Stan hitchhiked from Cape Town up to Johannesburg and spent a couple of days with me. Lance, my old friend from high school, was also on leave from the border; the old gang was together again. Lance had made it to second lieutenant with a Bushman tracker unit and had been close to the area where we had pushed vehicle patrol. I had often asked after him but had not bumped into him on the border. We swapped war stories.
He was bummed that he had just missed the two ops. “We were securing the area for you guys so that you could get into Angola without a contact. If it hadn’t been for us the whole operation would have been compromised!”
“We had a 16-click mechanized convoy with us going in… I don’t think we would have had a problem.”
We argued inter-unit politics and pride and drank. Stan got on well with my old gang and we partied at all the old haunts. We swaggered into the discotheque in Boksburg and danced to Bananarama’s ‘Cruel Summer’ then smoked doobies at the dam.
At a roadhouse that served late-night chow, a notorious Lebanese gang pulled in en masse. They were punks with long reputations of ganging up and kicking the crap out of anyone they decided needed an ass-whipping. They had also been involved in a few stabbings and shootings. One of the well-known Lebanese brothers sauntered by and muttered something to Stan who was glaring at him like a Nazi stormtrooper. The little prick sneered and made a hand gesture. Before Stan or anyone could react I had smashed my plate of burger and fries into his face and followed up with a punch that did not catch him flush. He whirled to run with his face full of ketchup, blood and gravy and I gave chase but ran into two of his delightful ‘cousins’. It turned into a free-for-all with everyone involved. I ended up doing pretty well, with two punks in a head-lock under each arm like in a Bud Spencer movie. I was starting to jump up and down, shaking them around. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stan reel back as he got caught by a good punch. Derek Worthy floored a skinny Lebanese with a long right-hand. I was just starting to have fun when some off-duty cop sneaked up and sprayed a canister of tear gas into my face from 30 centimetres away. I dropped like I had been shot as did the two Lebs I was holding, who also got the benefit of the blast, and, in agony, unable to breathe, the three of us crawled blindly on our hands and knees with our eyes burning like fire. I ended up leaning against the prick cop who had blasted me.
Finally Taina and I took off together and spent a week in Cape Town. We drove down through the flat, hot Karoo semi-desert and swam naked in one of the wind-whipped, remarkably ice-cold reservoirs that lined the side of the desert road. In Cape Town we went on long drives through the old wine routes. We went for long walks, disappearing off the paths to make love in fields of tall grass and wild flowers.
“Look at it from their side. All they’re doing is fighting for the right to govern themselves in South West Africa. Wouldn’t you be doing that if you were born black, Granger?”
I felt frustrated and out of place among the idiot university crowd. They all seemed like dipshits with their long hair and bullshit. Stupid motherfuckers. What did these jerk-offs know about a T-55 coming out and chasing you, or running the whole night without ammunition, or clearing bunkers while anti-aircraft fire made you almost shit in your pants, praying that the next one wouldn’t turn you into a heap of guts and bone?
One morning I was woken by a loud knock on the front door of the flat where Taina and I were staying. Sleepily I got up and opened it to find Stan standing in full step-out uniform, maroon beret and balsak at his side.
“What the fuck’s going on with you?” I inquired, still half-asleep and with a dreadful, throbbing hangover.
“We’ve all been called up. We have to go back to 1 Para… there’s big shit going on. They called my dad’s house.”
I stared at Stan through misty vision, not able to believe my ears, or the sight of Stan standing in uniform in front of me, telling me to get dressed immediately and get back to 1 Parachute Battalion.
“What? Bullshit. You’re kidding?”
“No, I’m not kidding. They called my dad’s house, man!”
“Bullshit. I don’t believe you.”
“I’m telling you, Gungie, I’m not kidding! I’m leaving right now and hitchhiking to Bloem! Come with me.”
“Well, fuck that. I didn’t get the message, did I? Nobody knows that I’m down in Cape Town. I’m not going you never saw me. Got it?”
Stan lectured me for five minutes, telling me I was not a good soldier and that I would be in big shit and was letting the company down.
I was not interested. As I saw it, nobody even knew where I was except for Stan. I would just say that I never knew. I turned around and went back to bed with Taina.
Stan went off in a huff and hitchhiked the whole 1,000-kilometre, two-day journey to 1 Parachute Battalion in Bloemfontein only to be told on arriving that it was a false alarm. He turned around and hitchhiked back. Apparently only a handful of D Company had responded to the emergency call-back from our precious 21-day pass. Stan was pissed.
“I’m afraid that’s the way it seems to be going, son. There’s talk that they might one day release Mandela and that the ANC could become a legal political party. I doubt that it’ll happen but either way I think there are going to be some big changes here. It can’t go on like this. These world sanctions are killing the country. The Americans won’t sell us a thing. Everything’s so expensive. Bombs going off somewhere almost daily. I’m afraid the day might come that life as we know it will change.”
“Fuck the Americans,” I thought. “They’re a bunch of do-gooders—a naïve, McDonalds-guzzling, fat-ass nation that thinks whatever they do, the world should do the same. Fuck the British… and the whole world too.”
I held no hatred for black South Africans nor did most of the people I knew. We would go out of our way to help them. I had known since I was a kid, without being told, that apartheid was wrong and would end one day, that black people should get a better shake. But the ANC becoming a political party, with Mandela coming out to lead them after 22 years in jail? What horseshit was that? It sounded like a bad Hollywood screenplay. The ANC wass backed by the same commies I was shooting on the border. I smiled and shook my head and tried to let it go. I wasn’t going to let politics ruin my 21-day pass. When I thought about it I actually didn’t really give a shit because it would never happen. That would be the day, that South Africa would give in to world pressure and communism.
“Well, you’ve only got three months left in the army, son. Have you thought what you’re going to do when you get out?”
“No, I haven’t, pa…”