Phansi ngamasarha, phansi!
Picture it. You’re a university student in 1990. It’s 39°C in the shade in Albert Park, Durban. Humidity levels are hovering around 200%. You’ve already downed about three litres of water, but there’s another thirst that you haven’t managed to quench. So, you walk out of your room, around the corner on St George’s Street, brave the cat-calling from the ladies of the night and get yourself two ice-cold Hansa ngudus (750ml quarts) and go back to your room.
About two seconds after pouring the amber-coloured sweet nectar of the gods into a glass tumbler, your door swings open and there he is. The resident sarha.
The word sarha is derived from the Afrikaans word saag, which is “saw” in English. It has evolved into a township colloquialism for an individual who loves to enjoy other people’s alcohol without ever buying any himself. Geddit? He saws through your booze.
In any case, now you’re that guy who, two seconds before, was anticipating a litre-and-a-half of brew going through your system but because of isarha, you have to accept that you’re having one ngudu.
And it’s not so much that sarhas are that way because they lack the resources to make purchases. It’s a little more cynical than that. To paraphrase the words of Larry the Liquidator, the character played by Danny de Vito in the movie Other People’s Money, there is only one thing that sarhas love more than beer. And that’s other people’s beer.
This is one of the reasons I often wish all my mates were women.
Sure, it’s a gross generalisation, but my experience with women has convinced me that they don’t muck around when it comes to money and paying bills.
I have seen calculators being whipped out after dinner in a posh restaurant and the words, “OK, who had the prawn salad and a glass of merlot coz that’s R197.95?”
Men are wussies when it comes to money. All in the interests of pointless bravado and point-scoring. It even gets so bad that we fight each other, insisting on taking R6,000 bills, knowing full well that we’re R20,000 behind on school fees.
There’s a fellow I have known for 17 years, from when there was a News Café off Musgrave Road in Durban. I have enjoyed a drink or
500 with him in this time. I have never seen him fork out more than R50 after a night out.
In fact, all his “business calls” just so happen to coincide with the arrival of the bill. After all, who’s going to interrupt a busy tenderpreneur pacing up and down closing a R10m deal over the small matter of the 18-year-old Glenfiddich doubles he’s been downing all evening?
There are many ways to deal with a sarha. There is the high road
The high road would obviously be to face the perp and tell him, ‘Look. You’ve got to start paying for your own drinks, china.” But that would just be awkward.
advocated by Clem Sunter and then there’s the weasel road. The high road would obviously be to face the perp and tell him, “Look. You’ve got to start paying for your own drinks, china.”
But that would just be awkward. So, as guys, we tend to take the way of the weasel. This usually manifests in excluding the sarha from plans that lead to Busy Corner in Ivory Park or an afternoon around the braai stand at a mate’s house.
However, one of the reasons that sarhas are so successful at their evil craft is that they possess winning personalities. No gathering is quite the same without their colourful stories. This is an essential trait in the arsenal of a successful sarha. He regales you with incredible stories. You supply the tipple. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Mutually beneficial.
Before you know it, someone is on the phone yelling over the music, “No, don’t turn right after the Engen.
Go straight until you see the Methodist Church and then turn left at the traffic circle. You’ll see the cars outside.” Three hours later you’re wondering how come there’s only three tots left in your bottle of Tanqueray.
It’s officially the festive season now, which is a big part of why I’m warning you about sarhas.
Tito has been reticent about just blurting it out, but we’re going through a recession and we’ve been at it for a while. This whole New Dawn/Thuma Mina hoax has been playing itself out for too long already. Money is tight. We all need chemical therapy, whether it’s delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol or ethanol in the form of a R600,000 50-year-old Balvenie or a carton of Ijuba Special sorghum beer.
Whichever way, all of it is costly. No-one can afford to just be giving it away to folks who just want to rock up and guzzle for free.