Sunday, September 11, 2016

Report Back #42: Alex Basson

Alex Basson, 1931 – 2016

My grootste avontuur en liefde wat lewenslank sou duur, het begin toe ek so elf of twaalf jaar oud was. My pa het elke einde van die jaar na oesaf vir sy arbeiders veertien dae verlof gegee. Nou, die twee wat my geintereseer het, was outa Adoons en outa Abraham. Hulle twee het gewoonlik vir hulle verlof die Sederberge ingevaar om te gaan boegoe pluk.  En ek wou saam! My ouers het toestemming gegee en ek het my knapsak gepak. My pa gee toe vir ons die perdekar met twee mooi swart perde. Hiermee is ons toe voort oor Kleinjongens-kraal tot by Syferfontein waar ons die perde en die kar gelos het. Hiervandaan moes ons nou voetslaan. Eers is ons na Perdevlei en daarna na Riempie se Gat. In die gebied was boegoe volop. Saans by die kampvuur het ons wye geselskap gehad. Die besoekers, meestal uit die Wupperthal gebied, was in die berg om ’n verskeidenheid van redes. So was daar onder andere boegoemakers, sederhoutbewerkers, klipbosbas versamelaars, rooitee en  heuningtee oesters, ens, ens. En watter geselskap was dit nie! So het ek elke plek se spookstorie leer ken asook die vele mitiese figure uit hulle volkskennis. Hulle het my geleer oor hulle veldkos asook die verskeidenheid veldmedisyne. Die verskillende rotsskuilings se geheime is aan my verklap en nog vele meer.
(see translation below)

Please note details of the Memorial Service at 10 am on Sunday 25 September
at Kleine Zalze

We returned last week from the Cederberg to the sad news that the estimable, wonderful Alex Basson had died. According to Pieter Malan he suffered a fall from which he never recovered. Alex was not only a doyen of the Cederberg, he was the much-loved teacher of thousands of children down the years. His contribution to mapping the Cederberg has been incalculable ... but I shall leave it to Pieter Malan to say what needs to be said, so much better than I can say it ...

Alex Basson – known variously as Alex, Lex, the Mountain Man or just OuToppie – passed away on the 3rd of September. 
Alex was born on January 24, 1931 on a farm on the Swartland side of the Piekenierkloof Pass. His first introduction to the Cederberg came as a young boy, when his father allowed him to accompany farm workers on their annual boegoe-making trips to the Cederberg. They would travel with a cart and horses to Citrusdal and then on to Citrusdal Boskloof from where they would take to the higher slopes. It was on the first of these trips that Alex met Wit Andries Nieuwoudt, a friendship that in many ways changed his life not unlike the way in which he would later change other lives.
After completing his studies at UCT Alex started teaching and for next few decades he would spent virtually every school holiday taking youngsters walking and climbing in the Cederberg. 
Dit was ook soos ek vir Alex ontmoet het. As ’n 13-jarige seun in die vroeë 1980’s, terwyl ek saam met vriende in Algeria gekampeer het. Alex het destyds onder die akkerbome langs die swemgat gekamp – gewoonlik saam met ’n horde “pikkies”, soos hy altyd na die seuns saam met hom verwys het. 
Na sy aftrede in die laat 1980’s het die meeste pikkies verdwyn, en het ek en Rina Rau sy gereelde klimmaats geword.  Vandag is dit vir my moeilik om aan enige toneel in die Cederberg te dink sonder Alex wat iewers onder ’n waboom sit en rook. 
Hy het die berg soos die palm van sy hand geken. Die afgelope paar jaar, lank nadat die bene ingegee het en hy nie meer so ver kon loop nie, het dit my steeds stomgeslaan hoe hy ’n plek in die berg – en die pad soontoe – in die grootste detail kon verduidelik. In sy gedagtes kon hy presies daarop afloop en elke belangrike rots en baken op pad soontoe onthou. Solank jy net nie vir hom gevra het om vir jou op ’n kaart te wys waar dit was nie. In die amper 30 jaar dat ek saam met hom geloop het, het ek nooit ’n kaart in sy rugsak gesien nie (en, moet ek byvoeg, het ons bitter selde op enige voetpad geloop).
Later het my vriendin, uiteindelik my vrou, ook begin saamkom. ’n Storie – oor twee vliegrampe, een in die Pakhuis en een in Elandsbaai – wat Alex een aand vir ons vertel het terwyl ons in ons slaapsakke langs die ou brug in Kliphuis in die Pakhuispas gelê het, het uiteindelik die inspirasie vir Sonja (Loots) se eerste roman, Spoor, geword.
Die storie oor Alex, en sy verhouding met die Cederberg, is onvoltooid sonder ’n verwysing na die rol wat Peter Slingsby die afgelope paar jaar gespeel het om hom te oorreed om sy kennis te deel vir Peter se onontbeerlike stel Cederberge kaarte. Alex kon by tye taamlik hardkoppig en jaloers waak oor “sy” berg, en die feit dat hy bereid was om talle van sy gunstelinge plekke met Peter te deel het uiteindelik beteken dat soveel meer mense as die pikkies wat destyds die voorreg gehad het om saam met hom te loop, nou in daardie vreugde kan deel.
Alex is nooit getroud nie en word oorleef deur ’n skoonsuster en drie broerskinders.
Pieter Malan
3 September 2016


