--- title: "My f*k, Marianne! What a time we had at the Barefoot Arts Meander" description: "A veteran journo commanding a town hall with her rapid-fire satire. A motormouth motoring writer-memoirist. A survivor of abuse who was once a national treasure and deserves to be again. It was a languid, colourful arts festival, but for me there was a serious edge too." type: "NewsArticle" publisher: "Daily Maverick" site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za" section: "GEMS OF KENTON" author: "Tony Jackman" author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/tonyjackman/" canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-10-02-my-fk-marianne-what-a-time-we-had-at-the-barefoot-arts-meander/" published: "2026-10-02T10:00:00" updated: "2026-10-02T11:34:23" lang: "en-ZA" word_count: 2621 --- # My f*k, Marianne! What a time we had at the Barefoot Arts Meander > A veteran journo commanding a town hall with her rapid-fire satire. A motormouth motoring writer-memoirist. A survivor of abuse who was once a national treasure and deserves to be again. It was a languid, colourful arts festival, but for me there was a serious edge too. By Tony Jackman · Published 2 October 2026, 12:00 SAST · Updated 2 October 2026, 13:34 SAST ## Key points - The inaugural Barefoot Arts Meander in Kenton-on-Sea delivered art, food and formidable personalities – with Marianne Thamm’s fearless satire stealing the show. - Thamm’s rapid-fire performance Would You Like Some Coffee With Your Coup? left audiences clutching their sides – and perhaps reconsidering Helen Zille. - Tracy Going’s powerful memoir and quiet resilience prompted a call to remember the former television anchor in a new light. - Motoring writer and memoirist Melinda Ferguson brought trademark chaos, candour and warmth to a festival fuelled by curry, gem squash and creative camaraderie. ## Content There was Parmesan Gem Squash on 80 plates, art in private houses and galleries, and the kind of women – jewels of humanity, hardened by life but their souls shining unblemished – who ought to rule the world. The setting was Kenton-on-Sea, of all places, and they have a new festival that managed to produce a slew of gems in its first outing. Welcome to the Barefoot Arts Meander, aka the Kenton and Boesmans Arts Festival. Boesmans. What a name for a seaside resort town clutched between two rivers like pearls not to be let go of. This is Kenton-on-Sea, the beach escape for rich Joburg people who now, in many cases, live there permanently, having visited their riverside homes for many summers. Kenton, where the houses are huge, with decks the size of a row of poor people’s shacks. They have a choice of rivers, if you please, for their houses to overlook – the Kariega for the filthy rich and the Bushman’s for the merely really, really rich. One riverside road has potholes, the other none at all. Into all this strolled Marianne Thamm, beneath a mop-top of curls and clad in blue dungarees and an air of no bullshit. She was smiling and jiving. If, one day, there is an epitaph on Marianne Thamm’s tombstone – if the undertakers are able to pin her down and keep her there – I think I know what it will be: “She spoke her fucking mind.” Nobody silences MT. Perhaps Thamm should be appointed president, I thought halfway through the show. She can stand up to Helen Zille for goodness sake. Nobody stands up to Helen! (I won’t even tell you who Marianne has on speed dial.) I’ve always held her in high regard, and now that I’ve seen her perform live I’m a starry-eyed fanboy. Marianne – MT, Lopez, or just Thamm to some of our colleagues – and I have been workmates-of-mutual-respect since 1982 and it was she who introduced me to Daily Maverick co-founder Branko Brkic at the start of my now 11-plus-years with the newspaper. Without that introduction there would have been no TGIFood, no Retro Karoo Food cookbook, no nothing. Marianne was as much of a character in 1982 as she is now. She takes shit from no one, never has. Look at the picture of her on the cover of her book, Hitler, Verwoerd, Mandela and Me, that tomboy imp on a beach staring you down, daring you to challenge her. Or was she just wondering why, why, why have you interrupted me on the beach? That’s who she was and remains. Oh and it’s Ma-Ree-Aarn, by the way, the Afrikaans way, not “Mary Anne” as some Kenton locals pronounced her name – comically for anyone like me who knows her and that she is soooo not a Mary Anne. ![Would you take any crap from this kid? And the grownup Marianne Thamm paying attention to tiny sculptures at Bruce Little’s gallery in Kenton. (Photo: Tony Jackman)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/OWT8M3ju4yvgMUFuW2r5tK6qY2o=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/2998/Thamm-gallery_521014.jpg) What I didn’t know is that Lopez can hold an audience of strangers – in this case the friendly and welcoming people of Kenton – in the palm of her hand for an hour or more. Think about that: Do you know how tough a task it is to command a stage? Especially when her script (which appears to be in her head, though how it finds space there is impossible to comprehend) is so rapid-fire that you wonder how she can even breathe. I contemplated sending my inhaler forward to the stage. This ability to hold an audience in her palm and keep them there stems from one inescapable thing: Marianne Thamm is fearless. She says what she thinks, what she thinks is always boldly stated with a fixed eye, and she doesn’t give one solitary fuck if you or anyone else has a problem with any of it. And my God she is funny, so funny. Try to picture the