Kaskarre Karting in South Africa, 1970
Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2020 4:36 pm
Interesting article found on line 
Kaskarre Karting in South Africa, 1970
High school in South Africa in the ’60-’70s was as boring as it gets, so creative entertainment was the order of the day.
Sanctions and a very conservative government meant that kids grew up in an isolated society. We didn’t get TV until 1975 and the only way we could listen to rock ’n roll was to tune in to Lourenço Marques (LM) radio that broadcast on shortwave from Mozambique.
Boredom means innovation to stay entertained and building kaskarre (soapbox cars) wasn’t good enough. We had to go faster, which meant hooking up with one of the few kids who owned a motorbike. At sixteen you could ride a small bike up to 50 cc, but Dawie Lombard had a 90cc Honda–illegal for him to own and ride, so acquired with the help of his cousin.
These photos were taken in 1970 when I was in my final year of high school in Boksburg. I was behind my fancy Pentax Spotmatic, so no photos of me, although I had as much fun as the rest of the gang both towing and getting towed. We all lived in a subdivision called Cinderella. Roads were being cut for adjacent Sunward Park, which meant perfectly plowed dirt roads with no traffic in sight. Ideal for towing our kaskar behind the Honda. Speeds were high and hence spills plenty.
At some point we got tired of the dirt roads and made the trek to the mine dumps, created by the gold mines that covered the land. Some were made of gravel, but the dried out slime dumps were perfectly flat, dusty and offered a clean canvas to paint drift marks on.
Leonard Meiring towning Deon van der Merwe.
Tinus de Bruin in the slide of his life on a slime dump in Boksburg, South Africa.
Dawie Lombard on his 90cc Honda doing towing duty.
Deon vd Merwe loving it.
Leonard Meiring towing Tinus de Bruin on top of a slime dump.
The slime dump gang with the mine and a large gravel dump in the background.
When the wheels come off…
You can be sure they’ll come off again.
When Dawie crashed (reenacted)…
The best tool available to bend the footrest back was an axe.
Pieter de Bruin ready to launch on the Boksburg mine dump.
Tinus de Bruin hanging on for dear life.
Name lost to a fading memory.
One of the locals getting a ride.
Pretty cool cart we put together.
Pieter de Bruin is a classic drift sequence.
What the heck, traffic cops were rare in South Africa back then.
