Nineteen forty-eight was a great year in South Africa’s history. Princess Elizabeth had recently toured and we’d all stood beside the road and waved flags and caught a glimpse of our future Queen as she rode past in a long black open Rolls-Royce.
It was the year South Africa got white bread, an event which excited a lot more people than catching a glimpse of the future Queen of England.
History will tell of how the election of the Nationalist Party, who still hold power in South Africa forty years later, was the turning point when the Afrikaner once again became the dominant force in the country. History is bound to treat this event with great pontification, showing how the struggle between the two white tribes of Africa reached its climax. In fact the turning point came, not because of an ideological clash between white and white, but because the Nationalists promised to bring back white bread to replace the healthier wholewheat loaf which had been introduced during the war. An already overfed white minority elected to vote on its stomach. Within a week of being elected, the Nationalists kept their promise and white South Africans derived great satisfaction from knowing that for once they had a new government which kept its word. Meanwhile, the black South Africans prepared to bend their backs to the sjambok and for the invention of a new game where they voluntarily fell on their heads from the third storey of police headquarters to the pavement below. It was curious that the whites, renowned for their sporting prowess, never learned how to play this game and there isn’t a single instance of a white South African becoming proficient at it. Nobody ever got their Springbok blazer for this new national game, even though a lot of very good heads played it with great courage.
Hymie, in a grim pun, said the election of the Nationalists to power was one of the crummiest moments in the history of any people.
Nineteen forty-eight was the year South Africa lost all hope of joining the brotherhood of man. Yet the black man held his humiliation and his anger at bay. It was not until nineteen fifty-two, four years later, that Chief Lutuli of the African Congress and his counterpart, Dr Monty Naicker of the Indian Congress, led the black and coloured people in the first defiance campaign where the words, ‘Mayibuye Afrika!’ became the cry of the black man asking for an equal share of justice and dignity for himself and his family.
Private schools have a habit of carrying on regardless, oblivious of social or political change. Had it not been for a boxing incident which led to the establishment of a Saturday night school for Africans, the Prince of Wales School would certainly have remained smugly wrapped in its cocoon of privilege and white supremacy.
The incident happened during the ten-day Easter break in nineteen forty-nine. Hymie’s parents decided to spend Jewish passover with relatives in Durban. Hymie elected to stay home and invited me to spend the short holidays with him. I wrote to Mrs Boxall who wrote back to say Doc was well so I agreed. The cook and the rest of the staff would take care of us and one of the chauffeurs would drive us the forty miles from Pretoria to Johannesburg every day to work out in Solly Goldman’s gym.
Solly protested but we insisted he be paid extra for the holidays. Hymie’s entrepreneurial sense extended to all things. He’d go to Barclays Bank in Yeoville on Saturday morning and demand a brand new five-pound note. Keeping it unfolded he’d place it beside the week’s entry in a large leather-bound ledger. On Sunday morning, after I’d worked out we’d go into Solly’s ramshackle office and Hymie would open the ledger where he had written in his neat, precise hand: Paid to S. Goldman five pounds for services rendered. He would make Solly sign the ledger and remove the five-pound note from the page. Then they’d shake hands solemnly like a couple of little old men, whereupon Solly would get his revenge by stuffing the pristine five-pound note carelessly into the back pocket of his dirty grey flannels.
Solly was a very natty street dresser but in the gym he always wore a sweatshirt and the same old grey flannels, tied around the waist with a frayed brown striped tie.
‘Why do you go to all that trouble when he just shoves it into his back pocket?’ I once asked Hymie.
‘So he’ll stick it carelessly into his back pocket. Every week my stupid ritual and his defiance reminds him not to take us for granted. Every time he sticks it into his back pocket like that I know he won’t.’
On the third day of the Easter holidays Solly asked whether he could see Hymie and me in his office. He pointed to two old cane upright chairs and, pushing a pile of papers out of the way, sat on the corner of a desk covered to a depth of six inches in evenly distributed paper. In addition to boxing bills, unopened letters and general paper clutter, there was a bronze cup about ten inches high green with verdigris, a telephone and a large desk blotter added to the mess. The telephone sat on top of the desk blotter which was covered with coffee rings and hundreds of names and numbers. If anyone had ever replaced the top layer of blotting paper Solly’s gym would have ground to a halt.
‘You’ve had an offer of a fight for Peekay in Sophiatown next Saturday night. It’s not my decision, mind, but it can’t do the lad no ’arm.’
‘Sophiatown! You mean the black township?’
‘Yeah, I’ll admit it’s a bit unusual, it’s a young black bantam who’s just turned pro.’
‘Solly, are you crazy? Peekay’s an amateur, he can’t fight a pro!’
‘The black kid’s not from up here, he isn’t registered in the Transvaal yet. Technically he’s an amateur here. Anyway, if the fight takes place in a native township, who the hell’s going to know?’
‘You should know better than that, Solly.’
Ignoring Hymie’s remark, Solly appealed directly to me. ‘This fight would do you a lot of good, sharpen you up nicely for the South African Schools Championships an’ all.’
