We were driving on a broken road somewhere near the edge of the Vaal Dam when my friend and passenger remarked: “It’s funny how things have turned out in South Africa just like Eugene Terre Blanche said they would, but not for the same reasons.” The devil loves an idle mouth and it’s true my navigational prowess had brought us (like SA perhaps?) to a road going nowhere. We had time to burn, not to mention 93-octane petrol at R21.35 per litre. And time to ponder our “failing state’’.
Still, I was a bit surprised that my friend, the same age as I, a philosophy graduate from one of our most expensive universities, should be citing the failed Horseman of the Apocalypse from Ventersdorp as his reference point for a remark on the state of our country, which by all accounts statistical and anecdotal, is dire. Especially because my friend, it would be fair to say, considered himself a paid-up member of the white, progressive left that played a role in the struggle that was way out of proportion to its numbers. Or indeed the quality of its ideas.
To be fair to my friend, he’s still hopeful and positive, and he decidedly hasn’t joined the righteous chorus of those who claim struggle credentials, or at least sympathies, but who are now “depressed by how things are turning out’’. As if their ideals were the only legitimate standard.
As I navigated that stretch, gingerly but now grey, I confess I thought it unfortunate Magashule had 'stepped aside' when he did. Another three months would surely have been enough to finish that part of the road and set his legacy in concrete (and asbestos) forever more.
One man’s road to nowhere is another man’s road to his farm gate, and so it happened to be that the strip of tar we were driving on so aimlessly, marked “Unknown Road’’ on Google Maps, somewhere near the swollen Vaal Dam, was thanks to our asbestos king, Ace Magashule. That’s what the locals say, that the road to Heilbron from the turn-off to Oranjeville in the northern Free State was widened and tarred for Magashule’s comfort. Forget the complicated geography, just think shimmering autobahn lined by shoulder-high cosmos and manicured veld, and, presumably, grazing lands as scenic deep backdrop.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I had missed the turn-off to Oranjeville I wouldn’t have been on Ace’s road at all. Regrettably, a 400-metre section that crosses a delinquent waterway remains unfinished. As I navigated that stretch, gingerly but now grey, I confess I thought it unfortunate Magashule had “stepped aside’’ when he did. Another three months would surely have been enough to finish that part of the road and set his legacy in concrete (and asbestos) forever more.
I’ve never dreamed as many have, or so they say, of living in a small town. I’ve always looked in the rear-view mirror at some awful rural holiday hamlet with relief and new resolve to never leave the pacific suburbs of Joburg again. Which makes it all the more surprising, to me especially, that I am soon to become a resident of Oranjeville, on the banks of the Wilge River, or the Vaal Dam, depending on who you ask. Hence my visiting there.
A historic town it is too, so I’m happy with my choice and look forward with justifiable anxiety to doing all the things I’ve never had the slightest intention of doing, such as fishing, boating and relaxing. There’s water on a biblical scale though, and I haven’t seen so much of it since Joburg Water left a mains gushing 10 metres into the air for three days up the road some years ago.
Oranjeville seems peaceful, all the more so because the roads are mostly mud and you can park a tractor outside your local Pakistani superette for as long as you like. There’s plenty of straw lying around should you happen to be on a horse. My friend and I loitered for a while in the main road, Malan Street, and a man without a shirt drove by, a bit eerily, in a silver bakkie.
Later, on a veranda at an eatery near the water’s edge, the same gentleman without a shirt walked past us and into the bar area, but came out again saying he’d have to wait for his food because they wouldn’t let him in without a shirt, which I found reassuring. He sat near us, a compact old guy with an earring and a bokbaard. Seems he’d forgotten to put his shirt on when he went out.
Then, incredibly, a gentleman in overalls and a harness clipped himself to the end of the rope and the helicopter quite routinely hoisted him off the ground and flew off with him attached and swaying in the wind.
He talked in a jittery sort of way about the huge waves in the dam on account of all the rain, and ventured that the water was clean enough to drink straight from the Wilge river. I was glad I had a Stoney to hand and couldn’t reasonably be called upon to test that statement. I had been looking at him quite intently because I was struggling to follow what he was saying, when it occurred to me that with his ebony eyes and trim beard he resembled Charles Manson more closely than anyone I’d ever come across. I wondered if I should mention this to him, and it seemed a pity not to, but I’d promised myself in my new neighbourhood not to say strange and alarming stuff. So I just nodded pointlessly and, hopefully, amiably.
On the drive back to Joburg, near an Eskom power station, we noticed a helicopter dragging an object through the air on the end of a long rope. A little further ahead, as if being visited by aliens (ET perhaps?), the helicopter landed at the side of the road and we stopped to watch it being refuelled from some vehicles parked just off the R716. A herdsman in blue overalls and a balaclava was taking pictures with his phone and we also gawked as the aircraft picked up revs and rose from the flattened brown veld. Then, incredibly, a gentleman in overalls and a harness clipped himself to the end of the rope and the helicopter quite routinely hoisted him off the ground and flew off with him attached and swaying in the wind.
This singular example of upliftment of a special kind — presumably this was some sort of Eskom power-pylon inspection — made me inexplicably proud to witness the effort and derring-do that go on behind the scenes to keep our lights off. I took a video of the helicopter and its human package and sent it to a friend. He remarked: “Looks like a different country ... Eskom works!”
And in this hi-tech idyllic setting, and as the helicopter fut-futted into the highveld coppery afternoon, I thought of that solitary dangling man and imagined that not everyone has given up on SA. By a slim and fraying thread do our hopes as a country hang. Tenuous, but not yet broken.
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