Bosman Mecca
We had come to the Marico to see how much of the world of Oom Schalk could still be found. I knew that some places and characters were purely fictional, but many were real, or at least an adaptation of the real. I’d brought my elderly mother along. My ma is Afrikaans, loves the Oom Schalk stories, and her brother (the poet Uys Krige) was a friend of Bosman in post-war Johannesburg.
She was the ideal travelling companion. We headed west of Pretoria on the N4, bushveld bound. Although the locale of Bosman stories is further north, the town of Groot Marico has become synonymous with the writer. It’s also home to the Herman Charles Bosman Literary Society and was the obvious first stop.
At the information centre – which doubles as Bosman Mecca – we met Santa and Egbert van Bart, the driving force behind the society. Apart from helping visitors with accommodation and Bosman info, they have also supervised the buildings of a replica of the school where Bosman taught (the original, on a farm near Abjaterskop, has fallen into ruin). It now serves as a living museum to the author.
The schoolhouse is a two-room, thatched structure with a dung floor and was built by society members using bricks salvaged from derelict buildings. ‘We inaugurated the Herman Charles Bosman Literary Society after visiting the original schoolhouse in October 1993 – it was still standing back then,’ said Egbert who, with his full beard, cardigan and veldskoens, was a pretty good facsimile of Oom Schalk. ‘The poet Lionel Abrahams was there in his wheelchair to reminisce, Patrick Mynhardt did his marvellous impersonation. A full Marico moon came up through the thorn trees.
Celebrating Bosman
The society still gathers on the third weekend of every October to celebrate Bosman. It has grown immensely, with members from all over the world.’ Sitting drinking strong coffee on the info centre stoep, conversation meandered the way it should of a bosveld afternoon: cattle rustling, the merits of peach versus marula mampoer, droughts and the Boer War. I hauled out a map and Egbert helped me trace a Bosman route. ‘You know my brother and Herman used to spar verbally,’ my ma was saying to Santa.
‘There’s that story about the time Uys was coming out of Broadcast House in Joburg and saw Bosman chastising a black man for flogging his mule. “That’s right, Herman,” called Uys, “Your good deed for the day. Tell him that after his mother, a man’s best friend is his horse.” ‘Bosman retorted: “You were always the master of the cliché.” ‘To which Uys quipped, “Ah, but do you know what a cliché is? It’s that which is worn threadbare next to the hearts of men. An indifferent poet – much more indifferent than I – said it.”’
By Justin Fox