by David Smiedt
As tracksuits were shed and final stretches dispensed with, a convoy of fifteen yellow utes, each equipped with a cage welded to the flatbed, roared into a semicircular formation around thirty metres from the start line. Their doors sprung open and out poured police in riot gear. With rifle butts pressed into their shoulders, they dropped to one knee and trained barrels on the runners. From somewhere behind this line of sanctioned aggression came a slow voice on a bullhorn that screeched with feedback.
“Under the State of Emergency Act of 1985, I am bound to inform you that this is an illegal gathering,” drawled the commander.
Not quite able to reconcile what they were hearing with the reality of the situation, the confused runners turned towards one another with quizzical expressions. The crowd then scattered as three tear-gas canisters were shot towards us on trajectories so low that a freckled teenager four metres to my left brought one to a halt with his cheekbone. Those who saw the blood running down the side of his face assumed he’d been shot. It was only then that we noticed the metal canister spinning at his feet. Sputtering thick smoke with every rotation, the tear-gas enveloped us in a searing cloud. Because your pulse and therefore your breathing inevitably quickens during times of stress, yawning gulps of this vapour are inhaled within seconds.
One of the reasons tear gas is so effective is that it not only attacks the eyes but also the other mucous membranes. Clutching at faces and throats, many of the runners collided with one another at speed as they attempted to escape the smoke. After copping an unintentional elbow to the solar plexus, I staggered from the crowd winded and gasping. It felt like someone had strapped me down, opened my eyes with toothpicks and then rubbed freshly cut brown onions over my corneas. This was, of course, after they’d inserted a Tabasco drip into my arm and dusted my windpipe with chilli powder.
I thought my parents were going to scale new heights of apoplexy when I told them where I’d been, but in hindsight I think they were merely relieved that I hadn’t been hurt or arrested, or arrested then hurt.
My father did, however, make me promise not to attend any more political rallies. My mother realised that the word “forbid” makes teenagers do crazy things and asked me simply to inform her if and when I was planning to take part in any more protests. That was the abysmally trivial sum of my experience with apartheid resistance.
Although the decision – as opposed to the discussion – to migrate was already in place, my potential political proclivities helped justify it. As did my looming conscription, the turbulent state of South African society and the fact that it was now easier than ever for a white boy with admirable intentions to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. But for Ronnie Smiedt to move forward, he had to look back one last loving time.
My father was born in a small town in the centre of South Africa called Kroonstad and died fifty-four years later in Johannesburg, the city where he had lived most of his life. He was a fierce patriot who would stand if the national anthem was played on TV, an old-school gentleman whose handshake was a contract, and a man who walked away from financial security, a lucrative family business and the only life he had ever known to start a new one in Sydney.
I don’t think my father was particularly fond of Johannesburg, but he didn’t despise it either. It was where he lived and was part of a community. So entrenched was the Jewish network that I never used the Yellow Pages before I came to live in Australia. A group of cousins, the Raisins – “The Current Specialists” – were our electricians. Our plumber was related to an aunt’s side of the family by marriage (we stopped using him after the Affair) and when we went retail, it usually involved requesting the manager by name, who would in turn give us a discount.
Dozens of women sporting pioneering plastic surgery that left them looking perpetually astounded would besiege my father’s showroom on a Saturday morning in search of some cost-plus-ten Wedgwood. He never took umbrage at these discount divas. Somewhere along the line, they, their husbands or their children would eventually respond in kind.
My father never saw me negotiate, as I did, the modern Australian man’s rites of passage – marriage, mortgage and divorce. His advice never came to mind when decisions had to be made, I never felt his spiritual presence the way my sister does and although I wear the gold-faced Omega watch he received for his twenty-first birthday, I struggle to recall the pitch of his voice.
What I do recall is that he used the words “of late” when everyone else said “lately” and that our annual holidays were sacrosanct. Aside from Jewish holy days, he spent six days a week, forty-eight weeks a year at the business he ran with his mother and brother. In early December, however, Louis Smiedt Wholesalers – importers and distributors of fine china, Parker pens and everything your servants in the kitchen might need – shut down for precisely four weeks.
Because my brother and sister are eight and nine years older than me respectively, they were holidaying with their friends by the time Dad decided that our traditional seaside sojourn year after year would simply not do. In hindsight, I believe that with migration on the horizon he yearned for some farewell road trips around South Africa. He was going to give his youngest child the opportunity to experience as much of his homeland as possible before it went to hell in a hand basket.
In the weeks leading up to these trips I would find small piles of maps and highlighters beside the toilet, where – between exertions – he would pore over routes, attractions and detours.
Being a man who effortlessly bounded what for most people is a chasm between organised and obsessive-compulsive, he would have a test run at packing the boot with empty suitcases and polystyrene eskies. On the morning of the trip, however, his finely tuned calculations would be fatally compromised by the dreaded luggage bulge. With the boot refusing to close and him loath to force it into submission, every item was then removed and the logistical process began all over again.
Having been roused from bed when dawn was slicing a carpaccio-thin slice out of the indigo night, I would crawl onto the rear seat and slip easily back to sleep.
