‘Custodian of the corpses’ loved his gruesome job
IHAVE met some pretty interesting people over the years. That’s one of the good things about being a journalist. You get to interview all sorts of people and the fact that you’ve been assigned to the job of talking to them means they are likely to be interesting. Some of them became friends and kept up contact for years. These included the writer and conservationist Victor Pohl, who was far ahead of his time in the fight to conserve Nature. I met him in 1973 and we kept up a steady friendship until his death in 1979. He is probably best remembered for his
and South African children’s books. I spent a happy afternoon chatting to my favourite author, the late Terry Pratchett, at the V&A Waterfront during his visit to the Cape, and I drank a few glasses of wine with the crazy country and western singer and author Kinky Friedman, on a wine farm near Stellenbosch.
I chatted to the British MP, Enoch Powell in the Mount Nelson and found him charming and erudite. I think his warnings about immigration have proved correct, although they were greeted with scorn.
One of the most intriguing characters to have crossed my journalistic path was Oom Daan Coetzee, “custodian of the corpses” at the UCT Medical School.
Oom Daan was in charge of the mortuary and the allocation of bodies to medical students. He was also the person who had to arrange the removal of body parts and corneas for transplantation.
It may sound gruesome, but he was matter-of-fact about it. It was a job that had to be done and he was good at it. He often met people who later turned up on the mortuary slab, and each person had a story. I have a copy of Oom Daan’s book,
which he gave me in 1987 and wrote “Lekker Lees, regards, Oom Daan”, in the fly leaf.
He was a large bear of a man with a dry sense of humour and an unusual hobby – he was an amateur cravateur. He made beautiful silk ties. (Nobody wears ties now, unless they’re attending school reunions, and there everybodyknows which school you went to. Why bother with an old-boy’s tie?)
Oom Daan’s ties were works of art, made with care and love.
I sometimes compare them to the amazing collection of Japanese netsukes in the Jewish Museum in the Gardens. Each one is a perfectly carved miniature sculpture that must have taken months to create. They were designed as “buttons” or toggles to keep the owner’s purse attached to his sash in a traditional Japanese outfit, which did not have pockets.
I wonder whether anybody still wears that form of traditional dress today. The art of carving netsukes survives to this day, but not as part of a man’s outfit.
Last Laugh
A car was weaving along the highway erratically and a traffic cop jumped on his motorbike and gave chase. He pulled up alongside the vehicle and to his surprise saw it was being driven by a little greyhaired lady who was knitting and steering the car with her elbows. The cop leaned over and bellowed: “Pull over!” The old lady smiled sweetly and shouted back: “No. Actually it’s a scarf.”