As well as its own government, police and defence force, the Transkei also has its own casino. This is just inside the northern border, the northernmost part of the Wild Coast, just down the road from the South Coast of Natal, where the wealthy of Durban have their holiday houses. There is no border post. Our first trip to the Transkei, late one night a few weeks earlier, had been to visit this casino.
Gambling is illegal in South Africa but there are casinos in all three independent homelands, the most famous being Bophuthatswana's Sun City where overseas performers not playing South Africa can play South Africa. These casinos are the brainchild of Sol Kirtzner, South Africa's richest man and something of a folk hero for his rise from ordinary beginnings as well as his marriage to former Miss South Africa and Miss World Anneline Kriel, now star of several Afrikaaner soaps. Sol and Anneline had been South Africa's best shot at royalty and when we were there everyone had an opinion on their on-the-rocks marriage. Generally people would point out how Sol was much shorter than his wife, considerably older, and ugly. But as they would wistfully add, that just went to show how much money the guy had.
The Transkei's casino was much the same as any other: bright, noisy, crass. Blackjack, roulette, a couple of bars, hundreds and hundreds of bandits. Special rooms for bigtime gamblers and on display a Lotus Esprit which you'd win with five aces on a machine nearby. Seemingly thousands of people, some there for a simple night out, others to change their lives, staring without smiling into the machine displays, pulling half-angrily, half-despairingly on the levers. A place of hope.
We weren't out to make or lose fortunes, although Greg tried for some time for the Lotus. One Scottish medical student we were with won two hundred rand with his second fifty-cent piece—he didn't even buy us a drink—but that was about it. They say the odds are in favour of the punters at blackjack, but only if everyone plays the same strategy. Several of us had actually rehearsed such a strategy and slowly filled up a table, but this one stooge wouldn't give up the final seat and kept undermining our good work.
There was not only a casino but also a luxury hotel, a golf course, theatres showing blue movies around the clock. We caught a four-star offering—five was the maximum possible—Flesh Dance, loosely based on the storyline of Flashdance. The central character was a pure-as-the-driven Jennifer Beals look-alike who wanted to make it as a dancer. A man who happened to be the friend of a nightclub owner who was going under fell in love with her when he saw her cycling past and, after a lot of people had a lot of sex—if it hadn't been for the sex it would have been a very short film—he finally got her career under way: fantasy dancing at the nightclub, reviving its fortunes when all hope had seemed lost, and of course eventually sleeping with him in the climactic final scene.
As with gambling, pornography is difficult to come by in South Africa; magazines we get used to seeing in the dairy or newsagent are banned there, though not unknown. Soon before we went over the reigning Miss America, Vanessa Williams, had appeared in a Playboy centrefold. Several of the young Edendale doctors and a few other young guys we met asked us to send them copies of that particular issue when we got back. I don't know whether they knew or not that Vanessa Williams was black.
The two whole days we spent at Mpande passed in a kind of dream. Some young hitchers we'd picked up a couple of days earlier on the motorway south of Durban had warned us about this: Pondo Fever they called it, a debilitating paralytic affliction peculiar to the Transkei where the sufferer would become so poisoned with relentless overuse of dagga that they'd end up totally unable to move, not even the feeblest of small flickers, so that the most basic self-care became impossible. It was essential you had someone to look after you. A woman among the group we'd picked up claimed to have once spent six straight months in this condition.
Of course it wasn't our plan to come down with the Fever. We had bought nearly a kilo of dagga but that was just for the record books; we would ditch it when we left. We were only staying for a couple of days and none of us fancied the thought of looking after each other's most basic self-care.
Nonetheless, when I come to relate the events from our two whole days in Mpande very little comes back. The pregnant woman walked by and collapsed; the next day she walked back with her baby. Pete and I tried to play backgammon and chess. We smoked dagga, joint after joint after joint—although it made little impression on the kilo. We stopped eating, stopped talking, finally stopped thinking. Time slowed to a crawl; insects sat on our faces undisturbed. By our third night we still hadn't been to the beach, not ten metres from the campsite. It might not have been Pondo Fever; it was definitely a case of the flu.
I can remember more clearly the way things went with Joshua. He woke me up what seemed like first thing in the morning—though after our first night with the dagga for all I really knew it could have been afternoon—to see what work we had for him. This time he had three others with him, including one of his brothers. He and his brother were smoking. I told him we didn't need anything done and collapsed back into my sleeping bag.
When we did get up they already had a fire going, a bigger one than the day before, and they were sitting around it taking turns to fire stones into the river with a slingshot. Joshua told us the fire would be four rand.
We tried to explain that we didn't want any more work done but Joshua wouldn't accept this, kept dreaming up tasks for himself and his friends; at one point we had to physically restrain him from killing a bird sitting in a tree nearby with his slingshot which he'd decided would make us a nice breakfast. He brought up the schoolbooks again; when we reminded him what had happened with yesterday's schoolbooks he looked like he might cry. The argument stretched on and on: they could wash our van, they could tidy our tent, they could make us up some sandwiches. All we wanted was to be left in peace and finally in desperation we offered to pay them to not work, a rand each just to go away. Joshua thought this over for a moment before accepting.
