Elaine Hurford

It’s impossible to describe, in a short tribute to this remarkable man, the extent of his vision, art and the ideals that guided his long and complex life.

Outa died from burn wounds on Thursday July 7, after his patchwork coat – familiar to his thousands of friends and acquaintances in South Africa and abroad – caught fire. He was preparing to go into town, Prince Albert, 45 kms away, to do business. He fed his cats, strays all, then made a small fire to heat water for washing. As he turned,  the tail of his coat caught fire.

He was taken to Prince Albert hospital with 80% burns, fully conscious, greeting everyone gallantly as was his way. From there he was transferred by air  ambulance to the burn unit at the George Hospital, but he died shortly after admission.

For the last 10 years  he has lived outside the town where he had to fight many battles for acceptance. His long-ago struggles against eviction from his home in Prince Albert, which resulted in a personal march to Parliament, are documented in newspaper articles by the outsiders who were the first to acknowledge him as a man to be reckoned with for his art, his philosophies and his principles.

Outa Lappies For some years he was given refuge in a garden in de Beer Street, where he slept beneath an aged pear tree which was festooned with his lanterns and laundry. But his residency, wherever he lived, was always tenuous and he moved from place to place, eventually to a derelict farmhouse 20kms outside Prince Albert, and finally to a railway cottage at Prince Albert Road Station, where the train doesn’t stop any more.

He told how his father, an itinerant sheep-shearer, taught him to “make something out of nothing” and this became the guiding principle of his life.

Outa’s beliefs were made manifest in his now-famous embroideries which documented his wanderings through the country, by some reckonings a staggering 16,000 kms – or the proverbial “ten thousand miles” -  in the course of his life. These he called his “chapters” and they depicted his philosophies and his life’s journey. His art also expressed itself with scrap metal, broken glass, reeds, feathers and other found objects, chiefly in small lanterns, and his now iconic “karretjies” or wagons, which he gave away, or sold, or, once a year, trailed behind him on a ceremonial ride into town to deposit money in the bank for his daughter’s birthday. She, seated aloft in a cart yoked to Outa’s shoulders, nothing less than a princess for the day.

This was the cart to which he yoked himself , like an ox, and set off on his many journeys. Outa Lappies was a tall, lean and very strong man, “strong as an ox” he declared, and like an ox, he would “toil and carry the yoke of his life”. The coat, patched together with scrap fabric and lined with hessian, was made and worn as a stand against those who ridicule poverty – like the people who laughed so many years ago, when his young cousin went to church in Klaarstroom in rags.

Outa documented his life in a file bulging with personal records, which included letters from countless friends around the world who, once they’d met him, never forgot the patchwork philosopher of the Karoo.

In 2001 he was named Western Cape Tourism Personality of the Year, an accolade which made little difference to his life which was lived in poverty to the end.

There are plans to create a museum at the little house on the station, recording his life and work. Donations may be sent to the PA Educational & Heritage Trust, Account number 907310467, at ABSA Prince Albert branch code 334-708. Kindly use the reference OUTA.