BAVIAANSKLOOF

PROFILE The old man and the kloof

Next time you drive through the Baviaanskloof, pull over at Babes se Winkel and say hello to Gustav Nortjé, the oom behind the cash register and a storyteller extraordinaire.

BY SOPHIA VAN TAAK

It’s a Monday morning in April and I’m with Gustav Nortjé (81) on the stoep of his turquoise house in the Baviaanskloof. It’s overcast: The clouds are heavy but seem reluctant to release their burden. In the front garden, a wind tugs on the branches of a scrawny guava tree. From the roof of the stoep hangs a ploughshare and some succulent planters made from plastic bottle halves strung up with orange baling twine. A clump of ferns grows in a corner.

Gustav looks like a farmer: leather boots, rugby shorts, two-tone shirt with a cellphone and a pen in the pocket. But he’s actually a shopkeeper. Well, he is now. The turquoise house borders his shop, which is right next to the only road through the kloof.

A cat emerges from the house but flees over the stoep wall when she spies me.

“Strepies! What’s going on with you this morning?” he says. Then he turns to me. “I’m one of the oldest men in the kloof. You can ask me anything about the people here. They grew up in front of me and I know them all by name.”

Gustav is one of the last Nortjés in the Baviaanskloof. There used to be many more of them, including well-known Afrikaans author PH Nortjé.

“Ja, my great-grandfather JG (Johannes Gerhardus) arrived in 1880 and got a title deed – he owned a piece of land that would later be divided between his three sons: Charlie inherited Grootplaas, Richard got Grysbult and my grandfather, Frank, farmed on Sewefontein.” Gustav points over his shoulder, as if those farms are right behind the house.

I’ve heard of Sewefontein before. It’s home to a natural spring and a forest of broom cluster fig trees that have sunk their roots deep into the water. A reliable water source is treasured in this region.

“After my grandfather passed away, my dad Hannes inherited Sewefontein. His initials were also JG,” says Gustav, further mapping out the family tree. “Charlie’s sons, PH and Francis, were his cousins. Francis lived in this house and ran the shop. His name was actually Johannes Gerhardus Francois. I’m also Johannes Gerhardus Francois. Can you imagine how complicated things got at the post office!

“This family of mine…” Gustav hesitates, then continues. “Look, Oom Richard was a donner. He had a twin brother who died when they were 12, trampled by an ostrich. My dad always said that God knew what He was doing because no parent would have been able to raise two of them…

“Richard drove a Belsize, one of the first vehicles in the kloof. The brakes weren’t very good, and he always had a 7mm Mauser behind the seat. One day, he was driving up the road when a donkey cart appeared out of nowhere. The brakes failed and he hit the donkey cart. The driver of the cart lay in the road and the donkeys were hurt. There was blood everywhere. Richard got the Mauser and put the donkeys out of their misery. The driver was still down, watching the whole thing. Oom Richard asked him if he was alright. He was terrified that he was about to be next: ‘I’ve never felt better in my life!’ he said.”

Gustav’s laughter sends Strepies, who has crept closer, scurrying away again. “In those years there were many people in the kloof. Many bywoners on the farms. You won’t believe me, but there were eight schools in the Baviaans at one stage. I went to a two-man primary school… Oom Francis and another of my dad’s cousins, Alfred Smith, were our teachers. All the kids from Sub A to Standard 2 were in one classroom; the kids from Standard 3 to 5 were in the other. After Standard 5 I went to high school in Willowmore, where I matriculated in 1959.

“I didn’t like school very much, but I enjoyed rugby and getting into trouble. My dad wanted me to go to Grootfontein agricultural college, but I told him I’d had enough of books. So, I returned to the farm – to Sewefontein.

“In those years…” He thinks for a moment. “No. See, I was born in 1941. There were only ostrich farmers in the kloof before my time. And people started planting tobacco. The road to Patensie was very narrow but in a good condition – it was graded regularly. We drove it in 10-tonne trucks to deliver tobacco to Patensie. After a while, they found out there was too much chloride in the soil and the tobacco farming petered out. We switched over to vegetable seed. I produced

“They still farm lucerne on a small scale, but the kudus eat it until there’s nothing left. In my day you wouldn’t even find a kudu hair in the Baviaans!”

Opposite page: When Gustav (bottom) and his wife Babes took over the shop 11 years ago, he named it after her. The shop only gets busy during holidays, but it stocks essentials like biscuits (top) and Zam-Buk (middle, left). During quiet periods, Strepies the cat (middle, right) keeps Gustav company.

vegetable seed until the 1990s. Vegetable seed was a big thing. The Baviaanskloof was the biggest vegetable seed producer in the country. Onions, beetroot, carrots, pumpkins, squash… you name it.”

