DAVE MEYEROWITZ – LIFE STORY · Dave Meyerowitz than I learned through anybody else. I think I...

Meyerowitz on Meyerowitz

DAVE MEYEROWITZ – LIFE STORY

“Meyerowitz on Meyerowitz”

Transcribed from a video interview with Lisa Chait from The Life Stories Project. Video available on www.lifestories.co.za or via direct url:

http://www.lifestories.co.za/interviews/advocate-dave-meyerowitz-an-

extraordinary-life

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A Tribute to Dave by Judge Dennis Davis Well I think the point about Meyerowitz is that you are not going to get anybody like this in the legal profession. Certainly not in my lifetime and I suspect not for a very long time to come, if at all. I mean, you are talking about a very unique human being. I am not talking about all the communal stuff, which doubtless will be dealt with separately, but if you look at Meyerowitz the lawyer … I mean he produces these books all on his own. Now we have to have teams to do the same thing and we are not nearly as up to date as he was. I have no doubt he’ll be screaming from wherever he is, saying, ‘I told you so’. Then, secondly, he is the leading tax silk in the country. He has a busy practice and then he’s got everything else that goes on at the same time. How on earth this all occurs, I have not the slightest idea! A man gets to 90 years old and I know when I’m asked to advise ‘who would you go to consult about a tax question?’, you’d go to Meyerowitz. At round about 90 he retires from the Huguenot Chambers and it’s unique. Why would you think that after such a long time there was nobody who was comparable in this particular area? Well, that’s the uniqueness of the man. I don’t think in any area of law has somebody dominated it for so long all on his own without research assistants, without any legal team … with Mrs. Eager who was long suffering over a very long period of time, having to put up with all of his almost anal compulsions and obsessions about getting it absolutely right. She did that wonderfully. You are talking about an extraordinarily brilliant career over a very long period of time. It is not the only thing. I appeared as his junior. He was way into his 80’s by then I think. I was about to go to the bench and I was called in to be the junior to Meyerowitz because the belief was that he wouldn’t be around if the matter went on appeal. In other words he would have retired by then.


Well if you’ve got a matter which runs into many many millions, if not a couple of billion, and you’ve got your senior council who is over 80 … and the way matters carry on in South Africa … you wouldn’t think, would you, that the person would still be active 3 or 4 years later. So I was brought in to deal with the case. Meyerowitz won the case and almost a decade later the same client briefed Meyerowitz. I am now the judge and Meyerowitz is still arguing in court. It seemed to me just absolutely extraordinary how he had defied all the odds. Trevor Emslie and I decided some years ago that if you took the books, the Administration of Estates book and Meyerowitz on Tax, these are deserving of a doctorate. The University of Cape Town does give doctorates for published works if they make a serious and unique contribution to a specific field. So he got an LLD as a result of those books - which was richly deserved. He was capped accordingly and, goodness knows, he must have been in his late 70’s by then and it was quite a unique occasion. It was our way of saying:

‘There is nobody else like you. There is unlikely to be anyone else like you in this particular field. We’ve never met anybody like this’.

Certainly from my point of view he was my mentor. I learned more about tax from Dave Meyerowitz than I learned through anybody else. I think I learned more about law actually. Dave is one of those people who marks the great jurists from the schleppers. The difference is (with) the ordinary lawyer if you go and consult them, they start looking at all these law reports (to) find out where the authority is. What Meyerowitz did, which is what the great lawyers do, is that they say:

‘There is a logic to this. The answer must be x. Now let me go and look for some authority to support my proposition’.

That’s not something everybody has, and only the really great ones can do that. (They) can understand the intrinsic logic of the system. He did that better than almost anybody. In this area … (tax) … certainly better. To the extent that it is hard to say somebody is irreplaceable but I would want to argue that nobody - with great respect to many very able lawyers in tax - has been able in any way to replace Meyerowitz.


PART 1

INTRODUCTION, ANCESTRY, PARENTS, IMMIGRATION TO SOUTH AFRICA

Dear family, I want to explain why I am sitting here doing an interview and a video on behalf of myself and you. On your behalf, on the basis that I would like you, at least those who know me, or those who know very little of me to know a little bit more about my life, a lot of which was very, very odd. There are meises, odds and ends which normally don’t come as far as I know into a history of anybody, but I hope that you will not be bored and at least for the next generation they will listen to it. What they do after that, G-d alone knows. I hope this video will convince you that you have a father and a grandfather of whom you can be proud and especially because of the yichus he gives to you. In a way I am sorry that I didn’t listen more to the stories of my father and mother, but I should tell you and you probably don’t know, I had ancestor called Bobba Rochel. She lived to the age of 106 and she died while being transported during the First World War. They lived in Lithuania in a small village called Sakot. My father came out here to South Africa at the age of 20. My mother came out 10 years later and she was 10 years younger. She came to marry him. It’s the usual story that happened in Jewish families. The men came to South Africa and they worked hard until they were able to marry and they sent back home for a bride, and who were the brides? Members of the family! And that’s why my mother and father were cousins. My father, when he came out, it was the Boer War in 1901 or something and he had all sorts of jobs and he ended up at the military camp in Wynberg and eventually he became a butcher and he made a living. That’s when he called my mother out. And what happened there? Apparently he didn’t know my mother, she must have been about 12 years old when he left (laughs). In those days it was an entirely different thing to today. In those days you left and said goodbye to the family and it was permanent. Very permanent. So the only communication was by letter and after a while you didn’t like letters anymore and he (you) lost track. Anyway there is my father, and my mother came out. My father, he taught himself English and to read and write and my mother, she didn’t. She didn’t bother and I think all of her life she must have been at a disadvantage. I understood from my father’s stories that his father had a mill, a watermill, and that he got strangled on the mill over there. That’s the story I remember in the past.


But coming back to my mother, my father thought that the older sister Rose would be coming out but she had already gone to America to join someone there and so they sent my mother. As far as I can make out there was no such thing as divorce in those days or anything like that. It’s like the same thing as Fiddler on the Roof:

‘Do you love me?’ … ‘I don’t know’ … (over the years).

They had a good life together. My father’s name was Morris Meyerowitz in English. My mother’s name was Rebecca Friedlander (in English). (Looking at photos of parents) I think my mother was quite a beautiful woman. Yeah, if you think in those terms of course … looking at her. She was a very good housewife. (Lisa: ‘And your father?’) Yeah, my father made a living. I never felt poor that we couldn’t … you know … he was generous with us.

