H: 243 “Dying Race”).
bushveld See bosveld.
“Bushveld Film Comedy, A” (VS: 162) Tongue-in-cheek review of Die Wildsboudjie, hoping it would “set the tone for future films to be made in Afrikaans”.
“Bushveld Romance” (S&H: 52) OSL tells of human weakness and a shy deluded farmer falls in love with a school-teacher. Interesting comments on the abolition of slavery and also courtship behaviour with one of the sweetest endings imaginable. “She looked me up and down, from my head to my feet, I might say. And then she held her chin up very high. And for that reason I knew that she was in love with me. Every girl that’s in love with me looks at me like that.”
Butler, David (b. 1960) Actor; studied at the University of Cape Town; debuted in 1983 at the Baxter and Market Theatres. Since then has gone on to perform many roles on SA television, film and stage, most notably (on TV) in Egoli, Binnelanders and Soul City. His work involving HCB includes the one-man show “A Touch of Madness” (2003), which includes the sketches “The Recognising Blues” and “Jeppe High Revisited”, “Street-woman” (1978; 2003) and “A Teacher in the Marico”, all of which were scripted and directed by Nicky Rebelo and presented at the annual Herman Charles Bosman Literary Festival, along with runs in Johannesburg and elsewhere. In 2010 an extended version of the last, renamed “A Teacher in the Bushveld”, was performed for the first time: in it Rebelo stitches together a variety of HCB reminiscences and stories, including “White Ant”, “Susannah and the Play-actor”, “The Affair at Uysterspruit” and “A Cold Night”, which are slipped into the narrative frame provided by HCB’s two principal autobiographical sketches about his days as a schoolmaster: “A Teacher in the Bushveld” and “Marico Revisited”. See photograph on p. 101.
Buys, Gerrit Proud owner of an antique flintlock rifle (OTS: 87 “The Old Muzzle-loader”).
Buys, Hendrik Man of dubious character who presents Jan Slabbert with a map indicating buried treasure on his farm; so absorbed with the treasure hunt he does not notice Susannah Buys’s amorous advances; ends up getting kicked out of the Marico – literally (UD: 39 “Treasure Trove”).
“By the Kerbside” (YB: 95) A series of snippets and observations of Johannesburg events and personalities; covers everything from Turkish baths to weddings, from midnight at Zoo Lake to Bar-lock typewriters. Possibly the closest a reader can get to what it was like to experience the unmasked wit of HCB. “The more I see of my fellow man, said a bitter French cynic, the more I love my dog.”
Byron, George Gordon (1788–1824) Sixth Baron Byron, English Romantic poet (CJ: 39 “Byron’s Chair”).
“Byron’s Chair” (CJ: 38) Wry comments on the silliness of attaching value to an object merely because someone famous might have used it; includes a dig at the poet Byron. “If you are a poet you won’t sit writing on a chair when you have got a bed to lie on. Or a carpet, even. Or, if you have got it, a cell floor.”
byt hom (Afr.) Lit. ‘bite him’ (VS: 163 “A Bushveld Film Comedy”).
bywoner (Afr.) Poor tenant farmer who works for a farm owner and also farms for himself but never owns the land; sometimes used as a derogatory term (H: 75 “Alarm Clock”).
C
Cachet, Jan Lion (1838–1912) Early Afrikaans poet of Portuguese-Jewish extraction known for his morality poems (VS: 167 “Die Duistere Vers”).
Cadwallo King of the Britons in the 600s (VS: 171 “Die Duistere Vers”).
caestus A gauntlet or boxing-glove used by pugilists in classical times (H: 241 “Bekkersdal Centenary”).
caesura The break a poet puts into lines of poetry to create a pause; see also meter (CJ: 71 “Art and Feudalism”).
Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid Lit. ‘Aaron the Just’; fifth Caliph in Iraq, famous for his part in A Thousand and One Arabian Nights; supposedly he dressed as a beggar and wandered the streets of Baghdad to overhear what his subjects thought of him (JN: 170; CJ: 138 “Talk of the Town”).
“Call of the Road, The” (IT: 113) The voorkamer crowd share stories of pride and adventures on the road. Some interesting background about the farmers is provided. “To tell you the truth,” Gysbert said, “I am not surprised at that mayor just taking it into his head to pack his things and walk off. I have lived in more than one highveld dorp myself. And I know what sort of things go on there. That’s why I don’t blame that mayor in the least. Just think what it’s like to wake up in the morning and to look at the sunrise, and there’s no mdubu trees or withaaks or maroelas. There’s just a piece of flat veld starting right at your kitchen door, and it has rained, and you’ve got to start ploughing. I can quite understand a person living on the highveld putting a piece of biltong and a spare shirt into a suitcase and walking away from there, then. I mean, isn’t that how quite a few of us landed here, in the Marico? And without a spare shirt, either, in some cases – in some cases that I wouldn’t like to mention here in this voorkamer, I mean.”
“Calling All Patients” (CJ: 201) Thoughts about patients’ role in medical history. Disjointed piece that offers little except inadvertently predicting the hospital TV dramas of the 1980s onward, where patients’ life stories would be equal to those of doctors.
Calvin, John (1509–64) French-born theologian; leader of the Protestant movement against Roman Catholicism; set up a strict religious community in Geneva, Switzerland (CJ: 87 “Dorps of South Africa”).
Campbell, Roy (Ignatius Royston Dunnachie) (1901–57) Poet. Born in Durban to a wealthy family of Scottish and Irish descent, Campbell attended Durban High School and spent a year at Oxford, where he made contact with writers like T. S. Eliot and the Sitwells. He became part of the literary society of London, and published his first long poem, The Flaming Terrapin, in 1924. Returning to SA for an extended visit, he co-founded, with William Plomer and Laurens van der Post, the short-lived literary magazine Voorslag in 1926. His scathing view of conventional white SA is conveyed in The Wayzgoose (1928), published after his return to England. After settling in the south of France in 1928, he published Adamastor (1930), the collection for which he is best known. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 he returned to England, then served as a news correspondent in Spain in 1937 before settling in Portugal. He joined an African regiment upon the outbreak of the Second World War and served in Kenya. After the war Campbell lived in London and worked with the radio service of the BBC, where he was instrumental in getting several of HCB’s Mafeking Road stories read on air. In a letter to HCB in March 1949 he wrote: “I think your stories in Mafeking Road are the best that ever came out of South Africa”, a puff that was used on covers of the volume for many years thereafter. HCB wrote back, asking Campbell to find him a British publisher – something that came to naught (see introduction to MR: 9).
“Camp-fires at Nagmaal” (S&H: 86) A farmer and a self-proclaimed prophet vie for the heart of the same girl. Musings about whether the good old days were quite as good as one remembers lead up to an ultimately sad and unexpected resolution of a love-triangle. “Consequently, the stories that Petrus Steyn had to tell of his experiences in the Kalahari Desert were as fatiguing to listen to as if you were actually trekking along with him. And the further he trekked into the desert the more wearisome his narrative became, on account of the interludes getting fewer, there being less buck and less Bushmen the deeper he got into the interior. Even so, we felt that he was keeping on using the same Bushmen over and over again. There was also a small herd of springbok that we were suspicious about in the same way.”
Cannabis indica A strain of dagga different from and stronger than the more common Cannabis