‘Christ, Solly, you’re off your rocker!’ Hymie continued. ‘You find a professional bantamweight, probably in his twenties, and you want to put him against Peekay who’s fifteen years old?’
‘That’s just the point, my son. Peekay wouldn’t be mismatched, the black kid is only sixteen. Three professional fights. Would I mismatch Peekay? Don’t insult my intelligence.’
‘Hey, hang on, wait a minute both of you.’ I turned to Solly, ‘There’s more to this isn’t there? First we’re fighting a black man in a black township, that’s not allowed for a start, then an amateur is fighting a pro …’
‘An unregistered pro,’ Solly interjected.
‘You haven’t answered my question, Solly,’ I repeated.
‘It’s not what you’re thinking, Peekay, there’s no money in it, there would be no purse for the fight.’
‘What about the book?’ Hymie asked.
‘No betting niver, Gawd’s onna!’ Solly folded his hands on the desk in front of him and stared down at the untidy blotter.
‘We’re waiting, Solly,’ Hymie said.
‘It’s Nguni, he wants the fight… Mr Nguni.’
‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’ I asked.
‘He’s a black fight promoter. Owns the game in the black townships.’
‘So what’s that to us?’ I asked.
Solly looked up at me. ‘He reckons if ’e was to match you with this Mandoma bloke it would be a t’riffic fight, that’s all.’
‘If you’ll come clean with the real reason you want this fight we could discuss it. What is it, Solly?’ I asked again.
Solly threw his hands up. ‘Okay, it’s business. Mr Nguni brings in the blacks, I train ’em, we share in the action. When you’ve got fifteen percent of fifty black fighters on the black township circuit it’s a nice little earner. I don’t honestly know why ’e wants this fight, I admit it don’t make a lotta sense.’
Hymie spoke as though he was thinking aloud. ‘The black guy is squeezing you and now you’re putting the hard word on us. I can understand that. But even if he is making book, and you say he isn’t, that’s not a big enough reason. He could lose his boxing promoter’s licence if he got caught.’
‘Hymie’s right, Solly. There has to be a better reason. Nguni is either a fool or he’s taking an enormous risk for a reason we don’t know about. Either way, we wouldn’t want to get involved. By the way this Mandoma, is he a Zulu? I had a nanny named Mandoma.’
‘Buggered if I know, until they earn me a quid they’re just black monkeys wearing boxing gloves,’ Solly said absently.
Hymie’s chauffeur was waiting in the Buick which was parked on a vacant lot a block away. As we walked to the car Hymie kept shaking his head. ‘I don’t get it; this Nguni guy would have to be crazy to take the risk of putting on a fight between a nigger pro and an amateur white guy in a black township. The cops would have him on about ten counts. I mean what’s the angle? A fifteen-year-old schoolboy boxer and a sixteen-year-old black bantamweight is not exactly big time, even in a black township.’
‘You haven’t figured it out have you?’ I said quietly.
‘No, not yet, but I will.’
‘Don’t bother, it’s got something to do with the people.’
Hymie spun around and grabbed me, ‘You’re right, Peekay. The Tadpole Angel!’
We turned into the vacant lot to find the Buick shining like a great black beetle among the cut down forty-four gallon drums half filled with solid tar, piles of bricks and the accumulated debris that seems to furnish vacant city blocks. The chauffeur was talking with a tall, well-dressed African and stepped forward as he saw us approaching.
‘Well, we’re going to know what the scam is in about thirty seconds. Look who’s here, Hymie.’ The tall black man straightened slightly as we came up. He was the tall African who always led the people in the chant to the Tadpole Angel.
‘This man he want speak you, baas,’ the chauffeur said to me.
‘I see you,’ I said in Zulu to the African who towered above me.
‘I see you, Inkosi,’ he replied and shook my extended hand lightly, barely touching it. Politeness required that we talk about other things before coming to the reason he wanted to speak to me. This is the Zulu way.
‘The weather has been hot and the rains have not come, where I come from the crops will be thirsty.’
‘It is so also in my place, the herd boys will need to drive the cattle far from the kraal to find grazing and the river will be dry but for a few water holes.’
‘What’s he saying?’ Hymie chipped in.
‘Nothing yet, we’re still talking about the weather.’
‘Your kraal is a far place from here?’
‘Many, many miles, Inkosi, my kraal is near Ulundi in Zululand.’ The royal homesteads of three out of the four great Zulu kings, Dingane, Mpande and Cetshwayo, had been near Ulundi and the chances were that the tall man in front of me was a high-born Zulu.
‘It is a long way from your wives and children, it is not good to be away from them.’
‘It is the custom, Inkosi. For the white man’s pound the black man must leave his family. These are hard times and I have few cattle and land.’
The time had come to introduce myself. ‘I am Peekay,’ I said softly, extending my hand for a second time.
‘I know this, Inkosi. I am Nguni.’ We shook hands a second time, this time first in the conventional manner and then by slipping the hand over the corresponding thumb to grip it in a kind of salute which is a traditional African handshake.
‘I see you, Nguni.’
‘I see you, Peekay.’ It was audacious of Nguni to call me by my name but I didn’t mind. I felt as though he had known me a long time anyway.