Rudolf Andrag sent me this cutting, of a letter to Die Burger from Alex in 1984, when the Cederberg was under the threat of a takeover by SA National Parks. The passion in the letter says it all ... [click on the photo to enlarge it].


Many years ago Alex told me of one of the most memorable people he had met in his long life. “I remember a good looking but lonely man with a Gladstone bag,” Alex told me. “I was six or seven at the time, and he was a doctor visiting my parents’ farm. He would sit down on the back stoep and put me on his lap. Then he would take his secrets out of his bag and show them to me – bush syrup or koekemakranka, or a variety of bulbs and other plants. I told him that I wanted an aeroplane for my next birthday. He told me to write a letter to Minister Oswald Pirow, and he promised to deliver it for me. Eventually I got a very friendly reply from the Minister, but no aeroplane!”
The good looking, lonely man was, of course, Dr C. Louis Leipoldt himself. Alex met many other extraordinary people in the Cederberg; I shall let him conclude in his own words ...

’n GROOT DANKIE!!!!!!
Ek wil graag ter afsluiting dankie se aan die Voorsienigheid wat so goed vir my was om my in my lewe die voorreg te gee om oomblikke en geleenthede te deel met ’n paar groot geeste wat my lewe geweldig verryk het.   Onder hulle was bv. Helmuth Andrag, wat moontlik die fikste man was met wie ek ooit saam gestap het.   Dan was daar ou Frederik Joubert, die donkieman.   Destyds kon hy met sy span donkies, stappers deur die berg lei ... Ek het reeds vertel hoe ek as jong seun kennis gemaak het met Oom Wit Andries Nieuwoudt. Hy was ’n gewone boer, maar ook ’n filosoof met ’n wye algemene kennis ...  Dit was ’n groot voorreg om hom as vriend te hê en om sy geselskap te geniet.
As jong onderwyser in die Kaap het ek by die Bergklub van Suid-Afrika aangesluit.   Dit het vir my baie deure oopgemaak, en het vir my ook baie voordele ingehou ... so het die wonderlike voorreg my toe voorgedoen toe ek vir niemand anders nie as Henno Martin, skrywer van Vlug in die Namib, Sederberg toe moes neem ... stel jou voor : aande om die vuur in die Sederberge met Marthinus Versfeld en W.A. de Klerk in jou geselskap! Dan was daar Uys Krige ... Dan was daar die Zimris, die Ockhuise, die Hanekoms en die Moutons van Wupperthal se mense. Wit Andries, Swart Andries, Leipoldt, Ruiter Syster, Ou Peerus, Pieter Boom, Dr. Nortier, Frederick Joubert, Ghôboom.
  Julle was die sout van die aarde!  Wees gegroet. Totsiens!

