by Chris Marais
He declared that his spot at Pampoenskraal was far superior to the “sumptuous grottoes of our wealthy financiers, the magnificent villas of the English citizens, nabobs and plunderers”. Those “grottoes and villas” took a couple of centuries to arrive. So did the “English citizens, nabobs and plunderers”.
Knysna, as we drove in, was very busy, even in the doldrums of the pre-Christmas season. “Money on the move.” A far cry from the scenes recorded in the journals of Hjalmar Thesen, great-grandson of the timber entrepreneur whose family line ran deep in the area.
When the Duke of Edinburgh visited Knysna in 1867 to bag a couple of the local elephants for his trophy wall back home, the village consisted of 25 “European homes” and a wharf. The real cowboys of the Knysna forests were, of course, the woodcutters. They lived off honey, sweet potatoes, wild boar, fish, pumpkins, bushbuck, bread and coffee – and the kind of food you’d only find in a very special deli today.
Another legendary Knysna character was George Rex, who may or may not have been the illegitimate son of England’s George III. Anyway, it didn’t hurt to have that kind of rep in those days. Rex did what most men in the district would do: he kept ostriches, hunted elephant and cut timber. He also persuaded the authorities in Cape Town to turn Knysna into a proper port. Interestingly enough, records showed that one of his descendants was the circus clown called Stompie, who partnered the equally famous midget called Tickey. Not to be confused with the hero of Marianis Mini Sirkus, which once played to limited crowds at Alexander Bay.
We shopped for victuals and went off to our digs, the Endlovana Coastal Hideaway near Belvidere. It was a tented camp in a world of fynbos and milkwood, a short walk from the beach. Working on this family property and learning a few environmental lessons along the way had turned its owner, Susan Campbell, from “arrogant and ignorant” lawyer into someone dedicated to low-impact living. She was certainly not on the side of the rampant developers of the area.
After the first night in Endlovana, Jules wrote in her journal:
“It makes you wish your childhood-holiday memories had been of this. Being in a tent exposes you. You feel the coastal winds, and the light veil of mist on your face. It changes your hair and the texture of your skin. You feel sleepy more often. You eat well. Last night we used the open-air shower on the top deck, bathing in warm water in cold night air, watching the stars. This is a generous place.”
The next afternoon found us up at the Pezula Estate, which Steve du Toit had recommended as one of the more “positive developments” along the Garden Route. Pezula’s owner-developer, Keith Stewart, looked a bit like the late movie director John Huston. There was also an air of the hungry wolf about him. But The Big Pezula wasn’t out to eat us that day.
Keith Stewart didn’t open up shop here because he needed the money. He’d made his fortune from inventing photocopier add-on equipment during the 30 years he’d spent in the USA. He bought the 630-hectare hilltop land overlooking Knysna and cleared the plantations, reintroduced fynbos to the property and sold large plots where houses could be some distance from one other.
“I had the luxury of time, so I cut no corners,” he said. “Now we have some of the most valuable real estate in the country.” (Hence the price tag for one plot of about R14 million. That’s land only. Mansion extra.)
But the laws of living in Pezula seemed to ensure that, for once, a coastal development would be a thing of value rather than an environmental eyesore. The homes of Pezula would have fynbos occupying their garden space. If you were in love with an exotic plant or flower, then you had to keep it in a courtyard under strict quarantine conditions.
It was most definitely a millionaires’ playground in the offing, but Pezula employed local people (and not just as waiters), was restoring some of the indigenous environment and was sorting out its water-usage issues.
You could always find someone willing to sell you dark secrets about Pezula in a dimly lit bar somewhere – but that, we were discovering fast, was standard issue for all developments along the so-called Garden Route. We were planning to gently sidestep this particular den of slithers but had to ask Stewart how he felt about the proliferation of poverty co-existing with all this wealth.