‘Is it about the business of the boxing in Sophiatown?’
‘It is so,’ Nguni confirmed softly.
‘Can we speak in English so my friend can share this talk?’
Nguni laughed, showing a brilliant smile. ‘My English she is not so good,’ he said in English.
Nguni’s English turned out to be very good and Hymie seemed relieved that he could share in the conversation.
‘It’s about the Sophiatown business,’ I said to him.
‘Ask him, no wait on, I’ll ask him myself …’
‘Hymie, this is Mr Nguni,’ I turned to Nguni. ‘This is my best friend, Hymie Levy.’
‘How do you do,’ Nguni said to Hymie, instinctively not extending his hand but bowing his head slightly instead.
‘Howzit!’ Hymie said, not yet used to the idea of meeting a black man on equal terms. ‘Why did you ask Mr Goldman if you could arrange a fight with Peekay?’
Nguni looked surprised. ‘It is always so in boxing, to ask the trainer?’
‘I’m the manager, it is me you have to ask.’
Nguni threw back his head and laughed. ‘We knew this thing, but also if your trainer he say this thing cannot happen I do not think you will listen?’
‘What did you offer him to make him agree?’
‘It is not necessary, he has boxing business same like me.’
‘How many boxers have you got, Mr Nguni?’
‘All,’ Nguni replied simply.
‘You’re not bullshitting me, you control all township boxers?’
Nguni turned to me and said in Zulu, ‘Your friend has no respect, Inkosi.’
‘I apologise for him, Nguni. He acts only like a white man from the city.’ I turned to Hymie. ‘Turn it up.’
Hymie shook his head. ‘Sorry, Mr Nguni, no hard feelings hey? This fight you want… it’s just that it doesn’t bloody well make sense.’
Nguni turned to me and spoke in Zulu. ‘I will have to explain it in Zulu, this man I think he does not understand the ways of the people.’
‘Mr Nguni’s going to explain the reason to me in Zulu, it’s evidently pretty complicated,’ I said to Hymie.
‘You are Onoshobishobi Ingelosi,’ Nguni began, ‘this is very powerful among the people. The people see you box only against the Boer and always you are winning also. The people think you are a great chief of their tribe, the Sotho think this, the Shangaan think this, the Zulu also, all the people,’ he paused, ‘I think this also. It is witnessed that you can make the stars fall from the heavens.’
‘It is not true, Nguni. I am not a chief of the people,’ I said quickly.
‘Who is to say what is true and what is not true. The people know these things, it is not for you to say, Inkosi.’
‘It’s about the Tadpole Angel, we were right,’ I said to Hymie.
‘There is a woman who has thrown the bones and made a fire to read the smoke,’ Nguni said suddenly. ‘The bones say Onoshobishobi Ingelosi who is a chief must fight him who is also a chief among the people.’
‘A witchdoctor? She said this?’
‘This is so, Inkosi.’
‘This chief. Who is this chief I must fight?’
‘He is the great great grandson of Cetshwayo.’
‘Pssh! Many such Zulus exist. Cetshwayo has surely many, many great great grandsons.’
‘He is the one,’ Nguni said quietly. The Zulus do not inherit titles but it is known who has the blood. ‘One day he will be a chief.’
‘Why is it necessary to fight this person who will one day be a chief?’
‘The people must see if the spirit is still with you. You are a man now, the people knew the spirit of a great chief was in the small one, but now they must know if it is still in the man.’
‘You mean if I lose to him who will be a chief, then I will no longer be Onoshobishobi Ingelosi?’
‘This is so, Inkosi. The woman says this is in the bones and in the smoke.’
‘Then I will lose,’ I said suddenly. ‘That way the legend will be dead.’
Nguni shrugged his shoulders. ‘It is not for me to say, Inkosi. You will only lose if you are not Onoshobishobi Ingelosi.’
‘But if you can arrange the fight it will be good for you as a promoter?’
Nguni looked down at the palms of his open hands which were almost yellow, the colour of Sunlight soap. ‘This is true but it is expected I should do this thing. Have I not led the people to all your fights?’
‘This is true, you are the one,’ I said, ashamed of myself.
‘Then you will fight?’
‘First we must talk to Hymie, he is my brother in this matter.’
‘I understand, it is right that it should be so.’
Hymie was clearly impatient to get a translation and when I told him what had been said he shook his head. ‘Christ, it’s witchcraft, Peekay. This is nineteen forty-nine!’
‘Ja, I know, but it might as well be eighteen forty-nine. Some things don’t change.’
‘So what do we do?’ he asked.
‘We fight, we have no choice.’
‘I don’t understand? Why?’
‘It’s difficult for you, but the people believe in the Tadpole Angel. I’ve never said this before, but it’s a symbol, a symbol of hope. There is a story amongst all the tribes that a chief will rise who is not of them but who will unite them against the oppressors.’
‘It is so, Mr Levy,’ Nguni said.
‘And this is the test to see if you’re kosher?’
