On a drab Braamfontein street corner is a small store called Grayscale, specialising in graffiti paraphernalia and alternative streetwear. Gini Grindith, as he is known in the hip-hop community, mans the counter. A graffiti writer who has not led a religious life before, he has decided to become a Muslim.
”A lot of people that I’m associated with musically and artistically converted to Islam in the mid-Nineties,” says the 29-year-old. ”I think a big influence was from [American rapper] Rakim. But I’ve always been on my own mission.”
That mission began with the juvenile delinquency that scarred his adolescence, leading to estrangement from his family. ”I guess they thought I’d be a fuck-up my whole life so they let me go,” he says.
He took to the outlaw lifestyle of a graffiti writer, which, ironically, turned him into the entrepreneur he is today.
Grayscale, he says, hardly covers its overheads. His real bread and butter is derived from various commissioned graffiti jobs he and a few fellow writers get each month.
Grindith was born in Namibia and grew up largely in Johannesburg. He was not christened or baptised, and is converting ”out of respect” for his Muslim girlfriend Zayaan Khan, whom he has known for six years.
”I’ve never needed a religion to guide me on what’s right and wrong. Everybody knows that instinctively,” he says. ”The one thing about Islam is that it is one of the purest forms of understanding. With Christianity you’ve got all these different sects that have branched off. Islam knows its base and roots. It’s not something that branched off something that branched off something else.”
I mention the Nation of Gods and Earths, the movement of which Rakim is a member, but Grindith is dismissive. ”I just have an issue in general with people from the States,” he says. ”They’re very egotistical. That’s why these guys feel entitled to start their own sects of Islam because they feel they are on some next shit which they’re not.”
What does hold a lot of sway in Grindith’s life is esoterica such as Zechariah Sitchin’s The Earth Chronicles, which tell an unconventional history of the solar system and the Earth, and of ancient celestial beings. But Islam’s emphasis on the family and teetotalism (he neither smokes nor drinks) also appeals to him.
Khan’s family has been his primary source of Islamic teachings and they helped through his first Ramadan. Khan regards his ”conversion” as a way of making things easier for her and Grindith. When he is ready he will declare before an imam that he is submitting his life to Allah.