too glad to assist – firstly, because we believed in the cause, and secondly, it provided an opportunity to play a gig.
It was a Saturday evening and the township was buzzing with activity, as was the norm on weekends. We drove to the centre, offloaded our musical equipment backstage and then waited as the crowd began to trickle in. I was interested to see who would attend a concert of this nature, particularly as it was being hosted in a black township.
I leant against a pole in the entrance area and blended into the scenery. From this vantage point I could observe the entire audience. The black fans were mainly professionals such as teachers, doctors, nurses and civil servants who could afford to be there and wished to contribute from their meagre incomes to a cause they believed in. The sprinkling of whites were mostly university students with left-wing political leanings, and there was a handful of Indians and coloureds.
As I remained standing against the pole for some time, I became almost invisible. I, however, took particular note of a group of tsotsis who, I was sure, were at the venue expressly to con unsuspecting patrons (and get a kick out of doing it). I watched as the leader of the group placed regular pipe tobacco in a special clay pipe that was usually used to smoke dagga. In isiZulu, he explained to the others how he was going to con whites with the pipe.
Just then two young and unsuspecting white guys came by. I couldn’t help but observe how they had made a great effort to disguise their whiteness – through their shabby clothes, unkempt hair and general demeanour. Though they tried really hard to blend in, the tsotsis homed in on them; they were ripe for the picking.
The two white boys had been drinking a cheap wine, packaged in a box, presumably to buck up some courage. I couldn’t help admiring them for making an attempt to cross the black-white divide into uncharted territory. But I could see they had no idea what they were walking into and what was in store for them.
They were soon met by the group of tsotsis who welcomed them and offered them their dagga pipe to smoke from – a universally understood act of friendship. One young man looked at the other and, more out of fear and a need for acceptance than a desire to smoke the dagga, they reluctantly agreed to do so.
As the guy holding the box of wine took the clay pipe, the head of the tsotsis relieved him of the box and took a long swig before passing it on to his excited mates. Meanwhile, the poor white guy was choking and coughing from inhaling the tobacco. Then it was the turn of his mate, who tried to alert him to the fact that the box was rapidly being emptied of its contents. Being outnumbered and in strange territory, all the young man could do was take his turn at smoking the pipe and choking on the tobacco while yearning to get his hands back on the box of wine.
When the box finally found its way back, it was empty. The two victims, blue in the face from choking, managed to produce contrived smiles as they moved meekly on to the entrance of the venue. It was my guess that they had no idea they’d been conned, as they had probably not smoked dagga before and knew no better.
As the tsotsis laughed and enjoyed their success, the leader caught my eye and I said, “Ucabanga uhlakaniphile?” This loaded rhetorical question made him realise I’d observed their entire con and, via the tone of my question, I expressed my reservations.
He smiled like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar and walked away with his mates to seek another victim, out of my range.
I then went backstage with our band and enjoyed the concert from that vantage point.
Betus was scheduled to follow the Malopoets, and the guys were ready and waiting. Meanwhile, along with the entire audience, we were truly enjoying the African rhythms of the Malopoets and we soon found ourselves foot-stomping in the wings.
Graeme, the drummer in our band, always made sure he had a bottle of water next to his drum set while he was playing. He didn’t drink alcohol, but the only container he’d been able to find for his water was a large empty beer bottle, which he had next to him, ready to take on stage.
I was mildly surprised to see the leader of the tsotsis appear suddenly. The beer bottle immediately caught his eye. Acting as if he was just being friendly, he danced alongside Graeme – all the while sidling up to the bottle.
Each time the tsotsi got closer to the “beer”, he monitored Graeme’s reaction. But the drummer was oblivious to this scheming and, finally, the tsotsi decided it was time to make his move.
He knew he had one shot and had to make the best of it. He danced as close as possible to the beer bottle, bent down and in one fluid movement grabbed it and glugged down as much as he could.
At that moment he caught my eye once more, and the look on his face said it all. He had (unintentionally) been conned.
As he beat a hasty retreat, I smiled to myself and thought: karma!
WAR ON COMMUNISM
Military Intelligence: an oxymoron
Dave Mannery and Phil Tetley were extraordinary guys and, in heart and spirit, were true South Africans. I got to know them at university. They lived on a farm in Pietermaritzburg’s Chase Valley; in a traditional African hut they had built themselves. Later, they progressed to a tree house up in the mountains.
Their dream was to live frugally, save as much as they could and, after graduating, hike around Europe, then buy two Arabian horses in Egypt and ride down the African continent. Believe it or not, they partly realised that dream, aborting it only in Zimbabwe after they fell gravely ill.
I spent many interesting times with them, listening to their fascinating stories, especially about the vacation work they did for the South African Parks Board in Namibia’s Caprivi Strip. They worked in the middle of a conflict zone – what one side saw as a war of liberation, and the other as a war against communism. They were neutral, their sole concern being to protect the wildlife. In doing so, they developed an objective view of the conflict, which I was interested to hear in contrast to the usual rhetoric dished up by the state-controlled media.
The day they moved out of their hut into the tree house, I was one of many friends (but the only non-white) who gave them a hand. They had brought back some empty mortar shells from the Caprivi, which they cleverly used for storing their grains. Together with all their other belongings, we loaded these shells onto the back of a truck and hauled everything up the mountain to their newly built tree house.
After off-loading all the stuff, we sat around on the grass below the tree house and smoked a joint – our reward for the hard day’s work.
They then related an amusing story about how military intelligence had imitated the Americans in Vietnam in their belief that to win the war they had to win the hearts and minds of the locals. Firstly, all soldiers on active duty in the strip had been instructed to share their rations with locals whenever they came across them. In theory it sounded fine, but soon soldiers found themselves swamped by locals demanding their rations. The order to share was swiftly abandoned. Then the generals learnt that there were some graduates from South Africa’s leading agricultural colleges in the unit and this inspired a different plan to win local hearts and minds. They brought in tractors, ploughed the lands and then supplied mealies for the locals to plant. To their surprise the locals did not do as anticipated, saying it was not they who had dug up the land in the first instance so why should they do the planting. Eventually the army planted the mealies for them. When the crop was ready to harvest, the locals were told to do the necessary. Once more they responded with, “We did not plant the mealies, why should we harvest them? You did; you should!”
So the army harvested the entire crop, which they bagged and delivered to the locals, who in turn sold it for a profit. From this experience, the boys from military intelligence learnt that the American formula of “winning hearts and minds” was not going to work in the African context. They gave up as fast as they had initiated the programme. To everyone’s surprise, a year later the locals arrived at the army base wanting to know why the army was late in planting the new crop, as they were eagerly waiting for them to do so.
As we laughed ourselves silly at the expense of the South African military, we were suddenly