I laughed despite myself. ‘Hymie, I didn’t start this, it just happened. I don’t want it any more than you. If the young Zulu chief Mandoma gives me a hiding, it’s all over. But I can’t walk away without the fight, that would make a fool of the people all these years. I couldn’t do that.’
‘What a shit of a possie to be in, but it’s not a good enough reason to throw the fight.’
‘You know me better than that, Hymie.’ I turned to Nguni and offered him my hand, ‘Mr Nguni, tell the people I will fight this one who will be a chief.’
‘I will tell the people,’ he said.
I set about preparing for the fight with Mandoma the Zulu bantamweight with all the vigour and purpose I could command. While I longed to be rid of the concept involving the Tadpole Angel it was quite impossible for me to bring myself to the point where I would throw the fight. I had settled myself to win so often that, in my mind, a single loss in the ring would have meant that I would not become the welterweight champion of the world. A childish concept perhaps, but nonetheless one which was bound with steel wire through my resolve. I had even taught myself never to consider the consequences of losing a fight. Too much cross-referencing of consequence robs the will of its single-minded concentration to win. While this fanatical resolve never to be beaten may have been a sign of immaturity, the sophistication I brought to the task of winning I was to see adopted by sports psychiatrists throughout the world in later years. The mental exercises adopted, first behind the Iron Curtain and then worldwide, in an attempt to win that endless cold war called the Olympic Games or any of the other master race events, were all familiar to me.
The greatest difficulty confronting me with the Mandoma fight was information. We knew nothing about the Zulu bantamweight. I always felt awkward going into a fight with an unknown opponent. It was like entering a dark room having been told to beware of the trap doors. If you know everything there is to know about an opponent your mind will do the fighting for you, triggering the body mechanism to do the things it needs to do a fraction faster. It is this fraction that makes for a winner.
The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, often well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated. The mind is the athlete; the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further or box better. Hoppie’s dictum to me: ‘First with the head and then with heart’ was more than simply mixing brains with guts. It meant thinking well beyond the powers of normal concentration and then daring your courage to follow your thoughts.
Saturday arrived. The fight was to take place in a ring set up in an African school soccer field in Sophiatown. We arrived about four-thirty on the outskirts where Mr Nguni was waiting for us.
The roads were dusty and it had been a hot day. Dust clung to the whitewashed walls of shanties and shops and everywhere there were advertising signs, for Gold Seal Cooking Lard, Blue Light Paraffin, Primus Stoves, Drum Tobacco and Sunlight Soap. There were a few trucks on the road and we saw one native taxi and several buses crowded to the point of bulging, though hundreds of people were on bicycles. The chauffeur kept an almost constant hand on the horn, which only seemed to add to the sense of excitement. As we drew closer to the school, people were lining the dusty narrow streets which seemed to weave haphazardly in among shanties built from every conceivable kind of material. Mr Nguni requested I turn my window down so the people could see me. Blushing, I complied. ‘You are very famous in this place, Peekay. The people have come for many, many miles to see you.’
‘Why are they all women and children?’ Hymie asked.
‘It is the men who will see the fight. The women they have come to see the Onoshobishobi Ingelosi.’
‘Christ, I had no idea. You’re more famous than Johnny Ralph, Peekay.’ Johnny Ralph was the reigning heavyweight champion of South Africa and a household name among whites.
Mr Nguni laughed. ‘Johnny Ralph, they do not know who is this boxer in Sophiatown.’
‘Mr Nguni,’ I said, ‘you must tell the people I am not a chief. I have no power. You must tell them that the Onoshobishobi Ingelosi is only a name, a name I was given at the prison in Barberton. It was for nothing.’
Mr Nguni turned to me in the back seat. He was clearly shocked. ‘I cannot do this thing, Inkosi. It is not for me to say who is Onoshobishobi Ingelosi. Tonight we will see, we cannot change this thing, it is in the bones and in the smoke.’ He turned back to the chauffeur to give a direction.
‘Shit! He believes it himself,’ Hymie said out of the corner of his mouth.
We turned into the school grounds and were met by a sea of Africans. The Buick was forced to inch its way through the crowd. It was an hour and a half before the fight and the soccer ground was totally full, with only a narrow aisle leading to the ring in the centre. There must have been ten thousand spectators with more pouring through the school gates.
‘I thought you said it would be a fight in a school,’ Hymie said to Mr Nguni. ‘I thought you meant a school hall or something. The whole of Africa has come to see the bloody fight! What if there’s trouble, a riot or something?’
‘No, no! No trouble here, Mr Levy. The woman, she will speak to the people.’
‘You mean the witchdoctor?’ I asked.
‘It is she, Peekay, she will speak to the people.’
Hymie grinned nervously, ‘It’s got to be the first time a witchdoctor has ever announced a fight. Are you sure you’ve told me everything there is to know about you, Peekay?’
I grabbed him by the shirtfront, ‘Don’t you start now!’
We were taken to a shower block to change. Solly Goldman was waiting for us. ‘They’re doing it kosher orright, they’ve got Natkin Patel, the Indian referee from Durban to handle the fight. Blimey! ’Ave you see the crowd?’
