The Road to Johannesburg

If any of you are interested, I have an eBook I am working on I cover my life up to the exit from the then newly independent Zimbabwe in 1981. It is similar in presentation that it has a lot of pictures

Click any pic for slide show

Chapters 1-2 Chapters 3-4

Using an extract from my book for the text here.

With sadness in my heart, as I approached that dome rock in Bala Bala, I realised, I was never coming back to my beloved home town Bulawayo. I think I may even bawled a bit, even midnight cowboys can cry.

The journey to Beitbridge although exciting was also a very sad day. I knew I was leaving a life, lost in politics and would have to take my pioneering spirit south of the Limpopo.

I cannot remember the name of this dome rock but was on the way to Beitbridge, the border town between Zimbabwe and South Africa. This was at a small town called Bala Bala. There were many such rock outcrops around and one has to wonder how they originated. We have no "recent" volcanoes there and the closest one is Mt Kilimanjaro which is in Tanzania.

Arriving at Beitbridge, the border post was teaming with a lot of folk also on their way out. 9th January was not the normal time for a vacation to SA. There were many cars packed to the brim and roof racks three suitcase layers high. Some folk had their caravans, others trailers. What was common, all of them were really overloaded. My car had essentially a suitcase or two in the boot, my tools and a steel trunk on the back seat, my entire worldly possessions.

I feared a search and seizure as in that trunk was all my army kit, the three unit's colours I had served in, berets, some camo, my ruck sack, harness that held kidney packs etc. I entered the customs office trying to look aloof and cool. When I came to the window, the guy asked me where am I going and how long. I said I had lots of family to visit so would be gone about 3 months. Klunk, klunk; my passport stamped and the pass slip for the border guards. No search and seizure and as I crossed the Limpopo river, I breathed a sigh of relief, I had smuggled my army loot out.

On the South African side, it went a lot quicker, “Welkom to Souf Efrica Mr Krueer” (the way they pronounce my surname in SA, with a silent “g”.

Klunk, klunk; another stamp (the last) on my Zimbabwe/Rhodesia passport ever, boom pass issued. No searches here either. They had a good idea what was happening with the “extended” holiday.

The boom lifted, I released my clutch, pulled away and was on my way to Messina. In the rear view mirror, I saw the last images of that border post.

Baobab tree (unusually with leaves)

Messina is the first town after the border on the SA side. The region is for all intents and purposes desert and rainfall is very sparse, not sure of the age of these trees but they are very old as water here is negligible. The tree bears a fruit like a coconut and when you break it open, inside are round seeds about a 1/4" in dia covered in white powdery cream of tartar. You put this in your mouth and suck them to get the powder off. It is sour and stimulates the saliva glands, seeds get eaten by monkeys and then deposited in excrement where they then take root and start the long growing process.

This area is very arid and hot.

After this comes Louis Trichardt (named after a General of the Anglo-Boer War) and before the long mountain climb you had two tunnels to go through.

On the other side of the mountain you descend to the town of Louis Trichardt.

View of Louis Trichardt from a mountain called Hangklip (Hanging Rock)

From here on you are on the plateau which is much of the highlands of South Africa varying between 3500 to 5000 feet by the time you reach Johannesburg.

The next town is Pietersburg (now renamed Polokwane)

Not much to see here as this starts some of the mining and huge farming areas. In the days of sanctions folk used to find ways of getting forex and come this far to buy goods we could not get. We pretty much did OK and a huge industry sprung up in the then Rhodesia and we started canning our own goods and manufacturing a lot of what we formerly imported. We sustained a 3.5% growth rate over 15 years and that in a time of war and sanctions. Any economist would wet his pants for a growth rate that high these days.

See what the fucking USA globalisation initiatives did?

It has already been said Americans have warped idea of Africa and a lot of folk think I live in squalor or standards lower than the USA. We are not a Banana Republic (yet). South Africa at one time produced over 60% of the world's gold and we are pretty much Americanised in the big Cities and metropolis of Gauteng (Formerly the Witwatersrand) which is where close to 25% the population lives. Pics of Gauteng

The whole province is almost one huge city and demarcations even back in the 80's you are leaving city (name) and 100m along you are entering city (name)

Johannesburg skyline

A story of the tall round building, called Ponte Towers. They were considering making this a prison at one time. It is hollow on the inside and what happened post independence, many black folk moved into the city with the repealed race habitation zoning laws and with them the criminal element from adjoining Soweto also moved in. The prisons in Jhb are just too small these days. The standing joke was that the prison would come with occupants. As pretty as it is, few folk venture into the city at night, all the night spots of the 80's are no more and most relocated to safer areas.

What you don't see from these pics are 10' walls and razor wire with electric fencing incorporated on top of that. The few safe areas are gated communities with armed response patrols.

