Is this Intimidation in the New South Africa?

This is an account of what happened to me today and I apologise for it being copied and pasted, but I took it from a statement I typed out that I am going to hand into our local police station tomorrow and quite honestly I am also under the weather today with 'gypo guts' so I really don't have the energy to retype it into my blog.


At just after 13h00, today, 28th February 2014, I was sitting in our lounge when I heard a police siren at my front gate.  I got up to go and look, letting out our dogs at the same time.  When I rounded the corner of the house I was amazed to see a vast number of identifiable police vehicles with other vehicles interspersed with them.  I went back inside quickly to grab our gate key as I realized that I would have to unlock our front gate for them all to come in and turn around to go back out again.  I went to the front gate and before opening it I spoke to the policeman in the first vehicle ( a big black 4x4) who did not get out and identify himself, but stuck his head of the window to speak to me... I asked him what they all wanted?  He said that they have come to check my workers.  I told him I don't have any workers and I am home alone.  Then he said they have come to do a visibility check.  I then unlocked the gate and he drove through, stopping to ask me again about workers. I told him again that we do not have workers here.  Then he asked me where my husband is and I told him he is at work.  He said okay and smiled and said it is just a visibility check.  I asked him if he has come to arrest me for something, to which he replied' No, have you done something wrong?'  I said 'no'.  He then drove up to my house and turned to go out, behind him I counted 11 more vehicles that proceeded up our driveway onto our property, which all turned to file out again. I noticed that 2 of the vehicles had Home Affairs decals on the front doors and one vehicle was an unmarked vehicle (white small bakkie).  In this particular vehicle the passenger was an elderly white man, thick set, with greying hair and a moustache. Before he moved on out, I saw him talking on his cell phone to someone which could have been nothing but under the circumstance I found it suspicious.  One of the police vehicles stopped before going out and a slender African policeman got out and asked me again about workers.  I told him too that we don't have any. He had a file/folder with him and I thought he was going to ask me to sign something when he said to me 'oh it is just a visibility check', however he didn't ask me to sign anything, but turned to speak to a policewoman who stopped driving on her way out, in her police car.  I didn't understand what they were saying to each other, but then she shouted to me about wanting to see my workers.  I told her too it is just me, then she drove off.  The policeman got into the back of one of the other police vans as it went past. I noticed that the vans were not all from this area and one in particular intrigued me as it had Johannesburg Central on the side of the vehicle.  I only remember one vehicle that had Hammanskraal on it, but there could have been more that I failed to notice. I noted that some of the people were in police uniform and others were in civilian clothing. I did not note any of the registration plates on the vehicles as there were too many of them.  I watched the vehicles all proceed down our driveway and turn right down Witstinkhout Street.  I did not notice them stop anywhere else on their way down the road.  If they were checking for workers on my property and came with Home Affairs vehicles included amongst them, why did they not stop over the road, or next door to them, or even at the house next door to me?  All of these plots have live in workers.  I felt victimized and afraid and when they were gone burst into tears at the distress I felt.  I then phoned my husband at work, which I never do, but I felt I had to tell him about what happened and how scared I felt.  I have never seen so many police vehicles in our area before and on other occasions when the police come to do visibility checks there are never so many at any given time.


All afternoon I have been thinking about this and I am more and more convinced that it was deliberately done to un-nerve me, or us because of Johan's involvement in the CPF and AfriForum...whatever, it was I am un-nerved.  Johan sent the above through to the Colonel at the Hammanskraal Police station and asked him on what grounds and authority this happened, to which he replied that he was unaware of it, even though at least one of his vehicles was involved.  He also said that it must have been arranged on a tip off to the Temba police station.

Is this the free and fair democratic country we have become where intimidation of innocent individuals is part of every day life??????

Mum all Moved

So the time has flown since my mum heard she has been allocated a cottage and in the meantime she was packing up boxes as she managed to find them, not realising though that she actually has a lot of stuff.  When she moved into her simplex in 1995 she down sized and now moving into this cottage she needed to down size again.  Having gone with Sara a few weeks ago to measure for curtains and her furniture, she became aware of the fact that she would have to get rid of some of the bigger pieces, so off they went to the auctioneer.

