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Authors: Nicholas Monsarrat
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half-past twelve.’
‘That’ll give us about an hour there,’ he answered, rather offhandedly. ‘Probably your saturation point.’
I forebore to say that in some ways I had reached this already.
We took the Main Reef road, through busy traffic, and then branched south, towards Teroka. Tall buildings gave way to smaller ones, and then to the open veld ; the surfaced road trailed off into a yellow dusty track, bad alike for the hair and the nerves. Steele drove his horrid little car well, but our progress was not easy; deep ruts, corrugations, and that enveloping ochre dust all conspired with the heat to complete our discomfort.
Then, on the skyline, I saw the outlying shacks of Teroka Township.
It was what I had expected – not better, not worse; a sprawling mess of tin shanties, hessian shelters, lean-to sheds made of planks and barrel-staves. The buildings (for want of a better word) seemed to have been planted higgledy-piggledy, but there was a road system of sorts; a distorted latticework of pitted tracks, deeply scarred by wagon wheels and rivulets of drainage, and cluttered by every sort of refuse and every breed of goat, dog and child.
It was stiflingly hot; the air smelt acridly of woodsmoke, natives and excrement; a pall of dust enclosed it all like a murky blanket. I wanted to turn back, admitting without argument that I wasn’t this sort of person. But for a number of foolish reasons, compounded of pride, good manners and simple obstinacy, it had already become too late.
As we drove towards the entrance gates, Jonathan Steele said: ‘Fill your lungs. This is the authentic stink of South Africa.’ My conviction that this was a special promotion, designed to shame Marie Antoinette under the cruel spotlight of reality, returned anew.
Then came two minor surprises, the two things I remembered best about that morning. At the rusty barbed-wire gate which marked the entrance to Teroka, a native policeman waved us to a standstill. He looked indulgently at the car, which might indeed have served as a Class II taxi: then he looked at us, and his bearing changed. He said to Jonathan Steele, with not too subtle insolence: ‘Sir, no entrance to Europeans.’
It was easy to understand why he enjoyed saying it. Normally, no white man in South Africa could be disciplined by a native; here was one of the few special cases where the policeman’s writ enabled him to step across that line, since under the new apartheid laws certain civic areas were barred to the ‘non-designated’ race, whichever that was. While appreciating the fact that this was the policeman’s big moment, I still disliked the implications.
‘Tell him to get out of the way,’ I said, loud enough for him to hear.
The first surprise was that Jonathan Steele answered him, not in English or Afrikaans, but in a native language which I took to be Zulu. They talked rapidly for about a minute, Shillingford’s name occurring here and there; and then the policeman stood aside and we went through.
‘Do you really know Zulu?’ I asked, impressed.
He looked puzzled. ‘Zulu? He wasn’t a Zulu. That was Shangaan.’
‘Now how did you know that ?’
‘The earrings,’ he said. ‘They had the Shangaan tribal emblem.’
‘You seem to be doing things very thoroughly.’
He grinned. ‘I’m writing a book about South Africa.’
The second surprise was Father Shillingford himself. We found him at the door of his ‘church’, a wretched tin shanty with a yellow pine cross over the door. Shillingford was a small, modest, rubicund man, far from Christlike – if Christlike means bearded, lean and dramatic, as the painters persuade us. He had a dusty brown cassock, and cracked boots. Only the eyes were out of the ordinary – pale, looking at you, and at the horizon behind you, in one embracing glance. I suppose they were the give-away; the rest of him couldn’t have been less distinguished.
He greeted Jonathan Steele like an old friend, and
‘That’ll give us about an hour there,’ he answered, rather offhandedly. ‘Probably your saturation point.’
I forebore to say that in some ways I had reached this already.
We took the Main Reef road, through busy traffic, and then branched south, towards Teroka. Tall buildings gave way to smaller ones, and then to the open veld ; the surfaced road trailed off into a yellow dusty track, bad alike for the hair and the nerves. Steele drove his horrid little car well, but our progress was not easy; deep ruts, corrugations, and that enveloping ochre dust all conspired with the heat to complete our discomfort.
Then, on the skyline, I saw the outlying shacks of Teroka Township.
It was what I had expected – not better, not worse; a sprawling mess of tin shanties, hessian shelters, lean-to sheds made of planks and barrel-staves. The buildings (for want of a better word) seemed to have been planted higgledy-piggledy, but there was a road system of sorts; a distorted latticework of pitted tracks, deeply scarred by wagon wheels and rivulets of drainage, and cluttered by every sort of refuse and every breed of goat, dog and child.
It was stiflingly hot; the air smelt acridly of woodsmoke, natives and excrement; a pall of dust enclosed it all like a murky blanket. I wanted to turn back, admitting without argument that I wasn’t this sort of person. But for a number of foolish reasons, compounded of pride, good manners and simple obstinacy, it had already become too late.
As we drove towards the entrance gates, Jonathan Steele said: ‘Fill your lungs. This is the authentic stink of South Africa.’ My conviction that this was a special promotion, designed to shame Marie Antoinette under the cruel spotlight of reality, returned anew.
Then came two minor surprises, the two things I remembered best about that morning. At the rusty barbed-wire gate which marked the entrance to Teroka, a native policeman waved us to a standstill. He looked indulgently at the car, which might indeed have served as a Class II taxi: then he looked at us, and his bearing changed. He said to Jonathan Steele, with not too subtle insolence: ‘Sir, no entrance to Europeans.’
It was easy to understand why he enjoyed saying it. Normally, no white man in South Africa could be disciplined by a native; here was one of the few special cases where the policeman’s writ enabled him to step across that line, since under the new apartheid laws certain civic areas were barred to the ‘non-designated’ race, whichever that was. While appreciating the fact that this was the policeman’s big moment, I still disliked the implications.
‘Tell him to get out of the way,’ I said, loud enough for him to hear.
The first surprise was that Jonathan Steele answered him, not in English or Afrikaans, but in a native language which I took to be Zulu. They talked rapidly for about a minute, Shillingford’s name occurring here and there; and then the policeman stood aside and we went through.
‘Do you really know Zulu?’ I asked, impressed.
He looked puzzled. ‘Zulu? He wasn’t a Zulu. That was Shangaan.’
‘Now how did you know that ?’
‘The earrings,’ he said. ‘They had the Shangaan tribal emblem.’
‘You seem to be doing things very thoroughly.’
He grinned. ‘I’m writing a book about South Africa.’
The second surprise was Father Shillingford himself. We found him at the door of his ‘church’, a wretched tin shanty with a yellow pine cross over the door. Shillingford was a small, modest, rubicund man, far from Christlike – if Christlike means bearded, lean and dramatic, as the painters persuade us. He had a dusty brown cassock, and cracked boots. Only the eyes were out of the ordinary – pale, looking at you, and at the horizon behind you, in one embracing glance. I suppose they were the give-away; the rest of him couldn’t have been less distinguished.
He greeted Jonathan Steele like an old friend, and
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