Leaving Home
My journey began in the sixties in Pretoria... looking for meaning, identity and enlightenment ... I became a Dharma bum in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac.
My father an atheist, indoctrinated me with his humanist /socialist brand of philosophy. I needed more, I was not convinced that life is a meaningless coincidence that ends in nothingness. Living in the apartheid era dominated by nationalist politics and propaganda and conservatism fucked my mind up. Who am I, what am I and what am I doing here?
I needed to experience life and sass it out. I followed Solomon's advice, "My son do everything your heart desires but remember, that at the end of your days you will have to give an account to God for everything".
I figured that if I was an atheist I might as well be a good one. "If God does not exist then eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you die". Or as Dotcheveski said "If God does not exist then crime is not punishable". Probably not a sentiment that my father would approve of, since he considered himself to be a good human being who adheres to moral humanistic values.
By 1967 the Hippy revolution was in full swing, and the drugs in demand were marijuana and uppers like methadrine, Black Bombs and Purple Hearts and LSD when available.
Wanda a raver and clubber frequented the electric circus and the Downstairs in Hillbrow.
She introduced me to her friends in Pretoria and it didn't take long before I was smoking it up. Groups of young people and a few older ones Old George the King of the hippies who carved Pipes out of whale bone got stoned out of our minds while listening to Donovan ...Blowing in the wind the Rolling Stones, The WHO and Led Zeppelin.
Gordon bought an old Jaguar MX10 which we spent a lot of time fixing, overhauling the engine. We eventually got it running and used all our pocket money for petrol. We'd pack this thing and hit all the parties and socials. A social was a disco at one or other of the sport clubs where kids went to dance and pick up chicks. When the music starts you pick out a likely candidate and do the twist until the slow numbers then get into a passionate clinch and smooch.
The girls we met at socials were those that let their bodies do the talking and would have nothing to say in the daytime ... not to mention the acne.
Girls I danced with invariable had boyfriends, who were hanging around, pissed out of their skulls, who waited till you were in a passionate slow dance before pouncing on me "Hey that's my girlfriend you're dancing with... Come outside" and a fight would break out with girls screaming. I was at a party with Gary and my sister when some guy picked a fight with one of my art school friends, when I tried to break up the fight he attacked me and I beat him up. Eight of his buddies were waiting for me at the gate when it was time to go home. I told Gary just to walk through them and they let us pass. When we got into his mother's car and drove away they followed us with a two cars and a bike. When we came to an open stretch of veldt, one car cut us off in front and one covered us from behind and the bike on the side, slowed us down. I told Gary to push the bike off the road but he didn't want to damage the car. When we stopped the gang surrounded the car and signaled for me to get out and they beat the daylights out of me. Beaten and bloody we went home. Was I pissed with Gary.
Woodstock in 1966 started a revolution of free love and peace. Kids were dropping out of school and hitting the road. Art school flew past in a haze... Gary dated Wanda for a while and was stoned all the time .... the combination of methedrine LSD and an interfering mother eventually landed him in Weskoppies. I heard he was caught running naked down the main road and arrested.
Shock treatment was a popular remedy for drug addicts and suspected schizophrenics in those days. The result was a zombie who couldn't remember things that we had experienced, they just erased a few chapters in Gary's book of life. He was in and out of mental institutions after that and eventually committed suicide.
After finishing Pro arte at the end of 1969 Gary and I hit the road and hitched to Durban and eventually landed up in Amanzimtoti. We ran into Butch a mean nineteen year old who liked to terrorise the neighbourhood. He had a gang of younger kids whom he ruled with fear and used to break into places to steal. They terrorised elderly black men and beat people up for fun. Butch found met us at the beach "Hi where you from?" "Joburg" "What you doing here?" " just hanging out" "you want a skyf?" "Cool man" after the joint "Where are you staying?" "No where, we'll sleep in the bush" "Why don't you come over to my place" it didn't seem like such a bad idea so we followed him to his moms house. He was sleeping in an outhouse and his mom didn't mind ... she seemed to take a fancy to me, "Nice broad shoulders you have".
We smoked more grass and during the night. While we were sleeping he went through my bag and stole what money I had. The next day we hitched to Durban to score Durban Poison. I thought that Butch was being very magnanimous, not aware that he was using my money. We spent the rest of the week very stoned.
When I discovered that Butch had stolen my cash I decided to stay and milk him for all I could. Gary decided that he had enough and went back to Pretoria.
Butch liked to show off his strength and would test the strength of his opponents with a friendly fight. He jumped me one day and I got out of his grasp and put him in a headlock and held him. He tried his utmost to get out of it but I held him down. He got frustrated and angry and raged, he turned all the colours of the rainbow and then I told him calmly, "calm down and I'll let you go, calm down and I'll let you go". He relaxed and I let him go. Although I was smaller and lighter than him, he gained a new respect for me that night.
A few days later, I met Judy, a tall pretty brunette model ... Butch's girlfriend. Her younger brother was his sidekick. One evening we went to a disco and Judy decided that she didn't want to dance with Butch because he was drunk and ended up dancing with me all night. When we got out Butch was waiting and told me that he was going to beat me up. He led me to the beach and stood there sizing me up. I had my hands in my pocket holding my open pocket knife, which he knew I had. He stood there staring at me for ten minutes and then thought the better for it and backed down.
We went back to his place and smoked some more grass and I fell asleep.
I woke up with him sitting on my chest with his hands around my neck.
I pretended that I was still asleep and waited...after about five minutes with no reaction he got off and went to bed.
The next day I visited Judy and on the way back as I was walking along the highway the cops stopped me and searched me. They then told me that Butch's mother had called them and told them that I was corrupting her son and giving him dagga. They then told me I had to get out of town and took me to Butch's place to get my stuff and escorted me out to the highway.
After they left me I ducked through the bush and made my way to Judy's place. Her family lived in a small apartment, very poor. Her dad worked part time on the railway when he was sober. I informed them that I was instructed to leave town. Fearing Butch's rage, Judy's mother decided that it would be safer for Judy and her brother to leave town with me.
They packed some things and the parents dropped us off on the highway near the next town. We spent the next couple of days hitching back to Pretoria to my parents house. My mother received them well but wouldn't let Judy sleep in my room. But we spent the next couple of weeks smooching and dating. We spent a lot of time in my bedroom and got into hot and passionate petting sessions. We kissed and cuddled for the next few weeks before I had to report for army duty. It was with reluctance that she saw me off at the army camp gate In January 1970 and she hitched back to Durban with Billie.
The army days
The passion saw me through the six weeks of arduous bootcamp with sweet wet dreams, that's something that they couldn't take away.
My friends told me to cut my hair before going to camp but my dad said that if I am a man I'd go as I was. I took up his challenge and took the threats and insults like a man. I was a target from day one, "You know what we're going to do with you...we're going to take a cork and shove it up your arse!" etc. etc. But I knew that they could only swear at me and weren't allowed to touch me, so it didn't matter to me. The army is all run and wait. You run to your destination then wait in line. In line for the toilet, in line for water, in line for uniforms. The haircut line is the only one I didn't have to wait for, they marched me right to the front to cut off my long hair and replace it with an awful brushcut.
Everyone got jipoed guts (diarea). If the meat is crumbed or curried, you should know that it has already turned green... avoid it. The first six weeks was pretty tough, but the hardest was the confinement behind barbwire fences, the lack of freedom and the loss of identity... reduced to a number, and ordered around like a robot. I often glanced over the fence and sized up my chances of escape.
The first long weekend off was Easter weekend. I headed to Amanzimtoti, but her parents had moved. I made some enquiries and discovered them in a caravan park in a town nearby. They informed me that Judy was living with her married sister in Redhill. I spent the night with them in a bungalow. The old man was crying and moaning all night with the DT's, a very disturbing night. The next day I hitch a ride to Redhill and found Judy. We spent a beautiful day on a deserted beach making love and slept over before heading back to camp. That was the last time I saw her. When I hitched back to Durban in June and rocked up at her sisters house I was told she was out with her new boyfriend. I said I'd hang around and wait for her and her sister decided to keep me entertained by going for a walk. We ended up in Redhill cemetery and made out in the long grass between the mounds. Well that was that then and I moved back to camp.
After bootcamp, I was moved to 5 Base at Defence Headquarters, where I tried out as a clerk ... admin was not my strong point...then as storeman ...keeping account of tents and toilet seats ... not my forte either. I eventually got the workers organised, they watched out for me while I lay on top of a huge stack of tents and read books. Very boring after a while. One of the soldiers in my bungalow was working for Paratus magazine as a driver. I asked him if they didn't need layout artists. He made some enquiries and told me to get an interview with the editor. My camp captain refused permission for me to go for the interview. So I made a dentist appointment and then went to see the editor. He was keen to take me on and arranged a swop for one of his admin guys who wanted time to study, I told him that most of my time was spent reading books, so he was happy to take up the position.
At Paratus I was exposed to the print media and was at least able to practice my creative skills. By the end of the year I was allocated another two trainees for the section. Both were ex art school students, Mike Kemp and John Moolman. They were great company, Mike would have us in stitches on our many trips to Cape & Transvaal printers in Johannesburg to check proofs.
The great thing about working for the army is that there is no shortage of resources. We staged a photoshoot representing the four forces, raising the flag on a koppie. There was no wind to wave the flag, no problem, we called and within minutes we had a helicopter to make wind. Sergeant de Wit was our staff photographer whom I accompanied on shoots. One day we had to get a portrait shot of the Head of defence force. We were setting up the lights in his plush office, when we smelled something burning. De Wit rushed to one of the tungsten photographic lights lying on the floor, which had by this time burned a perfectly rectangular black hole in the carpet. De Wit was flustered and dismayed, but the general laughed and just shrugged it off. He seemed like quite a gentleman. I became quite famous when My picture feature on all the promotional posters around South Africa,"Ons vir jou Suid Africa". Recruits had a good laugh when they recognised this ex long haired hippie when he arrived at the army, who was harassed and insulted.
The other perks of the job was that I no longer had to attend drill parades or stand guard duty. Since the office was in city centre, I decided to sleep at home. At 5 Base only had one inspection on Monday mornings, which I made sure to attend. Thus my last 8 months of army was spent more like a civilian.
Much of the time went by in a haze of marijuana smoked on the roof of the building with my colleagues. I'd come down into the office stoned out of my mind, "Ja Kommandant, nee Kommandant".
In September I hooked up with some art school friends who were living in a communal house in Sunnyside and got very stoned. There were rocks of opium going around which we mixed with the grass and smoked. Estelle, was getting affectionate, I called her the milkmaid. All white and pink and soft double D's. She pulled off her clothes and landed on the springs of a steel framed bed with no mattress, only a blanket covering the bare springs.
That night Estelle, Gary, Linda and I decided to head for Durban. We left at five in the afternoon and by ten that night we were dropped off somewhere in the Freestate. It was freezing cold and we huddled together wrapped in a blanket. After about two hours a farmer with a bakkie picked us up, and he handed me a beer from under his seat, which I drank. He dropped us off about thirty km's down the road. Where we huddled again until we got picked up by another farmer who had just come back from a funeral. After five minutes in the car I felt waves of nausea come over me until I could contain myself no longer, quickly turned the window down and vomited out the beer. I had food poisoning from something in or on the can. The rest of the trip to Durban is just a blur, but I remember arriving there in the early hours of the morning. We found a spot on a roof of the ablution block on the beach and slept in the morning sun. I was still sick as a dog and vomited my guts out. We spent the rest of the day looking to score some poison and spent the next few days smoking it up before heading back to Pretoria.
The lift back in a combi was one of the most memorable. It had a mattress in the back and I landed up with Linda who had warmed to me during the cuddles on the way down to Durbs. Now we got down to business in earnest kissing and groping, but because she had a steady boyfriend and remained faithful. I went back to camp a happy boy.
On the road again
The last day of the army was one of the happiest days of my life, I felt free as a bird and sang all the way home. I had made up my mind that I had enough of the army, I was not going to attend parades and camps, I was going to disappear.
I was offered a few weeks freelance work to finish a special edition of Paratus, which got me enough money to keep on the road for a good couple of months.
My dad pressed me for my intentions. He asked "What are your plans Jack? You can't just lie around here. If you want to go to art school I'll find a way to pay for it." "Dad, I don't want to waste your money ... I want to become a fine artist, but my biggest dilemma is being confronted by a blank canvass. I have very little to express as an artist and I need to go and find myself. I'm just getting my stuff together and then I'm going to hit the road."
A week later I headed to the coast enjoying the solitude on the road.
In Durban I met some hippies on the beach who were crashing in an old hotel that was going to be demolished. It still had the carpets on the floors and there were hippies and vagrants lying all over the place. Dagga pipes with good quality Durban poison were going round all the time, it was like Bob Dylan's song. "They stone you when you wanna get up, they stone you when you wanna go to bed, everybody must get stoned!" ... we ended up stoned all the time.
In 1970 the XL Cafe on North beach was the place for hippies to hang out and drink lots of cups of cheap tea and eat anchovy toast, that's all I could afford.
One of the regulars was Casper "the friendly ghost". He was cerebral palsied and liked to hang out with the hip cats and tell yarns, like, "The fuzz (cops) stopped me on the road and asked me why I am not at work. So I said 'I paint the dots on the dominos at the domino factory and today they're doing the blanks".
I was sitting on the wall looking out to sea when a cat named Boetie sidled up to me and stated chatting. "Where are you heading?" he asked, "nowhere in particular, just making my way down the coast". "Why don't you join me and my girlfriend, her friend is looking for a boy friend to accompany her". "Sounds cool to me" and he introduced me to Monica, a sexy auburn haired German girl with soft c-cup breasts and soft full lips, a couple of good athletic legs.
Where you from I asked her, "Windhoek...we ran away from a boarding school there.We hopped onto a train and made our way down to South Africa."
They later told me that she hooked up with some army boys and bonked their way down to Durbs where they met Boetie. "Where are you going now?" "We're hitching to Benoni... my brother has a farm there." Hitching with the four of proved to be unpractical, no one wanted to stop, so we decided to split up and meet at the Narnia in Hillbrow.
Monica and I arrived in Joburg in the late afternoon and waited for them at Narnia. Some old guy approached us and started talking to me. "I've met Bobby Dylan" was his icebreaker and I can't quite remember the rest of the ramble. But I was wondering what his intentions were, was he trying to pick up my chick? On hindsight he was probably an evangelist looking for an opening.
It was getting late and Boetie and Donray didn't pitch so we headed for Benoni. We got picked up by a taxi driver who took us to his pad in Kensington or Bedfordview. It was a typical two bedroomed minehouse, in a poor white part of town He offered us a buitekamer. Maidsroom with a mattress on the floor. A real bug invested place. Monica had taken some Pondies (Ponderax) The drug of choice with girls who wanted to lose weight. I tried to get amorous but she wasn't in the right space. I also took some and had a weird listless night. The following day we went back to Narnia and hooked up with Boetie and Donray.
The farm was a two acre plot, with a simple two bedroomed house, where his brother lived with his wife and two kids. Afrikaans plot bewoners. The four of us shared two mattresses on the floor and the first night was spent in a bonking competition. Boetie and Donray going at it all night.
We smoked a lot of majat, a low grade dagga, with Boeties family. When I say family I mean the whole family, even his three year old son was made to smoke ... this I thought was pretty unconstitutional. I reckon the girls also decided that these were not the kind of people they want to hang out with. The vibe between Boetie and Donray quickly went downhill and we soon parted company. Leaving Boetie behind we headed to Pretoria, where I rocked up at my mother's doorstep with two girls in tow.
She was happy to see me but didn't quite approve of me bringing two girls home with me, she sensed trouble. Mom always the saint, made a bed for them in the spare room but it didn't take me long to creep in there. Its here that she told me that she and Donray had met four boys on their way to the army on the train and bonked all the way to Durban. "What about falling pregnant?" I asked. "It's Ok...When I was at boarding school, I had menstrual cramps and the doctor prescribed the pill" That gave her the licence to screw ... and she took full advantage of it. After four days before we moved on, choosing not to be a 'las' on my parents.
My poor mom confessed to me later that I had given her many sleepless nights and that she had some scary dreams about me.
We made our way to Durban and down the South Coast to Margate, where we slept in the ablution block on the beach on the hard concrete floor. Monica and I made out next to Donray who moaned that she missed her boyfriend. The following day we hitched to Merino Beach and headed into the bush, where I found a stunning spot under a huge avocado tree by a river. I figured that this would be a good place to set up camp, but the girls were not convinced and decided to move on.
I stayed for a few days and then carried on down the South Coast to Port St John and then through the Transkei. Picked up a ride from filling station near Butterworth on a flatbed trailer loaded with steel rebar on a cold and wet night. Spread my sleeping bag on the steel bars and crawled in for the most uncomfortable night of my life, bouncing over the potholed highway for four hours. Got dropped off outside Transkei at the turnoff to KingWilliams town. It was still raining and figured I was there to stay. Saw a rusty overturned car wreck in the darkness and climbed over the barbwire fence and crawled inside ...spreading my sleeping bag for the night. Had a dream ... I was floating outside a medieval castle or monastery ... as I got closer I saw an old wizard beckoning to me through the turret window. He was sitting at a table and writing in a book. He gave me a silver ring with inscriptions on the inside of the band, just like in Lord of the Rings. Not that I had read the book or seen the movie. I woke up lying in a pool of water, yet felt strangely inspired and invigorated.
When I got to Kingsbeach in PE I slept in the bush that night. I had bought a pineapple along the way and placed it in my hat. When I woke up in the morning I discovered that a rat had eaten through my hat and into the pineapple. Went to the cafe and bought a piece of cheese and a half loaf of bread, an avocado pear and a pint of yogurt all for under a Rand. Can you believe it, what can you buy for a Rand today?
I took a walk through the city centre, two girls called out to me and asked where I was headed. I said "Cape town" and Jennifer said "come with us, we'll get you a place to stay". We walked from the city centre to Humewood beach and then met up with some of the young locals, hippies and surfers who hung out at the Kingsbeach kiosk and got stoned. Here I met Roger Layton and the girls asked him to give me a possie, so I went with him to his mom's house on the hill, where I stayed for a couple of days.
That night we went to a sailors club, navigators den or something and danced and smoked some more grass. The girls had British sailor boyfriends who worked on the ships and who would hook up with them when they got into port or they would hitch to Cape Town and meet up with them when they docked. That night a fight broke out in the club between a brawler and some unfortunate victim, who ran out got help from his boerbull dog. The brawler took one look at the dog and grabbed its snout and squeezed. The dog gave an awful yelp and went scurrying off with its tail between its legs. That put an end to the evenings entertainment.
Soon afterwards I left and made my way up the coast to Cape Town hitching on the Road.
Back packed Rubbergut Jack, walking the cosmic high way.
It always felt like a relief to get out of the cities and enjoy the freedom of the road, away from the noise, the business and the heavy smoking of dagga. I enjoyed the stillness of some desolate spot where I got t dropped off.... nobody stopping to pick me up for hours, I could contemplate the beauty of creation and the wonder of life.... or just have a Zen moment and enjoy the sound of the birds and the clouds scurrying across the sky and the subtle changes of light on the landscape and the smell of fynbos in the cool evening breeze.
Sometimes people would drive by slowly and stare at me "vuil hippie" and perhaps turn around down the road and then drive slowly past me again and swear at me or throw a Coke can at me, some times a kind stranger would pick me up and we would talk about metaphysics or "betaphysics" "Better physics" and sometimes drop a word of advice or wisdom, talked about God or philosophy. Sometimes I got a strange one, like the guy who drove me from Woester to Montague, he just giggled all the way, didn't speak a word and then turned and drove back to Robertson a 150km round trip.
I arrived in Cape Town on a warm summer's night ... got dropped off in Mowbray and walked along the deserted Main Road in the early hours of the morning, with its shabby old shops and tenement buildings, noticed the Little Head South shop there full of LA hippie gear. Eventually got a lift into town and walked to the Navigators Den in Loop street where I was going to meet the girls form PE. They were not there so I sat in the smoky dark club drank a few beers and observed the prostitutes and the sailors dancing and going on. Time to go home one of the unattractive prostitutes offered me a place to sleep and I went along. She had a flat on the top an old retail building on the corner of Castle and Buitengracht Street. I woke up with the morning sun streaming through the window that looked out over the Malay quarter. Had some tea and toast and made my way to New Church Street.
