Gone but not forgotten — Legends of the Karoo

The Diva of Namaqualand

The first time we met the dynamic hip-hopping 83-year-old grande dame of the Daisy Country was at a gig in an old-age home during the 2010 Williston Winter Festival.

Her face was sweet and wrinkled, a little baked apple nestling in an enormous pink sunbonnet. With her guitar partner Pieter van der Westhuizen, she enchanted the elderly crowd gathered in a tiny Upper Karoo sitting room.

While she sang a rendition of her hit song Lekker OuJan (Rather Pleasant Old John) the oldies boogied away in their easy chairs, wheelchairs and Zimmer frames. She was small and round, and she never stopped moving to the music. Her voice was distinctive, and her lyrics were instructive. And everyone loved her to shreds.

Tannie Grietjie Adams, a domestic worker for most of her life and without much formal schooling, was the toast of her hometown, Garies, in deep Namaqualand.

Legend has it that Tannie Grietjie had a special relationship with the number 13. She wore size 13 (kiddies) shoes and was one of 13 children.

Her first album, Grietjie of Garies, was recorded in a small kitchen on a farm in 2004 when she was already 77 years old. And even though it was said to be hellishly hot under the kitchen’s corrugated iron roof that day, Tannie Grietjie did not utter a word of complaint. This was her moment, her time to shine.

The First Lady of Nama Rap who had been described as having an ‘old-time film star bearing’ went on to become a festival favourite and a symbol of a certain down-home Karoo charisma.

Tannie Grietjie Adams died in April 2014 at the age of 87.

The genealogist

If ever you needed help climbing the family tree, Cradock-based genealogist Duncan Ferguson was your man.

Duncan Ferguson was known to prowl the dusty cemeteries of the Karoo in search of long-lost uncles, various ‘black sheep’ and lovelorn grannies. He sometimes found the skeleton in your clan’s cupboard, but, being the soul of discretion, only rattled it at your request.

Duncan Ferguson often found the skeleton in your clan’s cupboard – but only rattled it at your request. (Photo: Chris Marais)

Even at 80-plus, Ferguson had near total recall, but talking to him in his cluttered home where Tretchikoff prints adorn the walls was like trying to photograph a hummingbird’s wings in flight. He was up and down like a Jack-in-the-Box, constantly fetching oddments. And then he’d suddenly drag you off to see the tombstone, the box of human bones and the collection of black-and-white photos taken in Nazi Germany, one of which showed Adolf Hitler gleefully saluting his Youth Brigade.

Then there was the ox yoke, the World War 1 helmet, a 1911 typewriter, the pen made out of a shell casing, a billiard table iron and a walking stick that became a sword if you wanted it to.

But this human magpie was most comfortable tracking down various ancestors; the ones who climbed off the ship to begin new lives at the southern tip of Africa, and linking them to kin from the ‘old countries’.

When you had Duncan around for dinner, you had to bear in mind that he only ate sausages. And the only thing he struggled to remember was the local Cradock telephone code. 

‘Uncle Fergie’, as locals knew him, died in November 2016 at the age of 89.

King of Fook Island

Walter Battiss was one of the first white South Africans to recognise the significance of San art. (Photo: Chris Marais)

To become a member of Walter Battiss’ world, an inhabitant of Fook Island, there’s a special form you have to fill in. Information required includes your favourite fruit, the number of ears you possess, the length and colour of your tongue, your bad habits and the size of your nostrils.  

And when you walk around the Walter Battiss Museum in Somerset East (formerly run by his family as a temperance hotel), you get a sense that this son of the Karoo was way ahead of his time.

In 1939 he published his first book, The Amazing Bushmen, in which he heaped praise on San art, which he regarded as highly significant, while back then, the art of South Africa’s First People was mostly – and shockingly – seen as rock scratches and scribblings of no consequence.

Read more: In the footsteps of the King of Fook Island

Walter Battiss, born in Somerset East and raised in Koffiefontein and Fauresmith in the Falsch Karoo of the southern Free State, was also interested in Ndebele beadwork and African cultures that pre-date Islam. 

When he began working on his Fook Island concepts, they included special maps, stamps, characters, plant names and a comprehensive history of a fantasy world. As King Ferd the Third of Fook Island, he presided over a whimsical universe of the mind at the height of Grand Apartheid, which had a slightly bleaker attitude to life, the universe – in fact, everything.

One of his great friends was Pablo Picasso. Walter Battiss died in August 1982 at the age of 76.

Boy from Bethulie

The late Patrick Mynhardt in performance at the Richmond Supper Klub, Northern Cape Karoo. (Photo: Chris Marais)

One of South Africa’s most beloved actors and storytellers, the late Patrick Mynhardt, was a true son of the open plains. He grew up in the southern Free State town of Bethulie, deep in the Grassy Karoo.   

Shortly before he died in London on 25 October 2007, the 75-year-old Mynhardt performed a marathon combination of Boy from Bethulie and selections from his portrayals of Oom Schalk Lourens, the legendary narrator in much of Herman Charles Bosman’s satirical work. For an old trouper of 75 to stand up in front of – and enthral – a platteland audience in Richmond for more than four hours was nothing less than vintage Mynhardt.

While preparing for the Richmond show, he recounted the time he’d been given ‘the freedom’ of his hometown, Bethulie. 

“I had to perform in honour of myself,” he said. “And it was up to me to arrange the seats, open the windows, wind back the curtains and sweep the stage.”

As usual, the audience reacted with wild applause and laughter. Except, that is, for one old local who had known him as a young boy. Every 10 minutes, he would interject: “No, no Pattie! It never happened like that!”

And when Mynhardt was asked how he could still muster his incredible energy for a simple small-town show when he was about to go onstage in London’s West End, he said: “I just want to die in the spotlight, with my acting boots on – it doesn’t matter where.”

Keeping time

Tony Mauer was fond of saying: ‘I find it very hard to return watches I repair…’ (Photo: Chris Marais)

Taking a walk down Hope Street in the village of Bedford, one used to find J Mauer & Son, a little cathedral of clocks that all bonged on the hour.

The man seated at his chaotic workbench, surrounded by millions of tiny components, dead watches, timepieces in recovery, and others beyond the pale, was Tony Mauer. With a loupe fixed to an eye, the tall, slightly stooped Mauer brought to mind any Dickens novel you ever read. 

“People bring their clocks in for repair, and sometimes I get quite attached to the pieces. I find it very hard to send them back.” 

Tony, who was a member of all the important international horological societies, told us he was once asked by the Windsors to come to London on a two-year contract to repair the clocks in various Royal museums around England. “But how could I leave my family and this business for two whole years?”

He said that in “this modern throwaway society”, the craft of watchmaking was dying out. Which was sad, because when the power fails, the microchips melt, the poles shift and modern technologists are wandering the dusty, post-apocalyptic streets with nothing but time on their hands, these are the very craftsmen we are going to need.

Read more:  The Clock-Watchers of Nieu-Bethesda

On a counter stood an old scale-model hippy Kombi with a brace of surfboards on the roof rack and flowers painted on its flanks. It indicated there was more to Tony Mauer than met the eyepiece. 

“Although my kids aren’t into becoming watchmakers, at least I’ve got my son playing Clapton, Tom Petty and the Stones on his Fender Stratocaster.”

Tony Mauer died in May 2013 at the age of 70. DM

These are extracts from Karoo Keepsakes I & II by Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit. The authors are offering a Keepsakes Special on the classic little coffee table books of R600 (including courier costs within South Africa). For enquiries, please e-mail Julie at [email protected]