Vrygrond lies less than 2 kilometres from the shores of the sea in False Bay, and sits on beach sand. Before the major site works that accompanied the housing development, there were rolling sand dunes, most of them covered with shacks. In February 1997, shortly after the Trust had been formed, a suggestion was made by Danger Kumalo, the leader of the troublemakers on the Trust, that we should sell sand from these dunes, in order to raise funds for community purposes. Trevor Siljeur and his group were also in favour of this.

So one evening they introduced a guy called Paul Basson, - a powerful, bull-like, forceful man. He ran a trucking and sand business in the neighbourhood, and was prepared to buy sand from Vrygrond. I disliked him from the start, - a fast-talking, aggressive bullshitter. One of the reasons he was put forward to promote his offer was that he was a local lad and grew up in the area, - as if that somehow justified him getting a more favourable price.

Basson kicked off by offering R2 per cubic metre for the sand. He would come with his trucks, dig it out and truck it away. The Trustees were hot to trot, - they wanted to go ahead immediately on this basis. When I suggested that we at least get competitive quotes from other sand merchants, the room was filled with reluctance. No, let’s accept Basson’s offer. I refused, and insisted we delay replying to him.

A day later I phoned Robbie Ross, with whom I played squash and who owned one of the bigger demolition and trucking businesses in town. The going price for raw sand was around R4-50 per cubic metre. When I related this to my fellow Trustees at the next meeting, I was puzzled when, instead of reacting with huge pleasure that we had just doubled our income, they were sullen and reluctant. No, they said, we needed to deal with Basson.

In those early days I did not have the confidence that I now have. Nor of course was confidence merited, - I had not yet established any record of delivery. Hesitant though I was however, I realised that not only was it morally criminal to sell off Vrygrond’s assets below market price, it was also criminally criminal! In terms of the Trust Deed, to which we were all bound, we had a legal duty to act in the interests of Vrygrond. Selling sand at half price was a serious breach of this duty.

Over a series of Trustees meetings, usually held at night in the old wood and tin Crèche building, this matter of the sand was argued out, often with much aggression. Basson increased his offer to R2-50 per cubic metre and the pressure to sign an agreement with him increased.

Looking back on it, I am aghast at my naiveté. I suppose one thing that my years in Vrygrond have taught me is a healthy cynicism: look for the motives behind all actions. However even I eventually stumbled on the obvious truth - Basson must be bribing my co-Trustees. Why else would they be so incredibly determined to sell off their sand at half price to this crook?

I shared my suspicions with Trevor Siljeur and Yvonne Baard. A few days later Trevor came to me “Jonathan you were right. Basson gave me an envelope with R1000 in it to get me to vote to sell him the sand. I think I should put the money into the Trust bank account, what do you think?”. And he did. So to this day you can see on the bank statements of that time, the deposit of R1000 made by Trevor Siljeur, which was recorded in the annual Financial Statements as a donation.

I was and still am moved by this gesture of Trevor. For someone living in a shack, on the edge of utter poverty, to refuse R1000 is a serious act. Of course I do not know if in fact Basson gave Trevor R2000, and he kept half! But even if so, it does not to my mind diminish Trevor’s action. It was clear why the other Sanco Trustees were so insistently keen to give Basson the business. What did they, the supposed “Community Leaders”, care about the welfare of Vrygrond, if their own pockets were filled?

Things became more acrimonious and in April 1997, led by the Sanco four on the Trust, I was voted out as Chairman, so that they could go ahead with the sand sale. I then resigned entirely from the Trust and wrote letters to as many people as I could telling then the reason for my resignation. I felt sick with rage at the cynical greed of Gary Adriaanse and Danger Khumalo, and sick with disappointment at the certainty that without me the Trust would collapse in a matter of weeks. All that time and effort and passion for nothing!

