The Story of an African Doctor

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CHAPTER 1

Growing up: The early Years

I was born in September 1937, at the Gardens Nursing Home, Cape Town - by all accounts a small popular clinic generally favoured by Yuppies for the birth of their children. The clinic was on Kloof Street, in the foot hills of Table Mountain and my Ma told me the staff were friendly and complimented her on her small blond baby. Me!

My parents must have been in a hurry for me to arrive and therefore opted to use birth-inducing agents such as Quinine, Ergot and Uroselectan. The Gynaecologist then performed a high rupture of her membranes and very soon, I arrived! Often, when she was in a dark mood, Ma would mention that my birth was induced. In all probability she experienced some kind of guilt.

She was a strange mixture of an aggressive feminist and overprotective mother. She would be very concerned for our wellbeing one moment, only to come down on us like a ton of bricks the next, over a minor incident. This earned her the nickname, Battle-axe. Mostly she was just simply, Ma.

Ma’s maiden name was Louw. She had lovely green eyes and somewhat frizzy hair and grew up in Calvinia, a small town in the Karoo. Her writing career started as a young adult and eventually she became a successful writer of Afrikaans highbrow literature, like some other members of the Louw clan.

At the time there was much uncertainty as to how long peace would last in Europe, where Herr Hitler was marching up and down in a warlike manner. I think my parents were therefore in a hurry for my birth, because Daddy was due to go to America, where he had been offered a two-year fellowship to further his psychiatric studies.

Naturally, I do not remember a thing about that stage of my life. Neither do I remember us boarding the steamship Southern Cross the following year, but Gwen, my sister who is two years older than I, told me that she remembered it clearly. When we were older, she told me that the Southern Cross was a luxury liner that sailed regularly between Cape Town and New York.

Gwen was long sighted and had to wear glasses. Since she was overweight, at that stage, she was much stronger than I. Besides, our parents considered her the clever one and they were very proud of her because of her high IQ. Daddy was into that sort of thing as part of his being a psychiatrist and he tested her IQ scoring160. She was a genius of sorts, but things did not work out well for her. To say it bluntly - Ma thought I was stupid because of the stuff they injected her with to hurry my arrival into this world in 1937.

The first thing I do remember, somewhat vaguely though, is being held up to look out over the George Washington Bridge in New York. It was an impressive mass of cables and steel beams, gleaming up in the sky and below it ran the Hudson River. I think we crossed it many times, because for some reason we stayed with a woman called Muriel, in Leonia, a small town in New Jersey. All I do know about that is that Gwen and I were left behind with Muriel, when our parents took on a countywide tour of Canada and the United States, after he had completed his fellowship. The name Albert Einstein institute springs to mind but it did not exist at the time. It seems likely he attended courses at the Institute for Advanced Study, at Princeton in New Jersey.

Our parents were away for two years. Daddy had a lifelong interest in twin studies and a visit to see the Dionne quintuplets in Canada must have been irresistible. They were away a long time but I don't remember much about Leonia except that it snowed, and was very cold in winter.

Two years went by before they returned and by then the Second World War had broken out. We returned to South Africa on a Tramp Steamer, because the other ships were needed for the war effort. The ship, Charles H Cramp, was named after her original owner, who was involved in a number of court cases. The ship had lain on anchor at Providence Rhode Island for many years, before her release during 1922 by Court order, and after extensive litigation. It was a good name for a tramp steamer considering the neglect of many years. Apparently, she lived up to that description rolling precariously across the Atlantic for weeks on end, pretending to dodge the German U-Boats. As it were, there had been a then recent incident along the West African Coast where the Cunard Star Liner, Laconia had mistakenly been torpedoed by U156. Her captain, Werner Hartenstein, filled with remorse when they found survivors struggling in the water, launched a rescue mission aided by other U boats in the area. Grand admiral Karl Donitz, promptly issued the Laconia order, prohibiting U boats undertaking rescue attempts

Anyway, I can just imagine how Ma would have reacted. She must have gone hysterical. Daddy, on the other hand, would have remained calm. He always believed in the ability of the authorities in charge. Daddy was overweight ever since I can remember. He had black hair, a premature bald patch and a serene confident look about him. He was right as usual, and by some stroke of luck we reached our homeport, Cape Town.

