The Regime- Looking In: South African Short Stories

The

Regime

Looking In

South African Short Stories

John J. Murphy

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© 2012 by John J. Murphy. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 06/05/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1094-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1095-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012909486

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Contents

Preface

Cowboys and Indians

Naas van Bonkers Boere Orkes (Blue grass band.)

Johannes

Kootjie Barnard

Rugby

Tswana

The Great Trek in Reverse

Gross Spandau

John Tsikala—

Bureaucracy gone Mad

The Boy

Preface

In the sixties up to the end of the eighties if you were to do a word association exercise using the concept South Africa "as the jump start, the majority of the participants would associate South Africa with words such as, oppression, apartheid, the incarceration of Nelson Mandela, Sharpeville, Steve Biko, Robben Island and so on and so forth.

There is a theory (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principal in Quantum mechanics as well as a Buddhist philosophy) that states, There is no reality, reality is observer created. If we explore this statement we find that it is saying that the reality of the situation is dependent on where you are, your viewpoint, what you are, your cultural underpinning, and to a great extent what are you being presented with and that within these boundaries you are creating a reality. We will at this stage not delve deeper into such concepts as veiled reality or material reality as it does not add value to the discussion.

However, what is obvious, is that what I considered to be the reality of South Africa during the period 1930 to 1990 was not the same reality experienced or perceived by many of the other citizens of the country be he or she of African, Afrikaner, English, Indian, Colored, German or any other ethnic group.

The problem is of course exacerbated if you were on the outside looking in. Other African states, Americas, Europeans, (East and West block countries), indeed the rest of the world, were looking at a regime as it was depicted by the mass media, and creating their own individual reality about what was happening in South Africa. Uhuru, freedom for the masses, had become the powerful driving force used by the proponents of decolonization and to achieve this goal, as the saying goes: All’s fair in love and war

Even now fifteen years after Uhuru and with the clarity of hindsight, there still remains a great deal of uncertainty in the reality of the South Africa that was, the reality as portrayed by the various constituents both inside and outside the country and the reality sold for political gain.

This book of short stories or episodes (pre uhuru); about people’s lives tries to paint the reality as seen by me during that period and could thus be classified as historical fiction. Fiction in that space and time and characters were morphed so as not to represent any specific person or persons in any recognizable moment in time or at a specific place.

In doing this warping of space time and also encapsulating individuals in that space time, I have tried to keep the basics real and truthful. There was a Sepho, (although his name was different and his circumstances were very different from that described here in), but the genesis of the story as it unfolded is true as well as the eventual outcome. There was an Ant (who was killed by a sniper) and there was an oh so important inauguration of the padlangs hiking trail, but the characters and the events in all these stories are my reality as experienced by me.

The Rainbow nation as labeled by State President Mandela after independence is just that, a kaleidoscope of peoples with different, cultures, inherent characteristics such as aggressiveness, friendliness, passion for success, or the manana syndrome (tomorrow is another day), the passion for freedom (both from oppression as well as from colonialism), tolerance as well as intolerance. This is a new entity, a new complex adaptive system that if not correctly managed is doomed to failure in the short term, but hopefully in the long term out of the chaos will arise the phoenix.

These stories reflect my reality of South Africa at as I experienced it over a period of sixty six years; this is to me the true South Africa. The South Africa of sun, sea, sand, BBQ and Chevrolet, the South Africa I love.

It must also be mentioned that notwithstanding guidelines for authors that the story should be written preferably in the third person, I have chosen to ignore this. Therefore some are in the first and some are in the third person. Some things I experienced myself, some I observed from close up, some were told to me by friends and acquaintances, and some came to me via the media.

Cowboys and Indians

They were going to play cowboys and Indians. Kobus, the oldest of the boys, had been to a movie house in Louis Trichardt to see a western (or as it was commonly known, a cowboy movie). This made him the only one who knew anything about the concept of what is a cowboy and what is an Indian. He explained that basically it was the same as the wars between the Boers and the black people of Africa. The Indians (he pointed out that they were in actual fact called red Indians, why he did not know as they seemed to him to be white) attacked the whites (cowboys) at their farms, killed some of them, and stole their horses. He explained that it was funny that as far as he could make out they were mostly interested in the horses and not the cattle. This he explained, just like the attacks by the black impis of Dingaan on the white farms, led to a war where the cowboys attacked the Indians and killed them all.

