The Power of One

idea was to work an opponent round and then time a punch just as the hapless boxer moved into the direct line of the late afternoon sun. If a boxer was clever enough on his feet this simple expedient could be made to work half a dozen times during a fight, often earning the extra points required to get the decision. The gentlemen Christians had no compunction about doing this to their opponents, after all this was the Boer War and no quarter was given or expected. Hymie got the idea from a movie he had seen which showed how the Battle of Britain Spitfires had come out of the sun to pounce on unsuspecting German aircraft.

The people would watch the fights in silence until it was my turn to fight and then invariably a soft, almost imperceptible hum would begin, growing in volume and, in the African manner, always in perfect harmony. Then a leader would take up a chant which might go something like this: ‘He is the chief who comes in our dreamtime, the caster of spells and the bringer of wisdom.’

‘Onoshobishobi Ingelosi!’ the people would chorus in reply.

‘He can dance in the dew without leaving footprints and stalk the wind until it howls to be free.’

‘Onoshobishobi Ingelosi!’

‘His blows are like the summer thunder and his lightning strikes his foes!’

‘Onoshobishobi Ingelosi!’

‘For cunning he matches the thin moon and for wisdom the full, for is he not Lord of the dark and the light, the day and the night?’

‘Onoshobishobi Ingelosi! Onoshobishobi Ingelosi!’

‘He will win for the people, he will win for all the people, in all the tribes, the people are all his people!’

‘He will win, he will win, he will win for the people, Onoshobishobi Ingelosi! Onoshobishobi Ingelosi! Onoshobishobi Ingelosi!!’

Once the fight started there would not be a sound from the black spectators and after I had won the tall black man who had been present at my first fight in the school gym would raise his hand in the fisted salute. ‘Onoshobishobi Ingelosi!’ he would shout and the blacks would silently leave. I was later to hear that the absolute silence during a fight was so they could not be accused of barracking for me and in so doing incur the wrath of my opponent’s people and thus be banned from attending. In fact the absolute silence from the African stands was uncanny and made a contribution to unnerving my opponents.

Hymie was quick to realise the potential of the black audience and in return for admitting them to the boxing matches at the Prince of Wales School they were required to sing. This was thought no hardship, as most Africans love to sing and soon a tradition was born. Hymie also persuaded Darby White to move my fight up so that I was higher on the bill. This meant that the black audience would be able to stay as late as possible while still allowing them time to be home by nine o’clock curfew.

Parents and members of the public began to attend these summer evening fights and the Afrikaans schools were forced to do the same as us to attract white spectators. The fights became popular events, with the African singing a big drawcard leading, as it did, to what was soon regarded as the feature of the entertainment, the chant that preceded my bout.

It is an indication of the enormous dichotomy between white and black that for the first three years no white spectator bothered to ask for a translation of what was being said in the chants. People seemed intrigued by the fact that a small white boy had gathered a huge black following but they simply put this down to my skill as a boxer. The presumption of the white man knows no bounds in Africa. The full story would never come out but somewhere along the line the words Onoshobishobi Ingelosi were translated to mean Tadpole Angel.

The Tadpole Angel quickly became my fighting name among the whites and also, to my extreme mortification, with the kids in the Afrikaans schools. Translated into English it was a dumb name and my embarrassment increased when it was further modified by an anti-following of Afrikaners who referred to me as ‘little angel’ and even sometimes as ‘Mama’s little angel’.

Though not large in number, I was conscious of this very vocal group who, like the much larger group of blacks, attended every fight, but who came in the hope that Mama’s little angel, the Kaffirboetie, would come to a sticky end at the hands of one of their own kind.

By contrast, the people saw the name in only one light. I was fighting for them against the Boer. The tangible evidence of the enemy in the form of the dissident group of Afrikaners only served to increase their fervour. Their numbers multiplied each week and their chants grew more elaborate and beautiful. In fairness it must be said there were whites who were on my side, adult Afrikaners who loved to see me box and didn’t give a damn about my being a Rooinek.

The fact that I hadn’t been beaten wasn’t as big a deal as it may seem, there were several kids from other schools who enjoyed unblemished records.

My mind was permanently focussed on a single fixed point, the welterweight championship of the world. I thought about it so often, reaffirmed my determination so frequently, that hardly an hour of my life passed when it wasn’t in my thoughts. To lose a fight would be a backward step, a hair-line crack in my armour. The only way it was going to happen was for me to come up against a boxer who was a helluva lot better than me. Not just more talented but also a lot better trained.

While I told myself that each win was a small deposit on the ultimate ownership of the world welterweight crown, the enormous need in me to win touched on a whole heap of other responses a fourteen-year-old can’t really work out. It had something to do with rejecting the Lord, with my mother, the Judge, being surrounded by guys who came from wealthy homes, even my headless snake. While I didn’t think of it as camouflage, I now know that it was, that I kept myself protected by being out in front. Too far in front to be an easy mark.

Doc and Mrs Boxall had taught me to think. Mrs Boxall in the general sense and Doc in the particular. Doc’s life was a constant pre-occupation with minutiae, his eye sought always what lay hidden yet was important, he knew that nature guards her secrets jealously, that acute observation begins with a questioning mind. ‘Always to ask questions, ja this is so, maybe the answers come slow, but always they are coming if you wait with your head and your eyes.’

Geel Piet taught me to anticipate the problems likely to occur in any situation and to review the answers to them long before disaster struck. His mind was a network of emergency plans. While small boys are not natural pessimists, he nevertheless taught me the value of a routine which, when practised a thousand times, becomes an automatic reaction to a crisis.

Over all this lay Hoppie’s dictum: First with the head and then with the heart. Winning was something you worked at intellectually, emotion clouds the mind and is its natural enemy. This made for a loneliness which often left me aching to share an emotion but equally afraid that if I did so I would reveal a weakness which could later be used against me. Only Doc was allowed to know all of me with nothing held back.

But even Doc was lost to me when sex lightning struck and puberty arrived in a surge of lust. The superior equipment my mentors had given me and which I had unknowingly used so effectively to perfect my camouflage was suddenly useless. Nothing I had been taught prepared me for the onset of my sexual drive. I found myself more completely a loner than ever, but this time I was trying to keep the lid on an emotional cauldron that threatened to boil over and drown me.

I woke each morning with a rigid tent pole which, in the school tradition, I took to the showers, using my erection as a hook over which to drape my towel. While I joined in with the general hilarity at those of us who had been struck by sex lightning, I knew I was faking it. Buried deep where I hoped he would never surface lay Pisskop and his hatless snake and, while circumcision was too common among the guys at the Prince of Wales to cause embarrassment, my dick was the part of my anatomy that had started all my problems and now it was behaving in a manner over which I had absolutely no control.

Sex had never been discussed at home but among the guys in the boxing squad it was referred to as ‘doing it’. Snotnose was said to be almost doing it to Sophie Smit, Captain Smit’s daughter, having given her tits a feel-up in the dark at a Saturday matinee and, it was hinted, a feel down there, as well.

I knew enough about the ways of the Lord to know that if I should find myself in the fortunate position of being able to do it to Sophie, I would be committing a mortal sin. Though I freely admit, even in my pubescent state with my brains turned to meat loaf, I was aware that the chances of my achieving a supine Sophie were just about non-existent, I knew that the Lord, heavily backed by my mother, wasn’t the sort of person who settled for innocence by omission. My case was hopeless. Even for a sinner I was sinning at an alarming rate. Not only in my