by Chris Marais
I hadn’t seen Steve’s craggy face since the dark and desperate days of the 1980s in Jo’burg, when he played music in clubs all over the city. I remembered his voice, a throaty mix of Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen with wistful shades of Neil Young.
Twenty years later, I found Steve Walsh again. He had a funky little bistro right in the basement of African Perfection. That night, he introduced Jules and me to the world of sushi and sashimi – clean, raw food, straight from the sea. Someone had brought him a fresh yellowtail that morning. Steve prepared the meal in front of us: slices of yellowtail sashimi and hand-formed nigiri sushi, showing us how to hold and dip the little portions, what the pickled ginger was for and how dangerously delicious the wasabi mustard could be.
“It’s considered good luck and good manners to rest the chopsticks with the sharp points facing left,” he said sagely. Was this really the Steve Walsh of Jack Daniels Rockey 24 Prohibition Club and late-night Fontana Hillbrow fried-chicken fame?
“These days, I’m hooked on sushi,” he said, sneaking a little rice roll off my plate and quickly swallowing it. “That, and surfing.”
Steve also had his music corner in the restaurant, a tiny stage setup that sported a Fender Telecaster, an amp and a microphone.
“No gigs, mate. I sing when the mood takes me,” he smiled, with no apparent regret. I pulled him into the past with a couple of questions.
“I got out of the music business 10 years ago. I could see I wasn’t going to become a rock star,” he said.
Steve’s one and only CD so far, a very good collection of his own songs called Mister Dog, said it all on the inside sleeve:
“These songs were written between 1975 and 1995 when I decided to reinvent my life as a cook and open a restaurant rather than end up singing requests for a bunch of ‘play it again Steve’ drunkards in some poxy bar while drowning my dreams in brandy and Coke.”
The ‘Conversion of Steve Walsh’ didn’t begin here at Jeffreys. It started out at St Helena Bay on the West Coast, where he ran a restaurant and cooked over an open flame.
“At first, it was terrifying,” he said. “Would people like my food? I’d see a car’s lights come bouncing down the long track to my farmhouse restaurant and I’d think, ‘Go back. Oh please, go back.’ Then we started getting repeat business – people took to the food.”
We thought we knew the West Coast after our long ride from Alexander Bay to Cape Town. We thought we knew all the legends. Steve Walsh knew more. And he had the inside track on the issues, as well. He broke out a bottle of Jamesons and we rambled on about perlemoen and lobster to sharks and then West Coast dynasties we’d never heard of.
It took Steve nearly a year to learn the discipline of making sushi.
“And the respect one needs to give it.”
We asked about life on the water.
“The locals are traditionally very defensive of their turf,” he said. “Three years ago there was a vicious battle for command of the waves. It was sparked off by foreigners muscling in, which incensed the people who live here. The locals started wearing white vests over their wet suits and called themselves the J-Bay Underground, showing a bit of muscle themselves. It wasn’t all heaven out there. Surfers would slash one another’s tyres in the battle for a place on the waves. This happens all over the world.”
The next day, we would find the following graffiti on a face-brick wall near the shore:
“Don’t live here – don’t surf here.”
Steve said things had eased up in Jeffreys Bay, however.
“Turf has been established. The locals are more relaxed. In fact, a lot of foreign surfers are now remarking on how friendly the J-Bay crowd is.”
He spoke of the lure of surfing, the ultimate sensation of ‘the green room’, the cylindrical wave that put you in another place. The Mystic.
“And then there’s the power pocket, the critical breaking section of wave that speeds the surfer along at nearly 80 km an hour,” he said. “You use every muscle in your body, and are constantly competing with yourself.
“Supertubes is not the place to learn surfing. You’ll kill yourself. Have a look at those rocks at low tide. At high tide they’re only a metre below the surface. You come here when you’re good.
“After a while you become a water-man, you learn to deal with the ocean conditions, how to judge the waves. Every good surfer is a good water-man.”
In the old days, he said, surfers made up a small group of people with a bad reputation for grabbing people’s daughters in the back of their vans, taking drugs, throwing wild parties and dressing strangely.