On the highway out of Johannesburg we would zip past slumbering apartment blocks where the only lights visible where those in the servants’ quarters on the roof as the Doras and Dorothys rose to make somebody else’s breakfast before having their own.
With the first museum or natural phenomenon of the road trip usually six hours away, boredom accompanied me in the back seat trip after stultifying trip. This was partly because I was alone and partly because there was nothing to look at but a wasteland of mine dumps which gave way to a landscape that resembled a beige billiard table.
My dad was a Mercedes man all his life. Not the flashy sports variety, but the sturdy workhorse model. This was a person who considered fuel injection an optional extra and regarded the idea of sheepskin covers on the back seat as ostentatious. The inside of these cars was cavernous and it felt like my parents were in first class while I was in third.
Second class was reserved for what was known as “the cool bag”, a mobile pantry of fare that matched the rest of the journey in its tedious predictability.
Surrounded by water-filled plastic blocks that had been frozen overnight were four smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, dotted with capers, cut in half and wrapped in foil; a bottle of water; half-a-dozen cans of assorted soft drinks; and a handful of apples which would remain untouched.
Before he had pulled out of the driveway, my father knew exactly where we would be pausing to refuel. Aside from toilet breaks, this was the only valid reason to stop the odometer ticking over. Because from the moment he turned the key he was overtaken by a muted obsession with “making good time”.
The only good thing about these journeys was the music. Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin seeped from the speakers. I was also allowed to supply a tape of my choice, which was invariably The Beatles’ Greatest Hits. Somewhere between “Hard Day’s Night” and �
�Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” my father would announce, “They were such a fantastic group until she came along.”
Cue argument. “How can you say that Yoko Ono broke up the Beatles?” my mum would ask.
My parents always took great care never to argue in front of me and there were only two ways I could tell their respective hackles were rising. The first was the use of the phrase “with all due respect” at the beginning of my father’s sentences. The second was a pet name before every full stop.
“It’s obvious. She arrived and the group disintegrated, honey.”
“I don’t think this is your field of expertise, sweetheart.”
“Hey, I know my pop, angel.”
“Not as well as you think, darling.”
For an hour the car would be filled with Lennon, McCartney and unresolved tension, until my father would reach across the automatic gear stick and hold my mother’s hand for a few moments. I wanted to vomit. Not only then, but most of the time.
Motion sickness waited around every turn and in each dip. My parents attempted to regulate my outbursts with a drug called Dramamine. It did little to quell my nausea but induced a sleep marked by luridly trippy dreams. Goblins with the faces of chameleons would lead me through valleys of enormous poppyseed bagels with a cream cheese river and caper stepping stones.
I would emerge from the narcosis about five or six hours into every journey to see the signs begin to appear. Because most of the major global fast-food chains boycotted South Africa until the fall of apartheid, our highways weren’t marked with the illuminated posters indicating how near you were to clogging your arteries at KFC or Burger King.
In the absence of such multinational grease peddlers, local one-off operations with names like Wendy Burgers and the Doll’s House flourished in South Africa. What appealed to me most about these establishments was that they were not merely drive-through but drive-in. No sooner had you parked in a lot facing the restaurant than a smiling black waiter with a jaunty bow tie would appear to affix steel trays to the car doors.
I would only do the elongated pleeeeeeassssse once and the response was always the same: “It’s not necessary. Have another bagel and there are still lots of apples.” I learned early not to press the issue or Dad would threaten to bring out The Belt. Although the threats were sporadic, he made good on it just once. I don’t recall what prompted the discipline, but I do remember giggling when he removed his belt. It was the last time I laughed at him and it was the only time he laid a hand on me in anger.
Because he had to leave school in year ten when his father died and another set of hands was needed in the family business, my father always viewed his education as being somewhat deficient. This manifested itself in a desire for knowledge that stayed with him all his life.
As we wandered around whatever museum, national park or monument was on the day’s itinerary, something strange would happen to my dad. His face would crease into the gentlest of smiles as he peered into the dusty display case bearing the Bible and spectacles of Phineas Dystopia, whose inadvertent discovery of dioxy-methyl-who-gives-a-toss revolutionised the art of anodising. He pored over the plaques most others rushed by and would murmur some admiring superlative before summoning me over to share his peanut brittle and epiphany. It is only now when I find myself riveted to a Discovery Channel special on the mating rituals of the hummingbird or logging onto the New Scientist website when I should be working that I understand the pleasure that new information gave him. In an uncertain world, facts were steadfast and knowledge was power. And so it was that he sought destinations where extraordinary men did improbable feats, or where nature underlined man’s impermanence.
In an era where dads weren’t exactly comfortable with verbalising their feelings for their children, it was his actions that spoke volumes. Although he never got beyond an “ILY” at the end of his notes to us, there were no limits to the generosity he displayed with his time and energy. He was on the sidelines at every weekend soccer game from the time I was six until I was twenty. He taught me that being a gracious winner was as important as being a gracious loser. When he went to watch a provincial rugby match, there was never any doubt I would be taken along. His time was my time.
