Enjoying South Africa’s secret French connection

One aspect of the old South Africa’s racial policies cannot be faulted. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Huguenot refugees arrived at the Cape. Within a few decades, they had been culturally cleansed, abandoning the French language and becoming decent Afrikaners. If only we had possessed the foresight to do something similar in Quebec. But the immigrants were allowed to retain a legacy of their grenouille past: wine-making skills. They planted vineyards around Franschhoek and Stellenbosch, creating a great oeno-phile tradition which still flourishes.

The terroirs are in achingly beautiful terrain. Early on my first visit to South Africa, in 1984, I met a chap who had been working in the President’s Council — the equivalent of our Cabinet Office — at a senior level, but was giving that up for a chair at Stellenbosch, though he was only in his late thirties. I asked him why the devil he was rusticating himself and got only mumblings for an answer. I ran into him a few weeks later and he looked as if he was about to resume the mumblings. ‘No, no,’ said I, ‘you don’t need to explain anything. Since we spoke, I’ve been to Stellenbosch.’

It is a university town, and on that glorious autumn day, several elevens of Valkyries were cycling back from tennis: the blond flower of Afrikaner maidenhood, also achingly beautiful. There were young men too, coming back from rugger, with thighs like oak trees. It was surprising that the bikes could bear their weight, and the Springboks were not about to run short of prop forwards. I was with a homosexual colleague. So moved was he by the flower of Afrikaner manhood that I feared we would all be arrested.