Fast and furious in Piemburg

Mike Moon: Piemburg is the town where anarchic scenes were unleashed by novelist Tom Sharpe. It is, of course, a fictional version of my home town Pietermaritzburg - and sometimes not so fictional.

The city's real-life elders tried hard to bury the place's old nickname of "Sleepy Hollow" because it didn't have the desired go-ahead image. Indeed, the epithet was strictly banned from the pages of the local paper when I worked there in the 1970s.

Well, as Tom's books became worldwide bestsellers they sure livened Pietermaritzburg up in the public imagination - but in quite the wrong way.

In Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, the exploits of grotesque Lieutenant Verkramp, the kinky colonial Hazelstones and hordes of excitable Zulus mercilessly and hilariously satirised apartheid South Africa and its strange inhabitants.

Briton Sharpe lived in Pietermaritzburg in the '50s and '60s, before the Nats deported him for subversive activity. Boy did he get his own back.

An extract from Riotous Assembly: "Piemburg's mediocrity was not conducive to more than petty crime and it had been felt at police headquarters in Pretoria that, while Kommandant van Heerden's appointment might push the city's crime rate up, it would at least serve to lower the waves of violence and theft that had followed his posting to other more enterprising towns. Besides, Piemburg deserved the kommandant. As the one town in the republic still to fly the Union Jack from the town hall, Piemburg needed to be taught that the government could not be challenged without taking some revenge."

That paragraph told the world a lot about how mad this land was - and is. We Piemburgers felt a bit singled out, but couldn't help laughing along. The observations were all so incisive.

One adjective Sharpe used for Piemburg was "embalmed".

So it's ironic that the embalmed sleepy hollow has produced South Africa's most explosive, fast-moving horseracing event.

The "Festival of Speed" takes place tomorrow and all the best sprinters will be at Scottsville. The event grew out of the old Gilbeys Stakes, SA's first sponsored race in the 1960s and the brainchild of Sandy Christie, a Piemburg chap with the dynamism the city so badly wanted to project in those days. Tom Sharpe skipped the likes of him though.

Four 1200m Grade 1 races are carded, with the Golden Horse Sprint the headliner.

Great sprinters like JJ The Jet Plane have won this, the toughest of the country's Grade 1 dashes.

It's tough because the Scottsville track has a 300m uphill finish that's a searching examination of muscle and heart.

The hot favourite this year is the seasonally appropriate What A Winter, but there's just something about Winking Jack that reminds me of my Sleepy Hollow.

GOLDEN HORSE (8th Race): 2 What A Winter, 12 Winking Jack, 7 Splash Gold, 6 Shea Shea

SA FILLIES (7th): 2 Val De Ra, 1 Gibraltar Blue, 14 Romantic Moon, 10 Covenant

MAVERICK MEDALLION (6th): 2 Delago Deluxe, 1 Carlito Brigante, 9 Storm Bringer, 8 Soweto Slew

ALLAN ROBERTSON (5th): 11 Princess Victoria, 15 Trinity House, 17 Hot Girl, 2 Aspen Angle