of the left ear, had dark-stained blood spots.
After the workday of twice around the clock, I left with my beetle the hospital. I saw in the rear-view mirror the people who prepared their sleeping places in front of the outpatient reception. The gatekeeper chewed on a piece of meat and held a bigger piece of meat in his left hand when I passed the gate. The gatekeeper pushed the gate wings together with his right hand. The sun was already sunken, but the sky had still the violet touch. I switched on the headlights and drove to the post office. There were two letters in the post box which I put on the passenger’s seat and drove to the mini-supermarket for a small box of milk, a grey bread and something to spread on the slices and a pack of Stuyvesant.
I had not reached the flat when a convoy of five Elands with the long ninety-millimetre barrels and the headlights on full beam took the sharp left curve and blinded my eyes five times that I stopped driving. The convoy has passed and left back a sandy cloud on the gravel road. When the cloud dispersed I started the engine and drove the last fifty metres to the flat and put the car on the parking place. I closed the gate by pushing the latch into the notch and wished myself a restful night. The sandals with the sweaty cork soles were left in the verandah when I entered the small sun-heated sitting room and put the bag with the shoppings in the kitchen and the milk and the sausage in the fridge.
I looked for the senders of the two letters. One letter with a handwritten envelope came from South Africa and was stamped in Pretoria. The other letter with the typed envelope that came from Germany. I put the letters on the small table between the outseated armchairs and went back to the kitchen to make a cup of rooibos [red bush] tea and something to eat. I put the stuff on the small table and ate my supper. I felt exhausted and drank from the tea and tasted the tart aroma of the bush. It reminded me of the people who walked barefoot or in self-made sandals with soles cut out from scrapped tyres to look after their small herds on the arid ground with the sparse vegetation. I took a second cup of tea and lit up a cigarette and opened the envelopes. The handwritten letter came from Dr van der Merwe.
Dr van der Merwe wrote that the ‘Herkules’ was jampacked and the returners were excited. The plane touched smoothly on the ‘Waterkloof’ airbase where the families and friends were waiting. The greetings with parents and friends were heartfelt. There were tears of relief and happiness in their eyes that he and his wife had returned unhurt from the far north. The father brought the homecomers to the farm not far from Bloemfontein in the Free State where they were warmly welcomed by the workers and their families. He knew some of the workers since he was a child and spoke even their language. They stayed two weeks on the farm where they were spoilt. He weighed the cattles and put the brand marks on them and repaired engines. He shot two kudus and followed the track of a leopard which had killed three calves. It took three days and two nights when he shot the leopard from the hideout in a tree.
He and his wife enjoyed the life on the farm and both gave the joy to some workers’ children as well. Van der Merwe wrote that he would have become a farmer, if he were not a medcial doctor. They left the farm after two weeks of nature and rest and returned to their flat where they met their friends. Life in South Africa had changed. The black people are seethed with unrest. The signs of resistance against whites are obvious. The crime had increased especially in Johannesburg. Robberies and murders occurred every day in South Africa. Farmers and their relatives were robbed and murdered. The people carry guns to defend themselves and their families. The white-ruled system is close to come to an end. The big change is in front of our doors.
Dr van der Merwe had contacted the academic hospital in Bloemfontein to start his postgraduate in orthopaedics, since he had appreciated the work in orthopaedics at Oshakati hospital so much. He asked how things were in the north when the few doctors had to cope with the work, if the wards are still overcrowded and the toilets are still stinking, if the air conditioner in theatre 2 is repaired and the old and defective operating table is replaced by a new table. He asked about my life and thanked for everything I have taught him. Under my professional and human guidance and advice he had collected a wealth of experiences and directives of great value that he will keep in mind for his life. Van der Merwe wished all the people in the north a better future what he did not describe in details. He wished the people strength to go the last part on the path to independence. He wrote that the war would accelerate the great upheaval that will move as a powerful roller from the Angolan border downward to the south and seal the end of the apartheid system. He expressed the wish to see another again in Namibia or in South Africa and gave greetings to the colleagues and the nurses.
It was a handwritten letter of a friend who was a highly dedicated medical doctor with a human face at Oshakati hospital. He was respected by the nursing staff and the patients. Dr van der Merwe was a son of the African soil who loved the African people and respected their diverse cultures and traditions. He practised in an exemplary way humbleness, honesty, diligence and humanity which are some of the important aspects of being a good doctor whom the people could trust.
Regarding the great upheaval, Dr van der Merwe had predicted it in an open conversation at a hot evening in his caravan what was the third of the five caravans on the right-hand side of the small path opposite to the tattered picket fence with the rolled-out barbed wire. I also remembered the pleasant young Ms van der Merwe who had prepared a cold lemon tea with ice cubes. Now he saw the sheet lightning in South Africa and I could imagine it as the last act of a long era. This era was historically and from the human point of view a tragedy for the black people and for the white people became the end of the era like the awakening in front of a deep canyon.
It was the flaw with the illogical and anachronistic pattern in the white thinking. The realization comes too late that a social system of segregation and discrimination regarding the other-than-white skin colours could not work due to the practised inhumanity and injustice. This system had to disappear definitely and shamefully. The black storm on the ‘pretorianic’ stronghold stood before. The anachronistic ‘concrete’ heads of the last stubbornness will sit behind bulletproof glasses in the modern ‘Wagenburgen’ [waggons put together as a fortress], but they cannot hinder and not repulse the heavy storm which will bring the historic change.
I got the long Angolan border in my mind as an ignited fuse that led to the tremendous escalation of war what consequently gave the strong impulse to the ‘roller’ for its southward movement with an acceleration of the sinking apartheid vessel and the docking of the new power vessel with the black crew of the new era. One of the final questions was: To whom belonged the country and the continent? The answer should be fair and just: To all the people who do respect each other and in particular to those people who have their biological and cultural roots in this African soil. That should be the case for the San-people [Bushmen] as well who are the oldest inhabitants in sub-Saharan Africa. They are short in length and bright in their sandy skin colour and lived some thousand years in harmony with the nature.
San-people were highly specialised track readers and skilled hunters with bows and arrows. The South African army used them as tracker ‘dogs’. Most of their natural habitat were taken away from them either by the whites or by the blacks who pushed these people deeper into the desert by ignoring their basic rights on land for their living and by neglecting their needs as the oldest inhabitants. The San population had therefore decreased dramatically due to the dry, vegetation-poor and karst environment they had to live in. Alcohol has destabilized the rest of the San community to a large extent.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu brought the attitude of the whites to the point: “The whites came with the bible in their hands and we had the land, but after a short while they had the land and we had the bible.” The whites became the landlords that the black people became field workers degraded and depressed with their families into full dependency from these landlords and deprived of their human rights on the white farms what was originally the land of their fathers and forefathers. The whites ruled with the white muscle power and with clips round the ears and with cudgels and more. All this had started with the segregation and the colour bar that had resulted in the
