Oupa Grysbaard Speaks Up.

I am an old grysbaard (greybeard), closer to seventy than to sixty, and subsisting on a government pension, which in the New South Africa is probably one of the worst paid in the developed world. I suppose that this new South Africa can be said to be a third world country now that the Apartheid system has disappeared and the first world status with it.

Really, I should not blame the new rulers, because when I cast my mind back to the old days, I can remember that the minister in charge of pensions, when taken to task for the sad amount of money which his government paid to the senior citizens, sniffed in indignation and said that an old person could subsist quite well on a tin of pilchards and a loaf of bread each day. All too easy to say, seeing that he earned more than twenty times the salary of most well paid workers, never mind pensioners.

Not enjoying the benefits of a highly paid job, and having a family to support, I now find myself in the tin of fish and loaf of bread league, as everything is so much more expensive and the minister in charge of the pensions still has the same outlook as his former colleague. No doubt he enjoys far more benefits than his predecessor.

I really do not want to bemoan my lot to you, but I would like to share with you a few observations that I have taken note of, and chalked up as memories during my much too short life. Some of them have developed into issues which have become hotly contended and fought over by the different factions which make up this so called Rainbow Nation. To do justice to my views, it is necessary to relate where I come from, and what makes me think that I can even open my mouth on the subject without you concluding that I am really just an old fool. As everyone well knows, there is no fool like an old fool! Here, therefore is my story:

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I was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but grew up in Johannesburg, till the age of eight, and then for the greater part of my life in Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia. My stepfather was a commercial farmer, growing maize and potatoes for the local market, an activity which he was very successful at.

Farming was just not my scene, but we were living in a wild area, and not very far from our farm was deepest Africa, the bundu, the spaces of Africa filled with exotic people and animals. I loved the dambos (vleis), and the vast stands of elephant grass waving in the wind. The rains came suddenly, and the storms were violent, water cascading in solid sheets. Get caught in one, and it was amazing how big the rain drops actually were. When they hit you, they stung on your skin. You would be drenched sopping wet. Lightning bolts split the sky and ran all over the horizon in endless forks, coursing between earth and sky. Frightening and awe inspiring the storm would pass as quickly as it started. Glittering drops would cling to the elephant grass, pools would form where dust had been just hours before. Rivers became torrents, and broke their banks overflowing and coming down in a flood, covering the low level bridges. After the raging flood had subsided we would walk around in the ankle deep water and pick up fish that had been left stranded. My companions were the children of the farm workers, little black children, who could not speak my language, so that I had to learn to speak theirs. The result was that I became very proficient at communicating in the various languages of the farm workers.

I soon discovered that one cannot fully understand the minds of people different from oneself, until you could speak fluently in their own tongue. Once accomplished, many facets into their culture and personalities opened up and you could then think as they did. There were many traits which we as white people could not understand, which became quite understandable when your days were spent with these children,; when you spoke the way they do, and the time was taken up with them in the veldt, fishing for small tilapia in the streams and rivers, and when the weather turned hot, and I mean hot, then we would strip down and finding a shallow spot, swim bare arsed naked together cavorting and splashing, and generally having fun as kids all over the world are apt to do.

Having come from the city, I knew nothing of the bush. These kids were my mentors. They taught me to hunt birds using a catapult; how to select the best trees from which to cut the forked stick, and that the red inner tube from motor cars made the best elastic, and that the blue black iron stones flew straighter, and could bring down a wood pigeon or even a grouse. The green fruit eating pigeons were the fattest and they taught me to pluck them and grill them over an open fire, skewered on a stick stuck into the ground and turned occasionally till they were roasted to a brown and fragrant turn. We would eat the birds' bones and all. The quelea finches were also great eating. They flew in great flocks wheeling together, passing overhead at great speed. To get them, we each carried three or four stout sticks that we would launch into the wheeling flock, spinning the stick end over end. This confused the birds, and we were sure to bring down at least five or six birds with each throw. Each one of us carried a Knapsack on a long thong over the shoulder. The best knapsacks were made from the skin of a duiker, the small antelope living in the forests. A morning's bird hunt half filled the knapsack, and when it was mid day we would find a shady spot, clear away the grass, build a fire, using hard wood so that good coals would result. A piece of chicken wire would be stretched over the glowing coals and the plucked birds placed on and barbequed. The innards were left in, and when the carcass was ready to eat, they were pulled out in one motion with the anus. The bird was then popped into the mouth, and deliciously crunched. Accompanied by a dish full of stiff maize porridge would round off a gourmet lunch par excellence. Sometimes I managed to swipe half a loaf of home baked bread, stow it into my knapsack, and together with a generous layer of farm butter, it would make a scrumptious alternative to the maize pap. My Mother baked beautiful crusty farm bread, and if I caught her in a good mood, she would bake me a small round, and I would take it hot into the bush. Our mid day meal would then be a feast.