New Church Street
In February 1971 53 New Church street which was a well known Hippie Crash pad.
I was greeted by Mikey and old acquaintance from Pretoria, who used to hang out with Old George the King of the Hippies at Rondegeluk, a bunch of rondawels in front of the Union buildings. There I spent many a boring Sunday afternoon with friends getting stoned to Bob Dylon. A year later Mikey got killed in a car that was stopped off the N2 near Kimberly by a car that smashed into the back of them.
The place was just crammed with Hippies, I managed to find a spot in Mikey"s room which he shared with four others, a room which was probably 3 metres by four. It had two beds and the rest of us slept on the floor. Mikey had a bed which he shared with one of the chicks. Acid Grafiti on the walls, a carpet the only piece of furniture in the lounge, which was a reception room in the centre of this old house. Here we all congregated smoking bottlenecks all day and listening to loud Led Zeppelin or Mick Jagger "I see rainbows, in the colour of her hair'. Boy did I get stoned... then fell asleep. I woke to one of the guys screwing his girlfriend noisily, right next to me on one of the only beds.
The next day I went out with one of the chicks to hustle for food, a scarce resource in those days. We'd go into the streets and ask people for money for food, not too difficult when you have a lean good looking teen age chick at your side. Sometimes we would give them a hard luck story, like "I live in a crash pad and someone has stolen my money"
Which was true- the first day that I arrived someone had gone through my bag and stolen my cash. Where's the love bro? We would then buy ourselves a burger and then buy veggies with the rest which we would throw in the communal pot to stew. The guys were hungry, before the potatoes were cooked, the stew would be gone .... these were white boys!
In the evening all the guys were in the bedroom smoking. There was this cute blond curly 16 year old runaway, called Gypsy, sitting on the bed massaging Mickey, the centre of attention wearing only her panty and showing off her perky little breasts. She earned a little cash at Michealis art school modeling nude, so this was nothing out of the ordinary for her, but for the boys a nice treat.
While we were sitting around the carpet, we were suddenly surrounded by drug squad detectives who had come in through every window and door that was available. The grass quietly disappeared under the carpet while they searched the room which was full of dagga smoke. After stirring up the household a bit they disappeared without any loot.
A favourite outing was to Jack's beach, no not mine but another dude named Jack who had a VW Kombi. We'd go off to a little beach just before Oudekraal and make a fire and get smoked. On the way back home we stopped at the robot bottom of Kloof street and the door flew open, some one grabbed a crate of fruit from the greengrocer and off we were, without anyone skipping a beat.
After a while I got tired of the crowded house, picked up a book by Jack Kerouack "Desolation Angels" ... a rampaging stream of intoxicating thoughts of his trips between San Francisco and Chicago. I was on the road again.
I made my way back to Durban stopping of at PE where I hooked off the Kingsbeach crowd. On this occasion I met two sisters named René and her sister. René was a dark haired exotic girl who immediately took a liking to me. We smoked some dope and then took a drive with some friends into the coloured township to score more grass. It seems like the merchant was on a serious mission to get us mof gerook. I was the fireman to stoke a family sized coke bottle neck. Just the first hit was enough to make me seriously stoned. After the huge bottlenecks it was onto the brick pipe which was a hollowed out brick. Man did we get stoned and was I glad to get outa there.
The road back to Durban went by in a bit of a haze, got dropped in the Transkei somewhere outside Butterworth late one evening. Figuring that I probably wouldn't get a lift that night, I started looking for a safe place to sleep near the road. I walked to a building site and asked a labourer if it would be okay to sleep there that night. He looked kind of shocked and and replied "No, no. Ek sal you na die baas toe bring." and he took me with the bakkie to a nearby farmhouse. The locals welcomed me in and offered me a meal and bed to sleep in. They were a missionary group of some traditional pentacostal sort, perhaps "Blauwrokkies", but what did I know about religious sects in those days. The following morning after breakfast I joined them in their Sunday morning service, when the neighbouring church members joined them for some singing, prayer and preaching. I don't think that much penetrated my Halucinogenic mind, which was steeped in a mixture of Krisnamurti's brand of eastern existentialism and my indoctrination of secular humanism. I was on a mission of my own, looking for Dharma or spiritual enlightenment. I was on the road following in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac, the beatnik father of the hippies.
After the service and lunch and some good debate they dropped me on the road to Durbs, which I reached the same day via the dirt road to Port St Johns and along the South Coast Road.
Tripping on LSD
On this trip I was sitting on the wall outside the XL, when this blond chick came along "You want to smoke a joint" "Yeah, where you from?" "I have a flat in Hillbrow and was down the South Coast visiting my parents, where are you staying" "I'm just passing through from Cape Town. Maybe heading to Joburg" I replied. "'I've got a connection we can score some acid from" she said "Come over to my friends place" and I followed Dawn to Charmaine's apartment in Point Road. We smoked some more poison and met the pusher who was crashing there. Tony was on his way to make a delivery to a commune in Kwazulu, somewhere near Richardsbay. Now I had never taken acid before and was keen to try out the stuff, so when it was offered to me there was no hesitation.
The acid started to take affect as we were hitching out of Durban. By the time we got dropped off on the highway outside Umslanga I was peaking out of my skull man. Wow! The sky was full of stars and the atmosphere was pulsating and electric with energy and light. The long grass we were standing in was alive. This spaced out state of mind was weird and familiar at the same time. Like I've been here before, the hills were alive, I am, overflowing with joy, I'm back in Eden, the garden of God.... back to innocence.
I realise that I've been here before, a state of being experienced as a one year old lying on the pier on the canal in Zaandam Holland... I observed the water lapping up the cobbled sides, it was alive!! This is what the budhists and mystics describe as the state of "Wu", the state of awareness and oneness with the creation and creator. I was back in my childhood in the state of awe and wonderment, back in Eden the garden of God.
Tony and I were lying in the long grass at the side of the road while Dawn and her friend, Charmaine hitch hiked. It didn't take long for an unsuspecting dude to stop. When he opened the door the two of us jumped in with the girls. The driver was clearly startled by the ambush as the paranoia showed on his face. But the girls quickly put him at ease chatting him up.
This ride was cool man, it felt like a space ship traveling through the sky with stars buzzing by. Before long we were dropped off near Umzimkulu, where Tony made a phone call to the farm. The cats fetched us with the farm bakkie and warned us of the police road block up ahead. So before we drove away the bonnet was lifted and the top of the airfilter screwed off and the poison and acid was stashed.
At the roadblock the fuzz shone their torches in our faces, and then signaled the bakkie load of stoned hippies through.
The farm was a hippie commune where we were warmly welcomed with hot tea and treated to a lentil and veggie stew while listening to James Taylor and Cat Stevens, smoking killums with Durban Poison. We spent the night chatting and walking in the moonlight, not getting a wink of sleep cause sleep would not come.
I enjoyed the freshness of the morning dew and the smell of the place when the sun came up. The next day passed in a bit of a hangover stupor and we somehow made our way back to Charmaine's place in Durban and slept over.
Dawn suggested that I join her and hitch hike to her flat in Hillbrow. Sounded like a good idea to me/ winter was setting in and I had nowhere else to go.
So we set off for Joburg /got a lift to somewhere outside Ladysmith/ it was pouring with rain and getting dark/ saw a light at a farm cottage and jumped the fence.
Knocked on the door and was invited in by a bemused Indian man.
I don't think that they had ever had a white person seeking shelter in their humble home before. It was a small one bedroomed farm cottage, what we would call a RDP house today. They offered us towels and blankets to dry us and then made us a cup of tea. Not a great deal of conversation took place as they seemed to feel quite intimidated by or suspicious of our presence. They were a religious Hindu couple with a young child of a lower caste, brought to Natal to labour on the sugar cane farms. They generously shared their meager supper of tinned pilchards in tomato sauce and rice with us, which we gratefully accepted. They made us a bed in the corner of the living room on a coir mattress on which we cuddled up and had a restless night.
I will always remember the generosity of these humble people who were willing to help a couple of suspect hippies in need.
In the morning the quiet couple set us on our way.
We made Hillbrow in good time. Dawn was sharing the bachelor flat with Willie and an uncomfortable relationship began. The only furniture in the flat was two mattresses on the floor. Willies single mattress and Dawn's Double Dunlop mattress.
Willie went out for the day and Dawn and I slept. After having slept on concrete floors and hard mattresses for a year, that mattress was heaven. Dawn and I had sex for the first time doing the wild thing.
She then began to open up and share her life with me.
"My life is pretty fucked up" she said. "I had a breakdown and was treated at Fort Hare. They gave me hot and cold bath shock treatment for Manic Depression and I have been prescribed antidepressants". She told me that she came from a well to do family from the South Coast of Natal. Her dad had been a director of Frank & Hirsh, now retired and painting on their holiday resort.
"I can't have children because my insides were damaged by my uncle who raped me". "What happened?" I asked. "When I was twelve I staying at my cousins place and I was feeling sick with cramps. My cousin went to school and I stayed in bed and my uncle came in to see how I was. He started to stroke me and fondle me and then raped me. He damaged my insides so badly that I had to go to hospital. The scandal rocked the family but my parents covered it up".
"When I was fifteen I got involved with a young policeman from Marino Beach. When I was sixteen he was sent to the border and got killed. This really freaked me out. I then moved to Durban and got involved with Sean Hamilton Harty. He was thirty six year old hippie who made leather bags. He liked to watch porn and forced me to have sex with his friends. When I didn't want to do what he ordered, he beat me up and threatened to kill me if I left him. He baked my cat in the oven .... I tried to leave him but was too terrified. Then I met Brett the leader of the Hells angels, who really scared Sean. One day I climbed onto the back of his Harley Davidson and escaped to Joburg with him". "All went well until he got killed in a motorbike accident. While I was crying at his funeral, I noticed another girl crying for him and found out that he had been screwing her as well". "A while later two of Brett's Hells Angel buddies came to visit and wanted to fuck me. When I refused they tried to rape me. I struggled and screamed then I managed to grab the guys' wallet and throw it out of the window. When he left to retrieve it I managed to break free from the other dude, I ran out of the flat screaming, at which they fled. I broke down and landed in Fort Hare psychiatric ward, where they subjected me to hot and cold bath shock treatment for depression, which freaked me out even more".
Willy and I had a fight and he moved out soon afterwards ... moved in with a boyfriend I think.
Dawn worked at the Pink Panther Clothing Boutique on the ground floor of her apartment building. One day I get home and find Dawn lying on the bed and I ask "What's the matter?
"I'm depressed" "Why?" "We have to move out of this flat, we can take over a friend's flat but I have to pay the deposit and I just don't have the energy to go out"
I said, " Don't worry about it, I'll go. Where to? Who must I pay?" and off I went to find the property agent and pay the deposit. When I came back she soon recovered and we moved into another bachelor a block away, above the Pink Panther clothing boutique.
The flat was around the back facing the alley, where all kinds of shit went on day and night ... queers arguing and beating up their boy friends, gun shots and police running down the alley. Prostitutes and merchants selling drugs and the sound of night clubs going on through the early hours.
Dawn's maternal instincts kicked in and she acquired a few stray kittens which we named, Lamus the pus, because she looked a bit like a lemur, and hippie a beautiful long haired love pussy and Poison a pure white short haired cat who shared the mattress with us.
One day Dawn introduced me to Felicity a gorgeous young redhead who worked in the Pink Panther and asked me "would you like to fuck her... I can arrange it". I must have looked as though she was nuts, because the subject did not recurr... Felicity did become a regular visitor to the flat.
Sometime in June, Willie hustled a Volkswagen Van from one of his buddies and invited us for a trip to Durban on the spur of the moment. So late that evening we packed up and drove to Durbs. It was one of those memorable trips because we got very stoned in the hot box as we called it. The trip down the coast went in a haze of Durban Poison.
On returning to Hillbrow Dawn got a job with an interior office design company, drawing plans and we settled in for the winter. She decided that it was ok for me to stay at home and paint, so I asked Willie to borrow his boyfriend's bakkie so that I could collect my paint and art materials from my parents place in Pretoria.
On the way back from Pretoria with a crate in the back of this big Chevy truck, driving along Jan Smuts Drive chatting and laughing. As we passed Alexandria a coloured teenager ran across the road in front of us, then his buddy saw us coming and hesitated... then ran slap bang into the grill of the Chevy. With a thud his body hit the windscreen and was flung over the roof and landed stone dead on the tar a seventy metres behind us. White faced with shock we pulled the vehicle to the side of the road and waited for the cops to report the incident. We had hit the kid at 100km an hour and the tough grill and bonnet of the Chevy was completely buckled in. After banging and pulling the grill away from the fan belt we were able to get moving.
I spent much of the winter working on a few paintings, the large one "Let me be Free' and the ghostly ones "Lazarus rising" and "The union". I would regularly visit art galleries and remember an exhibition of Kevin Gardner's abstract action paintings. His work was vibrant and alive and struck a cord in my hallucinogenic state.
One Saturday John Moolman an army buddy who worked with me at Paratus came to visit, we chatted about old times in the army and about his recent trip over the Swartberg Pass, through "Die Hell" and smoked grass. Dawn was feeling a little left out and said something to me, which I dismissed. Shit happens, specially when one does not communicate very well. I realised that she had misinterpreted something that was said, or perhaps it was not what was said but the tone with which I had said it.So she got up and walked out. After a while we decided to go for a cup of coffee at The Dunka Donut.
When I got home about an hour later she was lying on the bed. I then noticed an empty bottle of sleeping pills lying on the floor, so I shook her awake, she was heavily doped and I asked 'What have you done?", "I've taken a bottle of sleeping pills" she muttered. So I stuck my finger down her throat to make her vomit, when that didn't work I said "I'm going to the chemist" "No, no" she wailed, "They'll call the cops". She was terrified that she would be reported and sent back to Fort Hare.
I ran to the nearest chemist "My girlfriend has taken an overdose of sleeping pills, have you got anything to make her vomit?" I asked anxiously. "Give her a teaspoon of this" he passed me a bottle of Antimoondrops.... I taking them I said urgently "I don't have any money on me but I'll pay you later" and I rushed off. Dawn was whimpering when I got home and immediately I poured a tablespoon of the stuff down her throat, which had the desired effect of vomiting her guts out. We then lay down and I comforted her.
That was the last time she ever tried to commit suicide with me.
Assault with intent
The apartment next to us was inhabited by two Afrikaans boys and an English girl with a three year old son who shared the flat. The boers liked to hang over the balcony and make hostile comments when we entered our flat. One evening Trish came knocking on our door very distraught, "The guys are drunk and terrorising my son and I can't take it anymore. Can I sleep over with you tonight?" "Sure" we said. "Jack can you help me to carry my suitcases?" "No problem" but I had my own fears, so I went to the kitchen and took a small potato knife and put it in my pocket for protection.
I walked into their apartment and said " Good evening" and walked through to her room. I picked up two heavy suitcases and walked back through the lounge. "Wat kyk jy vir my so?" the younger brother said, then jumped up from the couch and punched me in the face. I immediately dropped the cases and hit him back. Then his brother jumped up and pinned my arms behind my back. Their friend grabbed a heavy glass ashtray and attacked me from the front with the ashtray raised just about to strike. I reckoned that the situation was out of control... slipped my hand into my pocket and got hold of the blade which I managed to raise to gut height, then swung my full weight forward on my pinned arm and into his gut as he came for me. He stumbled back then charged again and again I let him have in the gut. He stumbled back and screamed "Pas op hy het 'n mes" They released me and rushed into the kitchen and grabbed a carving knives, at which point I felt it expedient to get outa there fast. The ambulance was called and the cops came and arrested me and put me in the cells in John Voster Square. The friend went to hospital where they cut him from puncture to puncture to clean out his gut.
I was eventually charged with assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. I got bailed out after a weekend in the gray, stinking, bug invested jail. Feeding on brown bread and "pets delight" which is what I called the tinned corned beef.
A few days after I got bailed out the detective in charge of the case came to interview me. Dawn and I had some friends around and did some serious pot smoking, I was lying on the bed totally gerook and out of it, when the cop walked in. He was very polite and asked me some questions. There were pips and stalks all over the coffee table and floor and the place must have reeked. I suspect that the detective passed our address on to the drug squad to keep an eye on us.
The case got to court and Dawn and Trish testified to fact that they attacked me and that I was forced to defend myself and the case got dismissed.
Many people regularly visited the apartment to smoke dope and drop acid. Tony the LSD merchant paid us a visit with a stash of "moondrops" which turned into an quite an acid party for a while. Michael a 17 year old teenager who had left home in Marino Beach on bad terms with his stepfather, crazy in love with a beautiful blond 16 year old from the suburbs, spent the night. Then there was Kas a tall Dutch druggy from Pretoria and two local teenage chicks befriended by Dawn or more like adopted into her fold. These kids just wanted to jol, listen to music, joke around and play stupid mind games with chatter that never seemed to go anywhere... too scared go out on their own and explore their own consciousness and confront their own demons.
Went for a walk to Fontana in High Point just across the road from us . In the arcade I passed an Indian family beaming with light ... a young hippie couple who were obviously high on acid smiled in passing. Then I walked back through the alleyway behind our flat saw some men climbing out of a truck saw the muddy aura that surrounded them and sensed the darkn side ... the ugliness of sin. ... the smell of rotting garbage and urine assaulted my senses and became acutely aware that Eden was polluted. Not just with garbage but with the evil of this world... I became aware that there were very clearly children of light and children of darkness. Some were looking for enlightenment and others just wanted to jol and manipulate others for their own profit and pleasure.
I went back to the apartment where Dawn and friends were still engaged with pointless mind games. We were all peaking on acid... out of our skulls, when there was a knock on the door and Kas went to open it ... the drug squad burst into the small apartment. There were plain clothes fuzz with sunglasses and torches running all over the place looking for drugs. It was kinda bizarre, when they didn't find anything and obviously weren't getting any coherent information to their questions, they hauled Kas off to the cop shop for questioning. He returned to the flat a while later in a depressed state of mind, huddled in the corner by himself. "What happened" I asked him. "They let me go after I told them to speak to Andre Stander. He bust me with cocaine which I was hidden in my ring some time back," he pointed to the large signet ring on his finger. I didn't give it much thought and asked him if he wanted a cup of tea. Hoping to distract him from his paranoid state.
One Eyed Louis
After the raid we vacated the flat and moved to Van de Merwe street.
I spent the next couple of days moving house with the use of an old baby pram which I found in the hallway. Imagine the sight of a long haired hippie pushing a pram with a double bed mattress and a fridge through the streets of Hillbrow.
The house in Van de Merwe street was sublet by One Eyed Louis to a bunch of hippies. Louis was an epileptic who was previously employed as a painter but now survived on a social disability grant. Louis and his wife were typical poor whites that had moved to the big city from Durban where he used to pimp his wife. They had a three year old girl and
a baby boy, who regularly got severe beatings. The wife would also sport a black eye now and again. It was an awful place to live... most depressing.
Sandwiched between two blocks of flats with Hillbrow Police station just down the street. Duke a notorious detective lived in a flat in the block next door and he kept an overbearing eye on us. The other eye was for reserved for one of the pretty girls in our commune that he had taken a liking to.
