Ouma Magdalena en Oupa Klaas Diedericks

Translation of transcription of a recorded interview with Ouma Magdalena Diedericks and Oupa Klaas Diedericks, conducted by Martin Mössmer, with Oupa Niklaas (Poon) van Rooy
Location: Breipaal, Douglas, Northern Cape
Date: 10 September 2018

MD = Ouma Magdalena Diedericks
KD = Oupa Klaas Diedericks
NvR =Oupa Niklaas (Poon) van Rooy
MM = Martin Mössmer

MD I say time is running out for the volk [‘our people’] to…
NvR That’s my point
MD They keep putting things off, and they don’t realise that the old folks are all dying out
NvR That’s what’s happening
KD Yes
MD D’you see?
NvR That’s what’s happening
KD Yes
NvR You can carry on, meester
MM OK. It’s the tenth of September, we are in Breipaal, with oupa Klaas and ouma Magdalena Diedericks. Do I have your permission to make this recording
KD Yes
MD Yes, yes
MM Is it alright?
MD It’s perfectly alright
MM And that we may use it for, and transcribe it, at the university for our research, and so on. Is that alright?
KD It’s fine
MM Is it alright?
KD Perfectly alright
MM OK. Look, my purpose is to… my own goal is, I want to compile a wordlist of the Griekwa language, and it will say: here’s the Griekwa word, here’s the Afrikaans word, here’s the English word
KD OK
MM And then I can give it to the community, to use for whatever they want
KD Yes
MD Indeed!
MM But then I’m also doing other research on people’s histories and their stories, and where people come from and how people have moved around and…
KD Yes, yes, yes
MM All those things
MD Oh, yes, I see. No, I really don’t have, as I’ve said, I don’t have, I grew up down there in the Erwe. And from there I grew up [there] until I was about twelve, more or less. Then my mother had me go to Welkom, so I went to Welkom. I went to work there, and from there I worked for some years, until about [nineteen-]sixty-one when I came back to Douglas, and so I came back here, came to work here at the old lady where I grew up, Johanna Esterhuizen.
KD That’s right
MD Now what was her, what is Boet’s surname?
NvR Bartenhors [probably Badenhorst]
MD Yes, than I came to work for her, I grew up under the kitchen table in her house [i.e. from a very young age], and so I came back and picked up where I’d left off with her. Up until a certain time, when, golly! When she starts fighting again and she wants to send me to Johannesburg, she had decided that when her daughter comes I must go to Johannesburg [with her daughter]. Because you see, it wasn’t nice here in Douglas, for me. Then one day as I came back from work, I came and heard, as true as Bob, my little cousin telling me, “There was a schoolchild here, here at mother and father’s.” I ask, what schoolchild? “The schoolchild says he fancies you!”
[laughing]
I ask when, since when? I don’t know any schoolchildren who go to school in Douglas
[laughing]
Then, she says to me, “The schoolchild is here! While you sit here and talk about it, he’s asked father. Father says he can have you.”
[laughing]
I was so upset by this business, I asked, “How can you just give me away like that to any old thing that I don’t even know, you can’t give me a man that I’ve never even spoken to! I don’t even know the first thing about him!”
[laughing]
Then, and truly, he just said, “Well, he said he’d be here on Wednesday.” And Wednesday afternoon as I came back from work he said to me, “Well, it’s Wednesday, that man’s coming, that schoolchild, he’s here.” On Wednesday I was here at sunset harvest, my uncle that I grew up with was as fierce as a tiger, my uncle Abraham says to me, “Listen here, a youngster is going to come here, and I don’t want to here your nonsense, d’you hear? You’re not going to sit and mess around with that boy! Listen to what he has to say!”
[laughing]
And there, and when the boy arrived and I looked at him, I realised that he was a snow-white hotnotjie! Uh. And as I looked I began to think, hold on, I wonder what’s at play, might there be something in this for me? Or not? But then we had also grown up in a way that, what our elders said went, you didn’t talk back. If they’ve said you’ll do such and such, then you did as they said. And so I went to this boy to listen, and he said he’s interested, and he’s already spoken to the people, and what do I say? Then I said, well, I suppose I have to say “yes”, what else can I say? Because you’ve already been given to me! And since those years, from nineteen-sixty-one, till now, I’ve been with that young boy that I took that day. A short while afterwards he left, that same evening, and then he came back and said to my great aunt, “I want to borrow this young girl. I want to take her to my people, so that I can introduce her.” And so they said, “Fine, you can take her.” And then, truly, that weekend he arrived to come and take me away, to Barkly West, to his parents. I was introduced and whatnot, and then they told me I had to stay, so I stayed for two months, because they had to first see if I was someone who could work, or whether I was a wastrel.
[laughing]
So I really did stay there for two months. And then after the second month was over, the hotnotjie was back again, and then when he was there I heard them as they were sitting and talking, they were talking the Griekwa language! “Tun ǀong” and so on, “Oh, yes son, no, no, she is, you can take her [as your wife]. She’s the right one.” And, uh, then he truly took me and brought me back. And when we got back here, he just decided, he’s not taking my home again, he’s going with me straight to the magistrate’s office. Yes. And when we got to the magistrate’s office to do the things, the late meester Olof told us, “No, this girl is far younger, he’s an old man already.” And I thought to myself, he looks like a child but I can see now that he’s a grown-up!
