NELLIE

My mother Cornelia Carolina (Nellie), born at Hopetown on 12 May 1902, was the middle daughter of  Neels and Annie du Plooy. She and Sue were just one year apart in age - Ann was five years younger. The three sisters were very close. Before her marriage Nellie lived with her parents in Kimberley and taught the kindergarten class at the Newton Primary School. Most of her class consisted of children from the Newton Orphanage.

Whether they were actual orphans or still had a parent somewhere, they were certainly starved of love and affection and my mother was frequently admonished for undermining the dignity of the profession, neglecting discipline and  "spoiling" the children. She saw nothing undignified in hugging parentless four- and five-year-olds and letting them sit on her lap. She had the best-behaved class in the school and they got the best marks, so her critics didn't have much of a leg to stand on.

She had a lot of artistic talent but her parents could not afford to send her away to art school. Instead she went to the Teachers' Training College and once she was earning a salary, she paid for art classes with Miss Sarah Reid, an alumnus of the Slade School in London.

She became well-known as a painter, and held her first exhibition in Cape Town in 1933.

She did not marry young: she was a 32-year old schoolteacher when she married my father, Jaap Steenkamp, who was five years her junior, in 1934. I was born in 1939,  my sister Marie followed five years later and my brother Rudolph two years after her.

She was a gentle and loving person and she never shouted at us nor smacked us. I never knew her to use even the mildest form of bad language. We all teased her for years afterwards about an embarrassing experience she once had at the grocer's. Those were the days before supermarkets: you bought your requirements over the counter. The upmarket grocer in town was Andrew Kiddie's. Mum was in Kiddie's on a busy Saturday morning and she wanted to buy a bottle of "Mrs Ball's Chutney". The saleslady asked her what sort of chutney she wanted. She had to raise her voice above the hubbub, when one of those moments occurred when there is a momentary silence, with only Mum saying loudly: "Ball's!"  Everybody looked at her, a few people sniggered and Mum was mortified.

 It was always her dream to have a "real studio", but that never happened and our house always smelt of turpentine - Mum would set up her easel in the dining room or in the sitting room or wherever the light was best.

She may have been an artist but she was also a very practical person. She was a good cook and she made all my and my sister's clothes when we were children. She could turn her hand to anything. My father was not much of a handyman and Mum was the one to turn to if anything went awry.

One day my brother, who was about fifteen at the time, was fooling around with one of Dad's hunting rifles, which he knew very well not to do, but he was showing off as boys his age will do. Next thing we knew, the thing went off and shot a dirty great hole in the wall. My mother saved him from a dreadful fate by patching that wall before Dad came home. She made a sort of papier mache paste and stuffed the hole, smoothing it over and touching it up with her oil paints mixed to just the right shade.

It was not until we were all in high school that she went back to teaching. She taught art at three of Kimberley's high schools. She also taught various crafts: pottery, pewter and batik, at the local Technical College.

Despite all her teaching commitments, her charity work and the many committees on which she served, she was always there for her family and held the reins of her household firmly. After she was widowed, she lived with her second daughter Marie until her death at age 92.