SEVEN POLICEMEN

Every community and every block of apartments has its unique characters whose personalities and interactions with neighbours, even fleeting, leave a mark.

Brooklands Heights in Ockerse Street, Hillbrow, was no exception. Mrs Ahrens who lived in a two roomed flat on the fifth floor was one such resident. Her apartment had a balcony facing the central courtyard and she often appeared on it, cigarette in hand, clearly observing the goings-on in the public areas of the building and keeping loneliness at bay. 

Mrs Ahrens, lived alone – not even a pet fish for company. Her circumstances were a mystery to her neighbours, something she preferred to keep that way. Often she would comment on her observations from her balcony vantage point, to anyone within earshot and willing to listen as she shared her pithy remarks that were laced with a rich serving of good humour. She was a “larger-than-life” middle aged lady, with an ample frame which she adorned with a somewhat Bohemian and free spirited style of attire. Her “artsy” demeanour suggested free thinking open-mindedness somewhat quirky in the conservative and decidedly rigid atmosphere that was so pervasive in South Africa before the advent of television that opened minds and attitudes, despite Calvinistic suppression of waywardness.

Before the flickering Cyclops made its way into South African homes in the mid-1970s, the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, one Dr Albert Hertzog (ultra-conservative son of former Premier General Hertzog) kept its arrival at bay for as long as he possibly could.  Fearing the inability to establish absolute control over television content, the state held back the introduction of Lucifer’s box. It could, if the reins should ever ease, spread ideas of communism and speed moral decay which would influence citizens if they were exposed to insidious notions of racial mixing. Even worse, it could show black folk living lives to which locals might have the temerity to aspire. The Apollo 11 mission to the Moon was the first major challenge to that policy, as Johannesburg residents queued for hours at the Planetarium to view CCTV visuals that were reluctantly permitted to be shown weeks after man had first set foot on our closest planetary neighbour. Three days a week whites could attend the showing, and twice a week all other races. As the clamour grew to see events the rest of humanity had viewed live, the first cracks appeared in public policy and police were at hand to quell riotous behaviour as folk jostled to taste the forbidden fruit.

Mrs Ahrens was a refreshing  antithesis of a society that was somewhat medieval in outlook. Those who toured beyond the borders often quipped that they were required to turn their watches back thirty years upon their return, either on board one of the mail ships that still docked at South African ports, or aboard a plane. She would often be seen galumphing along the landings as she made her way to the lifts. Wildly gesticulating with hands adorned with gigantic custom jewellery to match her generous torso, she would regale all and sundry with her latest insights.

Sundays in the 1960s and 1970s were governed by South Africa’s Sunday Observance Act and were rather sombre. Shops were closed. Entertainment venues were prohibited from opening. It was unlawful to perform work, subject to some exclusions. These were days on which most families attended church, dressed in formal “Sunday Clothes” – for the gents, suit and tie and the ladies – hats to top off stylish outfits. Mrs Ahrens, should she share the lift with a family on its way to church, would engage them with her views with respect to religion. She would cheerfully declare: “It will take God and seven policemen to get me into heaven.” It was without malice, and quite entertaining to witness her thumbing her nose at the reverence with which parents of young kids would sweep them along to the various religious gatherings that were at that time still well attended. Around her she would put up a smoke screen as she irreverently chain smoked her way to her destiny, if not to her destination. The ash would unceremoniously drop to the lift floor with each movement of her hand – almost as a foretaste of what she believed lay ahead should the seven policemen not show up.

Mrs Ahrens was missed when she failed to show up for her excursion that would begin in the lift on a Sunday. Her repartee when engaged on her libertarian views provided charming and amusing enjoyment. She would then invariably make another cameo appearance on a following Sunday as she performed the script of the comic tragedy unfolding as she inexorably swept along to the end of her mortal coil.

So, too, she skipped a few Sundays in this dramatic production. Her balcony was for some weeks smoke free and the windows and doors to her flat remained shut – suggesting another flight to Europe or vacation aboard a cruise liner about which she so often regaled her neighbours. Weeks passed without undue concern about this free spirit with whom most neighbours were fleetingly acquainted.

Until the odour began to waft along the corridors and into the flats of neighbours. Concern grew. 

The discovery was eventually made. The seven policemen showed up. Also the coroner.

©Paul M Haupt