The earth moved!
The year: 1964. Carletonville in the Transvaal. A sinkhole measuring 100 metres across and, when the dust settled, 100 metres deep to the observer, but that which had been, was swallowed in the bowels of the earth, never to be seen again.
The year: 1969. Tulbagh in the Western Cape was rocked by a quake registering 6.3 on the Richter scale. The shudder felt up to 160 kilometres away, embedding an imprint of destruction at the epicentre and trepidation at the farthest reaches.
The years since the discovery on the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, of gold and its extraction – tremors at irregular times in the wake. Dolomitic subterranean caves that had held fresh water for centuries had increasingly fallen foul of mining activities and progressively surrendered their water to mining company pumping, wells yielding fresh water for agricultural activities on the surface and precipitating massive dolomitic caverns ticking off the moments to disaster.
A small child plays happily on the sixth floor of a post bellum apartment, constructed to accommodate returning demobilised soldiers who had long since moved on and the dingy rent controlled modest flats occupied by mostly lower middle class tenants, but also a few millionaire types who stingily milked a system intended to be sub-economic and economic accommodation.
Stories of disaster abound in Johannesburg of sinkholes, earth tremors which test the limits of construction engineering and, horror upon horror – rare earthquakes to which South Africa is not immune. A child’s mind harbours the spectre of building collapse, being swallowed up and suffocated mercilessly in a sinkhole of a magnitude enhanced by a child’s mind. The adults have discussed the disasters which had befallen many a poor soul and had been reported ad nauseam in the newspapers devoured by parents.
The next door neighbours of the Oosthuizens in the Carletonville mining suburb of Blyvooruitzicht heard, at two in the morning, wagon wheels drawn by rabid oxen across a rough gravel and corrugated road. Twice Mr Britz heard this thundering noise. In the house next door the Oosthuizens had just returned from a glorious family vacation at the sea in Amanzimtoti and Johannes Oosthuizen bellows at the top of his voice, not at his wife Hester, not in anger, but in horror. Neighbours scramble only to witness through the windows of the Oosthuizen residence the swallowing by the earth of household goods and an entire family who had names Johannes, Hester, Jacoba, klein Johannes, Marianne, and their faithful domestic worker who, according to the newspapers of the time in 1960s South Africa and the memorial erected soon afterwards, would not have a name. Her station guaranteed anonymity in a society that callously refrained from naming workers, who didn’t warrant that touch of humanity. On 3 August 1964, six souls were swallowed up and “buried by God” Himself.
The scramble for safety began in the neighbourhood as houses began to crumble like the mine house of which a brick was ne’er again to be seen. Throughout the sixties Carletonville, Westonaria, Bank – all towns touched by the terror of dolomitic sinkholes – teetered on the brink of the abyss. Cordoned off were the properties in the gravest danger of being swallowed by the earth in its gruesome suffocating embrace. Houses in less immediate danger continued to accommodate mine worker families who would henceforth keep a beady eye on gauges measuring the imminence of dolomite cave collapse.
The horror of the Blyvooruitzicht events was told and retold by the adults. There was a search for reason and purpose. Why would God choose to bury a family – and their domestic worker? Surely there had to be some metaphysical reason? Can God be to blame? Could He have visited this inexplicable torment on what appeared to have been a contented, ordinary family – and their maid who didn’t warrant mention by name in the press and by the masons who carved the memorial which stands in the town churchyard to this day? Could it happen again? Anywhere? Was there a purpose in all of this?
Seared in a young child’s mind: another “Act of God.” Also crossing the mind: “Is God THAT mean and spiteful?” Aren’t there other, better ways to fulfil a purpose – and, yes, what could such a purpose be? The youngster would love to know.
The tiny town of Tulbagh in the Cape Winelands in 1969 was shaken, too, by wrath from on high, it seemed. The adults speculated, as they had done about the sinkhole of 1964. Children overheard the conjecture. A deep trepidation permeated young minds occupying what seemed to be an angry earth, a volatile and hostile terra firma that hosted terror.
That night. Fear! A light rumbling approaches the child’s single bed in a dimly lit corner of a little bedroom on the sixth level of the apartment block. Thoughts of an entire building disappearing into the earth or crumbling in a heap of rubble…
Furniture begins to traverse the floor. The intensity increases. Fear turns to terror! It’s moving – the chair is moving as the rumble intensifies with the perceptible swaying of the building. The walls of the room don’t merely rumble, but clearly begin to sway and the real possibility of structural failure exists. The instability of the floors now swaying in a rocking motion akin to a ship at sea, strikes terror in all who feel it.
As suddenly as it all began to move, in like manner did the tremor abate. Cracks in the walls the only reminder of the day it all moved.
©Paul M Haupt
Gripping stuff!
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