This weekend that has just gone was the big move and on Saturday Matthew and Jess diligently worked all day moving boxes, helping unpack, hanging curtains and doing whatever they could  to get as much stuff over as possible.  One good thing is that they didn't have to travel far as it is actually just a little further along the road that mum has been living in.  Since we arrived in South Africa in 1970, my mum has not moved out of the area she settled in all those years ago, which is good for her at this stage as all her friends are close by.  Sunday morning there was a race in the area which meant the road was blocked off till 10am, but soon after that, together with Sara and Bob, Matthew and Jess were there again, this time to move over the bigger things, mainly furniture. Sara packed a picnic lunch for everyone to munch on at midday and also took a cottage pie she made up for mum for supper.  Last night when I phoned my mum she said they had all worked like trojans and the photos show just that indeed.

Today was Sara's day off, so back she went to mums simplex to patch up holes in the walls where pictures, plates and cupboards had hung for so many years, as well as patch over them with a coat of paint.  She loaded all mum's pot plants and took them  over to her cottage and still had time to shop for a table and chairs to go on the patio, which is a pre-birthday present.  This evening mum was more settled, her phone has been connected, and even though she moved just a few hundred metres up the road, she has been given a new number.  The weather held up and didn't rain which is a good thing as there is nothing worse than loading and off loading in the wet.  Mum is happy, and excited and as Sara said later this evening had a stream of visitors today...I think this has been a good move for her...

Photo's courtesy of Jess and Sara:

Picnic lunch

cottage pie for supper

note the position of the bed at this stage

Bob and Matthew...

lunch time

floor now cleared and bed made up

Wall unit still to be fitted and assembled

kitchen area

hmmm...I know nothing about the shopping trolley!!!!!

Plates on wall

already trying out the birthday present

sewing machine set up ready for use

cross stitch pictures hung that mum embroidered years ago

E-tolls

LlvgMuch has been written and said about the new E-Toll system on the Gauteng roads between Pretoria and Johannesburg and now I am going to have my say too...out of absolute frustration!!!!!!

Firstly I don't knowkplw the heck SANRAL managed to get my cell phone number lnd then made the connection between me allml Johan...huh...but they did!!!!!!  It's not my vehicle that is being used on the road but Johan's....okay so I or NiQi  may have been using it, but still I don't see why I am the one that is being harassed almost every week with SMS's to my phone, telling me how mllllch money I owe them....and it seems to be growing in leaps and bounds even though we only travel the route once a month.

It costs me R300 in fuel to make a return trip to Charlotte Maxeke hospital and I seem to be billed more than half that amount in toll fees now too.  I don't like the fact that there is blatant discrimination between those who have bought an 'e-tag'  and those who have opted not to.  Where is our democratic right to have a choice in this matter?  The powers that be seem to think that if you choose not to purchase a tag for your car, then it is their choice to bill you almost double the amount per toll, than those who do have a tag.  That is surely unfair practise and unconstitutional.

When we received our first statement, and at this point the only statement, probably due to the postal strike, I was so confused by the varied amounts given to be paid that it just made no sense at all.  I promptly wrote them a letter, querying it all and asked for a break down, instead of quoting a lump sum amount, as well as an explanation of the discounted amounts versus the full amounts if the monies were paid over before a certain date.  This 'discounted' date happened to be before we even received the statement in the first place, so how did they expect me to pay it by then???  Must I make a note of every single toll that I go under, add it up and then travel to one of their pay stations hoping that my math is correct and if it isn't, have to make my way back again.

Things would have been a whole lot simpler if they had stuck to the prototype toll gate where we all stop and pay as we go through. It would have saved them money surely to set it up this way and then also stop all this cloning of number plates that people have been doing, or driving without a number plate, to get out of paying tolls.  In the long run they are going to lose money as people think up more and more ways to get out of paying.  I will pay the tolls if I am treated fairly and charged the same as those with an e-tag, after all it is the right thing to do....I may not like it, and be severely irked by the added expense to my monthly budget, but pay it I will.  Right now though I am waiting with baited breath to hear what the outcome of my correspondence to them is....

Cameras and Dreams

They say that if you want to be happy in life then you must do something you love and I think when a person has more challenges in life than the average person, then this is more important than ever.

NiQi has wanted to do photography and be a photographer for so long....her ultimate dream is one day be a photographer for National Geographic and with the patience she has shown, I am sure that she will realize this dream.