Gustav falls silent and looks at the bare guava tree.

“It’s the monkeys,” he says. “They eat all the guavas. I didn’t even manage to pick one guava last year. Not one. They eat everything!”

He takes the pen from his shirt pocket and turns it over and over, lost in thought. Then he snaps the pen back and says: “My father passed away in 1983 and that’s when my problems started. I inherited Sewefontein with my two brothers, Siegfried and Alten. How could we divide the farm? The only solution was for me to buy them out. Jis, man… Instead of an inheritance, I had to take out a bank loan. I paid so much interest on that loan I could have bought two new bakkies every year with the money.

“That’s when I approached Gary Player to buy the farm. I called his horse stud farm near Colesberg. A foreman answered and when I asked where Gary was he said, ‘Hold on, please.’ Gary was with him and next thing he was on the line. I was flabbergasted! I told him the farm was in the Willowmore district because the Baviaanskloof wasn’t so well known back then. When Gary heard ‘Willowmore’, he thought ‘Karoo’. He didn’t know what the landscape looked like here, or that we had natural springs on the farm. He was still playing golf professionally and told me that he spent more time overseas than in South Africa and he already had the farm near Colesberg. He wasn’t interested. If only he knew what it looked like here!”

Gustav held out for 10 years before the bank repossessed his farm. He toys with a loose thread on the seam of his rugby shorts. “Nou ja, then I farmed for other people,” he says. “I planted orchards and lucerne fields and installed irrigation systems…”

After a pause, he changes tack: “It’s a shame this place is so dry. I’ve never seen it likes this. The trees are still green, but there’s nothing on the ground. The mountains are government land, but there were many farms here in the kloof. When they built the Kouga Dam in the 1960s, some of the farms were bought up. The parks board also acquired some. There weren’t many farmers left in the end.

“They still farm lucerne on a small scale, but the kudus eat it until there’s nothing left. In my day you wouldn’t even find a kudu hair in the Baviaans! There were cattle and dorper sheep, and Dohne merinos for wool, and angora goats… Mohair is the main industry now. People farm with sheep on higher ground where there is grass, but you have to pump water up there. Solar pumps – it’s the only way to farm. One year of rain won’t help – we need two or three.”

A wooden window frame hangs against the stoep wall, each pane holding a family photo of the Nortjés over the years.

“Here I am with all my children,” Gustav says proudly. “My daughter Marieka is a colonel in the police service in Port Elizabeth. And these are my sons: Reghardt is in Brackenfell – he does specialised drilling under roads and buildings; and Francois is an animal health technician in Cradock. That’s the new name for a ‘stock inspector’.”

There are also photos of his late wife. “She was also from the kloof,” he says. “Maria Petronella, but we called her Babes.” His finger lingers on one particular photo. “She wasn’t doing so well here. She’d had three small strokes and was in a wheelchair. I had to take care of her. I had help during the day, but I was alone with her at night. It was difficult. We knew it was coming, but when she left the kloof in an ambulance in January 2020, I didn’t know that it would be the last time I would see her.” He gets a far-off look in his eyes. “I still can’t believe how ill she was.”

A vehicle approaches and stops in front of the shop. A car door slams and a woman walks fast up the garden path to the stoep.

“Môre!” she says, introducing herself: Susan Reyneke from the olive farm Kamerkloof. “Is the shop open today?”

“No, it’s closed for as long as I want to sit on the stoep,” Gustav jokes.

“Can I get a pumpkin?”

“Jong, I don’t have pumpkins, cabbage or sweet potatoes, but there are potatoes and onions.” Susan is at the door and he shouts after her: “Look in the fridge –there’s broccoli, too!”

He turns back to me. “Babes and I fixed up this place 11 years ago. After Oom

Francis passed away, the shop was closed for a long time and was neglected. I had experience running another shop on the farm – in my grandfather’s old ostrichfeather sorting room. That one was called the Sewefontein General Dealer, but this one… I changed its name to Babes se Winkel.”

Susan emerges from the shop with a bag of apples, some bananas and a pack of candles. “I left R100 next to the till,” she says as she makes a beeline for her car.

Gustav tries to stop her. “Wait, I have to weigh the fruit!”

“Ag, weigh seven other bananas!”

“R100 is too much!”

“It’s okay; we’ll sort it out another day. I have to go – we’re harvesting on the farm. Bye!”

She steps around the guava tree, gets in her car and drives off.

