Marianne "Janie" Evelina Bouwer

"Aunt Janie lived in a grand two-storey house in Alexandra Avenue, Oranjezicht in Cape Town (Above city bowl) which, to a schoolboy at Bishops (1944 to 1949) was a place of pure magic. Not only did she and her daughters Marianne (married to Danie Botha of Die Burger), Hester and Anna Catherina (“Atrine”) who lived with her until after I matriculated, and her son, Evert, allow me to smoke when I was 16 (Westminster 85) the whole place was packed with memorabilia from General Ben Bouwer’s military years. These included his service in the Anglo Boer War, the 1914/15 Rebellion and the First World War and his time as Commander of the Castle of the Cape of Good Hope. Those were halcyon days for the Bouwers who entertained and were entertained in style (one photograph saw the two of them seated on a special settee fitted to the front of a locomotive at some or other official opening of a new railway station).

It came as a great shock to the family when, after Ben’s death and full military funeral, his estate proved to be seriously in debt and Janie had to be financially supported by her brothers for the rest of her life.

To come back to the Oranjezicht house, there were swords, medals and shell-casings (used as doorstops) and two splendid but, obviously, disarmed machine guns on each side of the front entrance to meet visitors on the front stoep. To the best of my knowledge all of this was left to my cousin, Leon Rood, of Vereeniging (son of Oom Tommy and brother of Theo and Eric whose real name, I think, was Ernst) who had a fascination for weapons and things military.

Janie was a bridge-player with a husky laugh and a great sense of humour passed on to her daughters who all had wonderful personalities. Hester married late in life (to Paum Salzberg) and had one daughter, Paula; Petrusa married a Dommisse and lived in Malmesbury; Marianne was married, as mentioned, to a journalist on Die Burger, Danie Botha, and Atrine, the youngest and most lively married well below her station and eventually died in Kimberley in November 1975 aged 53. Their brother, Evert, was a nice but unprepossessing man. Another brother, vanRhyn Rood Bouwer died from a burst appendix in 1918 at the age of 14." Memories by Francois Marais