Johannesburg and Klerksdorp

Klerksdorp Hospital

Highveld Sunset

The beautiful old SAIMR buildings and behind them, downtown Johannesburg

The old SAIMR buildings, the old Hillbrow Hospital and behind it, Hillbrow

The North West Province of South Africa is not a place I frequent. Nothing personal. Just not really on the way to anywhere I go and I don't have any business in Potchefstroom or Rustenburg. But I had to visit Klerksdorp for a few days.

We flew up to Joh'burg and saw some people there first. My colleague is from George and Cape Town so I agreed to drive and navigate. We hired a car at the airport - splashed out and forewent our usual VW Chico in favour of a slightly spacier and more comfortable Toyota Yaris 1.3 - what a great little car! Paid a surprise visit to Mom in Law en route to the hotel and was just in time for coffee and a chocolate brownies.

We had booked rooms at the Grayston Drive Southern Sun in Sandton. I think it used to be the Holiday Inn. It is an imposing hotel on the corner of two major roads. The reception staff were friendly. I asked about wireless internet. One rand a minute, I was told. I said "Aish!", which is a wonderful and uniquely South African expression meaning "How!", which is another wonderful and uniquely South African expression meaning "Good Grief!" or something similar but unprintable. The check in clerk just laughed.

My room was on the first floor (second in American), but there was a rooftop just outside the window so it was like being on the ground floor. I discovered that the sliding window did not latch. Normally this would not have bothered me but in Johannesburg on the first (ground) floor ... I phoned reception and told them my problem. "No problem," the man said, "I will send someone with a new card and you can move to the room next door." Man duly arrived. The room next door was indentical except that the window latched, but it didn't fully shut. But at least it latched.

We arranged to eat at 7. In the meantime I investigated the gym, which was small but adequate. Got rid of about 300 kCal in preparation for piling on another 500 at dinner.

We elected to eat in - there was a choice of the main a la carte restaurant and a Thai restaurant. We chose Thai. I ordered the calamari curry (mild) which came served with rice. It was OK. I wouldn't write home about it. The starters were good though (ordered by one of my colleagues who had not been to the gym) - spring rolls, crisp fried battered shrimp, calamari rings ... all highly calorific but very tasty and enjoyable.

We went to bed fairly early as two of us were jet lagged and the other two had an early start planned. I did not sleep well, partly because of the cacophony in the tree outside - I think it was Indian Minor birds roosting. I had forgotten how noisy they are. They start shouting around 5. But it was more than that - the aircon seemed to be set on 24 and I could not switch it off. That is too hot. I guess I could have opened the window. In Johburg - ja, right.

We left the hotel at seven. I had to get to a meeting by eight and as it was near Auckland Park and I was in Sandton, I figured it would take at least an hour. Also, I had spotted the jams on the M1 south the day before and thought I would be in for more of the same - which I was.

I was a young boy growing up in Johburg when the M1 and M2 were built and I remember how the traffic flowed so easily along them both - such a change after years of the stop start of Louis Botha Avenue and the like. Not that they were without controversy - land was expropriated from better heeled owners in the leafier suburbs and even my young ears heard the moans and groans and thinly veiled threats. But the motorways were built none the less. Nowadays they resemble large parking lots in rush hour traffic. Having said that, we were still early for our appointment.

We passed Parktown Boys' High School and Helpmekaar Seuns' Hoerskool, Wits University, Milner Park, the Milpark Holiday Inn or whatever it is called now, Auckland Park, and the Rand Afrikaans Universiteit, now called the University of Johannesburg ... all of them full of memories from 30 years ago and more - Rand Easter Shows with family and friends, walking from Milner Park to Clarendon Circle to catch a bus back to Highlands North at 10 pm on a Saturday night with my girlfriend (now my wife), aged about 16, pub crawling with teenage mates, school rugby matches at PArktown and Helpmekaar which were more like wars than contests ...

Our next stop was in Braamfontein, near the Civic Centre. I pointed out Constitution Hill to my colleague, the old Johannesburg Fort, and remembered peeing on the gate of the fort after an illegal afternoon in a Braamfontein pub during my teens. Clearly the guards weren't looking or I would likely have been in serious trouble. Disrespect for the state president or something equally ludicrous.

