South Africa 1966-1969
This book is a degital representation of a photo album that I made during the four years that I traveled back and forth from college to visit my parents in Pretoria and Cape Town, South Africa, from June 1965 to August 1969. --Susan Rountree Hanes copyright 2011
South Africa, 1965-1969 In 1965, my father, William M. Rountree, was appointed US Ambassador to South Africa by President Lyndon Baines Johnson. In the same year, I graduated from National Cathedral School in Washington. As a college student at Emory University and then the University of Florida, I spent summers in both Pretoria and Cape Town, joining my parents when they moved between residences according to the schedule of the South African Parliament. During those blissful holidays I lazed in the sun, played tennis daily, and went to lots of parties. I am sure I gave my parents sleepless nights when I dated men who drove me to Johannesburg where the nightlife eclipsed that of the rather dull administrative capital of Pretoria. Highlights of my trips home were visits to the Kruger Game Reserve, where we stayed in authentic thatched-roofed rondavels with no electricity. There were fewer visitors at that time and the animals were close and plentiful. I remember a giraffe that put its head right in our car window while my father desperately tried to get his camera open in time; lions feasted by the side of the dirt road. I also enjoyed observing the culture of the native Bantu tribes, although with apartheid in full effect, those opportunities were few. The South Africans loved to party. I found myself in a constant whirl of tennis parties, pool parties, dinner parties. I celebrated my twenty-Xirst birthday with a formal dinner dance at the embassy in Pretoria; it was one of the most extraordinary evenings of my life. Many of the friends that I made during those happy days are friends that I still treasure more than 40 years later. I once considered attending university in South Africa, but I realized that if I stayed for school, I would probably never leave. The country had stolen my heart. Susan Rountree Hanes, 2011
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My father’s Swearing in Ceremony in Washington, D.C. The Deputy Chief of Protocol, Ambassador of South Africa to the U.S. Harald Taswell and his wife Vera, Secretary of State W. Averell Harriman, my mother and me 2
The Embassy Residence in Pretoria 3
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At the Strouvelle’s with Vicky, Mike, and Sally and her roomates, Julia and Jane
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Pat and Frank Kossuth’s Famous Christmas Party Who else could get my father down on the Xloor with a blindfold and a rolled up newspaper? (Gilly and Penny Kossuth are on the ends.)
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My 21st Birthday Party
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Kruger National Park
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Out and About in Johannesburg
Vicky Strouvelle
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The Embassy Residence in CapeTown
Opening Session of Parliament 24
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The University of Cape Town
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Peter McGregor 30
The Notorious Sally 31
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