It’s late afternoon in the Bushveld north of Thabazimbi, near the border with Botswana. Retired banker opens the door of his Land Cruiser. Get in, we’re going to look at some trees.
Few things are as enjoyable as joining a farmer for a drive on his farm, to look at things that he values. Willem Frost’s farm, Matlabas Game Lodge, is north of Sentrum (a dot on the map, nothing more), next to the Matlabas River not far from where it joins up with the Limpopo. There are wild animals to see here, but it’s the trees that Willem loves most. We drive to a certain point, get out of the bakkie and walk a short distance to a high fence – the border of his farm. He points to a big leadwood tree on the other side. It towers over the other trees on the banks of the Matlabas, which is dry at the time of my visit.
“Now that’s a leadwood tree – it must be seventeen metres or taller,” Willem says. His eyes shine with wonder. “If I could, I would buy my neighbour’s farm for that tree alone. According to the experts, if a leadwood grows in ideal conditions and it’s not damaged when it’s young, or burnt, or ruined by animals, it could take up to a thousand years to reach maturity. The wood is so hard and strong that it takes another thousand years to die. And when the tree dies, it takes a further thousand years for the wood to decompose and return to the soil. That’s a 3 000-year life cycle! If you take a piece of leadwood and throw it in the water, it sinks like a stone.”
The veld is dry. It’s May 2019 and rainfall has been below average. Willem says they usually get about 400 – 420 mm per year, but only 250 mm has fallen this summer.
Willem (72) grew up in Rustenburg. His mother’s side of the family is from Groot-Marico and his wife Lorraine’s family are from the Nietverdiend area north-west of Groot-Marico. He learnt to appreciate the veld as a child, but later moved to the city – first to Pretoria to play rugby, and later to Johannesburg for his career in finance.
These days the Bushveld is home. Willem and Lorraine, an artist, live here with their son Flippie, his wife Mia, and their grandson Ruben.
“When our children were young, they moaned a lot because their friends went to the coast during the school holidays and we always went to the bush,” he says. “We went on the odd beach holiday, but I don’t like basking in the sun like a lizard. What kind of life is that?
“I remember my childhood days in Rustenburg. We’d go into the veld with home-made bows and arrows. You didn’t even have to shoot anything, just walking in the veld, tracking a hare or a duiker, exploring places you’d never been… That’s what gave me a kick.”
Willem was a talented sportsman in his younger years – he made junior provincial teams for athletics and rugby – and he moves briskly over the sandy terrain. I have to push myself to keep up. We hear impala rams snorting nearby
– it must be rutting season. A bushveld bluebush tree entwined with a spike-thorn tree attracts our attention for a moment, then we head back to the Cruiser and move on to the next tree.
Willem’s ancestors arrived in
South Africa in 1820, but don’t let his English surname fool you. “My grandfather farmed in the Waterberg and he couldn’t speak a word of English,” Willem says. “The first Frost in South Africa was Philip Frost, who arrived with the Settlers. He had six sons and most of them married Boer women. Some of them even joined the Great Trek.”
Names and their meanings change all the time, whether you’re a man or a tree. Willem pulls over next to a broadpod robust thorn. “This tree is known as an enkeldoring in Afrikaans, meaning single thorn. Before that, it was called Engelse doring (English thorn) because the Afrikaners felt they had no use for it – the wood can’t be used to build furniture, or even for a fire. It has always been classified as an acacia, but this group has since been divided into two genera: Vachellia and Senegalia. The scientific name is now Vachellia robusta, subspecies robusta.” Willem wrote a book about antelope ( The Antelope of Africa, 2014) and is currently working on a book about trees. “I’ve always been fascinated by this amazing thing we call ‘life’ – the diversity, complexity and mystery of it. And nothing symbolises life like a tree. Trees make you think about life.”