My friend remarked how clean central Johannesburg looked. I guess he was right. Johburg didn't look too bad - certainly not the part we were in. [side bar: 3 days later, the streets of Johannesburg are anything but clean, having been repeatedly trashed over several days by striking municipal workers - who will presumably have to pick it all up again next week when they return to work]. It was a sunny winter's day, the kind which you only really get at 1800m above sea level. Crisp, dry, bracing. No wind. Bright sunshine. Almost bright yellow sunshine. There is something about that Highveld sun which is different.

At 1.30 we headed south for Klerksdorp. I managed to navigate the M1 through downtown Joh'burg and out past Booysens, Gold Reef City and Nasrec. I found the turnoff to the N12, the alternative route to Cape Town via Potchefstroom, Klerksdorp and Kimberley. The road was better than I remember - double carriageway for most of the way. We passed the petrol station where I remember fetching my eldest brother and his broken down red Honda 350cc motor cycle (or was it the Bridgestone 175? - I forget - he had a few) back in 1973 when he was doing vacation work on a mine in Stilfontein. The garage hadn't changed - not to my mind, anyway. I remember we had to get the beast - it was a large bike - into the back of the Ford station wagon on its side and it leaked oil all over the place.

To the left of us ran the railway lines, the main line to Cape Town. I saw myself travelling back to Cape Town for holidays from boarding school in Johannesburg, a 27 hour trip in those days and probably still - that equates to an average speed of about 56kph, which is painfully slow, particularly when you are 15 years old and your holiday is running out with every minute that passes. I think I used to board at 10 am one day and arrive at 1 pm the next. We (my girlfriend, my friend and I) would take the Number 13 bus from Highlands North to downtown Johannesburg and have breakfast at the Wimpy near the station. I think one could get the Full Monty for about R3 each. The train ticket, which my parents prepaid, cost R42 and 3 meal tickets and bedding, for which I was sent cash, came to another R12 or so. I used to have a small and illegal (I was underage to drink in public) bottle of red wine with my dinner (Nederburgh Edelrood was my "favourite" - in truth I hadn't tried much else) and then sleep through breakfast, hopefully breaking even for the trip.

I travelled 2nd class, which meant 6 to a compartment or 3 to a coupe. Since I travelled alone, I was normally allocated a compartment with 5 other adult white males - South African trains were still racially segregated in the late 1970's. Some of the characters I got lumped together with were interesting, some eccentric, some objectionable. I remember one elderly schoolmaster from Wellington in the Western Cape who was fond of a game of chess but not particularly good at it. I think we played 10 games during the trip and I think he lost them all. I say he lost them because I was and am no Grand Master myself - he was just hopeless. Smoking in the compartment was permitted and it was sometimes necessary to stand in the corridor to avoid the blue cloud. With luck one could get the on of the top bunks - that way you could sleep and largely ignore the company. But the cigarette smoke also tracked upwards and it could become uninhabitable. I wonder whether, in 2009, the mainline trains still flush their toliets straight onto the tracks as they did then. Presumably not. Or maybe they do. Strange custom. The public health part of my brain goes into convulsions when I think about it.

21 years ago, almost to the day (3rd of August 1988), I rode the train from Milner Park in Johannesburg to Potchefstroom. That was a trip about which I remember surprisingly little, except that the 110km journey seemed to take an absolute age. I was on my way to start my 3 months' basic military training at Witrand, which was where the medically qualified conscripts were sent. I looked at the station in Potchefstroom when we passed through - but it didn't seem familiar. I tried to picture the drab brown SAMIL 20 trucks lined up, each with a driver and korporaal waiting to pick up their loads and take them on their first "roofie ride" (a "roof" or "roofie" was an Afrikaans term meaning a new recruit)- high speed, frequent violent stops and sharp swerving, calculated to cause maximum discomfort and panic in the "roofs" - but couldn't quite conjour up the images.

We passed turnoffs to towns, the names of which rang bells mainly from television programs, news bulletins and maybe novels - Stilfontein, Orkney, Fochville (presumably pronounced with a soft "ch" like our Maths teacher at school who insisted on being called Miss Fosh), Carletonville, Kloof ... until we finally arrived in Klerksdorp. These are all mining towns. Gold mines. Some of the deepest mines in the world are here, I am told. These people have gold in their blood.

