En Passant: Our paths have crossed

MY TIME in Vryheid can be divided into two – my years in Rebel bottlestores, and my years in the Vryheid Herald. They are two absolutely different periods in my life for reasons other than that selling dop is a lot easier than getting answers from the mayor about municipal affairs.

One of the best ways to compare the two periods is if we imagine Vryheid as a pond. When I was a bottlestore manager I was like one of those goggas known variously as a water strider, a water bug, or a pond skater. You must have seen them – long legged insects, a bit like a large mosquito, that walk on water and in doing so create little indentations in the surface tension. They belong, apparently, to the Gerridae family of insects, and there are over 1,700 species of them.

I was like one of them, skating over the surface of the Vryheid pond, living a very superficial existence and almost totally unaware of what was going on under the surface. I was aware that below me there was a municipality, police station, child welfare, SPCA, St John Ambulance, fire department, magistrate’s court, golf club etc, but unless I had to have direct dealings with that institution I never gave it a second thought.

Working at the Vryheid Herald took me under the surface of the pond, and I have to tell you it has been a huge eye-opener as well as a privilege. I have met all manner of people, some of them amazing, who, in all likelihood, I would not have met had I not been at the Vryheid Herald. Like mayors, for example.

Big Martin Mtshali and old George Dlamini were two of them, and there were other councillors like JE Sithole, Esther Qwabe and Willem Burger. JE Sithole was a councillor in the days of the Transitional Local Council, and although he no longer is I still meet him occasionally at all sorts of different meetings. He must be one of the longest-serving community activists around.

And I got to know Joos le Roux, the one time Town Clerk, in council, and being at the Vryheid Herald I got to cover the trials and tribulations of one-time councillor Andre Lotter who’s now in exile, can you believe it. A South African in exile in 2015!

I don’t suppose I would have met the late Vernon Schefermann, nor Frik Venter and Neels Upton who were stalwarts of the Farmers’ Union, the Ram and Bull sales and Stockowners, nor such people as Danie and Daleen van Tonder who started the babies home.

Nor would I have met Hester van der Merwe and Marietjie Cronjé who in my time at the Herald have managed the Old Age Home, and people like Yvonne de Bruyn and Silve Birkenstock who you meet at Home functions. And what about the late Olive Sissons who I still wish I’d spoken to about the history of Hlobane.

Olive didn’t make it to 100 years old, but amazing Grace Mthembu did as well as the sprightly NP Mavuso who was an amazing man for his age. Those old people should have had their histories recorded, because once it’s gone, it’s gone. I think of someone like the late Albert Schmidt who was a mine of historical information, now all lost.

I have met some authors, but they don’t necessarily write about our history. William Zulu and SSS Mhlungu have both appeared in the Herald in my time, but what about Julia Abrahamson who no longer lives here and took a huge chunk of a very specific history of Vryheid with here when she moved to Gauteng.

Environmentalists that I met as a result of working here include my old pal Alex Wood and the late Charl Olberholster, hugely knowledgeable men, both of them, and both very willing to share their brains.

I think of Sister Dolorosa at Nardini who for me seems to represent that institution, and Thandelani Yaka, Annelize Vorster and Alet Swanepoel of Vryheid Tourism. And there are the old stalwarts at Vryheid Child Welfare, Bettie Swart and Margie Grobbellaar, who between them held that organisation together for years. I don’t think they ever came into the bottlestore.

I think of Ben van Eck and his policeman son Chris, both hugely committed to Vryheid; Doug Grewar who really did his best for the town and Ferdinand van Niekerk who continues to make the Klipkerk relevant to the people of Vryheid. I think of Chris Marais, solidly dependable at accident scenes.

I think of Osborn Nkosi and Jaap van Vuuren who made me aware of the disabled in our town; Delarese Weiss who introduced me to the Rose and Flora Society; Cecelia van Wyk and Maureen Ferguson at Vryheid Hospice, and Bongani Msimango of the Athletics Club pounding his way down Vryheid Hill to win another race.

There are scores of others, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people who I would not have known had I not joined the Vryheid Herald, had I not dived under the surface.

Mind you, they probably wouldn’t have known me either.

Verily our paths have crossed, and I am richer for the encounter.