The Free State.
I have a deep and abiding love for the Free State… That much-maligned province I grew up in. To be specific: Excelsior, the notorious inspiration for Zakes Mda’s novel; and Ladybrand, the tiny town from where South Africa launched their ill-advised “intervention” in Lesotho’s civil unrest in 1998. I remember watching the helicopters land on our rugbyfield, unloading stretchers and uploading troops… Wondering if our friends in Maseru would make it to school that day.
Going home is always a trip back in time. One I look forward to. On a good day, masses of clouds stacked into eternity in a blue sky, buttery sunshine flowing over green fields covered in hay bales – in a good year. A sea of marshmallow-pink and white Kosmos winding along the side of the road, and little black-shouldered kites hovering in hope of a quick takeaway mouse. And you know, at the end of the road, fresh air, mom’s cooking, galaxies of stars and a good, quiet night’s sleep.
That’s arguably the bigger picture of a trip back home… The smaller, more immediate one that occupied me on my most recent trip home was navigating the tyre-chewing network of potholes that now passes for roads… It’s been six months since I’ve been home last, and I don’t really know where they all suddenly came from.
Fast forward a few harrowing hours, and I’m nursing a cup of tea, listening to a family friend talking about how six months ago he became a token sacrifice: the last pale-face symbol of oppression to be bumped out of the local municipality. His particular set of skills involved finances – and he left them with some cosy millions in the bank. The cash is all gone.
No one’s exactly sure what happened to the dosh. They do know that there were quite a few random celebrations held. And two days before Christmas last year, all the tarred streets in town got ploughed up, in the name of progress, supposedly. The butcher tried stopping the machines by parking his car across the road running in front of his shop, pleading with his fellow shop-owners to join him… No one did. The streets are still lying all ploughed up, barely navigable if you happen to own a 4×4. A lot of people have closed the doors to their livelihoods: not many feet where wheels can’t reach. Word on the street has it that the contractor hired by the municipality hit the road. No word on who’ll replace him… And everybody’s pretty hush-hush on who’s enjoying the kickback from the deal.
The next morning we’re trudging through a field on the edge of town, doing what twitchers do best: looking for birds. If the light’s right and you squint a bit, you can see what this patch of land could be: a medium-sized bird-sanctuary, with little bridges spanning the stream that runs through here, small bird hides dotted here and there under the willow trees, maybe a kiosk with info on the birds you can find here. Loads, actually. It’s an untapped natural resource that could be of immense value to the tourist industry in this part of the province. Instead, you need gumboots to wade through the stacks of human excrement, animal bones and ash, left by vagrants. And rotting food, baby nappies and torn-open rubbish bags, dumped by the houses bordering the field. Some of the bags lie underneath the rusted “no dumping,” sign.
The old monuments commemorating events and persons as random as the Black Watch Mounted Cavalry and Antjie Scheepers are mouldy and fading. The town’s famous for its sandstone buildings, some of them declared national monuments, and yet the municipality gave permission that a piece of land be built up with a monstrous facebrick warehouse selling building supplies. At the main entrance to the town.
The old museum’s closed down, the Leliehoek resort privatised, gates closed. The eerie rock caves in the hills behind the town, rumoured to have hidden soldiers and their horses during the Anglo Boer war, is vandalized, spray painted, littered with tin cans and used condoms.
Don’t think that I’m looking at history through the rose-coloured glasses of being a kid growing up in some kind of pastoral innocence. It was never perfect.
But now, it’s a tragedy. And somewhere, there’s an official affiliated to one – and only one – political party: greed. Getting fat and disgusting on the sunken cheeks and ashen eyes of the Aids-riddled black men walking in the ploughed-up streets. Smacking its lips on the defeatist set of a sunburt white boer’s shoulders. Gorging on the dirty water and non-existent services and fading splendour of a town that was once so beautiful.
You’ve stripped the Free State of its beauty and humanness. You’ve left behind the bare bones of regret and poverty and hopelessness and simmering grudges. You’ve killed my home.
Tags: Aids, Anglo Boer War, Antjie Scheepers, birdwatching, Black Watch, corruption, Excelsior, Free State, Ladybrand, Leliehoek, Lesotho, Mantsopa municipality, potholse, Zakes Mda