I changed and we walked along to the school hall for the weigh in. Hymie looked at the scales, they’d been borrowed from a local trader and were the kind on which bags of mealie meal are usually weighed. ‘What’s the bloody difference, we’re going to fight him anyway, even if he’s over the limit,’ Hymie said.
‘It is very important, Mr Levy. The people must know everything is correct,’ Mr Nguni said.
Standing in the middle of the school hall beside the scales were a dozen or so Africans all neatly dressed in suits and ties. Though the suit parts were not always of the same parentage, they were clean and pressed. Standing to one side was Gideon Mandoma, the Zulu bantamweight I was to fight.
I broke away from Solly and Hymie and walked over to him and extended my hand. ‘I see you, Gideon Mandoma,’ I said in Zulu.
Gideon Mandoma took my hand, barely shaking it. He did not look up as he replied, ‘I see you, Peekay.’
‘I hear you come from the Tugela River Valley. It is where my nanny came from when I was a small infant, her name was Mary Mandoma, was she from the same chief’s kraal perhaps?’
Gideon Mandoma looked up at me, his eyes wide, a shocked expression on his face. ‘The one you are asking about is my mother. She is dead now five years.’ He pointed a finger at me. ‘You are the one of the night water?’
It was my turn to be shocked. I stood in front of the Zulu fighter completely stunned. I was going to fight Nanny’s son, the infant she had had to leave to look after me. It was I who had stolen the milk from her breasts when she had been hired to be first my wet nurse and then my nanny.
Gideon was the first to recover. ‘They say you are a chief, but must prove you have the spirit of Onoshobishobi Ingelosi. I know I am a chief and have the spirit of Cetshwayo and before that of Mpande, Dingane and even of Shaka the king of all the kings.’ His eyes grew suddenly hard. He had waited a long time and now he would fight the one who had taken his mother from him so that he had not known her until he was six years old. It was not meant to be like this, but for him there was now an added reason to win. To the Zulu there is no such thing as coincidence. I knew this would be a certain and powerful sign for him. Gideon Mandoma had a reason greater than my own to win. For the first time in my boxing career I was afraid. I knew Mandoma could beat me.
We weighed in in front of Solly, Mr Nguni, Natkin Patel the Indian referee and the other Africans. Both of us made it into the bantamweight limit, though I had five pounds to spare and Gideon was right on the limit.
The sun was setting as we walked out to the ring and already the air smelt of wood smoke and coal fires. It was still bloody hot and I’d been drinking water all day. I wondered about Mandoma, if he’d been right on the limit he’d have stayed off liquids, and we were fighting a six rounder, my first ever. It was the compromise Solly had reached with Mr Nguni, the difference between the three rounds of an amateur fight and the ten of a professional. It struck me that if I could keep him moving around the ring, the black fighter might just dehydrate enough to weaken in the last two rounds.
An old woman wearing a tired looking fur coat over a shapeless dress was haranguing the crowd from the ring. Her high-pitched voice carried to where we were standing on the steps of the school building. As she came to the end of her talk the crowd responded in thunderous applause. Two men entered the ring and lifted her and two others standing outside the ring took her from them.
‘It is time. We must go now, please,’ Mr Nguni said, and he led us down the narrow human corridor to the ring, following a rubber electrical cord which connected with a microphone. Gideon Mandoma and his seconds had preceded us by a few yards and the whole football field thundered to the roar of the crowd. We entered the ring almost together, though from opposite sides, and the human roar increased. Hymie and Solly were my seconds and Hymie moved over to the black fighter’s corner to check the glove-up, while a large Zulu in a mismatched suit with the jacket straining at its single brown button came over to do the same for us. I could feel the sweat running down from my armpits as Solly taped my hands and gloved me up.
Mr Nguni held his arms up and slowly the crowd grew silent. The microphone on a stand had been lifted into the ring and his voice echoed around the field as he addressed the crowd. First he introduced the referee, pointing out that he was an Indian who had come from Durban especially for the fight. The point of his neutrality was not lost on the crowd who gave Natkin Patel a big hand.
Mr Nguni then told the crowd that they all knew why this fight had been arranged. It was not for him to talk about it anymore. The talking would now be between the two spirits and the stronger would win and the people would know what they could think. The crowd was completely hushed as he spoke. He then introduced Gideon Mandoma who, arms held high, moved to the centre of the ring to huge applause. Mr Nguni held his hands up for silence and then asked the crowd to sing ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ i Afrika’, the African national anthem.
Ten thousand voices sang in perfect harmony and I shall forever remember the beauty of the moment. The yearning and love Africans put into this anthem is a hugely emotional experience. I was hard put to keep my concentration. Gideon Mandoma had the perfect reason to win the fight and now had been given the greatest inspiration any boxer ever had.
I was having trouble keeping the steel trap in my mind closed. Images of Nanny swept through my head. A sweet, dark woman who gave me unstintingly of her love, who never once mentioned the child torn from her when her breasts were still firm with milk. Gideon Mandoma had a right to hate me and hate is a good friend in a fight.
