Hobo season in Zululand is entertaining

IT’S that time of the year when the pottiest members of our society decide it’s time for a winter holiday in Secunda-on-Sea.

Nowadays, because of climate change, Zululand nights are not much warmer than those in Carletonville, but it’s the difference between waking up feeling stiff and not waking up because you are a stiff.

I like chatting to these lost souls. For R10 and two cigarettes I get a two-hour real life story with more drama, tragedy, intrigue, lies and twists than a Hollywood blockbuster.

It’s way cheaper and more entertaining than going to see a movie.

The lazy ones

Japie is 54. He arrived in Zululand a week ago in an ore truck.

He says he once had a normal life with a house and a wife, and a box of Playboy magazines in the garage marked ‘Lawnmower Spares’.

He didn’t lose his job, but just quit.

He was a hoist driver on the mine until he got sick of it.

When his pension money ran out and the UIF stopped, his wife left him for the garden service man, so he moved in with relatives.

But they made him mow the lawn and wash the Rottweilers, and after a while he went to live under a bridge.

Japie says he’s happy now.

‘Why must I work if I can get by doing nothing?’

The crazy ones

Barend says there’s a constant noise in his head like a ‘cistern which doesn’t close properly after you’ve flushed the toilet’.

He’s trying to get away from the noise, that’s why he keeps moving around.

He also once had a wife and two daughters, but he doesn’t know where they are and they don’t know where he is.

Upon asking him what made him decide to live as he does, he blames the ‘voices’.

He doesn’t like being around people much and while sitting with him in the park, talking, he directs all answers to my dog, as if I’m not there.

He shared half a chicken wrapped in tin foil with the dog.

I asked him where he got the home-made chicken from and he told the dog that ‘a kind lady gave it to him’.

The religious nut

Graham gave up everything because ‘the end is near!’.

He says he is from ‘Bethel’ and then goes on to tell me how he spoke to Jesus just the other day and was informed that everybody is going to hell except donkeys, because they are holy animals.

Asking him where he gets food, he says ‘Jesus provides for all my needs’.

Jesus also made someone give him a brand new blanket.

And Jesus told someone else to give him a pair of Grasshoppers.

I noticed a bottle of Honey Blossom wrapped in brown paper next to him and wondered if it contained water or wine.

I didn’t talk too long to Graham because every minute or so he would spontaneously shout ‘Halleluja!’ at the top of his voice and afterwards couldn’t remember what he was busy telling me.

The war veterans

According to Sarel he was a ‘rekkie’ in Angola.

He operated on his own behind enemy lines.

He never wore boots and lived off snakes and beetles.

He also never washed, and still doesn’t because the enemy can smell a whiff of Palmolive from three miles away.

He says people with his skills are scarce and therefore the government is looking for him because they want him to assassinate Steve Hofmeyr.

He told me how he once had to fight his way out of a town because the ‘police commander didn’t like my face’.

At this point I realised Sarel was describing the plot from Rambo First Blood, so I gave him a last cigarette and left because I’d seen the movie.