A special pocket inside my Knapsack contained an "Okapi"(made in Germany) knife which I kept honed to a sharp edge, so sharp in fact that I could shave the hairs on my arm or leg. This Knife was used to cut "cattie" forks, whip handles, throwing and fighting sticks. Each of us also carried a small native axe, forged from a motor car leaf spring into a wedge shape and inserted into the thick part of the club handle by heating the thin edge of the blade to a red heat in a charcoal fire and burning it into the wood. After the blade was burnt deep enough, a little Maize meal was poured into the burnt slit, and the hot blade was forced in. A few hard blows wedged it in fast, and it would then not fly out if the handle accidentally struck the wood being chopped.

We fancied ourselves to be mighty hunters, and when we encountered wildlife, we would stalk them patiently to see how close we could get before they took off. We used all the techniques such as watching the direction of the wind, stalking towards cover, and leopard crawling in the long grass.

One day this leopard crawl backfired on me. I was busy stalking a group of reedbuck, watching them intently as I fancied a leopard would, when I crawled right into a column of black soldier ants which we knew as Matabele ants. Let me tell you, the encounter was painful! These ants carry a sting in their rear ends, and fearsome nippers at the mouth. They bite into your skin with the nippers and then sting you repeatedly. You normally encounter them in the bush while they are raiding termite nests, and marching in a long column sometimes about five abreast. When disturbed and angry they emit a fearful buzz and spread out running in all directions to locate the disturbance and deal with it enmass. Believe me, when you hear the Matabele column buzzing, you hop out of the immediate vicinity lifting your feet as high as you can until you are sure the danger is past. Suffice it to say, that stalk was a painful one. Intent on the group of reedbuck I did not pay too much attention to the ground over which I was crawling until I intersected the marching column of Matabele ants. The first I knew about their presence was when I heard their angry buzz right under my very nose. They immediately latched onto the tenderest parts and started to sting. I took off for safer pastures as if I was rocket powered, while loudly lamenting my fate.

We were usually a group of about six boys, and as my father was their fathers' employer, the Bwana, I was automatically the leader of the group. Now and again an older boy might assert his claim on the headship, staring at me, and countermanding any instruction which I may give. What he did not know, was that I had grown up in the tough part of Jeppe, a suburb of Johannesburg, and I had learned to fight as soon as I could stand on my legs. From the age of six I had attended boxing classes, in which I excelled. We squared up to each other, he with his arms outstretched and fists balled. I took the orthodox stance, and pressed the attack with a series of left jabs flush on the nose, and followed up with a cracking straight right to the eye. Two more hooks to the ribs, and a right again above the heart usually finished the fight and asserted my authority. It is uncanny that the vanquished challenger normally became my closest follower, and would take it upon himself to keep discipline in the rest of the band. One husky lad took an astounding array of punches, and caught me back with a few sharp ones of his own. He was taller than me, and I had to duck under his windmill swings and get close to his body from where I sent in a number of cracking uppercuts combined with a few short left hooks to the right side of his broad face One hook caught him squarely on the chin, and he dropped as if pole axed. He came up with death showing on his face and rushed me with head down attempting to butt me in the stomach. He was heavy, and I knew that if he got me down I would have him on top and he would batter me mercilessly. I turned him with another left hook, straightened him with a short uppercut, and kneed him in the gonads. As he staggered back, I lobbed a handful of red sand into his eyes, and when I saw that he could not see well, I pounded rights and lefts into his head and body. I punched so fast that he was not sure that all the others had not ganged up against him and joined in. Suddenly his bravado departed, and he turned and ran for home. After that incident he avoided us altogether, and when I moved threateningly towards him he would get up and leave for the compound where the workers lived. My father heard of the fight, and warned me not to antagonize him in the workers' compound. This fight taught me a few salient factors that stood me in good stead in later dealings with black youth as well as later with adults.

I went to school at a farm school named Silver Rest. At the age of ten, I started in standard four which was a year ahead of my age group. My aunt, my mother's younger sister had taught me to read and write at an early age, and instilled in me the love of literature. When our schoolmistress, Miss Louwe discovered that I was streets ahead of the prescribed readers for standard three, she moved me up a class. At Silver Rest I made friends with the sons of all the farmers in our area. From them I learnt the rudiments of farm life, which was still patterned on the ways of the Vortrekker Dutch farmers of an earlier era. All the fathers were hunters of note, and we sat and debated the properties of all the big game rifles, even though none of our number had even fired one. During the winter months, the farmers had the practice of spending time in the bush, usually to the east of Lusaka in and beyond the hills of Rufunsa, where they hunted big game. Mostly the meat was dried or made into biltong, the pickled and cured strips of dried meat, similar to the American West's jerky. On occasion I would spend a trip or two with the friends I had made together with their parents in the bush, camping and hunting. One such father was named Tom Ferreira; he was a dead shot, and an expert in the bush. Best of all he believed that the children should learn to use a rifle and he owned a .22 caliber, which he called a saloon, and he would give us each a turn at pot shots. Sometimes it would be a guinea fowl, or a francolin. Often a fat bush dove or green pigeon. His two sons, Tom and Dirk, were both already expert shots, and I, the rooineck Englishman had to work doubly hard to be able to compete.

