Thandi felt the past roar to life. A car plate wasn’t just metal and paint—it was a witness.
In the dusty backroom of a Pretoria memorabilia shop, old Jakob “Spanner” van der Merwe carefully lifted a brittle, sun-bleached notebook from a locked cabinet. Its cover read: “Old South African Number Plates List – Provincial Codes 1952–1994.” old south african number plates list
Years later, Thandi returned to Spanner’s shop. She placed a new photograph on the counter: herself and an old man with kind eyes, standing beside a restored green Ford Anglia. The plate was a replica——but now it told a different story: one of recovery, not loss. Thandi felt the past roar to life
He traced his finger down a side column. “Wait. In 1976, CA 789-456 was reassigned to Bantu Affairs Administration , Mthatha. That car wasn’t visiting a farm. It was confiscating land.” Its cover read: “Old South African Number Plates
Spanner smiled, added a final note to his old list, and whispered, “Sometimes the past is hiding in plain sight… on a number plate.”