Bridget Hilton-Barber Unspoilt places What was once the headquarters of a cattle- rustling, river pirate, is now one of the most ridiculed towns in South Africa. Pofadder, Pofadder, how the mighty have fallen.
Puffadders had nothing to do with it. This dusty dorp was named after a Koranna leader once known to the area’s white settlers as Klaas Pofadder. Over 100 years ago, this was an outpost in South Africa’s own Wild West, the surrounding countryside a surreal backdrop to land-hungry settlers, restless natives, zealous missionaries and gold and diamond-seekers.
The nearby Orange River and its islands were the scene of many a raid and counter- raid between northward moving settlers and “river pirates” like the mightly Klaas. It was here at present-day Pofadder that he and his men had their hideaway at a lonely, inaccessible spring. It was here they planned their attacks and here that the mighty Klaas died in a shootout with Cape colonial mounted forces in 1875. (Or as one travel book politely put it – “he gave his permission for the building of a Rhenish mission”.)
By the mid-1880s, after a series of northern border wars, the river pirates were finally quelled. Little of the spirit of the legendary Klaas remains in Pofadder. What was once a rebel headquarters is today the centre for karakul and woolly sheep farming. Beer-drinking and dart-playing have replaced the banditry and horse- thievery of yore. And the only rustling now is the sound of plump thighs against crimplene.
A butcher, a bar and somewhere to pray, Pofadder today is a stereotypical Northern Cape town, an icon of South African backwater conservativism. The Calvinist lines of a vast sandstone church rise from the stifling heat and dust, looming above the tiny succulent-style gardens and boxy houses.
Like something out of an SABC sitcom, there’s a shop called Oom Frikkie se Winkel and a voice that says “nommer asseblief” when you pick up the public phones. The townsmen are all boeps, beards and snors – the kind that once prompted poet Roy Campbell to note that “beards are the only crop the Boers have ever grown without a government subsidy”.
But a visit to Pofadder is an essential part of any traveller’s ethno-tourist repertoire. And an excellent stepping-stone is the Pofadder Kafee – where the “adult” magazines are wrapped in red plastic bags and a friendly tannie serves a steady trickle of customers by day.
After dark, however, the pink floral curtains are firmly drawn and the cafe’s backroom comes alive. This is Dixons Tavern – throbbing pulse of modern Pofadder. Where the sakkie-sakkie hits full volume and the potjiekos steams. Where brandy pumps like the Augrabies Falls and the toilets are marked “itettie” (tits) and “itoti” (cock).
Dixons Tavern is like like watching an extended family get progressively drunker, louder, friendlier and more hopeless at darts. As the jokes got longer and the children dropped off to sleep in the bed alongside the mirrored bar, the sakkie- sakkie turned to tinny disco.
Bodies writhe, people clap hands. Pofadder is letting down its short back’n’sides. Veins standout on temples, sweat glistens on foreheads. The smoke hangs heavy.
Earlier that afternoon we’d been to Kanoneiland on the Orange River. While battling Cape forces, some of Klaas Pofadder’s men once unwittingly blew themselves up by firing a home-made cannon fashioned from a hollowed-out aloe stem stuffed with gunpowder and stones. Now we were in a place where people were unwittingly blowing themselves up with strong drink and red meat.
Caught in the eddy of a shrinking gene pool and permanent semi-drought, it’s no wonder Pofadderians are preserving themselves in alcohol. This is a place that gets as much rainfall in a good year as most European cities get in a morning. These are people who think El Nio is an Italian restaurant and cumulonimbus a rude sexual position.