My parents loved classical literature and I suppose that is why I was named: Rudyard Matthew Forbes. Come to think of it, the classics and intellectual pursuits were which brought them together. Rudyard was by no means a fashionable name at the time and some of my friends and those not so friendly, shortened my first name to Rudd, or even Rude. I therefore insisted that my name would be Matt. Plainly, Matt Forbes. Nothing more, nothing less.

It must have been soon after our return to Cape Town that my parents’ relationship started to deteriorate. Regrettably, they did not get on too well. Ma was a blue stocking, highly intellectual though. Later on in life, she became a famous author, albeit of some rather obscure intellectual works I had no appreciation of, except for the one dealing with my stepfather which she wrote after he passed away. However, he was interesting in his own right, because he was a German Jew who wanted to be a Nazi.

My biological father was also well educated and a lover of the English literature. His favourite author was W. Somerset Maugham. He would go about declaring: My name is W Somerset Maugham, the greatest brain of the new age. I think perhaps he just liked the sound of what he said more than its actual meaning. Admittedly, it has a certain ring to it. He often did that sort of thing because he was a bit peculiar. He had many good qualities, but driving was clearly not one of them as he lacked manual dexterity. He also had some difficulty with his weight from a young age. This added to his image. He was a psychiatrist, and I think they are all eccentric in one way or another.

His knowledge of the English language was remarkable. Later on in life he became a professor in Psychiatry, at The University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The students respected and admired him so much, that they would come from all over the University’s campus so they could attend his lectures just to hear him speak! I often thought of him as South Africa‘s very own Winston Churchill, except my father never shared Winston Churchill’s passion for large Havana Cigars!

I do not know why my parents ever married, because their personalities were much too different and I can imagine they must have clashed from the start.

I loved my father very much. He was always friendly and easy going and took a genuine interest in me. Sadly though, I came to see very little of him after their divorce.

We had moved from a small house in Pinelands, to what was known as a Lunatic Asylum, at the time. There certainly are some more euphemistic terms today but that is what it was. I spent hours standing at the gate of our house on the hospital grounds, staring at the patients on their daily walks. Valkenberg was named after Cornelius Valk a Dutch farmer who owned a farm there many years before.

Gwen and I had a wonderful time there. We had our fair share of mischief throwing stuff at the mental patients, running away when chased. We also experimented with smoking, by pinching cigarettes from Ma and hiding away in the pigsties at the back of our house—probably left there by Valk or his descendants. Some of the patients would make us things like carved wooden animals and one of them even made me a whip that really worked. It made a very satisfying ‘whack!’ each time I cracked it.

At night there was the usual blackout drill that would involve drawing the black curtains closed, so no light would be visible from the outside. Some of the authorities thought the Germans might fly over bombing the area, because Cape Town was home to many troops, airmen and sailors, all on their way to or from the battlefronts of World War II. Lisa, my younger sister, was about three years old and since she was afraid of the dark, she cried a lot.

The divorce was inevitable. Daddy had a roving eye and Ma, who had an unforgiving nature, would not forgive him. They decided to each go their separate way.

The plan was that he would move to Pretoria after the divorce. I wanted to go with him, but Ma said: You will never see Anton again if you go to Pretoria. Anton was my cousin and best friend. His father, Uncle Alton, and his mother, Aunt Bertha, were my favourite aunt and uncle and that clinched it. I was seven years old, Gwen two years older at nine, and Lisa the youngest, just turned four.

Their love of literature and the arts was not enough to keep my parents together. One would think that he as a psychiatrist and classical scholar, would have had enough sense to keep things together for the family’s sake. After all, he had made a detailed study of the human mind and became an eminent professor. Ma was a literary genius, who became a famous writer of literary novels. Sadly, their personalities clashed and they were both selfish. Besides, as mentioned before, Ma had that unforgiving streak that drove her to the limits of tolerance. The whole situation did not make for a happy home and in a way we were at the receiving end of it all. Maybe Lisa did not know much about it because she was a mere four years of