Pieter Pieterse - A Personal View
Created | Updated Mar 28, 2002
I didn't really know Pieter Pieterse that well.
I knew him from TV, yes, and from his books, of which I've only read one. But I did get to meet him, and we did talk. My dad knows him better, and also knows his sister and brother. I know his sister too... Marietjie Coetzee... she works (worked? things change so fast) for a local publishing company and she's rejected a number of books of mine and my dad's - but she did it quite politely, and she did sympathetically explain to us the problems they're having.
Our publishing companies aren't doing well, and Afrikaans literature nowadays doesn't really sell. And that was what Pieter was also talking about that night that we met... about how the publishing houses are currently pulping so many classic Afrikaans books, how even the best authors are going out of print, and having a tough time making ends meet. Pieter should know... he was, in fact, the only Afrikaans author ever to sell more than a million books, and even he was still finding it hard to make ends meet with the writing. Also there that day was PG du Plessis and Chris Barnard... all people my dad also knows from the old days; all people who are some of our country's most successful authors. PG that day told me that the best hope for me for getting my books published was to print and publish them and also distribute and sell them myself. He said that he, with his reputation and all, was thinking of doing that... that's how much the publishing industry in this country has been degraded.
Pieter told us that night how tragic he felt it was that this was happening... those books being taken out of print and pulped represent the best thoughts, the blood sweat and tears, the very lives, of our Afrikaans authors... but they're not 'economically viable' any more. They've been weighed and found too light by the competitive industry. We are all ingested, chewed up and spat out by our wonderful consumerist system. What is the life, the feelings and the knowledge of an individual human being still worth, today?
That was what we talked about that night. My dad introduced me to Pieter, we shook hands, and we talked about books, about publishing. As prominent as he was I had, until that evening, not even realised that I had read any books of his... but I then saw that one book that I had read back when I was a teenager had actually been written by him... 'Geheim van die Reënwoud'1, and I told him that. I also said that I had better read some more of his books... but in fact, I haven't, yet.
But anyway, from his talks, and from our talk, I got the impression that he was an intelligent, gentle, considerate, caring man. There was a lot more to him than we could see on TV or even gauge from his books. His books are all popular fiction... but that night he told us how hard it is for him to write, and about how he wanted to write something that would really be considered a 'masterpiece' of the Afrikaans literature.
The other people there that night - PG and Chris - had both written books considered 'definitive', and PG was promoting a book that night that I have read and consider a true classic... his only English book, 'The Married Man's Guide to Adultery' and totally different from what you'd expect from a book with that title. While Pieter had sold more books, he had not done anything of that caliber yet. But he would go on trying, and his time would come...
Fast forward, Thursday 21 March, Marloth Park. It is a region just south of the Kruger National Park, close to the Mozambique border, where many people own houses, most of them only used during holidays. I've been there, I know the place - I spent a weekend there with my parents as a guest of professor. Salomi Louw, the ex-wife of the famous SA Author André P Brink, Pieter and his wife Jenny2 also had a house there and had been living there for about a year. Jenny was away in Cape Town for a while, spending some time with her sister on visit from Australia. For a long time she tried unsuccessfully to contact Pieter. His cellphone was turned off. So she returned to their house on Thursday, still not knowing what was up with him.
She found his body, dressed only in short pants, lying a short distance from the swimming pool, with his hands tied behind his back with a nylon rope, in so advanced a state of decomposition that she couldn't tell how he had been killed.
Pieterse was 65. He looked younger. He was busy writing, working on his latest book, sitting outside in a chair at a smallish table, when he was killed. His wife has had nightmares every night since finding his body. Nobody knows who killed him, or why. Missing from the house was a firearm, a TV set, a cellphone and a video recorder. The doors of the house and the trailer were standing open when he was found. There were no signs of a forced entry. A blood-stained pillow was lying in the garden near the table, and a duvet was drifting in the swimming pool. His body was taken to Nelspruit for forensic investigation. To date the police haven't yet made a statement about how he was killed.
It couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Pieter was very socially aware. He was always very active in supporting nature and wildlife conservation and, also, he was providing help and support for AIDS patients in the region. He was involved in a nature school where, every week, he taught young children about the bush. The book he was working on was titled 'Takgali- plek van blydskap' 3 and was about the resettlement of communities on the West Coast.
Since his death many of his famous friends have responded with tributes... all of them are shocked and horrified and emphasise what a peaceful, kind, decent person he was. PG du Plessis said it best:
'It was the most horrible news I could have received. He really did not deserve it. He was a people-person and wouldn't have harmed a fly.'
Pieter Pieterse was born in Pietersburg, my home town, on 9 June 1936. He was the first of four kids. He matriculated from Pietersburg High, my own old school, in 1954. He did well in sports - rugby and gymnastics. After school he spent four years living in the bush, in what could be called a primitive state, finding his sustenance from hunting and gathering - whilst also writing. He got his knowledge, and love, of nature from that experience. He later became a cop, an insurance representative, and a marketing executive, while still keeping up the writing... but he soon realised that he had to choose between the security of a mundane job, and writing full-time.
He chose writing. He settled on a farm in, back then, the Northern Transvaal4 and wrote vigorously. In the late seventies he traded his farm for a trailer, called 'Die Spookhuis'5 with which he toured the country. He met and married somebody whom I can't find info on, had kids with her, and I don't know what happened to the marriage. Later, on the West Coast, he met his wife Jenny. They married in 1985 after a very brief romance... the ceremony taking place in Die Spookhuis!
He wrote books, but also radio serials, TV and movie scripts. Eventually he himself appeared in a number of TV talk shows, including most recently the very popular show of joke-telling, 'Maak 'n Las'. He won many awards. Of his 40+ books, many have been translated into English, and one into French as well.
He is survived by his brother and two sisters, his four daughters, and eleven grandchildren. They are all, of course, extremely shocked and distraught by his death. As am I. The world has been robbed of yet another good person. That's not a way to die for anybody.
I'm religious... Pieter was too. I believe Pieter is with God now... or will be with God someday... to enjoy peace and freedom from the troubles of this world. The rest of us are still bereaved, and still left to deal with all the insane violence. It has happened to a famous person this time... but, of course, the same thing happens to so many other not-famous people, and their families. What a world. I guess it's up to us survivors who still have our minds to make it better.
The Return of The Unmentionable Marauding Pillowcase
