Category: Blog Entry

We drove back to Cape Town today – listening to the talk radio discussing the question of the number of whites who have left South Africa since 1994.  Apparently it stands at almost one million – significantly weighted towards younger adults – and the major factors driving it are the high levels of violence and criminality – and employment issues which follow on the affirmative action programmes.

Well I have to report that a solitary policeman was guarding a Stop Sign against the rising tide of criminality in the middle of Humansdorp in the Eastern Cape yesterday.  I saw it as I went through it and went on my way 500 Rand poorer – but he was charming with it.

Meanwhile today at the Fairview Winery in Paarl [today is a Public Holiday in South Africa] a large proportion of the white population seemed to be out in family groups enjoying lunch in the early spring sunshine in the middle of the vineyards – and looking forward to a long summer and a long future.  Let’s hope so.

You will have noticed that I have a surprising affection for the Afrikaaners .. and the spirit of the Great Trek lives on, although in a somewhat debased form.  You’ll find it embodied in the person who owns the Internet Cafe at Knysna Quays …

After his computer had dropped its connection for the umpteenth time, I ventured to suggest that his connection might be a little fragile.  To which he responded as if I had questioned not his bandwidth but his parentage.  Indeed he had 1 meg of connection speed – the biggest and fastest connection in the whole of Southern Africa.  To put it in a nutshell, my connection couldn’t possibly measure up to his and I could take myself back to the hairdressers and girls blouses of the Cape.

Yes indeed.  Still trekkin’ – and going nowhere.

We’ve been in Prince Albert in the Little Karoo – 400k from Cape Town and 40k from the main road.

This is Afrikaaner country – part of the vast, dry interior of South Africa.  The Afrikaaners tired of the English settlers of the Cape, left them sipping their sundowners and took their rigorous approach to religion and culture out into the empty wilderness in the Great Trek of 1838 – 15000 of them in all.  The English, one suspects, were probably glad to see them go.  Until they found gold and diamonds.

Prince Albert sits just the far side of the mountains from the Garden Route – across 40 kilometres of the Swartberg Pass – precipitous and unsurfaced.  It’s a sort of model village of Cape Dutch architecture – laid out like a town in the American mid-west.  As the Rough Guide says, the silver spire of the Kerk reaches up into the endless blue sky.  For some reason – surely not love of the British Crown – the residents decided to name their town after Albert.  Queen Victoria responded by sending them a copy of Albert’s published speeches and writings – a work of such stultifying boredom that they put it in a glass case in the museum where it has remained ever since.

The charm of this place is the population of significant people and eccentrics – and sometimes both at the same time – who have chosen to live here.  We decided to give Cannibal’s Restaurant a miss and settled for the Karoo Kombuis – bring your own wine.  It’s run by a group of former staff of South African Airways – now probably slightly more wide-bodied than they were.  For the past 8 years, they have only had three items on the menu.  If you can’t choose, you can have all three.  Dinner for two – 186 Rand.

Meanwhile, back where we were staying – a beautiful house – we could discuss politics and world issues with our host and with the charming German Professor of Microbiology and his wife who were staying.  I tend to see life in fairly broad sweeps – his expertise has been in discovering and classifying microbes which can exist at temperatures above boiling point.  And not all ivory tower stuff either – he spent some time on a North Sea oil rig as part of his research.

Poverty not so much ‘in your face’ here – but it is still the subtext of every conversation here.  It’s the fear that the growing lawlessness and criminality which grows from the desperation of the poor will overwhelm this country before it has had a chance to solve its problems.  Of which more another day.

More South African contrasts.  We’ve just passed the most wonderful band playing outside the Waterfront – a group of young men playing with a naturalness, energy and exuberance that brings a lump to the throat.  On the TV this morning, they were [I think] marking the 10th anniversary of the Constitution with an event of such weighty boredom as would make the Eurovision Song Contest seem interesting.  Delegates from each of the provinces were reporting progress on equality, progress, freedom, justice … people were addressing one another with a studied respect … and the sound kept breaking down.  Not that it mattered.  But don’t knock it.  I always believed that a violent society was a place of short-cuts – bombs and bullets instead of listening to a point of view or valuing a different tradition or outlook; slogans and over-simplifications rather than struggling to understand; fear engendered rather than the kind of sympathetic space in which diversity can flourish.  Wholesome and participative democracy on a grand scale may seem worthy and dull – but it is precious, precious.

South Africa is not just about colour.  It’s much more subtle – and much more fun – than that.

