You used to be cool

By Mark John Burke

Owen is a good friend from my childhood, school and, even later, university years. We had very much the same interest when it came to girls, subjects choices, future dreams and, most importantly, American comedy. At a certain stage this fondness of cheap entertainment included a sitcom of the animated yellow-coloured character persuasion. I recall a particular episode that we often joked about. In this episode, where China wished to claim its debt from the USA, Bart Simpson asked senior diplomats and businessmen in an important meeting: “What happened to you China, you used to be cool?” In classic Simpsons style, one businessman jumped up and answered in a stereotypical Asian accent: “Hey, we’re still cool!”

Owen and I also have various other things in common, one of them being that we both come from a small but significant town in the Free State called Kroonstad. It was in this historic town that a concentration camp housed women and children in the most vile and repulsive circumstances imaginable.

There in the heart of the great Free State stands a state theatre equal in stature and size to the Baxter or Johannesburg Civic Theatre. Next to the theatre is an impressively big public library with a quaint yet interesting little museum attached to it. Kroonstad was once the grain capital of the Free State and year after year won the prize for the most beautiful town in the country. It was also home to Serfontein Dam which provided water when the town needed it and attracted tourists from all over. Kroon Park was one of the busiest resorts in the country and apart from the town’s strategic transport location, it also had a beautiful and historic old railway station dating back to the 1800s. At this impressive railway station the great Jan Smuts met with Lord Kitchener to begin peace talks and to start building a new, co-operative nation.

The state civic theatre continues to deteriorate in Kroonstad. On my last visit, the library didn’t own a book younger than a decade and I must have been about the same age the last time I visited the open doors of the attached museum. The roads are deplorably dilapidated and my friends that still work there have lived with water restrictions for the last eight years. Both Serfontein Dam and Kroon Park stand practically deserted and it saddens me to recall how the magical train station, which is right opposite the fire station, burnt down at the beginning of 2012. This happened because there was no working vehicle or equipment to stop the raging fire. The citizens in and around Kroonstad, including my parents and Owen’s parents, live with almost constant electricity outages and no foresight of infrastructure investment to bring back a booming economy to town. Those less fortunate than our parents, the ones in the townships, live in much the same conditions as those poor women and children in the Anglo Boer war concentration camps. They have to face the humiliation of open toilets and are not afforded some of the most basic rights, including access to clean running water.

One can get in a car and travel to Viljoenskroon, Ventersburg, Fochville or any other town in the vicinity and the most obvious observation is that things have changed. A Dutch Reformed pastor from Potchefstroom remarked in jest the other day that at least some rejuvenation was happening in Koppies: he claimed they were now attracting more tourists – having changed the main road into a 4×4 route.

This crumbling infrastructure isn’t an isolated incidence – it’s the case with many small towns across the country and even some of the metropolitan areas. With each passing year we see the optimism towards our country fade. This once rightfully proud and strong nation that, on several occasions, for reasons good and bad, had the world watching with bated breath, is fast becoming but another African country with African problems.

I wonder if Smuts, with his intelligence and understanding of languages (undoubtedly including slang and lingo knowledge), would ask us all: “What happened to you SA, you used to be cool?”

Mark John is a controversial alumnus of the Potchefstroom campus of the North West University and a confused masters student at the University of Cape Town. Read his blog at markjohnburke.blogspot.com