* Jack Botes was the illustrious town clerk of Pietersburg (Polokwane) for many years. I did this interview with him in August 2002, some time before his death from cancer.

Mr Jack Botes, or uncle Jack, as most people in Polokwane know him, is a regular visitor at the Theunis Fichardt Hospitium behind the Polokwane Technical College. He visited less when he was still healthy.

Friday, at the commemoration of the eleventh birthday of the hospitium, uncle Jack and aunt Myrtle were there, as founder members of the hospitium, to share in the festivities.

How Theunis Fichardt Hospitium became a reality

In the beginning he did not want to have anything to do with the hospitium.

Thirteen years ago, one of the well-known De Muelenare family of Pretoria approached uncle Jack with the request that he assisted in collecting funds for the hospitium planned by Cansa.
"I said no because I was too busy" uncle Jack remembered on Friday. "But one day I arrived at my office and there was Dr De Muelenare and a woman. They told my secretary they were old friends who were passing through and who wanted to surprise me". They were lucky as he had a few minutes open in his busy program.

Dr De Muelenare knew exactly how to approach Jack Botes. He started by relating the story of a woman in Pietersburg who died under a piece of corrugated iron, put against a garage wall, because there was no place in the city who looked after terminally ill patients. Two years later, and two months after the completion of the building, Jack Botes paid the final amount owed on the building costs.

Finding money

In the beginning, uncle Jack gathered a few people in the city and convinced them to to find sponsors to cover the building costs. According to the planners, the costs would amount to about R300 000,00 and uncle Jack convinced the team that it would not be too difficult to find 300 people to each contribute R1000,00. But when they had collected the R300 000,00, the cost had escalated to R500 000,00. Uncle Jack told the contractors to start building.

"When we had the R500 000,00, the cost had risen to R1 000 000,00 and when he had that amount, it had risen to R1,2 million. By this time uncle Jack had signed a personal guarantee for the building costs. "But two months after completion of the building, we paid in the last amount. And that is what you see here today".

"You know, if you arrive here on any day, and you ask where this one or that one is, who had been here yesterday, then they are gone".

There is a long silence while uncle Jack stares at the floor ..... then he looks up, over my shoulder and out of the window. "I never thought that one day I would be coming here".

* Cansa Polokwane aims to collect R1,2 million Rand with the Cansa Polokwane Relay for Life 2009 ..... the same amount as the original building costs.