Elsje Becker is a strong, gutsy woman. How could she be anything else after raising a troop of four lively lads, each one an even bigger (self-confessed) petrolhead than the next? This grandmother of seven and great-grandmother of one is a woman who perserveres, endures, holds her own and, above all, holds everything together (but she rarely holds her tongue...) It's no wonder that today, on the eve of her 90th birthday, she is still capable of doing a hundred squats every day.
Her husband, Joop, also a proud and upright man who spent many years working as an electrical engineer for the former Iscor, today reads aloud his memories of the 1957 Fiat Nuova 500 in their garage in detail and with great gusto. Joop turns 90 in October.
The Beckers are two remarkable, with-it people who celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary on 28 March 2024.
One photo hanging on their living room wall shows Mom and Dad with three boys sporting impish dimples. Today, they are all successful in their own right. Hennie, the eldest, is an electrical engineer who retired to Nuwerus and lends support to his minister wife; Gert, a mechanical engineer, is the founder and CEO of Saspine, a Pretoria-based company that manufactures implants for spinal surgery; and Jopie is an architect who also works in property development. The youngest and a latecomer to the family, Johan, also an architect, hadn't yet been born when the photo was taken.
THE BOYS CERTAINLY WERE a handful. Joop explains: "As a young married couple, we lived at 24 Park Avenue (today Emily Hobhouse Avenue) in Pretoria North, directly opposite Pretoria North High School, from 1964 to 1970. Hennie was six years old in 1967 and Gert was five."
Joop was eager to build a go-cart for his sons, for which he acquired an old JAP 2-horsepower engine from his brother. The go-cart had to be pushed to get it started, and when he was at work, Elsje was the one who had to do all the pushing.
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There are few secrets in Verlorenvallei
All platteland towns have that one famous (or infamous) character who knows everyone's business. Meet Livia Hoogenboezem, the keeper of every piece of gossip in Verlorenvallei...
To the babbling brooks of Sabie
Roughly every five years, Jaco and Jens Reverchon get itchy feet. They hopped around Cape Town, moved up north to the Greater Kruger and then, recently, put down roots next to the Sabie River where they live a peaceful life with their animals.
Willie Strauss Never an idle moment
A variety concert... that is how to approach your life and career when you want to survive as an artist living in the platteland. So says singer, lyricist and radio food expert Willie Strauss, who entices visitors to Die Sinkstoor in Cullinan with traditional offal and his mother's Bushmanland boerekos.
To die for
How do you avoid the tourist avalanche if you live in an Afromontane forest where holidaymakers descend in December? You drive to lonely outposts in the mountains of the Cape, says photographer Obie Oberholzer, and you make pictures rather than take them.
The art of small talk
In the city, a glib smile suffices when it comes to interaction with any stranger that crosses her path. Yet a visit to Struisbaai taught Elizabeth Wasserman that small talk is no small matter
Find wisdom in the forest: It all starts with soil
A tree is an investment in any garden, even though patience is required to pluck the (figurative) fruit. When you plant several trees together to create your own forest, the reward is much greater. They offer shade, they support life⊠and they improve your soil. We spent time reflecting in our white kareeâforestââ and learnt a lot
Ohrigstad's tiny big farmer
Agriculture courses through the veins of the Els family, who have been farming in the Ohrigstad valley in Limpopo since the 1930s. And they are getting younger and younger: Grandfather Jan Els was 36 when he set out, father Dewald 27⊠and littleWaldo got behind the wheel of massive machines at the age of 6!
On mountains and moments
On a trip in the southern Drakensberg, a torrential downpour and a field of prickly thistles got acclaimed photographer Obie Oberholzer thinking about the power of perspective
Spring on a stick
Expand your braai repertoire by serving a side dish of flavourful spring-vegetable kebabs cooked to perfection over the coals.
Postcards from the Tankwa
The R355 between Ceres and Calvinia is the longest stretch of gravel road between two towns in South Africa. And if you find yourself on this route, you're in the Tankwa Karoo. From the road, the surrounding plains seem lifeless and dull, but when you stop your car, sit quietly and breathe in the atmosphere, you realise there might just be much waiting to be discovered here.