When she left school the idea was that she enroll in a part time photography course, however circumstances at the time just didn't allow her to do this.  Her health has in recent years gone from bad to critical and miraculously bounced back to stable but never has her dream been shelved and as often as she could she has begged, borrowed and...no not stolen...but been given on permanent loan, cameras from friends and family in order to learn how to use different makes, get the feel of them in her hand and ultimately help decide what it is that she wants for herself.

Her goal has been for a long time to buy the Nikon D3000, so much so that she literally salivates when looking at pictures...lol
Saving has been a long term project and with the price of cameras going up all the time, it has taken longer than hoped on her part, but it is amazing how God works a plan and sometimes when we have one route in mind, He may nudge us in a completely different direction through the strangest of circumstances.  This is really what happened in this case, with her unfortunately breaking the screen on her phone.  She went online to see if she could find someone to replace it for her, then started looking at finding a second hand 'upgrade' on OLX, which ended in her looking at cameras on the same site.

We none of us have ever bought or sold anything on a site like this before, being overly cautious and more than a little skeptical.  NiQi however decided to take the plunge and emailed a number of people who advertised cameras, one of who promptly replied.  Under the guidance of an ever watchful and suspicious father, she made arrangements to meet up with him today and making her way with Kyle and a list the length of her arm of things to check before deciding to hand over her money in exchange for the camera.  She returned home late this afternoon with a smile that lit up her eyes.

To be able to purchase this, which was less than half the price of the same had she bought it brand new, it took all her savings and a loan from her dad - which at the end of the day, through God's timely provision, she was able to give back to him straight away through an anonymous donation specifically for that purpose.  Believe it or not the donation is exactly the same amount borrowed....now is that not God given?

A Little Rain

Yesterday late afternoon we had, as we do most days, rumblings of thunder and dark rain clouds all around us.  This is not an unusual occurrence and we have become used to watching as the clouds blow over and move on, most likely to drop their fill further on....where the grass is always greener.  lol

However yesterday, we were most surprized that the clouds decided to stop over our small little desert and open up, spilling droplets of water it had collected during the course of the day in an attempt to make us an oasis.  The rain didn't gush forth and there were definitely no promises of it staying for 40 days and 40 nights, but every little bit that fell was a rainbow in our eyes.

Needless to say, with such a change in having both wind and rain, we had musical power outages which can not possibly be good for our appliances, as it went off and on with such regularity that after a while we were waiting for the time for it to go off and stay off.  Well it didn't, it finally settled and stayed on for the rest of the night which as you know is a huge blessing with us being so dependent on electricity to run NiQi's machines at night.

This morning the ground is wet and muddy and the dogs came running into the kitchen after being out for a bit, just as wet and muddy...lol  I feel we can breathe clean, refreshing air for a bit instead of coughing in dust.  What a great start to a new day...

Cell Phone over heating!!!!

I have found of late that my cell phone has taken to over heating and then freezing....not in the cold state but the doesn't want to do a darn thing state and I'm not sure why that is.

I have been desperately trying to delete some of the 'stuff' off it, but as fast as I try, I seem to accumulate more.  I do tend to use my phone for most things technical these days as I usually have it attached to me...except when I am working outside as I am afraid that with all my bending down and up again that it may just slip out of my hand or pocket and into either a pile of horse manure or a water trough....and those are the times let me tell you that most people will try to contact me in some way or another.  My phone will be silent all day, but the minute I walk outside it becomes a hive of activity....

My biggest problem is my 'Gallery' which is just bulging with pictures and information...photos taken with the camera, downloads from e-mails, whatsapp images and videos and things that have been 'bluetoothed' to my phone....what do I do with all of them???  I start off with a bang, pressing delete over and over again as I want to make double and triple sure that I'm not going to delete something I actually want or need to keep, but I soon get bored and then stop the whole process...just to find a couple of days later that my phone has grown a little more in just a few short hours.  I don't have a place in the 'clouds'  and I really don't feel like opening one either.  I have enough folders and memory sticks already without doing that too and then I would probably be having to think up yet another password that I am more than likely to forget and end up changing the one I can't remember to another that will slip my mind...lol

So for now, every now and then I take it apart, let it cool down and then put it back together again....

