In vellies we trust
Which shoes are you wearing as you walk into 2022? Sophia van Taak makes the case for velskoens.
ILLUSTRATION NICOLENE LOUW
U ntil fairly recently, if you wore vellies, you were either a farmer or David Kramer. Some dictionaries still describe the velskoen as “a home-made shoe; a farmer’s shoe (with a low heel)”. It was a workhorse, not much more.
Side story: People on farms are resourceful. Gustav Nortjé*, who farms in the Baviaanskloof, told me in the old days, their rugby players wore boots made from baboon hide. It might sound absurd today, but for those pragmatic farmers, it made perfect sense. The players needed durable boots and baboons were a pest. Two birds, one stone.
But back to velskoens. They’re trendy now. Fashionable, even. Something you could previously only buy at a co-op is now available everywhere. There are Freestyle vellies; Kalahari Vellies; Sapmok; Plaasmeisie; Grondpad Vellies; Bummel;
Boggom; and Katu Vellies, famous for their DKW model, which stands for Dans, Kerk & Werk.
More and more people are catching on to the value and comfort of this South African icon. I wonder how many pairs are walking around the country right now? More than the number of K-Way down jackets? More than the number of people who have been vaccinated?
Siya Kolisi loves his olive-green Freedom of Movement vellies, and Prince Harry has even been spotted
wearing a pair of Veldskoen Shoes with orange soles and laces. I love it. If only everything in South Africa could endure and prosper like a vellie!
The vellies I’m wearing today are made from kudu leather. They were once blue but have faded to a grey rhebok hue.
The leather has worn so thin and slipper soft that I’ve retired this pair from active travel duty.
Throwing them away is not an option: Every velskoen becomes a friend and I walked a long road with this pair, from the Sagole Baobab in Limpopo through the jukskei sandpits of Kroonstad, past sheep being sheared in Williston, to the very top of Paarl Rock. They’ve stood on the white crust of Etosha Pan, played among bulbinellas in the Bokkeveld, crushed pepper tree fruit into the roads around Calvinia, danced at a sokkie in Stampriet, walked with a farmer through his burnt-down mielie field in southern Angola, prevented a coconut crab from pinching my toe in Madagascar, and even climbed the 699 steps of Jacob’s Ladder on St Helena Island.
When the time does come to get a new pair, I always follow the same process: I slip my left foot in and do the toe test – yes, there’s enough space to wriggle them around. The right foot also gets a shoe. I tie the laces, sit back and look at them, tapping the soles on the floor like a drummer keeping a beat. Usually, if you’re buying a pair of shoes, you walk up and down the shop a bit, but not with vellies. I’ve had enough pairs to know: A velskoen is seldom comfortable on the first day.
You have to work for it. But once the shoes have worn in… bliss! Creases form in the leather and it folds around your foot like a second sock.
I look at the price on the shoebox one last time – not cheap, but this is a longterm investment, made from full-grain cow leather. Here they are, then: my shoes for the next three or four years. They’re perfect now, but soon they will be scratched and stained. My vellies go everywhere I go, and they soon start to resemble a pair of wild dog pups, marked by stains left by wood glue and hand sanitizer, marmalade and gemsbok blood (long story). But vellies can take it. If only we were more like vellies!
I believe that vellies can unite people. For many years, I have been taking photos of my shoes when I travel. It started when I snapped a pic of a small tortoise next to my feet on a dirt road near Beaufort West, and I simply continued doing it. Before long, my vellie photos – and my vellies – started making me friends.
Most often, those friends are canine. Dogs love sniffing my shoes. I always try to photograph them, too: snouts jutting into frame. There’s Josephine from Smithfield; Meg from Loxton; tiny, one-eyed Muggie from Philippolis; Nella from the Waterberg; Vlooi from Rosendal; Trixie from Marnitz; Kollehond from the farm Kangnas in Bushmanland; Rita from Groot-Marico; Joe the pug from Moolmanshoek; Tokkelos from Williston…
My most notable human-vellie encounter was with poet Breyten Breytenbach. I was at indie bookshop The Book Lounge in Cape Town, for the launch of his poetry collection called op weg na kû. There were so many people I couldn’t even see Breytenbach where he sat in an armchair reading his poems. But through all the legs, I did manage to get a glimpse of his velskoens – red ones, each with a buckle on the side. Afterwards, my friend and I joined the queue for him to sign our copies. When we got to the front, Breyten greeted us and held out his hand for my book. But instead, I complimented him on his shoes. When he told me he’d bought them from Redemption in Wellington, I started to ramble on about how I used to drive there from Paarl with my mom when I was a girl, to buy school shoes, and how I had actually come to the front to talk to him about vellies. He was kind enough to say something polite about my own pair. My friend had to nudge me to remind me to hand over my book to be signed.