“Shaun Thompson changed the image of surfing all around the world,” said Steve. “In 1977, he became the world champion. He was presentable and interesting and sponsors loved him.” Steve put himself into the ‘soul surfer’ category.
He talked about the famous surfing destinations around the world, such as Teahupoo in Tahiti, “the scariest, most radical wave on the planet. I’m so happy I’m old so I don’t have to go and surf it. That’s the ultimate punishment.”
Did they respect him out there?
“Surfing is a sport where age makes no difference,” he said. “You’ll get 14-year-olds yelling: ‘Get off my wave, you old bastard.’ Around here, kids grow up quickly, because they hang out with adults so much.”
We visited Steve in his tiny bedsit to see the DVD Teahupoo – The Two Days That Blow Minds. There was a bed for himself, one for his dog Duke, a desk and a new Apple Mac he was slowly coming to terms with. Steve’s life was completely pared down. His current reading material was a book on Japanese cooking and a surfing magazine. Girls, Steve, what about the girls?
“There’s someone in Cape Town. I see her four times a year,” he said, and left it at that.
Back in our room, I paged through a copy of Zig Zag, the local surfing magazine everyone read in Jeffreys Bay. There was the thing on the Aussie mice I’d heard about. A guy called Shane Willmott was training three mice called Harry, Chopsticks and Bunsen to surf “small waves on tiny mouse-size surfboards”.
Willmott dyed his surfing mice different colours so they would “stand out in the white wash” of the waves.
I liked this story, but at breakfast down in 20 Pepper Street the next morning, I really liked the music of Jack Johnson, the Hawaiian surfer-singer whose sound was playing almost all the time in Steve’s place. When we checked the www.jackjohnsonmusic.com website later, the musician was quoted as saying:
“Future projects? I wanna collaborate with the waves for the next couple of years. I want to take a little break and surf a lot.” But not before playing a concert at the Waikiki Shell in Honolulu with my personal hero, Willie Nelson, in April 2006.
We had an appointment with our landlady, Cheron Kraak, who owned and ran the South African Billabong franchise and a company called Country Feeling. En route to her offices we drove through Jeffreys, which had to rate as one of the ugliest architectural collections along the SA coastline. Charm-free face brick was everywhere. ‘Low maintenance’ in full supply. One of the property ads at a supermarket read:
“Lock-up-and-go units, compromising [sic] two beds, one bath, open-plan kitchen area, parking baby [sic], walk to beach, limited sea view.” Not today, thanks.
We mentioned this to Cheron Kraak in her office. She pulled a face and agreed:
“Ugliness devalues everything.”
Cheron remembered this place when it was still a piece of hippie heaven on earth.
“I came here in the 1970s and fell in love with the surfing. I ran away from the whole tennis club thing in Jo’burg. An Aussie girl showed me how to make reversible hand-embroidered bikinis and board shorts. I started this business with one portable sewing machine.”
Cheron transformed a matchbox-sized garage into Jeffreys Bay’s first surf shop. She’d found a niche.
“I’d let the surfers choose the material and the buttons, and I’d cut the shorts out on the lounge table, se
w madly and deliver them myself,” she said. “I even offered a repair service when they got torn.” And then the Weekend Post told her story in January 1981 below the catchy headline:
“She sews sea shorts on the seashore.”
Life was only partly idyllic in the beginning. Jeffreys Bay had been a tiny fishing village, a beloved holiday-fishing spot for the local farmers, who didn’t immediately take to the surf crews.
“We were not accepted,” Cheron said. “You’d see curtains twitch as we walked past. Only a few people would let us stay in their outside rooms or sell us food. So we bought our own property.”
Cheron’s surf shop grew throughout the 1980s.
“A lot of locals still thought it was a front for something illegal,” she said. “But it was just the fear of the unknown. They were scared of change.”
Cheron Kraak now ran an operation that employed more than 200 people and brought an international surfing event to Jeffreys Bay in winter each year: the Billabong World Championship Pro Tour.