[laughing]
But then, then we tried, and they said, “No, you see you’re too young still for this man. This man is far older than you. We’ll have to raise your age a little, so that you’ll be able to get a little closer to him [in age]. You’re still too far behind. You must remember now that we’re changing your things.” And then they really did change my details that day, my age was changed and whatnot, and things were made right, and so we were married. And we’ve been together since that day in sixty-one, until now, two-thousand-and-eighteen, I’ve been with the schoolchild. Look…
[laughing]
MM And your parents? What was your maiden name?
MD Gouws
MM Gouws
MD Yes, it’s Gouws
MM And your parents were here, in the Erwe?
MD Yes, they were on the Erwe
KD Yes
MM And what did they… did they work there?
MD They worked on the smallholdings, on the plots
KD Yes
MM And your mother? What was her maiden name?
MD No, my mother wasn’t married, she was a Gouws, yes
MM OK
MD Yes. She was never married. And she also went out to find work, and went to work and from that time when she went to work she never came back again. I have no idea whether she’s still alive or whether she has died, because look how old I already am now.
MM Mmm
KD Mmm, yes. Haai
MM And oupa?
MD He has a good history, he can tell you a lot about the past [lit. ‘he can talk far’]
MM Oh! I can’t see much here in the sunlight… ah, there we go. That’s better.
KD Uh
MD You must tell the stories about how you travelled, oupa
KD I, look, my times of…
MD There from your home
KD I was born on the farm. Marydale, that’s the farm’s name, on the near side of Kimberley. I grew up there, in the way that it was then with looking for work, in at this farm, out again, in at that other farm, and so on. And, uh, eventually we came back again to this farm, the farm where I was born. And there I didn’t, see, our people in those days didn’t teach us the language, so that we could, as children, be able to…
MD Speak it
KD …speak it
MD And they spoke it well. His people only spoke the true Griekwa language at home, no Afrikaans.
KD Now, uh…
MM Not at all?
MD They spoke no Afrikaans
KD Uh, well…
MM Was that your mother and father and everyone?
MD Mmm
KD My father, my mother, my grandfather, my grandmother, it was they that spoke the language. But [inaudible] we just picked it up here and there
MD [to toddler] (Go now, go now, Tiggie, come, come, go to Dierdre, tickle her)
KD Do you see? Look, in those days our elders were very strict, and where the elders were sitting and chatting no child was allowed to be in the way, no children
MD Hmm-mmm
KD We knew where, how we had to play and were we shouldn’t. And that’s how we grew up. But when it comes to games, uh, then we would have a sakdans [a traditional dance, lit. ‘sack-dance’], they call it sakdans. And, uh, there’s also a stapdans [lit. ‘step-dance’]. It’s distinct from the sakdans. And, uh, that’s how I picked it up, learned how to dance the sack, stapdans, all that night-long dancing, and there where the young girls are confined
MD Mmm, the !nebesa [sic ǀ’habasas ‘initiated young woman’]
KD Yes, they call that word ǀnabasa [sic] uh, then there is dancing right through the night, and just before sunrise we go down to the river. This, this daughter, girl, she is inducted into the culture. Now, uh, I didn’t take that much notice of it [then], or rather, see, uh, I’m a little afraid of that water
[laughing]
And because of that I never tried it, uh, to go near to it. But they were good days that we had then, they were good times. And when it came to the sakdans, well there I was, there I was at the front of the line [i.e. the best dancer]. And when it came to stapdans, well, there I was also at the front of the line. I understand everything that happens there… Now, I don’t see it being done anymore
NvR No, it isn’t done anymore
KD Or it, we have to teach it now
MD Mmm
KD And, uh, it was always what kept us out of trouble, dancing right through the night. But there, you see, the white people of those times set a certain cut-off time, because tomorrow morning you had to be back at work, so we’d start at about six o’clock on Saturday evening and keep going until four o’clock in the morning, four, after four they’d go to the river and then, then the girl is given to it [the river]. Now, alright, they have a few things that have to be done there, ǀgom-bossies [the name for a number of aromatic plants found in the Karoo, also known as gombos] are burned, and so on, and you have to walk through the smoke and, uh, then you come back from there. This girl is then initiated from being a girl into being a woman. She is, in other words, she has now come of age
MD Mmm
KD But is she hasn’t been there then she hasn’t come of age
MD Mmm
KD But, sadly, today things are just any old way. They come of age in the shallows [i.e. superficially]
MD Mmm
[laughing]
KD They aren’t, aren’t [laughing] aren’t initiated into adulthood
NvR To show that they are now a young woman
MM Mmm
KD Yes
MD They just learn things wherever they feel like it [inaudible]
NvR Everything is bare and exposed
MD Mmm
KD Yes, yes
NvR They talk now of the ‘komdom’ [‘condom’, a pun on ‘become stupid’]
KD Yes
NvR A tyre-thing, and, and…
KD Oh dear
NvR Alright, but they learn these things at the schools, too
MD Yes, and they learn it all at school now too, about this sex and stuff. In our day we never learnt that sort of thing
NvR Those things were very scarce when we were young
MD Mmm!
KD Yes
NvR You get a fright when you see those things [lying] on the road
MD Mmm
KD Lordy!
