Monday, 21 April 1986: Zooming Across the High Veld to Piet Retief

I’m riding in the back seat of a Toyota Cressida station wagon flying across the high veld at 140.  OK, that’s KPH but it’s equivalent to about 85 MPH.  If we weren’t driving on the wrong side of this four-lane divided motorway, we could just as easily be crossing Iowa.  Lots of mealie (corn) fields, slightly undulating topography, groves of deciduous trees here and there.  Tony tells me that we will be passing through coal mining country soon.  To my right and left are two huge coal-fired power plants.  Tony and Hugh (white Johannesburg business colleagues) are talking about the bad erosion in the northwestern Orange Free State around Bothaville.  They claim that the stubborn ol’ Afrikaner farmers in that area plant corn year after year after year and use poor erosion control practices.  Tony says the soil there has been bleached white by all the chemical fertilizers.                    

       Our Johannesburg – Piet Retief trip covered about 360 km (223 miles) in less than 4 hours.

We’ve just turned off Route 22 an on to Route 545, a two-lane highway.  We drove through the “town” of Ogies in less than two minutes.  Tony describes it as a typical “platteland dorp” (flat land, small town).  An uninteresting main street with a few shops constructed of light colored brick.  As we pass the Casablanca Outfitters (clothing store), Tony remarks that there must be a Continental Hair Dressers in town as well.  These are apparently very common business names in small-town South Africa. 

We’re now passing some coal mines – underground operations adjacent to large, eroded tailings piles.  The coal here is rather low grade according to Tony and Hugh.

The three of us are en route to Piet Retief, a small city in the southeastern Transvaal just a few miles west of the Swaziland border.  Tony and Hugh are making a one-day business trip there, and I’m going along to see more of South Africa’s landscape.  The sky is overcast with the temperature about 20°C (68°F).

And now on our right is a large, ugly strip mine with a dragline (huge mining shovel) operating.  Tony says there is an environmental protection act in South Africa which supposedly clamps down on mining excesses.  In reality, the large, rich companies manage to get the rules bent in their favor.  “The most important thing is the most expedient one,” says Hugh.  “The hell with what will happen in the next few years.” 

Up ahead is Bethel, another platteland dorp.  Tony says it has been the scene of a number of infamous security trials.  The government likes to move these trials out of the large metro areas and into the “sticks” so that the press will not be as apt to cover them.

The landscape is much the same as I described it a few paragraphs back.  I should also mention that we frequently pass blacks walking along the side of the road.  We also pass groups of brightly colored shacks were they live as well a white farm houses, which closely resemble older farm homes in the US except for subtle architectural differences.

           Somewhere in the high veld.  Source:  1983.  Reader’s Digest Illustrated Guides to Southern Africa #4. The Transvaal.

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Hugh works in radio and Tony is bitching about the insulting nature of South African radio and TV advertising.  Seems it’s a universal problem! 

We’re through Bethel in a flash and turn on to Route 29 for the 57 km to Ermelo.  A flock of rainbirds or ha-de-das (ibises) flies past us.  Apparently they are fleeing rain up ahead of us as we are now encountering a few sprinkles.  I’m about to get religious with Tony accelerating around slow-moving bakkies (pick-up trucks) at 140 on this two-lane highway.  Cows resembling our Jerseys, hay rolls, windmills, and a roughly-lettered sign advertising potatoes. 

“Look at the hideous piles of tailings here,” Tony says in disgust while gesturing toward a mine on our left.  Speed limit: 120 – wish I had a little sports car right now.  I’ll bet there isn’t a cop around for miles although Tony mentioned earlier that he picked up a 75 Rand speeding ticket a few days ago. 

We encounter large power lines carrying “juice” from coal-fired power plants across the veld to cities and towns further west.  No lions or elephants in these parts – only cattle.  And now on our left is a little canyon with grey, horizontally bedded sedimentary rock standing out in vertical cliffs. 

As we roll down a four-lane street through Ermelo, Tony informs me that we are in Conservative Party and HNP [Herstigte Nasionale Party] country.  Both are far-right parties advocating Afrikaner nationalism and no accommodation with blacks.  I find Ermelo to be an attractive town of 5 to 10,000.  Pretty flowers are in abundance even though it’s autumn.  Piet Retief is still another 102 km ahead. 

Tony is a jazz fan so I’m introducing him to some of Denver’s local talent via his cassette player.  It’s great listening to the group “Images” as we motor across South Africa.  Next, a petrol (not gas) stop.  Mobil – Tony’s company works with Mobil, so even though he hates their TV commercials, he has to buy their gasoline.  Tony uses Zulu to order petrol from a young black attendant.  He explains that they probably speak Swazi here but Zulu is close enough for her to understand.  His African language is actually Xhosa (he grew up in the Transkei where Xhosa is the main language) but picked up Zulu as a result of living several years in Natal Province. 

Tony and Hugh are now making disparaging remarks about National Party propaganda and local white politicians.  For an English-speaking white South African, Tony is very liberal – verlicht (enlightened) in Afrikaans.  Hugh seems rather left of center himself.  The two joke about the absurdities of South African legislation.  For example, there is still a law on the books which prohibits blacks from supervising whites in the workplace, but progressive companies ignore it.  I explain to Hugh and Tony how I now have learned to pronounce “veld” correctly, but catch myself typing it out phonetically as “felt”.  Tony mentions Flytaal, a new lingua franca which is evolving in the black townships.  It’s a mish-mash of English, Afrikaans, and African languages.  And it’s dynamic – every day new words and terminology are emerging from the slums of Soweto!

Another power plant on our right.  Six cooling towers and four smokestacks spewing white smoke over the veld.  The landscape is becoming more interesting – more rolling with tall tree- and high-grass-covered-hills shrouded in a wispy fog.  Tony says we have just dropped over South Africa’s eastern escarpment and we’re losing altitude.  Forest groves are becoming more plentiful now, alternating about equally between the mealie fields and grazing land.  Given the redness of the soil and the evergreen forests you might momentarily fool me into thinking this is the state of Georgia.  But the bilingual road signs (English and Afrikaans) and the electrified rail line on our left tell me we’re a long way from Atlanta.  Railroad cars and large lorries (trucks) stacked high with timber.  Black workers perched atop the logs.  Grain elevators have given way to pine forests.

Piet Retief – 40 km.  Acacia saligna trees (a eucalyptus) line route 29.  A sawmill on the left and Springbok Fish and Chips restaurant on the right advertised with the ubiquitous Coke signs.  Several army trucks meet us heading west – the first I’ve seen in two weeks here.  Black wattle trees on the right.  “Bad for the soil” (acidifies it) reports Tony whose company is in the forestry business.  Denver jazz pianist, Rob Mullins, belts out some lively tunes on the Cressida’s tape player – maybe the first time he has been heard in the eastern Transvaal.  Tony is digging my music.  His older brother is a jazz pianist now based in Paris.  He left South Africa because a law passed in the early 1960s required that musicians apply for a permit each time they planned to play with a racially-mixed group [Jeezus Christ already!].

Piet Retief, at last – 11:35 AM.  Woops – ompad (detour).  Kerk (Church) Street is all torn up.  Tony notes that neither of the hotels here will admit the black members of his staff.  Hugh suggests that new hotel and restaurant legislation may finally change all that.  Tony and Hugh drop me off in the downtown area for a Rotary Club meeting while they head out of town for a tour of a new sawmill.  More about the Piet Retief Rotarians in the next installment.  By the way, the town is named for a 19^th Century Voortrekker leader.