Half a morning in Hopefield Police Station

Oh friend of mine

Don’t be denied

Neil Young from ‘Don’t be Denied’

HALF a morning spent in Hopefield Police Station’s charge office is as good a way as any to kick off into the New Year.

“Daddy you will be coming with us to the police station in the first part of the morning to get our Name Clearances,” I was informed today over breakfast by my 20-year-old daughter.

Heidi’s Look

I noticed Heidi looking at me meaningfully over her chopped banana and bran flakes.

“Yes,” I replied meekly.

Now I accept that the Newby name is generally pretty shitty around Hopefield. You see we flaunt a sort of arcane notoriety in this town … rather like Kurtz’s reputation within the Company in Heart of Darkness – he practiced “unsound methods” in his acquisition of ivory. But as in Kurtz’s case, the reputation goes somewhat deeper: just as Kurtz crossed a line drawn by a Eurocentric pen into a place where barbarism and savagery prevailed, we Newbys don’t seem to find ourselves in those places where our fellow Hopefielders dominate. You won’t find us stalking the streets, muttering tersely into walkie-talkie radios during the small hours while on Neighbourhood Watch duty. When everyone else dons black to showcase Boere Chic as well as bewys ondersteun for the Plaasmoord movement, we emerge as butterflies of the Rainbow Nation. Neither will you find us lost in wonder at the dominee’s sermon in the NG Kerk on Sunday mornings or banging away on the pistol range on Saturday afternoons. Different strokes for different folks

You must understand that we are not stand-offish people by nature. It’s just that we are careful about making bedfellows with the wrong people. Lots of the folk around here appear to maintain elevated levels of aggression, unnatural predispositions towards guns, unrealistic feelings of entitlement with regard to their status in society at large and quite frankly … display racist tendencies when black people are likely to enter the mix. It’s been suggested that because all of this is not really our cup of tea, we are heathens cut from communist cloth and libtards to boot.

But no, we were not on our way to the Hopefield Police Station to renounce ourselves by making a large donation to the Cape Party, pledging our support for the Suiderlanders or applying for firearm licenses. Our mission was to each fill in a document called “Application for a Name Clearance” which if successfully procured, would declare this flaky Newby family sufficiently sanitary to foster an unwanted infant from a Vredenburg child care organisation. Needless to say, this development is to more than likely further besmirch our name in local circles because there’s virtually no chance that this infant will be covered with a white skin.

Already I can hear the remarks as Mila wheels the small human into the Spar: “Ek het altyd geweet dat hulle was k…..boeties.”

But for an aging hippie with only mildly anarchist intentions, the world has shifted unexpectantly, but oh so sweetly, to present a startlingly wide broadside view of The Enemy for one last time. Exhilarating thoughts flood my head. Memories of covering the Soweto Uprising unrest of the mid-Seventies, being bitten on the bum during student demonstrations in the same decade, locked up and slapped systematically by Special Branch Officers for writing the wrong story. The Enemy has been lying dormant all this while, I think to myself.  But now He’s out of hibernation and thanks to Steve Bannon, Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini, Simon Roche, maybe even Donald Trump or Steve Hofmeyr and a host of other alt-right fools, my life has taken on a new meaning.  Ah but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now, I croon to my inner self. Viva! Vive la revolution! If I could just move a little bit faster then maybe the Antifa would take me and I might get to petrol bomb somebody.

“Daddy, come on get out of the car. Be careful crossing the road. We need to get to the charge office.” It was Mila making sure that the Form SAPS 91 (a) and I would make contact with each other on this day, the image of a minute black baby foremost in her thoughts.

Hopefield Police Station

Things inside in the charge office indicated a slow crime day in Hopefield. The policeman at the desk wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was tolerably pleasant. Of course, Heidi just had to up the tempo and rattle the cage. SHE wanted to fill in ALL the forms. The man behind the counter looked shocked. I assured him that she was the best person I knew for this job; the numbers would just fly off her pen, all the words would be spelled properly and all dates 100 percent correct. He looked unconvinced but she already had the papers in her control and a purloined police pen in her plump little fist.

I know that she gets ratty when in close proximity with policemen filling in forms, and recall with exquisite clarity the afternoon she accused an inebriated Zulu sergeant who visited our farm in the Umvoti District to investigate an arson charge. That story did not have a happy ending with her declaring the man to be incompetent for his job, and him moving off in a sulk to search for new girlfriends in the surrounding hills. The arsonist was never caught.