“There is no excuse for the shanty towns you’re talking about,” he said. “Government is just not doing enough. There is a skills fund worth billions of rands – and it’s not being used. In this area, there are 40 000 people living in poverty. I say to the local municipality, let’s take a chunk of the land you own. I’ll build 500 houses on a piece of it for free. Let’s get the other developers to build the rest.”
As we were preparing to wind up our time with him, Stewart said:
“Just remember, I’m here for the long haul. And, unlike most developers, I live on the property. You know where to find me.”
From riches to Rasta. The next day we drove through Knysna for our appointment with Maxie Melville in the township of Khayalethu, more precisely, the precinct of Judah Square.
Seen from a distance, Khayalethu had a stylish woodcutter thing going for it. Every building was handmade with planks, there were vegetable gardens and shops painted garishly. It looked like a large, rather funky, forest village where real people hung out. Poor, granted. But guaranteed to be interesting.
It was Saturday. Kids were playing cricket in the streets, using tomato boxes for wickets and crude bats. Near Judah Square we saw the ‘Rastamuffins’, preteens in their dreadlocks, goofing around near a wall of Rasta quotations.
Maxie’s home was not a dagga den. It was a small, clean house with timber add-ons. Someone had been baking. You could smell that ‘Granny’s just been and she left something for pudding’ aroma about it. There was nary a trace of a spliff, joint, bong or Rizla rolling paper.
Maxie, 40-something, lanky, dreadlocked and square of jaw, bade us sit.
“At one time the Rastas of Knysna lived apart, dotted about Khayalethu,” he said. “It was awkward. We’re vegetarians and don’t drink alcohol. People had meat braais around us, there were shebeens, drunks on the street. Then we got up a petition with 2 000 Rasta signatures, asking the authorities for our own space. Welcome to Judah Square.”
We had to ask about the dagga, which was part of the Rasta culture.
“All our households have a plant,” he said. “In summer they’re visible, because they grow above the fence line. But we have no crime. There is no rape, no robbery and no assault in Judah Square. We never pick up a gun. We never take hard drugs. To us, ganja is like food. It is our inspiration. It is the herb of herbs.”
As members of the general Knysna population, how did Maxie and his group feel about developments along the Garden Route?
“It’s a bit much. We’re worried about the nature. Development takes away our space, our beauty and our privacy. They say they’re bringing jobs but they only last a short while. The developments only benefit the rich. Our natural areas are getting smaller and smaller, and they’re pushing us out. They say it’s job creation and betterment, but is it really?
“We need more balance. Here, there is great wealth and great poverty close to each other. But there is no love.
“Besides, Rasta don’t play golf …”
Chapter 21: Plettenberg Bay to Keurbooms Strand
In Charm’s Way
A seasonal blend of suntan lotion, high hopes and lust. This was Plettenberg Bay in the summer of 1972, the year they opened the Beacon Island Hotel out on the rocks where once stood a whaling station, complete with boilers, bone crushers and blubber processors.
Not the world’s most romantic place in the early days.
But back in 1972 it was spring break for soldiers, and we lay on Lookout Beach like shorn goats released into the general population.
It was the time of Frank Zappa’s ‘Overnight Sensation’, Elton John’s ‘Crocodile Rock’ and Alice Cooper’s ‘School’s Out’. We memorised Frank’s soft-porn ‘Camarillo Brillo’ and ‘Dynamo Hum’ and trie
d our best to surf the easy waves of Lookout. All but one of us ended up posing sadly on our beach towels, surfboards lying nearby in a discarded heap.
The real surfer dudes were locals such as Rod Hossack from Vic Bay, who protected the Petals of Plett with their lives. The inbound Jo’burg parents guarded their girls like family treasures.
But we – a small brave band of five – had one another, our minivan and six weeks to blow on sunburn and optimism. And so we chomped little hamburgers from the Formosa Café in the delightful one-horse town of Plett and got drunk on two beers each and kept trying our luck with the petals.