PART 2

SIBLINGS, GROWING UP IN SALT RIVER There were four children in the family. My elder brother, Leo, his name was Arieh Leib. Arieh is a Hebrew word for lion. Leib is a Yiddishe word for lion and he was known as Leo. He was two years older than I. I came next. My name is David. I can’t remember after whom I was named. Then my sister came. She is six years younger than I was and I had a brother, Jacob, who was six years after her. So he was 12-years old and he was 12 years behind me and that’s that. He was the very first to die. He died about ten or twelve years ago in America. He’s an odd-bod, he was. Yes, in his way he was a philosopher. His wife called him a second Da Vinci. He studied medicine (and) he didn’t like it after four years. Getting through the exams, he didn’t like it. So he switched to architecture, but in the end he met a Jewish woman from England and he then emigrated to America with her. He was interested in art. He wrote a book, called … Oh, I can’t remember. I can tell you, it’s so obstruse, I can’t understand it at all. (Looking at pictures) This is a cousin in Jo’burg. This is another, that’s me, that’s a cousin from Jo’burg and that’s Leo. My father had a butcher shop that was on the way to the station and every morning we went to school I popped in there. I used to get a couple of pennies to take with me to school. He used to keep his till open. I said: “Dad, why do you do that", so he said to me, he says (laughing), ‘If people break in, they will break the till as well. I might as well save the till, so I leave it open and let them have a look and see what it is’. Yeah, I’d like to say one thing else about my father: The way he read the newspapers (smiling). He used to kneel on the chair and spread the newspaper on the table with his elbows there and read (smiling more). That’s the way he enjoyed reading.


He had a shop which he rented and the tenant sold second hand books and there was rain that came in and the tenant blamed my father. (So) my father bought the books. sodden books, and that’s where I started reading, and I read often and often. The book was called, I think, The Northwest Passage, about a thousand pages, sodden pages, but I went through it and afterwards I became an avid reader. I used to get many books from the library. I used to lie on the sofa with peanuts and sour figs in a bag on the floor and read till it was dark. I didn’t notice it was dark. We had a neighbour, neighbours who lived opposite us and every morning, or almost every morning the two women met to have breakfast. (Lisa: … Which two woman, Dave?) My mother and Mrs. Resnick, and they only called themselves in all these twenty years, they called themselves Mrs. Meyerowitz and Mrs. Reznick. I don’t know why. She had a son who was born within a month or two after I was born and, I don’t know why, I presume because she was unable to give enough milk, my mother suckled him and they were still Mrs. Reznick and Meyerowitz (smiing) and they had breakfast together. I don’t what other people called them, but in those days people were very formal with their names. (Lisa: So you are saying that your mom suckled somebody else’s child?) Yes. (Lisa: Was that something that happened often?) No. They were such good friends. That’s it. They were for over twenty odd years and that boy that she suckled became a doctor. Dr. Resnick!

PART 3

LOCAL CHARACTERS, CHILDHOOD STORIES, JEWISH FOOD, BOBBEMAISES, CHILDHOOD GAMES

We had a chap there who came from Lithiania and we called him Grientjie Stein. I can’t remember his first name. Why did we would call him Grientjie? because he was not born in South Africa and he came as a young man and he got involved with buying and selling illicit diamonds. You couldn’t deal in diamonds without a license. Someone must have told on him because they went searching his house and you know where they found the diamonds? In the tefillin on his head! The teffillin! You know that? You have a box on your head. They found the diamonds inside the box (giggling). That was an unusual place to put the diamonds, but it was, it was very interesting there. Percy Yutar, his father had a butcher shop. He started the Young Judeans. He was the chairman and that’s when I became the secretary. I must have been about fifteen or sixteen. Now he had his fingers nipped off in a sausage machine. Percy Yutar ultimately became a prosecutor and he prosecuted Mandela and he was ruthless, absolutely ruthless.


The interesting thing about it - he prosecuted Mandela in the Treason Trial and that’s where Mandela got twenty eight years in jail because of that. He was imprisoned for life! Almost twenty eight years. The interesting thing about the end of that story is that Mandela invited him to have a cup of tea with him. That shows the mind of Mandela. He never bore a grudge. In those days there was no such thing going to a shop (to) buy pieces of chicken and ready-made stuff. You cooked. Everything was cooked yourself and the chickens you got were live chickens. You took it to the Reverend Kassel, his name was. He was the shochet and in his backyard there he had a railing and hooks on the railings. Okay? And he would slice their throats and they hang up there and they (would) ‘chick’ and ‘chick’ and the blood would run all the time on the floor until they died. Then I would pick up the chicken and take it home and my mother would then have to pull off all the feathers and so on. It was a different life than today. You can’t imagine. But perogen! Because my father was a butcher we always used lung, made lung in the perogen. Terrific. Much better than putting any other meat in. Lungs, it was delicious and then we made, I don’t know what, you know what petcha (brawn) is? Petcha is a jelly, calf’s jelly. For some reason or another we called it stutende. I never heard of it from anyone but we called it stutende. Delicious. It was a big job to make it when cooking it for hours at a time. We used to take herring. You know you had a cold stove (we used to) take a herring and put it in a piece of brown paper and put it among the coals, get it completely charred, take it out and mix cream with it. Yeah you know, memory is wonderful but I don’t know how good these things were? It’s probably, you know, it’s always better afterwards. It’s like the person who goes overseas and has a hell of a hassle with the transport, with his luggage and so on, but when he comes back he makes a joke of it. I can’t tell. (Lisa: What about salternossers? What were those?) Aah, those were salternossers. (laughing) You know blintzes? A type of blintze, but it’s, ooh, bigger than it or something with plenty of cream. I don’t know, it’s almost you had to suck it up from the plate. Aah, those, were good meals. There were (such) bobbameises as the following: That if you’ve have a short neck - I don’t know where I picked that one up - If you have a short neck you’re likely to get a stroke. I used to worry about my height. After a while I forgot. My mother used to have superstitions. Most of the Jewish women had these superstitions. One of them was: when you sew something on your body, like a broken button or something like it, you must put a piece of cotton in your mouth so that you don’t sew your mouth. Yes (laughs) and you mustn’t go through a window because you’ll never grow. Those are the superstitions of the women. The toys we had we made ourselves. We played blow-blow. Blow-blow is (where) you took cards and you put them on the window sill and you blew. (Then) turn them


over and those who turned over the most were the winners. We played in the street. We could play in the streets in those days because the traffic was minimal. I played what they call kennetjie. You had a piece of wood with the ends off the ground and the stick and you hit it with the stick, it’s called kennetjie and you see how far you can get, okay. You play it with a wheel, a bicycle wheel without tyres. They used it with a piece of bent wire and you ran all over the place. Yeah, so those were the sort of things. We played marbles. We put up a heap of marbles and see who can knock it over. Yeah, people will remember about goons and ………. and all sorts of things … marbles. So we had a different life entirely from today. We weren’t sitting on the couch watching TV all the time and, you know, we had a good life. Did I tell you the story there, by the way, of the Savlon? One day I was in the kitchen with Mrs. Reznick and she asked me (laughing) she asked me if I’d go to the chemist and buy some Savlon. I didn’t know what it is. I said what’s that stuff? She said is it this yellow stuff. Oh, I said okay, I’ll go get it. I came back (laughing) with sulpher! Yes (laughing), I could have poisoned her.

