73) Witbank
When we had been in Witbank (I think it is now called Emalahleni) for about two weeks our furniture arrived and we all moved into our house together again. The boys were pretty glad to see their beds as sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor had begun to lose its novelty. Having all our things around us did make the house a little more habitable but it was never going to be really comfortable.
Witbank was a coal-mining town and there were a number of mines in the area. Some were underground but most of them were opencast. The proximity of the coal and its closeness to the highly industrialized Witwatersrand area made it a very good position to generate electricity so there were quite a few large power stations in the area too.
Wherever you went around Witbank you saw coal. Some of the mines were conventional underground mines with headgears like I was used to seeing in South Wales but there were also a number of huge open caste mines. They weren’t deep pits like the open caste copper mine that I had seen at Chingola in Zambia. Apparently the coal was pretty close to the surface so the mining method used was to dig up the topsoil in a long straight line, put it to one side and then with huge dragline machines they would extract the coal in that straight line. When they had finished there they would begin work on a strip of land parallel to the first strip. The topsoil would be removed and placed in the strip they had just excavated and then they would be ready to work on the second strip. When they got to the end of the coal they would take the soil from the first strip and use it to fill in the last one. This way the countryside would not be scared with huge holes when the mining was finished and then the mining company would plant trees and shrubs on it to finish off the reclamation work.
If I remember rightly there were about six power stations in and around Witbank. A great deal of the coal that was mined in the area went straight to the power stations to generate electricity but there was still a lot that was put on trains and railed to the coast for export all over the world. We would often see the long trains taking their load across country to Richards Bay on the coast of Natal to be shipped overseas.
We would also see the remains of old workings that were still burning underground. You could see the smoke coming through holes in the ground and sometimes at night you could actually see fire. At the terminal where the trains loaded the coal, there were huge mountains of coal awaiting loading and sometimes they would combust spontaneously because of the heat within them and we would see them burn.
Besides the mines and the power stations other industries had grown up around the coal. There was a large steel refinery called Highveld Steel and a Carbide Factory. Witbank had a good shopping centre, a hospital and schools, sports clubs, cinemas theatres and churches of all the main denominations. There was a dam not far out of town for boating and fishing so there was everything one needed there and it was only about 120 kilometres from Johannesburg and Pretoria if one wanted the bright lights of the city. But it was not a very attractive town and I think it was only the availability of work that encouraged people to live there.
Once we moved into our house we met our new neighbour, Mrs Devilliers. She was an elderly Afrikaans widow with an adult single son called Edward. Mrs Devilliers was quite a character. She told us that when she had bought her house it had been haunted. When she moved in she told the ghost “There is not room in this house for you and me, so you had better leave” and so he left. I can’t say I blame him I would not have liked to get on the wrong side of Mrs. Devilliers. She has lived next to Mr. Cross for many years and it seemed that they had spent all those years quarrelling. She would tell us how mean he was, and say that he should do some repairs and maintenance to our house. She would say that he thought that there would be a bank in heaven and that he thought he would be able to transfer his money there. “I’ll give him a cheque for a R50000 for his house and then when he dies and goes to heaven he can take the cheque with him and put it into the bank there” Mr. Cross was not very polite about her either but I think it was all a big bluff, they had been being rude about each other so long they just did not know how to stop. If we had not seen Mr. Cross by about lunchtime, Mrs Devilliers would go up to his cottage to make sure that he was all right.
Mrs. Devilliers told us that her maiden name was Murray and that she was a descendant of the Rev. Andrew Murray who had come out to the Transvaal from Scotland to start the first church there, at the request of President Paul Kruger. Her relationship with Edward was rather tempestuous and we would sometimes hear them shouting at each other. She was never anything but kind to my family and me; she had a particularly soft spot for Jonathan. She would trust him with her bank book and she would ask him to take money out for her, I don’t think she would have trusted Edward to do that.
We also got to know the family who had lived in the house before us. They were French and had lived in our house while they were building themselves a new house further up the road. They were in fact building two houses next to each other, one for themselves and one to sell. The husband worked in a brickyard and so had got a good deal on all the bricks for the two houses. Their own house had been finished and they had moved in. The second one was built but the finishing touches had not been completed. A lady came to look at the house that was up for sale and to show her the type of finishes it would have the husband took her around his own house. She was very impressed but said that she preferred the layout to the first house so she wanted to buy that one instead. He did not mind which house he had so he said, “Yes” and even agreed to vacate it within a week for her. His wife was furious when she was told. Not only had he sold the house that she liked best too, but she would have to move out within a week to a house that was not completely finished. You can imagine she had quite a few unkind things to say about her husband. But she did admit that it would not be too hard to move her stuff into the house next door.
