Braai4Heritage tour: Day 23 – Sharpeville to the eastern Free State

Posted by Chris Davies on 6 April 2011

On the morning of 21 March 1960 a large crowd gathered outside the Sharpeville police station just outside of Vereeniging.

They were protesting against the South African pass laws, which required them to carry “˜dompasses’ with them at all times, to justify their residence and movement in and through the Republic of South Africa. Jan has the full description of events on the Braai4Heritage blog, but 21 March will be remembered in South Africa as the day when 249 unarmed residents of Sharpeville were shot, many in the back, as they protested for the right to free movement and full status as South African citizens in a non-racial society. 69 people died.

On 21 March 2011 the Sharpeville Memorial and Exhibition Centre was unveiled, and we wanted to visit this South African Heritage Site on the Braai4Heritage tour as a way of recognising our past and drawing attention to how far we’ve come from those divided days.

Unfortunately, we weren’t given permission to actually braai at the police station or memorial site – understandable considering the large scale renovation and rebuilding currently underway. From what we saw, the new memorial and exhibition centre is coming along nicely. Perhaps we’ll get permission to braai there next year.

In the end we decided to push through to the eastern Free State and enjoy some of the renowned hospitality and stunning scenery of this beautiful region. It also allowed me to steer the tour towards one of my own favourite towns in South Africa, Clarens, and very importantly, sample a few of the delicious craft beers brewed there (well just outside of town actually), by the lovely folk of Clarens Brewery. A few beers tasted and a few take-away boxes of ale stowed safely in the back of the bakkies and we were back on the road towards the Golden Gate Highlands National Park.

Sunset is the best time to take in the sheer sandstone splendour of the Golden Gate Highlands National Park and we meandered our way slowly through the twists and turns of the Maloti Mountains, soaring red cliffs leaning over us on either side. Although it was sunset, the clouds kept frustrating our efforts to capture that perfect red glow off the rocks, and the cameramen spent over an hour driving up and down, jumping frantically out semi-moving vehicles and insisting on uncounted numbers of takes as gaps in the cloud suddenly illuminated or darkened the cliff backdrop around us. In the end I think we got our shots, more-or-less, and after spending another hour or so shooting cut-aways and “˜sick’ time-lapses of the glowing dusk, it was time to move on.

We spent that night with a friend of Faan’s, on a beautiful east Free State farm just outside Harrismith. This was Free State hospitality at it’s very best. Jan (yes another Jan), had a huge outside fire and an indoor “˜binne-braai’ ready for us when we pulled in through the cold, dark drizzle. Jagermeister shots were in our hands before we could say more than “˜hello,’ and delicious local chilli-cheese and other snacks were laid out on the table.

Jan soon set about whipping up some of his wife’s excellent “˜monkey gland’ sauce (after a few amusing phone calls to double check the recipe: 2x onions fried in butter, 150ml tomato sauce, 150ml chutney, tsp Bovril/Marmite, tbp Worcester sauce) and within minutes the steaks were on the fire.

This was one of the homeliest and most genuine braai experiences we’ve had so far on the tour and massive thanks to Jan for opening his house to us and making us all feel so welcome.

It was a pretty groggy start for all of us the next (Tuesday) morning, but it was time to hit a completely new province and check out some of the earlier, turn-of-the-century history of the area. We were off to see Spioenkop in KwaZulu-Natal, one of the famous battlefield sites of the second Boer War.

Day 22 | Day 24

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