was our AllPay day, you see,” says oom Klaas. “A young guy burnt to death in that house.”
6.
Between twelve and fifteen million people in South Africa depend on government grants.
7.
Why do I keep thinking of the bank robbery in Pofadder?
At first I thought it was funny: a bank robbery in Pofadder! Ha! Small-dorp drama! Five robbers, a hysterical teller, a flabbergasted police force. Just like an American noir movie, as if Pofadder weren’t real and only existed for the sake of the story.
And it’s possible that some people – especially city people – do see Pofadder as the prototype of a dorp, rather than an actual dorp. To those people, every backwater miles from the city is a Pofadder.
Daniëlskuil, the little place in the Northern Cape where I grew up, is one of those towns, far from everything and close to itself. Life in these towns isn’t idyllic and innocent. They also experience theft and rape, and, yes, sometimes people are even murdered in anger. But a robbery is something else.
A bank robbery is something daring, something calculated, something that happens in the big city with its gangs and syndicates. A bank robber hardly ever lives near the bank he robs. He comes from somewhere else, nameless and faceless, leaving behind fear and uncertainty.
Those five men robbed Pofadder of more than money.
Just past Prince Albert Road station, at Leeu-Gamka, I leave the N1 and turn onto the R353. This is the road to Pofadder, which is about four hundred kilometres north of here, past Fraserburg and Williston, in Bushmanland. If all goes well I’ll be sleeping in Brandvlei, in the Brandvlei Hotel, where I met Mozart the tame meerkat on a previous trip.
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