SUNDAY AFTERNOONS KWAMZOLI CANNOT BE JOHN 14 FOR LONG
Tessa Dowling

The Sunday Independent
February 11 2007

It was a peaceful late Sunday afternoon kwaMzoli. No, let me be honest - it was actually vrek boring. (It is hard to translate "boring" or "boredom" into African languages - Zulus and Xhosas are so seldom bored they use isithukuthezi, which more properly refers to "loneliness".

The irascible Sotho languages use the verb tena, which also means "annoy". Laid-back township dwellers live too close to each other ever to be lonely and, being too bored to be annoyed, they just borrow from the boring English and say bora).

Anyway, people were not chatting, they were declaiming. In full swing was Bra V, who had put on so much weight during the festive season that the buttons on his Madiba shirt popped off one by one as he spoke.

"Eish!" sighed cutely curvaceous Fezi, who was new to town and had a strangely laconic air for one so young, "He is so John 14!"

Thomas the German development aid worker looked puzzled. "John 14? Isn't zat from ze Bible? How can Bra V be John 14?"

Fezi was frank. "Because he is boring!"

"Who is boring?" Bra V demanded loudly, stepping over the people his lecture had put to sleep as he approached the table from whence came the insult.

Bra V's eagerness to impress with his knowledge overcame his offence. He took up a professorial stance (only slightly marred by the beer he was waving) as he explained the scriptural reference to the politely bemused Thomas.

"Eish, it is too bad," he complained. "You can't find a good sermon these days. Everywhere you go, it is John 14 - 'In my Father's house are many mansions...' He sucked his stomach in and pulled up his pants as if they were falling off him. "S'true - the same illiterate sermon everywhere. They want to impress that they are educated, but each and every one of them really, really only knows WAN (one) verse from the Bible, and that is John chapter 14 verse 2!"

Suddenly a lightbulb went on in the head of Thomas the German, but it was promptly extinguished by a defective generator in Mpumalanga and consequent Eskom load-shedding in Guguletu.

"Ah, I see! A boring thing is John 14 because township people are hearing zat verse from ze Bible too many times. But zat is not boring, it is fascinating!"

Sis' Dikeledi was so bored by this time that she had actually resorted to trying to fill in a sudoku puzzle with her nail varnish. Sis' Gloria had put Bra V's buttons over her eyes and was peering at everyone like a blind teddy bear with hair extensions.

"Bahlobo bam, metswalle, bangane - vriende, comrades!" We were almost relieved to witness Bra February staggering into the middle of the restaurant, tapping his comb onto his bottle to call us to attention.

"I have a question! Do you think our police force and our security ouens are doing a lekker job?" He spat on the ground to let us know what he thought. "Why do I bring the subject up now?"

He snorted and beckoned to his side Sis' Dikeledi (Tears), who appeared to be crying even more copiously than usual.

"The reason is that this beautiful lady has just had her TY (= Tony Yengeni = 4x4) stolen from outside this very establishment! In front of two security guards, nogal!" Dismay and sympathy rose up from the crowd - "Hawu bantu! Yeheni!!"

Now readers, you need to know this: A car to a customer at Mzoli's is like garlic to the minister of health, vokken important, so there was lank (surfer slang: great) sympathy for the girlfriend.

Everyone rushed out into the street to see whether their umsholozis (new-model Toyota Corollas, so named because their fronts look like Jacob Zuma's forehead and uMsholozi is his clan name) and even izikorokoro (the kind of jalopies that only intellectual whiteys drive by choice) were still okay and "on show". It was one helluva uproar. (According to the Reader's Digest South African Multi-Language Dictionary and Phrase Book, none of our African languages differentiates between "noise" and "uproar" except for Tswana, which has the lovely word magawegawe for "uproar" and the softer leratla for "noise").

Bra February called everyone to order by blowing on his 2010 vuvuzela and shouting out "Crime! Ubugebungu!" This is a subject that is never John 14 to South Africans, so the magents and the maleyidis started their usual undermining of the police force and their more lowly brothers, security guards.

"Izayoyo!" (township slang: those who run around madly) "Useless pitsa boys!" (for the City Police, whose uniforms look like those of pizza deliverymen) "Dimpja tsammuso!" (Pedi: government dogs).

"You all wiet mos I know a lot about crime," shouted Bra February above the uproar. "And I know that our bosware (Sotho-Afrikaans: brothers-in-law) have one helluva a hard job and get paid fokol (Xhosa and Afrikaans: nothing).

"And most of our security guards are French-speaking, so they don't know what the vok is going on. So I just wanna tell yous that I am starting a new kind of security company. If you think someone's planning to burgle your house, just call me. Then me and my gang, we arrive and do the job professionally, before the blerrie amateurs get there and make a mess. We mos painlessly chloroform you, then do the job quickly and efficiently. We even leave a courtesy choccie on your pillow saying "You has been robbed".

Bra February seemed so excited by his scheme he started to proclaim like the preachers on the third-class railway carriages. "Broers en susters, never again will you find that your laptop is gone with your PhD, but your broken CD player is still there! Oh no! Never again will you find shit on your floor and broken windows. My security company will clean you out cleanly. We will open your safe safely."

There was a roar of applause from the crowd as Bra February explained how we would get points for the number and type of crimes we got his company to do, and a special loyalty card that would enable us to buy our stolen goods back at discount prices from Cash Crusaders. Sis' Fezi looked strangely impressed. "You know," she whispered to me, "he's a big ihalahala (Zulu: bullshitter), but he is certainly not John 14!"

Tessa Dowling is director of African Voices, a multimedia language development company. African Voices has no links with Bra February's security company.