Jacques Pauw
Lockdown tales from Riebeek-Kasteel
It is late Saturday afternoon, and on the Juliet balcony (named after the Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou version) of the Boudoir on Main Street, Riebeek-Kasteel wine fundi Anton lights a charcoal braai. On his left lurks the ragged Kasteelberg, on his right the grand old Royal Hotel.
Anton is sitting on a treasure trove. Beneath him is his renowned Wine Kollective shop with the cream of the Sadie family, Mullineux, AA Badenhorst and Porseleinberg in his cellar. The Boudoir is usually a self-catering place but for now Anton is guarding his wine shop.
The village’s restaurants and bars feel under siege since lockdown as desperadoes dig for booze. My establishment, Red Tin Roof, was burgled just before lockdown (the police didn’t bother to take fingerprints). An Italian restaurant was raided on day one. Anton chased away a drunkard gaining entry to an eatery behind the Boudoir.
Like Anton, and armed with two dogs, I’m in lockdown at Red Tin Roof to look after it.
Tonight, on day two, Anton cracks open a bottle of his own creation, a chenin-based Santa Cecilia. It’s not his first. He believes the next best thing to a bottle of Santa Cecilia is another bottle of Santa Cecilia.
Riebeek on Saturdays is usually a grooving town (the question on visitors’ lips is why do people here drink so much?) but tonight it is deadly quiet, except for The Who blaring from the Juliet. The street in front of Anton is empty but for his brakkie Toulouse (100-plus in human years) stretched out on the warm black tar.
As the last lick of the sun slips behind the mountain, Anton, like the rest of us, is contemplating his mortality. Are Italy, Spain and the US our future?
Anton shares his anguish with every other human in every other corner of the globe. Borders and language and skin colour and culture are for now irrelevant.
We are united in our fright and fear; 8-billion mortals entwined in a simultaneous ballet of life and death.
The smell of a fragrant akhni (a biryani-like Cape Malay dish) permeates Faiza’s house in Riebeek-Kasteel’s “coloured” section, once known as Esterhof. Many residents call it the onderdorp — the town down there.
Faiza is surrounded by children and cooks for all of them. What used to be her mother-in-law’s two-room RDP house has expanded over the years to house two families comfortably.
Riebeek-Kasteel wasn’t always a divided village. In the mid-1960s, 60 families living in Oukloof in the “white” town were forcibly removed and dumped in Esterhof, half a kilometre out of town past Riebeek Cellars and on the other side of the railway line.
Since then the community has grown to about 8,000 people — compared to probably no more than a thousand or two souls in the spacious main village — who are densely packed onto 30ha of land.
Seeing that I am stuck at home, I send a WhatsApp message to fellow Kasteelers for insight into their to-dos during lockdown.
One of the first responses is from Faiza, who has been living with HIV for 18 years and suffers from hypertension, but is otherwise “as strong as an ox”.
She has never been busier. Says Faiza: “HIV did not get me down and neither will corona. I will fight it tooth and nail like I fought HIV.”
Working for a community organisation, she monitors the lockdown, creates WhatsApp groups to send advice, maps out problem areas and assists those in need. She is also working on a food and medical delivery plan to alleviate poverty and illness. Many adults are at best seasonal workers.
“There are many working behind the scenes in our little village to take care of the vulnerable. Authorities, organisations and individuals are all banding together to make this work,” she writes.
There was a healthy police presence on social grant payout day but nothing since then, she says. The shebeens and clubs that usually keep residents awake until early morning have closed.
Faiza says only about half the residents adhere to lockdown because “you can’t keep the kids inside; they want to ride their bikes and the yards are too small”.
Among those not staying home are a throng of neglected children who live in a derelict house on a farm bordering the village. Horror stories of abuse and hunger surround the house. The kids are in rags, beg from visitors and restaurants and raid rubbish bags.
I’ve seen them walking past Red Tin Roof virtually every day, towards the centre of town. But everyone is gone and the restaurants are closed.
What does one do? Feed them and break the lockdown rules?
The WhatsApp group becomes a snapshot of life in a small village under lockdown.
Says a resident: “I have 30 cigs and loads of wine.”
Another: “I’ll trade cigs for wine. Come to me.”
One more: “I still have a carton left but tonight sien my doos sy gat” (sorry, not translatable).
Deli-owner Ainsa is outraged. A spider bit her during a cleanout and she rushed to the pharmacy in nearby Malmesbury. A woman queueing for respiratory medicine (I don’t think it was related to the virus) for her husband and child was R116 short when she got to the till. She returned in a state of panic to the medicine department.
“Sorry madam, the price has just gone up.”
Ainsa paid the difference for the distraught woman. But what about next month?
There are, besides fear of the virus, two major concerns in town: residents’ 21-day booze stock will dissipate by day 12. There is a suggestion to get a local supplier to conceal wine under vegetables. Someone is devising a delivery system and a pick-up point.
The other is more serious. RiebeekKasteel’s economy revolves around tourism. The Olive Festival in May, a major moneybooster, has been cancelled. The arts festival in late winter is also under threat.
Jobs are going to be lost, doors will close, people are going to go hungry. We had to stop trading but we still have salaries, water and lights, rent and loans to pay.
Says the local baker: “It’s not the Covid I fear. It’s the aftermath of small businesses.
Those that are left. To pick up the pieces and rebuild the economy.”
But like everywhere else, life goes on. Says a resident who is doing her own gardening: “Much as I like someone popping in from time to time, there is also a comfort in knowing nobody will see me in my ageinappropriate shorts circa 1998, which only just cover the body’s essential services and expose too much of the melting-candle legs.”
Litton, a 60-something smartphoneless free spirit, sends a text message on his R699 Clicks special: “Luvley cool early dawn. Did push-ups. Chin-ups under steps. Sit-ups and now sit-down with a cup o tea. Lekka by die
see. Three gymnogenes [African harrierhawks] circling overhead. Using this opportunity as an exercise to go without certain things and to stay put knowing I have a lot more to be thankful for than sum others.”
Litton, by the way, is famous for shaking hands with Prince Harry at a Botswana safari lodge where he worked some years ago. As his Royal Highness was introduced to him, Litton let rip: “Howzit man! Nice to meet you!”
He said afterwards he didn’t really know who Harry was.
Remember Italians singing from their balconies during their darkest hour in order to console, inspire and support their countrymen and -women?
Says local artist Li: “Hi. Sunday 29th around 6pm, a couple of houses away, Bas was playing his sax … then Herman joined in playing his mouth organ and then drums from the Kirstein home … what an awesome sunset on the first Sunday of lockdown … all neighbours, Shawn and Solly, Li, Tracy, Keenan and Phil and Karin practising on any musical instrument they can find to join in the upcoming Sunday Sunset Lockdown session.”
And if I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
And if I shiver, please give me a blanket
— Behind Blue Eyes, The Who