One Sunny winter afternoon fourteen hippies were sitting on the front lawn enjoying a joint when the Duke suddenly appeared in the front door with a silver pistol in his hand. Spotting us from his 4th floor flat he climbed over the wall and sneaked through our house to surprise us. "What's that?" he said as the last smoker flicked the eintjie into the grass. The Duke retrieved the smoking butt from the long grass, "I thought so .... Dagga!" He casually slid his pistol in his back pocket and sat down on the balcony wall, upon which the pistol clattered to the floor. Slightly foolish he picked it up and said " The cheek of it .... smoking dagga in front of the police station!" and he proceeded to lambaste us severely. "I'll let you off now with a warning ... but don't let me catch you again"
Biggest Acid Bust ever
While we still lived in the apartment above Pink Panther Dawn brought Mark to visit . He was a weekend hippie that ran an art in the park polyfiller paint factory with some other acid heads. Mark was married but needed a place to fuck a girlfriend while he was in Hillbrow, so Dawn allowed him use the apartment. He gave us a bottle of Finibarbs in exchange. We hitched out to Brianston and lay in a field and dropped a whole bunch of them. The result was that by the time I got back to the apartment I was a paralytic zombie unable to stand. Not a good idea.
Mark went to London and brought back 4000 microdot caps of acid in a matchbox, in his jacket pocket through customs and we were invited to distribute some of the stuff.
We were distributing LSD to all our friends at eight Rand a cap and sold bulk at discounts for others to sell. We began acid binge tripping every night, only to realise that after two sleepless nights I was so strung out and exhausted that I couldn't enjoy the trip. It became hell just lying on my back watching the patterns play on the retina of my eyes. "The verse comes to mind "and they will pray for death but it will not come".
One Saturday afternoon I hitched a ride to Pretoria to distribute some acid to my old buddies outside the capital Theatre. I smoked some grass and moved some product. Then as I left to go back home I noticed that I was being followed and made a couple of deviations through shopping arcades to lose the tail. I ran/walked to the highway and hitched a lift back to Hillbrow. When I got home the door was locked which was odd. I knocked on the door ... which to my surprise was opened by Andre Stander the notorious cop that became a bank robber, then working for the drug squad, he waved me in and immediately searched my rucksack and ordered me to drop my jeans. He then searched my rucksack, fortunately not finding the strip of eight microdots hidden in the lining.
Then as I entered my room I noticed Kas and there were four cops searching the place. After a lengthy search with a fine toothcomb, they eventually came up with a strip of microdots between cellotape, hidden in my staplegun. "ah ha" he said in triumph " What's this? LSD" . I looked dismayed. "is this all?" he asked... I nodded my head. He took me aside and started to interrogate me, "Where did you get this from" I was silent ... "you may as well tell us, because we already know". "Well you seem to know more than I do" I replied. "You got it from Mark, The art in the park artist, didn't you?" Then I realised where they got the information from and I looked over to Kas who had driven us to Mark's house when Dawn and I collected the stash. "Come with us and show us where he lives" the policeman commanded me. I looked over to Kas and said, "Why don't you ask him to show you". Kas protested "shut up" said the cop "I've had enough of you". It seems that they also did not think much of the rat. They hauled me into the cop car and drove to Parktown straight to Marks place. After searching the premises for an hour they eventually found a stash of 300 caps in his garden and arrested Mark.
The story ended up on the front pages of the Star and the Pretoria news. "R19000 acid haul, biggest ever, young artist in jail". I got bail at my hearing and went to visit my mom. "I read in the newspaper someone with your name had been arrested for LSD. Was that you?" she asked. "Not me mom. Would I be sitting here?"
A week later I again went to visit my folks and my dad hauled out the news paper article and asked me again. "Yes dad" I confessed, "that's me". "Well don't expect me to help you out. You got yourself into trouble, you'll have to sort it out yourself".
"I know dad, don't worry". That was his brand of tough love and he was right! I had chosen to leave home and find my own way in life and I had to be adult enough to live with the choices I made.
I consulted lawyer who was a friend of a friend and he represented me in court pro bona. When the case eventually got into court, I pleaded guilty and the magistrate sentenced me to two years suspended for four years and a R200 fine because of mitigating circumstances, a first offence and still a teenager.
The lawyer asked me what I wanted to do now and I said that I wanted to go to a farm to clear my head and get away from the drug culture. He referred me to a friend who had a smallholding near the Willows in Pretoria.
So Kas and I moved to the farm and tried to grow some stuff. After we had spent a few days plowing with four donkeys in the hard summer earth and only managed about the quarter of the field, we borrowed a tractor from the farmer next door and asked the owner to cough up some money for diesel. The plowing went well after that but we discovered that diesel does not go a long way when you are plowing and we had to fill up many times. Then we realised that you have to plant seeds which costs money. When asked the farmer for seed he supplied us with a few packets of vegetable seed which we planted. The seed had to be watered by hand which was collected from the hand waterpump in buckets. As there was no irrigation I realised that one would have to plant crops during the rainy season. I realised that the owner was not very serious about farming and that he was just keeping us busy as part of the rehabilitation project. After a couple of months when nothing was happening on the farm it was time to move back to Hillbrow.
Trip to Knysna for Magic Mushrooms
I was visiting Densil at his flat one evening and found a young guy busy polishing off a bottle of brandy or whisky. This was James Botham or Shorty on account of his height, six foot three or something. So we decided to introduce him to dagga and made a big zeppelin and got him very gerook. Shorty worked for a men's clothing shop ... one day he announced that it was going bust and that we should come in and help ourselves. I went in with a large canvas backpack which he filled with several leather jackets and trousers for free. This made him pretty popular with the guys in the house and he became a permanent fixture.
At the time I was fascinated by anything hallucinogenic. Mushrooms appeared on my radar screen and I headed over to the public library for a crash course in the art of identifying edible and poisonous fungi. All mushrooms with black, brown or yellow gills are basically edible and the most poisonous mushrooms have white gills and are pure white like the Destroying Angel or Death Cup. The red and white mushroom typical of fairy tales was from the Amanita Muscarius family or Fly Agaric because it was used in the old days to kill flies. I spent some days putting my new found knowledge to use, scouting the fields and parks around Hillbrow for edible fungi and found many one particular type tasted like almonds when fried in butter, but I couldn't tell you what it was only that it was beige with brown gills.
One day I got a bee in my bonnet and said, " Hey Shorty, how about going to Knysna and collecting some magic mushrooms." Since Shorty was now out of a job 'Sounds great" he replied always ready for a new adventure. "But I'll have to go to Orange Grove to pick up my car"... a light blue Volkswagen Beetle.. "You and Seun can meet me there".
Seun was a junky whose brain was fried from taking too much Artane, an over the counter drug which was prescribed to counteract the side effect of Moggadon, a tranquilliser that was used to tranquilise schizophrenics.
Seun introduced me to this really potent stuff. When one hears about hallucinations, then this was it. Artane is a hypnotic drug that puts you into the subconscious state of mind. Its like you're dreaming but you're awake and projecting your subconscious fears and fantasies into the external world. It becomes difficult to distinguish reality from the dreaming state of mind.
Things get pretty creative here, the mind goes crazy with textures, seeing all kinds of things in them, so I did a few splash paintings and then doodled figures and things into the textures. Poetry also flowed with ease and I wrote some stuff, like,
Back packed
rubber gut me
walking the cosmic highway
leaving the shapely behind of Venus
feeling the fuck of the ecstacy
But let's get back to Seun. We packed our rucksacks and hopped on a bus to OrangeGrove. When we got a few blocks away I noticed that he didn't have his bag with him, "Where's your bag" I asked in dismay. "Huh? Oh I left it at the house" "No shit man! Here look after my bag, I'll hop off the bus and get yours, meet you in Orange Grove". I hopped off at the next bus stop and ran back to the house in Van de Merwe Street. "Fuck what an idiot" I muttered to myself.
Found the bag and got on the next bus to Orange Grove where Shorty was waiting.
We got into his banged up light blue Volksie and drove off to Durban to score some poison before cutting through the Transkei. When we got to Durban the next morning I wanted to brush my teeth and asked "Where's my bag Seun" " Huh? Oh fuck I left it on the bus in Orange Grove". "You fucking idiot! After I went all the way back to fetch your bag, you lose mine. You arsehole!" " I should have left you at home" But what can you do, the guys mind was screwed up.
On the way through the Transkei the clutch started slipping on the steep hills and we knew that we would have to replace it soon. Early the next morning we arrived just outside the Transkei. Near the King Williamstown turn off, we came across the wreck of a big old American yank tank which was a favourite for taxiing the natives to the homelands in those days. The ground was strewn with goods, glassware blankets, clothing, radios and there was no one in sight. Seun said "hey look here, what a luck" and he started scavenging through the stuff and taking whatever he thought had value. I felt rather bad knowing that these unfortunate people were probably in hospital and that these were presents for their folk at home. But I didn't say anything knowing that we needed the petrol money. About six kilometres further we came to a petrol station and Seun hawked the stuff to the attendants. I noticed a big black man sitting on a barrel who was recounting a story and gesturing. "Hurry up, Seun lets get going. I think that's the taxi driver!"
We got outta there quickly and made it all the way to Grahamstown where the clutch finally gave out. "We've got to rip the clutch out" Shorty said and parked the car on side of the road next to a rugby field. He found a long pole and we jacked up the car put some bricks under the wheels. Shorty loosened the bolts holding the engine and then used the pole to drop the engine on the ground to remove the clutch. He took the part and walked to the nearest part supplier and bought a new clutch, which we the replaced. Shorty was good at fixing things ... later started a business fixing anything.
An elderly teacher saw us youngsters working on the car and offered us sandwiches and cooldrinks. We chatted with her for a while, she was a retired schoolteacher and she had sons who had left home. By midday the car was repaired and we continued on our journey. I can't remember much after that but we ended up in Knysna where we hung around town for some time and were approached by some teenage girls. Seun started chatting them up and they wanted to know where we were from and where were heading. They were'nt too keen to come along so we headed for the forest and started looking for mushrooms. Must have been the wrong time of the year for we couldn't find any meaningful ones. That night we slept in the car at a waterfall... got bored of swimming and the forest and headed for Sedgefield to "The Farm" a hippie artist commune in the bush, which was run by .... a poet writer playwright. We hung out there for a couple of days, smoked dope, talked and drank tea made of Port Jackson leaves. The living quarters were very sparse and primitive, made from poles and builders plastic so we didn't stay long, I think the hunger drove us away. So we headed back to Hillbrow. While driving past Humansdorp in the middle of the night the engine seized up. Some one was kind enough to call a tow truck which hauled us back to Humansdorp, where we abandoned the car and split up. Seun and Shorty hitched to Durban and I hitched on to Port Elizabeth.
Got a ride from a couple of youngsters in a Fiat Bluebird and arrived in PE in the late afternoon and took them to Kingsbeach Kiosk where I hooked up with René and some of the hipcats. We smoked some grass and then drove to merchant and got heavily stoned. René was beautiful exotic girl with almond eyes and long black curly hair and a body like a Modliani Model. While we were driving back to Kingsbeach I saw the sweet way she was looking at me in my stoned state and said to her " I'd like to fuck you" and she replied "me too". René and I spent a long uncomfortable but passionate night in the cramped front seat of the Bluebird parked in the bush somewhere near the university. The two guys dossed in a small tent and dropped us off in PE in the morning and went on their way to Cape town. After a couple of days in PE I made my way back to Joburg after promising René that i would take her to Cape Town on my next trip.
Artane crazy
Dawn moved out of One Eyed Louis's house and settled in a cottage in Caroline Street right underneath the Hillbrow tower, which loomed over our heads like some dark foreboding presence. Big brother is watching... spewing out the propaganda to manipulate the masses. The cottage was a two bedroomed rental, we occupied one room and the other by a good looking Portugeuse fellow from Wood stock. I think his name was Doug or something. While we were painting out the house he brought over a girl friend who was married to some other oke. This girl looked like a stunning supermodel with honey blond curly hair down to her waist, wearing tiny Hot pants over a perfect butt, sporting perfect long slender legs clad in stripy seventies leggings. She kept the lodgers in the house entertained for a while helping to paint Doug's room.
Seun came around and scored some Artane at the chemist and we all swallowed three tablets each. Roger Layton rocked up at Caroline Steet with two friends from PE. This was Roger's first Artane trip. Roger was this bright 16 year old kid in first year varsity/ student of math and music. He was hallucinating out of his mind. I was seeing all kinds of paranoid hallucinations. I thought I saw cops in Klu Klux clan masks looking down at us from the block of flats behind us and there seemed to be a video camera spying us from the block of flats on the other side. When I took a walk down the main road in Hillbrow I saw someone with a camera taking pictures of me from a vehicle and then ducking/maybe it was real and maybe not. "Just because you have been healed form paranoia, doesn't mean that no ones watching you".
Weird things happened, one of the youngsters, a guy from Durban came rushing into the house in a paranoid state yelling "I killed a cop, I killed a cop". What happened I asked, "I was on the rooftop of a building smoking dope with a friend, when a plainclothes cop tried to arrest me and I pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the neck and ran away". " Oh fuck!" I said "Well you can't stay here, you'd better go back to Durban". We packed his stuff and dropped him on the N2.
Doug's buddy slept in the cellar and when we had the visitors they crashed in the lounge.
Doug's buddy slept in the cellar and when we had the visitors they crashed in the lounge.
One night Doug's buddy came in screaming "There's a dead man lying in the cellar clutching a bird" and he rushed out of the house. The next day we heard that he had been arrested for attacking a police van and breaking the mirror. They put him in jail where he kept on screaming and attacked a warden through the bars.
The next day Roger hitchhiked back to PE with his friends. On a subsequent trip I spoke to his mother who was very concerned about his state of mind when he returned, because he was apparently seeing things that were not there. Thirty eight years later I managed to contact Roger who had put the disturbing incident behind him and has gone on to become an influential IT guru specializing in artificial intelligence.
Roger told me this interesting story about two monks, one old and one young, who have taken strict vows of chastity. They are walking and talking by a river when they notice a voluptuous young maiden on the other side, scantily dressed, who is struggling to get across the river. Without hesitation the old monk wades across, picks her up in his arms and carries her across.
They carry on walking, and after 6 hours the younger monk finally blurts out "Father, why did you touch that women when you know we have strict codes of chastity?".
The Father replied "I dropped her on the river bank 6 hours ago - why are you still carrying her?".
He questioned how I felt about giving him those pills now? Apparently I had told him "that they were safe". He commented "They clearly were not safe and caused me some short-term grief. Were they safe? Why did no-one else have side-effects?"
I posted the folowing reply to Roger:
"I saw one of my best friends mind screwed up by psychiatrists in Weskoppies with using shock treatment (he eventually committed suicide). Exploring inner space, the mind is what I was about... therefore I experimented with drugs that allowed me to explore different parts of mind, shift consciousness from the rational through the subconscious and the unconscious mind. The most potent drugs available then were LSD, Artane and magic mushrooms. With LSD consciousness shifts from the rational to the unconscious mind, I learned to rely on intuition and trust in God the Spirit to keep it all together, you kinda of learn what faith is in this state of WU [no mind]. I also became painfully aware that my conditioning [learned behavior] was causing me to react to my environment in a less than desirable way. The things that "I wanted to do I did not do, and what I didn't want to do that I did" to quote the bible, I became aware that I was unconsciously hurting people and myself with what I said and did.
"I saw one of my best friends mind screwed up by psychiatrists in Weskoppies with using shock treatment (he eventually committed suicide). Exploring inner space, the mind is what I was about... therefore I experimented with drugs that allowed me to explore different parts of mind, shift consciousness from the rational through the subconscious and the unconscious mind. The most potent drugs available then were LSD, Artane and magic mushrooms. With LSD consciousness shifts from the rational to the unconscious mind, I learned to rely on intuition and trust in God the Spirit to keep it all together, you kinda of learn what faith is in this state of WU [no mind]. I also became painfully aware that my conditioning [learned behavior] was causing me to react to my environment in a less than desirable way. The things that "I wanted to do I did not do, and what I didn't want to do that I did" to quote the bible, I became aware that I was unconsciously hurting people and myself with what I said and did.
Artane was an hypnotic drug given to schitzophrenics to counteract the side effects of tranquilizers [drooling at the mouth]. Unbeknown to psychiatrists the drug accumulates in the blood and the patient starts manfesting classic hallucinations. I met a man years later who was being treated for stress and ended up going out of his mind .... "Artane". When he eventually consulted another doctor he was asked what prescription he was on "Artane" he was immediately taken off and the hallucinations stopped. My opinion is that psychiatrists need to take the drugs they prescribe to their patients to learn what they are doing to them. I didn't know this stuff when I began experimenting with it.
Seun one of the guys in our house introduced Artane to me. You could just get the stuff over the counter in those days. Artane sends you into the subconscious the realm of dreams, fantasies, creativity and also paranoia.
I have a terrible short term memory, but once on a trip down to PE, I was hitching a ride and reading a book Ron Hubbard on engrams and my eyes got tired and I closed them. I found myself continuing to read the page that was imprinted in negative format on the retinas of my eyes, I was half way into the next page when I realised that my eyes were still closed. CS Lewis used to play a game with his students at Oxford. He said "The problem with me is that I can remember everything I have ever read. See that library, pick a book, now pick a page, any page. What is it?" and he would recite the page from top to bottom. Well I can't do that now, but on Artane...
You left Hillbrow still tripping on Artane. On a subsequent trip through Port Elizabeth I visited your mother... she was somewhat disturbed by your state of mind when you arrived home. Still concerned 30 years later I traced you on FaceBook ... " I was still carrying that man".
You were into yoga in those days and chose the meditative route, I too followed that path but in those days I didn't have the patience or the luxury of time that the Zen Budhists had and needed accellarated realisation.
Did I say "safe" ? I suppose safe is relative, depends on who's driving the taxi.
Obviously your curiosity got the better of you otherwise you would not have take the drug when it was offered to you. And I probably considered you intelligent enough to make sense of the trip and work through it.
The problem with rational logical people is that they rely too much on reason. My father was an atheist and believed in logic... but how far can logic take us. What happens when you get Alsheimers or the left side of your brain gets damaged and you don't even recognise your own name? I offered him a cap of acid when he said he'd like to try it but he chickened out. It would have opened his mind to the spiritual dimension and his need to rely on intuition... but I'm not sure that he would have been able to handle it. Sometimes we need to be shocked or shaken out of our comfort zone acid has a way of doing that.
These days I have plenty of time to contemplate the cosmos and enjoy the wonders of creation and don't need all that junk ... my Lord and master showed me a better way. I had to come in by the door not a chemical window. In the end if we are truly seeking we all arrive at the same place."
Stoned and stupid
Wally was one of the three musketeers as we called the drug squad who were on my case. After the acid bust he told me "We don't mind you smoking grass but don't let me catch you with LSD." Then one day he dropped in at Van der Merwe Street and said " Just coming to check up on you, have you got any drugs here?" Dawn and I were lying on the mattress, I said " No, look here" lifting the mattress. "What's that?" he asked spotting a cartridge of dagga on the ground. "Oops!" I said and grabbed it, ran outside and threw it onto the roof. He let the incident pass this time.
Sometime later I was enjoying a joint on the steps at the back of the house in Caroline street, Wally walked in with a cop recruit to show him how the hippies live in Hillbrow. Ignoring the joint he greets me and introducing me to his friend. Quite stoned I decided to test Wally "Have a drag man" I offered ... he freaked, "How can you do this to me in front of my friend. Now I've got to bust you" "Oh shit! I thought to myself not again". Then I heard Kas calling for Wally from the bedroom, he had injured his ankle and was asking him to take him to hospital. I took advantage of the distraction and quickly disappeared and the incident passed once again.
My Epiphany on New Years Eve 1971/72
Party time in Hillbrow! The cops were out in force. The side streets into Pretoria were blocked by police vans to contain the midnight revelers and control the influx.
By nightfall we were already tripping on some fresh and potent LSD. Bored with the futile jol and crap talk going on in the house going around in circles never going beyond their little fantasies. I needed something real, I was looking for Dharma, enlightenment, sassing out the truth. The roof of High Point above Fontana was my favourite spot to meditate. It had a lift with mirrors on either side so that you could see your image disappear into infinity which was my ego boosting chamber. As it rose up so did I. I would stare into the mirror and asked "is this me" and prod my face with my fingers, like an alien who had just inhabited a new body. I looked and felt like a young lion, energized, feeling the blood course through my veins, the muscles of my heart and legs pumped tirelessly as I padded softly in takkies.