Totsiens, Alex. It was an absolute privilege to have known you, to have had your insights into the Cederberg before me, to have had your expert skill editing with Pieter my map that you so enriched. We offer our condolences to your family and your huge circle of friends.
– Peter Slingsby

Translation of Alex’s opening words:
My greatest adventure and love that lasted my whole life began when I was eleven or twelve years old. Every year after the harvest my father would give his labourers fourteen days leave. The two who interested me were outa Adoons and outa Abraham. These two usually went into the Cederberg for their leave, to pick buchu. I wanted to go with them! My parents agreed and I packed my knapsack. My father let us use the cart with two fine black horses. We set off over Kleinjongenskraal to Syferfontein, where we left the horses and cart – from here we had to hike. First we hiked to Perdevlei and then to Riempie se Gat. There was plenty of buchu in that area. In the evenings we had a wide variety of company. Most of the visitors were from the Wupperthal area, in the mountains for many reasons. There were buchu gatherers, woodcutters, rockwood bark collectors, harvesters of rooibos and honey tea, and so on. What a company that was! There I learned of every place’s ghost story, and the many mythical figures from their folklore. They taught me about veldkos and the uses of different medicinal herbs. The secret location of many rock shelters were divulged to me, and much, much more.

Sunday, July 3, 2016

Report Back #41

1. Olive Nieuwoudt

2. A few memories of Kromrivier

3. The Sneeuberg Hut: where was it once?

4. Dawie and Lizette: congatulations

1. Olive Nieuwoudt

On 24 June I received this message from Susan de la Bat, the daughter of Olive and Rens:
“In case you haven’t heard yet, my mom, Olive Nieuwoudt, passed away yesterday... We’ll miss her dearly.”

This morning I received this tribute from Elna van der Merwe, recalling her childhood memories of Olive (my translation below):– 

Met tannie Olive se dood is dit die einde van ’n era vir ons Van der Merwe-kinders wat die eerste keer in die laat sestigerjare deur ons ouers Kromriver toe geneem is. Hier het ons Desembers ’n paradys betree waarvan tannie Olive die middelpunt was. Ons pa het haar stilletjies voor ons ses kinders tannie Vy genoem na aanleiding van die Bybelse vye en olywe! In die koel, donker plaashuis het ons haar suurlemoensap gedrink en soos Kersdag nadergekom het, het die woeligheid toegeneem. Almal moes ’n present kry – van die plaaskinders tot die vakansiekinders. Uit daardie klein plaaswinkeltjie het die wonderlikste goed gekom. Ek onthou een jaar se plastiekpoppe. En hoe oom Rens om die hoek kom met sy Kersvader-pak en die plaaskinders skree van banggeit. Eers is daar gebid en gesing en dan is die presente en eetgoed uitgedeel. 
Ek kon my as kind verkyk aan tannie Olive wat van alles weet wat op die plaas aangaan en links en regs opdragte uitdeel in daardie lieflike aksent van haar; die tikkie Engels wat sy nooit verloor het nie, selfs wanneer sy perfek Afrikaans gepraat het. Ek het as ouer tiener bewus geword daarvan dat sy haar land verlaat het en ’n nuwe lewe kom maak het in ’n toe nog baie onherbergsame kontrei. 
Al het ek haar net een maal per jaar gesien, het tannie Olive ’n onuitwisbare indruk op my gemaak as iemand wat doen wat haar hand vind om te doen en dit met soveel uitnemendheid. Ek eer haar nagedagtenis. (En ek hoor haar stem elke keer wanneer ek weer op Kromrivier kom: “Pasop vir die slange voor jul voete!”)
Elna

The passing of tannie Olive is the end of an era for the Van der Merwe children, who were first taken to Kromrivier by our parents in the late sixties. Here we entered a December paradise, with tannie Olive in the centre. Our father quietly referred to her, to the six of us children, as ‘tannie Fig’, after the Biblical ‘figs and olives’! In the cool, dark farmhouse we drank her lemonade, and as Christmas Day approached the busy bustle began. Everyone had to get a present – from the farm children to the visitors. Out of that tiny farm shop came the most wonderful things. I remember that one year there were plastic dolls. And how uncle Rens came around the corner in his Father Christmas outfit, and the farm children screamed in fright! First we prayed and sang, and then the presents and the food were handed around.
As a child I watched how tannie Olive, who knew everything that was going on on the farm, would give instructions left and right in that delightful accent of hers; the touch of English that she never lost, even when she spoke perfect Afrikaans. As an older teenager I became aware that she had left her homeland and made a new life in what was then still a very inhospitable place.
Although I only saw her just once a year, tannie Olive made an indelible impression upon me; she could do anything she put her hand to with such complete competence. I honour her memory (and I hear her voice every time I return to Kromrivier: “Mind you don’t step on a snake!”
- Elna

I first met Olive and Rens on a schoolboy trip to the Cederberg in about 1959. Much later we got to know them much better, when Olive asked me to make a map of the farm and its walks, for her visitors. She had an uncanny ability to remember names and faces, a sure sign of her interest in and care for people; the Cederberg has felt emptier ever since she moved into Clanwilliam several years ago. She will be greatly missed and fondly remembered by ourselves and many, many others. Our personal condolences to Susan and Pip: you were privileged to have had a truly great mama.

