“Mealies! Mealies!” is his trademark marketing chant as he stumbles up and down the streets of the townships and villages around the North West town of Brits.
Now, as a direct result of this familiar chant, we all call the Zimbabwean immigrant “Mealies”.
I was having beer with a few neighbours at a shebeen when the man attracted our attention as he struggled down the street with his heavy load. He entered the yard and threw the bag of maize cobs on to the ground before choosing an upturned cooldrink crate as a chair and ordering a bottle of beer.
We got talking with the Zimbabwean, who was at ease about his illegal entry into South Africa and how he got around little things such as police raids. A plainclothes cop friend among us did most of the laughing.
Mealies came across as a remarkably hard-working man, who did all sorts of menial jobs in cities and towns around the country.
His first impression of us working-class South Africans was that we failed to identify so many opportunities that beckoned under our very noses, like buying mealies in bulk to sell from house to house.
Mealies left us agape as he related how streetwise Zimbabwean immigrants accumulated wealth back home by bartering stuff for livestock. For instance – and with apologies to comrade Robert Mugabe – in platteland Zimbabwe one could barter a Mandela T-shirt for a goat. A pair of farm boots could fetch a rooster, a hen, or even a whole flock of chicks.
Mealies took the opportunity to trace back his remarkable life, starting as a herdsman in a rural village in Zimbabwe. He then raised a little money and relocated to the outskirts of Harare, where he worked as … well, a Bible-punching, self-proclaimed modern-day prophet.
From this calling, Mealies raised enough money to cross the border into South Africa. Here he survived as a farmworker, gradually making his way from farm to farm, with his eye on Johannesburg and surrounding towns.
Mealies told us he had since decided to spend more time on the pumpkin and maize farms of Brits, where he had worked his way up to become a trusted tractor driver. The farmers here are rumoured to yearn to have the hard-working Mealies among their workforce.
That explains why he was elevated to foreman, against the wishes of 70 farmworkers, the majority of whom were born-and-bred South Africans.
This is a remarkable achievement for a nonresident, who, by his own admission, carries a fake South African identity document.
Johnny Masilela is a journalist and author.