Willie got a lift to less than half a kilometre from his place of work. From the point where he got out of his friend’s car you can see the front gate of the premises. Half an hour later his employer tried to contact him, but there was no answer
Trees Misbehaving
Tannie Susanna van Wyk was an unhappy person. When I arrived at their home to collect bags of chicken manure for our garden, she was in the kitchen, her face looking like thunder, to use a colloquialism. Outside, their teenage Zimbabwean gardener seemed to have gone insane. He was as
Things that Dogs Know
We have two dogs. One is a middle-aged lady called Chloe. She is black. A little grey around the mouth reveals her age. Tiny grey spots around her head are marks of past battles. Chloe does not always act her age. She is part poodle and part pit bull. The
Willie
Willie’s problem is that his plot is up against the Wildsplaas. Now, the Wildsplaas is no longer a place where wild animals are kept, as its name suggests. But it is an excellent place for thieves to hide out and raid the plots bordering it. In a month, Willie lost
A Shocking Moment
We have a big pile of bricks. We had torn down a partly built house in the bushes, on the far side of our plot. Criminals had been using it as a place to overnight while looking for opportunities to raid the properties of other plot dwellers. The incomplete house
A Place Called Sunshine
The community of Sonskyn is one of those made up of the people who missed the opportunities offered by the old regime and now feel excluded by the new one. The difference is that, while most such communities are black, some others, like this one, are white. Whether segregation among
Magic in the Water
So you don’t believe in magic? You think that everything in life must have a rational explanation? Well, maybe, but then again maybe not. I spoke to a lady whose home was filled with the pungent smell of burning incense. “What’s that about?” I asked. “It attracts money,” she said,
Mathematics and the Bureaucrat
So you thought that mathematics and bureaucracy have nothing to do with each other. Well, that is not exactly so. Mix them up together and you get an omelette that is often inedible, but sometimes unavoidable. Many, many years ago, decades ago in fact, I was employed by the engineering
Personality After Death
“Do you believe in life after death?” I was asked recently by a friend. “Certainly,” I said. “Not only do I believe in it. I have proof.” “Oh, really?” he said, an eyebrow raised sceptically. So I told him the story of my mother’s ashes. “And you imagine that proves
The Factory
He came from the city. Right away we could all see that. And he came with a mission. He was going to change Bultfontein, turning it into an industrial hub. He was going to be the van der Bijl or the Motsepe of our area, maybe even the Elon Musk.