PROFILE: The old man and the kloof

Next time you drive through the Baviaanskloof, pull over at Babes seWinkel and say hello to Gustav Nortjé, the oom behind the cash register and a storyteller extraordinaire.

- SOPHIA VAN TAAK

It’s a Monday morning in April and I’m with Gustav Nortjé (81) on the stoep of his turquoise house in the Baviaanskloof. It’s overcast: The clouds are heavy but seem reluctant to release their burden. In the front garden, a wind tugs on the branches of a scrawny guava tree. From the roof of the stoep hangs a ploughshare and some succulent planters made from plastic bottle halves strung up with orange baling twine. A clump of ferns grows in a corner.

Gustav looks like a farmer: leather boots, rugby shorts, two-tone shirt with a cellphone and a pen in the pocket. But he’s actually a shopkeeper. Well, he is now. The turquoise house borders his shop, which is right next to the only road through the kloof.

A cat emerges from the house but flees over the stoep wall when she spies me.

“Strepies! What’s going on with you this morning?” he says. Then he turns to me. “I’m one of the oldest men in the kloof. You can ask me anything about the people here. They grew up in front of me and I know them all by name.”

Gustav is one of the last Nortjés in the Baviaanskloof. There used to be many more of them, including well-known Afrikaans author PH Nortjé.

“Ja, my great-grandfather JG (Johannes Gerhardus) arrived in 1880 and got a title deed – he owned a piece of land that would later be divided between his three sons: Charlie inherited Grootplaas, Richard got Grysbult and my grandfather, Frank, farmed on Sewefontein.” Gustav points over his shoulder, as if those farm are right behind the house.