“Jeffreys Bay becomes the centre of the surfing universe for more than two weeks,” she said. “Every event is streamed live on the Billabong website, and there is massive media coverage, publicity you could never buy.”
Another feature of Cheron’s company was that she preferred to employ surfers.
“Everyone buys into the lifestyle,” she said. “Surfers run the business the way we want it. Outsiders just don’t get it – there’s a distinctive look.
“And in terms of our employment agreement, there’s ‘permission to surf when there’s surf’. After all, why are the kids here in Jeffreys in the first place? It’s the best right-handed break in the world.”
Carpark Vanessa emerged from her Wendy-house office as we returned. OK, I give up. Why Carpark Vanessa?
“Because I’ve been here working in the carpark for longer than anyone can remember,” she said. “We’ve got a few soul surfers in at 20 Pepper Street – Steve said to call you.”
The old guys (what am I saying? They were younger than me) were all successful businessmen and were tucking into a late English breakfast after a morning on the waves. We asked a large fellow what it was like being ‘in the green room’.
“Hmm. It’s a very rare feeling,” he said. “Like getting laid these days.” His feisty little wife raised her eyebrow as if to say that’s it, buster. No afternoon delights for you.
That night, Steve Walsh played for us. He sang the Waits classic ‘Heart of Saturday Night’ and I was back in old Jo’burg, drinking tequila sunrises on Rockey Street with my mates after a day of teargas in the townships. And then he put down his Fender, picked up his sushi knife, and proceeded to feed us …
Chapter 25: Port Elizabeth to East London
“Chickens, Plucked or Live”
After writing my final exams at Grahamstown’s Rhodes University, I shoulder my rucksack and stick a thumb out on the road to Jo’burg, via King William’s Town. Three black guys in a skoroskoro stop for me and I jump on the back, taking shelter from the pounding Border storm under a torn piece of old tarpaulin. This is 1975 and I’m not sure I’ve done the right thing here.
Especially when they stop off at a busy shebeen in King William’s Town and load up with sweet wine and Carling Black Label beer.
“Celebration drinks for after they’ve sorted me out,” I worry to myself.
They potter on into the countryside of thickets and low hills, and come to a stop in the middle of nowhere. Uh oh. This is it.
The driver’s mate hops out and hands me my very own bottle of sweet wine.
“It will keep you dry,” he laughs. Yeah, right. You just want to get me drunk and then it’s all over. But this line of thought is starting to tire me. They drive on, while I get a bit pissed at the back, singing Neil Young softly to myself in the rain. Let me exit this world with a suitable rendition of ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’. Kind regards, Mugged & Maudlin, Eastern Cape.
Just south of Cathcart, my benefactors stop again and go searching for wood to burn. Is this my final resting place? No. A piece of boerewors sausage the length of a champion python is flung onto burning bush. The lightly toasted meat is divided into quarters and I am handed my share.
There is a minimum of conversation. No life stories are exchanged. All I know is that they’re three Pondos going to look for work on a farm up in the Stormberg, somewhere near Molteno.
The men leave me on the N6 to Aliwal North, half-cut, well fed and bemused. Fear had driven me just this side of mad. The uncomplicated kindness of a lift, a bottle of sweet wine and a piece of sausage brings me back.
“OK Jules, let’s go out and commit some serious responsible tourism,” I joked to my wife 28 years later as I packed camera gear for a spin around Port Elizabeth’s townships with Calabash Tours. Finally, we were back in the Eastern Cape.
Responsible tourism. What a fuddy-duddy name for a great thing. A fun thing. Rather ‘dance-in-the-street tourism’. Rather ‘win-win tourism’.
“Maybe they should call it ‘discovery tourism’,” mused Jules as we left our boutique hotel in the Summerstrand with one Nelson Sebezela from Calabash. On the way, we picked up an aspiring wine maker from Australia, a hulking youngster called Michael. He was already looking green about the gills, muttering something about a late-night curry that was shouting the odds back at him.
“And you haven’t even seen your first Smiley yet,” said Nelson.
