Kaburu: Sudsy Malone’s and the washing of the soul

Written by Kaburu
Wednesday, 05 October 2011 18:23

Because God hates me, I spent quite a few years in the United States in pursuit of a piece of paper that said I might know what I’m doing. These years were passed in the Midwest amidst a haze of bad beer, chewing tobacco, oily pizza and thousands of girls named, of all things, Becky. If a degree means learning how not to do something, then my degree is Ivy League, darlin’. Because what I learnt pronto was how to lie, and lie but good.

I met folks who had never left their county, never mind their state, and I was terribly impressed by both their fundamental grasp of world events and historical acumen. Which is why I got away with describing myself as Dutch.

“From Holland. You know, Europe? No, no, not Europe, Nebraska. Oh, never mind.”
Besides the fact that all you had to add onto the word “Dutch” was “man”, and I’d be nailed, the good folks of Ohio bought it hook, line and sinker.
Now, what Afrikaner, you may well ask, would deny the Springbok? Well, the way I went on you’d swear I’d never even heard about rugby, never mind the “Sprungbox” or whatever ya call ’em.

You’d be amazed how quickly you learn to lie when you’re a Dutchman in foreign climes. And it was 1987.
But to my utter astonishment, when the horrible truth concerning my origins was finally exposed, most Americans asked me which country in South Africa I was from. Now irrevocably cornered, I realised that if they knew about the “homelands”, I was totally screwed. There was no way I could say Bophuthatswana, because the syllabic challenge was far beyond the linguistic capability of my interrogators. So I said Boksburg.
“Oh. Like Sprungbox?” they asked.

I nodded, and they wrote it down. I started compiling a list of the accusations that followed after my true identity was revealed. “You can’t be. You’re white!” was a good one. The end came with “Have you met Nelson Mandela?” Stunned, in a desperate attempt at absurdist counter-foil I replied that he often did maintenance work for my pa. They nodded, wrote it down, and the shock was complete. But it was only when I saw a bumper sticker on the back of a ’78 Plymouth Volari station wagon that read “If we knew how much trouble it woulda caused, we’d have picked the damn cotton ourselves!” that I realised the full extent of the situation. The only way out was to do the laundry.

But first a description of my local laundromat. Bordering the campus was Vine Street, which had the greatest bar the world had ever seen. Sudsy Malone’s had hosted the finest musicians on the planet, and its entry fee, because the proprietors know their market, was a bag of laundry weighing no less than 12 pounds. The back of the venue comprised row upon row of coin-fed washing machines and tumble driers. Upfront was the slickest bar and live venue this side of Soccer City. The money spent by students on laundry and beer was more than enough to pay for Nirvana-esque acts, but Sudsy’s impact on their souls was beyond their wildest imagination.

Sudsy’s brought in international acts, and while I was in town, a South African act was set to feature. So it was to this establishment that I hurried my shell-shocked body, laden with two bags of laundry and a pocket full of coins. I only turned around twice: once for washing powder, and once to get the right washing. (There was no way I was going to wash my girlfriend’s knickers in public. Not without fabric softener.)

I didn’t even bother doing my laundry after the bouncer had weighed it. I grabbed a beer, found a seat near the front and waited. This was not going to be your ordinary concert. Oh, no. I was about to see the show from heaven: Ladysmith Black Mambazo. As I sipped my bad beer, I looked around to see what kind of people had come to share in the music. Predictably, to my left were two lentil librarian lesbians drinking glühwein and discussing feminist slam poetry. Fine fine. It was the rest of the crowd that made me fear for my life. The venue was packed with members of the radical Black Students’ Society. A bit like the Panthers, only more intense. They hadn’t brought any laundry. The bouncer had taken one look and gone home – and there they stood, about 800 of them, in absolute silence. It was then that I knew how my ancestors must have felt when they faced the impi (Zulu warriors). This fear haunted them for eternity. If these guys found out who I was, I’d be eating my laundry tonight. All 12 pounds of it.

There is a God, because at that very moment the lights dimmed, and Zulu filled the air. It was beyond beautiful. So simple. So moving. So… big. I was spellbound. I know a bit about music, so I knew that what Joseph and his remarkable choir were singing was functional music. Its repetition was there not for lack of anything else to sing. I knew that isicathamiya (a Zulu singing style) was actually designed to help you walk hundreds of kilometers without getting tired. Sing on! But around me, the Yanks were getting restless. I could see that it all sounded the same to them. By the third song they looked like they wanted their money back, and by the fifth, muttered conversations about other things started to clash with Mambazo’s beauty. It couldn’t last, and it didn’t. When Mambazo finished the concert with Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, it was just me and the two lesbians. Had I known the words I would not have been able to sing in any case, I was too busy bawling.

When I walked home in the dark, it felt like my soul had been washed. That things would turn out okay, and that it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all that I’d left my laundry at Sudsy’s.