Native tongue Bafana Khumalo
It was that time of the evening when one can glare at the boss and waltz out of the office and the glare is followed by a smug smile that says: “This time is mine and there is nothing you can do about it. For the next couple of hours I can look in your face and tell you to perform strange acts upon yourself.”
I still had that smile on my face as I walked downtown, about to get into one of those coffin mobiles. For once I was at peace with myself, a peace brought about not by the world having improved overnight, but by a punchdrunk kind of peace which is predicated by giving up and hanging your gloves, saying; “I will never beat them, no matter what I try to do. They are too big and too strong.”
This was not to be for too long for I felt a bump from somebody behind me and I turned around to accept their apology. I shouldn’t have for I felt the fingers of a very rude brother reach into my breast pocket and try to retrieve a bulge which had been mistaken for a healthy wallet. Instead of catching hold of what was in my pocket he only succeeded in pinching my left breast. That’s when it hit me. I was the living victim of the good ol’ fashioned eGoli career. The apologetic brother behind me and the breast pincher in front of me were pickpockets and I was another job and another couple of rands in their pockets.
I could not believe that this was happening to me. Me, the township boy who is known for having a great knowledge of the street despite my education. No one would dare try to do that to me for they can tell real streetwise boys as opposed to the bumbling white folks who walk around the streets with expressions that proclaim: “Mug me.” My face doesn’t say that, does it?
My incredulity was not to last for long; in the few seconds this attempted robbery was taking place I was able to recover and regain my senses. What did I do when I fully recovered? No, I did not reach behind me and draw an automatic firearm and blow the son of a female dog and watch his brains congeal on the tarmac, as I felt like doing. I also did not reach deep within me and call on the martial arts techniques that I think I have inherited by watching badly dubbed Kung Fu motion pictures in the township. I merely looked at the brother and, in a matter of fact way posed a very lucid question: “You are trying to rob me aren’t you?”
The brother looked at me and with the most hurt of expressions on his face, he tried to put me at ease: “No my brother, we are not trying to rob you, we merely accidentally bumped you.” At ease I was for a split second as I pondered the response but I wasn’t exactly convinced by the explanation. For the moment I was going to accept it though. “OK. That is fine by me,” thought I while my brain was racing, wondering why a total stranger would be pinching my breast. I know that I am desired by half the world but very few people have pinched my breast as an expression of their lust. Other parts of my anatomy they had pinched, but not my breast. This was a moment of profound pondering for me. I had to find an answer.
The answer was the initial one: “No, you ARE trying to pick my pocket, you bloody amateur.” The brother slowly walked away and was adamant that they had “accidentally bumped” me. Hey, I know very well that I am not about to be admitted into Mensa but that is no reason for people to paw me in the streets of Johannesburg and then tell me that they had accidentally bumped me. So I followed him down the street whilst screaming after him this fact. I, at this time, was quite offended by the fact that I was being robbed by a rank amateur who couldn’t tell the difference between a fully loaded wallet and a breast.
So the terminally cool yours truly was seen delivering a harangue in the streets of Johannesburg: “You are trying to pick my pocket you fool and you are bloody lousy at it too. Are you using me for practice? You must choose your victims carefully in the future.” The brother was walking away with a demeanour that suggested that I was using a foreign substance and he didn’t understand why he had to be the victim of my drug induced flights of fancy. He was still on his accidental bumping trip.
I watched him disappear among the hordes of people in the streets and I was beginning to realise that people were staring at me and, besides, they hadn’t gotten anything. I was livid as I entered the taxi and offered my money along with the other passengers. The taxi charged its way through the traffic as the people therein held their breath, praying that they did not become a statistic. The driver accepted the money and duly forgot that he had to give change back. There was peace in the taxi until one woman reminded him. He glared back at the passengers: “What change, I gave you your change back.”
On that day, in that taxi, everyone seemed to have had enough of fighting with the world and no amount of provocation was going to change their minds. We all kept quiet as though we had all signed a turn-the- other-cheek contract with the world. We let him keep the change.