78) Eastvaal Ford
Jonny was working hard at his job as a car salesman; he had been transferred from the new car sales to the used car section. Every morning there would be a meeting of all the sales staff. The Sales Manager would give them all a motivation talk to start the day. He would offer incentives to the staff to increase sales. There would be prizes for the top sales, things like watches, pen and pencil sets, microwave ovens, heaters, and other household appliances. Each morning he would ask them all, “How many sales are you going to do today?” and each salesman would tell him how many cars he was expecting to sell that day. Then the manager would say, “What do you want if you reach target?” and they could nominate the gift they would like if they if they succeeded. It was all very Americanised and rather high pressure. Jonny was not used to this and he did not like it much. One morning when the manager went through his routine once again and Jonny was really fed up. He was asked “Jonny How many sales can we expect from you today?” and as Jonny knew he had two sales that were due to be completed that day he said “I expect to do two” and the manager said “That’s good, and what do you want if you do that” Jonny said “Do you think you could just get off my back for a few days?”
One morning Jonny’s brother Donald called in to see him. As Jonny was out doing a test drive with a customer at the time Donald sat and talked to one of the other salesmen. One of the young girls from the office had walked through the sales room and seen Don sitting there. She though it was Jonny as he and his brother look alike. I suppose she was used to being teased by all the sales staff so as she walked passed Don she stuck her finger in his ear. I should think Don was pretty surprised but he was not terribly upset. When the rest of the men saw what she did and realised that she had mistaken Don for Jonny they told her that Don was not Jonny and that she had just stuck her finger into the ear of a very important buyer and that he was furious. She laughed at them and said, “No that was Jonny”. Just then Jonny came back to the office from his test drive. The poor girl nearly fainted when she saw him and realised the mistake she had made. She just wanted to run and hide but the men made her go and apologise to Don as they said that if she did not they could lose a very important customer. Don realised what was going on and being a real tease laid it on a bit.
One of Jonny’s colleagues was a man called Ian Vinnicombe. A relative of Ian’s, a great uncle I think it was, had written his life story and Ian had a copy of the manuscript. It was typed out and edited by Ian’s cousin but it had not been published. Ian leant me the manuscript to read. The Natal University later published the book; it was an interesting insight into the history of Natal.
The Vinnicombe family had come to South Africa in the late 1800’s, from Somerset; they were a family of organ builders and repairers. They had also been builders and they had built quite a few Natal and Transvaal churches. The original immigrant seemed to have loved South Africa and to have got on well with the Afrikaans people, many of them were his friends. When in 1895 Leander Star Jameson lead a raid on the Transvaal against the Afrikaans people Vinnicombe was very shocked to think that British people could behave in such a way and to show his solidarity with the Boers he took out Transvaal citizenship. A problem arose when in 1899 The Boer War broke out. It was one thing to get cross with his homeland and to take out South African citizenship as a protest against their behaviour but he did not want to join the Boer army and fight against his “kith and kin” so he kept on the move to avoid the Boer call up. But then the British found out that he was in the country and expected him to join them in the defence of their “Empire” so he was on the move from them too. His friends seemed to have been sympathetic of the problem and tried to hide him. He would be visiting an English family and a troop of Boers would call at the front door. He would be hastily spirited out of the back door. When he was visiting his Boer friends a troop of British soldiers would call on the people and he would be out the back door again and off into the bush. Near the end of the war the British captured him but he told them he was a South African citizen and did not want to fight so they put him into a concentration camp in Natal and he told the story of the suffering of the women and children in those camps. It seems that the British were the first to use concentration camps. The Boer war was fought with modern guerrilla tactics, not a conventional war of those times when the two armies lined up in rows and fired at each other. The Boers used surprise and ambush tactics against the British and they would also get support and food from the farmers in the area. To stop this kind of support the British started rounding up the wives and children of the Boer soldiers who were running the farms in the absence of their man folk. The women would be interned, the farmhouses burnt and any crops destroyed. The camps were poorly run, and there was not enough food for all the inmates. It did not take long for diseases to break out and many Boer women and children died in these camps. I had never realised that until I read Vinnicombes book. He was an avid reader and said in his book that he loved to take a book to bed with him but there was no electric light in those days so he had to read by candlelight. He found that the most comfortable position to read in bed was to lay on his back and place the lighted candle on his forehead, this way he got a good clear view of his page. I can’t imagine that it would be very comfortable and wonder if I should try it but have never had the courage.
Another Boer war connection to Witbank was that Winston Churchill had hidden there in his flight from the Boers. I don’t remember the whole story but I know that he went to South Africa as a war correspondent and was captured by the Boers and held in a Prisoner of War camp in Pretoria. He managed to escape the camp and to travel to Natal with the help of an English mine manager. It was said that he went through Witbank on his journey from Pretoria to Natal and that he was for a while hidden in one of the coal mines in Witbank. It always surprised me a little that the even the Afrikaans people of the area were rather proud of the fact that their town had an association with the great man however tenuous.
