Strange blue night of an SA troepie

HE RETURNED – this he that was I, the I that was he – to South Africa and the army a free man, at least in certain respects, though “man” was probably the wrong word; he never felt it fully belonged to him, never came to like it.

The prospect of the army was of course vile. He had been in the United States, he had grown his hair, he had felt the freedom of water and movement and air. And yet it had been an absent kind of freedom, one that had no bounds, no shape, no contours, no prospects, a state of floating in the winds.

Now he has cut his hair – they will certainly cut it for him once he is in – and faces the looming day, a day he cannot later remember. But there has been a change. He has come to a decision, and feels free inside.

In his first six months the army beat him, pinched him, wore him down; he was depressed, subjugated, subdued. Now in his new existentialist mode he knows that if he frees his mind, nothing whatever can suppress him. They can do what they want, put him on permanent duty, deprive him of sleep, make him stand guard; cancel every one of his passes. But he has decided to be free.

By definition it is a freedom of the spirit; his body will become lighter all through those six months. This is part of his quest, so that he is flying, lifting in another way.

He has reported for duty, but has been reassigned. While his base camp will still be Doornkop, instead of going back to the store he will now be working at the Drill Hall in Johannesburg, the administrative headquarters for the region. It is in many ways the perfect, unimagined assignment. Every day he will be close to the heart of the city, in sight of life, the bustle of people and things passing beyond the walls on the roads and pavements.

His specific job is in the records office, and he has been seconded to a sergeant as his immediate boss. The office also houses a sergeant-major, a captain, a major, various PFs, some women staff workers and other poor troepies like him, though he is now no longer a roof.

The PFs for the most part are the usual: they drink too much, they gamble, they lose money and come asking for loans. Of course they are not allowed to do so; it is strictly against army rules, not to mention a taboo inversion of hierarchy. But the smart troepies will always lend them money, even a few rands at a time. Why? Because when you do, the PFs are literally in your pocket, they belong to you. You can always report them, they owe you favours.

In short it is a kind of blackmail – the ideal army situation. Beware, however, complacency; those same PFs will betray you at a moment’s notice if the opportunity arises. No such thing as loyalty here except the kind that can be bought, rather cheaply at that; what comes easily goes just as fast.

My sergeant, however, is different. He is of Anglo background, not Afrikaner, and his family were SAPs – South African Party before the war, followers of Smuts rather than the nationalist Malan – and that is why he will never be promoted further though he is, in the scheme of things, comparatively competent at his job. So, my sergeant talks to me, sometimes offers to share his “sangwiches”, as he calls them. But he too asks favours, chiefly to go into the city to buy Oil of Olay for his wife, because he himself cannot bear entering a chemist shop to buy women’s things. Though I have never heard of Oil of Olay, I am of course willing to take any opportunity, to be part of real life for an hour, at least in my mind, though what others see, especially the blacks who throng around me on the streets, is another question. There I am, a soldier, a hated soldier in my uniform, boots and blue beret, someone to fear and avoid.

Sometimes the small journey is even more fraught, for my sarge runs the Drill Hall bar, and there are often revenues to deposit, so I and another conscript are dispatched into town carrying money bags to the bank. We feel almost like cartoon figures holding little sacks with dollar signs marked on them, trying our best to look inconspicuous. We have no weapons, nothing to defend ourselves with; anyone could smash us over the head or stab us, so easy if only they knew.

My official job now is to go through the files on record and send out notices of call-up to those who have not completed their military service. There are any number of reasons why this might have occurred: an illness, a temporary deferment, someone managing to hive off without permission, someone on permanent awol.

As a general principle, I feel ambivalent about this duty. If some lucky bastards have managed to escape the army, good luck to them. On the other hand, many of them are apartheid supporters: let the bastards pay the price!

In effect, however, principles are beside the point, for the only rule that counts is that if I am caught letting any- one off the hook, it is DB for me, no questions asked. So I follow procedure. I read the files, find miscreants of various descriptions, and take their names to the sergeant: it is research of a kind. That is how I manage to call up one P Fourie – without realising he is the famous South African boxer Pierre Fourie, just then lining up for his world light-heavyweight title bout with the even more famous American Bob Foster.

Naturally, when conster nation breaks loose because of it (headlines in the newspapers; the brigadier has called in), Fourie’s service is “deferred” (forever), but I make myself scarce when he comes into the office to discuss it. That too is how I call up George, a Greek neighbour from down the street in Mons Road.

George is the biggest and best operator in the army I have ever seen, and within a short space of time he is parking his orange Alfa Romeo on the pavement outside the Drill Hall, and we are ferrying bets to the tote to place on the horses for the sergeantmajor.

Having won big once (perhaps George had arranged it, who knows), the sergeant-major now begins to lose more and more, and begins to creep around woefully, as if Uriah Heep had fused with Mr Micawber, always believing the next horse would come in.

In short order, George became a twostripe corporal, and persuaded me to take one stripe as well, though I had vowed to remain a private forever. The step-up gave us just that little extra freedom to gallivant even more. In effect, I was awol much of the time now – whenever, in fact, I wasn’t in the office or actively on duty.

Sometimes I would organise this semi-legally. Because my sarge ran the regimental bar, I became his barman, serving drinks when there’d be a special event on a Friday night. Afterwards, he would always sign a pass for me, so there I would be, heading home for the weekend, to appear miraculously back at work on Monday morning.

When I think of it now, I wonder how I did it – but that was the strange blue night of a universe we inhabited, with its own warped habits and altered laws. Such was my temerity that after a while, if I had guard duty on the weekend, I would park my white Ford Anglia, which I had inherited from my aunt, around the corner at a parking lot. And then, for those hours when I was not actually standing guard, I would sometimes drive home, despite my strong impression – perhaps accurate, perhaps not – that the statutory penalty for going awol while on duty was death by firing squad. Even when I was actually standing guard, like everyone else I would slither off, find a place to curl up and go to sleep. Or, I would bring my Dostoevsky, reading Crime and Punishment completely absorbed, suppressing any awareness that what I was doing was, in the eyes of the South African state, naturally a crime to be followed, if discovered, by severe punishment.

One Friday night, perhaps under the influence of my reading, the world opened up in another way, as if I were standing on a precipice. I was serving as barman as usual, and the guest of honour for a most ostentatious event was Magnus Malan, chief of the Defence Force and future minister of defence.

As the eminent guests gathered and circulated in their elegant dress uniforms and sashes, their wives preening on their arms, it felt like Russia somewhere in the 19th century. It was my Dostoevsky moment, Crime and Punishment par excellence. I consciously had the thought: I am this close and could shoot him. This could be the blow I strike against apartheid, the ultimate existential choice, and life, if I live, will be different forever. But of course I didn’t shoot anyone, not only because I wasn’t that mad or brave but because my rifle was somewhere else, and in any case they never gave us any bullets, and you could see exactly why.