audience of the sedentary wealthy of Kenton-on-Sea, and MT has come here at the invitation of the festival to entertain them for an hour. I wonder if they had any idea what was about to hit them. But they lapped her up like a town hall full of street mongrels that haven’t eaten for a week. They were too busy clutching their sides to clutch their pearls. They hosed themselves most inelegantly. And *my fok* Marelize, did she entertain them. *My fok*, Marianne! Actually, MT, there’s your next memoir title. Everyone’s best bit, I suspect, was her story about Helen Zille and the mouse. I will say no more. You have to hunt down her show and get to it. It is unmissable. I asked her where you can find her show, which is titled Would You Like Some Coffee With Your Coup? She said this: “I do a show on demand. Invite me, rustle up an audience, and I come.” There you go. Let her know at [lopez@iafrica.com](mailto:lopez@iafrica.com) and then show your potential audience this piece. They will book. ### **Let’s move on to Tracy Going** Tracy Going, in my memory, was once a bright, forthright anchor on TV. Somehow I missed what happened next. I had not realised it was so long ago, but I did not know about her assault, which utterly changed her life and stalled a brilliant career. Something like a quarter of a century ago. Or the subsequent memoir about it, Brutal Assault. Then, out of nowhere, she appeared on my WhatsApp, some weeks ago. *Tracy Going. I know that name. Wonder why she’s on my WhatsApp?* She was on the organising committee of the Barefoot Arts meander, she told me. I have since spent several days in her company. She was my host in Kenton, voluntarily ferrying me about after I cancelled my rental car in high dudgeon over the outrageous amount they wanted to block on my credit card for the privilege of borrowing a tiny car for three days and then returning it with a full tank. R7k, what the actual!!! (You know me: I never use exclamation marks. That’s three.) So this poor woman had to ferry me around because I threw a hissy fit at a car rental company. ![That book cover, and Tracy Going and Tony Jackman at the bowling club in Kenton-on-Sea (or was it Bushmans?) for John Maytham’s trivia quiz. Oh by the way, there’s nothing trivial about John’s questions. (Photo: Karina Szczurek)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/7UrE9CuNRJ4rS6q1sXa0x9n5fW4=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/2998/tracygoing-tj_923114.jpg) When Marianne Thamm becomes president, Tracy Going should be Minister of Perseverance and Standing Tall. She is regal, but not aloof. You would never imagine [what she has been through](https://www.amazon.co.za/Brutal-legacy-Memoir-Tracy-Going/dp/1928420125), if you were to meet her. I’ve rarely met a more impressive human. I met her partner too, The Disappearing Mauritian, a soft-spoken island Frenchman who was very funny about the actual French from actual France, and who kept disappearing while Tracy looked around wondering where he’d got to. But I had forgotten the ordeal she went through after her halcyon years in the sunny television spotlight. I bought her memoir, which I am reading now. Lopez read it while still in Kenton, and on our shared drive to PW/GQ airport she praised the memoir to the heavens. “So beautifully written,” she said several times. Tracy Going. It’s time to remember her name again. But in a different light. ### **Now let’s talk about Melinda Ferguson** Oh! My! God! Look, three more exclamation marks. There’s nothing to be said about Melinda Ferguson that shouldn’t be followed by an exclamation mark. What to make of this Motoring Writer-in-a-Man’s-World, inveterate memoirist and self-styled publisher and distributor? Of books including Tracy’s memoir? (A later edition of which was published by Karavan Press.) Put Ferguson at a table with Thamm, while we (that’s Tracy and me) sit opposite, and, well, Tracy and I dissolved into a lot of eye-rolling chuckles just watching them spar. It would be easy to conclude that Melinda is Just Too Much. I know what someone of my close acquaintance would say: that she’s as mad as a box of frogs. But the thing is, she’s bloody nice, kind, and insanely self-aware. It’s this self-awareness that feeds her need to write down, and tell us all about, every shit thing that happens to her. And shit seems to happen to her quite a lot. And we’re gonna know about it. She likes one-word titles. Like Crashed. (She totalled a R3.2-million red Ferrari, FFS. Who does that?) And Swift. (That’s the new memoir.) She lost her latest soulmate, a German psychiatrist called Mathias, to a heart attack suddenly 10 years after finding each other on Tinder. (“Don’t judge!” she tells the bookworm audience at her book event in town.) This while nursing a little bird, yes, a swift, although at first she had no idea what kind of bird it was, it was just a bird. Then a similarly mad (I say it in the nicest way) woman from England called Hannah, who parades near-naked through London to save, yes, swifts, found her and here we are, a book. I used to sub-edit her motoring columns. Maybe I subbed one about a red Ferrari, I don’t remember. Having met Melinda Ferguson, I’m not remotely surprised that she crashed a loan car she was reviewing. Jeez, Marelize. FFS, MF! ### **Now, on to other gems — food gems** Tracy had invited me to host a lunch of recipes from my Retro Karoo Food at the start of the festival, at Jerry’s restaurant, but first, on Wednesday evening, there was a launch party at Volo, a sprawling eatery named after a shipwreck, this being a stretch of coastline not unaccustomed to maritime