Two other meetings will also stay with me. I once got the opportunity to speak to Arnold Gertse, a velskoen maker from the Cederberg village of Wupperthal, in his workshop among pliers and shoe lasts. I took a photo of our feet together – it’s special.
I also have a photo of me and Stefanus Joseph, a man I met on the side of the road in Springbok. We didn’t know each other, but we simply had to stop and shake hands as we passed, both of us in red velskoens.
In a way, a vellie fan is like a Volksie fan or a Vespa fan or a Land Rover fan. If I could, I’d greet fellow vellie wearers with my hand on the hooter.
If you’re not yet a vellie fan, I think you should make a New Year’s resolution and buy a pair. Wear them with pride and be reminded that South Africa is still full of wonderful surprises. Be grateful that you have shoes on your feet. They can take you far.
*Read Sophia’s profile on Gustav Nortjé on page 34.
My vellies go everywhere I go, and they soon start to resemble a pair of wild dog pups, marked by stains left by wood glue and hand sanitizer, marmalade and gemsbok blood (long story). But vellies can take it.
It’s a Monday morning in April and I’m with Gustav Nortjé (81) on the stoep of his turquoise house in the Baviaanskloof. It’s overcast: The clouds are heavy but seem reluctant to release their burden. In the front garden, a wind tugs on the branches of a scrawny guava tree. From the roof of the stoep hangs a ploughshare and some succulent planters made from plastic bottle halves strung up with orange baling twine. A clump of ferns grows in a corner.
Gustav looks like a farmer: leather boots, rugby shorts, two-tone shirt with a cellphone and a pen in the pocket. But he’s actually a shopkeeper. Well, he is now. The turquoise house borders his shop, which is right next to the only road through the kloof.
A cat emerges from the house but flees over the stoep wall when she spies me. “Strepies! What’s going on with you this morning?” he says. Then he turns to me. “I’m one of the oldest men in the kloof. You can ask me anything about the people here. They grew up in front of me and I know them all by name.”
Gustav is one of the last Nortjés in the Baviaanskloof. There used to be many more of them, including well-known Afrikaans author PH Nortjé.
“Ja, my great-grandfather JG (Johannes Gerhardus) arrived in 1880 and got a title deed – he owned a piece of land that would later be divided between his three sons: Charlie inherited Grootplaas, Richard got Grysbult and my grandfather,
Frank, farmed on Sewefontein.” Gustav points over his shoulder, as if those farms are right behind the house.
I’ve heard of Sewefontein before. It’s home to a natural spring and a forest of broom cluster fig trees that have sunk their roots deep into the water. A reliable water source is treasured in this region. “After my grandfather passed away, my dad Hannes inherited Sewefontein. His initials were also JG,” says Gustav, further mapping out the family tree. “Charlie’s sons, PH and Francis, were his cousins. Francis lived in this house and ran the shop. His name was actually Johannes Gerhardus Francois. I’m also Johannes Gerhardus Francois. Can you imagine how complicated things got at the post office!
“This family of mine…” Gustav hesitates, then continues. “Look, Oom Richard was a donner. He had a twin brother who died when they were 12, trampled by an ostrich. My dad always said that God knew what He was doing because no parent would have been able to raise two of them…
“Richard drove a Belsize, one of the first vehicles in the kloof. The brakes weren’t very good, and he always had a 7 mm Mauser behind the seat. One day, he was driving up the road when a donkey cart appeared out of nowhere. The brakes failed and he hit the donkey cart. The driver of the cart lay in the road and the donkeys were hurt. There was blood everywhere. Richard got the Mauser and put the donkeys out of their misery. The driver was still down, watching the whole thing. Oom Richard asked him if he was alright. He was terrified that he was about to be next: ‘I’ve never felt better in my life!’ he said.”