PART 4

CHEDER, MORE CHILDHOOD STORIES, DAVE’S MOTHER (AND HER DEATH), SACS JUNIOR AND HIGH SCHOOL DAYS

Did I tell you about cheder? I never went to cheder, the ‘normal’ cheder. There were ten boys in our road, in our street. Ten boys and we had our own cheder. Yes, his name was Abelson, I remember. He was a teacher at cheder there but he used to come to us, teach us and especially on a Saturday we would have a class. He must have had herring or something because he was always thirsty and he drank a lot of water, no tea, with lump sugar in his mouth (laughing). He went back to Lithuania in 1928 and he probably died in the Holocaust, I don’t know. There were no geysers, electrical geysers. It was a cold stove or wood, I can’t remember which, but my father liked a steaming hot (bath). How he sat in that hot bath I don’t know but I used to come and scrub his back every time he had a bath. By the way the one thing about my father (laughing), he went to shul and when the rabbi started speaking he would walk out. (Lisa: Why?) He walked out because it was too hot for him, the air (laughs). I don’t think the rabbi liked it particularly, but he wasn’t over religious my father, not in the least. Did I tell you that one of the things he had was called a lokshen strap. You know what a lokshen strap is? It was a piece of wood, a piece of leather, half of it cut in strips and if you’re naughty he gave you one smack, it stung like hell. I could only remember one occasion when he hit me. What was it? I took some money, yes some coppers he had without telling him, and what did I do with it? I


went and bought myself brown paper, paste and bamboo to make a kite and the damn thing never worked really (laughing). It wasn’t worth it. There I got one crack. He was a gentleman, my father, however, yah. (Lisa: Tell me about your mother, Dave. What kind of woman was she?) You know I can’t talk much about her. I do know that she was very caring for us and that’s about all I can say and, as I told you earlier, I think she was inhibited from the fact that she (couldn’t) speak English but she looked after us well, she fed us well. I have always regretted that when I was out of the house and married I wanted to buy her things, a nice coat and all that sort of thing and I never really got around to doing it. Till one day I was at a meeting in town on a Sunday and I went up to say hello to her. Oh by the way, she’d had a stroke. No not a stroke, a heart attack, and she was in bed and one Sunday morning after a meeting I walked up to her, I came home to her, I wasn’t living there, I was already married, and she had just died as I walked in and I remember my father coming up to her and touching her. (Dave tears up) That was a sad moment and, you know (long pause), now that I come to think of it we sat shiva for the week. It was a wonderful time. We are not religious people but somehow the family sitting there for that week meant something to me. (Lisa: How old was she when she died, Dave?) She was in her sixties. (Lisa: She was young.) Yeah (Dave wipes away tears). (Lisa: She was young). Yeah (looks into the distance). I went to school, SACS, in town. That means I caught the train and walked up to school and as I said I passed my father’s shop. When I got to school there was an open shed and the whole school had to gather under the shed to say a prayer. It was the Lord’s prayer. You know the Lord’s prayer? It says:

Oh Lord which art in heaven Hallowed be thy name

etc, etc. Well for years after that I always thought that the Lord’s name was Richard – ‘which art’, I took it to be ‘rich’ ‘ard’. ‘Oh Lord, Richard in heaven hallowed be thy name’. So if you talk about his name I took it to be Richard (laughing). We had a teacher name Knobby Knowles. He took us for standard five and six. Unusual. I learnt an enormous amount from him about writing and reading. He gave us work to read, he gave us books to read, he told us what we should read and he had competitions from the point of view that he’d put two (pupils) together and say, now you each one write chapter stories. Don’t tell each other just continue. I learnt a lot about English there which stood me in very good stead all my life. In the high school, well nothing in particular except we had various names for teachers: Boozy Rodgers because he drank like hell, our Afrikaans teacher we called him “volstruis”, I don’t know why (giggling) we did. All sorts of names.


We had a lane. My classroom was (near) a lane and some chaps used to bunk. (They’d) get called to the roll (call) and later on just jump through the window, but I was never naughty in that sense. When I was about twelve or thirteen or fourteen, somewhere there, I started smoking. Oh yeah you’re not supposed to smoke! So what would I do? I used to go to the cinema and I bought a packet of cigarettes – ten! I used to smoke as many as I could before I came home and I used to get almost sick but if I had any over I would hide it. We had a terrace on the stoop with flowers. You know, it’s a stepped-up terrace, okay? and it was covered with plants and so on and I could crawl underneath and I sat there smoking. I gave it up one day. I smoked until I got angina and I stopped from that time but that was many, many years later.

PART 5

UCT, MASTERS OFFICE DAYS, JOINING THE BAR, THOUGHTS ON ‘AN UNFOLDING LIFE’

I was a good scholar, usually near the top of the class. (Lisa: When you were younger, in those years, what kind of career did you dream you would have?) None at all. That’s the point. I never thought about it. You know, this one says I want to be an engineer, this and that. When I passed matric I was going to go to university. My father was able to afford both my brother and myself at university. There were three professions that were fashionable if you want to put it that way: A lawyer, a doctor, I’m sorry, let me put it in proper order: A doctor, then an accountant, then a lawyer. A lawyer was down at the bottom. (Lisa: … down at the bottom?). (Dave laughing) Yeah. Anyway my brother was already doing accounting and I didn’t want to be a doctor so I decided to take law and that’s where I started taking law. I don’t know if I should say it but I was a very good scholar. I picked up five class medals in the process and I picked a prize. That prize, I think it was called the Nobel prize, not the Nobel prize that they do today, it was a bursary of eighty thousand, eighty rand. I am sorry, eighty pounds but there was a condition attached to it. The condition attached to it was you must go to a higher degree than BA. I had my BA. So I applied for it and they said ‘No you don’t qualify’ so I used my talent, because the law degree was a bachelor degree, not a masters degree. So I used my talent, I said, ‘No no I fall within the terms of the prize because I am taking the third course of the same law’. You know, I had two courses of the law before I had to get my bachelors and the extra course in the course of the bachelor law and I said, ‘I qualify!’ and so I got the prize. I can’t tell you if that’s because (I was) the best person but I tell you what the eighty pounds did: I paid all my fees, I paid for all my books and I had money over.