At the top floor I took the steps onto the roof and gazed across the city. "Far out man", spaced out. 180 degrees peripheral vision, no rational thoughts, no filters, no focus. I hear the sounds of the city, people reveling down below, the traffic, the airconditioning unit blowing, feel a light breeze on my face, see the clouds scudding across the full moon ... the light changing on the surface of the buildings... robots and vehicle lights doing their mechanical dance in the distance. I look up at the stars and wonder at greatness of God. Instinctively my heart reaches out in awe and wonder to the source of life and begins to speak to the "father". I am acutely aware of the contrast between the beauty and purity of creation and the noise and stench of the city with its dirty crime riddled alleys, where fights and gunshots were a constant occurrence. Ian Herslet told me that he became totally depressed and freaked out by the constant crime and violence in Hillbrow. "Early one morning I was on my way to the gym in High Point, when I found a young woman naked and sobbing in the arcade... she had been kidnapped by some guys in a van and raped all night, then dumped in the middle of Hillbrow. I covered her up with my jacked and took her to the police station".
I also had become aware of the ugliness of sin, that Eden was polluted by the human race. When walking around Hillbrow one would pass by some young teens tripping or a happy family beaming with light or brush past someone full of darkness, the ugliness of sin, murky colours emanating from them. The open mind is like a TV screen picking up vibes, perceived as colour. We respond emotionally to what we perceive, its hard to say for sure whether our emotions are interpreted as colour or whether what we perceive is interpreted as emotion... both could be true.
I also had become aware of the ugliness of sin, that Eden was polluted by the human race. When walking around Hillbrow one would pass by some young teens tripping or a happy family beaming with light or brush past someone full of darkness, the ugliness of sin, murky colours emanating from them. The open mind is like a TV screen picking up vibes, perceived as colour. We respond emotionally to what we perceive, its hard to say for sure whether our emotions are interpreted as colour or whether what we perceive is interpreted as emotion... both could be true.
After a while I walked down the steps along the corridor and see an open door to an apartment... I walk in to the surprise of the owner and say "Where's the party?". He replies "sorry, there's no party" and smiles in amusement ... I continue down the corridor. I walk down a flight of steps and get the feeling that I'm being watched/followed and I do a couple of avoiding actions, ducking down some steps and running through the corridor and then down to street level.
I'm back in the revelry, I walk into the road and stop a car and says to the driver, "lets go" " where" he says, " anywhere, I just want to go for a drive". He looks bewildered and drives on. As I walk along Pretoria Street I see a car with open doors and young people sitting in it... I get in and say "Hi, lets go for a drive" they look amused and laugh.
The jol is infectious, I'm caught up in the Pied Pipers spell. I feel like I'm being manipulated.... I look up at the dark tower/propaganda pumping to the nation...feel the dark waves of oppression. I look at the police with their dull gray uniforms and their dull gray police vans and remember the dull gray police cells. The netherworld is gray and dark, the colour of oppression. I want to be free! Free of oppression, free from my conditioning, free of manipulation, free from the Pied Pipers spell. I want to scream.
I spot a Police van/a big Bedford truck and jump onto the bonnet. The driver a young policeman's eye's go as big as saucers. I jump on the roof... both doors swing open and the cops jump out simultaneously. I jump down on the bonnet and onto the ground.
They charge form every side ... beat me with truncheons and fists ... throw me into the "vangwa". I smell the stench of blood, urine and the vomit ... I feel dirty.
At the police station they jeer at me, pulling me by my beard saying "Who do you think you are, Jesus Christ or something?" "get away from me you vuil hippie" "Why is this man so full of blood?". My long hair and red t-shirt with stars is covered in blood ...I want to wash ... I take off my leather jacket and shirt and look for a basin but there is none. I sit on a table and zone out.
When it was time to move me to Norwood prison cells, they steer me to a bus. When the policeman releases his grip on my belt I make a break for it and run down the road. "Stop or I'll shoot" I hear... "Shoot, shoot, it must be better in the next world than this one" I run barefoot down the road. Then thud a truncheon lands on my head again and again ... and I go down ... the pack of dogs catch up to me and beat me and kick my back to pieces.
As they carry me to the bus in a semi conscious state, I see a vision of Jesus hanging on the cross and bleeding. I feel His presence ... He says "Why are you fighting...you can't change the world ... I have already won the battle ... trust me ...do what I tell you to do".
I realise that he is MY LORD and MASTER .... that he is the scape goat. That we all need a scapegoat to take our frustrations, anger and resentment out on. The police pick on the hippies and the blacks and we pick on the fuzz. But here is one who says "stop the violence, lay it on me".
Right then and there he acid tension leaves me and a terrific calm comes over me.
The midnight revelers in the bus are shocked by the brutal beating of this youngster and extend their sympathy and comfort. When we reach Norwood prison I get chucked into the cells. I am in pain but no medical attention is offered. I pass out and wake the following morning to a beautiful sun filled day outside. I get into a discussion with a Scientologist who persuades me too come to one of their sessions when I get out.
The following day The Komandant from Hillbrow police station pops in to see how I am doing. He looks at me and says "So have you learnt your lesson" "Yes" I say "it was a stupid thing to do" he is take aback "Good ... good" he says and turns around.
Later that morning the arresting policeman came to charge me. He says "You got the beating in a pub brawl" "Nonsense" I replied "I don't drink and go to pubs". Realising that they're not going to pin a fake charge on me, they decide to charge me with malicious damage to government property. "You damaged the bonnet of my police truck" they claim. "Rubbish" I counter " I was bare foot and its a Bedford truck".
I showed them no anger or animosity and I think they felt bad about the beating.
I appeared in court and the case was remanded and when the case finally appeared in front of the magistrate, the cops didn't show up and the case was thrown out of court. The cut in my lip the bruises on my face and the gashes in my head and the scabs on my back took a few weeks to heal...the scabs on my back were the most painful cause every time bent over they would crack. The emotions, the feeling of disappointment ... the inhumanity of man ... remains a source of anger that rages against injustice and violence.
A Shift of Consciousness
Something started to change / a change of consciousness / a dissatisfaction with my condition .... stuck in a counter culture rut.
I met this cat on the street called Lammie, had long hair down to his waist and claimed to be a Satsangi. I went over to his place off Twist street and we listened to Cat Stevens and talked about the teachings of Vivekanada and Satpraskaskinanda who introduced Hinduism to the West, a very interesting discourse on consciousness and cognition. I had read the works of D T Suzuki on Zen very enlightening although a little heavy and discussed the the advantages of enlightenment through self realization. I offered Lammie a cap of acid, which he politely declined "my master would not approve" he said.
I went to a scientology meeting and read a few books of Ron Hubbard. A load of pseudo scientific psychology. After finding out how much it would cost to clear my "engrams" [hypnotic suggestions planted in my subconscious during time of trauma and unconsciousness] I decided that the Zen idea of transcending all this crap seemed like more of a sensible solution. Why dig into my painful past and relive all the hurtful feelings? I also buy into the Christian idea of "forgetting what lies behind, lets push on to the prize and high calling of Christ". Can't change the past ... can change my future. Where I come from isn't as important as where I'm going and the satisfaction derived from activities.
Dawn got herself a Great Dane puppy, which quickly grew into the size of a donkey and made huge poos in the garden which eventually made it uninhabitable. We still occasionally dropped a cap of acid, on this night We had sex and it just wasn't the same ...it felt very animalistic and mechanical doing the beastly thing. I asked myself "Is this it ... is this what I'm meant to be doing for the rest of my life" I tried reading Johns Gospel that night ... in the dark ... but didn't get it. Our relationship started to change she sensed that something was up and asked me if I had met someone else. I told her about René, I couldn't get her out of my head. I longed for her presence and fantasized about her body, the sensual curves, graceful as a sandy Namib dune. Long black curls that got entangled in my copper bracelets as she lay in my arms. Dawn wanted to meet this creature who had enthralled me, so we decided to hitch hike to PE with the puppy who was now three feet high and boisterous. Fortunately he took to travel... loved the adventure... the smells of the great outdoors. He would hide in the veld while we put out our thumbs and would be the first in the car when it stopped.
We spent some interesting days amongst the pineapple farms in the Eastern Cape and made it to PE. We met the guys at the Kiosk by the beach as usual, chatted and smoked some dope. Dawn met René and gave her nod of approval and then we hitched to Cape Town and landed up on the Lang Kloof in Houtbay, a smallholding inhabited by hippies.
I found a copy of "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" Lying in the house. The best introduction to Zen you can lay your hands on. Just simple stories ... moments of pure Zen.
Look listen and feel...run till you drop. Some of the stories were eye openers... Buddha was in a cave meditating. A man had just lost his wife and was heartbroken and miserable, he was looking for answers, for peace and wanted an interview with the Bodhisatwa.
His followers told him that the Buddha was busy meditating and could not be interrupted. The man sat outside in the snow for two days...eventually in desperation, he cut off his arm and presented it to the Buddha who then agreed to see him. I thought if that had been Jesus he would have been with the people and shown compassion, not locked away in private contemplation.
Another Buddhist story, a woman, her husband had died she too was broken hearted and miserable. She wanted to find peace in a monastery, but the abbot turned her away because she was very beautiful and he thought that she would distract his monks. She took a hot iron and scarred her face... seeing her desperation she was now admitted into the monastery. I figured that the peace of the buddhist was dependent on their isolation from the stresses of life in the real world. All our Bodhisatwas are sitting in mental institutions and monasteries zoning out, catatonic schitsophrenics we call them, sitting on a bench in the garden at Valkenberg watching the clouds scudding across the skies, the light changing on the wall and the sound of the wind and the birds in the trees ...zoned out.. an escape from reason ... from society and responsibility.
I think of another buddhist monk who...as an act of kindness decided to widen a narrow dangerous pass in the Himalayas, where many travelers lost their lives ... to work off his karma. The great engineers of South Africa Thomas Bain and others will be pleased to know that they have secured their place in heaven because of the passes they built across our mountains. You know that they used to trek freight with oxwagons over the Hottentot Holland mountains where Sir Lowries pass is today. It used to take 14 days to trek over the Overberg and that it cost one particular freighter 20 oxwagons per year. God bless Sir Lowry!
I realised that it was time to stop reading and start practicing.
Dawn and I hitchhiked back through the Karoo and parted company in Bloemfontein.
I ran into a young girl whom I met when camping in a cave at Oudekraal, at the time she was involved with a guy who later moved in with Dawn in Salt River. She invited me to stay for the night and introduced me to her friends, who took us for a drive up the hill and smoked grass. That's all.
Dawn made her own way back to Hillbrow with the dog which she eventually gave to neighbours of her parents on the South Coast. They had two great Danes and large grounds where he could run around in a beautiful environment.
The following day I got a lift to Vanderbylpark and dropped in to see Ria and Rob Eilenveldt who were neighbours and old friends of the family. I heard later that they were quite dismayed at my state ... smelly hippie with long hair and unwashed clothes ... I had been on the road for quite a while. She was a devout and millitant Christian who took me to the Methodist Sunday school when I was six years old. I slept over and when I left Ria prayed earnestly for me.
Ria a joyfull, jolly, round woman and Rob were well known in Scripture Union circles. They ran the Scripture Union Campsite at Stony Ridge where the Ciara Conferences were held. Years later when Christine and I were married we hooked up with them there. At the Time Rob was being treated for Leukemia when Ria recounted a couple of stories which will give you an idea of the mighty woman she was. "I took Rob to the Hospital in Johannesburg his chemo. While I was waiting in the reception area I noticed a black woman sitting on one of the benches in a long que waiting to be attended to. Her face was grey. I was a nurse in my young days and realised immediatly that she was close to dying. i walked up to her and asked her what's wrong? She replied that was bleeding internally and that she had been sitting there all morning. I asked her what her number was. 43 she replied. I went to the counter and told the receptionist that this woman needed attention immediately or she would die. "What number is she?" the receptionist asked. "43" I said "What number are you at?" "14... the patient will have to wait her turn" the nurse said. I replied "If you don't get her a doctor now I will stand next the her and scream!" The nurse replied "I'm sorry but she will have to wait her turn" Then I went and stood next to the patient and started to scream at the top of my lungs "Help...help I need a doctor now! If you don't help this woman now she is going to die!" Three doctors came running out of their examination rooms to attend to the woman and immediate took her into the trauma unit."
Another story. "At Stony Ridge one of our workers' sons was doing matric. He had to walk thirteen kilometers to his school in the Magaliesberg every day and thirteen kilometers back, so we bought him a bicycle. One day he came crying to me, "what's wrong" I asked. "While I was driving home a police van came up and bumbed me from behind. The policeman climbed out of the van and said that my tail light was broken and that they would have to confiscate the bike. I pleaded with them but they took the bicycle in the van" I was furious and called the police chief in the town ... he knew us well because we often hosted them at the conference centre for SAP conferences. I said "There is a problem, I have put the kettle on and you had better be here in time for tea or I will be calling Police Headquarters." He was there like a shot and I told him "We bought this black boy a bicycle so that he could do his matric and your constables, damaged his tail light when they bumbed into him and took his bike. It had better be returned immediately or I will contact head office". The captain apologised for his men's behavior and said that he would see to it. The same afternoon the constables were at the door with the bicycle and apologised. I said to them "Yes, you are jealous because this black boy is doing his matric and you guys don't even have your standard eight!"
Yes, that's Ria... standing up for righteousness.
I arrived in Hillbrow three o'clock the following morning and went straight to bed. When I got up in the morning I went for a quick walk to Dunka Donut and then back home. Ten minutes later the drug squad rocked up at my door "We've come to see what you have brought back with you from Cape Town" Like I said before" just because you've been healed of paranoia, doesn't mean that no ones following you". They apparently had my picture in every drug squad office in South Africa and were following my travels.
I realised that things were getting too hot for me in Hillbrow and that I needed to make a change. I had made a conscious decision to sop smoking grass since it was too easy to get caught. Unfortunately the following week a friend arrived from Durban with some poison and made a few joints with us and gave me a stick to keep. In my stoned state I threw it behind a painting and forgot about it. A few days later there was a combined Durban, Pretoria and Joburg drug squad raid on my house and they found the stick of poison and a cartridge of dagga in Dawn's handbag. I was promptly arrested. Wally couldn't protect me from this one.
I appeared in court and got another fine and suspended sentence. That's when I decided that it was time to leave.
I moved my stuff back to Pretoria with my parents and made my way back to PE to take René to Cape Town. I found some accommodation in an old boarding house for a few days and we engaged in some heavy petting. But things had changed, I was not the same person I was before. I realised that I was moving out of the hippie scene while René was just getting into it. I now did not want to be the corrupter of her innocence and her beauty. I loved her for and knew that we were not destined to be a couple. We hitched down to Cape Town together, a very memorable and enjoyable trip. we got dropped off late in the afternoon somewhere after Humansdorp in the bush. The scent of the fynbos and the beautiful sunset with this lovely creature by my side. I am still reminded of that day whenever I smell fynbos. A Kombi with surfers stopped and picked us up and we drove through the night to Victoria bay. We slept together in my sleeping bag, a very tight squeeze but enjoying the warmth of her body.
They lent me a surfboard and tried some surfing... not very successfully.
Found some magic mushrooms in the hills and sold them to some young surfers for food money. I think that's where I was given the name Magic Jack.
René and I made our way to Cape Town the next day. We dropped in on Les Abrahams who was working for Musica then in Greenmarket Square. Johnny Weber was working there as well and it seems that René made quite an impression on him, because he mentioned her to me months later after I got to know him at the Hippie market.
We landed up in a commune in De smit street in the old Malay Quarter, in those days it was a slum with ruined cottages with Hippies living in it. No 12 Jarvis Street and Napier Street was known for its crashpads. Christopher was a the leaseholder in the house and took a liking to me for my philosophical and mystical outlook. He was gathering his twelve disciples around him, The twelve signs of the zodiac, but secretly had his eye on René whose beautiful butt had mesmerised him.
I moved into the cellar where Stermin seemed to think he was king. Stermin was a nasty stoned piece of work, into black magic, people who want to manipulate others for their own pleasure. He had the hots for René and a week or so later decided to make a move on her and told me to leave. I told René that she could stay and that I would find another place.
With nowhere to go I started up Signal hill but decide that the environment was too hostile ... walked down to Sea Point and along the promenade. Saw this big bloke with his head down, wispy blond hair ... recognition..."Jan, Jan Bekker" "Jack ...is that you?" "Yeah man" "What you doing here?" he asked, "Got chucked out of my pad in De Smit street and looking for a place to crash" I said. "I'm staying here in Sea Point, come stay with me" "Cool man". Jan a Potch university dropout was stoned, always stoned on some kind of junk, like Bezedrex inhalers or Pondies and grass or acid. Basically anything you could lay your hands on. He probably got financial support from his family, father was a university professor.
As we walked up to his bachelor pad on top of a narrow block of flats, I told him about the magic mushrooms on the mountain in Longkloof Houtbay.
I settled into his place and the following day we hitched to Hout bay, walked into the forest and picked Aminita Muscarius Mushrooms. Poisonous toadstools and dried them on his balcony when we returned. A few days later we crushed the dried mushrooms and mixed hem with nuts and rice. We walked up Signal Hill and cooked the concoction. We watched the sunset and started walking down. After a while Jan started complaining, "I'm feeling sick" I said "Don't worry, just focus your mind on the environment, not your stomach". But to no avail, a moment later he cotched his guts out. I kept on in a meditative state and when we reached his pad, sat outside in the lotus position...Lost track of time ... when I regained awareness ... I noticed the occasional car passing in the main road below. I figure it must have been past midnight.
.. I'm disorientated...my world is confined to my senses...two dimensional. Light is static on the retina of my eye ... no sense of depth . Sounds, just a scraping on my ear drum. I feel confined in my material body ... feels like a concrete block a million miles thick ... and God and life is on the outside somewhere. I get up and walk to the edge of the building and look down six stories... I see a brick drop and cracking below... my subconscious interpretation of fear. There are no words/rational thought ... only instinct ... I take a step back. I'm afraid ... uncomfortable ... look for a way out ... look for the apartment /want to go inside / home/ warmth/security.
Find a door ... look for the handle ... the handle has disappeared! What's happening? Confused/sit down. See a sign "NO ADMITTANCE".
I have the strong intuition that GOD is saying "No admittance into my Kingdom... into Eden the garden of God" I cry out "WHY?" God speaks as clear as daylight "Jack, I'm going to teach you a lesson you're never going to forget!" I realised that I had poisoned my body with poisonous mushrooms and that I was going to suffer the consequenses.
I shat myself ... I feel like a little boy who's been naughty and who's going to get a hiding... want escape/get back to reason ... I latch on to my name ..."Jack...Jack ...Jack ...Jack ...Jack ...the mantra goes in my head like a Buddhist prayer wheel ... then ABCD EFG... the alphabet one of the first things we learn in school ... the building blocks of words which are the building blocks of reason. As the abc goes round in my head words are formed ... "Your's is the kingdom" ... "Your's is the kingdom, not mine oh Lord". "Your's is the power ... and the glory" I realised that I have been trying to enter into HIS KINGDOM through a chemical window, for my own power and glory. If I wanted into His Kingdom I would have to go through the door "His Way ... Jesus".
When I realised this ... the ground gave way beneath me and I dropped like a stone. Its like the dark concrete coffin that I was confined in suddenly evaporated and released me. I gritted my teeth and thought "I've steeped over the edge ... my mother is going to think I committed suicide" "Please God help my mother get over this." The body of the young man we had killed with our bakkie flashed across my mind ... I expected to hit the ground at any moment and would be smashed like him...when I had fallen about thirty times the distance ... I opened up my eyes and found myself still sitting in front of the door. Then I realised I was at the wrong door, the door to the liftshaft ...I reorientated myself and walked into the open door of Jan's apartment. He was lying on his bed arms flailing in the air yelling "I'm killing my brother ...I'm killing my brother!".
I shake him awake ... walk into the bathroom and stand on my head. Then vomit my guts out.
