Two Vignettes of Apartheid

God has sent us here…

As part of an initiative relating to sorghum beer, my boss had made contact with two ministers in the South African Government. We had a brief meeting with a Minister Koornhof, who more or less dismissed our proposition out of hand, before I was then introduced to the MP for Paarl, who was minister of Commerce. He was quite helpful and helped me put together a dossier better detailing our proposal for the Sorghum Beer Industry. 

While the South African Apartheid regime was a disaster, my experience of the individual Ministers was that they seemed just to be caught up in a situation they really didn’t know how to deal with. Koornhof’s Oxford dissertation (I think he was a Rhodes Scholar) was concerned with reasons why Apartheid could not work.

The MP for Paarl and Minister of Commerce seemed to me to be a sincere and quite decent man said to me once: ‘God has chosen us and sent us here for a purpose. These people (referring to black Africans) are just like children. We are here to uplift them.’ He didn’t seem able to see that what they were actually doing was exactly the opposite. 

patrick the driver

Patrick was the General Manager’s driver at head office, but for airport trips he used to pick me up, often very early in the morning. I liked Patrick very much - he was a great character with a great sense of humour.

When our son Dougal was born he asked me his name. I told him he was called Dougal, but that we often called him ‘Bloke’.

“Ah,” said Patrick, “so the father is called Guy and the son is called Bloke.”

On another trip, picking up some overseas visitors from what was then called Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg, they passed some houses that had been set on fire. When the visitors asked what was happening, Patrick replied, “Practising. Just Practising.”

Patrick was a man of great perspicacity and exquisite timing. He could feel the polticial winds changing, and he kept a weather eye on it, as he had six children, and was determined that they would be properly educated, a thing that was impossible under Apartheid.