Bless me Father

Chapter 22

211 Chapter 22 He was tall, muscular, though wiry, and had a few gold-capped teeth. He was deeply tanned. His hair was what they call ‘kroes’ – short and tightly curled – and a few people said, never to his face, that he was part-coloured; which was pretty normal in Cape Town. There was a thin line dividing whites and coloureds at the time. We lived in neighbourhoods adjacent to each other, and in mixed suburbs, unlike black people, who lived in townships far away from the city yet close enough to commute to work. Hennie became my best friend, partly because when I met him he was going out with Lillian. I was sixteen when we met and he was in his early twenties. I knew that he had spent his youth in the Constantia School for Boys in Tokai, and that he had recently spent a short time in Pollsmoor prison for assault with the intention to do grievous bodily harm. But in my mind, none of that ever counted against him. He cared for Lillian and he cared for me and protected me. ‘Anybody gives you shit, just tell me and I’ll sort them out.’ Hennie was exceptionally generous too. When he bought himself jeans and shirts and other clothes, he’d buy me exactly the same items – same colours, same style. He worked as a bouncer at the Pearly Shells, a nightclub on the main road in Wynberg. Pearly Shells must have been a concert hall in its early days – it was a large, cavernous hall with a stage, where live bands used to perform. One of the famous groups of the time was Jimmy Retief and the Idiots. One Saturday night a large group of national 212 conscripts from the military base up the road gatecrashed the club. They wore civilian clothes. They beat up the band members, cutting off their hair on stage. The band all sported long hair – it was the middle of the sixties. The soldiers were jealous or angry at the contrast with their military-style crew cuts. A lot of them had girlfriends and sisters who frequented the club. The club became chaotic. Hennie and his fellow bouncers, Sydney and Lofty, had their hands full. But Hennie, Sydney and Lofty generally did not come off second best. Every suburb or region had its strong men. There were the Woodstock boys, the Muizenberg and Fish Hoek boys, the Brooklyn boys and many others. When somebody gained a reputation as unbeatable in a fight, the challenges would pour in. Fights were conducted on a ‘gentleman’s’ basis. No knives, no weapons and no seconds or friends to help. It was stand up as a man, face your opponent and fight. The winner was given due respect and invariably would be challenged by someone else. It was rare that anyone hung on to the title for more than a couple of years – if that. AfewyearslatertherewasalegendaryfighterinCapeTownitself, Bertie Steyn. At the same time there was also a very well-known fighter in Johannesburg whom people believed was impossible to beat. He was a Yugoslavian and his name was George the Duke. The Duke was an underground figure and some swore he was a hit man. When The Duke heard about Bertie Steyn, and Bertie Steyn about The Duke, jeers and insults were carried between the two via the grapevine. Eventually one challenged the other –nobody was sure who – and George The Duke drove all the way to Cape Town to settle matters. They met one Saturday afternoon on the steps of the City Hall, opposite the Parade. After a lengthy battle Bertie Steyn emerged the winner. That’s how it was in those days of the ducktails and the street fighters. Sidney, Hennie’s fellow-bouncer at the time, used to be the 213 main man in Wynberg. A powerful ox of a man in his late twenties Sidney’s fists had been declared ‘dangerous weapons’ by a magistrate after countless charges of assault had been laid against him. But Hennie took him down one day. Sydney had beaten Hennie a few times before, but Hennie wasn’t one to give up. When the fight took place, the odds were stacked against Hennie. He was a lot lighter than Sydney and there was nobody around who could – or wanted to – take on Sydney, though there were many who tried after Hennie. Sydney...