At this point, Janneman, Kobus’s younger brother asked why they did not steal the cattle. It is well known he said, that cattle is not only nice to eat but can be sold at the cattle auctions for a lot of money. All the other kids agreed with this statement, and they came to the conclusion that these Indians were rather stupid. Next Kobus replied that they were not interested in cattle as they hunted buffalo for their meat and that they also used the skin for winter clothing but they needed horses to hunt the buffalo. Sepho, Janneman’s best friend on the farm and the son of Samuel Khumalo, an African that worked as foreman for Jannemans father, then stated that he still thought these Indians were not so clever for anybody knows that buffalo meat was much tougher and not as tasty as a piece of meat from a Nguni carcass. Kobus tried to explain that these buffalo were not the same as the African buffalo that they knew. In fact he said that they were only found in Indian country in America. However his audience remained steadfast in their opinion that Indians were a bit dumb to steal horses but to leave the cattle.

This was not the end of Kobus’s troubles. Next a heated argument broke out amongst the players because the African children were of the opinion that they were never allowed to win any game they played and that they were sure that if the game was played without the rules the Boer kids imposed on the game that they would win the war. So the two factions were at an impasse. Kobus resolved this by suggesting that rather than playing cowboys and Indians they should play cops and robbers. It was well known he said, that the African people were rather prone to stealing cattle and drinking whilst the cops which as they all know, were white, had the job of catching these bad guys even though he hastily added that there was of course the case of constable Venter, who they all know was convicted of stealing cattle.

So he declared that the game of cops and robbers fitted the natural order of things. It was also a fact, Kobus informed his audience, that because some of these African cattle rustlers were so clever, the police did not always catch them and thus sometimes the crooks actually win. So the question of who always wins does not arise, but they should wait and see who will be the last man standing and he would be the winner. He, the last man standing, would thus determine who had won, the whites or the blacks. This ended the discussion on the rules for the impending battle.

The weapon of choice for this game would be slingshots. There were many Maroela and Stamfruit (wild plum) trees on the farm so that there was plenty of ammunition for the slingshot war without endangering anyone unduly. However, what the African children did not know was that there was a much more Machiavellian motive for the insistence by Kobus and Janneman on the slingshot being the weapon of game as opposed to a clay-stick. Kobus and Janneman knew from experience that their opponents were much more accurate and could throw the ball of clay twice as far as they could. But they had a secret weapon, their father had bought them some very good slingshot elastic from the gun store when he had gone to Louis Trichardt on business and so they had what could be described as the ultimate slingshot.They knew their opponents only had strips of rubber from the inner tube of a motor car tire that their father, Samuel, had cut for them. Thus there was no way that their slingshots could throw a Maroela or a Stamfruit pit or a rock as far as the slingshots made with elastic bands. They, Janneman and Kobus, knew from previous competitions that Sepho and his brothers were not only better with clay-stick but also more accurate with their slingshot weapons. Thus with their superior slinghshot, they had nullified the enemies’ weapons superiority and leveled the playing field.

After much haggling back and forth, the rules for the game were established. It was to be Kobus, Janneman and Hentie, a kid from the neighbouring farm, against the three sons of Samual, Sepho, Johannes and Jeremiah. It was decided that if you were shot, you were out of the game. How would they know if they had been shot? Easy—any hit by a pip would make any one of them yelp and, depending on the distance, even bring a tear to the eye plus a resultant black or blue spot on the skin!

And so the battle began. After a while, when enough yelps and rubbing of sore spots had taken place, it was decided that they would call it a draw and retire to their favourite watering hole for a swim. The Moose River ran through the farm and had this perfect spot for skinny dipping and fishing. At some point all of them congregated on the banks of the waterhole to dry out.

They were basking in the sun, six boys having had a good time. They were all naked as