For context, I need to tell you that I recently moved from Durban (‘my city’ for more than 50 years) to Amber Valley, a large retirement village on the Karkloof Road just outside Howick. Coincidentally, my Mansfield grandparents retired from Johannesburg to Howick in the 1950s. From the Karkloof Road, this 1 000-plus home …
Author: Peter Mansfield
Stranger in the park
I went walking in the local park this morning, as I do every morning and evening, but this morning was different. I take my two dogs: Rocket and Luna. The walk is good and provides exercise for all three of us. I count the steps I walk each day, or at least the pedometer step …
“The sardines have NOT arrived!”
A friend of mine in Leisure Bay, Libby Goodall, yesterday sent me a short video of a shoal of 'sardines' floundering in shallow water at Pennington Beach on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast. The video of the shivering/shimmering fish dragged my memory back almost 50 years to a similar sunny mid-June day in 1970. A year …
Being disappeared!
Ever noticed how in Western societies us old folk are sort of 'disappeared' by the following generations? I am not talking about family (that is another discussion) but by society as a whole. Being disappeared is not an event. More a process. One day one notices that people are looking past one or through one, …
Two elephants in the budget room
There are many reasons why Wednesday's budget will be a very tough one with many different taxes raised, There are the usual frequently mentioned reasons and two big ones that seem to have been overlooked by most budget soothsayers. The obvious reasons include the underperformance by SARS, government overspending, the huge cost of the bloated …
The fishermen’s wall – Umngazi River Mouth
The rivers in the Transkei are different to those in KwaZulu-Natal. The difference lies in the sugarcane farming along the KZN coast and the natural grasslands along the Transkei coast. Most KZN rivers and their lagoons are silted up by the soil washing off the sugar cane lands. The rivers in the Transkei are not, …
Peter the cockroach killer
The Principal of the University of Natal during much of the 1960s, Professor Owen Horwood, and I had a less than cordial relationship and we had several run-ins. (For background, Horwood later joined the National Party (apartheid) Government as the Minister of Finance. He was married to Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith's sister. Quite a …