There were other famous names connected with the Boer war. Mahatma Gandhi served with the British medical corps as a stretcher-bearer. Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts was in Mafeking during the long siege of that town. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who created Sherlock Holmes ran a field hospital during the war and Rudyard Kipling who gave us the “Jungle Books” was working on an army newspaper.
One morning Jonny’s brother Donald called in to see him. As Jonny was out doing a test drive with a customer at the time Donald sat and talked to one of the other salesmen. One of the young girls from the office had walked through the sales room and seen Don sitting there. She though it was Jonny as he and his brother look alike. I suppose she was used to being teased by all the sales staff so as she walked passed Don she stuck her finger in his ear. I should think Don was pretty surprised but he was not terribly upset. When the rest of the men saw what she did and realised that she had mistaken Don for Jonny they told her that Don was not Jonny and that she had just stuck her finger into the ear of a very important buyer and that he was furious. She laughed at them and said, “No that was Jonny”. Just then Jonny came back to the office from his test drive. The poor girl nearly fainted when she saw him and realised the mistake she had made. She just wanted to run and hide but the men made her go and apologise to Don as they said that if she did not they could lose a very important customer. Don realised what was going on and being a real tease laid it on a bit.
One of Jonny’s colleagues was a man called Ian Vinnicombe. A relative of Ian’s, a great uncle I think it was, had written his life story and Ian had a copy of the manuscript. It was typed out and edited by Ian’s cousin but it had not been published. Ian leant me the manuscript to read. The Natal University later published the book; it was an interesting insight into the history of Natal.
The Vinnicombe family had come to South Africa in the late 1800’s, from Somerset; they were a family of organ builders and repairers. They had also been builders and they had built quite a few Natal and Transvaal churches. The original immigrant seemed to have loved South Africa and to have got on well with the Afrikaans people, many of them were his friends. When in 1895 Leander Star Jameson lead a raid on the Transvaal against the Afrikaans people Vinnicombe was very shocked to think that British people could behave in such a way and to show his solidarity with the Boers he took out Transvaal citizenship. A problem arose when in 1899 The Boer War broke out. It was one thing to get cross with his homeland and to take out South African citizenship as a protest against their behaviour but he did not want to join the Boer army and fight against his “kith and kin” so he kept on the move to avoid the Boer call up. But then the British found out that he was in the country and expected him to join them in the defence of their “Empire” so he was on the move from them too. His friends seemed to have been sympathetic of the problem and tried to hide him. He would be visiting an English family and a troop of Boers would call at the front door. He would be hastily spirited out of the back door. When he was visiting his Boer friends a troop of British soldiers would call on the people and he would be out the back door again and off into the bush. Near the end of the war the British captured him but he told them he was a South African citizen and did not want to fight so they put him into a concentration camp in Natal and he told the story of the suffering of the women and children in those camps. It seems that the British were the first to use concentration camps. The Boer war was fought with modern guerrilla tactics, not a conventional war of those times when the two armies lined up in rows and fired at each other. The Boers used surprise and ambush tactics against the British and they would also get support and food from the farmers in the area. To stop this kind of support the British started rounding up the wives and children of the Boer soldiers who were running the farms in the absence of their man folk. The women would be interned, the farmhouses burnt and any crops destroyed. The camps were poorly run, and there was not enough food for all the inmates. It did not take long for diseases to break out and many Boer women and children died in these camps. I had never realised that until I read Vinnicombes book. He was an avid reader and said in his book that he loved to take a book to bed with him but there was no electric light in those days so he had to read by candlelight. He found that the most comfortable position to read in bed was to lay on his back and place the lighted candle on his forehead, this way he got a good clear view of his page. I can’t imagine that it would be very comfortable and wonder if I should try it but have never had the courage.
Another Boer war connection to Witbank was that Winston Churchill had hidden there in his flight from the Boers. I don’t remember the whole story but I know that he went to South Africa as a war correspondent and was captured by the Boers and held in a Prisoner of War camp in Pretoria. He managed to escape the camp and to travel to Natal with the help of an English mine manager. It was said that he went through Witbank on his journey from Pretoria to Natal and that he was for a while hidden in one of the coal mines in Witbank. It always surprised me a little that the even the Afrikaans people of the area were rather proud of the fact that their town had an association with the great man however tenuous.
There were other famous names connected with the Boer war. Mahatma Gandhi served with the British medical corps as a stretcher-bearer. Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts was in Mafeking during the long siege of that town. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who created Sherlock Holmes ran a field hospital during the war and Rudyard Kipling who gave us the “Jungle Books” was working on an army newspaper.
posted by MC at
9:17 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home