71. South Africa. Queenstown Ciskei to Grahamstown.

In this post we stay with the Horne family in Queenstown.  We had me their son Martin in a campground in Spain, and we had looked forward a visit with his parents for a long time. Their hospitality was exemplary and Helena stayed in touch with them for many years afterwards.

Being able to stay in the home of liberal South Africans was quit an opportunity.  Mrs. Horne was able to drive us around so that we could see the racially segregated townships up close.  In retrospect is was short, two nights and a day, but we will never forget that opportunity to see South African apartheid up close, from inside.

We also drove through the last "Bantu Homeland" - Ciskei on our trip.

Our route through the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa.  Yellow indicates hitchhiking.

Umtata – Queenstown, RSA, Thursday, 21 July, 1983

(DAN) The poultry expert dropped us at the post office in Queenstown right at noon. We did not want to descend on the Horne’s right at meal time, so we went to get a cheeseburger and a glass of guava juice at Wimpy's.  Queenstown struck us as a friendly place right away.  In the first 30 minutes three different people approached and asked us where we were from.  We sat down to eat at an outdoor table and next to us was youngish man with a large dog.  This dog sat with his nose about 3 inches from the young man’s plate of “chips”.  Every now and then he would be given one, but he never stole one or even looked impatient.  When they left the dog carried the young man’s brief case… Looked like they did it every day.

We called the Hornes and they came right in to pick us up.  Mrs. Horne especially is every bit as enthusiastic as Martin has always been.  Mr. Horne is the town surveyor and has been since 1940, and before him, his father was the surveyor ever since 1908.  He probably knows the area as well as anyone.  Mrs. Horne is active, uses the phone a lot and really knows how to make you feel welcome.  We joined them for a rhubarb cake dessert.

After dinner we had the first of many cups of tea and continued to talk.  Mr. Horne went back to work at 1400 and at 1500 Mrs. Horne drove us around the area.  First we drove over to the “Bantu” township over the border in Transkei to drop Joyce at her house.  Joyce is the Hornes’ “domestic servant” and comes in from the township every day to work.  It has something of the phenomenon of Shoshanguve, fine, large houses (3 or 4), one even with a swimming pool, on prominent corners. Then, rows and rows of two-room houses with nary a tree in sight. 

Joyce in front of her house in the Bantu township

Another side of the Bantu township near Queenstown.

A doctor's house in the Bantu township

Next we headed back to South Africa to the Coloured “group areas” on the other side of Queenstown.  There are several very densely housed areas, fenced in, surrounded by vast open rangeland.  Coloured people are allowed to own their houses (have been all along, but the authorities determine the lot size).  This, combined with a few fairly wealthy house owners has resulted in one area of large, fancy houses with almost no room in between.  Just across the street from this area, in three directions, there are miles of open space.  This area is Aloe Valley.  Most of the Coloured areas, though, are what they call sub economic housing: the 2-3 room matchbox housing.  Finally the situation was right to see these places up close, and thanks to Mrs. Horne's insight and patience this trip was well documented.

Wealthier housing in the Coloured township near Queenstown

The Coloured township seen from another angle

Next, we drove out of town into the mountains directly behind White Queenstown.  The road took us past a very dry reservoir and into even higher mountains where Martin used to hang out --from a hang glider.  Over a pass and we were into Transkei again, the border evident from the very different grazing pressures (Transkei = bare).

The view was incredible over a wide valley in the direction of Lady Frere, but the dust clouds reduced visibility.  All day as we drove through Transkei the wind was blowing hard.  As they say in Kansas “the fields were blowing, and bad”. We even saw some sand drifting.  The Hornes said that it was the windiest day in a few years and wind always means that it is raining in the Western Cape.

We had a most enjoyable supper and evening with the Hornes.  They are a most artistic family.  Granny Horne was an artist in many media. Her water color paintings were scattered around the house.  They were mostly scenes from this area, including aloes.  One of her paintings caused an international stir, sort of.  She was always entering art contests, and one time her son-in-law suggested she enter her scribble board in the “modern art” category in a national contest.  This was a piece of paper where she cleaned her paint brushes, checked colors, made calculations, etc.  Granny did not like “modern art” so for the fun of it she named the piece of paper “The Christmas Rush”, framed it, presented it and won first prize.  The judge was an art professor from East London and they wonder if he will ever live it down.  It made the major newspapers in the country (Granny would not give permission for the Pretoria Afrikaans paper to print it).  It even got into a British magazine, Time and Life.

The Hornes and their house, Queenstown.

The Hornes’ nephew came over for a while.  Both he and his brother are lawyers and artists.  The older brother has left the practice to paint full time.  Their father was a well-known artist.

Queenstown, South Africa, Friday, 22 July, 1983

(HELENA). Before going to bed last night, Mrs. Horne found out how fond we are of being awakened by a good hot cuppa, so promptly at 6:30 this morning, there she was with our cup of coffee.  By the time we were dressed and ready to go, Joyce (Mrs. Horne actually calls her Joycie sometimes!) had been there a while and had the bacon and eggs ready.

Marjorie Horne is not one of these people who doesn’t know what to do with visitors.  When we told her we’d like to stay two nights and one day, she planned the day just right with a variety of interesting things.  First stop was at Jack Horne’s office, an old house that he and his partner have moved into.  Mrs. Horne had already told us about the front door that been horribly scratched by the previous owner’s dog and the strange signs (backward “J”) marked in black above each of the doors. 

We picked up Mr. Horne, and (after seeing Granny’s famous abstract painting) went to the museum with him while she went shopping.  Mr. Horne is on the board of directors, and it is housed in an old stone schoolhouse where he and their oldest children attended grade school.  He was particularly proud of an old house that they had reconstructed inside the museum.  Martin had suggested the idea. 

Mrs. Horne came to pick us up and we went home for a quick cup of coffee.  Last night I had asked her if she had a recipe for rusks, the dry dunking bread that Dan and I have become so fond of.  True to form, she immediately went next door to beg some rusks from her neighbor and this morning she not only gave me recipes, but insisted on making some so we could see how it’s done.  So while we bopped in for coffee, she got together the ingredients for the rusks.

Our next visit was to Queens College, the boys’ school where Mr. Horne, Martin and John (eldest son) went to school.  Quite an eye opener.  The campus looks more like a small university instead of kindergarten through “matriculation”.  Of the 600 high school students, just over 100 are day students.  The rest live in the school hostels.  We went into the school museum and saw all sorts of medals and pictures giving a lot of importance to sports.  I’m afraid that Dan and I consider the uniform (a black and orange striped blazer, grey pants and straw cheese cutters for head gear) a tossup between hideous and hilarious.  The top rugby players have a different blazer (with the same unfortunate colours) and little black and orange bill caps with tassels. 

Queens College and Girl's High School uniforms.

We drove around Mrs. Horne's school as well.  She had been an out of towner from East London.  Her mother died when Mrs. Horne was young and her father felt his daughters should go away to school and know how to be independent.  She had good memories of her school days there.

Before returning home for lunch we took a drive up one of the hills that overlooks Queenstown.  The scenic drive is also a game reserve, but we only saw a bit of game far way.  After yesterday’s dusty atmosphere it was “only a pleasure” to look across the town on a crisp, bright blue day.

White Queenstown at a distance

The Coloured township at a ditance

Lunch was most properly served on hot plates (on mats to protect the table),  with Mr. Horne reaching up to ring the bell (electric) for each course.  We had roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, curried cabbage, and dessert was another South African specialty – melk tart.  And of course tea in the sun room.  People here generally do not drink along with their meals.  Apparently they’ve heeded some health experts’ advice on not washing their food down.  (It is supposed to “dilute the gastric juices”.)

All day Mrs. Horne had been talking about taking us to see “the shells”.  We had no idea what that meant, and it didn’t sound terribly interesting.  It turned out to be a fantastic display of one woman’s art work.  She had two large rooms with paintings and pictures done in various mediums.  All of this was in her house and she had even painted a design on the floor of one of the huge rooms.  The small room was the most special:  several cases full of fanciful creations made out of only shells and materials found by the sea.  She had figures all the way from tiny children to whole scenes of fairy tales.  It was really beautiful.

Next stop was Dale Elliot’s newly bought studio.  This is the Hornes’ nephew who had just become a full time artist.  He and his wife bought this old house (over 199 years old) and are setting up a studio and gallery and are doing it RIGHT.  We had a cup of coffee there and went around the house which they are in the process of remodeling.  So far he’s got quite a fancy office-studio.  Mrs. Horne mentioned that tomorrow we’d be looking for a ride to Grahamstown.  Dale remembered that a bunch of Queens College teams will be going to play there, so he called several people to find out about possible rides.

While we were having our evening grape juice back home, Mr. Horne mention that he had found a ride for us with a man taking  his son to play in Grahamstown.  The time set for leaving is 7:00 so we all headed for bed early on.  Joyce had stayed on (we wondered if she spent the night here, which would have been illegal) so she served supper.  She had also washed and ironed clothes for us.

Queenstown- Grahamstown, South Africa, Saturday, July 23

(DAN) At 05:30 came a knock – Mrs. Horne with a cup of coffee!  The Hornes were going to 0730 mass (Anglican) so could not eat breakfast with us.  Joyce had been there a while already so we had toast, butter, two kinds of marmalade (homemade), eggs and bacon while the Hornes kept us company.  The “table” here is one of the most formal that I recall.  Speaking of table, theirs is a highly prized one made entirely of stinkwood, a tree that grows down in the forests of the Garden Route.  Along with “yellowwood”, they are used in all of the old “Cape Dutch” homes and are now quite scarce, thus they are highly prized. 

Our ride came by on time, and after picking up another youngster, we were on our way by 0710.  SA rugby by all accounts is quite a phenomenon.   This morning, for example, Queens College is sending 9 rugby teams (and three field hockey teams) to play St. Andrew’s at Grahamstown.  These 9 teams of 15 each only represent the Under 14 and Under 15s. The big boys are coming from St. Andrew’s to Queenstown.  A total movement of over 200 players, not to mention the parents that drive to support the team.  Grahamstown is 222 km away!  Mrs. Horne says that the SA railroads used to offer a special and the school would hire 3-4 cars and take the overnight train down one night and back the next.  White population concentrations are far apart in these parts.

Our ride was with the Ford dealer from Queenstown, and was very quiet compared to our last ride.  When you are in Queenstown you do not feel high because it is in a wide plain surrounded by high mountains.  But to go to Grahamstown you climb only a little through the mountains to the Nico Malan pass.  On the other side, however, is the escarpment with a drop of maybe 3000 feet before you level out.

On the Queenstown side the vegetation is mainly a sparse arid scrub.  Once over the pass the humidity picks up and the vegetation is quite thick scrub 6-8 feet high.

For the first hour we went in and out of Ciskei some three times. Ciskei is the newest independent homeland, only one year old.  The political problems they are suffering there have been in the news a lot lately.  The head of national security --who is also the president’s brother-- has been put in prison along with 14 other people for “plotting against the country of Ciskei”. 

Fortunately for the farmers, but unfortunately for rugby players and tourists it started to rain as we drove into Grahamstown.  The campground was not far so our ride took us there and dropped us.  We were there long enough to drop off our packs and then walked back into town.

Grahamstown figures prominently in The Covenant but is famous locally for being the home of the 1820 settlers.  1820 was when the first movement of British came out to settle and farm.  They were given land around Grahamstown and gradually spread inward.   To be descended from an 1820 settler is akin to tracing your roots back to the Mayflower --among the English speaking community I should add.

We spent the rest of the morning at the Albany Museum which is divided into a building dedicated to the 1820 settlers and another, half finished, for the Natural History of the area.  The first was well done with collections of “period furniture and dress”. The outstanding area in the Natural History part was the room of African instruments.  It was well labeled and by pressing 1 of 8 buttons you could hear a recording of a desired instrument.  In the first museum there was not one display for Black people except paintings of the fighting in this or that Kaffir war.  The “native” paraphernalia was displayed in the Natural History building along with the stuffed animals and “the origins of man”.

We had lunch on the deserted grounds of Rhodes University before setting out to see the sights of town.  The University was started with Rhodes money in 1904 (as was the University of Capetown).  The buildings were designed by Hubert Baker and had almost a Spanish Colonial appearance.  Of the 3500 students, 2000 live on campus.

Education is Grahamstown's largest industry as it has two large Anglican boarding schools (male and female) and Kingswood, which is a large coeducational boarding school (the first coeducational school in the Republic).  We walked through them watching the uniformed students with fascination.

Kingswood is supposed to be modeled after the Kingswood that John Wesley founded, “following the same ideals”.    The blurb also claims that it has “never stagnated or retrogressed”.  We were therefore disappointed to find a brand new gate monument at the entrance with a plaque saying “In honor of Rhodesian and other Kingswoodians who served their country”.  We stopped and watched some girls playing very strenuous field hockey.  Next we visited a cemetery[1] but it was new and not of much interest.  The school and cemetery are both in the Coloured part of town. The Fish River is the traditional border to where Blacks (Bantu) ever got before Europeans arrived.  Grahamstown is just south of the river and the change is very evident as most of the people on the street are Coloured now.

We looked at several old churches. There is an 1832 Anglican church. There is a Coloured Methodist Church right beside the White one and it looks equally old.  However it does not have a date, and of course is not mentioned in the tourist guide.  We walked around looking at the rest of the indicated historical buildings and then headed home.  Many of the old houses have been well preserved, yet look lived in.

It was still drizzling so instead of setting up our tent, we rented a rondavel at the campground.  We were glad because later it really stared to rain and kept on most the night.

(HELENA) Originally we were going to light a fire and roast some wieners, but the cold drizzly weather drove us to boil them on our Campingaz stove.  It felt good to be dry and warm, especially knowing that we could have been out in our cold tent.

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[1] Dan had worked two summers cutting grass in the cemeteries in Winfield, Kansas, so was something of an expert.