Now that I was on the verge of proposing to a girl he would never meet with plans to produce children he would never hold, I felt the need to connect with him in some way. In so doing perhaps I would discover why I couldn’t make it to the end of Field of Dreams without choking on tears. Was it simply that I missed the old man or was it regret at thanks left forever unsaid and admiration never articulated?
It wasn’t so much that I had to make peace with him being removed from life too soon, but rather that it was time to cast aside the foolish preconceptions I had about the manner in which he might make his enduring guardianship known.
For too long I had been vainly searching for some sign that he was watching over me. A decade and a half after his death, I realised that instead of seeking his presence, perhaps the time had come to start appreciating his presents. To see his attitudes, follies and foibles in my own. To value the principles, thirst for knowledge and appreciation of nature he gave me, instead of dwelling on what his absence had removed.
If there was one thing he’d taught me with all those trips it was that lessons were most effectively learned on the road. And where better than his homeland? Perhaps I might even catch up with the old man on some bushveld highway. Or at the very least do a practice run on packing the boot.
Curious to contrast the South Africa I grew up in with the postapartheid nation, and facing an imminent charge of grievous bodily harm against the builder who was carrying out my agonisingly slow and costly renovations, I journeyed to the Rainbow Nation with a wish list that grew daily.
I wanted to see elephants in the wild. I wanted to hear someone respond to “How are you?” with “Sharp!” I wanted to see sunsets saturated in the apricot shades that understandably aggrieved bridesmaids wear just once. I wanted to hear a Zulu spiritual on a Sunday morning and kwela jazz that night. But most of all I wanted to have a Castle Lager in the shadow of Table Mountain at a certain Camps Bay bar which is situated on a rocky outcrop surrounded by a tinfoil sea. Here, amid the gentle jibing of Springbok fans and the hushed urgency that comes with questions about property prices and wages in Sydney, I would tell a joke that goes like this:
A Texan, a South African and a Sydneysider were standing on the deck of a cruise ship chatting under a blazing sun …
Chapter 2
The Walled-Off Astoria
The first notice you encounter when arriving at Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg is located above the wooden booths manned by customs officials. There’s always plenty of time to take it in as the staff in question are usually embroiled in a heated competition to see who can make a line of jet-lagged visitors stand still longest. The board reads: “Should you have any complaints about the service offered by the Department of Immigration, please enquire about the register in which such complaints can be registered”. Not a good sign, given that your grievances are already being anticipated this early in the visit.
There’s a lot to bitch about in South Africa, and Johannesburg has it worse than most. It’s a city where there are counsellors who specialise in carjack trauma, the police instruct you to proceed with caution through red lights if travelling alone at night, and for a fee you can equip your vehicle with an undercarriage flame-thrower that will render any would-be assailants medium rare at the touch of a button.
With that in mind, it was probably best that I got the robbery out of the way on day one. I had gone to Sandton City, a muzak-drenched mall on Johannesburg’s affluent northern fringes, to withdraw some local currency from an ATM.
The place was bristling with guards in bulletproof vests, clutching pump-action shotguns to their hearts like NRA faithful about to recite the pledge of allegiance.
The security presence was warranted. For months preceding the trip, collea
gues, friends and family had warned me of the dangers of travelling through a country where the official murder rate is 58.5 per 100,000 (almost ten times that of the United States).
As John Travolta pointed out to Samuel Jackson by way of a “royale with cheese”, it’s the little differences between your country and the one you are visiting that are most striking. For example, the South African laxative industry had dispensed with the soothing quasi-medical branding found in Australia in favour of names like “Surge!”. The ice-cream trucks blared “Camptown Ladies” instead of “Greensleeves”, and a marking on the floor some four metres back from the ATM machines indicated the polite distance that should be maintained by the next in line.
When the elderly gent in front of me had finally figured out which account he wanted to withdraw funds from, I strode confidently towards the ATM, slipped my card into the slot and hesitated for a moment to take in the subtle yet marked differences between this machine and the ones I was used to.
Well, I might as well have shouted, “Hello everyone, I’m a naive tourist!” in all of South Africa’s eleven official languages. A deep and friendly voice at my shoulder drew my attention with a polite, “Excuse me”. Being one of those phrases one automatically steps aside on hearing, I turned around and a beaming black man in his early twenties and an imported suit brushed past me. With lightning fingers and a quicksilver dexterity born of years of scamming, he hit the cancel button while instructing me to hold down a key on the opposite side of the machine. He then bade me adieu with a dashing smile and responded to my hearty “Thank you” with an equally magnanimous “My pleasure”.
I then stared at the screen bearing the instruction “Please insert card” as my brain struggled to make sense of the message my eyes were sending it. My heart raced and my body temperature soared to the point where streams of sweat sprinted down my neck as I realised that I’d been well and truly had. The techno-Fagin vanished quicker than my delusions of being streetwise, and as I searched for the nearest phone so I could call my bank and cancel the card, my eyes came to rest on a poster not half a metre from the cash machine. It bore a depiction of a hulking assailant holding a knife to the throat of a woman at an ATM. It turned out to be a public service announcement bearing the warning, “Don’t accept help from anyone”.