It was hard going, at first. And then an unusual recruitment took place. Julia Rattray, one of our ‘home girls’ from Jo’burg, joined us. A girl? For sure. But not your run-of-the-mill girl. She could hold up her end of a wine bottle all right. Julia began to introduce us to the darlings of Plettenberg Bay and, after a few embarrassing false starts, we all found some form of summer romance.
The years went by, Julia became a newspaper photographer and we all hung out together in a large group at weekends in an edgy old villa of reduced circumstances in Bez Valley, Jo’burg. She took up with Kevin Carter, who was to win a Pulitzer for his photograph of a young southern Sudanese girl in drought conditions (with a vulture waiting patiently in the background for her to keel over) and they had a daughter called Megan. Kevin took his life and became a tragic cult figure around the world. Julia became a writer and went to live on the family estate near Plett with her daughters Sian and Megan. We have been friends for more than 35 years.
After weeks of drifting along the coastline, Jules and I decided that – even though we classed ourselves as liberal and democratic and all that – to allow your average South African freedom of housing design was to give him a loaded gun. There was just too much individual bad taste about. Many of our seaside villages looked like either tatty nightmares or identical seal colonies.
South Africa needed some architectural consistency, just like there once was in the old Karoo. And in some parts of the Western Cape.
So we needed to have speaks with Julia’s younger brother Martin, who over the years had designed classy coastal homes, hotels and polo complexes collectively worth more than R1 billion. Martin, the distinctly mad genius of the Rattray family, would know.
“The only problem with all this,” I said to Jules and Julia, our new travelling companion sitting in the back of the Isuzu, “is Horst.”
“Oh, Horst is a darling. He’s an absolutely adorable sausage,” said the languid Julia, sneaking a cigarette on the back seat and blowing the smoke out of a crack in the window when she thought I wasn’t looking.
Horst, for the record, was Martin Rattray’s Rottweiler. I had never seen a bigger dog in all my days. Horst could crush your back with one of his front paws. And I wasn’t keen to enter Martin’s place up on Fairview Farm at The Crags unless Horst had been placed safely behind a fence somewhere.
The other dogs in his life were spaniels. Many of them. Martin even had a cherished motor-bonnet ornament in the form of a spaniel in the On Show position. He’d had many a car crash in the district and, no matter how pulverised his old Mercedes would be, the silver spaniel rampant ornament always survived.
The signs in his coach house-cum-office read:
“Let us build such as our children will thank us for”; “A single ugly villa can dethrone a dynasty of hills”; “Beauty is necessary”; “Man becomes what he sees”; “The quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten”; “Piss off, I’m busy.”
Large chalices of wine were poured. Martin was immediately on the case:
“De gustibus non disputandum, old boy. About taste there can be no discussion.”
Did the country need a coastal-aesthetics committee, we asked.
“No teeth, no teeth at all. If you want to make sure there is visual, stylish harmony on the coast, it must be written into the building codes,” he said. “In any village, it’s good to have a signature characteristic, a flagship design.”
Why had South Africa been floundering away in a stew of styles, all mixed up and eclectic without being cute?
“Now write this down,” he ordered Jules with a mock-imperious air. “South Africa, by now, should have a style whose mother is Cape Dutch House and whose father is Ndebele Cottage. Look at those Australians and what they’ve done with the typical outback farmhouse.
“And if Plett were in Scotland, you would find an established village built in the time-honoured fisherman style by people using local material – people with a strong sense of community. They would have lived off the sea and there would, of course, be a fishing harbour with a market. It would look marvellous.”
What about ‘low maintenance’?
Martin cringed at the term. Then the light of battle went on in his eyes and he raised his wine glass like a saluting gladiator.
“Mining-camp mentality. Everything is created in a rush, with regard only for usefulness. And then there is the nouveau riche crowd, the ‘look at all my money’ gang. It will still take a few generations of wealth before people have the confidence to relax and not feel the need to show off. I have a client, for instance, who has opted to disguise her spa, gym and steam room in what looks like an old farmhouse. That’s style.