Unfortunately we failed to specify clearly the length of time we weren't employing them for and late in the afternoon Joshua was back, this time with five friends, a couple bigger than him. We weren't yet paralysed by Pondo Fever—we could still, for instance, roll up the dagga and light it—but we were hopelessly bewildered, lost in a moronic haze that left us unable to see what was really going on, certainly not able to argue about it. It seemed easier to pay the six rand, although it was a task-and-a-half getting the money out of my wallet.
The next day Joshua had maybe eight friends in the morning, a good ten or eleven soon after lunch. Each time there were bigger boys among the group than the time before. During the afternoon we agreed it would have to stop—if things kept up at this rate we'd run out of cash in another day. Either we told him no money or we left Mpande, but the conversation must have drifted away without us sorting it out any further than that and when Joshua came again at tea with something like fifteen boys I couldn't remember what we'd decided and looking out into the crowd of hopeful faces I meekly paid. Finally, after this, we struggled to a definite decision: we would leave in the morning. We would get up early and not smoke any dagga until we'd left.
In the morning there was already a bonfire blazing and too many children to count, for the first time even a few girls. There were certainly too many to pay, and when Joshua came up to the tent for the money we refused to give him any.
He stood facing us at the tent-opening, as always with a cigarette. In his other hand he held a packet of Chesterfields. A small crowd of children gathered round behind him, a couple of them even our height. There were more playing soccer with a can by the river and a few others with the slingshot. It seemed everyone was on the payroll. We told him we didn't have the money, that we were leaving anyway, and to damp the fire down a bit before the overhanging trees caught alight. He argued for a while—it was our own arrangement we were breaking—but when he realised we weren't going to give in he turned and walked very slowly out of the camping ground with his head bowed, a few boys
still crowding around him. They didn't damp down the fire.
Two minutes later the place was empty.
Pornography, gambling, sweets, cigarettes, cash, soft drink, dagga, lobster … who needs Esperanto when there is trade? Whiskey. Cars. In any language you can enjoy a car.
Driving south from Umtata a couple of days earlier—Umtata is the capital of the Transkei—we'd stopped to ask a group of policemen parked by the side of the road directions to the Mpande turnoff. We'd already taken one wrong turning trying to follow the map and we didn't want to end up lost.
There were three of them, each with a yellow landcruiser. They leant back on their bonnets, chatting and laughing; obviously it was a quiet day. They looked us over a bit at first—couldn't we see they were busy?—but eased off after a minute or two and we managed with their smattering of English to find out which road to take.
Several miles down the road one of the landcruisers sped up behind us, lights flashing and siren blaring. Greg and I looked at each other in horror as Pete leant forward to stub out the joint we'd only just lit up. With the help of our hitchers we'd managed to score a few bullets of dagga in Umtata the night before, not much, but enough to get us into trouble if the police felt so inclined. Maybe we'd been set up. Those hitchers had stolen Pete's walkman … on top of this our van wasn't registered. As Pete pulled up we argued about what to say.
The policeman took his time getting out of the landcruiser, sauntered up slowly, kicking our rear tyre as he walked past it. He took off his sunglasses, pulled a biro and a small spiral-bound notebook from his shirt pocket, flashed a smile full of white teeth at Pete through the driver's window.
The van, he said. How much you sell?
Then, of course, there's the whiskey. So many people I know seem to have a story from their travels concerning whiskey. One friend of mine got an amazing brass lampstand from a Syrian dig site by bribing one of the workers with a bottle of Johnnie Walker; another took a bottle round the US and had a nip in all fifty states. And as for us …
As for us, our packing up was slow and confused. We'd all lost things, everything was a mess; there was no order to our stumbling around. I'd find myself standing there, staring out across the river, or gazing at the ground, waking suddenly to the realisation that we were meant to be getting ready to leave. The fire had virtually died, it was maybe an hour after Joshua had left and we were still floundering around trying to get ourselves organised when a man rode up on a horse. The tent flaps were open and the kilo spread out on a newspaper right in full view; luckily I saw the man early and dragged it out of sight.
He was old-looking, sixty perhaps, with the familiar gloves and hat, and a plastic raincoat with only the top button done up. Several of his teeth were missing. Joshua and a few others were with him, which was just as well, because he wanted to talk to us and he only spoke Xhosa.
In Xhosa most of the consonants seem to be clicks, which to the untrained ear can all sound virtually identical. It's as if everyone's wearing ill-fitting dentures, or calling hens all the time. Whereas English is an only child, Xhosa has brothers and sisters. Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa: the speaker of one can without having to learn a single extra word already half-understand the others. The word Xhosa itself probably comes from another language, Khoi, where ‘kosa’ means ‘angry men’.
Joshua told us the man was the ranger. He wanted to know why we'd taken wood from the native trees when this whole area was a protected reserve.