Later we moved to a farm closer to the Ferreira's farm, and I used to walk from our house to their house, and spend the day with them, Hunting birds and hares in the veldt .We would accompany the black kids into the bush searching for wild fruits which grew prolifically in the immediate vicinity of our farms. There were Mabulas, or as the vernacular called them Pundus. They were a large oval fruit about the size of a plum, which when ripe it turned a bright yellow with sweet flesh on a large pip. We would pop it into our mouths and eat off the thin layer of flesh, while retaining the pip which housed a most palatable nut. The masuku was another lovely fruit. A hard orange outer skin with brown speckles, housed four large pips covered in a sweet musky flesh that was divine to eat. The msoli, pear shaped and light yellow was as sweet as syrup and much desired, although they were few and far between. Another fruit, the tumburwa, we called the wild apricot was also delicious, but we were lucky if the monkeys had left us any. These little rascals knew exactly where to find all the fruits, and seldom left us any. Sour plums, red and succulent were plentiful, but they were really sour! Num-nums grew in the riverine forests, purple and milky with a strange sweet taste on the tongue.

One favorite pastime was that after the maize fields were harvested, we would leave early in the morning usually accompanying a group of black boys and girls in search of the many rat burrows in the fields. These girls were accomplished diggers using the traditional native hoe. There were a number of different types of veldt rats. The most common was called Mbeva. They were a medium sized grey field mouse, and their burrows were quite shallow, running a few inches below the surface, but they were long and mostly branched out into a number of tributary tunnels. These we would carefully plug up and dig out the main tunnel; as the hoe progressed, the rats moved ahead of it till they ran out of tunnel. We stood around each with a stout stick, and as soon as the end was reached the rats would explode out and run in all directions. We would then lay into them with our sticks, cracking as many rats as we could. If one should escape, we would all pile onto it with cries of: "GIVE IT A SPORTING CHANCE!" Soon someone would strike the target, and we then returned to dig out the tributaries. There were never more than a rat or two in these, and so the search continued for a new tunnel complex. Other rat species were the Chituta, a blackish rat with a short tail that also lived in a fairly shallow tunnel. As the digging progressed, a section of tunnel may be exposed without being totally destroyed, and then the black girls would examine the ground, picking out loose hairs and they could identify the type of rat occupying the tunnel. I can remember an occasion when the girl doing the digging put her finger into the hole, and feeling said; "I feel him, it's soft." The next blow with the hoe, and a massive puff adder snake erupted from the ground. We all fled in different directions. Needless to say, that put paid to our rat hunt for that day. The Kantuva was a small mousy rat that dug deep down into the sandy soil, and I can not remember ever seeing more than one in its burrow. The Musansa was large and also lived in a shallow burrow. Once they broke out of the tunnel, they ran so fast that we could not catch them.

The two Ferreira brothers were the worst kind of practical jokers, and I was their most frequent target. Once I got to their house shortly after a short thunderstorm. The water was cascading down the decline of the dirt road which had been eroded with a broad rivulet running down the hill. The two brothers were walking in the stream of brown rainwater. "Come feel the cold water," said Tom and he hopped smartly out of the flowing coffee colored water. Thoroughly taken in I stepped into the fast flowing liquid, and landed in a hole which they had dug for just this occasion right up to my waist. Off they ran killing themselves with laughter pursued by some rapid shots from my catapult. On another occasion I arrived on their farmyard, and found the two busy picking and eating mangoes in their massive orchard.

"Here!" Tom called out to me. "See, we have kept you a delicious kidney mango, all you have to do is climb the tree and pick it."

Taken in by their generosity I climbed into the first fork of the tree and looked up at the beautiful yellow ripe mango. Two things made me wary. One was their eagerness for me to have a really nice mango, the other was the fact that they were both standing at least twenty paces away, egging me on to reach up and pluck the fruit. Carefully I inspected the fruit; it was suspended on a long stem with a bunch of long dark green leaves covering it from the top. There hidden among the leaf cluster was a massive wasp nest of the long bodied red variety, and should I pluck on the mango, the whole nest would be on me delivering the most painful stings. With friends like these, who would need enemies?

