Anthea Horan gives us a startling account of her lockdown experience in South Africa.

ANTHEA HORAN at London Theatre Direct
My story will only make sense if I take you back to pre-lockdown.  My last night out before the lockdown madness started was a trip to London to see The Lion King.  I loved it and I had seen it before but we had somehow managed to get the tickets in the private bar and the musical was so relevant to me as Boris Johnson had confirmed that week that it was safe to fly, and the reason that was relevant was that the next day I was flying to Cape Town, South Africa to visit family.  I was born in South Africa and emigrated back to the UK when I was two. 

We flew on Friday 13 March and the flight was over nine hours.  When we got to South Africa, I was interrogated by Border control demanding to know why I didn’t fly in with a South African passport, which was a weird and quite frightening experience. 

We had hired a lovely gated family home at the bottom of Tabletop Mountain in Cape Town, which had a swimming pool, jacuzzi and balcony. 8 Bedrooms, we hired two courtesy car’s and for the first couple of days we had an amazing time, going to the beach.  We had a lovely time sightseeing and managed to go to Boulders Beach to sunbathe with the Penguins. My UK friends then started to contact me to ask if I was worried about being in South Africa. Even though I had my concerns, I just thought everyone was over reacting! 

However over the next couple of days in South Africa, everything started to shut down, although nothing was on the news, yet.  It was all very secretive and hush, hush.  All the tourist attractions that we had wanted to go to refused us entry and then restaurants started to close locally and then panic started around the surrounding areas.

We watched the news and on 24 March we had a Presidential speech by Cyril Ramaphosa, advising that South Africa was going into a Military Lockdown.  He advised that anyone who had arrived after the 13 March would have to stay there.

That night we had a call from our landlord demanding us to leave the property within 24 hours as she had nowhere to go. My sister and her boyfriend woke up early and travelled around Cape Town to find out if any hotels would take us at short notice. We had 48 hours before we had to fly, so if we could find accommodation for those two days it would be more comfortable that staying at the airport. 

South Africa was extremely strict and you were not allowed to leave your property except for medical reasons or food shopping.  This meant that if you were out of your house for any other reason you would have been arrested and jailed for six months.  I can tell you the thought of that was petrifying. 

We got to a hotel but then discovered that the government had closed the airspace, hours before we were due to fly home!  I was officially under South African House Arrest.  I could not get out of the hotel.  If I stepped one foot outside, I would have been arrested.  We watched the news; riots were happening, businesses were being burgled, people were refusing to abide by military law and thousands were being arrested for breaking Covid Law.

We were later contacted by the Daily Telegraph and my sister’s boyfriend made a plea to get us home due to the fact that we were running out of medical supplies. The article went to press, and we were then contacted by the British Embassy after two weeks of quarantine.

Airspace eventually re-opened and we flew back on 9 April. When we finally got home we had to spend two weeks in quarantine and it literally took that time to actually recover from being trapped in another country without control of getting back home.

After two weeks of being quarantined and not getting any symptoms I was allowed out the house. I remember everyone moaning about the fact that they could not go to the pubs or go out or do this or that as a family.  For me, this was literally a walk in a park.  I could go out for a walk as long as I had a mask on, I could go shopping, I could do things like watch TV in English and also drink water from a tap!  You will never know that luxury unless you experience living without it. 

I was smoking twenty a day, sometimes more, depending on how stressed I was.  I ordered some detailed paint by numbers kits and started to teach myself how to paint and to trick myself into holding a paint brush instead of having a cigarette (see photos!) Five paint by numbers kits and I am still cigarette free. I gave up drinking for six weeks and started walking locally. We’re very lucky to live in the Surrey Hills.