Next Mr Nguni called me to the centre of the ring, and, to my surprise, the applause was just as thunderous. As I stood there he began the chant of the Tadpole Angel, his voice ringing out to the silent crowd. When it came time to respond with the chorus ‘Onoshobishobi Ingelosi… shobi… shobi… Ingelosi’, ten thousand voices rolled like thunder. I stood in the centre of the ring, the tears rolling down my cheeks. It was perhaps the greatest single moment of my life. The people wanted to know. This was not a fight between black and white, it was a testing of the spirit, the spirit of Africa itself. Two kids, not fully grown, on a hot summer evening that smelt of wood smoke and sweat, would decide if there was hope for white and black and coloured, for the people of the great Southland.
‘Mayibuye Afrika?’ Mr Nguni shouted.
‘Mayibuye Afrika! Afrika! Afrika! Come back, Africa! Come back, Africa!’ the crowd thundered back.
Handing the microphone carefully through the ropes, Mr Nguni left the ring and Natkin Patel called us over. He had deep pock marks over his face which was almost precisely the colour of good curry, silly as that comparison sounds. His steel-grey hair was brylcreamed flat across his head, the parting absolutely straight with not a single hair crossing the shiny road of his scalp. He was dressed in a white shirt, cream flannels and white tackies and looked more like a cricketer than a boxing referee. We both looked down at the ground as he spoke.
‘You are listening to me, please. When I am shouting break you must break, at once. When a knockdown is coming I am counting to eight, then I wipe your gloves also and then you continue. No heads, no elbows, you must fight clean or, by golly, I am giving you penalty points. Good luck, boys.’ He patted us both lightly on the shoulders. ‘Shake hands, when the bell is sounding please to come out fighting.’ Our gloves touched lightly though neither of us looked at the other.
I walked back to my corner and sat down. The bell rang. ‘Go get him, Peekay,’ I heard Hymie say as he pulled the stool out of my corner. I jumped up towards a blur of brown coming towards me across the ring.
Mandoma was coming at me fast, throwing everything. His punches landed on my arms and my gloves, he had come at me so quickly that he was able to keep me in my corner and I was forced to pull him into a clinch. The ref called for us to break as I managed to swing him around; the sun was in a perfect position, low and dying fast. He turned right into it, blinded for the split second it took for me to put a hard straight left bang on the nose. It was a good punch and a trickle of blood ran from one nostril. I would be bloody lucky to pull that stunt again, the sun wouldn’t last more than another round and he’d probably wised up already. Mandoma was enormously aggressive, prepared to waste a dozen blows to break through my defence. Towards the end of the first round he caught me under the heart and I thought I was gone. He packed a left hook like a charging rhino. I was keeping him away by jabbing my left at him. They were all scoring shots but none of them were hurting him. The bastard was terribly strong. I spent the first round looking for bad habits, but apart from the fact that he was throwing too much leather it was going to be difficult to fight him on the back foot. The bell went for the end of round one and already I was sweating profusely.
‘Take a look at Mandoma, he’s leaking,’ Hymie said.
‘Christ he hits hard, I’m going to have to keep him moving, keep him off balance.’
‘Only for the first four rounds. Look at him.’ Hymie was right, Mandoma was in a lather of sweat and with the sun so low it seemed even hotter than before.
‘Watch and see if he drinks in round four,’ I said to Solly as the bell went for round two.
‘Just box him, my son, keep him moving, coming to you,’ Solly said quietly.
Mandoma came at me just as hard in the second round, and while I took most of his punches on the gloves and arms, I realised that if he kept it up like this he’d hurt my arms and weaken me that way. I needed to make him miss more but he was fast as blazes and I had all my work cut out staying out of his way. I landed enough good punches to be ahead on points at the end of the second round, but there wasn’t much in it and I was using every bit of ringcraft I knew to stay out of trouble.
We came out for the third and again he came at me with the leading hand and crossed over with a right hook that caught me on the side of the jaw. Quite suddenly I was on the canvas, sprawling on my back. I could see two of Mandoma as he retired to the neutral corner and then the ref began to count. I knew I’d been hit hard but felt nothing, my head was ringing and I was using all my concentration to hear the count. At six my eyes suddenly cleared and at eight I was back on my feet. It had been a beautiful punch and I knew I couldn’t take too many others like it and survive. Patel wiped my gloves and made me count the three fingers he held up to me, and then six. It was all valuable time and my head had stopped ringing. Finally, he told us to box on.
Mandoma was after blood and came in too fast and carelessly. This alone saved me. If he’d waited to get set for another big punch he would have taken me. He wanted the knockout and his eyes were telegraphing his punches. Halfway through the round I was feeling strong again and I began to work to the old plan. Ignoring his head I went for the body, under the heart, in the soft area under the rib cage and into the solar plexus. He’d throw a wild left hook or a right uppercut and I’d follow in with two or three hard blows to the spot. Nothing fancy, but I could feel my knuckles digging deep. If I could stay away from the big punch and if he kept sending me a letter every time he prepared to throw a punch, I’d eventually get him. I’d been in against fighters most of my life, Mandoma had a bigger punch than any I’d been in the ring with before, and he was bloody fast. But I thought he was becoming predictable as most fighters do.