The next thing, now I’m qualified, if that’s what you want to say. I was twenty one. In spite of having a good degree, I felt raw about going to practice as an advocate. So I wanted go into a firm of attorneys, yeah, but I couldn’t get articled. It was the depression years. It was 1938. Years of great depression. Yeah, and I then applied for a job as a civil servant wanting to go into the deeds office to learn something about transfers. They offered me a job in patent law in Jo’burg, but I didn’t want to go there because I was courting. I was then offered a job in the Master’s Office which I took. I got to the Master’s office, which does deceased estates, and for something like six months I was nothing more than a messenger. Despite my degree, which entitled me to get an extra amount in salary - something like seventeen pounds a month -, I was in what I call the general room and people wanted documents. I would organise their documents. I would take (the documents), make copies, thread it with red tape and put a seal on it or I would go down to the vaults to bring up the folders that they wanted. I had six months and I was just about to resign when I went to another department where things were a little better and so it went on until the war started. Okay and the firm of attorneys, the people, came and offered me to join them. I got forty pounds a month. A big jump! Forty pounds a month! I was already married. Forty pounds a month and I took that job. The firm’s name was Syfret, Godlonton & Low. When I left I decided to go to the bar but because I’d been an attorney, acted as an attorney, I could not join the bar for six months so I had six months to do nothing. I had to wait. I’ve said and feel that a lot of my life just unfolded itself without previous planning, it happened from time to time, but when I think hard about it, there was a thread that didn’t break at all. Right from my early youth when I was at the age of about fifteen or sixteen I was involved with the Zionist movement and all my communal life was connected with the Zionist movement, but in addition to that I met my wife through the Zionist movement and I also believe that when the work I got involved in - tax and so on - had its origins to from the fact that it happened through a brit, which is also connected with the promised land. (Lisa: What do you mean a brit, Dave?) A brit. I mean by brit … why do you have a brit, a circumcision? It’s part of our Jewish life. I regard it as part of the promised land. It happened in the promised land that’s what I mean. Maybe it’s far fetched, but there it is.

PART 6

MEETING AND MARRYING CHAVIE, THE CHILDREN & LIVING WITH MY MOTHER IN LAW


I met my wife because her parents, especially her sister, (were) very much involved with the Zionist movement and I met her through the Zionist movement, as simple as all that. And then I started courting her. I don’t if I should say to you this, but you know, I can’t say that I’ve ever had a grand passion. Nor did she in a sense. She was a very quiet woman. She was an absolute stoic. She would never ever complain. We just fitted in. She gave me the space to do what I liked. She said, ‘A rose is a rose is a rose’ and I say, ‘A building is a building is a building’. My wife’s name was Eva Zelma. Everybody called her Chavie. There were lots of Chavies in the family, as usual, so she was little Chavie and had cousins who were other Chavies. I remember one occasion when she was in hospital, she had a hysterectomy and I sent her a big bunch of flowers and I put a card ‘from an unknown admirer’ and there, when I visit her, I see the bow there and I sit and I wait and I pick up the card and I read, ‘Oh from an unknown admirer’. I said, ‘I wonder who it is?‘. She said, ‘I know it’s you’ (laughing). That’s the sort of woman (she was). I had to pull everything out of her to talk. Yeah, we had sixty-two years of happy married life. When my father-in-law died we went to live with my mother-in-law. We did it partly, but it was only partly, because it was financially easier, but mainly because I knew exactly what my wife would have done. She would be visiting and worrying about her mother all the time. Her mother was aged fifty-eight, a hale and hearty and intelligent woman, but she came to us and we lived together for fifty-eight years till she became senile and we put her into Highland’s House. It was not an easy life having a mother-in-law there. When we went out at night visiting she would never ever dream of her mother looking after the children. We would take her and deposit her somewhere with some friend and round about ten o’clock, when I’m just enjoying myself, we would get up and go and fetch her and take her home and when you chastise the children, she’ll be hissing away all those years. She had the front room which had a shower and basin and because there was a low pressure, when I was in the shower in the morning, she would turn the taps on and I’d either gets scalded or I’ll be cold. I used to shout: ‘Bobba, bobba, bobba!’ I’m not sure whether she did it on purpose (laughing). I’ll tell you something about my children. Only it’s what I think are a little bit of eccentricities: Okay, my eldest daughter Sandra, for some reason or another she would never take a dummy, nor could I put a thumb into her mouth – she wouldn’t let it. That, I thought, was a bit unusual. Now when she woke up, she would wake up in the night and cry, I would hear nothing, I was fast asleep, I would ask my wife what happened


during the night. Then I bought a puppy. When the puppy just wined, I was awake, not my wife. Isn’t it funny how the mind works. You had the division of duty. My duty was to look after the puppy, she was looking after the daughter and that what that. That’s the one side, the one daughter. The other daughter, Vivienne, she never crawled in the ordinary way. You know what she did? She crawled on her back! She used her feet like this (shows rowing movement), peddled away all over the places as fast as you can imagine. I haven’t seen anything like it before. She is a very clever woman, my daughter Vivienne, and as a youngster she was very good at school,. I bought this house here so that she could be near the school which was just around the corner but on Mondays she was most reluctant to go to school for some reason or another, I don’t know. We had a brick as a door stop which had a leather covered cloth or something like that, and she’d be sitting on there and I would have to pick her up and take her out into the street and say ‘go’ and she would start crying and two minutes later she’s on the way (as if) nothing happens. I don’t know why it was Mondays? Somehow on a Monday … That was also an oddity. She was a bit of the cheeky one. I remember chasing her up and down in the old lanes (laughing). And then Paul, my son Paul. I can remember a lot of times when he was the youngest, of course. He used to lie in bed with us and I used to tell him stories and all sort of things. He had a little bit of an aversion to water for some reason or another but unfortunately in later life he had a disease called ‘the bipolar’. You know what it is? Up and down, up and down. He suffered a lot, a lot and I said when he died, he died about four or five years ago.(that) I cried for his life, not for his death. Vivienne … went to Israel. She went to Israel when she was about twenty. There is one thing I never did and that was pass on my personality. I was involved with the Zionist movement but I would never tell anybody to go to Israel. That would be their own decision. I didn’t tell my children to do that, but they’ve decided to go. Vivienne went in 1940, no 1969, and Sandra and her family went in June in 1979. Chavie had a relatively easy time when the children were born. Sandra was born in the Booth Memorial. Nothing in particular about it. Vivienne was born … I am not quiet sure … for the moment I think somewhere in the hospital near the Booth, but when she was born it was a fatal day in the sense for the Jewish community. They thought it was fatal. She was born on the day of the elections where the National Party came into power and General Smuts lost his seats in Standerton and the Jewish people thought the roof had fallen. It didn’t turn out that way but it was a big change of government. When we came to Paul’s birth I am living now with my mother-in-law the first time, I mean after my father-in-law had died. And now … Chavie was there, my brother-in-law was in Jo’burg and Chavie was hanging the curtains when her water broke.