“What’s a Smiley?” asked Michael with an uncertain look.
“Wait. That’s for later.”
I wanted a photograph of Queen Victoria, who stood stern and forbidding outside the Port Elizabeth Library. She was a silent reprimand to overdue-book borrowers everywhere.
As I was framing her glaring visage in my lens, two local lasses called out:
“Leave that old lady. Take our picture instead.” I made them pose with The Librarian Queen as a compromise.
From the minute we climbed into the Calabash-mobile, it was clear who our guide’s hero was.
“Nelson! Rolihlahla! Mandela!” he cheered, fist clenched and waving out of the minibus window. Nelson Sebezela then launched into Xhosa for Dummies & Daytrippers with an exhibition of confounding vocal clicks.
Driving into the middle-class township of KwaGxaki, Nelson spoke of goats and street committees:
“Around here, when you move into a new area, it’s traditional to have a big party, invite all your neighbours and slaughter a goat. They’ll quiz you about where you’ve come from, what you do, who your family is and what made you give up your last place.
“I recently left my parents in KwaZakhele,” he said. “I found my own spot, in the same township, and my new neighbours were so curious they sent a delegation to the family home to find out more about me.
“Even in the richer townships, there are street committees. That’s us Africans – we’re always in each other’s business. Sometimes, however, those street committees play a vital role, like breaking up family feuds.”
Three ghosts, magnificently covered in white clay, strode across a gully in the distance. I wanted to photograph them but because they were abaKwetha (initiates) no verbal contact was allowed. So, after a hundred hand gestures, they finally agreed to pose in silence.
We passed through the morning markets of KwaZakhele, where women vendors were cooking up a roadside storm. Among the “Chickens, Plucked or Live” signs was far stranger fare.
“Welcome to Smiley Street,” said Nelson. There came an audible groan from the sick Aussie at the back as we encountered scores of blackened sheep’s heads – the local breakfast of champions.
“The sheep’s head is put into the fire,” Nelson informed us, thoroughly enjoying this part of the tour. “When the lips have been stretched into a smile, you know it’s done. The women then take it out of the fire, clean it up and remove the brains, which we rarely eat. The real treats are the cheeks and the gums.”
Just then, somewhere in the vici
nity of historic Red Location, Michael had to exit the minibus and chunter loudly in the mud.
“Sies, man!” a couple of passing township women remarked, and turned their heads away in disgust.
Three years later, on the great Shorelines tour, we were back in the townships of Port Elizabeth with Nelson. This time, his boss, Paul Mediema of Calabash, was with us. We were drinking beer down at Kwekwe’s in KwaZakhele Township.
Was our kombi safe around the corner, I asked. “If the kombi is stolen, we just report the matter to the amaDhlozi,” said Paul, rolling himself a cigarette rather expertly. “It’s a system that evolved out of the anti-apartheid movement. Self-defence units became street committees. If you lose something, you just go to them, pay a finder’s fee and that’s that.”
In the kitchen at Kwekwe’s, Patricia January and her assistant Beauty Dywili were adding final touches to the tourists’ feast of chicken stew, boerewors, coleslaw, mealie pap, mash and fresh bread. They were expecting a large busload of Hollanders.
“We can’t give them too much traditional food,” Patricia said. “It would stress them.” There would be no grinning sheep on offer tonight.
The regulars, mostly older men, were having their Friday-night drink and catching up with mates.
The huge luxury bus arrived and out streamed about 40 bewildered souls. The township choir, a ragtag band of singing angels, began a litany of praise and welcome. The Hollanders walked the gauntlet of warmth and song into the shebeen, studiously avoiding eye contact. Soon, a few cold beers, some excellent singing and Patricia’s hot meal relaxed the group and grins began to emerge like shy little face-ferrets. Some very responsible tourism was on the go …
The next day we drove north towards Port Alfred. It was raining and the land about us looked Irish. The firestorms of the past week were nearly forgotten, as though they had happened in another country 10 years before. Still, we phoned Ashley back at Storms River to find out if all was well.