Nick Paul, resplendent in designer khaki, gets lost in tent town and discovers the Durban July is little more than a freak show
July day sits in the middle of Durban’s social calendar like a large, clever, sharp-tongued Berea matron with a fine mind and too much time on her hands. Everyone wants to be in her circle but, after a few hours, everyone leaves feeling stupid, over- indulged and perhaps a little resentful.
Greyville racecourse occupies a similar position in Durban’s geography. Bordering on just about everything – from the wasteground of Block AK to the more jaded reaches of the CBD and the light industria of Stamford Hill Road to the foothills of the dressier parts of the Ridge – it’s the still robust heart of colonial Durban.
Fighting off the boomerang flu with a fistful of antibiotics and a six-pack of Amstels, and dressed appropriately in a khaki Amanda Laird Cherry suit (Amanda is the Berea bloke’s designer of choice these days, now that it’s OK for blokes to have designers), I arrived at threeish, just as pre-main race excitement was mounting among the serious punters.
The track at Greyville forms a social divide. Not between the haves and have-nots, except in the sense that it divides those who have got a genuine interest in racing from those who have not.
The grandstand is like some vertical microcosmic Gotham, populated by serious wealth, serious desire for wealth, and all the bits in between – everyone from the richest owner in his box to the punter taking a R2 trifecta with the Freemans.
The tent town of corporate marquees and picnic sites inside the track is its suburbia, populated by everyone who may or may not have a flutter on the seventh but is here for the biggest cocktail party in town. On July day at least, Durban has its Hooray Henrys. Only here, they’re called Howzit Kevins. And on this July day, despite my best intentions, I was one of them.
So instead of getting on with all the impassioned scribbling I was going to be doing about the maze of contradictions and glaring ironies that is the July in post-apartheid, pre-millennial, crashing-rand South Africa, I was lurching around in a beer-stained suit, lovely young wife in one hand and capless bottle of J&B in the other, generally behaving exactly as a white 33-year-old male is expected to behave in the hours before someone older, darker and poorer comes to clean up.
The seventh race safely over (won by a beautiful little three-year-old called Classic Flag), the sun sank first behind the vastness of the stand and then behind the green crocodile of the Ridge, and the evening became a sort of moving yakfest – groups of people moving from place to place looking for the various elements that would make their good times better: music, more beer, a spliff, Lisa and Michelle who were over at site 47 a while ago…
We passed the Investec tent, where five bouncers were preventing people like ourselves from getting some of the intramural extramarital action Investec is perhaps unfairly famous for. We tried to get into another tent – something Shipping? – where a pleasant middle-aged chap with a moustache inquired after our business and sent us gently on our way.
The tents looked like a whole bunch of Westville weddings that were all headed in the same direction and had got into a traffic jam. Periodically, you’d hear the distant thunder of hoofbeats and remember why you were there.
There is something deeply stirring, primal and beautiful about seeing a herd of horses galloping by, especially giant mutant racehorses with tiny mutant humans on their backs. I suppose they don’t breed jockeys, but I suppose jockeys, like the rest of us, breed themselves. Horse racing is a weekly festival of Applied Genetics. Is it still the second-biggest revenue spinner for the government next to gold? A pretty thought: South Africa’s second-biggest industry is a freak show. It makes Steven Cohen’s appearance at the fashion judging that morning seem a little overblown and obvious.
Several hours into the chilly night, we made our way back through the tunnel under the track. We stopped for a quick dance to Take Five, soulfully played by a busker on alto saxophone.
Jacob Zuma and a modest but immaculately turned-out entourage came down the steps and around the corner, headed towards tent town. He strode with what seemed to be purpose and determination. I looked into his widely spaced eyes for perhaps a second and a tight little smile crossed his pleasant face. I had a lucid moment. “Thank God,” I thought. “Someone’s going to go and sort it all out.”