On another occasion, she was arrested inside a Stanger Cash ‘n Carry after absconding from a roadblock a kilometre away because the traffic officer was taking too long to complete her roadside summons. Subsequently, after being escorted to KwaDukuza police station she told the station commander that she did not have time to deal with fools. So it was fortunate that this particular policeman had acquiesced and allowed her to take over before history began to repeat itself.

Back to Hopefield Police Station – suddenly the tempo quickened. An accident had taken place on the R45 outside Hopefield and the officers attending were starting to return. A diminutive uniformed officer with Khoi features and an impossibly large braided hairpiece stripped her high-visibility traffic vest off to reveal a correspondingly large pistol attached to a belt wrapped around a minute waist. I stared at her (probably quite rudely) for a minute or so before I realised that the firearm was in fact standard size – it was just the fineness of her bone structure along with her height that in contrast, had made it appear so large.

A big grumpy square woman in civvies was moving around with a dangerous gleam in her eye. I realised that it would be better to humour rather than antagonise her because she was the deputy station-commander and one of those gay ladies who could take a person’s head off with a single swipe and not think twice. The station commander, a uniformed captain, emerged from his office where he’d evidently been in an important meeting. He cast a quick glance over his charge office and with a pained expression retired back into his office. He looked like one of the unhappiest men I’ve seen in recent months and speculated whether it might not be chronic piles that were responsible for his demeanor.

I was relieved to notice that he was (1) coloured, (2) a captain, and (3) wearing a uniform, because when the case of my photographic gear being stolen by a carpenter performing alterations was being investigated a while back, a white plainclothes detective warrant officer with a large hearing aid told me quite readily that he was the station commander, and for no reason other than intuition, I had doubted him at the time. It seems that even police officers, white ones nogal, are quite capable of offloading a few porkies once they get going.

Heidi had filled in all the forms and I had signed mine in the appropriate place, so now it was just taking-finger-prints time. This was not something that she could control; the fingerprint station sharing space in a tight passage leading to the ladies toilet with a microwave oven (presumably to heat up the officer’s’ pies) and a kettle to make coffee (real policemen shouldn’t drink tea should they?).

A lanky uniformed police lady had joined the throng and we became stuck together momentarily in the passage. I recognised her as the one who had tittle-tattled to the Stock Theft Unit when Winston went AWOL some months back. My wife had unwittingly committed the crime of owning unmarked cattle (all three of them) and was all but arrested when the Stock Theft Unit found out. Perhaps this officer had just been trying to polish her marble with aspirations of joining this elite band of husky bovine bashers in SUVs. I remember when they came to issue Heidi with a rather stiff fine; she was with them at our front gate, in jeans, firearm on the hip and a Make-My-Day look on her bony face.

However today she was different and querulous to the extreme. Francesca was her name and she was protesting loudly to the square policewoman. She didn’t want to go on a course and become deskbound. Her voice echoed around the room. She wanted to remain active and working in the field. In this way, she would remain young and sexy. She also seemed rather resentful that she had to look after her sick mother while enduring all this other stuff.

I caught the look in Mila’s eye. My daughter was thinking: first, off you’re not sexy to begin with. Secondly, everybody gets old and you’re no exception. Thirdly, it’s uncool as well as unprofessional to blow off about your personal life in a public space. Because for a millennial with hipster leanings, being uncool is the very worst crime that a person can commit. Far worse than theft, arson or murder.

Irrationally I demanded cake. What I had in mind was some fine Black Forest Cake, the chocolate sponge delicately dry and not too sweet; some parts soaked with kirschwasser, dressed with fresh whipped cream, shaved Swiss chocolate, and marinated black cherries. So Heidi dispatched Mila and me to the Spar while she waited for the forms to be typed out by a ponderous policeman. Of course, the Hopefield Spar has never sold anything remotely resembling the creation inside my head. Before settling on mince pies baked before Christmas, we examined cheesecake slices that were past their sell-by date yesterday and Mila immediately took the matter up with an abrasive assistant attending the bakery counter.

“Count the date properly,” the hussy instructed my daughter. “Then you will see they’s not past sell-by date.”

I smiled when I saw the expression on Mila’s face. If Heidi is the oak tree, then Mila is her acorn who never fell very far.