During World War II, thousands of Italian prisoners of war (PoWs) were held in South Africa, most of them at Zonderwater Camp outside Cullinan or in work camps across the country, including Pietermaritzburg. Hundreds of PoWs tried to escape, some to be free again, others towards the love they had found, writes Karen Horn in her book Prisoners of Jan Smuts.
Pietro Scottu did not share with me the details of how he and his wool-obsessed tent mate Gilio (surname unknown) managed to escape from Zonderwater, except to say that he was “one of the lucky chaps that managed to leave the cage and run off the camp, spending almost all the free time in hotel rooms”.
When Pietro and his fellow escapees arrived in Port Elizabeth, they settled into the comfortable Saint George Terrace Hotel. Their next step was to set up a business making toys and it was not long before they secured a deal with a prominent sports retailer in the city. What they did not consider was the space they would need to produce large orders from the shop.
As luck would have it, an airman serving at the Port Elizabeth airport offered them a solution. It is likely that this man did not realise that he was helping escaped Italian PoWs to establish a successful business when he allowed them to use his house as a toy factory. Pietro and his friend quickly began selling their toys, the first clients being Chinese men “who fell in love with the little toy and without further question” decided to purchase more.
Their success was satisfying, but also scary, not least because, technically speaking, they remained escapees on the run. Pietro later wrote in his memoirs: “Although getting such an important client made us rejoice in our success, because it guaranteed more clients in the future, thinking about it carefully, we realised that it could also represent a threat to our freedom.
“Firstly, because we weren’t at all equipped for production on a large scale, and secondly, because if anyone had had the idea, thinking to do us a favour, of finding out who we were and where the toys were made, and made it known to the press, whether local or not, we would have run the risk of finding ourselves back at Zonderwater. Our decision was sudden and perhaps a little hasty.”
Consequently, they quit their enterprise and departed for East London; but good fortune seemed to follow them, and especially Gilio, as Pietro remembered: “Gilio had not forgotten his passion: wool. There was no business dealing in leather and wool that he would not visit to talk about current products … the British Wool Commission was, in fact, in East London, and here, after a competency exam, he was hired as a Wool Appraiser.
“This became his fortune, not so much during his stay in East London, but after his return to Italy … when he finally returned to Italy, he started to sell wool with so much skill and ability that he immediately became successful, and in 1951, the large corporate, Bielletti, already a client of his, chose him as a consultant. They even brought him along when, by government request, the company had to visit South Africa to agree on wool purchases in order to properly revitalise the Italian wool industry.”
But Pietro had other ideas and so the two friends parted ways. It was now about a year after his escape from Zonderwater and Pietro was having the time of his life.
Having left his friend in East London, he soon found himself in an isolated part of Natal, working for an Irish woman who managed a trading post, “where one could haggle as well as trade”. Except for the odd mamba that caused excitement, there was not much to do there, and so it was not long before Pietro felt as if he “had arrived at a tranquillity convent because of the calm that reigned all around”.
Things, however, became interesting when, in July 1944, “on a cooler evening than usual, I found my boss in my bed, candidly telling me that, if I don’t mind, seeing the cold, we could perhaps warm each other up! How does one respond to this type of demand?
“I told her it was not a bad idea, and that on top of things we would be saving on firewood! And so, for the first time, I also worked nights.”
As always, Pietro was open to new adventures, but either he or his employer did not know or, what is probably more likely, did not care that “fraternisation” was against the rules: the regulations clearly stated that captives were not allowed to “fraternise with the public, travel on public vehicles other than local buses, visit any place of public entertainment, bars, cafés or dances, public or private, enter any private house, except with special permission of employer eg to visit a priest or fellow PoW employed elsewhere”.
In any case, by this time Pietro no longer considered himself a prisoner, and who knows what thoughts were in his employer’s mind? By 1944, however, the authorities should have known that only the pernicketiest of men would follow these rules. Despite the new arrangement with his landlady, though, for Pietro “life seemed very monotonous, and the thoughts of total freedom came back to (my) mind”.
Independent on Saturday