South Africa: Allemand right to Elsburg

Travels with David: Asia, Africa and The Balkans

I drive out to a Johannesburg suburb for a church dinner and barn dance and find myself deep in Afrikaner country. Descendants of the Boers who trekked north from the Cape from the 1830s settled on the High Veld, a plateau region of grassland and scrub bushes. More than 4,000 feet above sea level, it resembles the High Plains of Montana or Wyoming. This is cattle country, where Afrikaner cowboys drove their herds, cooked pork ‘n beans on campfires and slept out under the stars. Later generations moved from ranches to ranch-style homes, but these suburban cowboys dressed in jeans, fancy leather belts, boots, cowboy hats and plaid shirts still muster a pretty good yee-haw, especially after a drink or two.