The madness endured for another three days ... spaced out of my skull. I went to the Hippie Market where I ran into Bill, a friend of my brother's who introduced me to some Jesus freaks ... we talked and debated. I didn't trust them I though that they were a ploy of the oppressive establishment/the technocratic industrial system to rehabilitate me. Going straight was an anathema to Acid Head Hippies.
Guru Maharaji the then 13 year old wonder / enlightened one, was in Town. This was in 1972. I was invited by Chris from the house in De Smit Street to attend one of his lectures in a warehouse in Salt River. He told us about enlightenment, charging the batteries and switching on the lights ... I sensed that I was more out of my skull than he was ... still coming down from the mushrooms.
Went back to the Hippie Market and spoke to Chrisman at the Christian Bookshop. He was very patient and seemed wise and cool with his thick brown beard. After I had told him about my experiences on Acid and Mushrooms and that God had told me to come in by the door, I said" I want to talk to God" and he took me into a small cubicle at the back of the shop. I didn't know what I was meant to say, so he said repeat after me and I repeated a basic sinners prayer.
I walked ... felt a sense of peace ... knew that something significant had happened / a watershed moment.
Repentance! What's that?
Nobody could have told me that LSD was a bad thing or judge my morality or values. I was an opinionated insensitive oath ... raised by my atheist humanist father to question everything and to rationalise my conclusions. He loved to argue, I wish I could say "debate" but he didn't understand debate when it came to politics or religion. For him it was about winning or loosing ... for me its about arriving at the truth. When he felt that he couldn't win a debate he'd get angry and unfortunately logic can only take one to a certain point. What do you do when you can no longer rely on logic ... say for instance in the case of Alsheimers or LSD or Magic mushrooms. How does one function then? That's when one requires the quiet confidence of faith ... faith in the creator and the creative processes /intelligence/ knowledge/information buried in our DNA ... the double helix made up of strings of male and female... positively and negatively charged molecules that make up who we are. Something so simple develops into the complex organism that we are according to a strict code. The code is modified by experiences that we go through which allows us to develop strategies to adapt to our environment. Carl Gustav Jung calls this the Collective Unconscious or Race Memory, the Architypal man. Francis Sheafer proposed that some of this memory may be related to language/the words that we use.
There is information in everything... complex molecules are determined by the electron which carries sound light and information ... surely the mind of the atom?
Can't remember who proposed this hypothesis, but I read it in the early seventies.
Today scientist have discovered that DNA has switches molecules that get switched on or charged by traumatic experiences in life ... which results in an instinctive reaction to certain stimuli like famine/war/violence ... which results in a predisposition to anxiety or violence.
I reckon that the anger and anxiety my father suffered was largely due to trauma that he suffered as a "Kreigs Arbeiter" in East Berlin during the Blitz, when the Allied bombs flattened the city. "How can God be a God of love when He allows all this horror. What did the 13 Polish girls in the building across the road do that was so bad that they should all be killed?"
A good question but a futile one if you're an Atheist.... why question a God you don't believe in?
Have you ever wondered about the anger and the venom directed towards Christians as soon as they mention GOD or JESUS.
Remember Lammie the cool Sat Sangi? A year after my rebirth I met in the market at Green Point Stadium. "Hey Lammie, Howseet man". He looks at me curiously. Have I changed that much? My hair's is a bit shorter. "Howseet, what you doing here?" "I'm living here now, lots of things have changed ... I've become a Christian".
"You bloody Jesus freaks, why don't you give me a break" and he goes off...He rants for a while and then stops and asks "but who are you anyway .... are you the guy that offered me a cap of acid in Hillbrow?" ... "Yes".... "Oh! Now I appreciate what you are saying".
As soon as you identify yourself as a Christian some people assume that you're bigoted and narrow minded. Who's the bigot and who's judging now? We all need to blame someone ... it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord but we all need to blame someone. Yes, we're all pretty fucked up and we all need redemption.
Dawn said she hated Jesus Freaks. Why? I don't think she really understood why but my impression is that they raised the spectre of guilt before God. We blame God for the bad things that happen to us and then deny His existence ... curious.
"And you Christian, who are you to judge me!" the typical secular humanistic response. They pass laws on human rights then refuse to be judged. What's the point of having human rights if we don't have human responsibilty and people to police those rights. Unfortunately some will have to experience the judgement of the law. As soon as we make laws we acknowledge that there is a right and a wrong way to do things. The bible says that it demonstrates that every person has this consciousness within them so that they may be without excuse. Jesus summed the law up simply "love God and Love your neighbour as yourself" in other words every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect and be given the same opportunity to thrive.
When we cheat, lie, steal and kill, we are not respecting the rights of others. The problem with crime [sin] is that there is always a victim .... somebody suffers. Whether its a crime of passion, broken promisses, divorce, fraud or reckless driving.
"We are what we are because of the choices we make" ... sometimes they have to be split second choices. if you're drunk or stoned your reactions may not be quick enough to make that split second decision to go either left or right, which will make the difference between being whole, paraplegic or dead. Decisions effect our lives... whom to love, when to have sex, the sports we play, what to study or not to study, career choices, business decisions, what to buy and when to buy. The right time to travel. "There is a time for everything under the sun" and "A wise man gathers knowledge" and "wisdom is the dilligent application of knowledge" or the careful and responsible use of technology.
Free will is determined by the choices available to us.
Freedom implies free access to information and the responsibility to ensure that we have all the right information to make good choices or decisions.
A week after my realization, I'm at the counter of the coffee bar in the Market and I bump into a dude who owed me ten caps of acid from my distribution days. I notice his guilty look when he sees me and says sheepishly "Hi Jack, I've got a cap of acid do you want it?" "Yes of course" I reply and he reaches into his pocket and furtively passes it to me. Its a blue microdot and I pop it into my mouth without hesitation. "Manna from heaven" I thought. "Let go for a blow" he says, paying for the sandwich. We made our way to the Malay Quarter and scored a bottleneck with the merchant. While I'm sucking on the bottleneck I think, "This is not doing anything for me ... what am I doing this for?" I look around me at the ruins of the slum and the stench of urine and faeces "I should not be here. I want to go up Signal Hill and watch the sunset". So I split and ran cross country straight through the bush.
When I got to the top of the hill I came to a wall with a stenciled scripture on it, "No drunkard will inherit the Kingdom of God" It smacked me like a fist between the eyes! I walked further and came to a circular platform on the peak with the same scripture. I took out the Good News Bible that I had been given and started to read. 1 Corinthians 6:9
"Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God".
"Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God".
Conviction set in... it was crunch time ... I had to make a Decision.
I said, "Ok God, I'm finished with the bright lights of the city, with drugs and free sex. I want to be the person you want me to be."
That was my moment of repentance. I was going though a mental battle. Dark forces surrounded me. I sensed dark forces gnashing teeth in frustration. Thoughts came "Stay here on the mountain, you can eat herbs". Then I sensed God's spirit prompting "I want you to go down the mountain and back to Sunday school". "Ok God, if that's what you want I'll do it" and I walked down the mountain. It was a Wednesday evening when walked into a bible study in the Hippie market, they were singing in tongues and I felt as though I was walking into heaven. Still out of my skull on acid. I realised that I had come home.
Sorting out the mess and breaking old habits
My mind was like a fishing reel that had gotten out of control, a birds nest we used to call the mess, which takes hours to unravel. My psychedelic gospel was a mixture of Krishnamurti, von Daniken, Vedante, Zen, Antroposophy, humanism, existentialism and LSD and Artane. Lets not forget the psychologists, Freud, Jung, Alvin Toffler and R D Laing the anti psychiatrist. Every one had a contribution to make in my development and an influence in my journey. Some good stuff and some useless.
Now I had to determine the difference between perception and reality and put all this information in its proper place. I was a hungry new Christian and read the bible cover to cover in the first three months underlining the things that stood out for me.
One of the scriptures is "If a man will not work, he aught not to eat either"
"Ok Lord! Help me to find work" I put out the need and I got a small job doing some illustrations, then painted a sign in the Hippie Market, then got a job painting out a New Clothing Boutique and so it went. With the first decent payment I bought a the Logos Study Bible which then cost R50. The a scooter to get around.
Brian O' Donell was the owner of the Market. I was offered a place at Christopher's crashpad at the time ... Jan Bekker went back to Pretoria and I was just about to move when Dave Valentine heard about it. He said "You can't move in there, its a den of Satan" and he called to Brian, "Brian don't you have a place for Jack to stay" "yes, we've' got the outside maids room". Brian took me to his house in Greenpoint and installed me in a very nice and clean outhouse ... where I stayed for three months. This was all I needed to get on my feet and I am eternally indebted to Brian for his kindness.
There was this long odd space in the Market and I said to Brian "I think this will make a good poster shop" so he said "Well why don't you start it" "Ok, where do I start?" and he put me in touch with the owner of Vekerke posters who was all too happy to supply me with bins and posters on consignment. Posters were good business in those days and the shop grew quickly. At the same time I kept on doing graphic design, logos corporate ids and illustrations for Women's Argus and Bollie magazine.
It was 1972 and there were protests against the Nationalist government at St Georges Cathedral. I got arrested for waving a Christian banner and they threw me in the cells at Caledon Square in good company with Dean King and Bishop Tutu.
The security took my presence at the protest quite seriously and threatened me "Don't let me catch you in the streets I'll run you over with my car" They sent a detective to visit my parents to find out who and what I was. Some of the guys that were in jail were really scared and wanted to run to Botswana. I was represented by student Layers from Legal aid and the case against me was dismissed in court. The security police kept tabs on me for quite a while popping into the Market now and again.
Doing leather work and selling handbags was Sean Hamilton Harty, Dawns old abusive boyfriend. He was living in a studio on the corner of Long and New Pepper Street, which is now Mamma Africa. He offered me a room in the huge old Victorian apartment with it wrap around broekie lace wrought iron balcony, which was later torn down, making Long Street the poorer for it. The building belonged to Mrs Cohen who lived in Marmion Road, where I went to pay the rent, when I took over the apartment.
Ian Herslet made a commitment to Jesus and shared the apartment with me.
He was an ex Hells Angel from Joburg who had a lot of problems that he needed to work through and got quite aggressive if you pushed the wrong buttons. He had an old Triumph motorbike that he was busy stripping down and turning into a chopper in our lounge.
During this time I got news that a friend of mine got arrested and was in prison in Pretoria. So I hitched a ride to Pretoria and him a visit in Pretoria central ... talked to him and gave him my underlined bible. Visited my parents and told them my story. My dad was skeptical but said "Well if it works for you, I'm happy for you. You know I will never stand in the way of your beliefs"
I ran into Mike Kimber's sister who had a crush on me. She took me home and met with Mike who was at artschool with me. He had also recently come out of Weskoppies after he freaked out on acid. So I asked him what happened. He said "The vibes became too heavy and he had to withdraw" I said "How?" "Give it a chance to hear and to feel and give it a chance to shut up as well"... Zen in a nutshell!
She took me to visit Gary Myburgh and then on to some nightclub in Lyttleton called Starship. Gary Myburg, he had been in Weskoppies again and was now a total mental case. Electrical shock treatment wiped out large segments of his memory ... looked doped and lost. Couldn't remember half the stuff we did together, like our trip to Amansimtoti. That was the last time I saw him. I later heard that he had committed suicide. My fears of landing up in the hands of psychiatrists was well founded. I feared that if they gave me shock treatment Humpty Dumpty and all the Kings horses wouldn't be able to put him together again.
I smoked a joint with Gary an danced a bit with Mike's sister at the club and got into a bit of cuddling and kissing. The whole affair kind of got to my head and I kicked myself all the way back to Cape town for my stupidity. I had fallen from grace and disturbed the delicate fabric of my peace, the peace one gets from a clear conscience when the slate is wiped clean.
I had made a commitment to keep my hands off the girls and not get sexually and emotionally involved until I intended to get married. That wasn't easy for a single horny, twenty year old male, with lots of enticing teenage girls looking for love.
Johnny was a matchmaker and a payboy who couldn't keep his hands off the sisters.
He tried hooking me up with Beverly a Slim frecklefaced brunette model with skinny legs and nice boobs...yes I noticed. She invited me to go to the beach with her where I was give the opportunity to admire her body. But I was a good boy and kept my distance. May a sexy Malay girl used to hang around my poster stall and stand real close and rub my thigh ... drive me nuts but kept my distance. During worship sessions we'd sing and hold hands and the sisters would squeeze my hand so tight making it obvious that they wanted more. Cindy started hanging around my poster shop and introduced me to her cousin Christine, a quiet shy but cute little brunette ... so cute. I'd gaze into her eyes and simple take in her innocence and beauty ... not knowing that she would be my wife one day. Cindy was quite a strong and pushy girl not scared of initiating a relationship. She had the hots for me and often asked me to take her to church or the beach. On the back of the scooter shed hold on so tight it was obvious that it was more than just a scooter ride. Ian got involved with Cindy soon afterwards and had a stormy tussle for preemminence. Cindy loved to call the shots and Ian too so they were always at loggerheads about where to go and which movies to see. The relationship lasted a year and left them both broken hearted. Johnny too was in and out of relationships and trying to get me hooked up but I kept myself unentangled not wishing to complicate my life and break hearts. I understood the dynamic of love and sex ... its simple. I see ... I like .... I want ... I take ... and all the emotions go wild ... and then breaking up is hard.
But what about sex surely you wanted or needed sex?
Yeah, I had a fairly active sex life up to that point and my body isn't going to stop producing testosterone just because I want to abstain. I soon realised that if a young man does't have sex you have wet dreams. Having sex in dreams is often better than the real thing... unfortunately I felt guilty about the dreams ... I felt that I was somehow less spiritual than I was supposed to be and that I've somehow let myself down. Now I know that sex is just part of being human. God created us man and female to enjoy sex and when we abstain from sex ... its natural for the body and mind to find a way to discharge the excess hormones and if you need to, give it a helping hand ... so be it. Now if I have the rare erotic dream I just relax and enjoy it and let it pass. No one gets pregnant and no hearts are broken.
Towards the end of 1972 John Bond came to my poster shop for a chat, he had observed me doing illustrations and artwork and he mentioned that Edith his wife was an artist. We talked about art and Christian art and his opinion was that any art done by a Christian was Christian art regardless of the subject or content. Pretty switched for a straight dude. Then one day as he stood around rattling his keys in his pocket as was his habit, He said, "Jack, what are going to do with your life?" and I thought "what's the man of God trying to say?" I think he probably thought that I was wasting my time/talent in the Hippie Market. I said "I haven't thought about it". So I did. " I wonder whether I should go to bible school, I've become a serious student of the bible and I'm at the crossroad. I'm totally committed to the Way".
Like, soon after I got "saved" I was asked to give my story at the "Give God A Chance Crusade" with Brother Andrew as the Main Speaker and Frank Retief.
What a terrifying experience that was... speaking in front of six thousand people as a young Christian...my mind was racing...heart beating like a crazed drummer on speed.
So I prayed in tongues ... tongues ...tongues... what the heck is that you may ask. Well when the early disciples were waiting in Jerusalem after the crucifixion... tongues of fire came down and they all began to speak in strange languages. Apostle Paul said "we don't always know how to pray, but the Spirit prays for us in groans and utterances that cannot be understood, but God does". But he said something else "the Spirit prays and the understanding remains unfruitful/inactive" very Zen don't you think?
In other words the rational mind is silenced and one enters into a state of tranquility.
An excellent device when our heart is overwhelmed.
Soon after I started bible studies I was asked if I wanted to receive the gits of the Spirit and I said yes. We stood in a circle and somebody laid hands on my head and everybody payed in tongues. Here I stood expecting 'fire from heaven' or a bolt of lightning sending me on an acid trip but nothing happened. That night in a dream, I experienced the prayer group praying fo me when I hear God say "Jack ... wait!" That's all wait? I woke up that morning wondering...
Weeks later while I was reading the bible during my morning bath time about the Holy Spirit falling on the disciples and they received spiritual gifts, that the lights went on and I began to worship in tongues.
These were crazy times when we Jesus Freaks were witnessing in the streets and in the marketplace. Brian was sharing his testimony on Green Market Square ... Titch Paul who was a surfboard maker was there listening... got inspired and made a commitment right there and then.
Brian Johnny and Jaques Krige went to UTC and preached on Jammie Hall Steps when we noticed everyone going into the hall, Brian always the agitator told Jaques to get the mike and share his testimony. Jaques went up and started speaking, which was jeered at by the mob of students. One of the student leaders then took the mike and said "You call yourselves liberals, give him a chance to speak!" By that time Brian had told me to go up to tell Jacques to speak in the mike. When I got up on the stage the student handed the mike to me, kinda shocked I was forced to think quickly. There were posters outside announcing the up and coming event of "Guru Maharaji'. So I started off "I notice that you are interested in spiritual things ... Guru Maharaji for instance ... and I began to share my story." There was silence while I spoke, until I was interrupted by the dignitaries that were supposed to be speaking and I was ushered off the stage.
Yeah..in those days you had to be ready at any time to share your story. Very scary if you were not used to public speaking.
Larry Norman came to town and preached and sang his Jesus Freak songs,
"When I was up in Canada ... I didn't have much money... my shoes had holes and my toes were cold ... and my nose was kinda runny ... I met a wise man in the street and he said to me would you like to eat... he gave me a coconut hotdog fine ... a piece of bread and a glass of wine ... I said lead me on ... lead me on to where you are going... my body's tired but my hearts inspired and my hunger's growing".
But back to John Bond and my destiny... should I go to bible school?
I thought about it and told God that I'd do anything He wanted me to.
So I said "Do you want me to go to bible school and into the ministry?"
"How am I going to know? I'll tell you what, God. I'll ask John... if he says yes ... I'll go ... if no ... I'll know that its your will".
So next time I saw John I asked him, "John, do you think I should go to bible school?" and he answered without hesitation... "No Jack, I think you'll be wasting your time". "Oh! OK thanks".
I reevaluated my course of action and decided that the only prudent thing to do was to pursue my career in Graphic design. I took my little portfolio and went for a job interview in a small production studio which Brennan a friend and designer referred me to.
Since this was an important time for me I decided to go up to du Toits River in The Hottentots Holland mountains to pray and fast for two weeks.
Got onto my Vespa and drove the 70kms to Du Toits kloof, hid the scooter in the bush and followed the river upstream. I only had a sleeping bag and a little pot for brewing tea. And there I stayed for two weeks contemplating creation and my hungry navel. My biggest problem wasn't the hunger but the loneliness and isolation with only the baboons for company now and again and a few fly fishermen. I can't say that it made me any more spiritual...rather it made me more aware of my humanity and my short comings. The gratifying thing was when I went back home with my trousers hanging half way down my skinny butt. I was told by Ian Herslett who was then sharing the flat in Disapark with a group of five Jesus freaks and I "Somebody called. You've got a job".
In November 1972 I started working for the design studio working on the Woolworths account doing illustrations for training programs and artwork for their posters and signage and other accounts.
The flat was a crashpad for hip cats and travelers who sometimes ripped us off, as well as an outreach where we met and had very volatile discussions about the books of Francis Sheafer, Oswald Guiness and the bible. Ian was enrolled in the bible school and eventually dropped out of the course and sold me all his text books for R50 which helped greatly to develop my theology.
We put a notice in the lift to announce a discussion about Christianity and Mysticism and New Age religions. A group of Krisnamurti's followers were living in the flats and they joined us for a debate. After discussing both sides one of the young men admitted that he could more readily relate to the personal nature of Christ than to the objective existential philosophy of Krishnamurti.
Cindy and Christine would occasionally pop in and clean up the place for us and go to church with us on the back of our scooters. I remember a hilarious incident on my aging scooter one Sunday morning. I was taking Pietie's cousin Sonya to church [Harfield Road AOG] she was dressed in a short skirt with stockings and high heels as we were tearing down the steep hill towards De Waal drive. I stood on the brakes nothing...pull the handbrake ... still not slowing down... put the bike into second gear then first ... still going too fast for the stop street. I shouted to Sonya "hold on" as I threw the bike into the turn, I leaned the one way and she leaned the other and the scooter lost traction slid over the tarmac just narrowly missing on coming traffic. We were both shaken, her stockings were torn and her thigh had a large abrasion. We limped back home where Sonya got changed and we somehow managed to get to church via a safer route.
