What all local and central government authorities suffer from in the new South Africa is not only the blatant criminality in the form of corruption and nepotism but the appointment of wholly incompetent and corruptible employees. As a direct consequence, the signs of decay and neglect are visible everywhere.

The vignette below highlights and underscores the requirement to uphold not only the laws and bylaws but the ethos imbued and distilled in them as well as their enforcement, otherwise collapse is inevitable. The fastidious nature of the previous brand of civil servant such as Arthur Clayton embodied these concepts which ensured the optimum functioning of society.   

“This morning, I heard the sound of rushing water and went to investigate. I found that because of the water restrictions, a furrow had been dug from the tap into the flower beds.  The tap was gushing. Was this wrong though? A hose was not in use”. It was yet another ironic moral and legal problem for Arthur James Clayton, City Engineer of Port Elizabeth, the man who was obliged to ban, albeit temporarily, the use of garden hoses except for an hour a week. He solved it with characteristic directness. “I told my mother to turn the tap off immediately.” he said.   

This example albeit petty was the moral dilemma personified.

Main picture: Arthur Clayton

Recycling sewage in parched Windhoek
Water runs like a silver thread through Arthur Clayton’s life. There’s water, water everywhere, much of it undrinkable. As a child he saw the effects of too little of it on his frequent visits to Okahanja, his maternal grandfather’s place in the hilly bushveld 30 kilometres north-east of Okahanja. As an engineer, he has been involved frequently in water projects and, in fact, played a prominent role in Windhoek’s direct recycling of sewage into potable water, the first such scheme in the world.

During the 1980s, Clayton’s plan was to ensure that Port Elizabeth received its fair share of water from the Orange River scheme. In January and February 1984 Clayton saw about as much water as he is ever likely to see again in his whole life. As a hand on the Port Elizabeth yacht, Wings, he saw little else for 30 days as she crossed the South Atlantic in the Cape-to-Uruguay race.

Upbringing in Windhoek
Born in Windhoek in1935, Arthur Clayton was the son of Bill Clayton, Post Office official, and his wife, Minnie, a daughter of Capt. Bertie Liebenberg, a Senekal man who settled at Otjisemba after the First World War. Of his grandfathers, he was much closer to Captain Bertie. His Clayton grandfather was a stern, aloof Englishman who buried four wives before he  was buried by the  fifth. He was a reader on The Cape Times when he knew him. He lived in his own cottage at First Beach , Clifton, and sired 11 children, the existence of  some of whom he appeared to have forgotten. Two of his sons had the same Christian names and he insisted that each of his children had a trade and played a musical instrument.

At least two of his children ran away from home. Uncle John, who must be in his seventies at that time, lived in New York.  He was first cellist in the New York Philharmonic, owned a musical business, as well as a college where music was taught.

During WW1, Arthur’s father served throughout the East African Campaign and afterwards was posted to the trenches and killing fields of France. Somehow, he had caught just about every strain of tropical disease known to mankind. As well he was twice wounded and once gassed. After the war, he tried his hands at various careers, including prospecting before joining the Post Office in Windhoek in 1930. He died while still unretired, or in harness as it was then known, in 1956.

Grandfather Liebenberg was an entirely different sort of man. Having fought in the Boer War and been shipped to Ceylon as a British POW, after  the ABW he elected to join General Botha in settling in German West Africa. He spoke perfect English and his letters to young Arthur were always in impeccable  English and were always addressed, “Master Arthur Clayton”. Arthur  spent many holidays with him at Otjisemba which is a Herero word meaning “beautiful place”. He  was extremely well read, and it was from him that his love of reading, especially military history, was inculcated. Water was always problematic in those areas. When the boreholes ran low, they had to dig down through the sand in two riverbeds to find it and then form a chain passing buckets to fill cattle troughs.

Marriages between different nationalities
Usually marriages between different nationalities of the same race are not controversial nor does it result in aspersions being cast. That said, normal societal runs crumble when confronted by war between nations. It is a rare exception when such circumstances do not erupt in discord. In Claytons’ this discord arose due to the fact that his grandfather had married a German widow. His sons were fighting Rommel in North Africa whereas her children were in Germany. Their source of news differed dramatically. He listened to the news from Daventry whereas she tuned into Radio Zeesen,  the German propaganda station which broadcast to South Africa using right-wing anti British Afrikaans speaking Afrikaners who were trapped in Germany at the outbreak of war.

The news was so fundamentally different that it was as if each was not on a different planet but a different universe. Personally, I can identify with the conundrum as my maternal grandmother who was Afrikaans married an Englishman who could not speak or understand Afrikaans but when my grandmother’s family came to spend the Christmas holidays with her, they listened to Radio Zeesen when my four uncles were fighting the Germans up north in support of the British who my grandmother’s siblings despised.

Post matric world
Arthur Clayton matriculated at the Windhoek High School. As a youngster he had only contemplated being a cattle farmer, but at high school his horizons broadened. The Military Academy at Saldanha Bay had just opened and his father and godfather steered him in that direction much to his mother’s chagrin. She put her foot down and insisted that it was off to university that he would go. The cause of this change of heart was the arrival of career guidance, a new-fangled discipline which scientifically determined that he was not suitable martial material but rather more suited to  business or technical directing. His aptitude and his desire diverged, and his mother was on the side of the Career Advisors. Down the toilet went his dreams of a military career.

Off to varsity he goes
Instead, it was off to UCT to study mechanical engineering that Arthur went. The first two years were almost identical for civil, mechanical and electrical engineers. The direction that he favoured was electrical. It was pure maths and as he loved maths, he was enamoured with electrical. Reality got in the way when he considered job opportunities. The prospects related mainly to civil engineering.

