PROFILE: HAFFIE STRAUSS
The Agter-Pakhuis straddles the Karoo and the Cederberg. It’s a land of extremes – farmers here need to be bold and a little stubborn. The land will work you as hard as you work it, just ask Haffie Strauss.
“These mountains will always be extraordinary. I’m 78 years old and every day I drive over the Pakhuis Pass, I’m amazed.”
It was autumn in 2018 – at the height of a terrible drought – and Haffie Strauss was eyeballing a sparse rooibos plantation through the windscreen of her Land Cruiser. “In terms of agriculture, this is one of the weakest regions in South Africa,” she said. “Take the Free State – you put a plough down and watch the tractor disappear over the horizon. Here we only have small patches of arable land. Sometimes it’s stone, sometimes it’s clay, and summers are incredibly hot.
“Before the drought we had about 400 hectares of rooibos, now there’s only about a hundred left. Last year, natural springs farmers had been using their whole lives dried up. The groundwater is depleted.
“Rooibos grows wild in the mountains but nobody farmed with it before the 1930s because they couldn’t get the seeds to germinate. My grandfather, Le Fras Nortier, started to experiment and found a way to shave down the seed pod so it could absorb moisture and germinate.”
She fell quiet. “Oupa Le Fras was a wonderful character. He was a doctor in Clanwilliam. He and his friend Louis Leipoldt shared three passions: medicine, nature and cooking. My poor granny Agatha was always in a state when Leipoldt showed up. When the men started cooking, she didn’t go into the kitchen! She never really adapted to life in Clanwilliam. She wanted to be in the city and sip her tea wearing a fancy hat.”
When I first heard of Nortier’s friendship with the Afrikaans poet C Louis Leipoldt, I sniffed around the Internet and found a recording of a radio programme where Nortier says the following: “Agriculture is in our blood. Despite my other pursuits, I was always interested in farming and the improvement of our industry. I met L Leipoldt during the Great War and we were intimate friends right from the start. We stayed friends until his death. We often went on trips to the Richtersveld and Augrabies Falls to collect plant specimens. He was a very interesting companion. We would pull over when the sun set, no matter where we were, whether it was the barren plains of Bushmanland or the rocky terrain of the Lower Orange River, and sleep in the open, with no tent.”
But it was the Pakhuis area in particular that Nortier and Leipoldt explored and loved the most. It’s easy to see why. It’s still a scenic wilderness and judging by the abundant rock art, it was once home to all sorts of wildlife. The Strauss family owns a few farms in the region. I spoke to Haffie about rooibos at Traveller’s Rest; they also own Sevilla, just below the tea plantations, where you can do a circular hiking trail to see rock art: dancers and shamans and hunters, the fine detail of their karosses, quivers and bows preserved; plus mythical monsters and – my favourite – a zebra foal.
And these are just the paintings open to the public! An archaeological team from the University of Cape Town has combed the veld every June for decades and recorded all the rock art they’ve discovered, but despite this, Haffie and her children still find new panels to this day.
“These mountains will always be extraordinary,” she said. “I’m 78 years old and every day I drive over the Pakhuis Pass, I’m amazed.”
The landscape inspires you, as Leipoldt wrote in a poem called “Skoonheidstroos”:
Find yourself a shelter in the veld In the solitude where the aloe is king Encircled by rock, lovely, sublime, Weathered by wind and the violence of time.
Haffie herself seems immune to the effects of time. She’s still a robust farmer at close to 80 years old, and she drives her Cruiser with gusto, wearing hiking
When it got busy on the farm during the potato harvest, my sister Dana and I would drive the trucks to the markets in Cape Town.
boots and with her knobkierie always close at hand. But then your eye catches the diamonds on her fingers and her nails painted red. She’s deeply rooted in this soil, but her fruits are… exotic. (A conversation in years to come would reveal the reason for this contrast.)
As we drove through the rooibos plantations back in 2018, there were more pressing matters to attend to. The last time there had been enough rain was six winters previously, and even if the weather improved, it would take a year and a half for the tea to recover.
But they still have the sheep, right? “Yes, the dorpers…” she said. “We might switch back to merinos because the wool price is quite good at the moment. And the dorper is a difficult breed. They keep breaking out of their camps.”
Like many other farmers, Haffie has looked to tourism for additional income. Not many people came to the AgterPakhuis in the old days, although buses did come over the mountain during the wildflower season to get to the Biedouw Valley. Haffie’s daughter Charité and Charité’s husband Edu opened a farm stall and restaurant. Traffic increased when the Pakhuis Pass was tarred, and they renovated old workers’ cottages and built more guest units in a kloof next to the Brandewynrivier. Traveller’s Rest now offers accommodation for about 120 people and about 80 % of their income is derived from tourism. South Africans flock here to see the wildflowers in spring, but the majority of their visitors are rock climbers. “Rocklands” as it’s known in climbing circles has some of the best bouldering on the planet: relatively low outcrops that can be climbed without ropes. There are also some fine sport climbing routes.
“For serious climbers, this is their life,” Haffie said when we returned to the farmyard. “Some of them will stay for the entire winter, and they come back year after year. They’re from all over: America, Germany, Finland… We’ve had a few Russians, too. They rolled their bakkie – twice! Some just show up without a booking, especially the Spaniards – they are so disorganised. If all the units are booked, I let them sleep in my house. I never know who will still be there in the morning.
It’s unbelievable, really. People from all corners of the world come to the Pakhuis. When you tell the climbers that this is one of the best climbing areas, they always say: ‘No, you’re wrong – it is the best!’ No one wants to wait in line to climb. The sport is popular in Europe and their mountains are crowded. It’s still quiet here. They develop new routes on our property. The sport has boomed over the past five years and they say it will continue for the next few years. Unless disaster strikes.”
Haffie’s words that afternoon turned out to be prophetic. Little did we know that the whole world would soon retreat into its shell, and the Agter-Pakhuis would become as isolated as it was in Haffie’s childhood.
It’s 2020 now and I’m back at Traveller’s Rest after Covid-19 lockdown restrictions were eased. Haffie hasn’t changed at all: She’s still wearing her hiking boots and her nails are still perfectly manicured. We hide from the heat in her front room where family portraits decorate the walls. There’s nothing to say about the drought any more – it’s still ongoing and out of our control – so we delve into her history instead.
“My father Piet grew up on the farm Drilrivier about 8 km downstream from here,” she says. “He worked as an advocate, then came back to buy Lorraine, the farm next door. My mom’s name was Charité; she was Englishspeaking and grew up in Clanwilliam. Both my parents were very open-minded for the era in which they lived, so we had a different life to our peers. We were given so much freedom. If my parents went hunting jackals, we joined them on horseback. When it got busy on the farm during the potato harvest, my sister Dana and I would drive the trucks to the markets in Cape Town. I had a driving licence for heavy vehicles right from the start!”
Haffie gave herself her nickname in childhood – her real name is Anna Elizabeth. She, Dana and their brother Le Fras went to English-speaking high schools in Cape Town, like their mother