Sometime during this year my Vespa got stolen from Disa Park. I was complaining to God about my hard luck on my walk home from the Hippie market in the early hours of the morning. I needed to get around and had to find a way to finance a new ride. Johnny and Neil Forman were into scrambling by then and I found a bike at a dealership, a noisy lime green 350 Kawasaki. I borrowed R350 from my dad and took to dune scrambling at Koeberg before the Nuclear Powerstation was built. The bike left me with back and knee injuries that have been a source of pain for the rest of my life. The rewards of stupidity and haste.
Towards the end of 1973 the partners in the flat went their separate ways and I was left to pay the rent for a flat I couldn't afford. I was desperately looking for an apartment I could afford but nothing came up. Again I was moaning to the Lord about my need and on the last day, someone in the Market mentioned a flat to let in Albert Court in Long Street, right across the Old Victorian I used to stay in. Went to the carpet shop below signed a lease got the keys and moved in the next day. Shoo! Just in the nick of time .. God tests our faith.
Albert Court was a hangout for queers, transvestites and prostitutes. Two of the most famous queens lived across the hall from me Tammy and Che. They would spend Saturdays washing their waist length hair and doing their make up and preening themselves. I was washing my dishes one afternoon when I spot two sexy chicks in tight miniskirts coming down the steps, Tammy notices me and kicks up his leg to show off his suspenders "Hi Jack" before I recognised them. I spent some time with Tammy discussing life 'an all. He said to me " Nobody loves a thirty five year old Queen". Yes when you're young "someone wants to abuse you, someone wants to be abused by you" Boy George. But when they've had their fun you're left with your depression on the shelf. Next door to me was this pedophile arsebandit, who picked up young runaway teenagers and banged them. Ian climbed over the balcony one day because he was locked in the flat when he saw the guy going at it. I did try to speak to him about spiritual things which elicited this response"I love your body but I can't stand your mind".
I met a Schizophrenic girl in the Market and asked her what medication she was on. Curious to the effect that it has on the patient ...I asked her for her normal dose and took it. Christine and Cindy were coming to the apartment for lunch. By the time I got home I was in a paralytic coma, with spittle drooling from out of my mouth and was lying on the lime green 60's settee in the lounge. When the girls arrived I was totally helpless and embarrassed by my condition. They graciously made lunch and then went home, leaving me to wallow in my drug shackled state.
The Proposal
Being single was getting to me and some of the older woman in our group had the hots for me, they felt that it would be better for me to get married because I was causing the sisters to stumble ... what ... were they having wet dreams?
Anyways I thought about it and I was pretty tired of being a single unsexed male and the idea of marriage suddenly began to appeal to me. There were a couple of girls that took my fancy but not viable for several reasons. Then one day I was standing in church next to Christine and we sang some song and held hands and I thought "what a cute little hand" .
I questioned my friends about her to gather some intelligence and then made a play for her. I took her home that night on the back of my bike and said to "I'd like to know you better ... I don't want to mess you around" I drove up to Rhodes memorial and we stood in the moonlight looking over the dazzling lights of the city carpeted below us, with its streets of gold. "I want to get married and think that you would make a good wife, I don't want to mess you around and would like to know you better" "think about it and lets get together next Saturday for supper and we'll talk about it" "Ok" she said timidly and I took her to her home in Observatory.
The following week we went to La Fontana Restaurant and I asked her once again " I want to marry you. How do you feel about me?" she kinda swallowed and said "Yes..when do you want to get married?" "Next week, as soon as we can" I said. "We'll have to tell my mom". I bought her this little engagement ring that I got a jewellery to make up for her with a cross on it and came with an interlocking wedding band.
When we announced our intentions to her mom she said " How much money have you got in the bank" "R100" I answered. "Well, you'll have to wait till she's out of school" which was in a couple of months time. A year later we were married in September 1975.
I was upfront and straight with Christine because I didn't believe in getting emotionally involved and breaking hearts. I think that by that time I had a pretty good understanding about the mechanics of love:
I look...I like...I want ... I grab ... crazy heady feelings... but is that love?
Old Robert Islandveldt spoke to his daughter about love when she was having difficulty in her marriage". Rob said "I didn't love your mother when I married her". Shocked she replied "Surely dad! You loved mom when you married her". "No" he says "I just craved her body!" "You only know what love is after you have gone through, bankrupcy, sickness hard times together...then you know what love is".
And our love was tested very soon after. First, the very next weekend were off to Noordhoek/Longbeach with the boys to do some scrambling on the beach, on the way home afterwards we come around Constantia bend at Cecilia forest and this Alsatian walks in front of the bike and we go sprawling along the tarmac. Christine got her hand cut up and she was shaking with shock. A passerby drove her home, I followed later. No sooner had she healed up and back on the bike ...off to a party with Glen Simpson in front we go around the corner at the bottom of Upper Orange Street to the Loxton Lodge and we slip on the gravel left behind by a road repair and we go sprawling again. This time her ankle got caught under the wheel and graunched.
After that incident she refused to get onto the bike with me.
So I was forced to walk her to the station and take her home by train for a considerable time. I was in the Market one stinking hot summers day, when Johnny asked me if it was ok for Christine to go to the beach with him and I said "ok".
So she got onto the back of Johnny's bike and drove to Clifton. So I was waiting and fuming, "So you won't drive with me, but you will drive with that lunatic driver... Johnny! Don't expect me to walk you home in future!". So I kinda found the perfect cause to blackmail her back onto the bike.
Andre Olivier got saved around that time. Wilma got brought to Somerset Presby Church where we were meeting at the time under Paul Watney's preaching.
Wilma was working at the OK Bazaar in Parow when a fellow employee witnessed to her. Andre was very skeptical at the time and was into the same stuff that I had been through. Andre was a compositor for Cape & Transvaal printers and was just finishing his aprentiship. Bad career choice ... hot metal printing was soon to be replaced with Phototypesetting. Andre had a passion for leatherwork and made bags and shoes on the side. I began to visit them in their little one bedroomed apartment, where we spent many nights debating comparative religions amongst the smell of grass and incense. They had a cool little hippie pad and Wilma's cooking was very good and sustained me for a long while.
Andre made a commitment to Jesus during this period and I turned him onto Oswald Guiness's book "The dust of Death" which kinda was our textbook of comparative religious studies. A brilliant man with a keen perception of the truth was able to put the modern philosophies of Humanism and existentialism, the cults spiritism and the spiritualist church as well as the Eastern Mystical religions in context with biblical revelation in an unbiased and honest way. Thirty years later Andre came and preached at Life Church and he started reading from a book and I whispered to Christine "Oswald Quiness" I still recognised his distinctive style after all those years.
It just shows, my long term memory is amazing although my short term memory is atrocious. When God made me he just didn't put in enough RAM.
Before we got married I was stil living in the apartment in Pepper Street. Christine refused to move into the cocroach infested place. Ian said "the roaches are so bad that they carry you out at night". I found a nice one bedroom apartment in Rosebank but we needed some furniture. I like the modern stuff but couldn't afford it so decided to make my own lounge suite. Got a whole lot of foam cut at Baigram's and obtianed a roll of grey furry material from the Parade for the princely sum of sixty rand.
That Saturday I ran into Shorty at the Hippie Market and invited him over to my place for lunch. Christine had borrowed Hellen and her sewing machine and were busy cutting pinning and stitching the fabric. Shorty pitched in sorting out the sewing machine and getting the production going. During the job which lasted the whole weekend, I shared my story with Shorty. He was so amazed that we could have such fun without being stoned drunk or stupid ... and no swearing... that he came to church with us on Sunday and gave his life to the Lord.
Our friends Brian o'Donell and Sandy all helped with the wedding in September that year. Christine's parents were divorced and her mom was a hard working nursing sister with five children to care for.
My parents had just returned from Holland and were settling in again in Pretoria. We had gone to Pretoria with Neil Forman in his Old Volksie Variant cramped in the backseat cause the front seat was welded to the floor. During the petrol crises fuel was rationed and not available after seven at night. We carried two five gallon drums of petrol on the roof so that we could travel through the Karroo on this freezing winters night. Christine and I were in a tight embrace on the back seat when we heard and smelled sparks and burning material. We jumped up and stopped the car in the middle of the Karroo to douse the flames, the seat springs were making contact with the battery terminals... what can I say "We were a hot item...smoking ma, smoking".
When we eventually got to Pretoria we discovered that my parents had moved and none of their friends knew where they were. On top of that my brother was in Pietermaritzburg on holiday and uncontactable. So it was a pretty disappointing surprise and I wasn't able to introduce my fiance to my parents.... Pity!
We went on with the wedding without them and all our friends pitched in.
It was a lovely wedding with all our Hippie Jesus Freak friends, Christine's parents behaved themselves and Des her dad, treated us to a weekend at Van Riebeeck Hotel in Gordon's bay ... we didn't have any money or material expectations ... just stars in eyes and love in our hearts. We had our whole life ahead of us for honeymoons, what mattered most was that we were married and could build a future together.
Some of my thoughts on theology
Was Jesus an extra terestial?
Was Jesus an extra terestial?
When one reads in the bible about the appearances of God to man in the bible one has to wonder whether Eric von Daniken had a point ... did we have extraterrestial visitations? Chariots of the Gods ... the Cloud by day ...the pillar of fire by night. Ezekiel's vision, I saw a cloud coming out of the North and he goes into a detailed discription of the chariot of fire.
The prophecy "and then you will see the son of man coming down in the cloud"
The glory of God. Jesus said "you are from the earth/terra, I am not from the earth/terra". "My kingdom is not of this world," surely he was saying that he was an "extraterrestial"... not from this world?
When I proposed this to Jessop Sutton a scholar and a gentleman who lectured us from the bible, in the Hippie Market days, answered wisely, "Just keep an open mind". Sometimes we can't be too dogmatic about out things that are yet unproven. But in the same way that science fiction becomes reality...that hypothesis may yet come to pass.
What does Jesus Christ is LORD really mean?
Most Christians don't understand who it is that they worship/believe in.
Most Christians don't understand who it is that they worship/believe in.
The early Christians certainly did. When the bible says, "No man can say that Jesus is LORD but by the Spirit of God". In those days if you made this confession before Jews you would most certainly have been put to death. Unless you had a revelation and a conviction that Jesus is the Son of God, you would not lightly have made that confession ... and to become a Christian you would have to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord! "If you believe in your heart and confess with your lips, that Jesus Christ is Lord, you will be saved".
Today people glibly make the confession because their lives are not on the line.
What did they mean by Jesus Christ is LORD?
Jesus was killed because "He blasphemes ... he makes himself equal with God" they said. Where? In John's gospel Chapter 8 v18 or there about's.
Jesus says "Abraham desired to see one of the days of the Son of Man and he saw it and he was glad!" The Jews said, "What do you mean, when did you meet Abraham, you're not even 50 years old?". Jesus says "before Abraham was ...'I AM" and they took up stones to stone him.
They understood very well who he was claiming to be. They asked a very pertinent question.. "When did you meet Abraham, you're not even 50 years old?"
Now Abraham was a curios mystic wondering about God.. When he gazed in the night sky he came to the conclusion that there order in the cosmos and therefore an intelligent source of life. Then God appeared to him in visions and dreams and told him that he was going to father a great nation and in him would all the nations of the earth be blessed. Then in Genesis chapter 18 God appears to him in human form.
"And THE LORD [Jehovah] appeared unto him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood over against him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself to the earth"Abraham begs Him to come into his tent and eat.
"And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetched a calf tender and good, and gave it unto the servant; and he hasted to dress it. And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat". not a Kosher meal I might add "meat, butter & milk together?".
The LORD confirms his promises to Abraham and warns him about the destruction of Sodom.
And the men turned from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the LORD [Yahweh].
Have I got this right? Abraham saw three men two depart and go towards Sodom and the one who remains behind is THE LORD. [Yahweh] ... El Shadai (the almighty God) Also known as the Angel of THE LORD.
When Moses finally has his meeting with The LORD he askes "Who shall I say sent me?" And God said unto Moses, "I AM THAT I AM:" and he said, "Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you". "THE LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever"
So you see the God who appeared onto Abraham, Isaac and Jacob appears to Moses and calls Himself YAHWEH or as it was written YWH, which is unpronouncable/silent because His name was considered too holy to mention.
I'm sure that Abraham grappled with perception and reality just like we do. Was it real ... was I dreaming? Now you can say that these men who claimed to see God must have been smoking too much of the green stuff .... maybe... but the weird thing is that after the angels left ... there were the bones of the calf and the empty bowls... proof of a time space event.
So you see Jesus claimed to be this one .... THE LORD... my LORD and teacher.
But what about Science and other Religions?
This is a question we all ask and the biggest stumbling block of all is "I am the Way The TRUTH and The LIFE..."No man can come to the Father but by Me".
Crazy man, crazy! How can a sane man make a claim like that?
The Pharisees said the same "He's got a demon".
But what if He is who He said He was? What was He actually saying?
To me the most profound verse in the bible is John's "In the beginning was THE WORD and THE WORD was with GOD and THE WORD was GOD"
Traditionally this is interpreted as Logos (written word) the bible.
Which is considered by some as the final word on everything ... is it?
What are words? Words are the building blocks of reason. Without words, we don't have any rational thought ... creativity or intelligence. What was Adam's as well as every human's first task? ... To name all the things in our environment usually starting with "mom".
Science has discovered that with words we create a virtual internal world with which we deconstruct and reconstruct our world, understand principles, complex ideas and concepts. Science/technology/theology and philosophy. Music, literature, art and architecture. So when the bible speaks of "made in the image of GOD" its not about four arms and a leg, its about creative intelligence.
It is written that "All the Knowledge of the universe is hidden in CHRIST" surely that implies that its our responsibilty to search it out ... and that it is accessable.
Science is my friend and so is logic ... but logic can only be depended on, to a point.
"There is a way that seems right to man [logical] ...but the result is death."
What happens when I get Alzheimers or schitzophrenia? What does logic do for me then... when I can't even remember my name... that's when instinct/intuition and faith takes over. I can rest in confidence knowing that the creative processes [SPIRIT] at work in my being holding it all together can be relied upon to take me to the next level.
I like to reflect on what would have happened if Adam had not take the wrong path.
He had a choice to rely purely on LOGIC [the TREE of KNOWLEDGE] or remain dependent on GOD [the Tree of LIFE ... CHRIST]. I believe that we would have had intergalactic space travell by now. Look at the rapid advancement of technology over the last hundred years .... and knowledge and technology is on an accellarating tragectory.
Logic and technology on its own is ultimately destructive ... the BOMB.
Knowledge under the authority of GOD or SPIRIT is the responsible use of technology.
The tongue [words] have the power to heal or to kill ... to build or to destroy.
So science or logic is not the enemy of God and the true Christian is not afraid of science. The Bible [God's self disclosure in history]. Theology [study of the Word] is about man's perception of God ... our attemps to define this creative intelligence at work in the cosmos... and science attemps to define the principles that govern our universe using emperical data... much the same thing.
It is written, "The Spirit will lead us and teach us... Line upon line, precept upon precept" "A wise man accumulates knowledge" and "Wisdom is the dilligent application of knowledge" that sounds like science to me! The responsible use of science is what we need to feed and heal the world!
John called this intelligence "Christ" "and the WORD became flesh and dwelt amongst us". The fullness of the Godhead manifested in human form. The nature and character of God manifested in his behaviour and actions. So when He said that "no man can know the Father except through the son" So you see if Jesus is the rational manifestation of the Spirit of God in whom all the information of the cosmos is revealed or knowable, then it is impossible to know God without Him because he is all knowledge and truth.
You may sense Him intuitively and be aware of his energy in the creation, but not truly know Him. For knowing implies rational, intelligent interaction. The Hebrew definition of Knowledge is " An interaction with the environment which makes a demand on intellect and will". As we interact with the world we name things and create a virtual world which we deconstruct and reconstruct, we devise elaborate theories and call it science, we record events and experiences and call it history and attempt to understand and define God and call it Theology. Now you may call him Krishna, or Jehova or El Shadai or Eloihim or Allah.... But if you really understand who He is, you will understand what He meant when He said "No one can come to the Father but by Me".
There are as many names attributed to Him as there are languages and cultures, millions of books have been written about Him. Huge and powerful religious organisations have been built on these ideas. "We do not fight against flesh and blood, but pricipalities and powers" [principles/ideas/perceptions and the organisations that promote those perceptions/propaganda] Wars have been fought over these ideas. "Oh foolish man that I am, who will deliver me from this foolishness"
We all have perception of GOD which in a limited way defines him ... "I see GOD through a glass darkly" Paul said.
I see GOD through a pinhole box camera dimly reflected upside down.
We always need to be aware why the WORD became flesh ... So that we may learn something about GRACE.
Our history has been a DISGRACE, can we break the pattern? Will He find the FAITH on earth when He returns?
Paul said "I too have the mind of Christ" can we say the same?
We need to grow up and take on the mantle of grace and wisdom. Although the Bible is full of wisdom it is not the final WORD on everything ... we still have many things to learn and write about. Now don't burn me at the stake as a heretic but I reckon that in retrospect, the apostles and prophets and theologians regret many of the words that were spoken and written because of the bloodshed that ensued.
Lets get back to Eden, innocence ... awe and wonder ... lets learn to love a little and show some Grace. Give freely, love freely expecting nothing in return except joy. Now that's GOD! Don't you just love him! Enjoy the trip.........
Understanding the difference between Truth and Perception
People these days talk about "my truth" or "my reality" as though what we believe, determines what's true. Lets get it right... "my truth" is my perception or understanding of reality. People base their decisions and behaviors on what they believe is real or true and this often leads to dire consequences. False belief will always be crushed against the hard and unyielding wall of reality. Always check the facts... I was taught that faith follows fact. Some people would like you to believe that fact follows faith. Real faith results in action that changes individuals, communities and nations.
Reality or God's Truth remains the same regardless of what I believe, its Cosmic and universal truth, like the laws of physics, we understand that they existed at the beginning of time. "God's laws are immutable and unchanging". It is our perception or understanding of theology, science and the universe that keeps on changing as our knowledge increases.
People these days talk about "my truth" or "my reality" as though what we believe, determines what's true. Lets get it right... "my truth" is my perception or understanding of reality. People base their decisions and behaviors on what they believe is real or true and this often leads to dire consequences. False belief will always be crushed against the hard and unyielding wall of reality. Always check the facts... I was taught that faith follows fact. Some people would like you to believe that fact follows faith. Real faith results in action that changes individuals, communities and nations.
Reality or God's Truth remains the same regardless of what I believe, its Cosmic and universal truth, like the laws of physics, we understand that they existed at the beginning of time. "God's laws are immutable and unchanging". It is our perception or understanding of theology, science and the universe that keeps on changing as our knowledge increases.
Truth is universal and verifiable. Like the speed of light, 300 000 km per second is a constant. Its not 300 000 km one day and 400 000 the next, its always the same.
Our perception of the truth changes as we mature. Man's perception of God changes over time... theologians call this God's self-disclosure through history. Just a clever way of saying that our perception of God changed over time.
Why is it that the Old testament God and the New Testament God are so different?
Why is it that the Old testament God and the New Testament God are so different?
I find it very hard to reconcile the loving God of mercy and grace in the New Testament with the genocidal God of the Old Testament who told the Jews to masacre every man woman and child of the Amelekites.
Was there by chance some self justifying propaganda on the part of the Kings?
The same scriptures were used by English tyrants to entrence their position as kings and heads of the church, while mecilessly subjucating and exploiting the weaker tribes of Britain and the rest of the world. Why should we respect those who subjucated and exploited the weak? Except perhaps to avoid their wrath by keeping our mouths shut and thus e a modikum of peace.
"All we have to do for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing" can't remember who said that, but its true.
Let the righteous stand up for what is right and resist evil !!
The same with all other hocus pocus, its time for Christians to differentiate between Faith and fantasy. Just because we believe something ... that doesn't make it true.