Had it been the usual three round fight the decision may well have gone to Mandoma. By the fourth round he had started to slow down. He’d been chasing me for three rounds and throwing a lot of leather, the heat had to get to him. But he hadn’t taken water, just rinsing and spitting. So I kept going low and hard and toward the end of the fourth round I heard him grunt as I got three solid punches home. It was beginning to go like clockwork. Mandoma pulled me into a clinch and on the break hit me with a beautiful left lead. I thought I’d run into a train. I went down, my arse actually bouncing on the canvas. I couldn’t believe it, I shook my head but it wouldn’t clear. At the count of eight I was only just able to stand. Mandoma had me, one half decent punch and I was history.
The ref asked me if I was all right and when I nodded he wiped my gloves and told me to box on, this time not asking for a concussion count. I knew I had to hang on until the end of the round. Patel wouldn’t stand for more than two knockdowns. That is, if I could have gotten up a third time. ‘Dance, klein baas, your feet, you must dance, only your feet can keep you out of trouble,’ I could hear Geel Piet clear as anything. To my enormous relief the bell went for the end of the fourth.
‘He’s got a huge punch in both hands, lad, but he’s slowing. I want you to box him close so he can’t put a big one in, keep working at his body, he has to be feeling it.’
‘You could have fooled me,’ I panted. But my strength was coming back. I rinsed and spat, the water cool and delicious in my mouth.
‘Christ, he’s taking water!’ Hymie said. ‘The bastard’s taking water!’
The first twenty seconds of the fifth round were the hardest yet. Mandoma threw everything at me, but I wove and ducked, back-pedalled and kept out of the way. He threw a left lead and I crossed over with a right, catching him under the eye and opening it up. His nose was still bleeding and while I hadn’t hit him much in the head, I’d kept the nose bleeding with a regular jab right on the button. Nothing influences a referee more than a liberal splash of blood. Mandoma threw another left hook, telegraphing it from a yard away and I moved in and had him on the ropes with an orthodox straight left followed by a straight right to the head. Two copybook punches which, when timed correctly, carry a lot of zap.
The black fighter’s hands came up to defend his head and I moved in close as his gut area opened up and in went a Geel Piet eight, right where the water he had swallowed would be. I knew the pain and the nausea would be terrible and he gave a loud gasp as the flurry of punches went home, and tried to chop my gloves away with his own. I was ready with a right hook which caught him flush on the jaw, coming up with all my strength behind it. While his punches had bounced me off my feet, mine bounced him hard against the ropes and then he sunk to his knees, both his gloves resting on the canvas. Blood from his nose dripped onto the grey canvas as I retired to a neutral corner.
At eight he rose, but I could see he felt bad and I moved in and began to pick him off. I could have come in swinging and tried to finish him, but a fighter like Mandoma digs deep for his courage and can always find that one last big punch. I was almost certain that he was a spent force and wouldn’t recover between rounds fast enough. I’d get him in the final round. The bell went and I got to my corner to be met by Hymie and Solly, both shouting at me.
‘Ferchrissake, why didn’t you finish him off,’ Hymie screamed. ‘His gut, his gut is gone, you could have taken him, now he’s got bleedin’ time to recover,’ Solly said.
‘He only needs one more big punch and he can take me out,’ I protested. I was following a Geel Piet plan and not a Solly Goldman plan. Geel Piet would have wanted me to box him off his feet, not punch him. ‘You must always go safety first, klein baas, box, box, box, never fight.’
Solly regained his composure. ‘You’re right, son. I’m glad one of us is still thinking.’ Whether he believed it or not, he knew he had to restore my concentration and was aware that in his excitement he’d acted foolishly.
The bell went for the final round. Mandoma, desperate for strength, had taken water again. For the first minute of the last round he came hard, but his timing was out and he wasn’t putting his punches together properly. I stayed away from him. Flicking lightly at his cut eye. Keeping the blood coming, waiting for the chance to move in. He hit me with a right cross which, had it come earlier in the fight, would have put me down. Now it lacked authority. It was time to move in. I worked him into his own corner and went to work under his heart. Three solid punches before he managed to pull me into a clinch. He was too spent to stay out of trouble. After each break I’d move him back into a corner and set to work on his body. I couldn’t believe he could still be standing. I’d never hit anyone as often or as hard. But the bastard wouldn’t go down. I had to put him on the canvas again. I started to hit the black fighter hard on the nose and his gloves went up and opened him up down below. The Geel Piet eight became the Solly Goldman thirteen, the first time I had ever got a thirteen combination together perfectly. Mandoma gave a sort of a gurgle and then a sigh and fell. He was totally exhausted, his eyes were open looking at me but his body could no longer respond and he was unable to get his head off the canvas. He’d been boxed off his feet. His heart hadn’t died it just couldn’t hold him up on its own. Mandoma was the greatest natural fighter I had ever seen.
I had never been as exhausted in my life. Not only had I never boxed six rounds before, I’d never taken as much punishment. I tried to walk with dignity to the neutral corner as Natkin Patel started to count Mandoma out.
For the first time in the fight I heard the crowd, who were going absolutely wild.