NvR That’s also why, at the funerals, the memorials and burials, why they’ve also diminished
MD Mmm
KD Yes, yes, yes
NvR We don’t sing anymore [like we used to]
KD Yes! Iegha [? exclamation] no, we don’t sing anymore
MD Yes, now we always [used to] end the service at six o’clock
KD And we always made sure that the last prayer was said at six o’clock
NvR The last prayer, yes
KD And then they’d leave, and you’d…
NvR …in a few minute, or an hour…
KD …come together, yes. Now, I’ve…
MD You can’t even try to inform your children these days, you can’t sit and tell them, “Come sit here now, I want to chat to you…”
NvR No, they don’t want to do it
MD You think you’ll be able to inform them, and then they tell you, no, they already know all of it
KD Yes, yes
MD That’s what they’re like, you know? You’re not ignorant of things until a certain age [as it used to be]. We just had our children, when I think back to when I had my first child
KD Yes
MD And I was so innocent that I didn’t even know that I was having contractions. And I asked old man Sadie, old man Sadie says to ma, “What? You must thingamajig now, the aeroplane will [go and] bring the thingamajig now.” I’m, the pain had me running out the door, and I called out, “I don’t want to get on the aeroplane now, he hasn’t come yet [i.e. the baby], come back!”
[laughing]
“The aeroplane is bringing him now.” That’s how foolish we were! [She thought that the aeroplane was bringing the baby to her, and didn’t understand that it was going to fetch the doctor.] We knew nothing of these things! We just thought that when the aeroplane comes, “Bring a baby along with you!”
[laughing]
KD Yes but that’s all we knew…
MD There I was with the pain, I was waiting for the baby, he was about to come out right now! And I expected him to be brought to me [from somewhere else]… That’s how ignorant we were.
KD Goodness me!
MD You know, we really grew up in innocent/ignorant times, but they were good times.
NvR They were good times
MD We just weren’t quite so precocious
KD Yes, and so the time has gone by
MD If today could have been more like those times, then it would have been much better. And I mean, in those day of ours the children didn’t have children the way they do now
NvR Yes
MD We were innocent because we were cautioned about men
KD Yes
MD And you couldn’t, when you were menstruating, you couldn’t let a man touch you
NvR Yes
MD You must make sure his hands are far away from you. Today these things are not, they hang on to each other from here to goodness knows where, and I am now seventy-one, but I’m still here, and even now, if we walk together in the street, I’m too abashed to let my husband put his arm around my shoulders. I, people shouldn’t see him touching me
KD Yes
MD See, we were raised to be wary of these things. Today the children have no shame, they don’t worry, they do everything that’s obscene, and to them it’s fine
NvR To them its fine
MD If they get pregnant then they even brag about being pregnant
NvR Yes
KD Yes
MD Hmm? Goodness me, I don’t know, old Klaas?
MM And, oupa, what did your mother and father do? Did they work on the farm?
KD They worked on the farm and, uh…
MD (Come, come now)
KD As the people used to trek around [in the old days], [we trekked] from Marydale to Schmidtsdrift. Then we stayed a few months in Schmidtsdrift, and we…
MD (Behave, Tiggie!)
KD Look, we just had to go around and travel to where the work was
MM Mmm
KD But, in the end, we left Schmidtsdrift, there was a farm and I…
MD (Don’t do that!)
KD …worked there, and worked there. But then, they changed the names of many of the farms, and I’ve heard that it’s now called Bergmanshoop, so
[laughing]
The farm Bergmanshoop is there, uh, in the region of Ulco [town near Delportshoop]. Then we lived there for a time, I don’t know for how many months, or years, then we moved back again. Uh. And my father came back to Schmidtsdrift and he left me there with my grandparents, and he went to Natal. And so we grew up looking after our livestock, herding sheep, watching goats, doing the milking. And when he came back again, after the six years, he’d taken a six year contract at a coal mine, and when he came back from there, uh, then I had become clear of thought [i.e. more grown up], I had some understanding, but I, uh, I was afraid of this man who came walking along, he was speaking Zulu
[laughing]
This man was speaking Zulu, and, uh, I was bewildered, and that evening as he spoke I said, “Hey, mama, who is this man?”
[laughing]
But, you know, afterwards we fortunately reconnected with each other. And in the year nineteen-forty-six the Divisional Council work started, and he worked a good many years for the Divisional Council. Then he left the Divisional Council, Casey’s council, for Kimberley, there he worked at the Dynamite Co.
MM Mmm
MD (Hey! You’re an inquisitive grandchild.)
KD At that time when he worked there, we lived in Barkly West, there in Pniel, the Pniel-grounds, we lived there. And then in nineteen-fifty-eight he was killed there in an accident on the Main Road. He was buried in Kimberley, and so mother and I lived alone, we had to, and sold the livestock in the end. See, I was still a youngster, I didn’t understand the business that well, the cattle and livestock, goats and sheep. And they slaughtered [our stock] with a vengeance, the butchers [i.e. stock thieves], they slaughtered relentlessly. I wouldn’t have, old Rooys [NvR], I would never have sold [our livestock], but there was one fellow…
MD You had to, you were taking losses, ai
KD …there was one fellow who, uh, he had a funny name, Dikkop
NvR Dikkop
KD Twenty-five goats, not in two or three days, there all at once, twenty-five goats is what he slaughtered, you just see what’s left of them lying there… And for that reason I, we sold the livestock
NvR Auctioned and sold them
KD Auctioned
MM What does it mean…
NvR And they were cheap
MM Was it your goats that they slaughtered?
KD Yes
MM Stolen?
KD Stolen!
MM Wow!
MD They slaughtered like that
KD Slaughtered them and then sold them there at the, uh
MD They had to give up the farming, and so he had to go find work, and his mother went to Kimberley, to work in Kimberley
MM Was, um, Dikkop, was he a white man?
