Living in SOUTH AFRICA

January 1972 to May 1972

(By David Hardham)

Employment

My funds were getting low and I needed to work so I went out in search of employment. I was intending to stay in South Africa for approximately six months and I had already decided to try and stay in the computer industry (IT) as, using my UK experience, the pay would be greater than general office work or labouring. Ideally I wanted a contract but after searching the newspapers and employment agencies, there was very little or none available. For the interim, I looked at short term opportunities. There was an offer to drive luxury cars from Cape Town to Jo’Burg but you had to make your own way to the coastal city so I put that on hold for the moment. An out of the blue opportunity came up after I was talking with some other travellers one day and I took it as it had a couple of things going for it. It was immediate (more accurately starting in two days), it was good money and it was cash. All you needed was a driver’s licence (basic car licence would do) and a Commonwealth country passport as it was easier getting in and out of the countries involved. The job was as a truck driver, more akin to a road train than a standard truck. No questions were to be asked especially relating to what was being delivered but in essence it was to drive to Lusaka, unhook the load, hitch up a new load, then return to Jo’Burg. The Prime Mover was a Diamond T with a 6 speed gear box and 3 speed ratios making it 18 gears overall. It had two front seats and a sleeper berth across the cabin behind the two front seats. You opened the window for air-conditioning and as for a radio or sound equipment, forget it. For the trip up to Zambia, we hooked up a long, fully enclosed trailer which had 3 sets of double bogey wheels at the rear from a large warehouse and you didn’t have to be Einstein to work out we were transporting groceries. We unhooked the trailer at another warehouse in Lusaka before heading north to the Copper Belt, a little over an hour’s drive. We entered a large compound and all I could see were rows and rows of huge copper ingots. There were several twin trailers lined up ready for pickup with a canvas awning tied over them and although I couldn’t be 100% certain, it was a reasonable assumption they were loaded with these copper ingots. It took only minutes before we had refilled the massive diesel fuel tanks, were hooked up and off we went for the return trip. All we had time for was a quick pee, buy a cold soft drink and a bread roll with a non-descript filling and re-arrange the clothes we wore after sitting non-stop for a day and half. There were three of us who took turns in driving. The lead driver, a Brit, had done this trip many times and it was he who drove at the border crossings and the depots. The other driver was a Kiwi and this was his second trip, once you had done two, you became a lead driver. The actual driving of this monster was certainly an experience you would never forget. Speed limits were ignored as we pushed along as fast as the beast could travel and regularly clocked over 100mph (160kph). Everyone cleared a path when they saw us coming and the wind shudder as we passed other large trucks from the opposite direction tested the steering skills, luckily there weren’t many of these. The driving stints were roughly four hours each but there was no stopping. The person driving let go of the steering wheel as the co-driver in the passenger seat leant over to assume control then the driver would simply jump out of the driver’s seat and into the sleeping berth. The codriver then slipped into the driver’s seat and took over. The person in the sleeper who had made room for the driver then slipped into the passenger seat. All this on the open road at speeds of up to the 100mph maximum, no fuss, just swap. Changing gears was a trick which wasn’t as hard as it sounds. Being a right hand drive vehicle, the gear stick was on the left hand site. The speed ratio lever was on the right hand side. You always started in the lowest ratio but depending upon the weight of the load you started in either first or second gear and worked up to sixth gear before upping the ratio one notch and dropping back to first gear. It took me a few goes before I had mastered this manoeuvre as you had to coordinate the clutch, the gear lever and the ratio lever all at the same time, each time I failed, the truck had slowed so I had go back up the gears once more. As you needed both hands for gear levers, it meant you had to let go of the steering wheel so the quicker you did it the better. Stopping was another challenge. The upward journey wasn’t too bad as the weight wasn’t excessive, but coming back was a nightmare. Two trailers loaded with copper ingots were never going to stop easily and a couple of times I went through red lights as I couldn’t stop in time. As for stopping on the open road in a hurry, forget it. I don’t know the weight of each ingot but my estimate was they were 6 foot long, about 18 inches wide and 6 inches high so I guessed at around 100kg each and the total load close to 100 tonnes. No wonder there were so many accidents on the “Hell Run’. So why the secrecy? South Africa was under certain economic sanctions so ‘officially’ many goods could not be transported or shipped from its ports (Durban and Cape Town). Zambia is a land locked country and as soon as the South African sanctions were in place the primary route to send or receive goods was through Mozambique and the port of Beira. The most direct route was through Rhodesia via Salisbury, but once sanctions were imposed on that country following Ian Smith’s UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence), getting to Beira was quite a challenge. The alternatives were to go west across desert terrain and through Angola but they were in the midst of a lot of unrest; you could go north into the Belgian Congo (way too far and again, civil wars) or the new route which was being developed along the ‘Hell Run’ to Dar es Salaam (as mentioned earlier in the trip down). Necessity breeding invention with Zambia desperate to get copper to the outside world for revenue and the need for day to day household goods including food, this cloak and dagger operation was instigated and the relevant officials turned a blind eye. Although the copper ingots had to go to Durban to be shipped out, I was dropped off in Jo’Burg. The other L plater went all the way for this trip as he needed to be shown the port and the procedure of unloading as he was to become a Lead Driver for his next trip. The entire round trip had taken only three days and this was about to be repeated after a day’s break. I said, “Thanks, but no thanks”, one trip was enough, besides, I had been granted an interview with Nestle. The interview went well and I was offered a permanent position with Nestle South Africa and loved every minute of the work (I still have the letter of employment from them). I had told the manager who interviewed me I intended to stay for the foreseeable future (which was not a lie) and I had no intention to return to Australia just yet either (again, not a lie) and with this, he hired me. The people were friendly, the work was interesting and challenging and the pay was reasonable. Being a Swiss based multinational, there were quite a number of Swiss employees but there was also a potpourri of other nationalities. In the EDP department (as IT was called then), we had two Brits, a Swiss, a German, myself as well as a couple of local South Africans with a mix of both males and females. Typical of the office environment of those days, we were all in the one largish room with a desk each and a wall of filing cabinets and shelves (and smoking at the desk was common). We all got on well together and as I had the most experience, which seemed a little strange to me but it was probably a key factor in my successful application, they would often ask me technical questions and I was more than happy to assist. Office hours were 8am to 4:30pm with an hour for lunch (1pm to 2pm) which I struggled with as I was usually hungry by noon. The rigid Swiss clockwork style hours was also a challenge as I had always been very flexible in my working timeframes (a euphemism for I didn’t conform well to the standard work day) but I managed to adapt. They were ahead of their time as the office dress was smart casual but no jeans. Official dress code was jacket and tie, but we radicals in EDP rarely wore a suit and being in the height of summer, we could get away with trousers and business shirt, often without a tie with no complaints from our management.

