GG Merwe

Johan Van der Merwe farms sheep across a stretch of the Karoo his family has held for five generations, and has outlasted three droughts, two locust years and one bank manager. The game arrived with a travelling wool-buyer decades ago and stayed as the stoep game of the district. He builds a prime early, sooner than the position warrants, and the reason is not the prime. He is finding out what you do when it is uncomfortable and there is a long way to go, and he has said that he learns more from the first ten minutes than the result tells him. He is dry of speech and gives away nothing about what he concluded.