KD No
NvR He was a brown man
[laughing]
MM Or a brown man
MD He was a brown man
KD A brown man, a brown man
MD He walked around with [smart] clothes, looked like a man who owned livestock, he took orders from people. He drove around and took orders from people in the location
KD Yes!
NvR Yes!
KD And sold them! And so, our farming also came to an end, and now I was free [i.e. unemployed]. Now I had to find work, from Barkly, to Griekwastad, on past Griekwastad, worked on the farms again. Nineteen-sixty-two is when I came here, to Douglas. Uh, and I came and worked here for a white man, it ewas good, I rented a room here, lived in the room…

…and so…
MM Now the battery is flat… It never happens at the end or at the beginning, just when the conversation is going well
MD [inaudible] talk more about the time after you came from Griekwastad
KD Mmm, mmm
MD The other place isn’t…
NVR There… how you came from Griekwastad, when you were a bakka-boy [?] [inaudible]
MD Already in that time when Malaai took your things, because, you see, they
[laughing]
They, at Aunt-Bella’s place, hoer-hoender [lit. ‘whore-chicken’, possibly ‘making sexual advances’] at this geelmannetjie [‘yellow man’, i.e. KD]! And Elisa, who has died, Elisa who whistled like a boy
[laughing]
Nè! I’m telling you, Elisa could be way down by the thingamajig, then I’d be up here at my room, here at Johanna, trrrrrr! I’d whistle back [whistling]
[laughing]
I’ve heard now!
[laughing]
Ai, man!
NvR Father!
MD Ai, man.
NvR I said to the young woman here, you’re, the things [initiations] you’re doing here, we don’t know about [how you’re doing] these things. These things! They’ll kill you
MD No, man, no
NvR They don’t know what they’re dealing with
MD And I told them they should come and learn from us, we knew about all of them, they can stop it now
NvR I see that today they’re doing the same thing, the young women prefer this sort of thing, go to church with braided hair and whatnot. I mean, these things, these things weren’t
MD We dispensed with those things
NvR We were told these things
MD Uh, leave them!
NvR Listen, you’re going to have to leave these things [laughing]
MD Uh, you know?
NvR And now they’re talking about Facebook stuff [laughing]
MD Uh. Yes, we had nothing like that back then, but they were good times, those times of ours
NvR Our times were really…
MD [We] went to dances, and danced till all hours. As I said I grew up there at Johanna, under her kitchen table, well, she only let me go to dances until eleven o’clock, “Remember, eleven o’clock, when the bioscope is over, you have to be back, girly.” “Uh, yes, kleinnooi.” Then I’d go, and I’d come back. So I’d come back through the front door, so that she’d see me coming in. And I’d just climb back out through the window, and there…
[laughing]
…I’d be gone again, tomorrow morning I’d just walk back in by the front door, “Now where are you up to?”, “No, kliennooi, I just went out to look here at the thing to see what was going on in front here, I heard something, I’m coming now.”
[laughing]
No, we had very good times in our young days
KD Indeed, we did
NvR Yes we did

MM Sorry for the interruption
KD No, no, no problem, no, I’m just going to move around a bit. I think, old Rooys, all we have to do now, uh, just so these few…
MD You must tell us what, after you finished working there, when you came to Douglas. And then you came to work here, and then you found me here
MM From Griekwastad
KD Yes, from Griekwastad
MD Yes, and then you received me here, and then you fetched me with the work, and then you joined the church later, and so on
KD Yes, Koos, I quickly had to find my way to being a Christian because I was also a wrongdoer
[laughing]
Then, then I found…
NvR You weren’t quite right
[laughing]
KD No, no I was a wrongdoer, but I also had to get away from it. And so the Lord took me awat from all of that…
NvR The Lord helped out
KD …and he helped me…
NvR True
MD Uh
KD …so that I could…
MM What sort of wrongdoer were you?
[laughing]
KD It was drinking, it was fighting…
MD Oh! People!
KD …and it wasn’t good
MD The people, his family would say, he’s in trouble today, and then he’s back in this afternoon
[laughing]
KD I’m, how d’you say, difficult
MD I’d hear him, he even went and threw a policeman, there in front of the police station, then he bent over, picked up rocks, threw them at him, “You mustn’t look for trouble with me! Listen to what I say!”
KD And it’s hard, old Rooys
MD Look, he was a piteous person, truly. You wouldn’t even think so now! Just look at how many years he and I have been together, but when I, when they said to me, “I really don’t know what happened to the man.”
KD Eh…
MD But, uh, he almost wasn’t even a person then, he was very depressed
NvR Depressed
MD Was depressed. But the gospel really, uh…
NvR Brought him closer and tamed him [laughing]
KD Uh
MD It made him meek as a lamb, because he was, you know, my children are now all grown, most of them have died, there’s just one left
KD Uh
MD But, uh, when I disciplined the children, and I’m a very fierce person, I’m very strict
NvR Indeed
KD Yes, yes
MD I’m very strict, and, uh, he’s very gentle
KD Yes
MD He’s a lamb. But, uh, when I act against my children here, then he cries with the children. Then he’d sit and cry with them because he, his heart can’t take it, if they…
NvR Can’t handle it
MD …yes, but you see, I act severely when I act, look, when I’ve spoken once then the second time they get it, they have to get it from me, so they can listen
NvR Yes, yes. They must listen
KD Rooys, I came here by foot from Griekwastad. That morning as I walked from Griekwastad, I stood at a crossroads, and I didn’t know which road I should take. I stood there at the NG church, in Griekwastad
NvR Uh
KD Should I take the long road to Kimberley, or should I take the road to Douglas?
