In our little part of Valhalla, the very southern tip of it, we ‘Rooineks’ formed a gang, telling ourselves that it was for protection against the ‘Dutchies’. In practice, it really meant that we could get up to more mischief as a group than we could have done as individuals.
One day my mom, ever the voice of reason in troubled times, asked me to name the members of our Rooinek gang.
‘Well, that would be the Van Jaarsvelds, the Swarts, the Du Toits and the Jouberts, Mom,’ I replied.
‘And the Afrikaans gang members?’ she asked.
‘Those bloody Robinsons, Beavers, Allisons and Smiths!’ I answered.
But, then again, what’s in a name?
The competition between the local gangs was not fierce and never resulted in more than the odd bloody nose, blackened eye or bruised ego. However, individual feuds, though rare, did exist. I had one that extended over a few years with an Afrikaans kid named Christo. He was a year or two older than me but could never be mistaken for a street fighter by any stretch of the imagination.
The origins of the friction between us started with his father’s ownership of a reasonably large peanut field, which lay adjacent to our bush playground. In great anticipation each year, we would wait for the arrival of the mobile peanut processing plant, which harvested, separated and packed the peanuts into hessian bags. Then we would strike with military precision on a daring mission across enemy lines to liberate a single 30-kilogram bag of unshelled raw nuts from behind the harvester/bagging machine. Enormously proud of our freshly acquired loot, and using the thick bush adjacent to the peanut field as cover, we would lug the heavy bag towards the Spruit and our hideaway, salivating at the thought of an endless supply of groundnuts at our disposal for at least a few weeks.
One year, in the midst of this clandestine operation and while we were crossing the open ground a short distance away from the relative safety of the Spruit, we heard a shout. There, 50 metres away, skulking behind some bushes, were Christo and his short, dumpy, red-faced and irate father.
‘That are my nuts!’ screeched Christo Snr. ‘Bring them here, you rooinek diewe (thieves)!’
‘Run for your lives!’ shouted Brian Swart, and someone else screamed, ‘The mad fucker’s got a gun!’
Holding on to our loot for all we were worth, we dashed for the sanctuary of the riverine foliage, but there was suddenly a loud bang and my back and legs felt the excruciating sting of a thousand hornets.
Dramatically, one of us (I admit it may have been me) screamed, ‘I’m hit!’
‘We’ve all been hit, you silly shit!’ trumpeted Tula Billett. ‘The bastard just shot us with coarse-grained salt!’
Apparently, this non-lethal deterrent had been used effectively and frequently on would-be peanut liberators in the past. Explaining the welts on the back of my arms and legs to my mother as I prepared to shower that evening – ‘Got attacked by a swarm of bees, Mom’ – produced a disbelieving response.
But, as the sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons, I stored the events of that day in the recesses of my mind and plotted my revenge against Christo Jnr.
For more than two years all my carefully hatched plans came to naught as Christo dodged every move I made like a skilled chess master. Try as I might, I could not pin him down. At one stage I even pretended to fancy his sister and hid in the hedge with her at his front gate, hoping to trap him. But blood is thicker than water, and when she realised what I was planning, she gave me up and thwarted my dastardly scheme to wreak my revenge on her brother.
Then I got a break.
At Valhalla Primary School, where I was the head boy at the time, the principal tried to encourage good behaviour. Each week, the best-behaved student would be allowed to leave school an hour early the following Friday. Months went by before I finally managed to be chosen as BBS (best-behaved student) and was rewarded with the prized early Friday departure. Christo, who was already at high school in Voortrekkerhoogte, travelled home by bus each day, but I had never managed to reach his stop before he’d disembark and run for home, successfully dodging our inevitable confrontation time and time again.
But the extra hour that I’d earned that particular Friday gave me more than enough opportunity. I waited in delicious anticipation, hidden in the bushes behind the bus stop, for a full 30 minutes before his bus, with a squeal of brakes, stopped with a jerk and Christo disembarked. As the bus departed and Christo began the usual two-minute carefree saunter towards his home, I stepped out from my hiding place and said something like ‘So, we finally meet, Dutchie!’
As quick as a flash he turned and scarpered, and I just barely managed to clip his heels with my outstretched foot, which caused him to sprawl headfirst into the dirt and devil thorns on the roadside. Cornered, he got to his feet and raised his fists while his lower lip quivered, tears only seconds away.
I suddenly realised that he was substantially bigger than me, and that should he decide to turn aggressor I might end up on the receiving end. So, to keep the initiative and him off balance, I aimed one at his nose but missed and split his lip instead.
Bellowing like a stuck pig, he broke free and hightailed it for home with me running behind him roaring invective and insults like a seasoned sailor. Occasionally I managed to connect my foot and his bum until he finally made it to his house and scurried inside like a rat diving into a sewer.
With the swagger of a man who knows he’s won a long-anticipated battle against a superior-sized enemy force, I strutted my oh-so-self-satisfied way home. Revenge is so very, very sweet, or so I thought… The time to savour my hard-earned victory would not last long.
Reaching our house at 58 Viking Road a few minutes later, I decided to reward my Herculean effort with a doorstep-sized slice of French polony jammed precariously between two eye-wateringly large slices of fresh Boerstra’s bread, dripping with butter and All Gold tomato sauce – a veritable feast in my part of the hood! I had just sunk my teeth into my giant sarmie when, without any warning, I was yanked out of the kitchen, lifted clear off the ground and pinned to the wall outside, my feet dangling a full six inches off the floor.
All I could see in front of me was a hand, the fingers like bunched pork sausages, balled into a fist, cocked and ready to smash my 11-year-old face to a pulp. The other hand had me by the collar and was shaking the bejesus out of my slight frame. All the while, a high-pitched porcine squeal emanating from the hand owner’s fat lips tore into my ears in a screeched warning that he was going to batter the life out of me and feed my jellied remains to the pigs.
Although I was battling to focus and to breathe, I recognised the face of the peanut farmer who’d shot us with coarse-grained salt. It was Christo Snr. But then, as this bully with the contorted face stopped to draw breath before unleashing his fist, a supremely authoritative voice, the sweetest sound I’d ever heard, cut through the noise and said, calmly and clearly, ‘Sir, put Stephen down or I will hit you very hard on the head with my rolling pin!’
The voice belonged to Violet Mokabudi, my second mother, the keeper of our house and my saviour on many previous occasions.
‘Shut up, you black bitch!’ roared the peanut farmer.
‘Sir, I will not tell you again. Put Stephen down or I will hit you very hard with my rolling pin and also put pepper in your mouth for the bad words,’ Violet said, her voice taking on a steely edge.