Trompsburg Serenity central

Like many other towns in South Africa’s platteland, Trompsburg in the Free State suffers serious neglect by its local municipality. But residents here have resolved to roll up their sleeves and get involved. And they need no encouragement to help one another. Add the beauty of the surroundings and you have a winning town.

Trompsburg lies somewhere in the emptiness between Bloemfontein and Springfontein, next to the straight-as-anarrow N1. An island in the expansive grasslands of the Southern Free State, where grey-blue ridges rise in the distance. On a koppie, the Uniting Reformed Church presides over Trompsburg. Karel Schoeman’s birthplace.

Was he prone to sitting on a sunwarmed rock and gaze out over the town and the vast expanse of space in which it hovered?

Winter is here: at midday the veld gleams white, the same dirty white as merino wool at this time of year – and when the sun drops towards the horizon it turns a ripe orange that bathes the landscape in gold. Your shadow grows so long that, standing on the hilltop, you can touch the windmills there in Fontein Street. High in the blue sky, cirrus clouds blow in ahead of a cold front.

THE TOWN LOOKS very spruced up at the moment, even though the residents are frustrated with the municipality. Word has it that most of the municipal officials live in the upmarket Woodlands Hills estate in Bloemfontein and not on one of Trompsburg’s gravel streets. This is why the townsfolk often step in to help keep the town neat.

Louwrens Strydom, principal of Trompsburg Primary School, says their Bag-for-a-Bag project aims to keep the town spick and span, and support the unemployed. For every bag of rubbish that’s picked up, a reward is a bag of flour, rice, vegetables or other groceries in exchange. The school is also repairing the section of tar road that leads up to its gate, with tar and used oil donated by farmers.

The longer you chat with Louwrens, the more you understand how much he and the school mean to the town and the community. Since his arrival in 2019, small satellite schools have been started in Fauresmith, Philippolis and Colesberg. These schools offer preschool as well as Grade R and Grade 1 classes, and the teachers use Trompsburg Primary’s lesson plans.

“Schooling is one of the greatest challenges in the platteland. It’s awful to have to send a Grade 1 child to a far away boarding school. The satellite schools enable us to delay boarding school for a while. And when parents then place their children in our school and hostel, it’s much closer to home than Bloemfontein.”

The satellite schools are good feeders for Trompsburg’s Primary: in 2022 it will have two Grade 1 classes for the first time. Louwrens’s wife, Lizelle, teaches at PT Sanders Combined School in Madikgetla township, so they are aware of the difficult circumstances under which some children live. One of the ways in which the Strydoms >

Trompsburg has more than its fair share of windmills. Flip Henning says that, in the old days, you’d see only windmills and TV antennas when passing the town on the N1. Nowadays, the new Albert Nzula District Hospital (the buildings in the background) attract the most attention. On the corner of Kerk and Van As streets, in front of Karel Schoeman’s house, a poplar glows like a candle flame.

During winter, temperatures can drop to -10°C during the night, and most mornings have frost on the ground. By contrast, the midday sun in midsummer can be a real scorcher.

Principal Louwrens Strydom (at the back) with current pupils of Trompsburg Primary and a few alumni. This year, the school has 174 pupils from Grade R to Grade 7. The number is expected to rise to 200 next year.