NvR And then?
KD And that’s…
MD And he didn’t know it [the road to Douglas] very well, or at all, really
KD And it was about eight o’clock, and, d’you know, at ten I was still standing there, I still had to decide, because…
[laughing]
…there wasn’t anyone else with me who could give me advice, I had to choose between the two roads…
NvR The two roads
KD …which one to take. And so I thought, the one to Kimberley is too long
[laughing]
I’ll go along this way [to Douglas], and I can get a little work, for a week, and then the next weekend once I have that money… at that time the Koolkop [lit. ‘coal head’] still ran here
NvR The Kolekop, the [steam] train, yes
KD The little train
NvR Our train
KD And I stood there and thought, I could then catch the train in Douglas and go from there to Kimberley, and then I could catch the red bus from there…
NvR There
KD …all the way to Barkly West, then I’d be home. But it felt like something was pushing me along. I said I was thinking but I was already walking!
NvR You were walking [laughing]
MD Yes, coming to Douglas already
KD And so I was on my way. An old man, who has passed away, old Hendry Pieterse
NvR Pietersen
KD His brother, he was the one who drove his bakkie past me that morning, he went by at about seven o’clock, and then at about twelve o’clock he came by again, he said, “No”, I think it was two o’clock and he came by again. And then he hit the brakes when he saw me, “Where is it you’re going?”, boy, well, I said, “I’m going down to Douglas for a bit.” “Well, get on.” Alright, so I threw my things onto the bakkie and I jumped on, and we drove on down, and then he stopped when we saw old Lukas Visser and his bicycle, he had a puncture and no spare wheel or pump, so the old man picked him up as well and the two of us sat on the back of the bakkie together. And then when we got to Shaleng [?], he got off again, and once we’d driven a little further the driver asked me, “Now, where are you going, sir?”, and I said, “I’m going down to Douglas”, “Where must I drop you off, sir?” I didn’t know, because I had no place to tell him to go to…
NvR Here or there
KD And so when we got to the gate to the farm Rooirantjies, I said, “Yes, I think you can drop me off here, that’ll be fine”
NvR Because you had no plan of where to go
KD I had no plan. I jumped off there, said “Thank you”, and that afternoon I walked from there, it was about four o’clock. When I came to the corner, that corner there where the school is now, back then there was an old church there. When I got there I set my things down, in those years the people who live in Bongani now had been moved from here
NvR Over to Phelindaba
MD Mmm
KD To Phelindaba. There were just ruined houses standing here. And I thought, I wondered, as I looked around, looking over Douglas from the back, wondering, I’ll just settle over here and rest a while here. And so the sun set while I was sitting there, and I climbed over the fence, but, I had to camp out like a bushman
NvR Camp out, yes
KD I made my bed for the night, slept there, got up the next morning and stashed my sleeping things under the stones there, all the little things I had. Went to town. To look for work. Looked for work, ai, didn’t find any, the jobs are all taken. But I didn’t want to work on the irrigation canal, either, because I knew that I’d find work easily working on the canal, but it was tough work, ai
[laughing]
And I didn’t want to! At about one o’clock I came up and sat on the corner near old Joseph’s shop, uh, and I got up to no good again. Old Fouché grew these big grapes [over there]. I picked myself a bunch as big as this, rinsed them under the tap, sat there on the corner eating them. When I’d finished, I sat there… oh boy! It was nearly two o’clock now and I still didn’t know, would I find work or wouldn’t I. And then a man came along up the road, from doctor Nel’s direction, and he was already working there, old Piet Fodida…
MD You [NvR] probably don’t know him
KD Uh-uh. Old Piet Fodida, he worked for doctor Nel
NvR Oh, OK
MD Mmm, he lived in Bongani
KD Yes… And, uh… The old man came along. He liked to joke, that old man. “Hello old man, how’s it going? Oh, you know how it goes. Oom, are you looking for work?” D’you know, I threw those grapes away there and then
NvR Just to go and find out! [laughing]
KD I asked, where? “Yes, oom, I’m looking for work!” He says, “Well then. Sit here, wat here for me while I qickly go to…” There to, then it was still ‘Wynberg’…
NvR [inaudible] that’s right
MD shop
KD shop, yes. He says, “I’m quickly going to the shop, just wait for me right here.” And so I waited there for him, and he came. “Uh, yes oom, I found someone here who asked me yesterday, we can go there together.” And then we went together, and so he made the whole thing easy for me. The white woman and her husband, came to me, and it turned out to be old Land
NvR Old Land
KD At the time he was the manager at
NvR That’s right
MD [The] Cooperative
KD No, at the Barclays Bank
MD Oh, yes, yes, it’s not that other one from over there
KD No, not old Staals. Uh, alright. There I made arrangements with the madam and the man. And he said he needed somebody to clean his yard from one side to the other
NvR To clean, yes
KD Clean. The man who worked there wasn’t quite up to it. And so we hired each other there, “No but, come tomorrow. First eat, and then come tomorrow.” And so that evening I was, there past old Rooyes, that night I went and slept there again. Slept right there
MD Mmm, in the veld
