MR. WILLEM PETRUS DE BEER

HOW I REMEMBER MR. WILLIE DE BEER OF THE BLOEMFONTEIN TEACHER’S TRAINING COLLEGE

Uncle Boet, as we use to call him, was an example per excellence of an English lecturer. My vocabulary falls short to describe this role model of many an aspirant teacher. Especially in the Free State province of old when Afrikaans was the predominant language of this South African region which mainly consisted out of farmers and a concentration of miners in the Gold Fields. Afrikaans church going people with little exposure to the English versions of the Bible…In addition to that, there was only the Afrikaans daily news paper all over the province, namely “Die Volksblad” with one small English newspaper in Bloemfontein, namely The Friend. Sunday Newspapers, eg. The Sunday Times, were condemned by the church. Free Stators mainly listened to the Afrikaans radio station and Afrikaans soapies of those times, also in Afrikaans over Springbok Radio. The political status quo was to vote for the ruling National Party (NP) and not for the South African Party (SAP) that supported the British in World War II against the Germans. Afrikaners who did not sign an oath of loyalty to the war effort of South Africa were retrenched from their jobs in the government and private sectors during the Gen. JC Smuts ruled SAP government and before the NP took over after World War II. Consequently there was an anti British feeling among Afrikaners and subsequently not in love with the English language at all…And hereby hangs a tale…

Willem Petrus De Beer, an English teacher, who was brought up in a SAP orientated home due to his mother’s (auntie Trien) relations with the Squires and Steyn elite families most certainly got a chip from the proverbially English block. He took violin lessons while his mother also played an old pedaled organ when guests visited them for tea on Sunday afternoons. His father, Uncle Willy de Beer, was my grand father, Karel Johannes de Beer’s brother. (Confer to earlier publications on my Blog). Uncle Willy was also a very fine looking gentleman who was a painter on passenger coaches of the notorious South African Railways (SAR). Notorious in the sense that the SAR was compared with the best passenger train travel in the world! The coaches were originally build with imported wood, e.g. Burmese teak, which painters varnished it with skills that they developed themselves for the perfect customised finishing imaginable. Uncle Willy also decorated his own house interior with the wooden doorframes, cupboards, ceilings and floors which were imported woods, such as Baltic and Oregon pine. Uncle Willy had a grey Ford Custom Line which was also taken care of as if it were to become a collection item. Neatly covered under a white sheet in the garage when it was not used to drive to church and back. He milked his cow, planted green vegetables, fruit trees with lovely flowers in the springtime and fodder for the cow. He was a staunched businessman and ran a butchery after his retirement to pay for his son’s university education at the University of the Orange Free State (UOVS). Uncle Boet also worked in the butchery during his free time and used a bicycle from their little plot in Shannon on the outskirts of Bloemfontein to varsity and back which was approximately 20 kilometers from their home.

Uncle Willy and auntie Trien had no children of their own and adopted a little boy whom they baptized in the conservative Reformed Church as Willem Petrus De Beer.
He was selected on the school’s learner council and enrolled at the UOVS to become an English teacher. He taught for a while in secondary schools and eventually became a lecturer at the Bloemfontein Teacher’s Training College (BOK abbreviation in Afrikaans). Until this very day, alumni of the BOK as well as other lecturers who lectured with him as young inexperienced appointments, still remember Mister De Beer as a role model of a good teacher and educator who gave them the necessary professional guidance. As earlier stated, English teachers had no easy task to “convert” Afrikaner students into the Anglo Saxon world of English literature...Afrikaners of those times found it difficult to pronounce English words and seriously got mixed up with the present, past and future tenses! They became totally lost, especially with the incorrect use of the verbs that changed in plural and singular use. Reading aloud in English was a nightmare for any Afrikaner student who came from the rural sub regions of the Free State province where their grandfathers still told them about the war monstrosities of the British soldiers against the over 26 000 women and children whom they indirectly neglected to die in concentration camps during the Anglo Boer War (!899-1902). Consequently, De Beer and his fellow lecturers had a very hard time to educate these students about Shakespeare and poets such as Milton, and William Woodworth. The Oxford dictionary was even scaring off students to use it instead of the Afrikaans/English dictionary with a lesser degree of proper English nomenclature.

However, Mister De Beer became the head of the English Department and set an example which nobody could ignore. Not even the most staunched country bum…De Beer never reprimanded students who were not attending or tried to make funny remarks. He just carried on in such a manner that the “jokers” grew ashamed about themselves and actually felt the disapproval of fellow students, remembers my wife, Christa, who also took English lectures under him. He was the real English gentleman. Always correctly dressed in a suit with the correct tie knot. The refection of his clean spectacles and neatly combed hair portrayed the image of an educationist to be respected at first sight. He knew his Anglo Saxon literature and could read poems with the correct intonation, enjambments between the verse lines, pronunciations, enunciations and exclamations. According to my wife, who originates from Johannesburg and who had a wider background in English than us in Bloemfontein, was impressed by the way Mister De Beer articulated with his deep (sonorous) voice --not as a show of--but to subconsciously imprint the correct example of how the English language should be taught. In short, he established a love for English poetry, drama and simultaneously fostered the calling of true primary and secondary school teachers. The love for the profession was part of his calling, namely how to dignify the inferiority complex Afrikaner students and how to develop their professional image as teachers and leaders in their respective communities.

The older generation colleagues, like my colleague Doctor Henry Esterhuzen, a linguist by profession, and those who are still in the world of teaching remember Willem De Beer as that ‘one of a kind gentleman’ who grew out of the dusty and dry Free State soil into an example of an “Oxford trained academic” without visiting England during his training at all…

Very interestingly, he always used a cigarette box and lighter as well as a cigarette holder when he meticulously started this ceremonial ritual in style when smoking in the tearoom. WP De Beer respected female company which was seriously imposed by his mother. He also did some research about the De Beer family history. Uncle Boet got married to Sheila and they brought up three boys. We hope to publish some comments about their father later on this Blog..