When Nothing Is Everything

Scratching out a living on the edge of the Kalahari is not for everyone, but as Shirley Marais remembers, her grandparents’ farm was a place of miracle and wonder.

 

My Ouma and Oupa farmed an incredibly flat, incredibly stony piece of red earth in the Northern Cape, near the dusty dorp of Daniëlskuil, where the Kalahari edges into the Great Karoo.

They would have been called subsistence farmers today, although for them it was just a way of life, and one they had not really chosen. It was a continuation of the only path that they, and their parents and grandparents before them, had ever known.

Their surname was Van der Merwe and they had six children, born between 1934 and 1952. From time to time, they also took in children from their extended family. The Great Depression, World War II, a crippling drought, the great locust epidemic of the mid-1930s… All of these took a terrible toll on agriculture and rural communities in South Africa. Most people turned to their families first. On his narrow strip of Kalahari earth, Oupa provided enough not only for his own family and other family members in need, but also for some of the townsfolk who were not able to support themselves.

He farmed vegetables and mealies and Ouma had a magnificent orchard that year after year bore enough quinces, apricots, peaches, gooseberries and figs for what seemed like decades, judging from the pantry that was always tightly packed with preserves, jams, syrups and pickles. Dried fruit sat in huge white flour bags on the floor, next to a paraffin fridge that hummed and ticked in the corner.

They also kept chickens, sheep and dairy cows. Oupa sold milk and mutton to buy the things they couldn’t make themselves, like sugar, flour, oil, paraffin, knitting wool, clothing fabric and one pair of shoes per year for each child who couldn’t make do with hand-me-downs. Once every winter they slaughtered an ox for biltong.