What am I to do now? I can’t leave the kids alone. They’re all youngsters. So I got to Jossie Ozinsky. He was the anaesthetist in the team with Chris Barnard the heart specialist. I phoned my doctor and there is something wrong with the phone. I can’t get to the doctor. I said: ‘The bastard, he’s just got married, so he doesn’t want phone calls!’. So I ring up the telephone people (and) they say it’s not a doctors name. He had it in the name of his wife. So what the hell am I going to do? So I asked Jossie to go and fetch him, so Jossie went in the car to fetch him. He met a big dog in the grounds but eventually he got hold of Dr Prisman and took him to the hospital where Chavie was. And I looked at the watch, about an hour had gone, and I thought, ’She’s had the baby by now’. So I phoned up the hospital and he comes to the phone and I said, ‘What’s happening. Is the, is the baby born?’ He says, ‘Yes, the baby has been born’. I said to him ‘Where, what is it, a boy or a girl?’. He says, ‘I don’t know, I’ll go and look’ (laughing). That’s the story. Lisa and Dave looking at photos. (Lisa: This is Dave, Chavie, the girls and Paul, correct?). Yes, yes. (Lisa: Look how pretty she is). Good heavens, … (Lisa: She’s beautiful. Who’s on the left?) … Yea, I … (Lisa: … Who’s the one on the left? The girl on the left?) That’s Sandra. (Lisa: Sandra? Sandra and then Viv is the next one and then Paul is on the right?). Wait, yeah, and that’s Chavie there, yeah.

PART 7

‘THE LATE MEYEROWITZ’ (STORIES ABOUT LAST MINUTE DAVE), AMUSING COURT STORIES & WHY DAVE CHOSE TAX AS A CAREER

When I passed my BA my father bought me, bought a car. We lived in Salt River and I hired a chap, called, uh, it doesn’t matter I can’t remember, I think his name is Nobel (laughing) and I learnt to drive the car. He had a duel control. He was probably scared stiff (laughing). I think rightly so, because I was scared myself (laughing). Anyway I used to drive the car. I used to use his car to learn. Now I am ready to get my licence and this time I am getting my car in Salt River and I drive into town. I get into Adderley Street and in those days you didn’t have lights … what’s it?, traffic lights. The man stood in the middle of Adderley Street on a pedestal with a pole and on it it had (a sign with) ‘Go/Ry’, okay? and he would turn it. Now I get there, just about there at that point, (and I see) ‘Stop’. So I stop. Then he turned the ‘Go/Ry’ and I take my foot off the pedal too quickly and I jerked across the whole of Adderley Street. But eventually I got to the depot, where it still is now, and got through the test and now I am going back home. Now I am going back home, I’ve being tested, I come down what’s that short street?, I can’t remember. What is that short street’s (name)? uh, Shortmarket Street. I come down Shortmarket Street and the car stops. I’m out


of petrol. What to do? What to do? So I get out of the car and I went to a garage and I got a tin of petrol and I brought it back to put into the car and when I got to the car I realised I should have taken the funnel as well. How do I get the petrol in unless I went back, which was quite a distance? So I was very ingenious. Yes, very. I took out my hanky and I stoked it in the tin and I squeezed it into the tin (laughing) until I had enough to get some in there with it. Yeah, that was my first one and ever since I was always short of petrol. I always wait until the last moment to fill up. Yeah, that’s the car. (Lisa: Are you a last moment kind of guy?) Yeah, oh very much so. Have I ever told you about my going to court. I called myself ‘The Late Meyerowitz’. I was always late, running around in circles. I used to dream about it. Yeah. You know we had chambers nearby the court (and) in the court we had a roaming room where you kept your bib and gown and things like that and I would be hard at work and thinking of something or other and suddenly realise I should be in court, I’ve got a case on! It is a small case, actually. So I would rush down there and find I’ve left my keys behind. So I would run downstairs to the caretaker’s room where he had the keys’ duplicates. I would get the duplicates, go up to my locker, (and) open the locker. Now in those days you had to wear a shirt without a collar because you put a bib there. So you had a stiff collar. You put the stiff collar on and you use a stud. Of course my hands (are shaking) and straight away I’m worried (and) the stud drops on the floor and I had to pick it up and put it (on). By the time that’s happening the case is almost over, they’re almost finished. And so now I rush in there to the court in the hope that they’re still there. They wait, okay so they called it, but they called it again, okay. And that’s the sort of thing that happened time and time again. I remember when I used to go to the Appellate Division in Bloemfontein. I would come there and talk to them. You have there a beautiful layout of the benches in oak and everything. It was very nicely done and you stand behind a lecturn with a space underneath with a glass of water there. It was a normal thing. And so I’m now talking to them and there’s five judges sitting up there, hey. I’m talking to them and I am now feeling thirsty. So I am talking and I put my hand down but I’m a clumsy chap. I knocked the water glass over and there the water is streaming out onto the table, on this lovely oak and on the floor and they were passive. I take my hankie out and I talk and I mop and I talk and I mop (laughing). I tell you, I was really embarrassed. That was one of the times. Another time (I) stayed at a hotel nearby. It was quite easy. I used to walk to the court. I went out into this one street, turned down that way and then (down) the next street, on that street that’s where the court was. One occasion I thought, ‘Ag, this is a mall, there is an entrance on the other side, why must I go that way? Why don’t I just go straight into that road?’. So I go and I find myself in the ‘gammadoelas’. I am