When I was here three years ago, I spent quite a bit of time in suburbs like Bellville learning about the Dutch Reformed Church and its community.  It’s almost always unwise to think that people and situations may be alike – but I sensed that they would be a bit like the Ulster Protestants.  And they were – decent, kindly, hospitable, upright.  A bit cautious about outsiders.  They were people who had put their faith in a package which combined religion and politics and now felt that they were losing.  They kept home baked biscuits in Tupperware boxes.  I liked them and felt at home with them.

Yesterday, Mark and I decided it was time for a haircut – if you want to know about a place, get your hair cut there.  My hairdresser turned out to be a long way from Bellville – coloured, frizzy hair died auburn and very camp.  I don’t have much hair so there was time for a chat.  I always have problems with the sticky-out hair at the top – ‘No problem’ he murmured.  ‘My ex-partner had hair just like yours.  I’ll cut it the way I used to do his’  And so he did.  And we chatted about how South Africa is changing and how he wanted to move to Italy – because Australia is too much like South Africa.  And he did ears and eyebrows and beard – eyes covered in case bits of beard jumped up and stung them.  And with a waft of talc and perfume it was done.

Welcome to the new South Africa!

Can’t resist a holiday blog from here – still early spring and not too warm.  I was last here three years ago during a sabbatical from work – looking at it the ‘miracle’ of political change through slightly envious Northern Ireland eyes. So it’s interesting to see how it has moved on.  It still feels good, flexible and positive – the talk radio is still optimistic where the equivalent in Northern Ireland is still angry, bitter and full of recrimination – unless BBC NI’s Talkback programme has changed.

It is, of course, about colour.  But more often I find that I experience South Africa as a series of collisions between first and third worlds – and the gaps are felt as economics as much as race.  We have Mark with us – he took us back to a donkey farm on the Cape Peninsula where he spent a summer volunteering two years ago.  Turn left off the tarmac opposite the township and suddenly your pure white Avis Polo stands out as a first world alien being.  We met the redoutable Sonia who runs it.  I gave her some plastic ties to replace the orange string which holds together all the pens and the 17 donkeys. Mark intends to go back to have a few beers with some of his friends – one was orphaned in Namibia at an early age; the other fled Rwanda when his father who was a judge was murdered – now living in a windowless building next to the farm.  We’re also going to visit the massive Khayletisha township to see an Aids project with which we have links.

There are some impressive signs of progress – the townships/shanty towns are gradually being replaced with prefab buildings and there are new schools.  But it must all seem painfully slow if you are living in a packing case.  We debate the massive over employment.  Drive into the filling station and several black workers rush forward to help you do what you could perfectly well do for yourself.  Is it good for their self-respect to have what – to first world eyes – appears to be a non-job?  My view is that, if we are as wealthy as we must appear to them, we have almost no right to a view.  At nearly 14 rand to the pound, South Africa is cheap for the visitor even if it is expensive to get to.

For the rest, it’s tourism in a place of staggering beauty.  Mark and I walked the hills of the cape on Sunday with James and Mike.  We’ve just been down to Hermanus to see whales – Hermanus is a bit of a Bundoran but the whales are amazing.

And finally – given my recent preoccupation with the position of the lavatory seat – I have to report that the only bit of non-PC material I have encountered was in the Harpic ad [I think] on TV.  Smiling white housewife and smiling black domestic worker rejoice that Harpic has brought them a shining white toilet.  Could they really be serious?

Time to go – after a very breathless period since we were in Donegal.  My tendency to crawl the internet cafes while on holiday may mean that there is the occasional surfacing …

It’s been a busy few days – over 500 miles busy in the last three days and I haven’t had time to sort out the demisting in the car. The websites say it’s likely to be the heater matrix.  That sounds inaccessible.

Went to Aviemore last night to meet the Ministry Enabling Group of our church in Rothiemurchus. This is the group of people who share leadership and pastoral responsibility for the congregation – there is no ‘Rector’ or designated clergy leader – so it’s collaborative ministry. We were supposed to be doing an introductory session on Christian Ethics. And we did do a bit of that although the group [and I] found the material tough going. But it was very interesting to hear the story and progress of the congregation under this new form of leadership – sharing of tasks, mutual support and a confidence which communicates itself to visitors and newcomers. As in our congregation in Alloa, it’s capable people with great commitment learning to work together and support one another.

Sermon for 150th Anniversary Service of Mission to Seafarers in Aberdeen 5th September

Mission to Seafarers Aberdeen 5.9.06.doc

Area Council Service Kirkaldy 3.9.06.doc