Living in SOUTH AFRICA

January 1972 to May 1972

(By David Hardham)

Accommodation

Finishing the expedition and leaving my fellow travellers who had been an integral part of my life for the past 15 weeks was always going to be difficult. All were planning only a brief stay before moving on and I was the only one who intended to live and work in South Africa for some time. Some had pre-arranged hotel or other forms of accommodation and they dispersed to these. EO had contacts with a hostel in Jo’Burg and many of us spent the first few days there; in my case it was over a week as I wanted to find more permanent housing. Details of those first few days are sketchy but I do recall catching up with many others on a daily basis to outline what plans each had. I was finally able to get a refund of my stolen traveller’s cheques and repaid those kind people who had lent me money since Kano in Nigeria. They were Bob C, Bob B and Ann and although they had no doubt of my integrity, I am sure they were relieved to get their money back. The number one priority for everyone in those first few days was to get their photos/slides developed, myself included. We spent many hours comparing what each other had taken and organised for additional copies to be made. I was particularly keen due to my camera loss and I obtained many copies from others, particularly Bob A, for which I am especially grateful now that I have decided to write this book. I can only recall details of a few and their forward travels, the others I cannot remember. Bob B stayed around for a week or so before heading to Durban with plans to head up the east coast going via Mozambique and Malawi and I never heard from him again. Thankfully, I have managed to re-establish with Bob just recently and he has provided many additional photos and information. Joan was heading home to Perth in Australia and have also recently managed to re-establish contact with her and she has been a valuable source of information. Bob C and his wife Judy were heading back to Canada, ?? was heading back to Kampala and most of the Kiwi’s were heading home as well. Bob A and Fran were talking of heading off to the Okavango swamps in Botswana but I do not know if they managed to get there. As for me, I found a boarding house and moved in there as soon as I could. It was located in the Southern Suburbs, not one of the more popular areas of suburban Johannesburg as it was surrounded by slag heaps, the residue rock and dirt extracted from the gold mines. These were literally a massive pile of rubble and nothing would grow on them due to the contamination from the leeching using caustic solutions to extract the gold from the ore. Although they didn’t smell, whenever there was any hint of a breeze, dirt would blow off them and spread across the surrounding areas shrouding everything in a veil of dust. I chose this type of accommodation as it was cheap; I needed no furniture; I had breakfast and dinner included as well as washing and ironing; it was close to public transport (trolley bus) and I could leave with a week’s notice. The owners were a married couple; she was of South African descent and he was of Greek descent. His often told line was that she married a Greek God then he became a Goddam Greek. The establishment comprised a standard suburban type rendered brick house with a number of bedrooms, two of these were for guests and it was the privileged ones who had these rooms as they were closest to the kitchen, were the warmest and had access to the main bathroom. Outside were two rooms which were part of the house but had external doors and I was in one of these and shared it with a policeman (whose name I can’t recall) who had been there for some years. Along the back fence was a brick building comprising four bedrooms and these seemed to house the more ‘rebellious’ types. All rooms were shared and there were few spare rooms or even beds at any point in time despite the constant movement of a number of residents who came and went. As my room was accessed from outside, I had a key to the room I shared and there were no restrictions on what hours you could come and go, the only condition was to respect other residents and neighbours in the street by keeping noise to a minimum, especially at night. There were at least two housemaids who performed all cooking, cleaning and laundry duties and I enjoyed talking with them as often as I could to learn of their life. All meals were taken in the main kitchen area which could seat eight at a time but the varying occupations meant that generally there was only four or five at any one time plus the owners. It was at the dinner meal and occasional weekend daytime meals that I spent time chatting with the maids and exchanging stories. They were equally fascinated with Australia and had a deep thirst for knowledge on what life was like especially on how the Aborigines were treated as that was the closest association to them. The housemaids did not live on the premises, they had to travel each day from their designated ‘blacks only’ housing area. These maids were relatively lucky as they only had a short journey of roughly half an hour each way. The majority of residents were locals of various personalities.

Most were Afrikaner and detested the blacks and treated them accordingly. There was one other Australian, from Sydney, who was a real bore, he never wanted to do anything and did nothing but grumble the entire time. He shared a room with Bill, a knockabout local of English descent and it was Bill who I befriended and shared many a laugh and drink with. He was the same age as me and had just been released from a six month jail term for stealing cars. He had mixed in with the wrong crowd and got caught. He now had a job with a panel beater and he was intending to keep clean as he didn’t want to go back inside. His father had died some years back and his mother had recently passed away and left him some money so he wasn’t short of funds but was content to stay in the boarding house for the time being. I ended up sharing the room with Bill a couple of months later once the other Aussie guy left. I didn’t really mix with the others very much as I could see them having a bad influence on me. They smoked Dagga (marijuana) a lot, inhaling the smoke as they poured water down the wall. I couldn’t see the value in that and looked like too much hard work and way too complicated. Besides, I wasn’t interested in drugs at all. My roomy was a bit of a strange one. A true Afrikaner in his forties, he bad mouthed the blacks on a constant basis but in his defence, he had to deal with a lot of the more unruly characters due the locality he was working in. One benefit he did provide was an unofficial visit to Soweto as this was one of the areas he had to patrol. We went early one Sunday morning as this would be the quietest and less obtrusive time to visit. I had seen poverty and cramped housing in various villages we had passed on the journey south, but nothing like this. It was an absolute squalor and oppression at its best with people living on top of one another in small cramped single roomed houses with little ventilation; no sewerage; hot water was a achieved by boiling water using gas bottles and even running cold water was a shared tap. I have seen recent TV footage and it looks like paradise now compared to what I saw back then. We encountered no trouble and made it safely out, it was common for police vehicles to be attacked for no reason.