What gets on Jaco’s tits most about Potchefstroom these days is the black people. Swart mense. He does not like the way they walk around as though they own the place even though the town was founded by Voortrekkers in 1838 just after Piet Retief was murdered by the Zulus.
Everything here have been built by white people, by us. Black people has done fuck all. When the Boers arrives here the blacks is sitting on their arses watching a few cows wandering around. These people can spend hours looking at cattle although they haven’t got a fucking clue how to fix them if they is sick. Sometimes they blow smoke up their noses. Many of the black kids was used to die very young. Now because of modern medicine they are breeding like flies. What for? I want to know. What is the use? They worse educated now than they was under apartheid. Apartheid was not so bad as what everyone says, ask a black, many of them says they was better off before. Now their own people is robbing them blind. It’s a shame. The ANC crooks who runs the place is so fucking corrupt they is bleeding their own people to death. The blacks knows where they stand when the whites was in charge. There was respect. Now it’s fucking chaos with murders, hijacking and fuck knows what all.
One good thing I have bought a gun with the money Oom Frank gave me but even that is a hassle. I must take a test and I must have a permit. More worser than that I must have two hours of instruction from a kaffer policeman who can’t hit a watermelon with a shotgun from five metres away. I want to tell this fat poes so-called policeman that I am shooting since I am five and I don’t need any help from a policeman straight from the bush, thank you. Also I have to write my ethnicity on the form. Why? I thought we was all equal now. Maybe they don’t want too many whities buying guns but I keep my mouth shut. You have to. Now you can’t even shoot on your own farm without a permit but no worries the black people can come and snare your buck at night or steal your sheep and the police does zip. Or they steal. The black people steal anything they can. They kill our cattle out on the veld and cut it up right there and sell it to butchers and they just jack up your bakkie on bricks and take the wheels. And God help you if you leave your radio in a car for two minutes, it goes like shit off a shovel. Democratic shopping. And another thing is getting me the hell in: my cousin hasn’t answered me. He’s too fucking important, he’s turned into a sort of Engelsman with a medal from the British government for his success in business. If you ask me, he got the medal for giving money to politicians more like licking their arse. He’s a ware piepiejoller. He’s a Member of the British fucking Empire. When I go to England to play rugby ten twelve years ago the place was so cold and grey and shit I couldn’t stand it. The whole fucking country is more or less the size of a sheep farm in the Karoo anyway. Still they call themselves an empire, how do you like that. And now my cousin who is also a Retief on his mother’s side is so up his own arse you will think he was born in Buckingham Palace, not Jo’burg. Jewburg. You can’t even say that no more. Oom Frank’s dad was a commie also. Even Oom Frank hisself is really a commie deep down. He visited Thabo Mbeki and Oliver Tambo up in Lusaka with other big cheeses. It was in the papers the Citizen which was a pile of shit.
Jaco is sitting in a pub with Jannie and Stoffel.
He sends his cousin another email. It starts Please Oom. But Oom Poes MBE is busy or he has blocked his emails.
Potch has gone to hell. The streets is dirty, the university what was built by Afrikaners for religious reasons is now full of blacks. They eat their free lunch at the cafeteria and fuck off immediately. One or two writes papers, Ph.Ds, total crap nobody knows what they is about not even the blacks who writes them. They piss just about anywhere and they drop all their rubbish straight onto the street. They cut branches from the municipal gardens for firewood even jacarandas so the botanical gardens looks like a bomb fell on them. Sometimes they have kak art shows there what nobody likes but they look at masks and Bushman painting and shit rugs which is made from potato sacks and then their faces looks like they has a mealie up their arses as they are trying to say something which shows they are trendy. Or tries to pretend they knows what this bullshit means.
