In Times Like These

© Copyright 2013 PJ Stassen

All Rights Reserved

   The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, “The trouble with this country is …”

-          Sinclair Lewis, 1885-1951.

   I was born in 1947 and raised in the nondescript little (predominantly) mining and railway village of 

Randgate, a suburb of Randfontein, in South Africa.  We were ‘moderately’ poor, certainly not wealthy.  Fortunately, children do not always realise their poverty until somebody reminds them of it, and, in Randgate, there was nobody or no family prolific and rich enough to remind us of our (very) lower middle-class status.  We were a close-knit family, and the children blissfully ignorant of their lack of wealth and society clout.  I was the eldest of the six children, five boys and one girl.  The only indicator, I think, of the region’s relative deprivation must have been the free milk and fruit delivered to us during the classroom breaks in primary school (during summer) and replaced with the steamy hot, freshly baked hake (in winter) 

   My dad was a cowboy-western movie-enthusiast, and as we, as a family, more or less never (or seldom) went to Church, the movies had become my primary source of my socialisation and information about ‘high society’ outside Randgate.  In Hollywood, those were the days of Roy Rogers, Spencer Tracy, Joel Macree, James Stewart, Richard Widmark, Gary Cooper, Richard Egan, Audie Murphy, Charles Starrett, Randolph Scott, Clint Walker, Charlton Heston, Robert Taylor, Cary Grant, Stewart Granger, Robert Mitchum and Yul Brynner.  In music and popular entertainment people used to drool over Al Jolsen, Dick Haymes, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Robert Goulet, Johnny Ray, Rex Allen, Roy Rogers, Andy Williams, Stuart Hamblin, Gene Autrey, Perry Como, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.  Ladies who could sing ‘perty’ included such greats as Jane Powell, Jeanette MacDonald, Rosemary Clooney, Doris Day, Vera Lynn, Debbie Reynolds and Patti Page.  In South Afica, Eve Boswell often headed the charts.  A great highlight for me in 1963 was when my dad took me with him to watch the movie Judgment At Nuremberg.      

     It was only later, much later, that I came to realise the important place in history of our ‘nondescript’ little village … Randgate was situated right on top of one of the richest (if not the richest) gold reefs in the world, the now famous Main Reef of the Witwatersrand ('Ridge of White Waters').  Only a few miles or kilometres from our home stood the Randfontein Estates goldmine, one of legendary J.B. Robinson’s mines started many years ago, in the days following the tragic Anglo-Boer War.  This is the very region where Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato also earlier (at Luipaardsvlei and elsewhere) had invested in new goldmines, although their claim to fame came more from their exploits in Kimberley with diamonds, further down south.  
 

   If you were one of those fortunate few who had studied in England with a Rhodes Scholarship, bear in mind that your scholarship was probably financed by gold from my region or diamonds from Kimberley. This region, just like the Klondike and other famous gold rushes, drew fortune-hunters from all over the world, and not long after the discovery of gold, toward the end of the 19th century, the city of Johannesburg, the ‘City of Gold’, was founded, today about a 45 minutes drive from our village of Randgate. 

   The discovery of gold (and the resulting Outlander-grievances) at the Witwatersrand and in Johannesburg apparently had been some of the primary reasons for the eventual unfolding of the Anglo-Boer War in 1900-1903.  So prolific had the discovery been that it later, because of certain labour-dispute issues that I do not want to elaborate upon in this forum, became the scene of another serious conflict in the shape of a little mini ‘civil war’ in the Witwatersrand: The notorious Rand Revolt, or miners’ strike of 1922.  White, striking workers organised themselves against the mine-owners and 'capitalists' into armed commando units compelling Prime Minister Jan Smuts eventually to resort to iron fisted methods to contain the strikes.  It was also at Benoni in South Africa where (probably for the first time in the world) bombs were dropped from 'flying machines' (aeroplanes) on some of these commando's hiding from government troops in residential areas of the town. 

   Much later, during the fifties and early sixties, my father was, among other things, a shaft carpenter  at the Randfontein Estates goldmine, and this mine, as well as Robinson Deep, were in fact situated so close to our home that the mines’ spooky, ship’s foghorns woke me up for school every morning at 6 a.m., although the alarm was actually intended for the migrant hostel workers at the mine.

   The discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa changed the face and history of this country forever.  But, in spite of all the gold, diamonds, platinum, iron and steel and other much sought after export products, I wonder if there is a more enigmatic country in the world today than the land of South Africa.  In these times of economic meltdowns, rife corruption in high places and the escalation of crime, the only real wealth is Jesus Christ … the Pearl of Great Price, the Rock Of Ages, the Bread and Water of Life.  Yes, in times like these, we need JESUS … more than ever. This song, In Times Like These, played a major role in my life as a young adult to shape my thinking during the early years following my conversion in 1962.

YouTube 

In Times Like These

(Ruth Caye Jones, 1902-/© Copyright 1944 by Zondervan Music Publishers. All rights reserved).

In times like these, you need a Savior,

In times like these, you need an anchor;

Be very sure, be very sure

Your anchor holds and grips the Solid Rock!

In times like these you need the Bible,

In times like these O be not idle;

Be very sure, be very sure

Your anchor holds and grips the Solid Rock!

In times like these, I have a Savior,

In times like these, I have an anchor;

I’m very sure, I’m very sure

My anchor holds and grips the Solid Rock!

CHORUS: This Rock is Jesus, Yes, He’s the One;

This Rock is Jesus, The only One!

Be (I’m) very sure, be (I’m) very sure

Your (My) anchor holds and grips the Solid Rock!

Piet Stassen

eLiterature/eLiteratuur:

1. Scribd Publishing Site:  www.scribd.com/PietStassen (ENGLISH & AFRIKAANS)
2. eBook: 'Evolution: The Science That Evolved Into A Fairy Tale' (ENGLISH)  
3. eBook:  'Bertrand Russell Revisited: Rebuttal Of Bertrand Russell's 'Why I Am Not A Christian''(ENGLISH)
4. eBook: 'Meditations & Contemplations: A Reader For Both Atheists And Creationists' (ENGLISH)
5. eBook: 'Conservation, Rhino Poaching And Hypocrisy' (ENGLISH)
6. eBook: 'Why Darwinism ('Evolution') Does Not Make Sense' (ENGLISH)
7. eBook: 'Names And Titles Of Jesus Of Nazareth (ENGLISH)'
8. eBoek:  'Darwin Of Christus: Suid-Afrikaners By 'n Kruispad!' [AFRIKAANS].
9. eBoek:  'Bevryding Van Die Anti-Evangelie Van Ateisme-Evolusionisme' [AFRIKAANS].
10. eBoek:  'Name & Titels Van Jesus Christus' [AFRIKAANS].
11. eTracts, Christian (Free, Downloadable):  Free, downloadable Christian eTracts for free distribution (ENGLISH)
12. eTraktate, Christelik (Gratis, Aflaaibaar): Gratis, aflaaibabre Christelike Traktate vir gratis verspreiding (AFRIKAANS)

Bibliography

1.  Andrews, Allen (1969) Quotations For Speakers And Writers. Newnes Books. London.

2.  Hymntime. ‘Ruth Caye Jones’. Accessed At <http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/j/o/n/jones_rc.htm> [online] 2013.

3.  Peterson, John V. (1968) Great Hymns Of The Faith. Singspiration^® Inc. Zondervan Publishing House. Grand Rapids, Michigan.