KD Look, I didn’t want to worry anyone [laughing] because I didn’t want be worried [by anyone]. So I slept there that night, when got up the next morning I got up with everything. Shook out my bedding and folded it up. I went through to town. Got there, and put my things there by the garage, uh, and there the madam picked me up, and she asked me, before she asked me I explained my situation to her. She said, “Now why didn’t you say anything yesterday?” I said… Then I went from there, after I finished [the work] at one o’clock, at two o’clock I was off. She said I could go, so I went to look for a place to stay. And then I came and lived here with my uncle, late uncle Jan Meyers, old Koekie Meyers
NvR Meyers… Koekie Meyerse, yes
MD Yes, down over there
KD Then I came to live there. And I even got a big room, and it was painted and everything, and uh, I moved in there. I paid five bob as my rent, a month. And I lived there and worked. And worked well, too! And uh, I hadn’t been here for too long before the Lord spoke to me. The gospel, uh, was suffering. And I must join it to serve the Lord. And so I joined. And uh, then there were a few young men here, who converted at the time, old Tas
NvR Old Tas and company
KD A few boys there from Campbell. Hê! Then the gospel was hot. When the gospel warmed Klaasie [KD], the gospel was hot
NvR It was hot then, hot. It was like the sea
KD Ja nee, it’s not like now, the way people do as they wish, do with the gospel as they wish
NvR There’s even one who has taken two women now
KD Yes I, no… And this is how I accepted the Lord, and how we served him, and I worked part time, and I worked spiritually and, uh, this is how I came to Douglas, so that since sixty-two, if I’m right, then I think I’ve been in Douglas for fifty-four years now
NvR So, you’ve now got your…
MD Mmm-mmm man, it’s longer than that, longer
NvR …yes, you’ve actually lived your whole future here
MD Uh
NvR What happened there, but your parents didn’t really speak the language to you
MD Mmm-mm
KD No, look
MD He did, let me interrupt here quickly. He did, look, as they told me, I spent a lot of time with the in-laws, he was more out and about
KD Yes
MD He had been like that since he was little, never wanted to stay at home, he preferred to be on the road
NvR On the road, yes
MD D’you see? He was a traveller. See? He stayed away from home…
KD Yes, I couldn’t get to the language
MD … when he came from school he just go, he’d just leave school and go who knows where… his brother, his eldest brother spoke the language fluently
KD Mmm
NvR That’s right
MD See? Because when I came to my in-laws’ home, when they spoke to each other I’d ask him to explain to me
KD Eh
MD “When they say this, sister, they mean that.” D’you see? That’s how it was. End then in those days I used to go there often so that I could learn the language, but I’ve unlearnt it again. See? There are still words here and there…
KD Yes, but there are still people who speak it
MD … that I still know
NvR Yes, you can still, here and there, especially, as I say, our, like my people did, as my mother and her people wanted to teach me, they were already dying off one by one
KD Yes, yes
MD Yes, yes, d’you see? Uh, uh. Yes, and they also spoke it, they spoke it too
NvR They also spoke it
MD They could speak it
NvR My in-laws weren’t like that, but now the way that we were brought up, we had to pass them by
MD Yes, uh
NvR Yes, but what I’m saying now, I want, as I said to him [MM], I feel we need to be recognised
MD Uh
KD Yes
NvR Griekwas
MD Griekwas, yes. We’re Griekwas
NvR We must be recognised, for our
MD For the tribe
NvR For things that we would like to do
KD Yes
MD Mmm
NvR So that we can help our children, because we grew up in a healthy way
KD Yes, yes, yes
MD Mmm
NvR We were given hidings by two parents
MD Yes
NvR If you did wrong somewhere else, you couldn’t come and complain to your mother, or…
MD It didn’t help to come and complain that “so-and-so gave me a hiding”
NvR No, you’d get a second hiding
MD You’d just get it again
NvR Now they don’t get that today
MD They won’t just give a hiding anymore
NvR Now, that’s the way it is
MD D’you see?
KD Yes
MD Now, that’s exactly what I’m telling you, those times were healthy times. You heard what the old man said, for five shillings he stayed there, and then he worked, for how many years I don’t know, for old Staals. Was it old Staals? No, old, for that old boertjie. What is…
KD Van Zyl
MD Old van Zyl? Here at aunt Maggie, of old Jan Nel’s wife, woker there for years.
KD Yes, yes
NvR Yes
MD He worked there for a number of years before he went to work for Standard Bank. He worked then for three Rand, and remember he had a house and children, a house with three children
KD Sir, many don’t believe it!
MD Huh? Three rand? How?
KD Three Rand. A week.
MD We’re talking about three Rand
NvR My goodness… Three Rand?
MD Not even thirty Rand, it was three Rand
KD That’s a long time ago now. Look, there are now three plots on the land that that old white man had, old van Zyl
NvR Goodness, people
MD Hmm?
KD And it was all one way, because, he had so many fruit [trees] there, ai, during fruit season I had to sell and the oubaas received. Uh!
NvR And in other words, when you look back now into your own lifetime, a wife always has her man’s breaks
MD Uh, mmm!
NvR You held him fast
MD Uh!
KD Ja
NvR There were no chances for it, [to go] this way, or that way
MD Uh-uh, mm-mmm. No, when he came here all that funny business came to an end
[laughing]
KD Yes
MD No, he came and walked into the snare
[laughing]
KD And then I found the way things were here, I understand now
NvR You understand now
MD Yes. Yes, he can’t, because then we got married and the children came along, and then he had to pay attention to this, to these or…
KD Yes
NvR Goodness
MD (Hey! Come away from the car!)