A convoy of bakkies towing off-road caravans speeds past. They don’t stop at the shop. I wonder how much business the shop sees in a day. As if reading my mind, Gustav says: “The kloof is busy over Easter and at the end of the year, but I don’t have much to do with tourists. They only come in to buy a cooldrink, maybe some biscuits. I serve the community. Chicken, sausage, Russians, livers… Want to see?”

We walk into the cool darkness of the shop. The fridges hum softly. On a wide wooden counter, a book full of scribbles and sums rests next to a box of apples –R3,50 each. Above the cash register there are old signs for Chesterfield, Gunston and Satin Leaf cigarettes. I ask Gustav if he smokes. He laughs and shows me his hand: The pen he’s holding is squeezed between his index and middle fingers, like a cigarette.

“I smoked Lexington and always said if I make it to 50, I’d quit. Before I knew it, I was 50. I’ll never forget, it was a Monday morning, and everyone knew I was planning to quit that day. Babes couldn’t handle it. She gave me a carton of cigarettes as a present! I said: ‘Jinne, jong! Wat maak jy nou?’ And she said: ‘I don’t think you should quit – you’ll be impossible!’

“I smoked until October that year. I was still 50… One morning, I decided that I wouldn’t smoke that day. I walked around with a pack of cigarettes in my

VISIT BABES SE WINKEL

The shop is open on weekdays from 9 am to 1 pm, and from 2 pm to 5 pm. On Saturdays it closes at 1 pm and on Sundays it’s open from 11 am to noon. 38 go! #179

shirt pocket for two weeks. The pack wore through after a while, but I never smoked again.”

Gustav is in a reminiscing mood today. He groans as he sits down behind a desk; the surface strewn with papers, a pocketknife, a calculator and packets of Marie biscuits.

“I have rugby knees,” he says. “If I never played rugby, I would have been fine. I was a flanker for Willowmore. Number 6 – a fun position. I always said I’d play rugby until I was 30 and then I’d get married. Babes knew it. But then I was in a car accident and couldn’t play any more. Babes didn’t want to wait any longer. We got married in 1969, just before I turned 29.

“I drove a black Chev Impala in those years – we went to the Kruger Park for our honeymoon. We entered the park at Punda Maria and drove to Pafuri then down to Shingwedzi, Letaba, Satara, Pretoriuskop… We spent two weeks in the park.

“I left home with R300 in traveller’s cheques from Volkskas Bank. We paid for the accommodation in advance, but the other costs – petrol, food, cigarettes, beer… I drank long toms like it was going out of fashion and we still had money left when we returned home.

“Ai, those were the best years,” he continues. “It was the time of Elvis Presley and V8s – Chev Impalas and Chev Biscaynes… The food and drinks and cigarettes cost more than the petrol. Back then you didn’t budget for fuel, you just filled your tank for 35c per gallon.

“In 1964, I drove an 8-cylinder Biscayne from Willowmore to my brother in Vereeniging – 80 – 85 miles per hour. There was no speed limit back then and we drove fast. The petrol to Vereeniging cost R22. Unbelievable! If you paid that little for fuel in Willowmore today, your tank would be empty before you reached Beervlei Dam!”

Gustav makes us each a cup of tea and we return to the stoep. The weather is clearing up and Strepies is basking in a sunny spot. No rain for the Baviaanskloof today, it seems.

Another vehicle pulls up and a young man calls from the bottom of the garden: “Môre-môre! I brought the trailer.”

“Thanks, Hancu, leave it there under the tree,” Gustav calls.

Then, to me, he says: “This trailer also has a story. I was in Willowmore last Friday. The antique shop owner there is interested in a cupboard and a table of mine, and ag, some other things of mine he wants to sell. He knew I’d be coming into town again this Friday, so he suggested I take his trailer and bring the furniture, saving him a trip. But I’m forgetful in my old age and I forgot to hitch it up – I only remembered when I was already halfway home. So, I went to Nico Smith on his farm, Uitspan, to borrow his trailer, but then we had a whiskey and I forgot that trailer too! When I got home, I called Nico and asked him to find someone to bring me the trailer. And here it is.

“We’re a close-knit community. Everyone knows everyone. We care about each other. I thank the Lord for the privilege of growing up and growing old here. I would never adjust to life somewhere else.

“The young farmers still include me. I’m not lonely. It’s just the evenings alone that get to me. I hope I die suddenly –I don’t want to end up in an old-age home or a care facility… My children know: They must scatter my ashes in the spring on Sewefontein. And then I’ll haunt the place!”

He scratches Strepies with his foot. “Until then, this cat is my tjommie.”