I was ravenous, not having had either breakfast or lunch. We saw a sign post to Pannarotti's ( a well known pizza/pasta joint) "1.3km". We followed it, drove round downtown Klerksdorp for 10 minutes, found only second hand car dealerships and eventually gave up and opted for periperi chickenburgers at Nando's - another great South African institution.

Later, after midnight, the night air was bitingly cold. I said to my colleague, who having been classified as coloured (though he is lighter skinned and straighter haired than I am) did not have to go to the army, "Can you imagine getting up at 4 am in this cold and marching round the parade ground in a thin brown overall, plastic helmet ("doiley") and boots, for 2 hours before trying to get down a breakfast of cold sloppy scrambled egg, soggy toast and burnt coffee, and then enduring an inspection which lasted over an hour and consisted mostly of your corporal and/or lieutenant shouting insults and expletives at you, some of which you had never heard before?". He just laughed. So did I. 21 years has soothed the frustration and anger. Now I sit in a hotel room with the heater on full, well fed and mellowed out, and wax philosophical about the way it was.

The folk we were visiting in Klerksdorp were a mixed bunch. Many came from elsewhere – Graaf Reinet, Durban, Cape Town, Bloemfontein - but one was from the town – Klerksdorp born and bred. After a long day of meetings and presentations we decided to spend the evening together at a local restaurant – Koobah or something similar. We followed our colleagues across town – it seemed like quite a distance but maybe the illusion was due to the number of traffic lights and 4 way stop streets, beloved of small country towns in South Africa, at which we got stuck. I kept getting caught by the red lights. The person I was following got impatient with this slowcoach from Cape Town. Clearly could not keep up with the pace of life in Klerksdorp.

The restaurant was rocking when we got there – clearly more than a restaurant. We elected to sit on the enclosed verandah. They shoved three tables together and encircled them with plastic chairs – off-white or lurid green. The waitress wanted to know what cocktails we would like. The list was long and included such items as “the panty dropper” and “safe sex on the beach”. Little indication of what they contained. I opted for a Peroni draught beer and the lady next to me for a glass of Shiraz, leaving the cocktails for the more adventurous. But we are not off the hook – they brought a complimentary round of “French Kisses” which looked and tasted like red cough mixture with cream on the top.

I asked the one and only native Klerksdorper in the group what the local speciality cuisine is. She hummed and ha’d and finally pronounced “vetkoek, I suppose” – doughballs deep-fried and sometimes filled with savoury mince, eaten hot - kilocalorie city, “or maybe melktert” – a milky custard pie. So where does one get this sublime vetkoek or melktert? Oh, there are lots of tuisbak – home cooking – outlets in town. Tannie Mostert or Tannie Melktert are famous for their melkterts. On the ground floor of the office block where we had our meetings is a small shop called “Knuppeldik Kombuis”. OK – “dik”, means thick. So what is a “knuppel”? (rhymes with "nipple"). And what is a dik knuppel? Do I want to know?? I was assured they have good vetkoek. We decided that the little man who stations himself outside the shop and asks everyone their business should be called Oom Vetkoek (although he is thin and probably doesn’t partake of vetkoek all that much).

Back to the meal. We asked the waiter what the special for the evening was? Burgers, he said – two for the price of one. Looked like we were all having burgers. Nobody wanted starters except my colleague from Cape Town who ordered peri peri chicken livers, extra hot. He shared them with his neighbour on the other side, who happened to be Asian. They made highly appreciative noises. I remembered my mother preparing ox liver every Wednesday during my childhood – doctors instructions, which Mom took extremely seriously, and on account of my grandmother’s pernicious anaemia, we were told. I can see her taking this great bloody lump of organ and cutting it into chunks with a sharp knife, rolling them in flour and then frying them. I hated it and still do. The bile ducts seemed to turn more green and more prominent with the frying. The liver itself tasted like what it was – an excretory organ. But maybe chicken livers are different, I thought. I speared one and cautiously slipped it into my mouth. Wrong! It tasted the same as they did 40 years ago. I didn’t spit it out but neither did I take any more.

