Talking Location with author Deon Meyer – STELLENBOSCH

18th April 2022

#TalkingLocationWith …. Deon Meyer, author of The Dark Flood, set in Stellenbosch.

The Dark Flood is the eighth novel I have written with the detective Benny Griessel at its heart and Cape Town has in turn been at the heart of Benny’s life. Now, however, police politics mean that Benny and his colleague Vaughn Cupido have been banished from the big city and given one last chance in a place they can only see as a punishment posting. It’s a move I made of my own free will…

I grew up in a blue-collar neighbourhood of a gold mining town on the African highveld. Klerksdorp. The Wild West. A tough, hustling, bustling boomtown, a cultural desert in the rolling savanna landscape. It was the exact antithesis of mythical, magical Stellenbosch.

From a very young age, I knew about Stellenbosch. In history class, we were taught that Stellenbosch was the second oldest town in the country, established in 1679. Just 50 kilometers from Cape Town, it was named after the Dutch governor at the Cape of Good Hope, Simon van der Stel. In direct translation Stellenbosch means ‘Van der Stel’s forest’.

I knew about Stellenbosch because my father told us about it. The spectacular mountains, the oak tree lined streets, the quaint irrigation canals, the beautiful old Cape-Dutch architecture, the serenity of the Eerste River. The famous university, where the smartest South Africans studied and worked. Where the Boland muse whispered to our illustrious poets and novelists. Where Doc Danie Craven trained legendary Springbok rugby players. But most of all, my dad said, Stellenbosch was about wine. Because the town was surrounded by the most beautiful wine farms in the world, where the closest thing we have to royalty produce the very best wines in the country. And wine was sophisticated. Civilized. It was culture.

I ached to one day attend Stellenbosch University. To breathe the sophistication in the hope that it would rub off. But we were too poor. When I finally got to experience Stellenbosch for myself, I was in my early twenties. I explored it as part of a motorcycle road trip, and it was exactly as my father had promised. Historic, beautiful, classy. Magical. Way out of my league.

In the early nineties, I got to know the place a little better when I enrolled for a postgraduate degree, finally realizing my dream of studying there. But still as an outsider, on a motorcycle, once a month. Marveling at the charm, the buzz, the sophistication. Never entertaining the idea that I would one day become a resident.

But, by the time our children entered university, Marianne and I took the plunge and moved there. Twelve years ago, now. It made practical and economic sense. And I knew: the harsh reality of living in a town is often the end of myth and magic.

We discovered many things. Like the vast divide between rich and poor. In Church Street, on a Friday night, the Porsches and Ferraris of the new business elite parked in front of street cafes; in Kayamandi township, people getting out of minibus taxis after an exhausting day of job-seeking or manual labor.

And the traffic. With almost 200,000 inhabitants in 50,000 households, it is amongst the most populated municipal areas in the Cape Winelands and has grown into a small city. Add to this the 30,000 students during academic term, and the road congestion during peak hour is just crazy.

As a crime fiction author, I took specific interest in the considerable size of the South African Police Service presence in Stellenbosch and discovered that the town has more than 70 murders per annum, 2,100 drug related crimes and 1,250 residential burglaries.

And in our social interaction, we experienced cliques, snobs, elitists and a dim view of inkommers – people who were not born and raised there.

So, did the Eikestad – the City of Oaks – lose its myth and magic for me?

I am delighted to answer in the negative. Because despite the realities, we see a town where the wealthy constantly reach out to the disadvantaged. Where hundreds of upliftment projects aim to improve lives and futures. Our children attend a multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-lingual university, a beautiful privilege that was unthinkable just thirty years ago.

Despite the cliques and the snobs, so many people made us feel welcome and appreciated in our new community. We discovered the spectacular mountain bike tracks on Stellenbosch Mountain and the breathtaking Jonkershoek. The university’s lunch hour classical music concerts. The world-class restaurants, the admirable efforts to preserve the historic architecture. The never-ending charm of the many stunning wine farms. As for the traffic: Marianne and I work from home and often cycle to the town center.

We’ve grown to love Stellenbosch.  We continue to be absolutely fascinated by the town, the people, the geography, the culture. And as my passion for the place grew, so did my desire to share it in one of my books. That is one of the reasons why I enjoyed writing The Dark Flood so much.

#jakhalsdans black route – Spectacular #karoo © the author

The Dark Flood by Deon Meyer is just published by Hodder and Stoughton

Deon Meyer

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