NvR (Hullo! Hullo! I see you, my child, I’ll shoot you) Now, then the dangers were the lions, then they also saw that “we can’t come by here”
MD Huh-uh, huh-uh, no
NvR And it was good, and the three Rands, talking about just three Rand. Al I wore was gumboots, all I had was half a bucket of mielie meal, half a bucket of bread flour, one of those small packets of sugar, between my wife and myself
MD No, those times, only the other day I showed Angela a little receipt, of a time when we bought a whole sheep and paid only thirty-five Rand
NvR Hey, people!
MD And today, look, the other day I went with the child…
MM You can’t even buy a sheep now!
KD No!
NvR You can’t buy one!
MD Uh-uh. The other day I bought a sheep here and the man says to me it’s a thousand five-hundred
MM Only this much mutton
[laughing]
NvR Hey, people!
MD Just so!
MM As much as you can hold with your fingers, that’s how much you can buy
MD Yes. With only ten Rand we used to buy a whole sheep thing
NvR That, the side [half a sheep]
MD Yes, the whole side, like this. And the leg, and it would be a big sheep’s leg. Today you can’t buy anything anymore, huh? This old man once, when he was a loose [inaudible] know he’s going from one place to the next, here they worked for thirteen Rand. Then I said to him, “No, you can just leave it all”
KD Here, at, at Scholtz
MD Huh? But we used to do club-buying [stokvel], but the times, look, what actually helped us [get by] was that things weren’t so expensive
NvR Not so expensive
KD Yes!
MD Today’s trouble is that food is too expensive, people
KD That food is dear
NvR And that is why people can’t take children down to the river these days
KD Yes, yes
MD No, everything is under pressure, look, today, at this point we get this money from the state, but it means nothing
NvR No, it means nothing
MD By the time you’ve come from town back home you’re
NvR It’s all finished!
MM It’s all finished!
MD Then it’s finished, by the time you sit down at home, when you walk into the house there none left
NvR Then you still ask yourself
MD Then you think [to yourself], when the money was only four-hundred Rand, I used to be able to buy things and then still, out of that four-hundred Rand I’d still have some over until the next pay time
KD But this [state pension money] only lasts for a little bit, yes. I was working, living in Kimberley, I was looking for work, but things were tough, I couldn’t find any work. I was walking down Green Street, you know where Green Street is, there at the West End. In the third week I luckily found a little work, where my cousin was working as a plumber, and he said he’d ask the man he worked for, so when he talked to me I said that was alright. And so later on when they started work on Monday morning, uh, he hired me, and so I started working right then. Remember, it was now three weeks of me looking for work, this was the third week, on a Monday. And I still smoked at that time, I had no tobacco, I had no matches, nothing, I had nothing! It’s just me, all I had was myself! I had started that morning, alright I had work now, but I had nothing to eat
MD Come, you must look this way! You mustn’t go staring off that way
[laughing]
KD To these guys, I was now going off to eat breakfast, but I had… the intervention of the Lord made it possible, the guys were sending, were looking for someone to send [to buy food], “No, just send this young boy here”, and my cousin said, “Just take my bicycle”, [inaudible] But I wasn’t so wor-, I was worried about myself
MD Yes, they could eat but what about you?
KD The m-… And so I went to the shop, these guys, the one wanted bones, the other kwaras [? tripe], sugar, coffee, tea. So I went off to the shop, bought the things at the shop, then to the café, got things at the café, and then to the butcher, and as I stood there in the butcher’s shop, it was just me and the butcher in the butcher’s shop, as I came in, “Yes, man! What can I do for you?”, “Well, my lannie, I’m a bit busy”, “Well what would you like then?”, “Kwaras and bones”, and then there was a sound as if someone was coming in the door, and I looked around. Huh-uh, there was nothing, and then the man asked at the same time, “Yes, oupa, what would you like”, then I said… uh… And then as I looked around then I saw a bit of paper that had blown in, through the open door. And then I came closer could it be?
MD But it was one of those red ten Rands, the old-fashioned red ten Rand
KD It was still a paper, the paper ten Rand. Now, people used to be quite…
NvR Cautious
KD …in some places it wasn’t lekker. I thought [laughing] the paper, and I took the bit of paper. It was a red ten Rand. No, not ten Rand, a Rand
NvR Rand, Rand
KD It was still a Rand. The paper…
NvR The paper, the red one
MD Yes, the red one
KD The paper one Rand
MM Yes, it’s sort of brownish
MD Yes!
KD Yes. I had it! Picked it up. That was a day’s pay because we were paid a Rand a day. My day’s pay. Ou Rooys [NvR], just like that, my troubles were gone [lit. ‘my head opened up’] [laughing] and, it’s funny, I had that ten Rand, that Rand, I could buy myself matches, I bought myself cigarettes, I bought myself bread, I went to buy chips, I bought myself meat, and the guys I worked with even still borrowed money from me!!
[laughing]
NvR That’s how much that money was!