Mole/s in the Garden

Whenever I think of moles I think of the story 'The Wind in the Willows'  with Rat, Mole, Toad and Badger...such earthy little creatures who spent much of their time on the river.  I still have my copy of this book packed away somewhere, waiting for a small child for whom I can read it...lol

So you see when I wake in the morning and see mounds of soil crisscrossing my garden making their way either to or from the vegetable garden, I cannot help but feel like it is all part of a story book.  Johan brings me back to reality though when he too looks out of the window, sees the same mounds and in a veritable manner says...'well say goodbye to your vegetables'...no longer do I think of 'Mole' and 'Toad' in a whimsical way, but rather open the back door, chase all six dogs outside and give the command 'seek'.

William, my poor old blind cocker spaniel was the first to find something out of the ordinary and as I watched a new pile of soil surfacing, he was there digging away, nose to the ground, trying his best to find this pesky critter that dared to enter his domain.

This is the first time that we have had a mole or maybe more than one mole in our garden and I wonder if it is because there is so much more area for it/them to venture under the ground that they haven't ever made their way close.  I used to think it is because our soil is so dry and sandy that it didn't suit their habitat, but quite obviously my thinking is incorrect.

So whether it/they made their way from the back of the property or the front, I do not know, but they do seem to be here to stay for a while.   I imagine that this appears to be quite a storage pantry of delectable delicacies as they munch their way through the vastness of our sweet potato patch....whatever, it has been about a week since we saw the first mounds and every day the dogs are sniffing and searching and digging, but none have been slow enough to be caught...which is probably a good thing because what would I do if I saw one of the dogs lolloping toward me with 'Mole' dangling from their mouth....

The Wind in the Willows

Baking Biscuits

I'm not going to let the dips and outages of the internet get me down at all....I must just get cracking with blogging as it allows me and when it is off then I will carry on with my day....

Johan's sister has a delicious recipe for biscuits which she often makes...it is definitely one of those 'moreish' biscuits - the more you taste, the more you want to eat.  Some time back she gave me the recipe and I decided I may as well try baking them myself.

Well mine didn't come out quite as big as hers do, but it may have something to do with how I flatten the mix before it goes into the oven to bake as mine are a little thicker than hers are too....but they are definitely 'moreish'.

I thought that this is a nice enough biscuit, together with my Crispie Family Favourites...also 'moreish' to pack up as singles and sell for NiQi's fund.  I have packaging already so must work on some labeling and then we will see how they go...

                                      

Valentines Day...the day of love?

Today is Valentines day and if history is anything to go on in the Lucas home it isn't much different to any other day of the year...lol

Johan will be the first to admit that he doesn't have a romantic bone in his body and as hard as I have tried to convert him over the years, I have now given up and come to terms with the fact that he will not change, he is who he is and I will love him all the same. I fully put the blame for my romanticism on Barbara Cartland and Mills and Boon, who repeatedly spun webs of love and romance and mysticism that gave promises of 'forever after' in my teenage years... and even though Johan isn't as romantic as I might like, I feel that I have enough in me for both of us and every year I continue to give out little surprizes...under his pillow...in his lunch box...tucked in his briefcase...wherever...

So last weekend when at the shops I was looking for something small for Johan and in Woolies came across a small pack of jelly worms which was captioned  "Catch of the Day.  You have my Heart"  When I saw them I was reminded of many years ago, before Johan and I were married.

We were both working at Transport, and Johan drew and cut out a 'rainbow' fish which he hung with a paperclip attached to a string on a pencil and over the front of his desk.  It became a joke every time I was in his office with his colleagues about what he was trying to catch....aaaah young love.  Anyway I saw them, I bought them and somehow I thought he would remember the same thing as me.

I put them in his lunch box with a few other treats and when he came home I asked him what the jelly worms reminded him of...well he went through every fishing trip we've ever been on together but it wasn't what I was looking for!!!!!  When I reminded him, he looked blank...he couldn't remember his fish at all.  Too long ago or it just meant more to me than it did to him.

The best thing about today though is that after many years, Johan did manage to buy me a card and some chocolates - probably at the insistence of NiQi...lol

Aaaah the romance of Valentines day and everything that goes with it...

from my darling hubby

NiQi gave me this flower with some Ferrera Roche choccies