ROSES AND ROSETTES

Hannah Goss and her Appaloosa Graffiti
(Photo: Cheryl Goss) 

HANNAH’S DEBUT AT THE ROYAL SHOW

It’s Royal Show time in the capital city right now, and the kids are having a ball. The organisers are celebrating the 163rd renewal of Africa’s oldest Agricultural Show, and we’re told it’s the third oldest in the world. The boss was asked to make the honour guest opening speech at last night’s formal dinner: having broken his duck in a similar capacity at the Royal Queensland Show in Brisbane, Australia, he wondered whether he should follow the same theme. No, this was about us, about our home and KZN, and some of the best agricultural country in the world. A gathering of ministers, mayors and men of business were reminded how furiously the British, the Boers and the Zulus had fought for the spoils of our territory, and why this is such a spectacular place in which to live.

Earlier yesterday, Hannah Goss made her “big” show debut on her faithful Appaloosa, Graffiti. It was a daunting moment, coming after just a handful of dressage tests, and just five formal lessons in her life from the inimitable Jenny McConnell. That this is a budding champion is evident from the photo. Here’s Hannah adorned in rosettes and medals, before she smelt the roses.

Reverting to the speech, there is a lesson in the stories of the great battles between those three nations, and their impact on the way we are today. They reminded us that we teach history the wrong way around. The first thing we should learn as a child, is that we are all part of the same human race. The last thing we should learn is that we’re South African, Protestant and of European ancestry, for example. Just recently, The Economist magazine, which claims to be Europe’s leading voice on global economic opinion, carried a foreboding headline “Be Afraid,” on its front cover. The message, with respect, is misleading. It represents a world view of Western political, economic and social dominance that is struggling to come to terms with its own decline, and with the emergence of another world, of which we’re a part, stepping boldly into a future of momentous change and great opportunity.

We live in a country, in a region and in a world of great change. South Africans are nothing if we’re not enterprising, courageous and sheer bloody-minded. The challenge for our young people is to graduate from our schools, colleges and universities, to go forth to new lands of conquest, and to dare themselves and our society to see a new and a better time. Every generation wants to believe theirs is the best of times and the worst of times. Our young people should live boldly. They have nothing to fear, but fear itself.

WRITE THIS DOWN : FRIDAY 23 JULY 2010

Hear The Drums
(Photo : Wally Strydom)

SOUTH AFRICA’S
WINNING-MOST RACEHORSE OF ALL TIME

Friday 23rd July 2010. The day HEAR THE DRUMS went where no other horse has ever been before. At 1:15pm yesterday, champion jockey Anton Marcus jumped out of stall number 7 at Port Elizabeth’s Arlington racecourse. Before the clock struck 1:16, South Africa’s winning-most racehorse of all time, scooted home under a burdensome 62kgs for his 33rd career victory. In the process he eclipsed the sixty five year old record of Screech Owl, having previously passed the 30 victories of the great Hartford warrior, Sentinel, who was out on his own among racehorses of the past 4 decades.

HEAR THE DRUMS’ R2million in earnings, makes a mockery of his R42,000 Ready To Run price tag, but that in itself is a tale of its own. Passed over by most judges prior to his entry into the sales ring on account of his faulty foreleg engineering, HEAR THE DRUMS would have failed the scrutiny of his owner Peter Fabricius as well, had he not bought him over the telephone.

In the end, it takes a horse of steel will and sound limb to win 33 times, and HEAR THE DRUMS is the greatest advertisement for the fact that there’s more to champions than just legs.

His story reminds us again of the fascination of our sport. Here is a horse that was given the best of upbringings, and a career modelled by a sympathetic owner and fashioned by an astute trainer. But there is another thing to this horse that we often neglect in a champion. They often win when they shouldn’t, and there’s no substitute for sheer grit.

SOUTH AFRICA CELEBRATES A DOUBLE CENTURY

General Louis Botha
(Photo : Boer War) 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOUTH AFRICA

Hashim Amla’s outstanding knock of 129 in Dominica, West Indies, yesterday was not the only a century not out South Africans have woken up to this morning.

On the 31^st May 1910, the Union of South Africa came into being, anointing a man with close ties to Summerhill and Hartford, as Prime Minister. That this farm is steeped in old history is well known, but it’s a lesser known fact that Louis Botha, the second Anglo Boer War’s most successful general, took command of the Boer forces at the foot of this farm.

Besides, apart from the Lord Chief Justice, Lord de Villiers, the only one man to emerge from the Union talks (which brought about the Act of Union) with a knighthood, was Sir Frederick Moor, who together with his brother, Senator John Moor were the founders of what we know as Hartford House today. Of course, Hartford has been through many changes in its life, and today it celebrates the fact that it ranks as the only world-class hotel on a world-class stud farm in the world, as well as being home to one of the nation’s top restaurants.

Aside from these two gentlemen, Summerhill itself was home to Sir Frederick’s deputy (when he was Prime Minister of the Colony of Natal), Colonel George Richards, which means that for the last years of its existence as a colony, Natal was ruled from these two farms.

Happy birthday South Africa.