Gustav’s laughter sends Strepies, who has crept closer, scurrying away again. “In those years there were many people in the kloof. Many bywoners on the farms. You won’t believe me, but there were eight schools in the Baviaans at one stage. I went to a two-man primary school… Oom Francis and another of my dad’s cousins, Alfred Smith, were our teachers. All the kids from Sub A to Standard 2 were in one classroom; the kids from Standard 3 to 5 were in the other. After Standard 5 I went to high school in Willowmore, where I matriculated in 1959.
“I didn’t like school very much, but I enjoyed rugby and getting into trouble. My dad wanted me to go to Grootfontein agricultural college, but I told him I’d had enough of books. So, I returned to the farm – to Sewefontein.
“In those years…” He thinks for a moment. “No. See, I was born in 1941. There were only ostrich farmers in the kloof before my time. And people started planting tobacco. The road to Patensie was very narrow but in a good condition – it was graded regularly. We drove it in 10-tonne trucks to deliver tobacco to Patensie. After a while, they found out there was too much chloride in the soil and the tobacco farming petered out. We switched over to vegetable seed. I produced
vegetable seed until the 1990s. Vegetable seed was a big thing. The Baviaanskloof was the biggest vegetable seed producer in the country. Onions, beetroot, carrots, pumpkins, squash… you name it.”
Gustav falls silent and looks at the bare guava tree.
“It’s the monkeys,” he says. “They eat all the guavas. I didn’t even manage to pick one guava last year. Not one. They eat everything!”
He takes the pen from his shirt pocket and turns it over and over, lost in thought. Then he snaps the pen back and says: “My father passed away in 1983 and that’s when my problems started. I inherited Sewefontein with my two brothers, Siegfried and Alten. How could we divide the farm? The only solution was for me to buy them out. Jis, man… Instead of an inheritance, I had to take out a bank loan. I paid so much interest on that loan I could have bought two new bakkies every year with the money.
“That’s when I approached Gary Player to buy the farm. I called his horse stud farm near Colesberg. A foreman answered and when I asked where Gary was he said, ‘Hold on, please.’ Gary was with him and next thing he was on the line. I was flabbergasted! I told him the farm was in the Willowmore district because the Baviaanskloof wasn’t so well known back then. When Gary heard ‘Willowmore’, he thought ‘Karoo’. He didn’t know what the landscape looked like here, or that we had natural springs on the farm. He was still playing golf professionally and told me that he spent more time overseas than in South Africa and he already had the farm near Colesberg. He wasn’t interested. If only he knew what it looked like here!” Gustav held out for 10 years before the bank repossessed his farm. He toys with a loose thread on the seam of his rugby shorts. “Nou ja, then I farmed for other people,” he says. “I planted orchards and lucerne fields and installed irrigation systems…”
After a pause, he changes tack: “It’s a shame this place is so dry. I’ve never seen it likes this. The trees are still green, but there’s nothing on the ground. The mountains are government land, but there were many farms here in the kloof. When they built the Kouga Dam in the 1960s, some of the farms were bought up. The parks board also acquired some. There weren’t many farmers left in the end. “They still farm lucerne on a small scale, but the kudus eat it until there’s nothing left. In my day you wouldn’t even find a kudu hair in the Baviaans! There were cattle and dorper sheep, and Dohne merinos for wool, and angora goats… Mohair is the main industry now. People farm with sheep on higher ground where there is grass, but you have to pump water up there. Solar pumps – it’s the only way to farm. One year of rain won’t help – we need two or three.”
A wooden window frame hangs against the stoep wall, each pane holding a family photo of the Nortjés over the years.
“Here I am with all my children,” Gustav says proudly. “My daughter Marieka is a colonel in the police service in Port Elizabeth. And these are my sons: Reghardt is in Brackenfell – he does specialised drilling under roads and buildings; and Francois is an animal health technician in Cradock. That’s the new name for a ‘stock inspector’.”
