My town
Patensie is a place rich in history, oranges and Ferreiras
When you drive into Patensie from the direction of Port Elizabeth, you realise quickly what it’s about around here, because this Eastern Cape town with its 5 000 souls is dwarfed by the surrounding patchwork of fields and citrus orchards. This is farming country.
In Patensie, in the evergreen Gamtoos Valley, you can forget about stumbling upon renovated neoclassical buildings and bohemian art galleries. Do, however, expect to find a huge, bustling Agrimark.
Diesel bakkies rumble along the dusty streets and, as far as the eye can see, khaki-and-shorts fashion trumps the latest Markham trends. The people of Patensie are down-to-earth, you discover when you spend a while here.
Patensie is known for three things: citrus farming, the fact that it’s the eastern gateway to the Baviaanskloof, and the profusion of Ferreiras who live in the area. (There are only four tarred streets in the centre of town, and every one of them is named after a Ferreira.)
“Patensie is not a town,” says Danie Malan one night beside a fire on his farm Tierhok while a lamb’s neck potjie simmers on the coals. “It’s a family, a community.”
It soon becomes apparent that this is indeed a close-knit community. To fully appreciate this bond, it helps to know something about their history. >
“Most of the farmers in the district are fourth or fifth-generation owners of the land. This may be one of the foremost farming districts in the country today, but things weren’t always this rosy.”
The story of the Gamtoos Valley (“Gamtoos” is a Khoi word that means “roaring lion”) is one of water: the brackish Groot River and the freshwater Kouga River join here to form the Gamtoos River. This lion was not easily tamed.
The first settlers, among them mainly Ferreiras, but also Malan, Scheepers and Du Preez families, put down their roots here with great difficulty during the early 19th century.
Over time the land was planted and crops were irrigated out of the Gamtoos by means of flood irrigation. Although the system of sluices, furrows and rotational schedules kept the farmers going (and fighting) until as recently as the Sixties, this supply was unreliable and the water of low quality.
Only since the completion of the Kouga Dam in 1970, which captures the Kouga River’s fresh water about 5km upstream from the confluence, have the farmers been able to count on water of good quality and a reliable irrigation scheme.
Since then, the people of the Gamtoos have not looked back – they’re living in clover. However they still share that bond that was forged during the hard times.
Behind the fig leaf
“With 35ha you can buy yourself a Merc,” says former primary school principal Radie Ferreira from his townhouse on a hill, overlooking the district. “Today, anything grows here: citrus, potatoes, herbs, lettuce, you name it. Even though the name of Patensie is derived from a Khoi word for ‘place where the cattle lie’.”
Beyond the sprawling farmland, the vegetation is lush and psychedelic green: the valley’s subtropical climate supports a rich and diverse ecosystem. There are reportedly many leopards in the kloofs, and a steenbok can
The upside of this prosperity is that father and son can still farm together. In other farming districts people are not as fortunate.
still surprise you at dusk on the edge of town. Hoopoes and hornbills are abundant, and strelitzias grow wild in the veld.
A Burchell’s coucal kok-kok-koks somewhere in the garden while Radie and I enjoy our coffee. “We are a small, close-knit community, and it includes many young people. The upside of this
prosperity is that father and son can still farm together. In other farming districts people are not as fortunate; the children have to go make their own way somewhere else. Here, the land stays in the family: the new blood comes in as the young men go and find themselves wives.”
Practically everything here revolves around agriculture: those who don’t farm are involved in it in one way or another. The Patensie Citrus Co-op, the Gamtoos Irrigation Board, the packing companies, nursery, engineering works – these are all job creators that keep the community going. In the end everyone in the region is dependent on and bound to one thing: the earth.
As the farming community prospered after the Kouga Dam was completed, the town developed to provide for the practical, everyday needs of the farmers. This is still the case today. However, it’s the people who give the town its substance, who make it special.
“Look, we can fight and gossip something fierce,” says Hildie du Preez on a stuffy Sunday afternoon. “But just you wait and see what happens when a crisis strikes, my friend, then we stand together as one.”
Hildie manages Spoon Scrapping, a workshop that manufactures and distributes hand-made cutlery. Her teenage daughter Rike-Mari is the creative engine behind the business. Tequila, the imposing Great Dane in the yard, also keeps one blue and one brown eye on things.
“Recently, there was a guy here who’d been in a serious car accident and didn’t have medical aid. The community clubbed together and in no time raised R200 000 for him.”
The local Gamtoos Valley Primary School also struggles – there are 12 staff members but only five are paid by the Department of Basic Education. That’s why the residents stage an annual concert in the school hall to raise money. About two years ago the big hit of the night was the town’s single men who were decorated with body paint from head to toe and then “auctioned off” to women in the audience. “To do with what they wanted,” Hildie jokes. “The naughty bits were covered, more or less.” But things got so jolly that one unlucky character accidentally lost the proverbial fig leaf. “Luckily he had something to show – he’s a boerklong after all!” >
Beware the ghampie
It is, however, more than family and other ties that make this community what it is. You also get inkommers. Johan Mostert moved here five years ago after deciding he’d had enough of city life. Now he grows peppers and supplies them to markets and chain stores. “Look,” he explains, standing proudly in one of his high tunnels in town, “this place has the old farmers who earned their right to be here over generations. You have to understand there’s a hierarchy; you shouldn’t come here and be a know-it-all. If you understand this, you’ll be fine.”
