inadvertently, in south africa part two By Sara John
I realised at that point that until year previously Namibia had been under the control of South Africa so there could be some resentment from the regime about losing a country. My gentle ‘outburst’ was simplistic, a little helpless, a touch of being a quiet and gentle older lady, reliable and quite straightforward. I thought the best way to play the scene was slightly Dame Judy Dench.
We were standing, in the Emigration Hall of the airport, trapped in Johannesburg, facing two large armed Afrikaans Officials with enormous dogs, hearing the aeroplane we should have been on, flying up into the sky without us. Our torn up tickets to our destination, Windhoek, the capital of Namibia were blowing away before our eyes. It was one of the most serious, frightening and potentially dangerous moments of my fairly sheltered life, to date.
Observing the reactions from the officials, it seemed to work, Hugh glanced at me as though I was his mother rescuing him from big bad bullies in the park. Accordingly I felt, or imagined, the atmosphere to be easing a little, Hugh and I appeared to the officials not to be the exciting criminal ‘Aliens’ that they first apprehended after all.
By this stage, Hugh, my travel companion was too terrified to contribute to our interrogation. His personality was certainly not in any way confrontational, and he had not attended any of the Assertiveness Courses, or Personal and Professional Development Workshops that I had been running for many years. However, I decided that this was no time for me to be assertive!
We were told by the emigration officials that we HAD to purchase tickets for a S.A.A flight to Cape Town that afternoon, one thousand five hundred miles away and, in the wrong direction. Then we had to stay in the Cape Sun Hotel Saturday evening and catch a very early flight on Sunday morning on to Windhoek. Windhoek was more or less the same distance again, another one thousand five hundred miles. Hugh was fresh out of credit on his credit card so with another silent prayer I presented my debit card. (I dared imagine an assistant angel picking up the prayer, long distance, and saying to a colleague close by, “I DO NOT believe it, it’s HER again.”) Clickity click click went the machine, it had gone through without a hiccup.
I put my hands together on the tall counter in front of me and prayed, daring to wonder whether there was any assistance, spiritual, legal, diplomatic or otherwise, available in that country, South Africa, still under the apartheid system at that time. I recalled hearing the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster explaining that the power of prayer was always ‘worth a go’, because it was like leaving a message for someone on their answering machine! Hope for the best, he had said. We were asked over and over by the two officials if we had packed our luggage ourselves, where was our luggage, what was our business, and why were we trying to enter South Africa without visas?
Prayers work! Thank you God!. We were presented with two one-way tickets each. And, I retrieved my debit card and put it safely away. I risked asking if I could leave a message at my husband’s hotel in Windhoek explaining our whereabouts. One of the officials said yes. He asked for the hotel telephone number which I had safely tucked in my luggage, that is the luggage which I had not seen since Thursday late lunchtime. I said, “All I know is that it is called The Safari Hotel, Windhoek.”
I tried to explain to the officials that we were the innocents in all of this, we were travelling to Namibia from London and we had been diverted because of bad weather in England. We were travelling with Lufthansa and we followed their re-routing instructions for our journey via Frankfurt and Johannesburg and on to Windhoek to the letter. I added that by now alarms would have sounded in Namibia because we had been missing since Thursday and it was now Saturday! We were not tourists, we were on official business! The business was Broadcasting.
The Official rang a telephone number out of his notebook, and he handed the phone to me. The hotel receptionist answered and I asked to leave a message for my husband giving his full name. I
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Sara John - March 2020 page 1
Monday, 02 March 2020 11:24 Magenta Yellow Cyan Black