Tell him we didn't, said Greg. Joshua spoke to the ranger in Xhosa. We looked at each other, nervous. It was the first we'd heard anything about a protected reserve.
He says you're lying, said Joshua. He knows you used wood from the trees. He says trees have been damaged. He can call the police and get you put into jail.
Listen, Joshua, said Pete. You know what happened. You tell him the truth. And tell him we're leaving today. Joshua spoke to the ranger again. This time there was a longer conversation. The ranger was becoming angry. He pointed into the tent.
He wants to know what you were hiding when he first came, said Joshua. I felt my heart start to race.
Nothing, I said. Tell him nothing.
He says where is your dagga? said Joshua. Where is your lobster?
No, said Greg. Tell him we have neither. No dagga. No lobster. And then to the ranger himself, louder, waving his hands. No! Nothing! He turned and went into the tent. The ranger dismounted, left the reins to one of the boys, limped over to the remains of the bonfire and kicked at it. He turned for the tent. I felt sick. This was it.
Look! said Greg, stepping out, pointing down at his feet. And there it was, straight and tall, standing alone between us and a sticky end, complete with fishnet cover. The one thing we had so far failed to share with Mpande. Jack. Jack Daniels. Pleased to meet you.
The ranger stopped. He looked at each of us in turn, then pointed to himself questioningly.
For you, said Pete, picking it up and offering it to him. He looked at each of us again, allowed himself a smile. He nodded, took it from Pete, held it at arm's length and squinted, as if he could read the label if it were far enough away, then pulled it close to his body. He laughed, said something to Joshua.
He says thank you, said Joshua. He says you're too generous.
Greg found him a plastic bag. As he wrapped it up the ranger limped round to the front of our van, leant back to admire it, spoke to Joshua again.
He says he likes your van. We smiled and nodded together as he limped back to his horse. Finally he shook our hands, hauled himself up into the saddle and rode slowly off, cradling our whiskey with one arm.
When he had gone Joshua lit a cigarette and put it to us that it was he who had saved our necks. The ranger had been going to get the police, but Joshua told us he'd sworn on his honour that we had no dagga or lobster, and he'd taken the rap himself for damaging the trees. Of course it was impossible to know whether this was what he'd said or not—and we had good reason to doubt him—but we were relieved to have got away at all and there were five of them there so we gave Joshua five rand.
Someone told me that Umtata is the South Africa of the future, the way the whole country will one day be. Wide dusty potholed streets, simple square houses spread in regular repeating patterns for as far as you can see. In the centre of town a large concrete-floored supermarket, a few small basic hardware and trinket shops—closed—hundreds of mostly barefoot people, all walking. Maybe a bus of children. And no whites.
The rest of our story seems almost an afterthought. We got away from Mpande after another hour of pissing about, hardly spoke to each other as we wound our way back to the main highway. We went back to Umtata briefly to buy gas with what cash we had left, then headed south for the border post. Greg was driving. Pete and I rolled joints from the kilo, smoked them for a puff or two, then threw them out the window. As it had been for the last two days everything once again became slow and dreamy, forgotten even as it happened. We crawled along between the tall hills. There was no one else on the road. It felt like we'd been driving for days.
The plan was we'd throw the dagga out as soon as we were near the border. It was probably stupid to bring it at all but we wanted it till the last minute; as Greg was always saying, you only live once. It was only with the gradual return of the familiar hopeless mix of Afrikaans and English road signs as we came towards the outskirts of Stutterheim that we finally realised we were already over the border.
There was no use arguing; we were all too out of it anyway. As we drove through Stutterheim we tried to work out what to do. There was the problem of our passports but it would take hours to go back the same way and come back out via a border post—and who was to say we wouldn't balls it up again?—and of course there was the kilo. Why go to all that trouble now that we had smuggled it over the border, however inadvertently? It would certainly enhance the rest of our trip. I don't think we really came to a decision. Greg just kept driving.
Just before we'd left Mpan
de I'd finally made it to the beach. It was wide, almost white, not a soul to be seen. The waves were small and frequent, the water warm. It wasn't so wild. There was the slightest of offshore breezes, barely that, certainly no great wind likely to sweep us into the sea—besides, we were leaving anyway. Way out in the distance there was a ship. I left my clothes in a pile on the sand and swam for maybe five minutes.
INCIDENT ON ANZAC CRESCENT
First day back at school and Vanessa has her bicycle stolen. It wasn't her fault—she had it locked up in the bicycle shed with all the other kids' bikes; the lock was still there when she went in after school. Someone had hacksawed right through it. What pisses me off most is the guy in the shop telling me the lock was made of titanium and that no cutting equipment in the world could ever perform such a feat.
Well it has.
Vanessa is our ten-year-old foster child; she got the bicycle for Christmas. She'd only had it five weeks. Where do people get off taking young kids' bicycles? Apparently several others went missing as well. Can you see it? First day back at school, four or five kids in the bicycle sheds, crying. I mean, Jesus Christ.
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