The late, great Peter Tosh would have approved of the gig in the hall that carries his name in Khayelitsha, writes Steve Rothfuchs
The steady thud of reggae was the only thing that penetrated the pungent, wafting cirrus of ganja fumes. Even the 200 or so people – sweaty, stoned and bopping – seemed to be consumed by the clouds. By midnight, the crowd at Peter Tosh Hall had evolved into a bobbing, synergetic mass.
The great singer himself, gazing down from Rasta heaven with a spliff in hand, must surely have been beatific in approving the hall named for him in Khayelitsha. The atmosphere was too seamless and fluid to qualify as your average jol. There was no alcohol-inspired idiocy (alcohol was not allowed on the premises) and the only tobacco in sight was used as mix and wrapped in joints.
Weapons, as a sign at the entrance requested, were checked at the door. Males removed their headwear, as was Jah’s wont, and women donned theirs. (The sexist connotations of this rule are, at least for now, better left undiscussed.)
Rastas came from throughout the surrounding area, including distant parts of the Boland, to spend a night at The Gig. The air was thus thick with the scent of ganja and impepoh, a herb used like incense. At Rasta gatherings, these veritable clouds of religion are like oxygen itself. One need only breathe to share the experience.
The Gig’s ambiguous legality allowed for a place where people could arrive and peacefully – if vigorously – commune. Urban Rastafarianism remains a rightful and increasingly less obscure religion of the poor, young and male, true to its Jamaican roots.
They arrive in numbers at The Gig, whose pan-Africanism pulsated squarely in one of the poorest areas in the country. The labyrinthine backstreets of Khayelitsha, home to half a million people, was a surreal and subterranean world with an animated, dynamic and reckless air. Seemingly gestated from the bowels of the Cape Flats, Peter Tosh Hall was just four walls and a roof mounted on the sandy floor of the Cape Flats.
The route, especially at that time of night, was lost on me (I would have been especially useless on the way home). Though guided by a good friend as well as former resident, Khayelitsha nevertheless seemed a particularly precarious place after the sun went down. Draped in African neo-Gothic, you would almost have expected a Nosferatu tokoloshe to be hanging out with the other tsotsis at the local shebeen.
Yet any apprehensions disappeared soon after entering the hall. Although I was the only person of non-colour, hardly a casual glance was passed my way. Ironically, I was likely the only person present who had ever seen Peter Tosh perform live.
The hordes gradually arrived throughout the night and the music, pounding from huge speakers mounted on the walls, was the collective pulse of everyone present. Fresh arrivals were quickly sucked up into the dancing, perspiring vortex of flailing arms and flying dreads. That the near-deserted weekend streets of Cape Town’s central business district were so relatively close seemed absurd.