The riddle of Rosalind Ballingall, New Contree, 78, July 2017, pp. 1-23 The riddle of Rosalind Ballingall: Poster girl for hippie counterculture in Cape Town in the late 1960s Albert Grundlingh* Stellenbosch University
[email protected] Abstract This article examines the short-lived hippie phenomenon in Cape Town during the late 1960s through the lens of the disappearance of a young woman from the University of Cape Town in the Knysna forests in 1969. It seeks to explain the dynamics of a particular kind of emerging culture and the way it was infused by public mystifications and conceptions of hippies. In doing so it has two aims in mind, namely to account for an apparent historical puzzle and to cast light on a largely forgotten dimension of white social history. Commenting on the fate of the 20-year-old University of Cape Town (UCT) student, Rosalind Ballingall who had vanished in the vicinity of the Knysna forests in the southern Cape on 12 August 1969, a police officer Major FJ du Toit felt justified in saying two weeks later: “I am sure Rosalind is still alive”.1 He made this statement after an exhaustive search by his men, but one which still had to yield firm evidence on Rosalind’s possible whereabouts. This article looks at the immediate circumstances of Rosallind’s disappearance and by implication why Du Toit could make such a confident statement. Its main analytical thrust, however, is the wider dynamics of an emerging counterculture mainly among certain UCT students and the way in which these developments informed the Ballingall case.