Johan and his wife have made good friends among the other young farmers, and their children have settled right in. “Man, it’s a great place. It’s a farming community, and we have a lot in common. And here you’ll find everything you need: doctors, a good school, the lot.”
Afrikaans is the dominant language in these parts. “Here, we speak English only for self-defence,” Hildie says drily when I run into her later.
The Khoi language seems to have had an influence on the regional dialect. A speed bump is called a ghampie and a meerkat a gharkie. A ghampie refers not only to a speed bump on a tar road but could also describe a corrugation on a dirt road. As in: “After leaving the hotel last night, I had to swerve to avoid a gharkie. Then I hit a ghampie and I ended up in an orchard.”
Peace and quiet and a giant bazaar
From a tourism point of view there’s not much going on in Patensie, but it’s this peace and quiet that lure people to the district. “More and more people from outside are cottoning on to how peaceful this place is,” says Heidi Müller, owner of Padlangs Country Restaurant and Shop outside town. “Port Elizabeth and Jeffreys Bay are close by and increasingly people from that side come chill out here over weekends. Land and houses are
You have to understand, this place has a hierarchy; you shouldn’t come and be a know-it-all from the word go.
no longer being bought up solely for farming, but also by people who want to get away and simply own and enjoy a part of the beauty and peace of the region.” Indeed, the town’s location is quite special: you’re just under halfan-hour’s drive from the sea. Especially the younger Patensienaars often slip away to Jeffreys Bay over weekends, >
even if a dusty farm bakkie with a surfboard on the back is a rare sight.
“We’ve recently also started hosting weddings in one of the old packing sheds, and it’s become popular. Getting married in the city is too expensive for many people.”
It’s easy to understand why this region is becoming increasingly popular among townies: it’s picturesque, and the town is safe and quiet. At sunrise the cocks crow, and in the sultry evenings children play happily on the lawns.
“Life here really is slower,” Toska Joubert of Tolbos Country Shop and Restaurant concurs. “But it feels as though you get so much more done, because you don’t waste time on things like sitting in traffic for hours.”
There are a few blots on the landscape. The local station is an eyesore with empty carriages rusting away – the only things that still travel through here are troublemakers and stray cats. There have been attempts to take over the premises from Transnet, but so far these efforts have been in vain.
And the town’s sewerage system consists of underground tanks that have to be emptied by sewage trucks fairly often, yet the municipality doesn’t have enough of these trucks.
So there are times when there’s more than the smell of orange blossoms on the breeze…
On a Sunday morning, when the church is packed, the sounds of the church organ are carried on the breeze from the top end of town. In Patensie, church plays an important role in the community.
Every year, the Dutch Reformed Gamtoos Valley East congregation hosts a bazaar in one of the packing sheds to raise funds. Then the tables (and stomachs!) groan under home-made goodies and there’s an auction and dancing to the music of a boereorkes.
Don’t think for a moment this is your average village bazaar; it’s an occasion of note. Thousands of people come from all over specially for the event, says Annatjie Malan, main organiser and, yes, also the church organist. “Last year we raised almost R500 000. A percentage is shared among the other congregations in the area. This year we’re expecting even more visitors,” Annatjie says proudly.
Where everybody knows your name…
Patensie, small as it is, has a celebrated rugby history, largely thanks to SP Ferreira of the farm Endulini. He is the father of Freddie “Boetie Bun” Ferreira, legendary WP
Don’t think for a moment this is your average village bazaar; it’s an occasion of note. Thousands of people come from all over specially for the event.
scrum half of a few decades ago. SP was president of the Patensie Rugby Club from 1964 to 2011, and played for Eastern Province as scrum half, fly half and centre from 1954 to 1957. Under his leadership, the club dominated the local league over the years.
“Man, these boere could play,” he says in his lounge on the eve of a test match between the Springboks and the All Blacks. “I also organised >
foreign tours for them, and got big overseas clubs to come play here. It’s all because I had the right contacts: Doc Craven and I met in Stellenbosch and became good friends.
“We were both Sappe,” he says while we look through the framed team photos in his study. Big names such as Danie Gerber, Carel and Michael du Plessis, Christian Stewart and Frans Erasmus have run on the field for Patensie on invitation. And the survivors of the Uruguayan club Old Christians, whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972, after which some players resorted to cannibalism to survive, came out to play here two years after the disaster.
With the advent of the professional era of rugby, the club league in these parts eventually had to throw in the towel too.
SP quickly changes the subject. “I’m crazy about rugby because I’m so crazy about people.” For a moment he stares out of the window. “But they have to be nice people.”
This, I think, as I’m driving away from SP’s packing shed with the gift of a bakkieload of oranges, perfectly sums up the heart of this place and its people. The days of brackish water in the orchards may be over, but salt of the earth – that you still get here.