It was always a bit awkward living on the front half of the plot with our dogs. Anyone calling to see Mr. Cross or his servant would have to go through our garden and our dogs hated that. Visitors were inclined to leave the front gate open too and then the dogs would get out on to the road. Rocky started to wander then and when the gate was closed he would jump over the wall. He would go and bother the people that lived opposite us and we found pellet wounds on him so we knew that he was being shot at so we had to do something. We appreciated that he should not be out making a nuisance of himself but did not know how to keep him in. We knew that the best way to train a dog not to jump over a wall was to put him on a choke chain and a long lead and when he attempted to jump to shout “No” and yank on the lead, but our problem was that Rocky never tried to escape while we were there so we could not train him not to jump. Derrick gave us some long poles and Jonny and the boys put them into the ground just behind the wall. Then they put strands of wire between them at about twelve inches apart, thinking that that would keep Rocky in. He just jumped through the wire and off he went again. We got some more wire and criss-crossed them between the horizontal wires. I don’t know if Rocky could see the extra wires or not but he did not try and jump for a few days then one evening just as it was getting dark we saw him making a leap for freedom and my thoughts were “What can we do next?” but before I had had time to think the thought through poor Rocky hit the wire barrier. He must have hurt himself, he fell and yelped in pain, but it worked better than any training we could have given him. He remembered that when he jumped he hurt himself and he never tried that one again.
Once I had got all our belongings unpacked and put away and cleaned the house up as best as I could I began to look for something else to do. The boys talked about the tuck shop at collage so I asked them if they needed volunteers to help. They gave each other a strange look and said “No Mom, don’t come and do tuck shop duty” I was puzzled as to why they did not want me there and all they could say was that it was not like tuck shop in high school, but they did not think it would be a good idea for me to volunteer. A few days later I needed the van that they were using for transport to do some shopping and so I arranged to collect them after collage. As I was waiting for them outside the collage I was amazed as the other boys came out of classes. Most of the pupils were young men who were already working some of them in the middle of their apprenticeship not school boys like Jonathan and Dominic were. They looked a tough bunch to me, dressed in motorbike leathers; smoking and I could imagine that they had knuckle-dusters and chains in their bags. When we talked about it later Jonathan and Dominic said that they had heard that the tuck shop was selling drugs, I don’t know if that was true but I could not imagine selling an orange juice and half a dozen bubble gums to this crowd of youngsters.
Witbank was a coal-mining town and there were a number of mines in the area. Some were underground but most of them were opencast. The proximity of the coal and its closeness to the highly industrialized Witwatersrand area made it a very good position to generate electricity so there were quite a few large power stations in the area too.
Wherever you went around Witbank you saw coal. Some of the mines were conventional underground mines with headgears like I was used to seeing in South Wales but there were also a number of huge open caste mines. They weren’t deep pits like the open caste copper mine that I had seen at Chingola in Zambia. Apparently the coal was pretty close to the surface so the mining method used was to dig up the topsoil in a long straight line, put it to one side and then with huge dragline machines they would extract the coal in that straight line. When they had finished there they would begin work on a strip of land parallel to the first strip. The topsoil would be removed and placed in the strip they had just excavated and then they would be ready to work on the second strip. When they got to the end of the coal they would take the soil from the first strip and use it to fill in the last one. This way the countryside would not be scared with huge holes when the mining was finished and then the mining company would plant trees and shrubs on it to finish off the reclamation work.
If I remember rightly there were about six power stations in and around Witbank. A great deal of the coal that was mined in the area went straight to the power stations to generate electricity but there was still a lot that was put on trains and railed to the coast for export all over the world. We would often see the long trains taking their load across country to Richards Bay on the coast of Natal to be shipped overseas.
We would also see the remains of old workings that were still burning underground. You could see the smoke coming through holes in the ground and sometimes at night you could actually see fire. At the terminal where the trains loaded the coal, there were huge mountains of coal awaiting loading and sometimes they would combust spontaneously because of the heat within them and we would see them burn.
Besides the mines and the power stations other industries had grown up around the coal. There was a large steel refinery called Highveld Steel and a Carbide Factory. Witbank had a good shopping centre, a hospital and schools, sports clubs, cinemas theatres and churches of all the main denominations. There was a dam not far out of town for boating and fishing so there was everything one needed there and it was only about 120 kilometres from Johannesburg and Pretoria if one wanted the bright lights of the city. But it was not a very attractive town and I think it was only the availability of work that encouraged people to live there.
Once we moved into our house we met our new neighbour, Mrs Devilliers. She was an elderly Afrikaans widow with an adult single son called Edward. Mrs Devilliers was quite a character. She told us that when she had bought her house it had been haunted. When she moved in she told the ghost “There is not room in this house for you and me, so you had better leave” and so he left. I can’t say I blame him I would not have liked to get on the wrong side of Mrs. Devilliers. She has lived next to Mr. Cross for many years and it seemed that they had spent all those years quarrelling. She would tell us how mean he was, and say that he should do some repairs and maintenance to our house. She would say that he thought that there would be a bank in heaven and that he thought he would be able to transfer his money there. “I’ll give him a cheque for a R50000 for his house and then when he dies and goes to heaven he can take the cheque with him and put it into the bank there” Mr. Cross was not very polite about her either but I think it was all a big bluff, they had been being rude about each other so long they just did not know how to stop. If we had not seen Mr. Cross by about lunchtime, Mrs Devilliers would go up to his cottage to make sure that he was all right.
Mrs. Devilliers told us that her maiden name was Murray and that she was a descendant of the Rev. Andrew Murray who had come out to the Transvaal from Scotland to start the first church there, at the request of President Paul Kruger. Her relationship with Edward was rather tempestuous and we would sometimes hear them shouting at each other. She was never anything but kind to my family and me; she had a particularly soft spot for Jonathan. She would trust him with her bank book and she would ask him to take money out for her, I don’t think she would have trusted Edward to do that.
We also got to know the family who had lived in the house before us. They were French and had lived in our house while they were building themselves a new house further up the road. They were in fact building two houses next to each other, one for themselves and one to sell. The husband worked in a brickyard and so had got a good deal on all the bricks for the two houses. Their own house had been finished and they had moved in. The second one was built but the finishing touches had not been completed. A lady came to look at the house that was up for sale and to show her the type of finishes it would have the husband took her around his own house. She was very impressed but said that she preferred the layout to the first house so she wanted to buy that one instead. He did not mind which house he had so he said, “Yes” and even agreed to vacate it within a week for her. His wife was furious when she was told. Not only had he sold the house that she liked best too, but she would have to move out within a week to a house that was not completely finished. You can imagine she had quite a few unkind things to say about her husband. But she did admit that it would not be too hard to move her stuff into the house next door.
It was always a bit awkward living on the front half of the plot with our dogs. Anyone calling to see Mr. Cross or his servant would have to go through our garden and our dogs hated that. Visitors were inclined to leave the front gate open too and then the dogs would get out on to the road. Rocky started to wander then and when the gate was closed he would jump over the wall. He would go and bother the people that lived opposite us and we found pellet wounds on him so we knew that he was being shot at so we had to do something. We appreciated that he should not be out making a nuisance of himself but did not know how to keep him in. We knew that the best way to train a dog not to jump over a wall was to put him on a choke chain and a long lead and when he attempted to jump to shout “No” and yank on the lead, but our problem was that Rocky never tried to escape while we were there so we could not train him not to jump. Derrick gave us some long poles and Jonny and the boys put them into the ground just behind the wall. Then they put strands of wire between them at about twelve inches apart, thinking that that would keep Rocky in. He just jumped through the wire and off he went again. We got some more wire and criss-crossed them between the horizontal wires. I don’t know if Rocky could see the extra wires or not but he did not try and jump for a few days then one evening just as it was getting dark we saw him making a leap for freedom and my thoughts were “What can we do next?” but before I had had time to think the thought through poor Rocky hit the wire barrier. He must have hurt himself, he fell and yelped in pain, but it worked better than any training we could have given him. He remembered that when he jumped he hurt himself and he never tried that one again.
Once I had got all our belongings unpacked and put away and cleaned the house up as best as I could I began to look for something else to do. The boys talked about the tuck shop at collage so I asked them if they needed volunteers to help. They gave each other a strange look and said “No Mom, don’t come and do tuck shop duty” I was puzzled as to why they did not want me there and all they could say was that it was not like tuck shop in high school, but they did not think it would be a good idea for me to volunteer. A few days later I needed the van that they were using for transport to do some shopping and so I arranged to collect them after collage. As I was waiting for them outside the collage I was amazed as the other boys came out of classes. Most of the pupils were young men who were already working some of them in the middle of their apprenticeship not school boys like Jonathan and Dominic were. They looked a tough bunch to me, dressed in motorbike leathers; smoking and I could imagine that they had knuckle-dusters and chains in their bags. When we talked about it later Jonathan and Dominic said that they had heard that the tuck shop was selling drugs, I don’t know if that was true but I could not imagine selling an orange juice and half a dozen bubble gums to this crowd of youngsters.
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