Singing speed cop of Calvinia
The amazing Boeta Gammie, aka Akkedissie, writes speeding fines by day and hit songs by night
Chronicling apartheid’s underbelly
Pickled pie in the Karoo Christmas sky
A special boy
Boeta Gammie is a bit like that Portuguese white wine everyone used to quaff at summertime lunch tables: singing, dancing, guiding, snake-catching and traffic-fining – sometimes all at once.
Gammie, aka Akkedissie, aka Jan Isaacs, first caught our eye at the 2010 Williston Winter Festival, when he was on a bill that included groups like Flying Angels, God’s Beginners, Never Trust Boys and the aged but ever-rockin’ Tannie Grietjie, the Grand Dame of Garies.
Up stepped a sharp fellow in a silver suit, red satin shirt and the kind of two-tone shoes your mother warned you about. The dancers moved as one mass, drawn by a force we newcomers knew nothing about.
Before the man played the opening chord on his guitar, feet were already beginning to kick up dust as a prelude to the full-blown Nama Riel.
Tannie Grietjie had played her gig and was in a car about to leave. But when she heard the opening notes, she made her way back and began to boogie with the crowd. She went from 83 to 38 in 10 seconds flat.
Akkedissie (Little Lizard) was truly in the house.
His songs are catchy tunes in the Nama folk genre, and his words are all carefully crafted messages. As he played Ant Katriena, Die Honne Byt My (Aunt Katriena, the dogs are biting me), an old Willistonian said to us: “That’s the biggest hit of the Hantam this year.”
We are headed for an address in Calvinia West, and an appointment with Akkedissie.
Knock on the door. No reply. His neighbour, an elderly guy called Andries de Wee, says Akkedissie has gone to church and we’re welcome to wait for him over here, in his lounge. “I was his principal in Middelpos Primary,” says Mr de Wee. “He was always a special boy.”
Akkedissie pitches up like a dust-devil in a pink shirt. He leads us in his car (with personalised plates) to a little house.
“This is where the Akkedissie thing began – at my late father’s house,” he says. “I spotted a fat-bellied skink sunning itself on a stump in the front yard. I wanted to catch it, but it wriggled out of my grasp.”
He was horrified to find the detached tail twitching in his hand: “I thought I’d killed it. Then someone said no, the tail just comes off naturally and it grows another one. So I put out more sunning rocks for the lizard, caught flies for it to eat and set aside a little plate of water.” The lizard thrived.
The Wonderkroon violin
But let’s roll back the past to when little Jan Isaacs was a farm worker’s son growing up in the Hard Man’s Karoo. This child became a veteran of the farm school system and, by all accounts, a chatty boy. He played his first guitar at six.
“I was also dead keen on the violin, but I couldn’t lay my hands on one.”
He had his eye on the perfect soundbox, though. It was a tin of Lennon’s Wonderkroon Essence – a popular digestive medication. He emptied it into a jug and drilled holes in the tin so his dad couldn’t refill it – then took his hiding like a man.
“I added a stick, fishing gut and some hairs plucked from a horse’s tail. It worked well.”
He scratches out a tune on his childhood fiddle, which he’s kept intact all these years.
Gammie and the Riel
As a teenager, he arrived in Calvinia, entered his name in a draw for the first RDP house in town – and won. Soon, he was the most cheerful refuse removal man in Calvinia. Then he worked in a butchery before becoming a traffic cop, but it was the fat lizard that launched his music career.
“I wrote a song called Akkedissie. became a hit.”
Moonlighting as a radio DJ, he liked to feature a song by Tolla van der Merwe called Boeta Gammie. It became his nickname. And Akkedissie became his stage name.
Now we’re heading to the house of Johanna Jooste, known as the Queen of the
It
Nama Riel. Within minutes, the speed cop is crouched in the road, playing his guitar, while a jubilant Tannie Johanna is dancing the Nama Riel on a speed bump.
This marvellous dance forms part of a courting ritual, in which the man entices the girl towards him with his moves, and mock-fights with rivals.
A human dynamo
Then we meet Gammie’s lovely wife Audrey and their son, AJ Lee. It turns out that in addition to being a DJ, choirmaster, traffic cop, singer, storyteller, father, husband and lizard wrangler, he’s also the local SPCA man.
So when he shows us his award, a Department of Social Services initiative called Community Builder of the Year, no one in the room raises an eyebrow.
Snakes and biscuits
Gammie has taken on another self-appointed job, of town snake-catcher: “It’s terrible that snakes are being wiped out. We need to save them. They eat mice and rats.”
After seeing a harmless serpent stoned to death, Gammie chatted to nature conservation officials, read up about snakes and put the word out that he could be contacted when any reptiles needed to be caught.
Gammie does not ask for payment, but people often give him gifts such as biscuits.
Spread the light
We are invited to Gammie and Audrey’s house, for a special performance by AJ Lee, now a pre-teen.
The sound system is rigged up. AJ takes the microphone. Neighbours gather at the fence. And then from the doorway flows a nearly perfect rendition of I Will Always Love You. Dolly Parton and the late Whitney Houston would surely approve.