Jaco’s phone rings. A researcher from Cape FM Radio tells him that a great white has eaten someone in Fish Hoek, Cape Town. The researcher says that there will be a debate about whether these sharks should be shot or tagged if they are seen near the bathing areas. They want Jaco to come down to Cape Town for the big debate on Cape FM Radio. As it happens Jaco would love to shoot a great white, the more the merrier in fact. It’s them or us, take your pick. It’s fine for these tree-hugger poephols to say the great whites must be protected. Great whites are bastards and he should know he’s been inches away from death. The researcher says, ‘That’s interesting, but please don’t come on quite so gung-ho.’
Jaco has no idea what she means. He agrees to go – there’s a fee and a plane ticket. He is in the Bourbon Street Pub, where he and some of his mates meet most days at lunchtime; he pays up, he’s only had four Windhoeks, maybe five, and one dop of Commando brandy, who’s counting. He leaves a message for Flip Steenkamp on his phone to tell him he’s off to Cape Town.
‘Jammer ou maat ek moes Kaapstad – toe gaan vir die radio en televisie oukies.’ I must go to Cape Town for the radio and television people.
Cape FM. He hasn’t been on that for a while, not since he came back from the States. Meanwhile four or five people has been killed by great whites and he has not had one call. Not one. Nitzs.
It’s eleven o’clock. He climbs a little unsteadily into a bakkie they lend him and drives out to the farm to pack. His mood is completely changed. He sings ‘Ring Of Fire’. He wishes he could sing good. Johnny Cash is his favourite singer, you can’t beat him. He’s so happy he even offers two black women a lift in the back of the bakkie. He never gives the black men a ride if he don’t know them.
As he turns off onto the dirt road to the farm his phone rings again. Shit, it’s Cousin Frank. He pulls over.
‘Ja, Oom, thanks for calling.’
‘Listen, Jaco, I am off to the Addo Elephant Reserve with my family. So I can’t meet you now but I can speak on the phone. Maybe in a couple of days when we are in town.’
‘No, that’s only fine because I am op pad to Jo’burg to get the plane now right this minute. I am going to talk about sharks for Cape FM.’
‘Okay, well I won’t be able to see you at the house as I have my daughter here and so on. We will be back in Cape Town in a few days. You know Lucinda was in rehab and she must have peace and quiet? So when I am back I will call you and we can meet somewhere to talk. Basically I don’t think you should do it. By the way I think your shark days may be a diminishing asset.’
Jaco has no idea what a diminishing asset is but he guesses it is not good.
‘Thanks very much, Oom, baie dankie, hoor. Thank you. I am very grateful for all what you has done for me. And we will talk about the other dinges.’
‘That’s fine. But don’t ask me for more money because I won’t give it to you. And listen, whatever you do, don’t say yes to the Scientology business until we have spoken.’
‘Ek verstaan, Oom,’ he says in Afrikaans to demonstrate his sincerity. ‘I understand.’
‘Jaco, nog ’n ding, did they put up the gravestone for Tannie Marie?’
‘Ja, they did that. It looks great. Beautiful job. Just by the chickens’ house.’
‘She was good to me. Okay. Got to go.’
Jaco feels his anger rising. Why does my cousin think I will make trouble at his place disturbing Lucinda? What is a fruitcake as far as I know. And was I asking for money? No I was not, even though I am a little short. His cousin paid a lot for a gravestone, nearly a hundred thousand. Fuck all to Jaco. All his dosh is from England: a hundred grand is nothing to him, the rand is up to shit. What about giving something to those who are not under the earth?
At the farm Jaco bursts through the fly screen and hastily packs some clothes in an old suitcase. None of the family, thank God, is at home. They don’t like me. They want me to fuck off. I’ll show them.
A maid makes him a flask of tea and gives him something to eat for the journey. Her name is Hester. He fucked her once or twice when he was drunk, but we don’t talk about that. He thinks she can still be in love with him.
Now she gives him boerebiskuite, which is rusks. He hates them. In California he liked cheesecake. Jewish cake. Still, very tasty … No question, Jews knows how to make money and cake.