Magriet Adams: The farm girl whose songs made her a Namaqualand icon
1927-2014
NAMAQUALAND is known for two things: the wild flowers that draw busloads of tourists to the dusty roads of the Northern Cape every spring, and the cultural phenomenon who spent most of her life in a cramped pink house in Daisy Street in the small town of Garies.
When she died in a Springbok old-age home on April 15, Magriet “Ouma Grietjie” Adams, 87, known locally as “Ou Sus”, drew tributes from many of South Africa’s leading Afrikaans entertainers, including Steve Hofmeyr.
Adams, small in stature but big on personality, was also jokingly dubbed “the grandmother of Afrikaans rap” thanks to her use of rhyme. But her songs were a unique blend of traditional Nama and popular music.
She appeared on several television shows, released two CDs, played at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival and was the subject of a documentary.
David Kramer gave her a pair of his trademark red velskoene — in a child’s size 13, her family said, laughing at the memory of her tiny feet. But it was her pink kappie that most will remember. The frilly bonnet, much like those worn by the voortrekkers, is a cultural phenomenon in Namaqualand, where some of the older women still wear the headgear.
“She always wore a yellow one, but when she became famous she only wore pink,” said Garies resident and friend Girlie Cloete.
Hundreds of friends, family and the merely curious visited her ramshackle pink and green home in Garies this week, even though Adams had not lived there for the past two years.
Adams grew up on a farm about 20km from the small Namaqualand town and never had much of an education.
“She went to school for the first time at age 14 but at about 16 she had to leave because her parents were moving into town and the commute back and forward during the war years was hard,” said Wouter Jordaan, a former municipal manager who hired Adams as an office cleaner in the 1980s.
After leaving school, she worked in the kitchen of a school teacher. Adams’s family, many of whom still live in Garies, remember her singing along to songs on the “wireless” while she worked.
But it was her own songs, made up of little rhymes, that made people sit up and take notice.
Jordaan said: “One day, I came back early from lunch and I heard her singing and I realised the talent she had. She had a wonderful personality, but you can’t put personality on a CD.”
He got Adams onto a few local television shows, and later onto the bill of the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival in Oudtshoorn.
Together with Afrikaans musician Zirk Bergh, Adams — then 76 — recorded her first album in the kitchen of Jordaan’s grandmother. One of the songs on the album, the uptempo Lekker Ou Jan, about a school teacher called Mr Lambert, became a hit.
Adams was declared a provincial icon by the then Northern Cape premier Dipuo Peters and in 2007 the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation honoured her with its reconciliation award.
This week her daughter Elna recalled how people used to
She always wore a yellow one, but when she became famous she only wore pink
queue to meet Adams in person and ask her to sing Lekker Ou Jan.
“And my mother used to put out her hand and say ‘this is my work’,” she said of her mother’s straightforward requests for payment.
Her friend Cloete said: “Whenever you asked her where she was going, Ou Sus would say ‘ Ek jaag net die vrede na [I’m just chasing after peace].’ That’s a nice way to end it. Like her songs. She always ended them on a high note.”
Adams is survived by six children, 13 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. — Bianca Capazorio