Yes, there is and was a hospital and some amenities such as sports fields to serve the hordes of mineworkers. No wonder some people yearn for life under the kindly NP government, which created such pleasant village communities for people.Įxcept, of course, that it’s bunkum, a story which enables the writer to avoid confronting truths about the toxic foundations of her prosperous mid-20th century life. Kathorus (Katlehong, Vosloorus and Thokoza) was a dormitory settlement housing labour for industry, a product of forced removals and the migrant labour policies of both colonial times and the apartheid government, which drew tens of thousands of single men to work on the mines and inhabit the 29 hostels in Kathorus, far from their wives and families. Sounds cosy, doesn’t it? Like some semi-mythical village just outside London, with a bobby on the beat and Thomas the Tank Engine pulling up at the gleaming little station, and young men in white playing cricket on the village green. "The village I know was Natalspruit (now Katlehong) which also had its own hospital.” She added: “…unless our domestic was lying, Natalspruit had schools, creches, clinics, bus and train stations, police station, play grounds, shops, hospital, houses, tarred roads…” Prior to that they lived in townships build by the NP which included every amenity needed for a village. A ‘friend’ of a friend of a friend on Facebook wrote: “There were no such things as informal settlements under the APARTHEID GOVERNMENT (NP). ![]() ![]() Recently, I came across a prime example of skewed values supported by skewed stories. If they tell themselves stories that confront their own truths, it will free their histories for future flowering,” wrote Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri (he won the Booker Prize for The Famished Road). ![]() "If they tell themselves stories that are lies, future generations will have to live with the consequences of those lies.
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