One of South Africa’s great characters, Johnny Theunissen, died this week after a short battle with cancer. He was 56.
‘I’m going up!’ David Rawdon said to Johnny Theunissen in 2013 shortly before the hotelier died. Johnny had a habit of looking up too, seen here in his element at the piano in the Lairds Arms at the Lord Milner Hotel in Matjiesfontein.
He was also a lay pastor, a man of his community, and was as integral to Matjiesfontein as the very bricks and mortar laid by the Victorians. He blew that bugle with all his might, then stuck his head through the ornate doors to the pub where a man in his cups had been dozing with his head on the bar counter. He swung around, “
International guests were told that “the birds’ nests in the tree near the yellow lounge are dried coconuts” and that Johnny’s own grandmother “was Logan’s Hot Chocolate and I came out as the cappuccino”. And now that a man who was a part of the essence of the place has moved on, we who love the man have asked ourselves this week, can Matjiesfontein ever be the same without Johnny in it? And the answer is, yes, it can, because history and decades of that resilience have demonstrated this.I remember when the late Muriel Bownes was at the piano and telling ghost stories – must have been circa 1989 – in theat the centre of attention of guests who had only checked in hours earlier.
My own family have been going there since 1981, before my daughter was born. My girl even got married there, as she swore she would when she was little.Writer Etienne van Heerden and his family, I discovered this week, have been visiting virtually as long as we have, and loved Johnny. “We know Matjies is a place that is close to your heart and as such you will have known Johnny, experienced his tours and singalongs in the Lairds Arms. He has been the personality of the village for 35 years and leaves a huge hole in the community.
“They were obviously amused. But what made the story was another guest lying on the lawn in the dark looking at the stars and Judy tripped over him and he screamed in horror thinking she was a real ghost.”
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