[laughing]
MD Yes, that much, that’s how much value it had in it
NvR That was its value
MD Yes, that’s what its value used to be
KD And then by that evening I still had six shillings! Out of the ten shillings, I still had six shillings left over. And I went and gave the guys their things, and now just think of how easy things were in those years
NvR Hard, but really enjoyable
MD Uh
KD Yes, as that other speaker always said, it was hard, [greetings in background] it was difficult, but it was also good
NvR It was good
KD You could get everything easily
NvR Easily
KD It seemed difficult, but everything always worked out comfortably
NvR It looked like it, but it was really, those days, I must say, honestly say, we lived really well
KD Yes. Good times
NvR That bucket of mielie meal, that bucket of bread flour, coarse flour, those packing boxes, that bucket was like this…
MD Ooooh…
NvR …those two buckets, the mielies, I don’t know where, look at today’s white mielies, and then look at the mielies we had in those days
KD Yes
MD Those used to need to be cooked all day, and these are cook for a short time and they’re all cooked
KD Five minutes
NvR Oh no
MD And the flour, old Rooy [NvR], the ten kilogram bag of flour we get now, it’s four batches [lit. ‘four times’ kneading’] for us, because we aren’t that many
KD Yes
NvR Yes
MD You can only knead four batches of bread out of it, the fifth, the last little bit is too little to make a fifth batch
NvR To make another one
MD Yes. It looks to me now that it’s a thing, it’s a ball [mill] that makes it [the flour], it’s all rock-hard, sometimes
KD Yes
NvR Yes
MD Now look, I say the times are really good now…
KD No
MD …the times are better now than in our time
NvR Yes
MD But actually it just that, everything has become too expensive
NvR It’s all too expensive
KD Indeed, indeed
MD Look, at that time you could buy a lot of things with a hundred Rand
NvR Buy many things
MD Because I always used to go in to town with fifty Rand, and then I’d come back with two plastic bags full of things from town, of everything, meat, vegetables, I bought everything. And now we can’t what’s-its-name, today I can’t anymore. If I now take a hundred, if the children, when my child’s children come home from school then I need to take a hundred Rand out of my pocket, they go and buy just bread and Rama with it, and milk, and they come back with no change. It means nothing anymore
NvR It doesn’t have any value
MD Money has no value anymore, all we really have is [inaudible]
NvR And the way we use electricity now, the electricity is also giving us hell
MD Ooooeee…
KD Yes
NvR The water also gives us hell
KD No sir, I just want to finish of this [story] little bit
MM No, that’s fine
KD The… Following on from the money. I was still living there in the two-room, and we were holding a conference, it was actually a youth conference, and uh, we were about fifteen all together. Look, the people didn’t ask differently in those days, “You have to be fifteen in a bakkie”. This was still with old pastor Phetla. Alright, and time was moving on, time was moving on, but then he said, this baas, “Listen, you can’t ride [on my bakkie] on credit. No, you may not.” “But so-and-so wants to go, but so-and-so doesn’t have any money, and so-and-so has…” No, but we were different in the old days, helped each other
NvR Helped each other
KD Helped the one and the other. But there came to me, as the leader of the youth, and I have the people who now [need money to go], not the, they don’t need to worry themselves. But alright that, it costs kneeling, it’s a kneeling matter. Monday, Tuesday, it’s Wednesday already, Thursday. There’s no answer yet [from god]. Oh… I’m in great need, and I’ve now promised to the children and everything. And uh, Thursday night, Thursday night we go home, tomorrow is Friday, remember now that it’s the last day [before the conference]. Truly, one must trust in the Lord
NvR We pushed through
KD What he does, he does with power. Friday evening preached to the beloved. Friday night I get a vision. I say, someone comes to me quickly, but the someone comes and stands by me and speaks, he says, “Man, you must, give him the money, he needs it.” And I think to myself, who is being spoken to now? “Give him the money, he needs it.”

MD Again?
MM It was the…
MD Oupa [KD] is talking too slowly
MM No, it’s the, the thing’s brain was full, the thing’s brain. I have to put in a new brain for it. This is what it looks like. It’s from all the photos I took. There we go. At least it’s quick.
MD You must [hurry up] now, the schools are coming out, the children will be back soon. Let’s hurry up a bit
MM There we go, you [KD] can carry on

KD No, I was just, on the Friday I was at work and later in the day the manager said to me that I should clean his car. I was cleaning the car, and I was busy around the car, and with that I was finished. I had polished it and everything. And when I came round to get the bucket, as I bend over I saw lying next to the bucket an hundred Rand, and I picked the hundred Rand up, put it in my pocket. But remember, I hadn’t been working there at the bank for that long, I was cautious
NvR Yes, maybe it was a trap, this
KD Yes, yes. I went round to the back, and I looked, it was really a hundred Rand. Then I came inside and I went to the manager, I told him the story of what had happened, then I showed him, he asked where the money is, then I showed it, gave it to him. That guy just took the money like this, looked at it. He said, “No man…”
MD There’s no name on it, it’s yours
KD He said, “There’s no name on it, is there?” I said, “Yes”. He said “Well then, it’s your money, man.” I stood in the door and showed him where I’d picked it up. He said, “No man, what has no name on it, who are you going to give it to?” And so I got those people from here to Kimberley and back. How?
NvR The trust
KD The trust in the Lord
NvR That pressure, it was there, but it was light [or ‘lifted’?]
KD Yes, yes. Now when I was telling this to another brother, I was telling them my, this history, the other one says, “No, you should have…”, I said “Man!”
MD Should he have taken it to the police station? Where to?
KD “Should I have taken it to the police station, take myself to the police? Those men will take that money.” No, there was no name
NvR “No, well just put it over here, when we find that person…”
MD No! He’s just going to tell you that, then they’ll take it
KD Thank you very much, sir
MM Thank you very much to you all
KD Alright, thank you very much
MD No, thank you, thank you very much
MM Thank you very much for your time
MD No, we’ll come together again
NvR Well, ma, as I said to you and the pastor, I will let you know
KD Yes
NvR I am very keen to do that thing now
MD Yes, so that we can really talk, and so that things can…

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