“If you love a plasma TV screen, you can have one. But why not put that TV set into a home built in the style of a fisherman’s cottage? It doesn’t have to be [insert dramatic shudder here] face brick all the way. My friend Gordon Forbes [the former tennis star and author] once gave me the most beautiful brief. He said make me look as if I’ve got a lot of style but no money.
“Charm is marketable. Charm is valuable. I will send Horst the Rottweiler after any person who regards charm as secondary to low maintenance.” As if on cue, the monstrous Horst came into the coach house and showered me with spittle from his spade-like tongue. When he saw Julia his eyes rolled with pleasure and he rumbled over to where she sat.
As usual in this part of the world, the conversation drifted to the weather. I remembered Plett from years gone by, when the rainy season would seriously set in and we’d spend many consecutive days indoors, wandering why the hell we came down here hoping for quality beach time anyhow. Now, it seemed, there was more sunshine than anyone needed. The district was drying up.
“I live on rainwater that falls on my roof,” said Martin bitterly. “I sometimes have just enough to wash with a bucket and a face cloth. And that brings me to my next question: why on earth don’t all South African homes have underground water tanks by now? We still haven’t realised we’re living in a dry country. We pray for rain in the dry season, and then when it comes we just let it run off our roofs without storing it.”
As the afternoon at The Crags wore on and the wine flowed, the conversation went walkabout a little. We were now in Scotland, with Martin inhabiting a castle he had inherited. A castle that burnt down in mysterious circumstances. Martin wasn’t saying a thing about that. But he did tell us about the delicate ‘Code of Butlers’.
“While I was living in Scotland, I visited a friend living in another ‘rotting stately’ up the glen,” he said. “When I asked the butler how my friend was, he told me that ‘milk had been needed upstairs’. That’s butler-speak for ‘Her Ladyship has a dreadful hangover’.”
Inspired by Scottish memories, he rushed off and fetched a bottle of Bell’s. Pouring generously, he added:
“I learnt to drink whisky in Scotland. They say they use enough water when they make it, so you shouldn’t add more. And ice? Oh, ice bruises the whisky.”
Then we were in London with Martin, where he’d had a brush with the law.
“I’ll never forget the headline: ‘Boozy Toff Attempts to Enter Ritz Without Exiting Car’. I complained bitterly to the judge about the lack of parking space in Piccadilly.”
After two more Bell’s monsters, the Rottweiler had truly set in on the afternoon, so we fled down the hill with a promise to
meet Martin early the next morning.
We were a few minutes late in arriving at the entrance to Fairview and there was Martin, tapping his foot on the asphalt of the N2 racetrack. He was looking forward to the outing.
Our first stop was up the road, at the Kurland Estate. Martin had designed much of this grand homage to polo. The budding greenie in me bristled at the arrogance of the ponies, all the Plett bling and the Countess of This and the Prince of That and the Eurocopters that “thickened the skies” here over Christmas. And at all those millions of litres of much-needed water going to waste in the “hissing of summer lawns” (to quote Joni Mitchell) and the White Russian blood lines and curlicues and such.
But the old-time libertine in me was totally fascinated by the Jilly Cooperishness of it all, the who’s-bonking-whose-wife-ness of it all, the airs and graces and rush of the chase on the polo field and the gasps of the sexy young things in the summertime. That’s always been Plett, really.
We had come to Kurland to admire Martin’s new pavilion, an exquisite series of three white buildings, spacious and airy, with the delicate Victorian lines of spun sugar.
“Oh yes, the hissing of those summer lawns again,” I cursed, as a spray of water hit my camera. To make matters worse, you could see the not-so-distant smoky haze of the firestorm that was beginning to suck up an awful lot of the forests and plantations and villages around here. But the morning was hot, and both Jules and Julia stood barefoot on the green polo field allowing the spray to irrigate them from top to bottom. Jules tucked in her shirt and did a surprise cartwheel, and we all applauded. Meanwhile, the water flowed at Kurland, at a rate of 1.5 million litres a week. I remembered Rod Hossack’s words: