1953 - my second year in South Africa

1953

 

Recollections:

The work Walter had found for John was that of oven mechanic for a bread bakery which had a long conveyor oven. Dough preparation started at night and by the middle of the night the dough, in separate pans, was loaded continuously at one end of the oven and came out at the other end baked. The baking process for a loaf took about 20 or 30 minutes. With hundreds of loaves being baked the oven ran for several hours.

The oven could only be repaired or serviced when baking had finished in the morning and after sufficient time had elapsed for it to cool down somewhat. The work sometimes involved lying on the conveyor belt while the oven was still very warm and travelling through the oven for the full 20 or 30 minutes. This was very hot work.

The bakery gave John the use of its electric van. This had a very 'tinny' body which rattled when the van was driven. At the back was a huge battery which had to be plugged in at the bakery depot daily to recharge.

 

January 1953

John has decided I should get a job and will have a maid to do the housework and look after Ann. There was never any discussion with me about this and after Elizabeth left Philomena arrived. . I had to sack her a few days after taking her on. She asked for bleach for the laundry and said she had used bleach on clothes at her last place. I told her I did not want bleach used on the laundry and it was only to be used for cleaning the sink, kitchen surfaces and toilet. 

Today I went into the bathroom and found she had put the laundry in the bath including two of my new dresses (only worn once) and had poured neat bleach over everything. The dresses had been patchily bleached white completely ruining them. I sacked her on the spot and she then had the nerve to ask me for a reference saying she had a right to one and couldn’t get a job without one so I wrote ‘Philomena has worked for me for one week.’

I have not had another servant since then and don’t want another but John told me, last night, that I had to go back to work because we needed the money. I’m not happy about leaving Ann in the care of a servant but John insists and was very unpleasant and overbearing about it.

 

14 January

I started a new maid a few days ago. John went out and found her. I was to start work on Monday as a clerk in an insurance office but on the day I was due to start work, she did not turn up. John said he would sort it and went off and brought back Mary who, he said, had been recommended by someone at his work.

 

February

Mary has proved to be untrustworthy and unreliable and I wanted to sack her. I am not happy with the arrangement and Ann isnot happy being left with her. John told me how he had found her. He had gone down to Jeppe station where women coming off the township trains hang around looking for work. He went up to one of them and asked if she was looking for maid’s work. She said yes and he brought her back. I couldn’t believe he had left Ann in the hands of a complete stranger. It doesn’t seem to worry him at all.

Yesterday, in view of what he had said about taking her off the street, I said I was not going to leave Ann with her again and would not go to work until someone more suitable was found. John insisted I was going work and when I argued with him he slapped me across the face. So I went to work. Half way through the morning I burst in to tears and my supervisor came over to see what was wrong and took me to the tea room. I told her what had happened. She asked me if I wanted to continue working and I said no, I wanted to be at home with my baby. She said that if I wanted to stop working at this job she could arrange for the firm to say they were cutting down on staff so that I would have an excuse for leaving.

Tonight John arrived home saying he had arranged that his mother will look after Ann while I work. He knows how I feel about that. I’ll bet she just loves that.

Later:

I now have a job in the Carlton Hotel but cannot say it is much fun. I am back in accounting and spend the day entering and adding up long columns of figures. That is all I do all day and I hate it. Hotels are all front for the guests but behind scenes the place is dark, dirty and grim.

 

April 1953

Visited the Rand Easter Show. This is a mixture of Ideal Homes Exhibition, car, trade, agricultural shows and fun fair.

The Chamber of Mines had a large display showing the gold refining process and a permanent imitation mine. To view the display we were crowded into a lift the same size as ones used in the mines. To experience conditions we were so packed in so that we couldn’t move, and stood shoulder to shoulder, pressed tightly against those around us. The temperature soon started to rise and I thought I was going to faint and wanted to get out. Horrible feeling. Then the lift was dropped a couple of feet suddenly and everyone shouted with fright - including me. It was a relief to get out of there.

We then boarded little trucks on rails which travelled round the ‘mine’. They even have men appearing to work underground using drills.

The next process of extracting gold from the rock involved crushing the rock to a fine powder and using cyanide to extract the gold. The residue is piled up on waste land and forms the great mine dumps of dust which dry but never solidify. Because of the cyanide nothing grows on them. Tiring day but very interesting.

This accounts for the fine yellow powdery dust which covers our furniture sometimes. Most irritating as it makes more work. There are mine dumps near where we live.

 

(Sometime during 1953 John’s old friend, Len, travelled out to see if he and his wife  would like living in SA. He stayed with us for about 3 months and then returned to the UK.)

 

May 1953:

John took up fencing at a club in town a while ago and took me along last night to a competition there. As we boarded the bus to come home I had my wristwatch (my 18th birthday present from Mum and Dad) stolen from my wrist. I didn’t notice until we were half way home.

 

Undated:

One night recently sitting with friends over a few drinks we heard noises outside in the back. John and Len went out to investigate and found two black men crouching down so they could not be seen as they passed the kitchen and dining room windows of the flats. They were probably looking for an empty flat to rob. J & L chased them down the road but lost them down a side street.

This is a very Afrikaans area and Nationalist meetings are held in the garden of the house next door. Sometimes it sounds as though a fight is going to break out with lots of raised voices.

 

Undated:

Soon after they arrived in SA the Bretters got to know an old gentleman named Ernie Green, who is about 78. He owned a house at 11 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown which stands in an acre of garden. His income, apparently, is insufficient to cover the upkeep of the house and he doesn’t want to move so the Bretters have offered to buy it from him at a very low price on condition they allow him to live with them until he dies.

 

September

The Bretters have moved into 11 Jan Smuts Avenue. The house is very big and has 5 bedrooms and is on an acre of land. They will take in ‘paying guests’ to help with the expenses of running the house. Parktown is a good address. They have also taken over James, Ernie's 'houseboy'. It's rediculous calling him a houseboy - he is over 40 I should think.

Ernie is an very interesting person although Mrs B always brushes him and his stories  to one side and clearly shows she had no patience with him. It was so very different before he agreed to sell them the house.

 

Ernie was born in the 1880's and his family apparently moved on to the Rand at about the same time. He has seen tremendous changes in the country and Johannesburg itself, having seen it grow from a small town into a city. It’s quite amazing to think that Johannesburg is less than 70 years old.

He knows the history of South Africa from those days and has tales of people he has met who became prominent businessmen such as Barney Barnato who killed himself by jumping overboard on a boat journey from Southampton in 1897 and the Joels and Oppenheimers.

He remembers the Jameson raid which took place when he was a young lad in 1895 and tells us tales of the Boer Wars and Oupa Kruger the last President of the South African Republic. Also of early in the century when the gold mine workers went on strike and there were riots in Jhb when many were killed and buildings were burnt down.

He also remembers when the roads of Johannesburg were laid out to allow the  teams of oxen pulling wagons (which together could be up to fifteen foot long even without the oxen) to turn in the road and when the trams first started running along Commissioner Street. The length of an ox team and the carts accounts for the width of the roads in the city.

He has certainly seen some changes and must have been quite comfortably off to have owned a house and grounds this size.

I learnt quite a bit about the history of the country by listening to him.  Gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand at about the time he had been born and he has seen the mine dumps growing up around the town. The early houses were built of corrugated iron and as there are some iron houses near us in Jeppe I wonder if they are from that time.

He said that, Jeppestown, was at in early times known as Natal Camp and nearby Ferreira's Camp (now Ferreirastown) was where the first tents were pitched. This was where early Johannesburg had first formed. Parktown then was the most fashionable part of town to live in.

The tales Ernie tells are exciting and full of interest though I suspect he embellishes them a little. He could write a book of his experiences. He has some little personal peculiarities apparently including never taking a hot bath and never using a towel to dry himself preferring to run round the bathroom until dry (which makes quite a racket on the wooden floors according to Mrs B.) This probably came from the days when there was only cold water. He never wears underclothes either which quite shocks Mrs B!

 

November:

We have been burgled 3 times in the last year. Twice in 1952 and once this year. We have little of value and can ill afford to lose what has been taken taken. Insurance replaces a few things but it never seems to be replace everything stolen. The police come out, take a report, but there is little chance they will recover anything.

Each time it was during the night while we were sleeping. On the last occasion they entered through the bathroom fanlight window and came into the bedroom while we slept and took clothes from the back of the chair at the foot of John’s bed and from the wardrobe beside me. It’s frightening to think burglars stood in our bedroom while we were lying there asleep and I wonder what would have happened if one of us had woken up? We are insured but it never covers the cost of replacing what has been stolen.