There are also photos of his late wife. “She was also from the kloof,” he says. “Maria Petronella, but we called her Babes.” His finger lingers on one particular photo. “She wasn’t doing so well here. She’d had three small strokes and was in a wheelchair. I had to take care of her. I had help during the day, but I was alone with her at night. It was difficult. We knew it was coming, but when she left the kloof in an ambulance in January 2020, I didn’t know that it would be the last time I would see her.” He gets a far-off look in his eyes. “I still can’t believe how ill she was.”
A vehicle approaches and stops in front of the shop. A car door slams and a woman walks fast up the garden path to the stoep.
“Môre!” she says, introducing herself: Susan Reyneke from the olive farm Kamerkloof. “Is the shop open today?” “No, it’s closed for as long as I want to sit on the stoep,” Gustav jokes.
“Can I get a pumpkin?”
“Jong, I don’t have pumpkins, cabbage or sweet potatoes, but there are potatoes and onions.” Susan is at the door and he shouts after her: “Look in the fridge – there’s broccoli, too!”
He turns back to me. “Babes and I fixed up this place 11 years ago. After Oom
“They still farm lucerne on a small scale, but the kudus eat it until there’s nothing left. In my day you wouldn’t even find a kudu hair in the Baviaans!”
Francis passed away, the shop was closed for a long time and was neglected. I had experience running another shop on the farm – in my grandfather’s old ostrichfeather sorting room. That one was called the Sewefontein General Dealer, but this one… I changed its name to Babes se Winkel.”
Susan emerges from the shop with a bag of apples, some bananas and a pack of candles. “I left R100 next to the till,” she says as she makes a beeline for her car. Gustav tries to stop her. “Wait, I have to weigh the fruit!”
“Ag, weigh seven other bananas!” “R100 is too much!”
“It’s okay; we’ll sort it out another day. I have to go – we’re harvesting on the farm. Bye!”
She steps around the guava tree, gets in her car and drives off.
A convoy of bakkies towing off-road caravans speeds past. They don’t stop at the shop. I wonder how much business the shop sees in a day. As if reading my mind, Gustav says: “The kloof is busy over Easter and at the end of the year, but I don’t have much to do with tourists. They only come in to buy a cooldrink, maybe some biscuits. I serve the community. Chicken, sausage, Russians, livers… Want to see?”
We walk into the cool darkness of the shop. The fridges hum softly. On a wide wooden counter, a book full of scribbles and sums rests next to a box of apples – R3,50 each. Above the cash register there are old signs for Chesterfield, Gunston and Satin Leaf cigarettes. I ask Gustav if he smokes. He laughs and shows me his hand: The pen he’s holding is squeezed between his index and middle fingers, like a cigarette.
“I smoked Lexington and always said if I make it to 50, I’d quit. Before I knew it, I was 50. I’ll never forget, it was a Monday morning, and everyone knew I was planning to quit that day. Babes couldn’t handle it. She gave me a carton of cigarettes as a present! I said: ‘ Jinne, jong! Wat maak jy nou?’ And she said: ‘I don’t think you should quit – you’ll be impossible!’
“I smoked until October that year.
I was still 50… One morning, I decided that I wouldn’t smoke that day. I walked around with a pack of cigarettes in my
shirt pocket for two weeks. The pack wore through after a while, but I never smoked again.”
Gustav is in a reminiscing mood today. He groans as he sits down behind a desk; the surface strewn with papers, a pocketknife, a calculator and packets of Marie biscuits.
“I have rugby knees,” he says. “If I never played rugby, I would have been fine. I was a flanker for Willowmore. Number 6 – a fun position. I always said I’d play rugby until I was 30 and then
I’d get married. Babes knew it. But then I was in a car accident and couldn’t play any more. Babes didn’t want to wait any longer. We got married in 1969, just before I turned 29.
“I drove a black Chev Impala in those years – we went to the Kruger Park for our honeymoon. We entered the park at Punda Maria and drove to Pafuri then down to Shingwedzi, Letaba, Satara, Pretoriuskop… We spent two weeks in the park.
“I left home with R300 in traveller’s cheques from Volkskas Bank. We paid for the accommodation in advance, but the other costs – petrol, food, cigarettes, beer… I drank long toms like it was going out of fashion and we still had money left when we returned home.
“Ai, those were the best years,” he continues. “It was the time of