People believe in all kinds of old wives tales. Why.. just a few hundred years ago christians believed that the earth was flat and if you sailed to the edge you would fall off.
We believed that the earth was the centre of the universe and that God created it in six literal days. Oops, sorry fundamentalist if you still do.
Wise up children. "In mischief be children but in understanding be men. "
Not using the brain that God has given you to discover the mysteries of the univers is an inditement against the Christian.
The bible... Myth, Allegory and Gospel
The bible... Myth, Allegory and Gospel
The Bible contains Myth, Allegory and Gospel. The creation story is so obviously myth. Its a story not so much about how to make the universe in six days but to position the theology of the Righteousness. The theme of the Bible is about choices and God advising us to choose life. Therefore Adam and eve are confronted by two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge [of good and evil]. Two destinies.
One... a life dependent on God and two ... a life dependent on our own intellect.
After Adam ate of the fruit his eyes were opened and he became aware of sin and guilt.
He was cast out of the garden of innocence where he dwelt in the presence of God.
"and every man did what was right in his own eyes" The beginning of Humanism? Man deciding what's right for himself. Relativistic thinking?
The Hebrew idea of knowledge, "An interaction with the environment which makes a demand on intellect and will". Adam first had to name all the animals, define a language, whereby he could determine what is good or bad for him and his society. What is editable and what is poisonous, how to survive in a hostile world. Hunting or domesticating cattle, scavenging or tilling the land. To live in a tent and follow the grazing or settle in a city. Define rules for cohabitation... grazing rights and land rights.
The 10 Commandments was a simple code of conduct for society given by God according to Moses. " this day I have set Life and Death before you... choose Life!"
Unfortunately man has a way of complicating things ... look at all the law books in the Library of Congress. Its a minefield.
Jesus focused on the kernel of truth "Love God with all your mind and your neighbour as yourself". Loving God implies respect for the environment, all of God's creation and respecting the dignity and welfare of others.
Oh you Atheist or Secular Humanist, what about this don't you understand? And what about this is so unacceptable to the rest of humanity?
Truth is true for everyone, it is not relative. We may not like the truth in the same way that we not like the face in the mirror. We might not like the law when the law does not suit us, but laws are an unfortunate necessity.
Jesus spoke in parrables [Allegory], stories to illustrate a point. The story of Job might also be allegorical.
Much of the Exodus, Judges, Kings, the prophetic books and the Gospels are mostly historical. With love poems and songs and the wisdom literature of Solomon in the middle of the bible.
Lets be discerning and read stuff in context, not everything is history and not everything is what God said. But we can learn a great deal from the collective wisdom of our forefathers.
"Smart people learn from their mistakes ... a wise man learns from other peoples mistakes ... and a fool never learns from anyone's mistakes" a Jack original.
Zero to hero
After our wedding and short holiday I go to work on Monday morning... at an advertising agency called Darryl Fine and Day. As I walk into the office Gerry Day says "Don't bother to hang up your jacket ... come into my office" "We'll you know you're a designer visualiser and we haven't had much creative work to give you... we have to cut down on staff and you're the last one in so..."
I walked straight out and went home to Christine who was still on leave " Guess what?" You've been fired?" "Yeah, but the good news is they've paid me for till the end of the month" so we had another week together. Checked the paper and found another job within a week with Chris Brewer and Associates I was the only other associate at the time. Started with better pay and the promise of a raise in 3 months. Its amazing God provides.
The way I got the job at Darryl Fine was also pretty weird. Ian Herslet had been calling the number on the add he had gotten out of the paper all day and couldn't get through and passed to me that Friday evening at 7pm I called the agency got through immediately and had an interview for Saturday morning. In the morning I went to the agency where I was employed to get my portfolio and found the place swarming with firemen. The boss Angelo came walking down the steps in obvious distress, "What's happened" "There was fire in the photographic studio and all my equipment is gone" Oops, I felt kind of bad to jump ship at this point but its not my problem. I rushed up to the design studio and found my portfolio lying under a tarpaulin, safe and dry, everything else was a mess of water and soot. I grabbed it and ducked downstairs and went to my interview. Got the job. I think they were so amazed at the hour I called that they thought that I'm obviously the kind of guy who understood the crazy hours that artists were supposed to work.
Unfortunately I was not, I was in love and would rather spend the time with my girlfriend than socialising with the obnoxious people in the office. Darryl was the worst of them telling vile jokes and propositioning female reps over the phone "When you going to let me doodle you?"
Every move was an improvement, after working for Chris Brewer I said to myself that I wouldn't work for another agency unless it was my own. I was tired of being exploited.... working ridiculous hours for no overtime pay was expected. I'd be checking proofs at the repro house 2:00 am in the morning while the boss was cosily tucked in bed.
Chris Brewer's main client was Gordon Dick's Furnishers, which we built from a small account with two stores to a mega account with five stores. Chris employed his client's daughter Michelle and we got on pretty well together. Our darkroom was also where the tea was made so I happened to spend a lot of time talking to Michelle. One day while we were at an office lunch Chris asked me "Why are you spending so much time in the darkroom with Michelle?" I looked at her and nudged her and winked and she played along wink ...wink. Chris looked upset"Are you having an affair together?" We laughed it off. Unbeknown to me Chris was having an affair with Michelle and was just plain paranoid and jealous.
Chris went on leave a while later and while He was away I handled the Dicks account. The client was so impressed by the way and speed that I was working that he mentioned it to Chris when he came back. When Chris handled the job he'd take a brief, write up a contact report get the clients approval, then put the job into production. I'd do the rendering and concept, Chris would discuss it with the client, on approval, we'd do the photography finished art. When I handled a project I would take my drawing pad along with me discuss the strategy come up with a concept and do the sketches there and then on Gordon's desk. He'd approve and the job would go straight into production.
Chris started feeling a little threatened and started nit picking. The client and I had agreed on a headline on a job that was already in production and Chris wanted to change it so I objected "Chris, Gordon has already approved the concept and headline, we can't go and change it now." He freaked.."you always think you know it better" he screamed and threw himself onto the floor in an infantile tantrum and kicked his legs into the air. We laughed but a few days later he said "We can't work together anymore. You're fired".
I started working for Old Mutual a month later.... sometime in 1975.
Later that year I heard that Chris had divorced his wife and married Michelle.
After his marriage Gordon calls him into his office and said " I don't believe in mixing family and business. So I've decide to give the account to someone else". Soon thereafter two of his clients went belly up and couldn't pay their media bills and Chris became liable, so he also went into liquidation.
Makes one wonder about the providence of God. If you hurt one of mine I'll hurt you. Karma...
South Africa was in upheaval there were constant protests and riots in the streets of Cape Town. After the riots in '76 many whiteys left the country and a lot of homes were on the market. When we got married I said to Christine " I don't want my children to grow up with the insecurity that I experienced as a kid, moving from one rental property into another. Lets save our money until we have a deposit to buy a house, then have children." "How long" she asked "Three years" I said. That was the plan and we worked towards it. After two years at Old Mutual I became eligible for a bond benefit at 4%.
In 1977 we were living in George Rauch's house in Sea point. He was one of the people that I brought to the Lord an a good friend, but friends also have their weaknesses. George was a divorce with two children whom he funded.
He got involved with a young coloured girl halve his age and they were obviously sleeping together. This came to the attention of the elders of the church and they asked me to speak to him. I basically told him of the accusations and said that he should do the honourable thing and marry her, which was illegal under the old apartheid laws or leave her. Christine decided that the three years were up, went off the pill and promptly fell pregnant. Zoé arrived in June ' 78 and in October old George decided to evict us.
Christine hurriedly contacted estate agents to view houses for sale in Sea Point and City Bowl, with a screaming baby in tow. We eventually settled on the house in Oranjezicht. I always liked Marmion Road High on the slopes of Table Mountain. Mrs Cohen my landlord from the apartment in Pepper Street lived up there and I figured that it was a good upmarket area. The house was a bit of a wreck ... rental properties don't get looked after, nor had it been developed to its full potential.
Big solid double story structure of a nondescript style ... I call it Cape Railway ... built for railway managers in 1928 ... the price now rockbottom after the 76 riots. We moved in February ' 99 and immediately went to work redesigning, drawing up plans and walking it through council. What money we had saved we were able to use for renovations since Old Mutual covered 100% of the bond at 4%. Thus started my 30 year property development project. Which was the best investment I could have made. The final value was eventually worth five times what my pathetic pension and capital preservation fund produced after 25 years of contributions with Old Mutual's pension fund.
The agent and management fees probable cost about 40% of my investment over the years. The ANC government that took over in 1994 thought that pension funds were easy pickings and imposed taxes in the hands of the life assurance companies which affected the values. Then after ten years of volatility they suddenly realised that millions of South Africans can no longer afford to retire without government aid. They quickly realised that everybody was taking a knock, both black and white policyholders... by 1996, 60% of Old Mutual's policyholders were already black.
There is still a great financial disparity between black and white people because their is such a huge difference in population. Its easy to get the impression that most whites are rich and most blacks are poor. But reality is that the wealth in 3 million white hands is not going to go very far when distributed amongst 40 million blacks. Its time that black South Africans realised the power and wealth that they have collectively and that they can no longer rely on the whites to drive the country and economy forward. Unless increasing numbers of blacks add substantial value to the Gross Domestic Production and government service delivery, we will all go down the slippery slope of inflation.
According to the mid-2011 estimates from Statistics South Africa, the country's population stands at 50.5-million, up from the census 2001 count of 44.8-million with whites accounting for 4.5 million
Read more:http://www.southafrica.info/about/people/population.htm#ixzz1UiYqjuBL
The black population is still largely dependent on white enterprise to provide jobs.
The biggest change is seen in government departments and municipalities, which is now probably in the region of 85% black judging by the faces in the front office which is contributing to an substantial increase of the black middle class.
Great wealth has been accumulated by the political elite and their cronies in a very short period of time. Mandela R80 million ( he deserves it). R69 Billion to ...Shaik Shabir R300 million. When one considers the asset worth of many of our politicians one wonders how they managed to accumulate that kind of wealth on a R600 000 pa minister's salary over ten years.
Its time that the ANC wakes up to the realisation that they are in control and stop the struggle dialectic of redistribution and start thinking in terms of wealth creation, innovation and productivity. Lets not follow the example of the Zimbabweans who nationalised the farms and businesses and plundered the mines to enrich the political elite and plunged the country into bankruptcy. Mugabe turned every Zimbabwean into a Billionaire .... unfortunately a hundred billion Zimdollar note can't even fill a tank with petrol. They stole till there was nothing left to steal... typical of African democracies.
Why were there only two presidents in all of Africa who dared to criticize Mugabe?
They accused the whites of stealing their land but they deny the fact that the whites developed a sound infrastructure and economy which provided jobs and fed the whole nation and still had enough left to export and earn foreign currency.
One can say that the colonists didn't do enough to develop a black middle class, but give credit where credit is due. They struggled for hundreds of years to turn the bush into fertile farms... Farms which were nationalised and turned back to bush in just a few years. Now the ANC's minister of Agriculture is threatening to take land back from unproductive black farmers and their seems to be some appreciation for the need for more government input and management. I think the idea of co-ops to run the farms is a move in the right direction. Farm subsidies to black farmers has proven to be unproductive in Africa.
The colonists built roads, passes and railways through difficult terrain, they set up schools and universities.... perhaps not enough to cater for the needs of all, but get real, its all about capacity and logistics. Their just wasn't enough wealth in the hands of the minority to cater for the majority and now that the power and responsibility lies in a majority government, there still isn't enough wealth skill and capacity. Lets give credit where credit is due... to the missionaries and mission schools for educating and transferring knowledge and power to the ruling black class and to the Nationalists for imparting basic literacy to the masses.
The priority of the Nationalist government in South Africa was to elevate the impoverished Afrikaner after the British burned down their farms and commandeered their businesses and industry. The great drought and the depression of the thirties was the final blow to the Boers who made the exodus to the cities to find work.
When they got independence from the British in 1948 their first priority was Afrikaner education and business development. They set up Afrikaans Universities wrote textbooks in Afrikaans and even managed to establish quite a few black universities, Mabatu, Fort Hare, University of Western Cape amongst others. Within forty years they built a solid Afrikaner middle class.
I was a school kid at Totius Skool in Vanderbylpark when Hendrik Verwoerd spoke on Republic day when South Africa got its independence and soon afterwards Sharpville erupted ... not a good start for the brave new republic. The ANC mobilised the masses burned their passbooks and rioted. The struggle had begun and South Africa was battling with a civil war and the threat from across its borders as well as financial and economic boycotts.
I take my hat off to them, they worked very hard to achieve what they did for their people. Will the ANC be able to say the same in twenty four years time?
My prayer is that they will but at this stage it looks unlikely.
Why am I going into this rant? Well, when I talk to young black locals and refugees in our church or when I'm asked to speak at a black church ... they all want to know one thing ...how to go from zero to hero.
My story speaks to them... I was on the streets... I experienced prison and police brutality.... raged at the system and those in authority...when I came to Cape Town I started with R5 in my pocket, a few pots of poster paint and a set of Windsor & Newton watercolours in my bag. When they see my car and my house they can see that I've come a long way. But my story is not about the spectacular rise to greatness of a sportsman or a politician. Its just the struggle of the ordinary Jack and his simple stupid faith in the WORD of GOD.
I love to use the story of David to teach kids about faith ... and what people need is faith ... they need to know that their preferred future ... out of the ghetto is achievable.
Faith is not belief ... its not pie in the sky when you die ... to use an old struggle slogan. Its not make believe. Because we believe some thing that does not make it true. No! FAITH is the CONFIDENCE of things hoped for.... FAITH makes it possible to achieve my dreams. The word ASSURANCE is used in the Romans 12 the Greek word "Pleraphoria" which means ENTIRE CONFIDENCE.
Paul elsewhere says "Do not caste away your confidence [faith]."
So you see faith and confidence is the same thing. Now God said "David is a man after my own heart". Why did God love David, a poor boy with no hope of inheritance
the last in line, condemned to look after sheep in the bush.
How did this no hoper get from zero to hero?
Goliath was challenging the army of Saul and the Israelis were terrified at the size of this man. When David was ordered to bring his brothers food to the front line, heard him and said "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine who dares to insult the armies of God? Is there no one to take him on? I'll take him on...God gave me the lion and a bear when they went for my sheep and God will give this Philistine into my hand". His brothers tried to silence this snotty little brat, but it came to the attention of Saul. Since there were no other challengers he gave David his armour to put on, but David said "I can't fight in this, I haven't been trained in this". So he went to the stream and picked up five round stones.. why five? Why not one if was such a great man of faith? Because when he was in the field looking after his sheep. He'd practice with his sling. The first year one out of fifty he hit three, the next year one out of thirty, then one out of twenty and then five. He knew from experience that he would get him with one out of five. You see he had a realistic assessment of his skill. "Don't think of yourselves more highly than you aught but think soberly according to the measure of the gift of God."
On the other hand, Goliath was over confident and thought "Who is this snotty nosed little brat" and he didn't bother to put his visor down. David charged and let him have it between the eyes ... the rest is history.
So FAITH is CONFIDENCE based on experience and skills development.
Find something that you enjoy and are good at ...then excel at it become the best... be the champ... whether its surfing, sailing, dancing, art, music, science or carpentry. If you're good at it, you can make money from it!
As it is written "Whatever you do ...do it with all of your heart"and "Your gift will make a way for you". It builds confidence/faith and opens up new opportunities.
If you are a black South African there is plenty of opportunity for educated smart and efficient young people. If you're white you'd better be enterprising because employment options are shrinking, but talent and smarts will make a way for you. Whatever you want ... you've got to go out there and make it happen ... its a competitive environment ... develop your skills ... and go with confidence and enthusiasm (full of God) and be a positive influence in society.
Coincidences and Miracles.
"They that are led by the Spirit these are the children of God".
Rudolf Steiner stressed the importance of being open to new experiences not sticking to familiar paths ... One day I hitch hiked to the dam and got dropped off in the bush some 10 kilometres from the dam. I climbed over a fence and walked down to a river, crocodile river I think, walked along it and came to a cave in a koppie and went inside and meditated in the stillness. I spotted a book and picked it up ... it was another book by Rudolf Steiner.
Then there was the time I got thrown out of De Smit street and needed a place to sleep, I followed my intuition, what was the chances of running into Jan Bekker just at that time?
On one of my trips down the coast I stopped off at the Wilderness and walked along the beach. Found a cave in some sandstone cliffs and camped there for a week. Only had some soya flour with which I baked a little loaf of bread. I had a dream when the hunger got to me. I was in a botany classroom or museum and saw a set of large shallow drawers. When I opened the drawer there were A1 sized drawings of plants, the one I was looking at looked like a "Vygie"... the next day I walked along a dune and saw the plant growing on the dune and wondered if it was edible. Only later I learned about the "sour figs" that the indigenous people of the Cape enjoy.
When you are hungry without a cent in your pocket one tends to look down to ground looking for a luck. Our scavenging instincts take over ... one becomes more alert than usual.
You might begin to mutter to God, "Looks like I'm not going to eat today. If you want me to fast that's okay, if not I know you will supply". I decided not to hustle but to rely on faith instead. Jesus said "God knows what you need [food clothing and comfort], so you don't even have to ask him about that" "look at the lilies of the field and the birds of the air".
There were times that I was hungry and God always met my need, I never needed to beg. When I realised that I needed to work He supplied me with contacts that led to jobs.
Johnnie Weber used to say "Faith without hinting is dead". I strongly disagree!
"If you have a need ask God in your closet and He will meet your need" what's the magic in begging or hinting?
That's why I find the begging in churches appalling ... it demonstrates a terrible lack of faith. How can you expect your members to exhibit faith "trust God to supply" "when the church begs from the pulpit". Now you can call it teaching on tithing... but that too is not what Jesus taught. It totally negates the principle of faith. Tithing is a crutch that faithless ministers lean on when its convenient.
Tithing was introduced to finance the tribe of Levi to serve as priests and judges.
It was a great idea and at ten per cent value for money. I wish our government and the courts could do it on just ten percent of gross domestic product. We pay in the region of 60% when you combine all the taxes that are levied, personal tax, VAT, import duties, property taxes, Capital gains tax, estate duty taxes, road levy taxes and insurances.
"You scribes and you Pharisees, you put heavy burdens on people's backs and don't lift a finger to help them". Fortunately we are no longer under law but grace. The law is about compulsion...crime and punishment ...Grace is about giving and forgiving!
Tithing is not a principle that should be taught in church, generosity is! ... and I believe that the people love to be generous, even in their poverty. As you would have seen from my story. The most generous people are the one who have the least ... the poor Indian family who shared their meager meal with me and sheltered us from the rain for the night. There were many more ... a young girl who bought me takkies out of her pocket money... the hippies who shared their homes and food...the strange fellow who drove me all the way to Montague and then drove back to Robertson... The farmer who took for lunch at his house in the Karoo or the Dairy farmer near Humansdorp who gave Dawn and I a ride and treated us to breakfast at his home and then sent us on our way.
Brian O'Donell who gave me his spare room and provided Christine and I with a wonderful wedding... the generosity and kindness of people goes on and on.
That's why I'm so ashamed of the church when it begs. Its Ok to present the needpeople will rise to the occasion and I applaud the generosity of the Christian folk to help the community. There is so much good work being done by the church it makes me proud to be called a Christian.
But back to being led by the Spirit. God will use anyone to fulfil his purposes. I'm reminded of a girl, I think her name was Michele, Ian Herslet dated her for a while when she was a young Christian and when they broke up he was heartbroken for a while and cried on my shoulder.
One morning she rocks up in the Hippie Market with a good looking young man in tow and introduces Piettie to me. "He wants to commit his life to Jesus" she said. I spoke to him and then invited him into a back room and introduced him to Jesus. I found out later that Michele and Piettie were in bed together and in her backslidden state told him how happy she had been as a Christian and Piettie answered "That's what I want!" that's what I'm looking for". Piettie later shared the flat in Disa Park with us and has been a lifelong friend.
