Moshe (Part 2)

After repairing the leaking Welsh plug in Beaufort West, Moshe’s journey was fairly uneventful until he reached the outskirts of Kimberley at dusk. A troubling noise and a disturbing shudder on the gigantic steering wheel of the old Pontiac were cause for alarm. Nevertheless, he decided to press on until he was in the city – no use tempting fate by stopping several miles away along what was a deserted regional road.

Upon entering the city, Moshe pulled over to the side of the road to inspect the cause of the shudder and flapping noise. This time it was the front left retread that was peeling away from the tyre. It had already begun to break apart and was poised to shred to pieces. A cursory inspection of the other tyres revealed some serious issues with the caster, camber and toe alignment – clearly not a job to be tackled without specialised equipment at the roadside. Moshe resigned himself to spending a night in his car, as the tyre retailers had already shut up shop for the day. The decision to continue driving until he had reached the built-up industrial area of Kimberley was fortuitous, as he could get a take-away coffee at a nearby café and settle in for the night on the bench seat of the Pontiac Chieftain without too much concern for his safety. Kimberley was not a crime-ridden hotspot in the seventies. Such political unrest as there was at that time, was generally confined to township areas some distance from the central business district and industrial areas.

The next morning Moshe was able to scrape enough cash together as he had brought along  to get settled in Taung upon arrival. It was more urgent to get the old car back on the road, so he determined that it would be best to deal with those settling-in costs when they arise. Bald tyres replaced and alignment professionally set, he hit the road again.

Moshe was learning lessons about having to cope with adversity. He was also being schooled in the serious drawback of buying an “el cheapo” bargain basement car from a dodgy salesman. A long trip and an unreliable vehicle aren’t good partners. 

It was late afternoon when this young doctor finally reached his destination. Taung was a tiny village in those years. The main activity in this town was at the recently built Mothusi supermarket complex. Referring to it as a supermarket complex is probably stretching the truth a tad. It was the only general dealer and grocery store in a hundred mile radius. Next to the shop was the tiny office that was rented by the newly established Bophuthatswana Homeland for a district surgeon to be based. A “Bop” government official had been dispatched to Taung to await the arrival of the newly appointed doctor, but he had spent his day on official duty at the shebeen – an unlicensed liquor outfit operating along the outer fringes of legality. Essentially it was an illegal pub to which the authorities turned a blind eye. Upon Moshe’s arrival he found himself making frantic enquiries as to the whereabouts of the official who he had been assured would be ready to receive him and set him up to start treating patients within a day or two. Word of mouth alerted the “Bop” civil servant about his arrival and he unhurriedly showed up with a formidable bunch of keys. Moshe had to take a step or two back to avoid becoming inebriated by the alcoholic fumes being emitted by the official. Fumbling for the right key, he eventually managed to unlock the latch and shove the ill fitting door open. In the room was a government issued desk and chair and a nervous neon light that flickered to life. A small window (a fanlight) would be the only concession to fresh air. The dank room had clearly not been opened in quite a while. There was a telephone on the desk – one of those farm lines that had to be operated with a crank handle. A spin of the handle would alert the local telephone exchange operator to manually connect a call. Calls received were on a shared line, so Moshe would have to learn to respond to the correct code (one long, two short and another long ring). Answering any other ringtone would inject the doctor into someone else’s conversation – in Tswana, which he had not yet learned to speak, but soon would.

After the two had locked up the office for the night, the official had to show Moshe the Bophuthatswana government’s accommodation arrangements for the new employee. The “Bop” factotum (or clerk – or whatever official title he held) joined Moshe in the Pontiac, riding shotgun. Moshe was directed along a road that passed by the Agricultural Co-operative on the left and wound its way to what was to become the University of Bophuthatswana Agricultural Faculty – when suitable permanent buildings could be erected some years hence. A couple of miles before that site could be reached, however, he was directed to turn right along a gravel road that led to houses occupied, as he would soon discover, by South African Defence Force personnel seconded to try and set up some semblance of an administration in the newly “independent” Bantustan. It was independent in name only – recognised as a state only by the South African apartheid government and fully funded by the South African fiscus. Moshe was directed to one of those houses where he would share it with some Veterinary Doctors, Lecturers at the Agricultural Faculty under construction, as well as at a recently established Teachers’ Training College in Pampierstad near the town of Hartswater. Hartswater, as the name suggests, formed part of a massive Vaal-Harts irrigation scheme on the South African side of the border with this “independent” homeland. Lush, well irrigated, rich farmland contrasted quite starkly with the arid stony outcrop that existed in the Bantustan in close proximity. Moshe would be the only chap in the housing complex that was officially employed by “Bop” and not the SADF. The decision to accommodate him with the SADF personnel was likely dictated by his whiteness – the other “Bop” officials all being Tswana.

After being introduced to his new housemates and dumping his luggage in the room reserved for him, Moshe took the trip to Mothusi’s Shopping Complex with the “Bop” factotum. The train station was near Mothusi’s, so Moshe dropped his passenger there and sent him on his way – ostensibly back to Mmbatho from whence he had come. As he made his way in the Pontiac back to his new “home” in the residential village, Moshe caught a glimpse, in his rear view mirror, of the official popping into the shebeen for “round number two” of his binge. There he would await the arrival of his transport to the “Capital” of Bophuthatswana.

The new young doctor was about to embark on a phase in his career that would teach him much about the practice of medicine, about himself, about South Africa in the seventies. It would be a steep learning curve. He would find out much about officialdom, politics and political agendas. He had grown up and been educated in the land of his birth, but was about to find out how little he knew about this country in which he was a third generation settler. South Africa was then, and still is, a complex confluence of multiple world views and divergent experiences. It remains a compartmentalised society – citizens in a gigantic “melting pot of humanity” oblivious to the struggles and experiences of folk across the great divides that are part of its woof and warp.

[Next week: We’ll pick up from the point at which Moshe establishes a medical service to a rural community. We’ll witness “scales” falling from his blinkered, naïve and innocent perspective.]

©Paul M Haupt