Some chronology for John Joseph Ray


My Crepe Myrtles in blossom

1979

South Africa

In 1997 (during the Apartheid era) I went to South Africa for 5 or 6 weeks. The University paid my way so I could do a survey there. Rather unoriginally, I was interested in surveying white attitudes to blacks etc.

It was at that time an amazingly well-kept and affluent©looking place -- at least in the white areas. Cheap black gardeners, I suppose.

The South African Indians were very interesting. They tended to live in big, opulent©looking houses and drive quality cars. Standing on the kerb in Johannesburg you saw dark men with European type noses going past driving BMWs and the like. You also saw dark men with flat noses hanging out of dilapidated and overcrowded buses. The nose (race) seemed to make the difference.

Apartheid discriminated roughly equally against all sorts of dark people but the Indians found the basically rather petty restrictions little problem (they did not, for instance, want to intermarry with the whites anyhow!) and were in fact at that time the richest Indian community in the world. They were averaging an income about 80% of the white average.

So it was not Apartheid that explained negro poverty in South Africa. The sad fact of the matter is that Negroes are poor, violent and generally at the bottom of the heap wherever they live. And South Africa was the only part of Africa at that time where they did not from time to time have to face systematic mass-murder and famine.

There was still a lot of sporadic black-on-black (tribal) violence and dire poverty among them but the South African border police were still there not for the purpose of keeping the South African blacks in but to keep foreign blacks out!

I took a drive through Soweto with Leon Louw (a leading local libertarian). We needed no pass, suffered no restrictions and were even shown around by any government employees we approached. Blacks who saw us passing by waved.

Most of Soweto comprises 4-room brick houses that are undoubtedly overcrowded but also seem solid enough. Water is laid on but I think they were just getting electricity (at the hands of WHITE electricians!).

All Soweto houses had a yard of their own but I saw no greenery in any of them. As far as I could see, in Johannesburg it was only whites who were growing vegetables to save money! Isn't that worthy of Ripley?

Incidentally, where does the name "Soweto" comes from? It sounds pretty African does it not? In fact it is simply an abbreviation for "South West Township". Quite English, really!

I discovered some good foods in South Africa -- particularly a type of curried Kebab called Sosaties. There was a mass-marketed Stout produced by S.A. Brewing that was very good too. The best I have tasted. And one of the Cape wines is unlike any other. It is a hybrid grape called Pinotage. It produces superb wines in South Africa but no-one else has much luck with it. Thanks to the moronic policy of several Australian governments it was for a time a prohibited import here.

The best brand of South African wines seemed to be K.W.V. (translates to Co-Operative Wine-growers Union).

All of black Africa drinks Cape wines when they can afford to.

White South Africans must at that time have been the most hospitable whites in the world. I know -- from the doorknock surveying I have done. Only in South Africa was I regularly invited in when I knocked on people's doors. They would answer my questions even if they were having Sunday dinner at the time.

After doing my door-knocking in Johannesburg, I took the train down to Bloemfontein. It was a slow steam-hauled train and rather took me back to my childhood train trips in Queensland. It was slow to minimize damage due to possible derailment (by black terrorists) and steam-hauled because there was at the time an embargo on supplying South Africa with oil.

We passed a lot of shacks with blacks living inÜr them on the way. It was notable that the corrugated iron roofs were always just held down with rocks rather than being fastened in any other way. When the train came by, the blacks would come out and wave to it. Lovely!

I stayed with Dr. Patrick Heaven (Yes, that really is his surname!) and his family in Bloemfontein and was amused when he introduced me to his fellow Afrikaner academics in the Psychology Department. They were all wearing ties! You would never see that anywhere else among psychology academics to my knowledge.

My trip to South Africa was in December so Patrick was kind enough to invite me to a family Christmas party when that came around. At the party a dear little Afrikaner girl (about 10) asked me: “And what do you think of our language?” I was delighted to be able to say (in complete sincerity): “I like the way you say “Dankie” (thank you)”. She seemed pleased with that.



Hoddox

What are "hoddox"? I have encountered hoddox only once. It was on my first trip to South Africa in 1979. I was in the Hillbrow area of Johannesburg, then a rather "vibrant" (in a good way. I don't like some vibrations) area. It was a safe area to walk around in then, unlike in the "rainbow" South Africa of today.

Anyway, I wanted some food so walked into a small cafe and asked the proprietor what he was selling. He listed a number of things, one of which was "hoddox". It sounded interesting so I ordered it. It was a hot dog. The proprietor was Greek -- and a Greek version of a South African accent had foxed me.

I very rarely eat hot dogs because I don't like frankfurts, which are their usual filling. Although there is something about franks that I don't like, I have never been quite able to pin down what it is. I think I may have found out, however. I think the following information from a food chemist might put a lot of people off:

"One thing about hot dogs, they're in a category called emulsified sausages and they're a bit more complex than, say, your typical sausage. In summer sausage, meat and fat are ground up into small chunks, and them mixed with spices. You can still see those chunks and tell the meat apart from the fat though. In an emulsified sausage like hot dogs, the meat and fat are ground into much tinier chunks, until it forms a uniform paste. The paste then mixed in powerful, high speed mixers together with spices, additives, water, and air. If regular sausage is like pesto, emulsified sausage is like vinaigrette. There's a lot of things going on in there that you just can't see without a microscope"

I am very keen on sausages generally so it must just be the texture of franks that I dislike. A jocular name for sausages is "mystery bags". I think the mystery is most pronounced with franks.




Back to index page

E.&O.E.

My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal); My Home page supplement; Subject index to my short notes. My annual picture page is here

Email me (John Ray) as jonjayray@hotmail.com