The roads and infrastructure could not handle the influx and many businesses moved their headquarters out which saw a boom in a relatively new town called Midrand (formerly Halfway House) and houses many HQ offices for folk like Siemens, all the car manufacturers and also the IT industry. It is more or less our version of silicon valley.

Typical structures in Midrand, not many pics as it is mostly a business centre. Property here is frigging expensive but is serviced by two freeways and trains.

Pretoria Skyline from the Union Buildings

Pretoria (now Tswane as the town was formally named after another Boer General) used to be one of the two state capitals of SA. Govt. would migrate between Cape town and Pretoria. Pretoria was the Administrative Capital and Cape Town the Legislative Capital and Bloemfontein the judicial capital.

My cousin was a PA to one of the ministers and she travelled between CT and Pretoria. Pretoria is where all (or most of) the foreign embassys are located. Everyone still calls it Pretoria as most businesses are not about to change all their letterheads to appease some fringe nut with issues from 17+ years ago.

Tswane is really just a name for the municipal district and another huge cluster-fuck of the current government where municipalities were merged, now fuck all gets fixed as it is always the fault of someone in another city. For example, where I stay, we have had no street lights for over a year in our section, cannot even replace a simple light bulb as their cherry picker is broken.

What is happening now, services are being contracted out as the Affirmative Action was just a guise for jobs for mates and they are all fucking incompetent. In the days of white rule, you fixed the cherry picker yourself. Guys filling post of electricians now were electrician's helpers then (not trainees) and do not have the necessary training or qualifications but they have a car and cell phone and housing allowance and all of them drive BMW's. In the old days, not even the town's heads of Dept. drove BMW's. Most of these municipalities are bankrupt b/c of this stupid misappropriation of funds.

When I worked for the Power Utility Eskom, before I left with an AA package, I was one click below management and was next in line of succession. All I ever drove was a Toyota Corolla 1.6l and I don't think it even had an aircon. It was a dedicated pool vehicle and only for official business, I could not use it to go to the mall unless it was on the way home and it stood parked on weekends. I had to use my own car for shop visits or social visits. If one of my subordinates need to go somewhere, they used my vehicle, they all used their own cars to get to the office. I applied for a car allowance and upper management turned down the request and gave me a brand new pool vehicle of their choice. Of course upper management now is mates of mates and so protocol has gone with the proverbial wind.

Sandton Images

Sandton Centre

Sandton is where all the rich folk live and a typical house here looks like this

This is not even very upmarket but is about ZAR3-7M+ Some of the real larney houses are estates and we are talking ZAR25M+ (divide that by 8 for an approx USD price)

Remember we do not earn USD here. My house in my hick town is valued at ZAR850k which I bought furnished for ZAR140k in 2005.

Gauteng has some of the finest highway systems and upgrading started prior to the 2010 Football World Cup and is still in progress. Long time overdue.

Apart from driving on the left hand side, you would not really feel you are in Africa other than the fine sunny weather teh guud lord has blessed us with

The legacy of Johannesburg and the glory years of lotsa gold are the old mine dumps proliferating the landscape.

They did start recycling them for more gold extraction with a view to pumping the waste into disused mines but that stopped as it turned out to be too costly; and that was when gold was about $300/fine ounce. New mines only bring shaft sinking rubble to the surface. The ore is processed underground as many of the mines are deeper than 3500 metres. Only the raw gold ingots (not gold bars) come to the surface these days. The deepest gold mine in SA is about 3.5-4km below the surface. SA is now exporting this expertise to other African countries.

The mine dumps are due to a process called Heap leaching. The crushed ore was drenched with cyanide which dissolves (to ess. ions) the gold and then via a process of using activated carbon to selectively absorb it, or the Merrill-Crowe process where zinc powder is added to cause a precipitation of gold and zinc. The fine product can be either doré (gold-silver bars) or zinc-gold sludge that is then refined elsewhere. (see Wiki article)

The old methods were primitive and the dumps still contain huge amounts of gold than can still be extracted by more modern processes.

So the next time you look at your gold wedding band, chances are very high that the gold came from lil' old South Africa, and probably the diamonds too.

Zimbabwe gold mines have a higher yield per ton but folk are waiting for the antichrist Mugabe to die, and a full democracy before anyone is going to invest there. He was not even born in Zimbabwe IIRC, a foreign fuck who happened to to be in the right place at the wrong time. Even the black folk in Africa hate him. The day he dies there will be parties in the UK, AUS, NZ and in SA. You may even hear a distant roar, don't worry, it is not the rapture, just us Whenwees (term for ex-Rhodesian) celebrating.

You know just one bunker buster and a flight by one of those larney stealth bombers..... hint hint......

Sorry for the injection of political rants but this history also needs to be understood.