Johannesburg - So, there they were – Kay (with her cigarette holder and beret) and John (with his intense gaze) in their Austin 1100 (who on earth would ever buy a German or a Japanese car after what we went through in the war?) – on their long-awaited journey from Cape Town up the Garden Route.
Somewhere near Betty’s Bay (just around the corner in Western Cape terms), Kay asked John: “Did you lock the front door?”
There was a deep, querying silence – which lasted not more than a mile, if one believes the story – and then they turned the car around and headed back to Pinelands. Once back there, presumably, they thought: to hell with the big wide world. We’re happy here. And they never did get to finish that road trip.
True story. My mother (whose relatives they were) used to love telling that story and she wouldn’t lie. Embellish, maybe…
My mother was a Capetonian. A retired one. Who had left and never returned.
“People in Cape Town,” she would say, “think the world ends at the Hex River Valley.”
When I got older, as we neared Cape Town at the end of a three-day rail trip, and as the train wound through the impossibly beautiful Hex River Valley, into the winelands, with that mountain in the far distance, young as I was, I did think: so why would they leave?
Over the years, though, I’ve noticed that people who live in the Western Cape – and in KwaZulu-Natal – tend to take for granted the beauty and variety all around them.
Our family’s relatives and friends in Cape Town seemed to seldom move far from home unless we were down on holiday – and then the picnic baskets were hauled out, the maps checked (“Where’s Ysterfontein?”) and we hit the road.
I don’t think that much has changed over the years: it’s hard to get yourself out and about when you look out of the window on to a mountain which is truly one of the wonders of the world.
The same take-it-for-granted attitude was evident in my mate in Durban – my best man in fact – who seldom seemed to move further than Pinetown.
When we moved to Joburg in the early ’90s, after exploring most of Namibia in the brief four or so years we were there, our young family did more travelling through KZN than did Des and his. We did beach, Berg and bush with equal enthusiasm.
And every time, as we wound our way up the N3 to Joburg, we would marvel at the lethargy of the people at the coast.
And when I got the opportunity to traverse the Cape, I was stunned by the sort of things Kaapenaars take for granted or even moan about… like the stunning sunsets along their coastal roads, or the winters they whine about (come to Gauteng and the Free State and we’ll show you bone-numbing cold). I remember running through Franschhoek in the morning rain, with people looking at me as though I was mad. The craggy mountains, the lowering clouds, the rain – what a place! What a privilege to experience it close up and personal.
The real connoisseurs of the Western Cape and KZN are, of course, the people from Gauteng. And, if that seems like old Vaalie arrogance, understand that we have so little of our own beauty in this money-obsessed, polluted, crowded, violent and rat-race province, that we drink in beauty and wildness.
That’s why we descend upon the Cape and KZN in droves every year and spend huge amounts of money. Anything to get away from our electric fences, potholes, armed response, blue-light convoys and taxis… So, if you people in the Cape and KZN are concerned that you may become jaded and blasé about your surroundings, look at us – the peasants from the highveld – and see in our eyes how fortunate you are.
l Of course, I may be wrong and you may want to drop me an email and tell me why… E-mail: [email protected]
Saturday Star