Open Writing

Like many people of an earlier generation, my parents were pioneers too, in their own way. My father came up to Johannesburg from East London around 1913 to work on one of the early power-stations at the tail end of the famous gold rush, travelling everywhere on an Indian motor-cycle. Later he bought an 11-acre property in Bramley, Johannesburg where, after his marriage, he and my mother lived for 26 years.

When my father bought the property, there was no running water or electric light and in those early years they used candles, gas lamps and a coal stove. The only form of sanitation was what the Australians call a ‘dunny’ in the back garden with the infamous ‘bucket system.’ The buckets were emptied once or twice a week by two men driving a mule-wagon. The arrival of the cart was preceded by strong smell of Jeyes fluid, used to disinfect the buckets and the wagon. What a dreadful job. Cowled in sacks, the men arrived and departed at a run. As a small child, twilit glimpses of these hooded men running furtively through the garden terrified me, and my mother made sure I was whisked away as soon as the jingle of the mule’s harness was heard.

The water question was addressed by two large rainwater tanks which collected the runoff from the roof, but if this supply ran out my father had a system of empty paraffin drums carried in the boot of his car which he filled at work. He carefully brought the precious contents home, but I’ve no idea how the water was transferred from the boot. Maybe it was pumped into the tanks or used straight from the drums.

One year, Dad decided to bring in a machine to drill for water, and for days the family walked around with forked sticks in their hands looking for signs of underground water. Boring was known to be very expensive, and after the noisy clacking machine had got down to 150ft without any sign of a strike, the undertaking was abandoned as useless.

A bath was a real luxury, and as far as I remember was only taken out of necessity and never more than once a week, often sharing the water when the first person had finished. I have warm memories of standing with a hand on Mum’s shoulder while she scrubbed grimy knees and elbows with a well-soaped flannel, muttering under her breath how children’s arms and legs attracted the dirt.

The coal stove in the kitchen was part of my childhood where I learnt to spell “Johannesburg” from the word stamped on the oven door, and many were the loaves of delicious homemade bread, cakes and puddings my mother produced from its black interior. All the furnishings of that comfortable old kitchen remain as cherished parts of my childhood, and the plain deal table is still in use. The “zinc” had a chipped stone draining board and a white enamel bowl where the budgie, Pretty Boy, took baths in a lettuce leaf if the tap was left dripping, but the stone draining board and rigid enamel wash-bowl made short work of crockery if care was not taken.

There were a number of fruit trees which produced small quantities of delicious fruit, although many of these varieties are no longer cultivated, being what horticulturists call “low bearers.’’ A productive fowl-run and a small vegetable garden stood cheek-by-jowl with the corrugated-iron “kaya” housing July, the kindly Zulu man of all work. A toolshed and a large coal bin were faced by a large compost heap/garbage pit, where the “boy” burnt the household waste every Saturday afternoon.

Coal was delivered by horse and cart, being carried on the men’s backs before being emptied into the bin. As a small girl, my friend and I were given a ‘treat’ by the man working for the local grocer and taken on the delivery wagon on a round of the suburb sitting uncomfortably in the bouncing cart while he urged the horse into a canter. It was horrible, and the feeling of vulnerability with the road rushing past underneath so fast and nothing to hang on to ensured that I never repeated the experience.

Several acres were left uncultivated and allowed to return to natural grass. During the dry Highveld winters a vigilant eye was kept on bonfires to ensure they did not race through the shoulder high grass to catch the line of large black pine trees and ugly Macrocarpia hedge, or burn down the house.

I remember my mother planting a number of jacaranda trees and also a sprouting acorn which grew into a huge English oak. It was amongst the branches of this tree that I read the famous “Biggles” books by Capt. W E Johns during my wildly rebellious teenage years, escaping into a world of make believe rather than concentrating on my incomprehensible maths homework. One or two of those trees are still alive over 70 years later, but I never did learn arithmetic.

Roaming the “farm” as I called it, I once surprised a guinea-fowl on her nest and she, poor bird, got such a fright at my quiet arrival that she flew up attempting to peck my eyes. Fortunately for me, her beak only caught my left eyebrow and caused no real damage, although as a small child I made the best of my “terrible accident.” It was an early lesson in how quickly wild creatures react to unexpected surprises.

