Another Van Pletsen Storyteller

Dina-Ann Boessenkool

Introduced by Roon Lewald

My cousin Dina Ann is providing fresh proof that the ancestors of the Van Pletsen tribe all qeued up to kiss the blarney stone. Dina’s mother (my Aunt René, who is still hale enough at 89 to plan her umpteenth trip to Europe this year) is the  last survivor of my maternal grandfather Frans van Pletsen’s brood of four daughters and one son. The story-telling gift which prompted my own mother (Reinet’s elder sister Helen) to record the family’s history in her “Van Pletsen Saga” has resurfaced in Dina Ann Boessenkool (née Vincent).

On Afrikaans

There is, for me, something remarkable about well-crafted Afrikaans prose. Her words are fertile; a faithful translation into English will often demand of a translator three words for each pregnant Afrikaans word. She remains, for this writer, a language that at once embraces and estranges her readers, for she is essentially tribal.

Any engelsprekende that has ever ventured into a conversation in Afrikaans with Afrikaners might know what I’m trying to place my finger on: his toungue immediately betrays him as an outsider; there is an awkward moment of sheer horror when conversation halts — and resumes — in English. There is little to no middle ground for those who speak Afrikaans as a second, third or foreign language. Our battered vocabulary and slaughtered syntax betray us immediately for the buitelanders that we are. It is our shiboleth.

Inyoni

In memory of my sister, Deanne Seneschal Raszat, née Lewald, born 31 Jan. 1940 in Durban, South Africa; died 26 Sept. 1996 in Leimen-Gauangelloch, Germany

By Roon Lewald

Deanne

After cancer won a five-year battle for my elder sister’s life, my brother-in-law sent me a parcel of old studio recordings of Deanne’s singing recitals made by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC/SAUK) between 1953 and 1958. Apart from a pile of yellowed newspaper clips and eistedfodd certificates, they were all that remained of the years when my mother’s coaching of Deanne’s voice propelled her into brief local prominence as a promising young singer. My dutiful elder sister had already been slaving away at her piano lessons for nearly five years when, at the age of 10, our Ma yoked her girlish lyrical soprano too into the musical harness of our parents, both of them singing teachers. At the age of 13, she piped German Lieder and Afrikaans liedjies into an SABC mike for the first time and was introduced on the nationwide “Young South Africa” programme as a young singer with a great future.

Die Van Pletsen Saga

In English

Klik vir genealogie

Hier volg nou die “Van Pletsen” saga wat ek belowe het om neer to skrywe voordat ek tjêns word en niks meer kan onthou nie. Ek kan nie waarborg dat al die féite, datums, ens., juis is nie, want wat ek hier skryf is gebaseer op hoorsê – op wat pa en ma, oupa en ouma en ou tantes en ooms vertel het! Volgens my oom Jan Sauer van Pletsen (wat joernalistiese neigings gehad het en ʼn paar boeke die lig laat sien het) het ene Carl Johannes von Plessen, gebore 1795 in Oos Pruise, daar moelikheid gehad het met die owerhede en toe die land verlaat en hom gevestig in Brabant, België.

(Oupa se suster, Tant Mart Vorster, het graag gespog met die feit dat ons Van Pletsens oorspronklik Von Plessens was en dus tot die aristokrasie behoort het en dan het my pa se broer, die stuitlike oom Kootjie, haar altyd gedemp met die woorde: “Ag, wat, Ta’ Mart, die ou swernoter was seker ʼn ou perdedief. Dis die dat hy daar out Oos Pruise moes padgee het!”) In Brabant het hy huursoldaat geword en as sulks onder Napoleon gaan veg.

Na die slag van Waterloo het hy en ʼn Havenga (seker ʼn voorstaat van Klasie Havenga) as verstekelinge op ʼn skip hier aangekom in 1820. Dit blyk dat hy in Graaf Reinet te lande gekom het waar hy getroud is met ʼn Anna Sauer (gebore 1805) wie se vader, Johan Nicholas Sauer, uit Keulen in Duitsland gekom het en onderwyser in Graaf Reinet geword het.

The Van Pletsen Saga

by Helen Lewald (nee Van Pletsen)

Translated by Blane van Pletzen-Rands

(Klik vir Afrikaans)

(Click for Genealogy)

Here follows The van Pletsen Saga , which I have promised to write down before I become senile and can’t remember anything. I cannot guarantee that all the facts, dates, etc., are accurate, because what I am writing is based on hearsay on what father and mother, grandfather and grandmother, and old aunts and uncles have told me!

According to my uncle Sauer van Pletsen (who had journalistic leanings and allowed a few books to see the light of day), one, Carl Johannes von Plessen, born 1795 in East Prussia, ran into difficulty with the authorities and left that land and established himself in Brabant, Belgium. (Grandfather’s sister, Aunt Mart Vorster, boasted the fact that we Van Pletsens were originally Von Plessens and, therefore, belonged to the German aristocracy and then my father’s brother, the stately childishly absurd uncle Kootjie, always deflated her with these words: “Oh well, Auntie Mart. The old rascal was probably a horse thief. That’s why he had to get out of East Prussia!”)

Samuel Begg

By his Grand Daughter, Helen van Pletzen neé Begg, with research by Scott van Pletzen-Rands

28 June 1878 – 13 April 1934

I never knew my paternal grandfather as he died in 1934, the year before I was born. He was born into a coal mining family. All his working life he was a coal miner and died suffering from the miner’s disease, silicosis, caused from coal dust in the lungs.

My father said Grandpa kept going to work even when he was ill as he was so loyal to his job. From what I heard of him, from those who knew him, he was a much loved man. His widow, Granny Begg, was very stern and unbending with her strict Baptist belief, but I think Grandpa Begg was a much softer person. I say this as I heard someone saying once that if Granny had died first the children would have been fighting over who could have him staying with them. Grandpa and Granny joined the Baptist Church together as a young couple and were true to the Church all their lives. They had four children, Samuel, Thomas (my father), James and Mary. Sam and Tam left the Church when they could choose for themselves, but Uncle James went on to become a Baptist Church minister and Aunty Mary continued attending Church even although Uncle Robert, her husband did not go. She sang in the Church choir.

When I asked my father about Grandpa Begg’s parents he said I should let sleeping dogs lie.

Helen van Pletsen – the Nightingale of Natal

By Roon Lewald, son of Helen van Pletsen, author of “The Van Pletsen Saga”

In a personal twist to the old show-biz saying that “you haffta be Jewish”, my Afrikaner mother had a stock diagnosis of people she considered too humourless to appreciate the funny side of life. Irritated by an encounter with some particularly dour, self-righteous grudge-bearer, she would shrug and say: “His / her problem is a lack of irony in the blood.”

Jane King Blane

“Granny Begg” 22 September 1883 Died 30 August 1983

Remembered by her grand daughter, Helen van Pletzen née Begg

My memories of Granny Begg only go up to when I was 21 as I left Scotland in 1957 and only saw Granny after that on the few visits we made to Scotland. We kept in touch by letter and she wrote faithfully – always starting her letters with “Dear Eln” as she spelled as she spoke. When she was unable to write herself she would get someone to do it for her.

Granny became a widow at the age of fifty, the year before I was born. She then rented a room from a Mrs Todd who had a big house in The Castle, New Cumnock, Ayrshire, Scotland. “The Castle ” was the name given to the main street in New Cumnock. Her room was up one flight of stairs. It was a very large and pleasant room with a window looking over the street and a window looking out to the garden and washing lines at the back and she made it comfortable and homely. There was an open fire and she also had one gas burner that she could use for cooking.