I have come to Balfour because this is where I began. My Irish grandfather was mayor of this town many times in the ’twenties and ’thirties, and my family was once at home here for reasons which are as characteristic as they are curious. I have driven the hour from Johannesburg, arriving on a Saturday afternoon in mid-April to find the Balfour Hotel unprepared to receive a guest. The fact that a reservation has been made serves only to increase the scepticism of the clerk behind the desk, a frowning woman who assures me that I have found her here quite by chance and no record of my booking exists. In case I should wish to take the matter any further she is quick to tell me that she is only ‘helping out’, and if this fails to deter, that she has just ‘stepped in’ to assist the owner who is ‘unavailable’, as well as being ‘out of reach’ and is not expected to return in ‘the foreseeable future’. The way she delivers these warnings suggests that he might never return at all – at least not while I am here. She stands looking at me: thin, tense, dark-haired and defiant. Something in her manner and the jut of her chin intimate that this is my chance to rethink my idea of spending a night here; it is something that can very easily be done, as she demonstrates with a gesture towards her book; the blank space makes clear that I am not expected. I have only to walk away and no one will ever be any the wiser. In reply, I take out my pen; I even ask about breakfast. From the light in her eye I realise I have given her another weapon. Breakfast is a problem, she says, on Sunday.

Arriving in the peace of a Saturday afternoon the town, in the way of many small South African towns preparing for the long silence of the Sunday to come, lies as if stunned in the brilliant sunshine and the sky has that polished gun-metal sheen so characteristic of the Transvaal highveld as autumn draws on. Though blazingly warm for mid-April the heat carries an almost imperceptible sharpness, a most delicate razor’s edge to the faint breeze; a touch of steel on the warm neck which reminds those who feel it that the sunshine is really just for show and summer has gone. The main road, running north to south, is broad and empty, lined with one-storey shops, filling stations, a municipality building in yellow brick, and two banks, Barclays and Standard. Rumours reaching observers abroad have suggested that such financial institutions are pulling out of South Africa. If so, the news clearly has not yet reached Balfour. The only things moving in the main street are the election posters roped to the lampposts, showing once vividly coloured photographs of the candidates, now fading in the sun. A sense of weariness stamps the posters, the candidates’ smiles seem stiff. We are already three weeks into this campaign, another three to go before White voters set off for the polls on May 6th. The posters are strapped to the lampposts at a height which makes it difficult to interfere with them. Mutilating your opponent’s posters is a traditional sport at election time; but of course nothing is too high when you possess a ladder and a bit of determination and, doubtless, these posters are patrolled regularly since there is so much time still to run and the parties contesting this seat will be taking no chances. The colours of the posters are all noticeably alike; this is because they all use a great deal of orange, a colour which dominates the South African flag since it combines uneasily with the other two colours, white and blue. The effect of this combination is to induce, at least in me, an unsettled feeling, not unlike motion sickness – odd sensation in a country where so little moves.