Urban legends, made in the US of A, have a uniquely South African flavour, writes Arthur Goldstuck
After the 1994 elections, South Africa began to resemble most other countries in the world of urban legends. In other words, people stopped believing everything they heard.
Of course, that meant they could still believe half of everything they heard. And believe it they did.
Oh, none of that end-of-the-world nonsense that required a shopping list of baked beans and candles and a laager in the veld. People do prefer reality, and many of the bizarre urban legends that emerged from the 1994 elections had more to do with the unreality of those days than with sheer gullibility.
If there is anything that takes reality to extremes, it is the crime wave that has steadily intensified since 1994. And it is reflected as dramatically in the official statistics as in the hidden psyche of the nation’s urban legends.
The latest manifestation of this psyche is not even a “Made in South Africa” urban legend, but it captures so many nuances of our peculiar society, it is difficult to imagine it could have applied to any other country.
It is an urban legend that also takes advantage of a technology that was only just beginning to rear its head back in 1994: e-mail. Most people learning the legend are doing so either by e-mail or via that other time- honoured method of rumour transmission, the dinner party. But most of the passing-on takes place via e-mail, and usually to a mailing list comprising the culprit’s entire electronic address book. The result is that the tale spreads like a virus, and is equally infectious.
It is usually headlined:
“THIS IS HAPPENING – HIGHWAY SAFETY ALERT – Gang member warning!!!”
It continues no less luridly, loaded with the combination of anonymity and authoritativeness that is so common to scare legends:
“A police officer working with the DARE programme has issued this warning: if you are driving after dark and see an oncoming car with no headlights on, DO NOT FLASH YOUR LIGHTS AT THEM! This is a common gang member `initiation game’.
“The new gang member under initiation drives along with no headlights, and the first car to flash their headlights at him is his “target”. He is now required to turn around and chase that car, and shoot at or into the car in order to complete his initiation requirements.
“Make sure you share this information with all the drivers in your family!
“Please share this with whomever you want.”
The result, on the Internet, has been the near-jamming of company e-mail systems as everyone with access, or even a hint of access, tries to follow that last instruction.
In that sense it is no different from a stream of warnings about viruses that are unleashed when you open an e-mail message with a certain subject matter. The warnings always come with a lofty- sounding organisation as origin, and a plea to pass it on to whomever you know as the punchline.
Real-world urban legends are more subtle in their punchlines, spread more slowly, and thus last far longer. The Legend of the Deadly Headlights used to fit into this category. It first began circulating in the United States early this decade, in response to the growth of gang activity in inner cities, and a rash of drive-by shootings in east Los Angeles.
Its arrival in South Africa coincides with a rebirth of the legend in the US, where e-mail is ensuring its renewed popularity. This time round, South Africa is plugged into the global village, and local conditions mean that the legend fits precisely into our jagged psyche.
Its rapid spread here has also meant a rapid response by the media and their investigative reporters. The reporters, in turn, have been met by a police response that, for the first time in recorded reportage, incorporates an understanding of urban legends. Several police representatives have in fact described the rumours as precisely that, “urban legends”.
At the same time, the police have assisted in providing a better understanding of urban legends, by giving the reporters a context in which to understand the absurdity of the story.
Superintendent Wickus Holtzhausen, for instance, told Cape Talk radio station that a powerful rumour had been doing the rounds that 12 innocent people had already been shot as a result of the above rite. Clearly, no one could hush up a dozen killings of that nature.
Many of the legends that have grown in the fertile fields of a crime epidemic are not of the kind that reporters query with police, and tend not to require dire warnings that erupt into electronic chain letters. As a result, they enjoy a quieter but longer life, and serve several useful social purposes.
Take The Legend of the Hapless Hijackers. A well-to-do housewife from a well-to-do suburb was driving along one of the countryfied roads north of Johannesburg in her new 4×4 luxury vehicle. Mindful of the many tales of hijack hell, she hears the alarm bells begin jangling in her head when she sees what appears to be a dead body in the road ahead.
Briefly regretting the fact that dirt may get into her tyres, she swerves off the tar road, on to the gravel verge, through a ditch, and back on to the tar well beyond the body. With shaking hands she calls the flying squad on her cellphone to tell them what she had seen.
An hour or so later she receives a call back from a police detective: “Tell me, lady, did you notice anything unusual?” asks the detective. “Besides the body in the road, I mean.”
“No, I was too frightened to notice anything,” she stammers. “What was I supposed to see?”
“Well, lady, there were three men lying in the ditch you drove through. They all had AK-47s. You killed all three.”
The legend is by no means fresh out of the box, and began emerging not long after hijacking became the single most high-profile crime in South Africa. But today it plays a powerful social role, aside from making for great dinner party conversation, which is where it probably originated.
More importantly, it enables ordinary citizens to feel that hijackers do not have total control over their mobility. In a strange sense, it offers a sense of confidence that the scourge can be beaten. (Just make sure you drive a 4×4, goes the more snobbish moral of the tale).
For others, it provides some sense of comfort to believe that all hijackings are co-ordinated by a well-run syndicate that plunders to order. That is a far more palatable idea than the general perception that the crime around us is merely a reflection of growing chaos. And it leads to urban legends like The Tale of the Choosy Hijacker.
A woman is hijacked in her BMW, and becomes the unwilling passenger of a businesslike man who is driving her off to some unimaginable personal armageddon. Next thing his cellphone rings, and he nods a few times before turning to the woman.
“It’s your lucky day,” he says. “Your BM is blue. They want a red one.”
He stops the car, flags down his accomplices in the car behind, and gets back in with them – leaving her to drive away unscathed.
And then, inevitably in the wake of numerous faked hijackings, is the legend of The Hijacking That Never Was.
A Capetonian motorist is doing about 200kph down the N2 when, suddenly, a traffic cop leaps from behind the bushes to flag him down. Seeing 200 is not a nice number to have to admit to in court, so the guy speeds up. Within minutes, he is pursued by a back-up team of cops, their sirens blaring.
A few kilometers further the offender rounds a sharp curve and, with only about a 30 second lead, drives into the bushes, leaves the car running and jumps into his boot.
As he hears the cops pull up, he starts banging on the boot from inside, screaming for help. The officers quickly let him out, and fall hook, line and legend for his claim that he was hijacked just outside Cape Town and forced into the boot.
In South Africa, why shouldn’t they believe him? And why shouldn’t any of us believe that someone would come up with a scam like that?
An in depth exploration of the American origin and spread, from the early 1980s to 1998, of The Legend of the Deadly Headlights can be found on the World Wide Web at