Galant

Galant was my mother's gardener. He was old when he started working for us. Once or twice a week he would arrive at our front door, ready for whatever needed to be done in the garden. He had a bitter aroma of burning newspaper about him because, like many of his kind, he did not smoke commercially made cigarettes, but rolled his own out of newspaper. God knows what was rolled into that newspaper but I don't think it was dagga.

He had a surprising history, but this being South Africa during Apartheid, and he not being a loquacious character, you would have missed it if you did not spend quite a lot of time talking to him. I would have been between nine and about fourteen years old at this time. And anyway, who talks to the gardener?

Well, I did.

There's a wonderful Afrikaans expression which does not translate well into English but I'd heard my mother use it when referring to Galant (she spoke English generally but switched to Afrikaans when she couldn't find an English expression. Or when she was very angry ...). She would say that Galant was "gepla deur die maan", ("troubled by the moon" - a bit crazy) - and he was, actually, but in a nice way.

He was a descendant of the Malay slaves who were brought to South Africa to work on the farms. These people were steeped in a culture which we whites knew absolutely nothing about, and which had a language, religion, terminology and concepts of its own. The Afrikaans language picked up some of the linguistic elements, but not the terminology or the concepts, which were entirely foreign.

Apartheid didn't just happen out of nowhere: prior to the coining of that term in 1948, there had always been a pretty clear-cut separation of the races on a legal and cultural basis in South Africa - as in America - and as with the black people in America, the Malays were foreigners, brought here against their will and yearning for a faraway country which they had no hope of ever seeing again.

There is a wonderful film by Rian Malan titled The Silver Fez, which deals with an old tradition, the Cape Minstrel Carnival, and into that Malan has woven the sad history of the Cape Malays. I saw the film when it first came out and I was fascinated.

From the film I earned about the "Nederlandsche Liedjies" - songs in the now all-but-forgotten language of the slaves - songs with a strange, sad, mournful tone, in a language which even the singers themselves, in some instances, no longer understand, the whole tradition having been passed down from father to son over several generations. I doubt whether the lyrics have even been reduced to writing - see here .

I was once in a lift with four Malay men. They were speaking to each other in a language which at first sounded like Afrikaans but I couldn't understand a word of it. It was Afrikaans dialect, alright, but understanding it was just out of my reach.

Yet as soon as the they had to speak to an outsider, they switched smoothly into Afrikaans.

The coloured population of South Africa has three totally unrelated sources: Firstly the remains of the indigenous XhoiSan tribes, then the mixed-race descendants of European settlers and black tribes (mostly Xhosa), and finally the Malaysian slaves who were Galant's ancestors. But of course the Nationalist Party, with it's desire to put everyone into a racial "box", simply lumped all these people together as "Coloureds"

But that is all by the way. I have digressed.

One afternoon I came out into the garden to find Galant holding the garden hose like a weapon, squirting a jet of water into a hole in the trunk of one of our old Oak trees - you know how old Oak trees tend to develop big holes, where bees make nests, squirrels hide nuts, and smaller creatures take shelter. Well, Galant had obviously taken a strong dislike to that hole.

"What are you doing Galant", I asked.

"Hy loer vir my. Ek gaat daai oge uit spuit" He said.

Then I noticed that the tree had two holes, fairly close to each other, and Galant saw them as "oge" - eyes. But why would that worry him? Perhaps if you live in a world occupied jointly by spirits and human souls, where magic is part of the ecosystem, then a weathered old forest sprite might well be thought to be looking at you!

So we spoke about the spirit in the tree for a while.

"Hy like nie vir my nie" se Galant

"Hoekom, Galant?

"Nee, master Herrie, hy's kwaad vir my ommat hy dink ek het een van sy voelkies vermoor"

"Wat! Het jy, Galant?"

"Nee, master Herrie, daai ou voelkie was alreeds vrek toe ek daar aankom. Hy't sommer daar gele innie modder tussen die wortels van die boom, toe kry ek hom daar, en ek het hom sommer daar ook begrawe. Maar die blerrie dom-astrant boom dink nou ek het hom doodgemaak, en nou is hy die hel in met my en hy will niks van my weet nie. Ek pleit al hele oggend met hom maar nee, the case is closed, se hy.

Nou loer hy onophoudend vir my. Ek is bang hy gaan 'n doekum op my sit"

A little explanation here. A "doekum" (my spelling) is a spell or a curse, the effect of which (as far as I know) is that the subject of the spell/curse will fail at all his endeavours. Only the person who imposed the spell can lift it. But if Galant could render the tree unable to see him, it would not be able to curse him. Like Chinese ghosts, spells can only travel in straight lines, ie., line-of-sight.

It was a long, hot morning, some kind of holiday I guess, and we got into a rambling conversation. My mother had gone out, there was no-one to supervise Galant, and he obviously wanted a break. I fetched a Coke for each of us and we sat on a gentle rising slope in the lawn, behind the old tree, away in the farthest corner of the garden, and he told me stories - how true they were I'll never know but overall I had no cause to doubt him.

Galant was a young man at the time of the First World War. The SA Army had established a separate corps called the Cape Coloured Corps, and Galant had signed up for training. A whole different picture of Galant began to emerge: in my mind's eye I saw a strong young man, an idealist, proudly wearing his country's uniform, embarking on Army transport to go North to fight for his country, bearing his Lee Enfield .303 rifle on his shoulder.

See here: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/cape-coloured-corps-and-first-world-war

The Cape Coloured Corps distinguished themselves in battle in both West and East Africa and at one stage went as far north as Ramallah in Palestine. But the Corps suffered the same fate in South African history, as the Tuskagee Airmen in America. It seems that coloured soldiers in both South Africa and America were very shabbily treated when their fighting days were done: they were gratefully received on sign-up, and then shamefully forgotten afterwards.

So here was Galant, literally an old-time war hero, mowing the white madam's lawn to eke out a living in his old age. Utterly shameful.

As I grew up I forgot about Galant and he went out of my life and I don't even remember the last time I saw him. This must be the first time I've thought about him in 50 years. - But my mother painted a portrait of him once, a long time ago. I'm going to try to find it, to put it up with this post.

Sic transit gloria.

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🅒 HARRY FRIEDLAND March 2022

🅒 Painting by Dolly Friedland

Tales from 🅒"MARIMBA" BY Harry Friedland