Job hopping galore
Clayton qualified in 1957 and until 1965 job hopped in order to gain adequate experience. He moved from Vacuum Oil, went to Ninham Shand Consulting. Next it was Burtons contracting in Rhodesia, then back to Shand again and then for the Provincial Roads Department in Southwest Africa. Fortunately, he built up a wealth of experience. By arriving during a crisis period, he was given the type of experience which would have taken years to accumulate in South Africa.

Bush living in Federal Rhodesia
Clayton found it exhilarating to work in Rhodesia during Federation at a time when the country was experiencing dramatic expansion. It was while working on a contractor financed project building the road from the Gwaai River to Wankie that he was compelled to live out in the bush. As the government specifications were of the most basic, much of the detailed design had to be done on site. Hours were long, working drawings and planning was done at night after a full day’s work.   

They performed strictly according to the specifications by means of rigorous inspections. When he arrived, the relationship between the contractor and the government engineers was extremely tense. Clayton was given immediate responsibility  for several major bridges,  other bridges and all culverts and earthworks but it took a while to gain the confidence of the government.

Female intrusion
At this point the Federation fragmented, and his prospects were dimmed. In any case, his plans now revolved around marital issues and as he did not want to subject his girlfriend, Cathy, to the rigors of bush life, he resigned and rejoined Ninham Shand.

It was while working for Vacuum in  Upington, that Arthur met Cathy Dalton, an Upington girl. After nuptials at the end of 1961, they commenced married life together at Assegaaibosch while Arthur worked on the detailed design of the new road linking Kareedouw with the national road west of Humansdorp. This had its own unique complications. For instance, farmers through whose farms the road would be built, would be surly and uncooperative. On one occasion he found that a whole gang of coloureds, some of them  trained to perform very responsible work, had been jailed for trespassing. What he never knew was that if one climbed through a fence instead of going through a gate which could be some way off, is regarded as trespassing. Fortunately, the police were understanding, and the issue was resolved amicably.

From wildlife and the outdoors to commuting
From the wilderness, he was thrust back into the commuting and suburban living, when he relocated to Cape Town. Frustration abounded as his error was acknowledged. To make amends he accepted a job with Provincial Roads in Southwest. Once again, he could not dodge the crisis as the country was in the middle of one. The torrential floods of 1963 had severed the main road to the Cape everywhere. He was placed in charge of a special squad with the best men and the best equipment to restore the road.  

John Williamson was the antithesis of a civil servant, and he was place directly under him. He was the quintessential slave driver, always in a hurry and fastidious too boot, but who drove himself harder than any of his staff. Notwithstanding that, he got the job done and done well. Being so fastidious, his routine when inspecting jobs was like clockwork. He would depart on a Sunday night and would sleep in the bush rolled up in his blanket. At the crack of dawn, he rose and even without a cup of tea would be at the work site awaiting the arrival of the workers on Monday morning and woe betide them if they were five minutes late.  

Windhoek’s City Engineer
In 1965 Arthur joined the Windhoek Municipality and in 1967 he was appointed City Engineer. John Williamson was shocked and outraged. How could an engineer work for the Municipality.  John was clearly under the mistaken belief that it was a sinecure where wheels ground slowly and innovation abhorred. What Arthur encountered was the opposite. After years of neglect  Southwest Africa and particularly Windhoek was in the throes of an exhilarating period of expansion. Hence, he never regretted switching from private enterprise to a municipal bureaucracy.

His plate was overflowing with projects: roads, new townships, water schemes and a sewage scheme that won a gold medal and became a tour attraction for visiting engineers, a new fire station, and master plan for the future and many other works.

All good things come to an end. From 1979 onwards the economy worsened. Development lost impetus. Clayton became frustrated. He had qualified as an engineer to do things, build stuff and erect other things. Instead, he grew restless without the challenges of yesteryear. He could have utilised this bleak period to obtain more degrees, but Arthur’s drive and passion was to obtain more experience through practical jobs.

Port Elizabeth beckons
In 1982 Port Elizabeth was in need of a new City Engineer. Clayton applied and was appointed City Engineer. Yet again Arthur faced challenges which re-energised him. The old youthful vigour returned. Going to work was no longer a chore.

From a department with a staff of about 600, he moved to one of 2300 employees on its payroll. Even though the engineering was the same, everything was on a larger scale. It also involved a new aspect in the marine element.

He found the job full of stimulation but needed to hone his delegation skills. From being in a small operation in Windhoek in which he personally was au fait with all aspects of all the jobs, he now had to be more hands-off. He had to engender a more delegating form of leadership style using the softer human resource management skills. It was only because he mastered this essential skill had he was able to take seven weeks’ leave in order to participate in  a major ocean yacht  race.

Source
Profile of Arthur Clayton Keith Sutton [Eastern Province Herald, December 28, 1984]
Sabinet 1995
Civil Engineering Juky 2013

Clayton, Arthur James, civil engineer. He was born in Windhoek in 1935. He graduated from Cape Town University in 1957. Originally City Engineer of Windhoek. Appointed City Engineer of Port Elizabeth from 1982 to 1989.  He negotiated with the Department of Water Affairs on the exchange volume between the Gamtoos River GWS and the Lower Sundays River GWS during the drought of 1989.  He resigned to become City Engineer of Cape Town.  Arthur received numerous awards for his contributions he made. He retired in 2001. * Windhoek 1935 †29.9.2012