A couple of months before the matric exams, I was at a Highlands Park soccer match one Saturday afternoon in June. After the match I was walking across the field and a black kid grabbed my arm. It was the kid I went to Germany with who I sat with on the train. He said to me “Its time to leave” I asked why and he said “we are going to burn the country now”.
I was taken aback by that but I didnt really understand.
On Monday morning our assembly was interrupted and all the kids were sent home.
Soweto and Alexander Township were on fire.
The tensions were incredibly high. There was a massive police presence. At night you could hear machine gun fire in Alexander Township on the northern boundaries of the city. People were scared. Everybody. Nobody knew what was going to happen.
I talked to Philemon, the worker at the apartment building were I lived. He said it like this…”I wont be killing you Neil, because I know you and you are a good person, but the boy next door, he will kill you, and I will kill his baas (boss)”
Everything had changed.
Where ever you went after that, shit was tense. You looked over your shoulder. You were less likely to walk around alone. It was not good.
And it was in that backdrop that we were getting ready to do our exams. Suddenly, the army seemed like it was seriously some place you didnt want to go. I mean we knew that you could get sent to the border, but that war seemed to be winding down. Nevertheless it was unsettling.
The African’s were angry and more free to express themselves. I got into an argument with a black man at the corner cafe one day. I don’t remember what started the argument, but it was most likely an argument over the pinball machine. All of a sudden he attacked me. He was a street fighter and he came at me kicking and punching. I had never been in an actual fight before so I did what I could to defend myself. I blocked what I could and punched and kicked where I could. I had rudimentary karate skills having been trained by Errol who was a black belt a little, so I hurt him on occasion with well aimed punches and kicks. I was really lucky though. He was kicking my in the nuts using his right foot, which swung up and to his left so he kept kicking me in my upper right thigh in the groin area. It turns out that I was wearing a bathing suit that day, and my nuts were hanging down the left side of the suit while my penis was on the right. He kicked my penis about 20 times hard. Finally I hit him in the throat hard enough that he backed off and two guys grabbed him and pulled him away because someone had called the police. I limped home and put ice on my penis.
The next day or maybe a day or two later, I was on a tour of the nuclear power plant with the school and I was in the bathroom taking a leak when the teacher came in. Mr Dal Bianco. I showed him my blue penis and he laughed his ass off. I really was very lucky…and he was too because I never called the cops or threatened him. I saw him again a few days later and we shook hands and made apologies….crazy.
After the rioting started, the country settled into what felt like a siege. The news from the townships was shocking. We were living in a war zone. You could see smoke and hear gunfire sporadically. It was very stressful.
My Life: A Memoir 