in the industrial area. I don’t know where the hell it is and now it’s really getting late. So I asked someone where the court is. Oh, he says, ’It is over there’. So I run to that court. Huh-uh, it’s not the court, it is a local court. I want the Supreme Court! Eventually I got there. Can you imagine my feeling to come to court late in the Supreme Court! (Lisa: Did it ever affect the outcome of your arguments in the case?) No, I don’t think so. No, because most of the arguments is already … they’ve got a copy of the argument. You know you have to put your argument on paper. Not the whole of it, the jist of it and then you use it, you go through the paper. So that’s that. There was a case in Cape Town in which I was arguing. I won the case in the Lower Court and in two courts and now my opponent was applying for leave to appeal to appear in the Supreme Court. He got it, by the way, but he shouldn’t have got it, but anyway, he got it. The procedure is the applicant stands up and speaks and then after that the other party, the defendant, gets up to speak. He got up to speak and he should have sat down, but he stood up when I got up because he had a sore back. So I said to the judges, I said, ‘My Lords, my learned friend is standing because he’s got a sore back. I’m standing, because I’ve got a good leg to stand on’ (laughing). Yeah so that was a bit of an amusement to start with. I still lost the case. You know what I said? ‘Ah you can afford it. Give it to him’. (Lisa: Why did you go into tax?) Well, I am going to tell you. (Lisa: Tell us now.) Why did I go into tax? I knew a lot about Estate Duty because I was in the Master’s Office. I should say in the Master’s Office after those six months when I was about to resign, I went to do a section where (and) I had to deal with Estates and check the Estates - how they were doing it properly. There was Estate Duty involved in that sort of thing. I think I was the only one who ever read the Estate Duty Act. No, it was very simple law, the way they worked. (if) you don’t know, you just asked your superior and often a superior came from another department and he knew bugger-all. I shouldn’t use that word, should I? Anyway, that’s how I got into estate duty.

PART 8

EARLY DAYS AT THE BAR, WRITING MY FIRST BOOK, THE STORY OF ‘THE TAXPAYER’ & THE PRO’S (AND CONS) OF A FOCUSSED MIND

When I came to the bar, you don’t get work. You (are) idle for long periods of time. I earned four hundred rand the first year and I thought it was wonderful! So I had leisure time and I decided I would write a book on Estates which I did. That was published then (in 1949) and is still (being) published.


Now the story of the brit comes into the picture. Aubrey, late Aubrey Silke, he had written just a primer on tax, income tax. My colleague at the bar, Irwin Spiro (had) written a couple of articles on parent and child and one of them related to tax. Now both of them had Jutas as a publisher. They met at a brit and they got talking and Aubrey Silke said to him, ‘What about a journal on tax?’ and Spiro said, ‘No we have to have someone who deals with Estate Duty’, and so they came to me and we started the magazine, but in order to that we went to Jutas who were our publishers and we said we want to publish a magazine. They said, ‘No we don’t want to. you’ve tried and it doesn’t work’, so we said to them, ‘I tell you what we do. We will be responsible for everything, but we’d like you to act as our publisher and you’ll get a commission for it’. And so we published and from the very start it was successful. I spent since 1952 till recently when I sold it (writing and editing it). For most of that time until 1964 I had Spiro as my co-editor but in the end I said to him, ‘You must take over or I take over’ because he was a Teuton. Everything was, ‘If on the one hand, and then on the other hand’. I said, ‘That’s not the way I work. I want a magazine that says do this - do that’. So I said. ‘You take over or I take over’. No, he didn’t want to take over, I didn’t think he would and so I’ve been there. Then eventually, I am jumping now, I had a partner. I worked on the basis, you know if something happened to me, the thing will just fall apart. So I thought I must have a partner and I got a partner on the basis that he would buy me out, that he has to buy me out if I sell. (Lisa: So every single month for how many years you edited this?) From 1952 to to 2008. (Lisa: Dave, how were you able to edit this monthly periodical and also run your practice?) No one has ever done it. It’s unique. If you read what Dennis Davis said in his tribute, I think he says something like that. I don’t think you can do it. I do know, for example, a whole group, a team of people, chaps at Wits University started a magazine. They had two issues and they stopped. You’ve got to be dedicated. You’ve got to be dedicated and you can’t do it unless you’re dedicated. It became a passion of mine and I was dedicated and I worked. And that’s why I was, I want to say to you as far as home is concerned, wherever I was I was divided into two parts. My body was here (and) my mind was with The Taxpayer. I would go to concerts and relax there and in the middle of it I would start thinking, ’Here is something I should write’, and then I couldn’t wait to get home. That’s what happened. My whole life was like that. (Lisa: You have a very interesting ability to be highly focussed on the task at hand. Tell us about that personality trait, Dave?) Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if I am but all I know is that I was always worried about filling the magazine of twenty pages and when I have an idea I have to put it


down. My problem was always when I lay awake in bed, when I lie awake in bed, I often don’t sleep when I get an idea. All I should do is (say), ‘I’ve got the idea - OK, I’ll wait till the morning’ but I can’t get rid of it. I don’t know if most other people are like that? It’s in my mind all the time. I can’t get rid of it and that’s why it takes hours at a time to sleep. And now, these days, I’m sleeping much better because I’ve got nothing on my mind about that (smiling).

PART 9

WWII, DAVE’S TAX CONSULTANCY & FREE TAX ADVICE FROM THE MAN HIMSELF

I think I’m possibly alive today because of flat feet. When South Africa joined into the war people volunteered. There was no such thing as a recruit, absolute recruiting. We volunteered. I volunteered, but I was not accepted because of my flat feet. That’s what I mean and who knows what would have happened to me (if) I’ve been at the war. That’s why I say my disability kept me alive. As simple as all that. Instead of that, I joined the Civilian Guard. Oh, maybe I should tell you about the Civilian Guard. What was my job? (I used to) go down into the bowels of the City Hall. There was a room there with about a dozen or twenty phones in case any emergency came and the phone was ringing and I would never be able to find which phone. All I know is we took two shifts and we had a narrow ledge somewhere and I used to sleep on top of that ledge until my turn was over. Then I did some guarding. You may not remember but we had the gas works down near the docks. (I stood) guard there with a rifle. I’ve never used a rifle in my life! One night the alarm goes off and now I am standing there with this rifle and inside the building there is a light. ‘Should I or shouldn’t I try and shoot the light?’ (laughing) ‘Close the light?’ Then it stopped and I said I’ll never be able to aim to get the light. In my career in the tax world, apart from all my writings and so on, the advice that I gave and my opinions, I was doing what I would call providing a hechsher. You know what a hechsher is? What was it? These people came to me with big schemes involving often millions of rands and they were selling the scheme. They were people who were able to organise finance all the time. They made a profit on it, of course, but they had to sell it and they needed someone to say the scheme is okay or not. Sometimes you had to tweak it a little bit this way and that way to get it right. That’s what was my function (was), that I would say, ‘That’s okay’ or ‘It’s not okay’. I put it to them straight. I didn’t initiate any schemes, I wouldn’t know because it’s dealing with finance and I don’t know what you can do in the financial world. They come to me (with) what they can do, what they would like to do, and I would say yes or no and then often I worked on a system. I gave them a draft. I said no