God does not give up on people that he loves. Michelle disappeared off the radar screen for a few years. One lazy Saturday afternoon I went for a ride on my Vespa, I had an inkling that Ian was going to Rondesbosch and I went that way. I drove past a block of flats and saw a scooter parked there and stopped. In my Harry casual dreamy state of mind I simply walked up some steps and knocked on a door to ask for directions ... the door opened and there stood Michele to my surprise. She had moved on to the next guy, a student... I think she was more surprised than I was and invited me in and we spoke a while. That's the last time I saw her but I'm sure that God had not finished with her.
A few years ago Christine and Robyn Scott were driving on the N1 highway into Cape Town late at night. I see a woman being beaten up by a man on the side of the road. There's a car stopped ... I say to Robyn "Stop the car ! Stop the car!" He gives me a shocked look and stops the car. Now you don't stop the car on the N1 at night with the possibility of gangsters in the parked car ... but I felt strongly that I needed to intervene.
I jumped out and ran back, glanced into the parked car and saw that it was occupied by some rough looking individuals. When I got to the fight I grabbed the young mans arm and pulled him off the cowering woman. He got a fright and ran off , then the guys in the car approached. I recognised someone from my past, someone I have not seen for 20 years ..."Glen, Glen Simpson?" Glen was one of the Jesus freaks that worked in the Hippie market... a small man afflicted with dwarfism. "What's happening here?" I demanded. He looked at me with surprise, "Jack?!! Its my son, had a fight with my wife. Thanks for intervening."
The following weekend He came to church and Christine chatted with him, I was out sailing. He had fallen on hard times, back slid, got involved with this coloured woman and divorced his wife and child. He got such a fright when he heard me calling out his name in the dark "He thought it was an angel". The lord spoke to him through the event. Coincidence or led by the Spirit?
Somehow our spirits are interconnected by the Spirit of God like some great cosmic neuron network. We used to say while tripping on acid "The mind is in the room" talking about our collective consciousness ... mind or spirit. It was difficult to separate my mind from the rest... it was as though we were all one. In the same way as Jesus said "I and the father are one" ...."that you may be one with me as I am with the Father".
I have always been a dreamer and cruised through life in a kind of a dream, a little spaced out... perhaps a painful birth ... or the migraines I suffer from four concussions and a couple of near death experiences might affect the left side of my brain ... so that I have been forced to rely more on my right side when the left side lets me down.
The big question that science is asking is " Does the brain create God or religious feelings or did God create the brain so that we could experience him?"
Sure we can have experiences of God by stimulating a certain part of the brain or by taking certain drugs. I believe that the hard wiring in our DNA is the result of empirical stimuli. We are receptive to these stimuli because of repeated exposure to external data or experiences through our evolutionary history.
The tree of life ... strands of DNA strung together in a complex code... intelligence.
This of course would make absolutely no sense without words and consciousness. "Hey Rodger, how far are we with artificial intelligence"... Creating bits of information using binary code ... +- ++- ---+++ - +- +- +---+ +-+-+-
A computer with the ability to interact with its environment ... learning from it and adapting its responses and modifying its environment. Will it have self consciousness or will it just be a machine?
The miracle of life is that I am a conscious intelligent being capable of appreciating life, love and God.
If this miracle is real then it is likely that other miracles are possible.
If the brain creates our experiences of God, how would you explain the experiences of people who have died and were brought back. I was watching National Geographic TV "I should be dead". The story of a woman who had an anuarism. In order to operate the surgeon had to cool the blood until hypothermia set in and the heart stopped and the patient is dead. While she was dead she saw the whole operation from the ceiling. When the patient was revived she told the surgeon exactly what she saw.... she described who was in the room and things that were said ... the instruments they used the order of the procedure. Things that she would not have known if she was in simply in a coma.
To me its proof that intelligent rational consciousness continues after life and that consciousness is not just a function of the brain.
The implication is that the collective unconscious is more than just race memory hard wired in our DNA or conveyed through language and books.
The worst experience of my life is the day we pulled the lifeless body of my grandson Seth out of the pool. Zoé popped into the studio with Taylor and Seth...he sat on my lap for a while and then walked out while Zoé and I were talking. Zoé went upstairs and put on the TV..a while later I heard Christine arrive. They made a cup of tea and Christine asked "where's Seth?" "He's with dad in the studio". Christine walked to the balcony and looked down at the pool and stared not quite making out the bundle stuck in the creepy crawly... then to her horror saw that it was Seth's feet and nappy sticking out. She gave an hysterical blood curdling scream I heard feet running and the screaming continued. I wasn't quite sure what was happening whether they were fooling around or what. Then I went outside and saw Zoé pulling Seth out of the pool by his feet. When I got hold of him his body was like a cold piece of white rubber ... I rolled him on his stomach and pressed the water out of his stomach and lungs then holding him upside down I cleared his throat and pushed his tongue down, then began to blow as much oxygenated air into his nose and mouth while Zoé pumped his heart gently "One..two...three...four...five...six.....seven... eight... nine.... ten....blow...." After five minutes there was no response "Please God bring Seth back to us" In the meantime Christine phoned the police and paramedics were on the way "she was still hysterical horrific crying moaning sobs" I have never experienced something so horrible. "One..two...three...four...five... blow....One..two...three...four...five... blow...." Ten minutes later the police arrived, still no medics, I saw the tears in the burly policeman's eyes when he saw the scene and he radioed the Paramedics from the fire brigade.
"One..two...three...four...five... blow....One..two...three...four...five... blow...."
Fifteen minutes later still no response from Seth the thought crossed my mind that we were working on a corpse and I cried even harder"Please God help us"
Then there was a little "hugh" from Seth "was he trying to breath or is this just an involuntary response". We carried on. Twenty minutes later our GP doctor Voluter arrived and said "There's a faint pulse" Seth took another little breath and after a minute another "hugh" . Thirty minutes later the first paramedics arrived from the fire brigade. The 911 paramedics were stuck in traffic.
They immediately took over and aerated the lungs with oxygen and stabilised Seth put him on a stretcher and took him to the hospital.
The doctors put Seth on an artificial respirator and kept him sedated for nine days while his lungs recovered. We were very worried that he might be brain damaged but there were positive signs. Like he moved his arm to his face like he is trying to remove the tubes to his nose. When his blood gasses became normal and he was taken off sedation, he opened up his eyes for the first time and moaned. I picked up the sorry little fellow and held him in my arms where he whimpered. He suddenly gabbed hold of the tube in his nose and pulled the tubes out. The nurse rushed in "Well if out we might as well leave it out" I passed him over to Zoé hold " Owa, mommy Owa" were his first words. We were ecstatic realising that he could remember where he left off.
Seth made a painful but complete recovery. During Seth's accident we posted his progress on Facebook. Friends from all over the world were praying for him. Our church, Life Church prayed for him, Rivers Church was praying for him. Andre and Wilma Olivier had lost a grandson in similar circumstances so they were praying and showed his progress on the church video screen. So there was great rejoicing when Seth recovered fully.
A miracle or medical science and God working together?
I believe that we should do what we can and trust God to do the rest ... and never give up!
Church Growth and Politics
The Jesus movement spearheaded by Brian O'Donell and the Narnia Committee, Mike Coleman, Dave Valentine and Krisman Stander was encouraged and grew under the inspired teaching of John Bond and Noel Cromhout at Harfield Road Assembly of God where we had our communion services and conferences.
When I joined the Jesus movement they were meeting in the coffee bar in the Hippie Market which was run by David Valentine. Dave was the oldest dude there and this was his mission. He spent many hours sharing his inspired words with me and others. I also spent a lot of time with Krisman in the bookshop debating religious and philosophical issues.
The hippie Market was the place for Hippies to meet from all over the world and as more hippies got influenced the Market became a strong mission centre, with a far reaching influence in Cape Town and the world. Harfield Road AOG grew rapidly as a result of the influx and hived off to open new churches in Somerset West where Bushy Venter was preaching, Constantia, Tigerberg and Lotus River. Costa Mitchell Derek Morphew and Bushy Venter were some of the new crop of young preachers who grew up under John Bond's ministry and they were put in charge of the new church plants. Unfortunately their ambition exceeded their ethics. They thought that they could do it better than John. Johny Weber overheard Costa say to John "Why don't you retire and let us young ones run the show". It wasn't long after that Derek Morphew hijacked the Tigerberg church which John started. Bushy Venter moved to Johannesburg and was involved with Orange Grove Church on the move which broke up and started the Vineyard church with Costa Mitchell. Pinelands AOG was started by Johnny Weber and the Downtown AOG as we were then called, Mike Coleman pastored that for a number of years before John Fisher took over. John Fisher then influenced the members to move the church into Derec Morhew's group. At the time before this happened I heard about changes in teaching from my friends and I warned John Bond that fisher was preparing for a take over and the ever trusting John said "No, John Fisher wouldn't do that, he's a real Assembly boy". Six months later it was gone.
In 1973 we obtained a warehouse above a car sales showroom in 93 Loop street.
Where the numbers grew under the teaching of Noel Cromhout. We were banned from using the premises by the fire department [inadequate fire escapes] and moved to St Andrews Presbytarian Church.
St Andrews was an historical building with marble plaques on the walls and old wooden benches which quickly filled up with Hippies and vagrants under the solid teaching and preaching of Paul Watney. Raymond Alexander and Wilma and Andre Olivier joined the church during this time as well as many others that have made an impact on society.
After two years it was decided that it would be prudent to move to new premises, and we moved to Sea Point Glengariff Road Cnr of Main. We renovated and built a nice facility which we could call our own, but the hot cramped conditions eventually forced us to move. Philip de Vries took over from Paul Watney and Later Noel Cromhout.
We made the next transition to Avenue Disandt where Ray designed us a nice new building which could seat 360 people comfortably. Had some nice growth under Noel with a vibrant youth. He appointed Mark Le Roux as youth pastor when he went into the army.
John Bond invited a team from John Wimber's church to preach at the Caiara Conference and in his churches. Loni Frisby preached and got people vibrating "in the spirit" but I'm not sure who's spirit that was. He prophesied "Loosen the colt of the ass the Lord has need of it" So the youth leaders decided that this was the Lord saying they should leave and start their own church, which they did taking at least sixty of our youth with them. This was a huge blow to our church, we lost an entire generation of our youth and our church was built on youth it was a youth movement.
Without oversight and accountability "The Body" which is what they called themselves quickly degenerated into a corpse, I mean cult. The members were isolated form their families, the church leadership decided who would go out with who and who to marry. They were influenced to give all their money and inheritances to the church. If the leadership decided that you need to wash their car you did it. Needless to say "The Body" disintegrated and Mark left the church and went to Europe with the money and left its members devastated. But the damage was done not only to themselves but to Sea Point AOG which was slandered. Only Tim ever came over to apologised about the damage which was done. Some of the youth trickled back to us but came with emotional scars that took time to heal.
We had to rebuild a new youth and our children were the next crop. Christine took over the music and Zoe started playing the piano and singing in church form the age of 14 and what a confident little performer.
Barry a new pastor took over from Noel. I call him the weeping prophet.
All his messages were negative and defeatist which resulted in a lot of weeping and confessing in the church. Members of the church raised funds to establish the Discipleship Training College which was started to train young evangelists. Andre Olivier and John Neel were from the first crop of graduates and were appointed to assist Barry. Anthony Liebenberg who was the National Karate Champ got saved and also went to the college.
During this time a man called Jeff Lewis joined us from the Rhema Church. He'd built a yacht with his wife's money and had gone to Tulse Oklahoma. The so called faith teaching "name it and claim it" didn't sit well with me but many were seduced by his teaching. Nobody was allowed to challenge his teaching. If you did you were accused of being the devil robbing the seed. Barry had been set up and seduced by Jeff "Listen to Barry the gift of God" etc.
A groundswell of discontent rose up amongst the older Christians who had been well taught by John Bond and Noel Cromhout and Andre called Noel and asked him to arbitrate. The result was that Barry and Jeff Lewis left and Geoff Bond was appointed.
A period of relative calm and steady growth ensued. Andre Olivier was appointed to run Sun Valley AOG and later Somerset West before being sent to Sandton AOG to sort out a difficult church. John Neel moved to Durban to assist in a church. I was appointed as an elder during Geoff's ministry.
Wayne and Sue Richards joined us from the Mission Church [Lester Bloomberg], a lovely young couple that had a passion for helping street children. They volunteered at the Homestead night shelter but felt that not much was being done to rehabilitate the kids. The church raised funds to start a Highway Home. The manse at Somerset Presbyterian church was offered to us for a Rand a year and we spent about R35 000 to renovate and put in bathroom facilities and bed rooms to accommodate 14 kids.
They ran with that for a couple of years until their own children were born and it became too much for Sue. They found a social worker to take over the running of the home. Sue became a PA to Geoff Bond and Wayne got himself a job at Old Mutual.
Peter Watt was appointed to take over the work. Peter was a profound and inspirational teacher/preacher. I always got something good from his preaching. Peter was thinking about retiring one day and started building a house in Constantia which distracted him and took up a huge amount of his time. The lack of input resulted in a period of stagnation. During this time we occasionally had combined meetings with the Three Anchor Bay Baptist church at the Metro Cinema in Sea Point. The church was pastored by Billy Marais a charismatic preacher evangelist. Peter suggested to the elders that we should think of joining forces and make a bigger impact on Sea Point. So we held exploritry sessions with Billy who was keen on the merger. His church joined with ours for several months to see if the synergy would work. During one of the elders meetings Etiene Zeely asked "What will happen if one and one don't make two but one and a half and we find out six months down the line that we can't afford to keep on two ministers?" and they both said "We'll cut the garment according to the cloth".
A year down the line finances were tight and the time came to cut the garment. Donovan Coetzee was called in to arbitrate and advise. Now neither Billy nor Peter were prepared to cut their salaries since they both had financial commitments and the issue became who's going to stay and who's leaving.
It was decided that Billy would add the greatest impetus for church growth at that point and it was with great regret that Peter had to go. We went into the future with trepidation knowing that Billy was a wild stallion and it was going to be a rough ride.
Peter was very disapointed and was offered a position in Natal an had to rent out his house in Constantia. Later he moved to Pretoria where his ministry and church has really taken off.
In the meantime we made an offer on the Metro Cinema complex and sold our building in Avenue Disandt for R2.8 mil, a very good price and bought the Metro complex for R3mil and budgeted another R600 000 for alterations. There were shops below that would bring in an income to pay for the small bond. The figures looked good.
The walls between three smaller cinemas were knocked down to make one large auditorium. A new stage was built with pits for the monitors. Offices were built on the other side, and a garage down below served as the children's church.
The smaller Three Anchor Bay building was sold for R250 000 and we wrote into the title deeds that if the church was ever dissolved and the building sold a third of the proceeds would go back to the Baptist Union. Unbeknown to Billy the deeds were given to the AOG Trust for safekeeping.
We needed to write a new constitution for the church and appoint trustees for the bank accounts. During one of the meeting Billy asked where the Title deeds were and Ray told him that its In The AOG Trust and that the title holder was the AOG Trust. Billy looked dismayed and said, "We can't have that, get the title deeds and have them changed into the name of The Atlantic Community Church.
We argued that it would cost a lot of money and what for? The Trustees had no problem releasing the title deeds when they were made aware our plans why would it be a problem in the future? Billy wasn't happy but the title deeds stayed in the trust where Billy could not lay his hands on them if he had less than honourable intentions.
Everything was going smoothly and the band was preparing for the opening night.
Billy was sitting in the auditorium when he noticed that one of the monitors had been moved out of the pit and placed behind the curtain. "Who moved the monitor?"
he bellowed. The band stopped in shock "I did" said Linda Hamber our drummer. "Who gave you permission to move the monitor". "I did" said Christine "The band couldn't hear themselves...." " Don't you know that disobedience is as the sin of witchcraft" he said angrily, "I'll see you in my office tomorrow". By this time the band was so upset that they wanted to lay down their instrument and walk off the stage, but Christine encouraged them to stay and carry on.
Later Billy approached Christine and gave her what sounded like an apology and the service went on as planned.
The band was upset letters were written and a meeting was called on Wednesday.
I was sick with flu and had severe chills and seats that I couldn't control but I was there to support Christine. Alex Harper was there and wanted Billy to apologise.
The meeting deteriorated from an angry argument and nearly ended in blows with Billy walking out .
His brother talked some sense into his head and he apologised to the team.
We were warned about his "Shenanigans" by a member of his church before the merger. The church continued to grow, the building on the street front brought new people into the church and Billy's enigmatic preaching built them in.
In one of our elders meetings I challenged Billie's teaching on tithing arguing "that tithing was instituted under the law and therefore not consistent with the new dispensation of Grace through Faith. The Law is about compulsion and the grace is about generosity". He said "Well its biblical and if you don't believe it you can't be an elder". So I said "Billy, did you make me an elder or did God" and he didn't answer. On Sunday he came to me and said "You were right". But he didn't alter his hustle on tithing.
Billy was a man of extremes on the one hand hospitable and loving and on the other overly disciplinarian or legalistic.
We had a family church camp in Ceres that year. My Daughter Jade and Roddy his son got on very well together and we could see that they had a liking for each other. They disappeared for a while and Billy went berserk at Roddy. You'd think that he had raped Jade or something.
Sometime later we walked to the waterfalls and pools amongst the rocks. To get there we had to walk along the train tracks through a railway tunnel, Billy assured us that it was safe and that the trains were not running. Just as the last group made it out of the tunnel a train came charging through. Billy was traumatised, he realised that he was wrong and that somebody could have been killed and he just couldn't apologise enough. Nothing happened everyone is safe and there is enough space between the tunnel wall and the train for someone to get through. So what's all the fuss about.
A year later the church was doing well and Billy mentioned that his brother is doing well in business and that he would like to have a challenge like that. In October Anthony gets a call from one of the members who runs a security company
and asks for details of Billy's salary package, when asked why he's told that Billy is applying for a job. An elders meeting is called and Billy is asked what his intentions are " I have not decided yet I'm just exploring my options and praying about it'
Early December Albert meets him on the road to Plettenberg bay and asks him what's happening and he said " I'm still praying about it".
Between Christmas and new year Anthony and Albert and me and our families are relaxing at Theewaters dam and Albert brings us a letter form Billy. The gist is that he has decided to accept the job offer but that he still wants to function as senior pastor of the church and that he considers the new job as his "tent ministry". If the proposition is not acceptable to the oversight, he would be ok with that and keep on supporting the church.
The following week Donovan chaired an elders meeting and asked us what we wanted to do and unanimously agreed that Billy would not be able to fulfil the needs of the church on a part time basis. As businessmen we were painfully aware that the kind of salary and benefit package that was offered would demand a twelve hour day.
Billy was notified of our decision and he was furious. We didn't see him back at the church again for a year. He told people that we had fired him and began to get people to leave the church and join a new thing that he was starting in Milnerton. I don't think that he even told his wife the real truth. We asked him several times to come and meet with us so that we could part amicably but he refused.
It didn't take long for Billy to show his crazy side in his new job. Billy gets these grandiose ideas , he decided that the security company needed new vans so he went to Mc Carthey's and ordered 14 new security vans with out getting the approval of his directors. You can imagine their surprise and told Billy that they couldn't afford it and went back to Mc Carthey's in embarrassment to cancel the deal. Not surprisingly Billy lost his position soon afterwards.
The chronicles of Billy will have to be written by somebody else. But why did I get so carried away again?.... Well when we first started meeting together in the Old Metro Cinema, Simon Dickenson shared his testimony and the Billy stood up and prophesied.... and I thought he looked familiar ... a cop?
After the merger I shared my story of jumping on the cop van with Billy and my subsequent conversion experience. A week later we're on our way to a conference in Joburg and stopped over at the Gariep dam. At the camp fire he says to me "You know Jack ... its a funny thing ... but in 1971/72... I was a cop in Hillbrow and this wild man jumped onto my cop van" "yeah" I said " What was he wearing?" He said " No shirt no shoes" I said "The shirt came off afterwards"... yes he was the young cop sitting in the van whose eyes went as big as saucers.
Coincidence?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete