1960 was not the happiest year in SA. In January, riots in Durban killed a number of policemen. In February, rebellion against the government erupted in Pondoland, and in March the infamous Sharpeville Massacre took place. British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan made his memorable “Winds of Change” speech in the South African Parliament. 17 African countries gained independence that year.
On a happier note, the Beatles formed up in Liverpool and the birth control pill became commercially available. The world population was a tad over three billion.
In 1961, the Union morphed into the Republic and left the Commonwealth. This move was much welcomed by most Afrikaners, not so much the by the English-speaking population. The Black population may not have been too happy either, despite having endured one and a half centuries of British rule. I remember my old nanny, tears rolling down her cheeks, saying “They have taken our Queen away”.
Almost immediately, international pressure was exerted. South Africa was banned from the Olympic games. Within the country, apartheid was rigidly enforced, and the black liberation movements responded. Decades of mayhem followed.
Yuri Gargarin made the first human spaceflight. A Russian dog, Laika, had preceded him by four years.
In 1962, the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war, but President John F Kennedy faced down the Soviets as their fleet loaded with missiles headed towards Cuba, and we all breathed a big sigh of relief. Imagine a similar situation with Donald Trump in charge!
In 1964, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment, the Rhodesian Bush War began, and the author completed school without being expelled.
In 1965 Hendrik Verwoerd was assassinated in Parliament, Sir Winston Churchill died, and yours truly was conscripted into the Army for an interesting nine months. Looking back at the experience, it’s amazing how time effaces pain in favour of fun!
I do recall the suffering involved when I had to “skaapdra” a large fellow who was a postman in civvy life, up the butts at the shooting range at Hamilton in Bloemfontein. This punishment came about because the staff-sergeant instructing us in radio procedure left the classroom for thirty minutes.
In that time, we logged into the police channel and began reporting burglaries and murders all over. The cop vans went ballistic. But our staff sergeant was wise to us. “Julle is nou weer in die kak!”
Tempe was a not a holiday camp. But the Army does some strange things. Some of us entrained for Cape Town for six weeks of guard duty. We were garrisoned in the Castle, where we were served very decent food on crockery by waiters. What a change from the normal greasy horrors dumped into your ”varkpan”!
Our job was to guard Wingfield Airfield. At that stage there didn’t appear to be any other army presence in Cape Town, just those nancy boys in white ice-cream outfits who had landed with their bums in the navy butter. So armoured troops guarded an air force base under command of the navy. Weird.
One evening, while off duty in our guardhouse at the airfield, we had attempted to persuade the above-mentioned postman to part with some of his biscuits, but he was not budging. We made a plan.
While my mates kept him talking, I leopard-crawled up behind his bed, the idea being to remove the packet of biscuits from his pack. But I guess postmen have instincts honed by constant confrontation with angry dogs. He sensed my presence and used his large boot to good effect on my head. A brawl ensued. Eventually peace descended, the biscuits were eaten, and we all went to sleep, except the postman who sulked outside in the freezing winter rain, nursing his bleeding face.
I was rudely awoken by a naval petty-officer and after parade in the Castle courtyard the next morning, was brought before the Veldkornet (they had reverted to Dutch East India ranks at that stage). The postman and the corporal of the guard, a middle-aged man of limited intelligence, then laid their charges against me.
Apart from assault, battery, and biscuit theft, I was indicted for deliberately riding the corporal’s bicycle into a wall with resultant damage and of running and jumping on eight army beds until they broke. What saved my bacon was the lugubrious manner in which the two complainants laid their charges. I could see the Veldkornet biting his lip to stop himself laughing. I got off with confinement to barracks.
A year later, the 24-year long Border War started. It ended in 1990 with the approach of democracy for Namibia and South Africa, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It had evolved from an “anti-terrorist” movement into a proxy war between the West and the Communists. Over 2 000 South Africans and at least eight times as many Cubans, Angolans and Namibians lost their lives.
By this time, the USA was embroiled in the unpopular Vietnam War. In 1967, the Israelis whacked four Arab countries in the Six Day War even though vastly outnumbered. Dr Christiaan Barnard carried out the world’s first heart transplant.
In 1968 President Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. I was back in the Army for a three-week camp, on manoeuvres in the Free State. My buddy and I decided to charge a large anthill in our Ferret scout car, a lovely four-ton toy with a six-cylinder Rolls-Royce engine. The anthill won. We ended up with all four wheels off the ground and spent some time wondering how we would explain this problem. Luckily some friendly “tiffies” came by in their engineer’s truck and pulled us off.
