| Notes |
- The "Steyn" was added to the family name because Pieter was born on the birthday of President Steyn who was a personal friend of his father, Gabriël Johannes (Jan) Greeff.
Pieter's dream was to become a doctor. One of his lifelong passions was to assist those with illnesses and disabilities and given the lack of opportunities to study in this field, he achieved much, earning the respect of many who he helped towards better health by sound advice and the use of biochemical, herbal and traditional remedies.
Denied the opportunity to pursue his dream by his parents' wish for him to farm and their disapproval of his choice of spouse, he and his wife Sannie and two daughters, Marie and Ina relocated from Lichtenburg to the Witwatersrand by ox-waggon in January 1933. Into her old age, Ina remembered how the waggon got stuck en route.
Pieter found work on the gold mines during those difficult years of the Great Depression but his move away from his beloved birth-place, the farm Manana near Lichtenburg, led to him being disowned by his affluent parents.
The stress of being unable to care for his family as he would have liked, led to attacks of epilepsy, stroke and shingles.
Pieter and his family lived in Benoni, where he became well known, respected and loved. He was a hard and diligent worker and rose through the ranks to mine captain in a much shorter time than the vast majority of candidates. He continued his studies and earned promotion, so that he soon owned his own home and was later promoted to the position of economy engineer, due to his ability to plan and implement economy measures to the benefit of his employer. When he achieved financial stability for his family through sheer guts, determination, study and hard work, the epilepsy disappeared and his general health improved.
He regularly spread the gospel of Jesus Christ in the black townships on weekends and was fond of ministering to children.
His love for children was very real and special to his own three children, who only have fond memories of the times they spent together as a family.
He left the mines to join his son-in-law, Corrie Botes in a welding business in Springs and after his retirement he devoted much of his time to his beloved Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ by distributing tracts to workers at railway and bus stations, often travelling by train to Johannesburg, Pretoria and other destinations for this purpose.
Once a black man refused to accept the tract he offered, commenting that he was a white rascist. Pieter calmly related to the man with an anecdote from his rural background, asking him what happens when a springbuck suddenly discovers that he is among the impala. The man responded by saying that it immediately sets off to its own kind. He took the point, changed his mind and accepted the tract.
Pieter and Sannie raised their two daughters, Marie and Ina in Benoni, where their only son Jan (Gabriël Johannes) was born in 1943.
He designed and handcrafted beautiful brass 21st birthday "keys" with loving care and had them chromium-plated, one for each of his children, when they turned 21.
His favourite hobby and lifelong passion was watch and clock repairs. He also pursued other interesting pastimes. For example, once he took to writing the Lord's prayer on the back of postage stamps with an extremely fine-pointed pen and a magnifying glass. His son recalls how he once wrote the full prayer onto a standard size postage stamp TWICE.
A lasting testimony to his creative ability and workmanship is the memorial designed and built by him for the grave of his grandfather, Hendrik Adriaan Greeff. The memorial can be seen at the family graveyard at Manana, about 8 kilometres to the east / northeast of Lichtenburg. [9]
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1900 - 1983 (82 years)
[4, 5] 