Conservation District had applied for subsidy for the enlargement of a small earthen stock watering dam. The farm could only be approached from the east, off the Ceres to Calvinia road. As a guide, the Chairman of the District, Boy van der Merwe, accompanied me. He was a huge Afrikaner and nogal a Sap (the old South African Party member). After mountain climbing in a GG 1949 Chevrolet sedan, we arrived at the humble farmstead. We enjoyed clotted koffie and beskuit with our host and his family, then proceeded to the dam site, some 200 metres from the homestead.
I set up my tripod and Boy carried the Sopwith staff. I had no sooner started surveying when, along came a black headed sheep. It started being a nuisance by nudging my tripod, thus bumping the dumpy level off its settings. What with trying to shoo the hanslammertjie away and resetting the dumpy level, I sort of had my hands full.
In the meantime Boy had progressed to the far end of the dam wall. As an Afrikaner, he was enjoying the tussle between the bottle fed lamb and the rooinek.
I was new to farming and somewhere, sometime, I had heard of an Afrikander type of sheep or beast.
I shouted, "Oom Boy, is dit 'n ware Afrikaner skaap?" Back came the loud call from Boy, "Die enigste ware Afrikaner sit in die Parlementshuis!".
He was alluding to a remark, made earlier in the week, in Parliament by a NP Minister, to which the opposition Press had reacted sharply.
** Translation of Afrikaans text I shouted, "Uncle (Oom is a form of address to a somewhat elder gentleman) Boy, is it a real (or true) Afrikaner sheep?" Back came the loud call from Boy, " The only real Afrikaner sits in the House of Parliament!"