Olive, Rens, and ?Pip with a party of climbers at Algeria,
in 1959: photo by Howes-Howell


2. A few memories of Kromrivier

For many years Kromrivier was synonymous with the Cederberg for us, as it was for so many others. In later years we became more attached to the Agter-Pakhuis, but that was more to do with better roads and spring flowers than anything else, and we still visit Kromrivier with our sense of familiar affection as strong as ever. It’s one of those places that harbours very strong memories – here are but a few.
* The April school holidays sometime in the late seventies, when our children were but babies. With friends we had the campsite below Suringkop. It was a great week, with the farm almost to ourselves and, reluctant to leave, we asked Olive if we could extend our stay to the Friday – Good Friday, as it happens. “You don’t want to be here,” Olive said wisely, but we insisted we’d give it a try. We were about to turn in on the Thursday evening when all hell broke loose. It was nearly ten pm when car after car started rolling in across the low bridge. Within minutes the air was rent with the cries of overtired children. Nearby a husband and wife were throwing deck chairs at each other; someone had forgotten the tent pegs. Over there a tent went up, with a bright lamp inside. Husband and wife proceeded to disrobe, blissfully unaware of the silhouette-show sharply projected by their lamp onto the bright canvas of their tent. The racket of tired campers arriving from their long trek went on until after midnight; in the morning we hit the road as quickly and as quietly as we could.
* The trip when we and a few other families were marooned on the wrong side of the river by floodwaters. Rens and Olive sent bread and meat across the river in a bucket on a wire. There was no charge for the extra nights we spent!
* Dogs were not allowed, but that did not deter us from taking Mango the cat to Kromrivier. Mango had been to the top of the Drakensberg and done two trips down the Witels – Kromrivier was small beer for her. However, when leaving time came there was no sign of Mango. She was a cat, after all. “Don’t worry,” Olive said. “I’ll ask the farm people to look out for her.” Olive phoned on the next Thursday. “Your cat is here,” she said. “She’s moved in with some visitors in one of the cottages.” When we got back to the farm Olive told us how she had identified our cat. All week the farm kids – duly instructed by Olive – had brought in a stream of black and white cats that were then placed on the kitchen table. If they were farm cats Olive’s own pussies stayed asleep on a sunny window ledge. However, when Mango arrived there was an instant bristling, hissing, and, in no time, cats on the attack. Mango survived three trips to Olive’s kitchen before she was safely holed up with Olive’s visitors.
* In 1976 we visited the farm to make a map for Olive’s visitors. Rens showed us every nook and every cranny on the farm, mostly at hair-raising speeds straight through the veld in his old brown Peugeot bakkie. “There’s only a problem,” Rens insisted, “if we hit a termite hill!”

3. The Sneeuberg hut

Charles Merry sent me these three photos. The first two show the old Sneeuberg hut; the third the present hut. Does anyone know why and when the old hut was broken down, where it was situated, and why a new one was built in the present location?

Sneeuberg Hut: 1960s
The same hut in 1976
The present Sneeuberg Hut: May 2016

4. Dawie and Lizette Burger of Driehoek 

... and of course our congrats to Dawie and Lizette of Driehoek on the birth of their second child, a son, earlier in June!

