Recalling life on a South African farm

Press, 1 June 1981, Page 12

Recalling life on a South African farm

Aled Hedgecock, now of Akaroa,recalls his childhood on a South African farm 35 years ago. The author attempts to give a picture of life in South Africa as he found it .on the eve of the introduction of the policy of apartheid.

I was one of 300 children evacuated from Britain to South Africa in the firt year of the Second World War. My foster parents there were third or fourth generation South Africans of Scots descent. They had farmed in their ’ earlier days in the Transkei, but had recently moved to the thornscrub bushland just south of Pietermaritzburg in Natal. As children they could remember their parents’ bitterness at the burning of their farms during the Boer War. Grandfather (I use this term for their kindness to an adopted son) had fought in Flanders with the South African Brigade in the First World War. When I arrived nephews and nieces were fighting in North Africa and Italy for the Commonwealth.

Grandfather owned freehold 500 acres and leased another 100 acres of what was called a Government Out-span Block. This supported about 60 dairy cows plus dry stock. The cows were hand-milked. Two bullock teams, each of eight yoke, were kept for heavy haulage, ploughing and cultivation. A horse or mule team, depending on the weather, took the chilled milk to the railway each day. A drought had persisted for three seasons, conditions becoming so severe that water had to be bought from the railway and carted home for the stock. If the rains continued to fail the family faced bankruptcy. For those who assume every white South African lolls round a swimming pool in the surrounds of a palatial bungalow, clapping hands for servants to produce large iced drinks, the homestead I lived in resembled more something from the Australian Outback. Built of wattle and daub, it had an iron roof and beaten mud floors, which when dressed with a suitable mixture of ox-blood and dung, shone.like blue marble.

A deep' veranda- shaded all four sides of the house. Cooking and bread-making was done by means of a wood stove. One luxury was a home-built paraffin refrigerator. Lighting was by kerosene lamp. I did my high-school homework by candlelight. The farm also supported three other families — one Xhosa and two Zulu. These

native families had worked with “my family” for as long as written or oral tradition could remember. They were “our”, (forgive the word) black family. We and they knew each others’ joys and sorrows, marriages, births and deaths. But, and here is the rub, they did npt wish to-be white, nor we black. Each side disdained the thought of mixed marriage for, as a Zulu proverb has it, “the sun does not mate with the moon.” Yet. we all cared and had respect, and resembled an extended familv.

The wage structure "figures much in discussion about South Africa. At that time a man received 25 shillings (about $2.50) each month. Each worker was issued with two sets of work clothes a year. Each family, which occupied its own kraal, rent free was allowed to graze a certain number of cattle. In addition, each kraal had a share of the land to grow their own mealies, millet and pumpkin. Fresh milk was drawn from the farm herd. Everyone had their own poultry, and wild game when , the opportunity offered. Should a family be going hungry through the drought, or from over-indul-gence in fermented beverage, the farm provided additional sustenance. Much has been made of comparing the white diet to that of the indigenous population. The fact is ignored that mealie and millet porridge, curds and pumpkin, ' were the normal diet and staff of life. Meat consumption was reserved for an especial occasion, or for the warriors whenever inter-tribal disputes, or other circumstances, required them to fight. Cattle were a man’s visible wealth. Bride price and compensation for offences were governed by a code based on head of cattle. It was the usual custom of farm workers, male and female, to work only for a sixmonths period. Then a relation would take over for the next six months. Work was available for everybody, full-time, except at harvest time, when it' was mandatory for everyone to work, the six-monthly shift system prevailed. In education the family gave every encouragement for the Bantu children to attend

school. But. and I can vouch for the frustration, once a child in any family became proficient enough to read and write a letter, the child was withdrawn from the school by the parents. Recent letters to the newspapers state that white children have free education, whereas the native children have to pay. The boot was very much on" the other foot in the South Africa I knew. The farm paid any expenses that may have been required in the Bantu school, which was provided free bv the Government. • The "white education system was not free. We paid term fees as at any New Zealand boarding school. We also had to provide our own textbooks,writing materials, and the inevitable school uniform. This was my knowledge of life in rural South Africa until shortly after the end of World War II when I went to sea as an apprentice. It is, perhaps, appropriate to mention that all my school friends lived in a manner which hardly differed from that *bf the children of working men in Australia or New Zealand. There were no private swimming pools; nor did the majority of families own a car.

Even then, in the later 19405, the situation of the town Bantu who had lost close contact with his tribe was recognised. A satisfying solution had to be found. But I defy anyone who has not had first-hand experience, to comprehend the size and intricacies of the social problem. On one leave from sea, back on the farm, just after the first race riots in Durban between Zulu and Indian populations, my sister remarked on two frustrations which, although common then, are I believe by no means solved yet. The first is the apartheid practised between the Bantu tribal groups and, especially in Natal, between the Bantu and Indian populations. The second is the frustration felt when a Bantu, who has been trained to the degree that his or her expertise can only be increased by overseas experience, refuses to return to work for the advancement of their own people. Such people become “black Europeans” in voluntary exile.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, when the cry everywhere was for freedom and independence, the Afrikaner launched the system of apartheid or separate development for different races in South Africa. It was an

honest attempt to solve some of the above problems. But world opinion, especially from the emerging black nations in Africa, brought such political pressure to bear that the system, which was meant to develop slowly at the pace of an ox-team, was forced to quicken. It was this forced quickening of pace which led to people on both sides being hurt and further frustrated. Consider the Nationalist Afrikaner. He has lived in

South Africa for 330 years. He has fought numerous native wars, two bitter wars with the British, and then served the Empire and Commonwealth in two World Wars. he is not likely to give up his “home place,” for where would he go? Who can lay title to the land? He realises there must be change and the Afrikaner, for all his stubbornness, is both wily and extremely adaptable in his own environment. Refusing to play sport, especially rugby, with the Spring-

boks is not going to make the Afrikaner change his politics. Rather, sporting and social contacts should help to make both sides more tolerant and aware of the other. New Zealanders, especialy the pakehas, and I am now a New Zealand citizen, are hardly in the position to criticise the Afrikaner on such matters as land tenure. The energy being spent here in protesting would be better used to help put our own house in order first.