The weekly family wash, including several pillowslips, one sheet from each bed and at least two or three of my father’s shirts with separate collars, several damask table napkins and unpleasantly soiled handkerchiefs, was done by the washer-woman who arrived every Monday on foot from the nearby native township of Alexandra.

She, poor woman, had to kneel on the hard ground and scrub the wash on a ribbed ‘washing-board’ in a zinc bath filled with tepid water using a bar of ‘blue’ soap. As she worked, the sticky grey-blue curds of accumulated suds and dirt was enough to turn the stomach. Once finished, the water was emptied out into a part of the garden called a ‘seep’ where the water from the bath and hand washbasin ran, and the whole smelly, unhygienic area was planted with straggly geraniums trying to breathe through the crust of fat and muck. The morning was taken up with the washing, and the afternoon ironing the results, using a ‘cold-iron’ heated on the top of the coal stove. Luckily for the washerwoman, the fashion for ruches and ruffles had changed, as otherwise, amongst her skills she would have needed to know how to use a “goffering iron” to put the crispness back into the mistress’s ruffs.

In my memory those days were filled with laughter, sunlight and happiness. I basked secure in my parent’s love and each new day was an adventure. Winters were icy cold, the Highveld frosts made colder by the uninsulated iron roof only warmed by the valiant efforts of one tiny Victorian fireplace in the sitting/dining room over which we huddled on frosty nights.

Entertainment was the “wireless” with an English radio service which operated from six to nine in the mornings and 4 pm to nine at night. I remember my father, brought up in a staunchly British home where the children had been trained to despise the Afrikanders, entering the room to switch off the radio as the closing announcement was made. As usual, the BBC English voice said, “Thank you very much, Ladies and Gentlemen,” and “Baie Dankie, Dames and Heere.”

Imitating his British accent, my father replied, “Buy-a-donkey, yourself, you blithering idiot,” while aiming a finger and thumb at the wireless in a shooting action. The announcer was fraternising with the enemy. It was not all that many years since the end of the Anglo-Boer War and my father was determined that not a word of the alien language would be tolerated in his house.

Enormous empty stretches of savannah came right up to the outskirts of the suburbs and very few people had the luxury of a their own swimming pool, but it was quite safe to walk anywhere in the early days along narrow paths beaten out of the veld by the feet of passing strangers. I rode my bike everywhere. One of my proudest sporting achievements was to ride up the hill from Bramley to Highlands North without holding onto the handlebars. Looking back I realise that it was not the exercise of physical skill that was special, but the complete lack of traffic that made it possible.

The Pretoria Road, now Louis Botha Avenue, was empty of traffic most of the time, and it was the same for most other arterial roads, so when we formed a school crocodile to walk to Norwood Municipal Swimming Baths for the weekly swimming lesson, nobody gave it a second thought. It was a long, hot walk for short legs, all the way from Waverley to Norwood, and many of the children were too tired to benefit from the lessons when they got to the baths. I never learnt to swim properly, although it has been my favourite form of recreation ever since.

Such a feast of memories, and such an interesting place to grow up in, although I hated it at the time as I found Johannesburg so boring. But then, don’t all young people find their home towns boring and long to move on and start having adventures?

Johannesburg as I knew it no longer exists. The vibrant, energetic and hard-working European-style business centre is now advertised as, “Africa’s World Class African City” and is a welter of pavement traders, tatty “hairdressers” and drinking dens, with litter everywhere. Lovely Art Deco and Art Nouveau buildings have been vandalised and taken over by slum and drug lords, and prosperity and big business have moved away taking the glitz and glamour with them. Now most of the action is in Sandton and suburbs further north.

Traffic clogs the highways night and day; the crime rate is stratospheric, the distance between Johannesburg and Pretoria [now Tshwane] is almost completely built up, and nobody walks a step if they can help it. But I cling stubbornly to my memories of the old days, which neither time nor social and political changes can destroy.