‘Onoshobishobi… shobi… shobi… Ingelosi!’ the chorus rolled like thunder across the football field. On and on it went until the microphone was pushed back into the ring and Gideon Mandoma’s seconds had helped him to his corner. I walked over to see if he was all right and to shake his hand.
‘You are the great chief, you are him who is Onoshobishobi Ingelosi,’ Mandoma said, and standing on still trembling legs he held up my hand. The crowd went wild.
‘It is you who are a chief, your spirit is still with you, we will be brothers, Gideon Mandoma.’
‘I see you, Peekay. We have taken the milk from the same mother’s breast, we are brothers.’ I held up his hand and the crowd roared their applause.
Mr Nguni was back at the microphone and after some trouble got the crowd to quiet down. I had returned to my corner and was sitting on the pot while Solly was rubbing me down and Hymie held a fresh towel to drape over me.
‘We have seen what we have seen. You must all go to your homes, tell the people that the spirit within the Onoshobishobi Ingelosi lives also in the man. You have seen it with your own eyes and it is so,’ he said simply. He turned and called Gideon Mandoma and me over and we stood next to him with our arms around each other. ‘We have seen the spirits fight, in this we are all brothers,’ Mr Nguni said and the roar of the black crowd closed the proceedings.
I touched Gideon on the shoulder and returned to my corner. It was just beginning to move into darker twilight and the smell of wood smoke and coal fires came to me again. In the distance a train whistled, cutting through the hubbub of the departing crowd. All around us black faces were grinning and some would stretch out and touch me lightly as though I were a talisman. But most looked at me and I could see that they believed. The legend was cast deeper and would spread further. I wondered if it would ever end. I suddenly realised that every bone in my body felt as though it had been broken.
With my arm around Hymie’s shoulders for support we walked through the corridor of black bodies on our way back to the school. Black hands touched me, wiping sweat from my body and wiping it onto their faces.
‘There you are, what did I tell you, lads, didn’t I say it would be a t’riffic fight?’ Solly said as we entered the school. ‘Blimey! Twice there I thought you was gone, my son. It’s good to know you can take a punch. Lemme tell you, I never seen an amateur throw a perfect thirteen-punch combination before. It was worth coming’ just for that.’
‘Cut it out, Solly, can’t you see Peekay’s hurting,’ Hymie cut in.
‘Not as much as the swartzer, my boy,’ Solly said.
When we got to the shower block I sat down and started to cry. It was as though I saw the years ahead. The pain in my body had somehow sharpened the focus of my mind. I saw South Africa. I saw what would come. Something had happened to me; Hymie was talking but it was as though his voice were in an echo chamber. No, not an echo chamber; in the crystal cave of Africa. His voice echoed across the tops of the rainforest, down the valley just as the barking baboons had done. ‘I’ve found it, Doc. I’ve found the power of one!’ Hymie’s voice was saying. The cave about me was shining crystal, the crystal became my pain and the pain sharpened as the light grew more intense. My concentration focused down to a pinpoint. The sadness I felt was overwhelming; sadness for the great Southland. In the whiteness, in the light, was a sound, as if the light and the sound were one. It was the great drum and voices of the people. They came together as an echo.’ Mayibuye Afrika! Afrika! Afrika!’ Come back, Africa! Africa! Africa! My life, whatever it was to become, was bound to this thing; there was no escaping it, I was a part of the crystal cave of Africa. And in the pain and confusion I wept, I could see only destruction and confusion and the drum beat; boom, boom, boom, and the light began to fade and Doc entered the cave, his hair white as snow, tall as ever, ‘You must try, Peekay. You must try. Absoloodle!’
Hymie put his arm around me. ‘There’s more to this Onoshobishobi Ingelosi than I know about, isn’t there, Peekay?’
‘Christ, I dunno. I just don’t know,’ I sobbed.
‘Don’t worry, Peekay, no one can hurt you. No bastard can hurt you while I’m alive!’
‘Doc’s dead!’ I heard my voice saying as though it were totally divorced from my body.
That evening when we returned to Hymie’s place in Pretoria there was a message to call Mrs Boxall.
‘Peekay, we have sad news, the professor has disappeared! Gert, and all the warders not on duty, and half the men in town are in the hills looking for him, but he’s been gone two days. Now they say there’s little chance of finding him alive!’ Her voice faltered and then broke as she began to sob. The line from Barberton was crackling, fading in and out and Mrs Boxall’s sobs grew and receded. ‘Please come home, Peekay, please come quickly, you’re sure to find him, you went so many places together,’ she wept.
Hymie forced me to sleep. ‘We’ll wake you at two a.m. and a chauffeur can drive you the two hundred miles to Barberton, you’ll arrive by sun-up.’
I knew where to find Doc. I knew that somehow he had done the impossible and had reached the crystal cave of Africa. Doc would be lying on the platform, his arms across his chest. In one hundred thousand years people would find the cave again and would climb up to the magic platform and they’d say, ‘What a strange coincidence, that looks just like the shape of a man made of crystal. A very tall, thin man.’ And then I cried myself to sleep.