So it was with great surprise that I got a call a week later from Gary Adriaanse, asking me to please come back onto the Trust and be their Chairman again. For Gary to do this must have eaten him up. He and I had had many clashes in Trust meetings. I despised the strutting, cocky, smiling way he would disrupt meetings; I hated the way he used his psychotic cleverness to divert and eventually destroy any cooperative movement for the good of Vrygrond. And he felt a reciprocal dislike for me. Once when I was giving him a tongue lashing in one of our meetings, he burst out angrily “I’m gonna fok you up!”. To this day I consider it surprising that I was never physically assaulted by Gary.

So for Gary to call and ask me back was surprising, and must have cost him dear. I accepted, and my one week resignation from the Trust was over. I was back on board.

With my new found confirmation, I was able to insist that we negotiate Basson up to R4 per cubic metre for the sand. We had lawyers draw up an agreement which made provision for a Vrygrond resident to be paid to monitor the trucks as they took sand, and that Basson would pay the Trust in advance for every 10,000 cubes he took. The agreement also stipulated, - and this was subsequently important, - that no sand be taken on Sundays.

There was another matter, which was not a trivial one, - the Trust was selling sand which did not belong to it. Vrygrond was on Municipal land, and the sand belonged to Council. I was in favour of going to see Council and getting their agreement. Trevor was adamant that we ignore this minor technicality of who actually owned the sand, and go ahead, - Council would never know what was happening and in any case would do nothing.

Well, not only did Council hear about it, but they acted with great efficiency and determination. Within days we were all served a Court Interdict which prohibited us from selling any of Vrygrond’s sand. So in the end I had to go and address a full meeting of the South Peninsula Municipality in which I managed to persuade them to permit the Trust to sell a defined quantity of sand. Trevor was at that meeting, and did not help matters by launching into a seriously abusive tirade against the Councillors and then storming out. I still consider that meeting, in which I single-handedly turned around a group of angry, dismissive and unsympathetic Councillors, to be my finest hour!

Initially we monitored the taking of sand. One of the Trustees and a stalwart of Vrygrond, Oom (Uncle) Thys Witbooi, was given the job of being the sand monitor and he took it very seriously. He shared my suspicion of Basson and was determined not to let him cheat us. I added up pages and pages of truck number plates and drivers’ counter-signatures, and then invoiced Basson for the next R10,000. But of course it started getting away from us. Thys was not able to monitor every truck throughout the day, it all got confused, and eventually the dune had disappeared into Basson’s trucks and the Trust was still owed serious money.

We had no choice; we could not just abandon tens of thousands of Rands, and so we embarked on what must be the most disastrous course of action known to civilised man, - a legal case. Even with Sonnenberg Hoffman Galombik, one of Cape Town’s oldest and most prestigious law firms acting for us at a discount, the costs soon mounted. Going through the paperwork some smart person, not me, realised the blindingly simple truth that Basson had been taking sand on Sundays when our monitor was off duty, secure in the fact that no sand was to be taken on Sundays! He owed us around R100,000, - a huge amount in 1999, and even more so in the annals of the Vrygrond Trust.

Papers were served and the day of the Court Case came. At the last moment, Basson through his lawyer, agreed to settle with us. “On the steps of the court” so to speak. It was a total victory. He signed a court order to pay us over R100,000 in a couple of instalments. My fellow Trustees were jubilant. I was less so, since I had a fair idea of what would happen.

What happened can be quickly told. Basson failed to pay a penny on any of the due dates. He had no assets registered in his own name. Even the house he lived in was registered in another name. When the Sheriff of the Court came to his house to seize his furniture, he said everything belonged to his wife and his son. In the end we forced the Sheriff to seize a couple of trucks from his scrap dealers yard, which sold at auction and we got about R12,000 after costs. The legal costs amounted to about R70,000, which pretty well used up the entire proceeds of sale of the sand.

To this day, when I drive to Vrygrond along Military Road and pass Basson’s scrap yard, with his name painted on the wall, I get a pain in my stomach.