The first moon landing took place on July 20, 1969. I remember watching the full moon. The computer processor on board the Apollo spacecraft ran at 0.043 MHz. A modern Apple cell phone runs at 2490 MHz! Woodstock happened, and Redstock, the Village version, carries on the tradition.
In September, the Tulbagh Earthquake, 6.3 on the Richter Scale, occurred during the night. I distinctly remember waking up as my bed shuddered and thinking to myself that I should perhaps consider spending less time at the Club. But the next morning there was a crack in the opposite wall.
The decade of the ‘60s saw big changes in the Village. Previously run by the Divisional Council, Redhouse became part of the PE Municipality. The cattle grid and old farm gate at the village entrance were removed. Streetlights became a hotly debated topic. The old manual telephone exchange housed in the then functioning post office opposite the station disappeared in the early 1970’s.
In those days, many people from the Village travelled by rail, including kids going to school in town or Uitenhage. We had a lot of fun on those old trains. Eventually, steam faded from the scene and now we endure diesel locos, with their banshee wail, about as romantic as a mobile brick.
The 1970s was the era of sexual revolution which lead to free and easy attitudes about mankind’s oldest game, but the backlash came at the end of the decade with the rise of AIDS. Feminism continued to fight for women’s rights.
Round about 1970, primary salt pans were established across the River from Redhouse and to the north where the golf course used to be. There was a major outcry about this as residents declared that salt seepage would kill all vegetation. It is true that the Golf Club gave up the ghost in 1978 but that was as much to do with the movement of serious golfers to much more attractive courses in town, and the removal of George Goba and his family from the area by the application of apartheid law. George had looked after the course for ages.
For nearly half a century the pans attracted thousands of birds and created the basis for a future tourism industry in the area. Unfortunately, the advent of democracy in 1994 also ushered in the era of kleptocracy, whereby the ruling party abandons all responsibility for governance in pursuit of looting the state. The pans are now salt deserts, and there are no more flamingos, entirely due to the incompetence of local government.
In 1970, the world population hit 3.7 billion and the Boeing 747 made its maiden flight. Bigger aircraft were needed!
In 1971, the microchip was invented, a significant step in the progress of computerization. In a throwback to the stone age, Ide Amin seized power in Uganda. A murderous nutcase if ever there was one, old Idi demonstrated that democracy has an inherent weakness in that it relies on the popular vote. Most voters make decisions based on emotion rather than logic. The end result is not always a happy ending. Look at the modern USA ,and SA for the last twenty-six years.
The yachting scene at Redhouse was booming. So was the South African economy but not too many could see the long decline that lay ahead.
In August, the River came down in flood. Alan Scott’s houseboat was moored in the River and he set off his alarm to awaken the Village at 04h00. I had returned the previous night from a six-week stay in Frere Hospital in East London, following an unexpected encounter with a bakery van in the middle of the night while on a hockey tour. The alarm woke me up.
The water was extremely cold. Numerous large serpents lay washed up on the Towpath, alive but immobile, their cold-blooded metabolisms no match for the conditions.
In 1972, Northern Ireland suffered the Bloody Sunday massacre and the Summer Olympics in Munich were disrupted by the murder of eleven Israelis by a Palestinian terrorist group. A South African Special Forces team carried out a raid on the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam using as their base the SAS Emily Hobhouse, a Daphne class submarine.
1973 was a BIG year in Redhouse. The Zwartkops Rowing Club celebrated its centenary with a well-planned series of events, including the reintroduction of rowing as a regular sport, culminating in a huge party entitled “Dancing through the Ages”, see picture. Most amazing fun. In December, senior yachting personality Alec Paterson introduced the Laser dinghy to the RYC. We laughed at it, calling it plastic Tupperware. We did not foresee the future of yachting.
The world population passed four billion in 1974 and the British and Irish Lions tour of twenty-two matches took place. The “Invincibles” led by Willie-John McBride won 21 games and drew the first in controversial circumstances. The tour scheduled for 2021 (COVID-19 permitting) will only feature eight matches.
The Vietnam War ended in 1975, a defeat for the USA that cost them close to 60 000 lives. Portugal abandoned its empire, leading to independence for Angola and Mozambique and long and debilitating civil wars in both countries. The first cricket world cup took place.
In 1976, the Soweto student uprising ended in numerous deaths. The first of South Africa’s puppet states, the Transkei Republic, was constituted. Traveling through the Transkei required your passport to be stamped at the bridge across the River Kei.
The first mass production of personal computers took place in 1977, Elvis Presley died, Star Wars became the highest-grossing film ever made, and the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft were launched. They are still travelling, the most distant man-made objects in the universe.
In 1978, Spain reverted to democracy under King Juan Carlos 1, the first test-tube baby was born, and the ANC attempted to kill about 500 of its own cadres by poisoning their food because an infiltrated enemy agent could not be identified. And this lot rule the country?
Smallpox was eradicated in 1979, the Rhodesian Bush War ended, and Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in the UK.
The 1980s were turbulent times indeed. The country was in a permanent state of emergency. Security patrols in the Village at that time were a lot more likely to encounter trouble than at present, not that we can afford to be complacent. One of the more hilarious incidents involved half a dozen burglars who broke into the now-demolished hockey club building via a serving hatchway. That night, four patrols were in position across the Village, in radio contact. The closest group found two bandits waiting for their mates to pass out the plunder, one fled, the other was whacked with a number four iron by a keen golfer. He was picked up in due course by the police, nursing a cracked scull. The lads inside climbed out of the hatchway straight into a police van.
In 1980, Iran and Iraq started an eight-year long war which had throwbacks to WWI, including the use of poison gas. Russia got entangled in Afghanistan, a move it came to regret. Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. Back home, the sailing scene in Port Elizabeth was dominated by large numbers of Hobie Cats and Windsurfers, and dinghy racing at RYC remained strong.
Part of Laingsburg was swept away within minutes by a major flood in 1981. Prince Chares married Lady Diana Spencer. The AIDS epidemic began.
The UK sent a task force a long way to recover the Falkland Islands from Argentina. A 74-day campaign led to a decisive victory for the British. Mrs Thatcher gained much popularity and the Argentinian defeat resulted in the eventual return of democracy to that country.
Redhouse experienced another major flood in 1983. The counter current along the Towpath was so strong that it carried a heavy clinker-built rowing boat 500 metres upstream! Australia won the America’s Cup, the first ever defeat for the USA in 132 years. Shortly afterwards, our SA team at the Laser World Champs in Gulfport, Mississippi experienced apartheid, American style.
Happy memories of O’Hagan’s pub in the French Quarter of New Orleans, along with paddle steamers, much music and loads of fun. One Rand got you US$1.20.
In 1984 Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and I learnt how to cook a sheep suspended inside a 44-gallon drum dug into the Towpath, with the fire built around the outside. Steam-cooked lamb, absolutely the best.
By the mid-1980s climate change was becoming a topic of conversation. The Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was sunk in Auckland harbour by French secret agents. The world economy was sick, and in South Africa it was worse. Port Elizabeth suffered greatly and at one time a third of the houses in Walmer were on the market. “Last one to leave PE, feed the dolphins and turn off the lights”.
In 1986, Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant exploded. Halley’s comet showed up. The following year the stock markets crashed world-wide. In SA, the situation was exacerbated by international sanctions. The world population passed five billion.
During the Laser National Champs in 1988 a fearful north-westerly gale came out of nowhere just after a fleet of 72 boats had returned from racing in Algoa Bay. A massive container crane slipped its brakes and toppled off the end of the Charl Malan quay in Port Elizabeth harbour. I still get the shudders thinking about what might have been if we hadn’t decided to bring the fleet ashore so we would get the sailors to the Mayoral cocktail party on time.
In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet bloc collapsed. South Africa dismantled its nuclear fission devices. Change was on the way. The Border War ended and talks between the government and formerly banned parties began. The following year, Nelson Mandela was released from prison. The Gulf War devasted Iraq and the World Wide Web was invented.
Evidence of change in South Africa was everywhere. The white percentage of the population had sharply declined. The first census in South Africa in 1911 showed that whites made up 22% of the population. This had fallen to 16% in 1980. Forty years later, it is probably about 8%.
In 1980, sports clubs in Port Elizabeth and surrounds were booming. RYC had so many boats multiple starts were always necessary. The Redhouse Hockey Club fielded four teams. By 1990, the RHC was no more, along with many other hockey, rugby, tennis, and soccer clubs. The RYC is a shadow of its former self but has hung in there, keeping the flag flying for yachting.
In 1991, the first website became available to the public. Namibia and 15 former Soviet republics gained independence. In 1992, a 13-kilogram meteorite destroyed a car parked in a family’s driveway in New York. Pope John Paul II realised the world really was round and lifted the Inquisition’s edict against Galileo Galilei posted 350 years earlier. The European Union came into being.
A new interim constitution was approved in South Africa, and finally in 1994, South Africa adopted a new constitution and the ANC took power, with Nelson Mandela as president. It was an interesting time!
