Jan was now becoming quite serious about Erna, the woman he had met some weeks before, and he was driving up and down to Capetown over week-ends. As it is about six hundred kl to capetown, I was in a state of nervous worry all the time. South African roads could be the most dangerous in the world, and we have a lot of road deaths. The causes of this is mostly drunken driving, unlicensed drivers, and of course the mini taxis. This taxis, that can seat about ten people, were usually overloaded to a point where the driver could have no control over the steering. Many people die almost daily in this mini bus taxis, and the causes are always either overloading, or negligence. One taxi that had gone off the road in the Eastern Cape had thirty six passengers instead of the ten it was licensed for. Most of the people died, but this did not stop the overloading, or the negligence.
I went to my friend Louise in Uniondale to watch the Wimbledon tennis, and had to come home in the dark, something I never do when Jan was away. On opening the gate I saw that it was tampered with, but as the cattle always try to push it open for a little nibble at our plants and vegies, I did not take too much notice.
Jan's cat was waiting for me, and he was maauwing so loud and and distressfully, that I decided to go over to their house and feed the cat before unlocking my house.
Jan's house has a long veranda at the back, that span the whole length of the house. The moon was almost full, so I could see good enough, and proceeded to fill the cat's bowl from the tin holder, but something was troubling me, although I did not immediately grasped what that was. But I knew that my eyes had caught sight of something strange, and as I looked around, I saw that the huge sliding doors were standing against the wall, and a big hole where they should have been.
That was when I heard a noise inside the house, and the next moment I also heard somebody running away.
The doors all came out onto this veranda, and I was at the furthest one, with no escape if the person or persons came out of the doors they had removed, and I knew that nobody would hear me scream!
If anybody's feet ever had wings, as the saying goes, mine had wings that night, as I just kind of glided down the steps, and over the many flowers and a rockery, quite missing the path!
I had two locks to undo at my house, but as I was trembling like a bally jelly, it was very difficult, and by the time I was safely locked inside, I was a wreck. I phoned Gary as he was the closest, and he undertook to phone the police, and within minutes he was at my house with his shotgun.
As usual, our police took their time, so Gary phoned them and said to be there in five minutes, or he was going to shoot the perpetrators. That shook them up, as most of them are in cahoots with the thieving lot, as I well knew. When we first bought our places, somebody broke into my bathroom where Irma had stored her things, her house not having doors yet, and although nothing was ever found, one of the cleaning women for the police came to tell us that they were using Irma's kettle in the office! She was too scared to say much, and she begged us not to name her as the person who told us.
On inquiry, they laughed their bally heads off, and told us that they had clubbed together to buy this expensive kettle, and there was nothing we could do about it!