The importance of manners

WHILE I was speaking to a gentleman outside the voting office at York Road Primary on Saturday, a tallish fair-skinned man, in arrogant boorish fashion, equipped with blinkered eyes and without a “by you leave”, broke in, and spoke to my friend without even greeting or looking at me.

He spoke to my friend for a short while and left when he was done.

I cannot decide whether this unpardonable display was born of blindness, bad manners or just plain racism.

Would he have behaved in this rude, uncultured fashion if I were white or light-skinned?

Ironically, during my 90-year sojourn I have been greeted by the late King and Queen of England in Newlands Avenue, Claremont, during their 1947 royal visit.

Their daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, displayed good breeding by greeting me likewise.

Sometime later, my friend Ikey and I were hailed by a solitary old man with a goatee and walking stick near Maclear’s Beach on the beautiful Table Mountain.

He said that he was thirsty and Ikey, Jan Christian Smuts and I swigged my big bottle of Schullers ginger beer straight from the bottle in no time flat.

Some decades later, while I was doing escort duty during election time at the polling station on Wilderness Common, the most hated man in the country greeted me and asked me to help his wife get him to the polling booth.

The conversation we had about how he saved the Outeniqua Choo Tjoe from closure made my day, because since childhood I had been an avid railway buff.

In conclusion, had the purveyors of politeness that I have mentioned been available today they could have taught the man that I met on Saturday good manners and saved his party from losing at least one vote.

A wag once said: “For the want of a horse, the battle was lost.”