Anton Enus is the host of SBS World News, a desk he’s been behind since 1999. Before that gig made him a familiar face to Australians, the journalist and presenter worked for 15 years at South Africa’s national broadcaster, SABC, where he was part of the team that covered the country’s return to democracy in 1994.
Enus was born in Durban and migrated to Sydney with his partner, Roger, to take up the job at SBS. Here, he tells us about the special item that travelled with them – and the rather large, somewhat menacing object he had to leave behind many years earlier.
What I’d save from my house in a fire
Way back in the late 1980s, when my partner, Roger, and I were just setting out on our long adventure together, we were keen hikers. We would carry enormous backpacks and wander around the Southern African countryside, setting up camp on beautiful hillsides and bathing in icy streams. They were gorgeous times, shared with friends who loved the outdoors just as much.
On one such trip, we ended up in the kingdom of Eswatini, then called Swaziland, and spent the weekend in the mountains putting in serious kilometres on foot. At the end of the hike, hungry and exhausted but happy, we stopped off at a local market before heading back home to Johannesburg. On a whim, Roger bought me a necklace made of earth-brown nuts and seedpods. It’s not the kind of thing I would wear, but I treasure it. For years now it has lived draped over the frame of an artwork that hangs in our apartment, so I see it every day.
My most useful object
Oddly, a pot. Actually, two pots. My grandmother, whose name was Lily, was a remarkably strong, steel-willed woman who outlived two husbands. She worked hard all her life and raised six kids (a seventh died young) through the Great Depression. She also loved cooking and baking, and as she got older, she would rope me in to help with the mixing and kneading – micromanaged by her, of course.
When she was deep into her 80s she took me aside one day and said she no longer had the strength for her kitchen work. And then, with great seriousness, she said she wanted me to have her two favourite pots, which were about 20 years old. An odd choice as a gift to a young man – I was probably too immature to realise the sentimental value they held for her – but I accepted them graciously. And let me say, they are magnificent. I’ve had them for almost 40 years now and use them every time I cook. They show no sign of ever wearing out. I like to think that somewhere in their layers and layers of shared sautéing, stewing and steaming, her culinary skills reach out to me.
The item I most regret losing
When I was a young child in Durban we lived in a rented house with an outside dunny, an open-door policy for friends seeking a party (there were many!) and a great big concrete baboon guarding the front door. It must have been a metre high and sat there grim-faced in its painted grey hide. I don’t think it had a name, but everyone who came by for the first time would do a double-take as they approached the house.
It remained there unmoved – and unstolen – because it required several men to lift it. And even then, with great effort.
When my family relocated to the Western Cape, the baboon went with us – I’m not sure how the removalists coped. It was actually quite scary. My parents were convinced their new house was haunted and that there was some link to the great lump of an ape. In fact, they would never allow me to stay home alone at night – even in my late teens – because they were convinced there were nasty spirits about. I never experienced any such thing and felt quite attached to our statuesque, unsmiling friend.
He vanished, probably in some later house move, taking a special element of nostalgia and intrigue with him.