Kaartman, July 2016

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Report Back #40

1. Patrick Lane

2. Piet Streicher: a Celebration

3. Petrus Hanekom: a new book


Patrick Lane

It’s been my privilege while mapping to have met scores of reserve managers from all over South Africa. Like librarians they fall into two distinct groups. There are two kinds of librarians: those who are mainly concerned with preserving books, and those who are mainly concerned with encouraging reading. Some reserve managers are all about conservation for its own sake; others see themselves and their fellow human beings as a part of the whole that we call nature. The latter do not exclude their fellow humans, they are always inclusive. Patrick was the latter kind: ultimately, the very best kind. Patrick saw that the Cederberg was more than the mountains and the cedars, the fynbos and the leopards. Patrick saw that the Cederberg was also the mountaineers, the hikers, the boulderers, the campers. He saw that it was the farmers and the landowners and the labourers and the grizzled old retired foresters. He understood that it was also the researchers and the scientists, the students and even the cartographers, and he was always inclusive of them all. Above all Patrick understood that if conservation is to succeed, the public must own it: exclude the public, then why should they care about mountains and cedars and fynbos and leopards?
Patrick’s view, Patrick’s essential humanity was summed up for me in a moment, a few years ago. A large leopard had been trapped and darted, near Bushmans Kloof. Quinton Martins had invited a couple who lived nearby to bring their twin eight year old boys to see the animal. It was Patrick who, on his haunches next to the unconscious animal, took the small boys’ hands and said, ‘Here, stroke the leopard – feel its fur.’
To be eight years old and have stroked a live, wild leopard! – Patrick had understood in an instant how much that would mean to them both, for the moment and forever.
He was a lovely man, and his loss to his family and the mountains he loved is profound beyond words.

A memorial service to celebrate the life of Patrick Lane, much loved family man and respected conservationist, will take place on Friday 8 January at 14h00 in the Worcester Christian Community Church, 68 Baring Street, Worcester. 
No flowers at the request of the family, please. (The cremation will be private.)


A Cederberg celebration

Piet Streicher’s video, which I hope to include below, reveals his and his family’s deep love of the Cederberg. In a powerful sense it is in its own way a tribute to Patrick Lane, and how much Patrick would have appreciated the enjoyment of these mountains that the video reflects.
Piet sent us the video before Christmas. Beautifully put together, it’s accompanied by the singing of Piet’s daughter Carla. Click on the picture to open the video.



Petrus Hanekom: New Book

Hard on the heels of Olive Nieuwoudt’s “My Cederberg Story” comes Petrus Hanekom’s second book, “Cederberg-stories uit Grootkloof”. Petrus’s first, “Diepspore”, was published in 2012.


“Cederberg-stories” is a valuable contribution to the lore and history of the Cederberg. It reminds us, appropriately, that the ‘Cederberg story’ is not just the story of the farmers, the landowners, the mountaineers and other visitors, but also the story of, over time, many hundreds of people who in successive generations have lived and worked and loved in these mountains. Petrus takes us from the Basters of the 1700s through his own life, as a barefoot boy who became a forester and ultimately a retiree at Bosdorp. He tells how the people whose reed houses (riethuise) and tiny cultivated plots stretched up and down the valley, from Doringdraai to Sandkraal, were forced to move off the farms onto the State land that became the Cederberg Forest Reserve. 

The young men such as Petrus himself were employed by the Forestry Department, to plant plantations, cut footpaths, carry heavy telephone poles deep into the mountains to link the fire-lookouts to the station at Algeria. Until 1960 the people lived in riethuise, without running water, sanitation, or rain-proof roofs, but in that year the Department investigated the provision of decent housing, and so the construction of Bosdorp began. The first houses were of bricks and mortar, painted white, and from these the town’s local nickname, ‘Witkamp’, arose. Later the classic wooden houses that Forestry became famous for were used to expand the settlement.
Petrus makes no bones about the fact that it was a tough and a hard life. One cannot gloss over the justifiable hint of bitterness that creeps into his tone whenever he mentions apartheid, and its suffocating, cruel effects upon his people. Nevertheless, there is also a strong hint of nostalgia for the ‘good old days’, and I could not help reflecting that the very same hint shines through much of Olive Nieuwoudt’s narrative. What is it in all of us that apparently makes us hanker after the ‘good old days’, when a snakebite would always kill you, food could not be kept fresh for long, if you had a toilet at all it was a longdrop 100 metres from the house, you had to stoke up the donkie-boiler to get hot water, and a journey of a hundred kilometres might take three or four days? Not to mention a life-expectancy several decades shorter than we enjoy today ...
The last third of the book deals with local tales, of animals and people of the area, and Petrus ends in charming style with poems and songs from his childhood and younger days. The Afrikaans is colloquial and, in places, ‘different’, but this Engelsman had no difficulty with it.
I don’t know where the book is available or for how much, but anyone interested can contact me here and I will put you in touch with Sally Argent, the publisher.

Kaartman, Nuwe Jaar 2016