The first time I went to Bapsfontein was to steal peaches. We picked them on abandoned farms that had been bought by the SAR. Then we stopped at the local hotel and I gaped at its painted garden-bed statues, bigger than garden gnomes, of dark skinned, patched-clothed men toiling, one with a spade, another a wheelbarrow, others hoeing and raking.
The second time I went to Bapsfontein, a few decades later, was to write about oddball Country-and-Western braais at the same hotel. The photographer and I passed, at the entrance, a man with a bulletproof vest under his open pink windcheater, the handle and nose of a firearm evident. Beside him was a slightly chipped brown worker still bent over a spade.