Later I was posted to high school in Lusaka, and attended the Lusaka Boys' school which was built next to the railway line. The school was a group of rambling colonial style whitewashed buildings with tin roofs. To accommodate the influx of students, a few cement asbestos classrooms had been added, with a science laboratory built of the same material. We also had a boxing ring built with bricks and the floor filled with gravel. Anyone being knocked down also skinned his knees and elbows in the process. We avoided fights in the ring which, were also supervised by a member of the staff, and preferred to take our quarrels behind the toilet block away from the prying eyes of the staff room.

My boarding hostel was called the Herbert Stanley hostel, and there I entered a new dimension, experiencing the typical British public school system. Discipline was the order of the day, and as we were the newcomers and the juniors, we were made to be skivvies, fetching and carrying for the older boys. I had an independent nature, and refused to be a slave to any other kid. That attitude soon attracted the attention of the bully squad in the hostel, and they were merciless; prominently a kid that I would refer to as Brian. He made my life hell. It was not long though before we got our own back. The rain season had arrived, and after one particularly wet week, the sun came through the clouds, and all the boys were told to go out and play. In the grounds of the hostel was a massive termite mound, and these termites had brought piles of sticky clay to the surface. On the farm we used to use this type of clay to make models of oxen which we would burn in an open wood fire, and play with. All the farm kids knew how to knead the clay to make it plastic and workable.

Well, the older kids, egged on by the squad of bullies, decided that we would play "Kleilat" which was a war game where the number of participants were split into two teams, and each one would cut a long supple cane like branch and trim it, and a piece of clay would be kneaded and molded onto the front of the stick. The stick would be wielded and the piece of clay would shoot of the end in the direction in which it was aimed with considerable force. Should you be struck on the body by such a lump of clay, a bruise would result, which would start off as blue, then turn purple and eventually yellow.

The teams were selected, and true to their sadistic nature the bully gang chose their cronies to be pitted against the newcomers. Our team consisted of all the farm boys, and what the bullies were totally ignorant of was that we had grown up with kleilat, and that we had even used the technique to hunt birds and rodents, and that our aim was polished and pinpoint accurate. At the bottom of the school grounds was a large mulberry tree which grew the perfect long sticks, supple yet not sloppy. We each cut three or four sticks, trimmed them and stuck them in our belts. The bully squad took possession of the termite mound, and allowed us to only fetch enough clay that we were capable of carrying off. This we did, and took up position behind a hedge of hibiscus. At their signal, the clay missiles came over thick and fast, but to our good fortune, most of them landed in the hibiscus hedge and did very little damage.

I soon spied Brian's method, he would load up a few sticks which he would plant into the soft clay in front, and as soon as they were ready he would fire them off in quick succession without really taking aim. As the last missile was thrown he would then duck back into cover and load up again for the next salvo. His method was adopted by the rest of his gang, and at his signal a rain of missiles came falling into the hedge, with only one or two finding any telling mark. The boy standing to my left was a lad named Christie, who was also from a neighboring farm and a dead shot with the kleilat. "Let us wait for Brian to show himself for his next shot, and as he takes aim, we let him have it with two well directed shots." I said to Christie.

As this bully came out of his cover, we each loosed off two shots at him. My first shot was slightly ahead of Christie's, and slightly faster, and it caught Brian squarely in the left eye. He came upright with a howl of pain, and Christie's clay caught him in the other eye. His squad turned and ran, and we pursued them with missiles coming thick and fast. Each of the troops caught a few painful clay missiles on the back before we broke off the engagement. Brian was carted off to the sick bay, and had to have the clay washed out of his eyes. After that episode they left us strictly alone, and the next year they were gone, having completed their public exams.

In my thirteenth year, a family friend came to visit from the Copperbelt which lay about three hundred miles from our farm, and brought with him an 8x60S Mauser rifle. He wanted to shoot a kudu on the farm, but spent the whole long weekend drinking, and when he left he forgot to take the rifle with him. I happened to come home the next Friday, and soon discovered the rifle. Of course I nagged my mother to be able to take the rifle with me to the bush, but she insisted that it belonged to our family friend who had forgotten it there, and had not given permission for us to use. Knowing that he arrived home from his shift on the mine at about four in the afternoon, I again nagged for her to phone him; his reply would put the whole matter to rest, so she placed a call to him. When he came on the line, she asked him about the rifle, and after a silence he asked her what rifle is she talking about? When his memory was refreshed, he asked her what I wanted to do with it, and after hearing that I could use it on my hunting trips, he said: "I bought that rifle and all the ammunition for thirty pounds, and my intention was to hunt a kudu which I never got around to. I definitely have no use for the thing, and your son can have it with my compliments, and I hope he gets much satisfaction from it." The rifle was immediately dispatched to my room, and I counted the rounds of ammunition. He had left me one thousand rounds, mostly the round point solid type. A gift beyond my wildest dreams!