GOLIATH vs THE DACHSHUND

Ndumiso Ngcobo holds up the Little Guy

IWONDER how many people followed the story of the Kenyan lion that was killed after nearly mauling a man to death.

Apparently Mohawk (so named because his mane resembled the hairstyle made popular by Mr T) escaped from Nairobi National Park. Folks from Isinya town spotted the beast and a crowd gathered to partake in some lion-gazing.

Mohawk grew agitated and pounced on one of the bystanders. Rangers got wind of the mauling, located Mohawk and expedited his departure to the land of feline ancestors via a hail of bullets.

Stories such as this always make my blood boil. It infuriates me that when an animal that has been kept prisoner all its life does what comes to it instinctively, we sommer just kill it. And don’t bother with “once it bites a human, it’s likely to attack humans again”. As opposed to what? I think lions that deserve to be shot are lions that don’t have the good sense to attack humans.

Anyone who hears there’s a lion roaming around free and rushes towards it probably lacks the most basic instinct of all creatures on the planet: friggin’ self-preservation.

We humans consider the chicken to be a pretty daft animal, no? But I bet every chicken in Isinya that got a whiff of the fact there was a lion on the eastern side of town, headed west. Not humans. They headed towards Mohawk and then shot him dead when he behaved like a lion.

I have always rooted for the small guy. That’s just how I’m wired. Because I’m a product of Bantu Education, I was instructed in a subject called Religious Education. My favourite story was David vs Goliath. And later on, when David grew too big for his sandals and started creeping up on Bathsheba, I was on the side of Bathsheba’s hubby, Uriah the Hittite.

This is why Baby Jake Matlala is one of my favourite boxers of all time. Whenever he fought guys so big their navels were in line with his eyes, I’d yell out, “Forget the face! Punch him in the groin, Jake!”

And this is why I’m such a fan of our constitution and all the laws that emanate from that beautiful document. I harbour this romantic notion that the constitution serves as a wall between the strong and the weak, allowing the minions to face up to the giants on equal terms.

Tragically, most of the time the big guys still trample on the small guys. Financial muscle can drag out court cases indefinitely until the small guy runs out of legal funds. Many years ago my own father had a car written off after a collision with a van belonging to Transnet. My dad’s lawyer told him: “Just settle with them. They’ll keep us in court for five years if needs be.” This is why, when that Kenneth Makate fellow told Vodacom to go to hell and send him a “please call me” when they arrived there, I celebrated like it was 1999.

I thought about all this while on my almost-daily 10km walk the other day. A tiny brown dachshund was roaming around one of the streets. He would trot up to a random gate and bark and growl menacingly to get the attention of the canine occupants. The imprisoned dogs inevitably took the bait.

One massive English mastiff type was so incensed at whatever the tiny dachshund was yelping at him that he started running around in circles at about 200rpm with frothy drool spraying out like a lawn sprinkler.

My dog vocabulary is limited to two words, “Woof!” and “Grrr”, so I can neither deny nor confirm that after the mastiff went berserk, the dachshund pranced away singing, “Neeny neeny neener! You can’t do nuthin’!” All I could think was, “The mastiff represents big business, the dachshund represents the ordinary man in the street and the gate represents the law.”

I must sheepishly confess that I have a completely selfish reason for always rooting for the small guy. You see, I stand hardly 1.7m tall in my Prince stilettoes. Throughout my life I’ve been the small guy in my circles. This is why I always made friends with much bigger guys. They served as my constitution.

My Small Man’s Syndrome kicks in at the most inopportune moments. I remember a road trip to Port Elizabeth with a bunch of friends over a decade ago. We ended up at a nightclub on Parliament Street in Central. I started an altercation with some local guys over an innocuous misunderstanding (probably because some tall guy was looking at me funny). And it was on.

One of my closest friends is Maswazi, 1.95m and 110kg of pure Zulu manhood, despite his name. We won the ensuing skirmish hands-down, due to my superior punching. And by “superior punching”, I mean that I stood on a chair behind Maswazi and threw punches through the space between his right ear and shoulder. It was a beautiful sight. And then I left the club with my constitution before the bouncers came to investigate.

That’s when he said something to me that I will never forget, which taught me something about the abuse of the constitution. I wanted us to go back into the club and “finish them off”. He looked at me solemnly and said: “If we go in there, one of two things will happen. One: we’ll get killed. Or two, we’ll kill someone.”

I lost all appetite for a good ol’ scrap. I can live with getting killed, if you know what I mean. But if we killed someone we’d end up in prison and what if I got a frisky cellmate, given my size?

But I digress. I guess my point is that I have a lot of sympathy for the small guy. That’s why I almost shed a tear when I saw Juju being carried out of the National Assembly like a slightly heavy Queen Cleopatra on a carpet. There should have been a gate between the Red Berets and the might of the speaker. E-mail lifestyle@sundaytimes.co.za On Twitter @NdumisoNgcobo

Tragically, most of the time the big guys still trample on the small guys My Small Man’s Syndrome kicks in at the most inopportune moments