you tell me if you’re satisfied with this draft. I did it on the basis that I don’t mind changing it to help you with the sale, but I wont change my opinion. I’m stubborn, you see. I wont change my opinion but I’ll make it easier for you to sell, as long as it doesn’t affect my opinion and so we (would) take out a word here and put another word there and that’s how I worked. I was able to charge any fee I liked, but I just couldn’t do it. I charged a moderate fee. I once had my fee questioned. It was a small matter many years ago and the attorney came to me and said, ‘Look, my client said I was charged …’ I think it was something like nine or ten guineas and he said, ‘My client says it is too much, he wants half’. I said. ‘How come, you come ask me that?’. He says, ‘Well the client says he was your father’s partner and he would like it’ (laughing) I ask you? I said, ‘Chutspah’, the answer is if you think it’s too much take it for nothing!’. A chap comes to me, his uncle had an insurance company and his uncle offered it to him for five hundred thousand rand. (He wants to know) He can sell it to one of the big companies for a million rand, is he liable for tax? You see, then he comes to me with that. So I said, ‘Yes, I think you are. Yes, you are liable, you are buying and selling. You are liable, that’s income. You’re liable for income tax’. But I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, if I can tell you how, if I work out a scheme where you don’t have to pay’, and the tax with him was something like sixty-seven or seventy two percent of the profit, ‘If I can work out the scheme where you don’t have to pay’, and the tax was then by the way something like sixty or seventy two percent of the profit, ‘If I can work out that scheme, will you give me fifty thousand rand – the attorney and myself fifty thousand rand?’. He looks at me and he looks at me. I say to him, ‘I don’t understand you. Here you are going to pay seventy two percent. I can save you that seventy two percent and you are going to pay the chap on the golf course who said to you, ‘Why don’t you visit Meyerowitz?’, you are going to pay him fifty thousand rand … or more!’. He says, ‘Yah, I came to consult you. (laughing) ‘I said, don’t worry I just wanted to test you out to see your reactions. There is no such thing that I know, nothing that I can think of that’s going to save you tax’. There (are) odd people like that. I’ve got the best tax advice which I won’t give and that is don’t earn then you don’t pay tax. People cheat with the tax. They cheat in pennies, small amounts. They take money out of the till and so on. My advice to them, as far as that is concerned, never do it when someone else knows what you’re doing. You lump yourself into blackmail. How come? Your employee! you can never get rid of your employee. You try and do that and he goes to the revenue and he splits on you. I had a case like that. Yeah, and it cost him a lot of money in the process. Not me, it cost him money from the tax and the penalties.


PART 10

CRIMINAL CASES & THE PROBLEM WITH JUSTICE In my career,at the start I got involved with two criminal cases and those two criminal cases I want to talk about not because of the facts, I want to talk to it, because of the legal complications. I want to indicate how law works. Justice is not always done. The first one is even connected with something that happened in the Bible. Something important in the Bible I should say, not happened in the Bible. The first one I had … I had an appeal against a conviction for rape, okay. I argued in the Supreme Court that the magistrate was wrong because he simply accepted the word of the complainant. Whereas the law required that there must be some corroborative evidence of what happened. Something or other that would corroborate her. The historic reason for that goes back to what happened with Joseph and Potifar’s wife in the Bible. I don’t know for those who remember it, but Potifar’s wife made advances to Joseph and he rejected them. Then, because out on revenge, she said he raped her and he found himself in jail for seven years or something like that. From biblical times the law is (that) you must have some collaborative evidence. It’s very hard actually on the woman, on the complainant but there it is, but it can lead to a miscarriage of justice. And the second case concerned an Italian (ex prisoner of war) living in the Free State, it’s up country, who bought a second hand car and decided to come to Cape Town. He gave a lift to two blacks and they came into Bellville about the middle of the night and they were stopped by the police who found two big cases full of dagga and they were charged (but) one of the blacks ran away so only the other two were charged. I defended the one and told the attorney of the other, ‘Just keep your black out of the box, the witness box’. My person I am defending, the white one, he told this story: He said, ‘I bought the car, I decided to come to Cape Town, these two blacks heard I was coming, they asked for a lift, I gave them a lift and these cases don’t belong to me, they belong to the blacks’. Now I argued on the basis of the law that is not beyond reasonable doubt that his story is untrue and he was acquitted. When we left the court he said to me, ‘Can I get my dagga back?’. Now this was a miscarriage of justice. The idea behind this, behind this idea that you must prove beyond reasonable doubt, arises from a theory in favour of the criminal. Not necessarily to be in favour of the criminal, but arises from the theory that better ninety nine get off than one person, innocent person, gets convicted.


PART 11

THOUGHTS ON RELIGION & COMMUNAL LIFE When it comes to religion, I have a view (thoughts). I am diffident to argue it all over the place, because I haven’t read enough and I perhaps don’t understand enough, but for the life of me, I can’t believe in a God who worries about me … that I commit sins, that we do things like that. I just can’t. I accept that there could be a creator but I will not accept, in my own mind I can’t, that the words in the bible are his words. That’s what someone wrote and to some extent I think they bound themselves by what is in the Chumash and therefore everything has to be termed in terms of the Chumash. If what they wrote is what God did then he is not a merciful God, not at all (shakes his head). When I go to Shul and I read the prayers I don’t mind reading the Hebrew because I don’t understand it, but when I read the English I stop. What sort of prayers are we having that I say ‘For your sake, for your sake, for your sake’? I just can’t believe it. I have nothing against those - I won’t say nothing … I don’t mind anyone else who is thinking and believing. I read a book once recently called: “The G-d Delusion”. I think what he said was irrefutable but I think he is wasting his time. There are people who want, who need it and if they need it well and good. The one thing they mustn’t do is to try and impose it upon those who don’t. The Rabbi, the Lubavitcher Rebbe said, and I agree with that, he said: ‘For those who believe, who have faith, there are no questions. For those who don’t

have faith, there are no answers’. That’s one, and then I think it was Dean Smith in the seventeenth century who said:

‘We have learnt enough to hate, but not enough to love’.

And that’s factual. I often wondered, all our Rabbanim and so on, do they really believe? Do they think that the world was formed three thousand years ago on such a date and such an hour? I don’t know? They must (just) leave me alone. I will leave them alone then they must leave me alone. (Lisa: You’ve been very involved in the community as well, though. You have a different perspective on that. You were very much involved. Very briefly can you tell us why you were drawn to do community work and the little bit of what you’ve done?) I don’t know. Well, it’s my dyslexia. I say yes when I mean I don’t want to. In other words I don’t know if it’s in my favour or against me. A lot of the work I did I took it unwillingly, but once I took it, I did it. (Lisa: What was the work that you did?)