David at work

Friday night drinks after work became a common event and some of these extended into dinner and even after dinner drinks but it was rare to socialise together over the weekend. I would regularly have lunch with Rolf and Luddi, two of my co-workers, more often simply getting take away from the food court nearby. Rolf introduced me to Geschnetzeltes, a dish of pasta (usually spaghetti) with a veal, mushroom, cream and white wine sauce as it is a Zurich specialty (from his home city) and this became a more than regular lunch time meal from the Swiss owner of the fast food outlet. Our office was located opposite the Carlton Centre, a new skyscraper being built which would become the tallest building in Jo’Burg. Every morning as I arrived at work I would see dozens of labourers sweeping the streets to remove the residue of the sand blasted concrete shell of the office and hotel tower. Each night the streets forming the perimeter of this new building would be closed off to enable this decorative blasting to occur. Work safety was not a primary concern and tales were told of the number of (black) workers who had fallen down lift wells or off the edge of walls to their death, many whose bodies were never found as often they would be simply thrown into freshly laid concrete and thus entombed forever.

Photo of Jo’Burg with The Carlton Centre under construction

I would travel to work from the boarding house on a trolley bus (a normal bus but had twin rods which connected to overhead wires like a Melbourne Tram) that stopped almost outside the Nestle office building so the travel time was quite short, roughly twenty minutes and seemed relatively cheap and definitely convenient. When I had decided to leave South Africa and return to London, I was trying to work out the best way to tell my manager I was leaving as I didn’t want to give Australians looking for work in Jo’Burg a bad name. An unexpected opportunity arose when the Government of the day announced it was cracking down on non-resident workers. As a member of the British Commonwealth, Australians could work freely without a working permit, similar to what was in place in the UK. This crackdown applied to Commonwealth countries as well with threats of expelling workers immediately if it was deemed they were taking the jobs of local residents and citizens. I discussed this with my fellow workers and all of us who were categorised as non residents were a little worried. I spoke with my manager who understood my plight and when it made front page news for the next few days, I seized the chance and said I was heading to London due to the uncertainty of being able to stay in the country. He understood my concerns and accepted my resignation reluctantly but sympathetically. Little was I to know this same opportunity would arise in London when I worked there after this trip.