disasters. If I lived in Kenton, I’d be at Volo every day. Nothing came aground at the launch though, or during the festival that followed. This was my first taste of Kenton as it is today. Nearly everyone I met was from Joburg, or used to be. The maritime air was scented with dune fynbos, camphor and the whiff of hard-earned money. Oh and parmesan and curry spices. The first at Jerry’s, the second at the Bell. The kitchen crew at Jerry’s had turned out in their traditional finery, because it was Heritage Day. The kitchen did a great job with my Parmesan Gem Squash, not skimping on the butter (my recipe calls for “too much”) or Parmesan, and one gentleman remarked that he hated gem squash but loved this. It was normally too watery, he said, and that’s exactly how not to cook gem squash. If this is your experience of a gem, you’re doing it wrong. There was a packed house of 80 people, 31 of whom bought my book, thanks to the brilliant salesmanship of the two-woman crew from Bargain Books in Port Alfred. Nobody walked past them without buying a book. Tracy was the calmly efficient emcee, then the sweetly bemused interviewer, pinning me down with that half-raised-eyebrow on a countenance that’s on its way to bursting into a chuckle. She and I were invited to join a family table for supper, by Lauren Jarvis, a ceramic artist whose work is truly beautiful. I was given a gorgeous royal blue and white plate decorated with an elegant prawn. It matches my kitchen, by chance, and an artwork celebrating a prawn belongs in a room where food is prepared. ![Gorgeous plate by Ceramic artist Lauren (Lolly) Jarvis. (Photo: Tony Jackman)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/lF_Tyh2pqg9X6I8v7eOmymwUMtQ=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/2998/LaurenJarvis-plate_841126.jpg) The Bell is a smart, elegant bar where the whiskies are grand and the breakfasts classy. “Coffee bar by day and whisky and wine bar by night” is the boast, and that’s clever. But there was a special curry night that evening, and we went along. On our way to the curry supper we had popped in at Tracy’s home over one of the rivers. I’m nervous to say which one, for fear of offending half of Kenton (or Bushmans). The Wandering Mauritian was cooking a chicken dish in a wok that smelt delectable. He wandered on to the balcony where we admired the view, and pointed to a nearby house where the curry we were about to eat was made, he said. Then he drifted back inside and we left him to his eternal wanderings and went off to the Bell. We ordered a thali, which arrived without a thali. It didn’t matter. Sometimes it’s the thought that counts. What would have been on the thali, if there’d been one, included chicken akhni that was gorgeously, subtly spiced and aromatic, keema beef roti wraps, a curry of potatoes and sugar beans, samoosas, and a “home-style” dhal. Instead of a thali, it all went on the table. I didn’t mind at all that MT and MF were at full tilt at moments in the meal. It turns out they’ve known each other forever. They struck me as being like siblings who love each other but fall into a tussle on demand, then fall out of it just as easily and discuss the relative charms of samoosas and chilli bites. At one point MT told me for the 437th time: “I eat to live, I don’t live to eat.” Copy that. I left happy and smiling – this is my kind of food, and these are my kind of people – and was back next morning for a breakfast of creamy scrambled eggs on sourdough toast with bacon on the side. It felt like contentment. \*\*\* Some final thoughts on Marianne Thamm, on Tracy Going, and on the whirlwind personality that is Melinda Ferguson. ### **Marianne Thamm/MT** She challenged the audience to sign up as Insiders and thereby pay her and my salary, and all the rest of us. Keeping DM and journalism alive. DM would do well to send her on the road, she is astonishingly good and successful at signing up the formerly disinterested. There was a queue to sign up after her show. (You’re not signed up? You can [do so here](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/insider/). Or increase your subscription and thereby possibly help them give us a salary increase. Please and thank you.) Just one small thing, Lopez: Add “moer” to your title. Moerkoffie. ### **Melinda Ferguson/MF** Oh! My! God! I’m gonna hunt her down next time I’m in Joburg, but I’m bringing MT along. We will all go to some smoky joint in Melville. I will put them at a table together and watch from the corner. Having suggested a title for MT’s as yet unwritten next memoir, as far as I’m aware, it would seem churlish not to submit one for Melinda too. A one-word one, obviously. A memoir, perhaps, of everything that isn’t in her other five memoirs. I’ll go with… Then! Oh, I should appoint her to MT’s Cabinet, too: Minister of Drama. She can sort out problems for thespians and playwrights. ### **Tracy Going** The memoir Tracy Going penned in the wake of that brutal assault epitomised what any of us wouldn’t want to write about, or shouldn’t need to. It needed to be expiated. I see the human being she is today against a watermark image of the woman she was before a shadow crossed her life and changed everything. This is not how she deserves to be seen. What that man did to her was so horrifying I’m struggling to find the words. I’ve just deleted my strongest thoughts about it all. She is writing now. I didn’t pry as to what it might be about. But I have a private hope. And who am I to say it, but I will: a memoir that will reset the damage done by that brutal assault. With a title to make that clear. Regal Legacy. **DM**