The burger was OK. Not earth shatteringly OK, just OK. I washed it down with a good latte. They brought another round of cocktails – slightly different this time – green cough mixture with cream on the top. I was the designated driver so have a water-tight (waiter-tight?) excuse. Someone else got mine – she said she was walking home. I somehow doubted it but what did I know? The cocktails had loosened tongues, removed inhibitions and blurred boundaries. The stories got louder and more hilarious. We heard about a local storekeeper who had refused to replace a pair of sunglasses, because he suspected they had been exposed to the sun! We laughed about the Klerkdorp police detective who reported, when asked about an investigation into a stolen laptop computer, that the computer was still “undetectable”. We were entertained with scurrilous stories about the mens’ health clinic upstairs from their offices, and the characters who worked there (and their partners). We heard about a local GP who presented for a job interview for a research post and when asked why he had applied said he wasn’t sure – his brother (also a doctor) had told him to apply. One of the group had gone to a strip club in Klerksdorp and had had her breasts unexpectedly fondled by the (female) stripper. She also recounted how a male employee had asked for time off work to see the doctor and when she asked what the trouble was, had immediately dropped his pants and showed her – an abscess on his buttock! It seemed that life in Klerksdorp was far from dull.

The next morning I went for a run around the town. Well that is an exaggeration. Even Klerksdorp is too big to circumnavigate in 30 minutes. It was cold – the hotel concierge expressed concern. I said I would run fast enough to keep warm and, apart from my hands, I was right. I ran through a technical school and out on the Orkney road, over the railway and up to a reservoir. The houses were mostly of that typical style which one can see in just about any small town in the more rural provinces of South Africa. Built 50-100 years ago, single storey, solid brick and mortar construction, plastered and painted, usually orange or green, corrugated iron or asbestos sheet roofing, wiremesh fencing, maybe a “hoenderhok” (chickencoop) or aviary in the back yard, separate garage, usually a few peach trees, some garden gnomes and occasionally a fish pond. Also common are wagonwheel design gates and glazed pottery plaques of Mexican's with very large sobrero's sleeping under cactus plants, displayed prominently next to front entrances. Some houses have deep verandahs or “stoeps” which run along one or more sides, but they are generally the older ones – presumably the style went out of vogue at some stage. In the driveway, normally a “bakkie” (pick-up), often the larger older variety like the Ford or Chevy 3 ton, and a family car, like an old Mercedes Benz (the 240D very popular) or a Toyota Cressida – ugly but solid. Being on the Highveld they don’t rust.

I find that running in strange towns shows you a side of life you don’t otherwise see – in this case, the bustle of early morning activity around getting kids to school and parents to work. A sour looking woman in a luxury SUV blasted a taxi driver for stopping in her path – I am no fan of taxi’s but this one didn’t seem to have done anything illegal to me. The sun was just rising as I turned to run back, large and red from the Highveld dust I suppose. The other thing I noticed was the constant cooing of the doves in the pine trees – very much a highveld sound in my mind. We get doves and pigeons in Cape Town but they must roost elsewhere because I seldom hear them in the morning. Maybe it is a different species.

I met someone later in the day who has lived in Klerksdorp all his life and he is past retirement age. He told me that crime is not a huge problem in Klerksdorp but is ever present, and that he and his wife had just moved into a secure housing complex. He seemed very English in this rather Afrikaans town. He said that he had done his 9 months' army training in the local commando's, back in 1961 - before I was born. He had family all over the world - Afghanistan, England, elsewhere in SA - but clearly he was happy in Klerksdorp. I thought I could be happy in Klerksdorp. Life seemed simple, rounded out, navigable. Life in Cape Town is anything but.

Then I was back at Johannesburg airport and waiting for the call to board our plane to Cape Town. Back from the time warp and the memories. Back to the genteel packaged sandwiches and glasses of grape juice which the SAA lounge offers its loyal sons and daughters. Outside the multicoloured aircraft came and went - Mango, Kulula, SAA, Comair/BA - they lined up and taxi'd out like obedient kids in a kindergarten class. Every now and then the building rumbled from a jet taking off on the distant runway. Such activity. Such industry. Such craziness. What a strange life.