Well I was the Chairman of Zionist Organisation in Cape Town. I was on the Board of Deputies for many years, for something like thirteen, I don’t know how many years. What happened was I became the Vice Chairman. You were Treasurer, you were Vice Chairman (and) ultimately Chairman, but I said no. I said I’ll the Vice Chair but on one condition, never ever do I want to be the Chairman. That was a lot of work. I think one year I counted something like three hundred meetings in the year .. I don’t know. It was a great part of my life of course and I often went to all these meetings. At my office I never kept a diary. So how did I go? I said, ‘I am always available, you just phone me up and say come and I come’. I’m an odd character. Yeah, I think that’s enough of that side of it.

PART 12

A FRANK SELF ASSESSMENT (Lisa: Dave, you say that you’re a disagreeable man.) Yeah. (Lisa: Why?) No, what I mean by is that I often disagree with what’s happening and I criticize more than I praise. I cannot for the life of me say something that I don’t mean. That’s why I always have a difficulty in making a speech about somebody. If I can’t, if I don’t know anything good to say to him, I will not say it. (Lisa: Are you stubborn?) What do you mean by stubborn? (gives Lisa a cute look) If you’re right, you’re not stubborn (laughing). (Lisa: Are you always right?) No, but the problem is to know when I am not (giggling) (Lisa: Do you have a temper Dave?) Oh yes. A blazing temper. (Lisa: I can’t imagine.) Yes, I do. You know when I exercise it? When someone imputes my integrity. I just blow up on the turn. I’ve got that. I’ve got a list of all my faults (reading from list): ‘Should I say or do something and later regret it, I severely criticise myself for my stupidity. Even when I win a case, I would mull over what I’d said and often conclude that I could have done better. I enjoy a manufactured argument’. You know what I mean by that? Throw a bone between two dogs and see them fight. (laughing) Oh this I want to tell you (reading): ‘It is completely irrational but I do not bargain’. I get a quote and I don’t question the amount. I don’t ask them for discounts, I don’t get another quote, I just accept. (Lisa: What else have you got on your list, Dave?) Again another irrational thing. (Reading) ‘I am diffident about asking a stranger for directions or persons for a favour’. They ask me for a favour, I’ll do it on the turn. I


don’t ask them. I don’t know what the hell it is? It’s pride. It must be pride or something. (Lisa: Where’s the pride from?) Oh I don’t know why but that’s the way it is with me. (reading) ‘I believe that self respect is very important and that requires (us) to be honest. Whether I am honest or not, we’ll deal with it, but I believe (in) self respect’. I could never respect myself if … I would like in any case to have the moral advantage over the others. That’s me. To my mind the acid negative test involves a bus ride. You’re on the bus and assume now that you’ve got a bus where the conductor goes over and takes your fare, okay?, but he overlooks you and now you get to your destination. What do you do? Do you say, ‘Hey, here’s the money’, or do you just walk off the bus? In my view, the person who walks off the bus is absolutely dishonest. It’s the beginning. If he won’t pay that bus fare, it means that whenever he gets the opportunity to do something that he wont be caught he will do it. I’ll say that’s the test, but the negative doesn’t apply. You may be dishonest, but then the question arises (about) your temptation. You can be honest if you’re not tempted. If there is nothing to tempt you, and in my life what I have done, I have had nothing really to tempt me. You know why? Because anything I wanted to do I could do legally. A friend and I used to take a stroll in the docks often. This was during, just after the war years. He liked cigarettes. A certain type, a brand of cigarette, I can’t remember, but it was imported and you couldn’t get it here and we went onto the mail ship and he bought two packets and he gave me one packet to hold and he took one packet and we walked out of the docks. I think he had the idea, and maybe he was probably right, that if you declared it to customs they would confiscated it. It wasn’t the money. They would confiscate it. Boy, did I sweat as I came out and I said, ‘Never ever again!’ (smiling). I would hate to be in a situation where I was caught out in a lie. I can’t do it. So what I am saying is that I haven’t been tempted, never tempted. It’s unlikely because I am always thinking of the possibility of what would happen if I were. My handwriting is bad for two reasons: The one is, I’m extremely impatient and I want to get it off my head, but because my thoughts run ahead my handwriting chases my thoughts and the words are often left out. And I was spoilt. I had a secretary with me for thirty years (Lisa: What’s her name?) Eileen Eager, and she was able to read my handwriting and once she could do that, I regarded my handwriting as her shorthand. But if I wanted to, and I had the time I could with effort have quite easy handwriting. Handwriting is one thing. My wife had a very nice handwriting and I could never read it!


PART 13

NURSERY RHYMES & FINAL ARGUMENT I want to tell you about my nursery rhymes. I like kids, I play a lot with kids, but I’ve reached the age where it’s almost impossible. You know why? They won’t stop and they exhaust me. I’m called ‘Rude Uncle Davey’, by the way. I love making little jokes for the kids. (Cameraman: Tell us a few) Oh, there’s one of them I always tell them: How do you spell ‘yuppa? You know how you spell ‘yuppa? Say it. (Cameraman: Yuppa … Y. U. P. P. A). Yeah, but you must say it properly: ‘Why You Pee Pee Hey?’ (laughing)

“Humpty Dumpty sat on the stoep Humpty Dumpty made a big poep

All the queen’s perfume And all the queen’s ink

Couldn’t get rid of that terrible stink”

“Ba Ba black sheep have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full

One for my master and one for my dame And one for somebody

I just can’t remember the name” This is my version:

“Baba black sheep did you get a smack Yes sir, yes sir, red, blue and black

Red from my papa and blue from my mom And black from my sister

Right on my bum”

FINAL ARGUMENT Meyerowitz concludes …

(Slightly tearful) I think that I have been extremely lucky. I’ve had a good, long life. I’ve had a number of operations involving cancer several times and so on but by and large no aches and pains. That is on the physical side. On the mental side everything I’ve done, despite my saying that I was a recruit, in my work I enjoyed it thoroughly, I was happy. My advice to people has always been if you want to do something do something that makes you happy. Don’t just take the job on for the sake of the money. Do the happiness. I cannot complain. I’ve had a very good life.


The end of it, as far as I’m concerned, I am dead, I’m dead. When I’m dead, I’m dead. Nothing … nothing. Maybe this CD, this video, will be something for my family. (Lisa: What are your thoughts and feelings on what’s ahead for you?) You know, I must tell you, I don’t think. I operate as if nothing is going to happen. I don’t believe that anything is beshert (preordained). If it happens, it happens and that’s how it is.

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[ENDS]

DAVE MEYEROWITZ – LIFE STORY · Dave Meyerowitz than I learned through anybody else. I think I...

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