When I first came to South Africa as an economic mercenary in 1981 there was a little bit of cultural adjustment required. For example, I had always been used to driving on the left but I had never seen an offramp marked SLEGS ONLY. Knowing a little about South Africa's strict apartheid regime I knew that people of a particular colour were not allowed to be in the same area as people of a different colour, particularly after dark.
So to me the SLEGS ONLY sign on the highway offramp was a clear warning that, unless you were a SLEG, you would be taking your life into your hands by exiting the motorway at that point and possibly finding yourself in a SLEGS township. So I just drove on until I discovered Port Elizabeth.
Another confusion was the name above a pub door. In England the name of the licensee appears on a plate above the door to the public bar. This means that if the beer is bad you know exactly who to blame. In South Africa every pub in the 1980's seemed to be owned by a bloke called Reg van Toegang. I assumed Reg to be a very powerful Broederbonder until someone translated for me four years later.
Having settled into my "commune" in Rosebank, I bought a company car and had the radio stolen in the first week. I was slowly getting into the rhythm of South African life but I still hadn't a clue where to tune my radio dial. I started out with the SABC English service and I'm not sure it was even called SAfm in those days.
I remember a nice lady called Bea Read every morning who reassured me that, although I may be living in a pariah state, I shouldn't believe everything I read in the foreign press. How could Bea, with her beautiful enunciation, be the servant of an oppressive regime I wondered? It was obviously the communists who were spreading rumours.
Bea was my anchor in the early days as was the man who came on at seven in the morning for a bit of religious reflection in a spot called "Think on these things". The presenter of this daily reminder that all good South Africans should read the Bible had a strong authoritative voice and a very clipped English accent. The sort of voice you knew you could trust. The sort of voice that suggested that the voice's owner had the ex directory telephone number of God himself. It was comforting stuff in an age when the natives were just beginning to get "cheeky", as the northern suburbs kugels put it in those days.