Talking to strangers, Mzansi style
Even if you’ve never been to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, you’ve read enough American literature and watched enough TV series to know that sacrosanct rule: no religious talk or politics at the dinner table or during happy hour at the Moose & Witch. Back here in Mzansi, we go to shebeens and braais specifically to get into heated debates about who is the Son of Man’s best friend south of the Limpopo: Shembe or Lekganyane.
Oh, you haven’t been to a shisanyama? OK, but I bet you can relate to finding yourself in a room with 58 other souls in those buildings I like to call The Great Mzansi Equalizers.
Yes, the licensing department, home affairs, police station or, in my case, the Ekurhuleni municipal offices. Even if you’re the CEO of the Mzansi chapter of the Illuminati, you would have experienced the ignominy of wasting four hours of your precious time only to be told “sorry, we’re offline” by a disinterested individual busy munching on amagwinya. This is when you realise that “don’t talk to strangers” is a foreign, Western concept that has nothing to do with us.
The last time I was stuck in a room with 33 strangers at the electricity department, I knew whose power had been cut off three days, whose meter box had been tinkered with, who lived with two grandchildren from Stanger, and whose son pays her bill from Ontario. In this country, we strike up conversations with absolute ease, exchange details on the spot, and move on. Many of us use tax consultants whose details we got from a guy we were having the Federer/ Nadal/Djokovic “GOAT” debate at the car wash in 2021.
Visiting places like England can therefore be a bit of a culture shock to a boy who grew up taking minibus taxis from Hammarsdale to Pinetown. Of the many idiosyncrasies of life in London was the discovery that one could purchase beer at Spar supermarket at 3am, open a can and drink it on the way home. I was so chuffed by this discovery, I walked into a pub in Greenwich Village, ordered a pint of Stella, walked out and found a park bench to watch the River Thames.
I was so caught up in the ecstasy of the moment I found myself switching to Mzansi mode and addressing a pleasant-looking gentleman of advanced age in a beige woollen cardigan, with a striking resemblance to Douglas Wambaugh, the character in the TV series Picket Fences. “You know, back home, sitting here and drinking beer could get us arrested.” After several “I beg your pardons” from him, to which I repeated myself louder each time to accommodate his clearly failing hearing, he hissed at me, “My hearing is perfectly fine! But do I know you?” His parting shot was to shake his pelican nose and turkey neck in righteous indignation at me. “They ought to teach you manners over there in Africa”, he said, before walking off.
At the time, I remember thinking that Wambaugh from London had pushed the rule to absurd levels, a view I still hold. On the other hand, however, there are situations that even someone like me, who appreciates the casual manner in which South Africans interact with each other, wishes we could sprinkle a pinch of Wambaugh dust. I had this very thought this past week. A technician came through on Sunday to fix our stuttering laundry machine.
Two days later, I received a WhatsApp message with a motivational message, accompanied by a biblical verse. Fair enough; my own fault. As part of my negotiation strategy to lower his fee, I may have moaned loudly about the cost of stationery and university registration fees in the middle of January. You know, Mzansi style. But where I drew the line is when he started sending me random
YouTube clips of posthumously released Zahara songs with lyrical IOUs to her former record label. So I decided to man up and do the right thing. Yes, I blocked him.
The question is, what do I impart on my children? The missus and I delude ourselves into believing we’re raising worldly global citizens. Like a typical South African family, we have inculcated a healthy sense of hysterical suspicion of strangers in our offspring. But it’s as confusing as hell for them when you’re having an animated conversation, with lots of boisterous guffaws, with an “uncle or auntie” at the boarding queue at King Shaka. Then when they ask you on the plane who that was, you get that bunny caught in the headlights look. If we’re being honest, I’m just as conflicted about it.
A few weeks ago, my friend Rams Mabote and I decide to have our longoverdue, first post-Covid pint of ale or seven. I was running unfashionably late and by the time I arrived at Busy Corner shisanyama in Ivory Park, he’d been waiting about one Castle draught long. In that time, a fellow had ignored about four empty tables around him, nominated Rams as his companion for the afternoon without any consultation, and taken a seat across him.
Mabote isn’t what you would call a shy fellow, so it was hilarious watching him squirm awkwardly as I joined them. Fortunately, he’d had the good sense to warn me via WhatsApp of the table invasion. I arrived, riding on my high Wambaugh horse, wasting no time in loudly telling him, “Let’s grab that table over there, I have something confidential for you.” Of course, there was nothing confidential, if you don’t count our political and religious views, which we shared with reckless abandon well into the evening.
I often feel that there isn’t enough to celebrate about living here. So I try to savour every little joy I get coming my way. One of those moments, is when I recently found myself seated opposite a fellow who looked familiar at the Slow Lounge at the airport. After wracking my brains unsuccessfully, I realised that he, too, was shifting uneasily. Finally, we pointed at each other simultaneously and went, “Remind me where…?” After a few moments we remembered that not only do we have a common friend, we spent an entire weekend together in Newcastle.
The flipside of it, of course, is when you receive random TikTok clips from your erstwhile housekeeper from four years ago.
While I appreciate the casual manner in which South Africans interact with each other, sometimes I wish we could sprinkle a pinch of Wambaugh dust