Mr Nguni turned to me in the back seat. He was clearly shocked. ‘I cannot do this thing, Inkosi. It is not for me to say who is Onoshobishobi Ingelosi. Tonight we will see, we cannot change this thing, it is in the bones and in the smoke.’ He turned back to the chauffeur to give a direction.
‘Shit! He believes it himself,’ Hymie said out of the corner of his mouth.
We turned into the school grounds and were met by a sea of Africans. The Buick was forced to inch its way through the crowd. It was an hour and a half before the fight and the soccer ground was totally full, with only a narrow aisle leading to the ring in the centre. There must have been ten thousand spectators with more pouring through the school gates.
‘I thought you said it would be a fight in a school,’ Hymie said to Mr Nguni. ‘I thought you meant a school hall or something. The whole of Africa has come to see the bloody fight! What if there’s trouble, a riot or something?’
‘No, no! No trouble here, Mr Levy. The woman, she will speak to the people.’
‘You mean the witchdoctor?’ I asked.
‘It is she, Peekay, she will speak to the people.’
Hymie grinned nervously, ‘It’s got to be the first time a witchdoctor has ever announced a fight. Are you sure you’ve told me everything there is to know about you, Peekay?’
I grabbed him by the shirtfront, ‘Don’t you start now!’
We were taken to a shower block to change. Solly Goldman was waiting for us. ‘They’re doing it kosher orright, they’ve got Natkin Patel, the Indian referee from Durban to handle the fight. Blimey! ’Ave you see the crowd?’
I changed and we walked along to the school hall for the weigh in. Hymie looked at the scales, they’d been borrowed from a local trader and were the kind on which bags of mealie meal are usually weighed. ‘What’s the bloody difference, we’re going to fight him anyway, even if he’s over the limit,’ Hymie said.
‘It is very important, Mr Levy. The people must know everything is correct,’ Mr Nguni said.
Standing in the middle of the school hall beside the scales were a dozen or so Africans all neatly dressed in suits and ties. Though the suit parts were not always of the same parentage, they were clean and pressed. Standing to one side was Gideon Mandoma, the Zulu bantamweight I was to fight.
I broke away from Solly and Hymie and walked over to him and extended my hand. ‘I see you, Gideon Mandoma,’ I said in Zulu.
Gideon Mandoma took my hand, barely shaking it. He did not look up as he replied, ‘I see you, Peekay.’
‘I hear you come from the Tugela River Valley. It is where my nanny came from when I was a small infant, her name was Mary Mandoma, was she from the same chief’s kraal perhaps?’
Gideon Mandoma looked up at me, his eyes wide, a shocked expression on his face. ‘The one you are asking about is my mother. She is dead now five years.’ He pointed a finger at me. ‘You are the one of the night water?’
It was my turn to be shocked. I stood in front of the Zulu fighter completely stunned. I was going to fight Nanny’s son, the infant she had had to leave to look after me. It was I who had stolen the milk from her breasts when she had been hired to be first my wet nurse and then my nanny.
Gideon was the first to recover. ‘They say you are a chief, but must prove you have the spirit of Onoshobishobi Ingelosi. I know I am a chief and have the spirit of Cetshwayo and before that of Mpande, Dingane and even of Shaka the king of all the kings.’ His eyes grew suddenly hard. He had waited a long time and now he would fight the one who had taken his mother from him so that he had not known her until he was six years old. It was not meant to be like this, but for him there was now an added reason to win. To the Zulu there is no such thing as coincidence. I knew this would be a certain and powerful sign for him. Gideon Mandoma had a reason greater than my own to win. For the first time in my boxing career I was afraid. I knew Mandoma could beat me.
We weighed in in front of Solly, Mr Nguni, Natkin Patel the Indian referee and the other Africans. Both of us made it into the bantamweight limit, though I had five pounds to spare and Gideon was right on the limit.
The sun was setting as we walked out to the ring and already the air smelt of wood smoke and coal fires. It was still bloody hot and I’d been drinking water all day. I wondered about Mandoma, if he’d been right on the limit he’d have stayed off liquids, and we were fighting a six rounder, my first ever. It was the compromise Solly had reached with Mr Nguni, the difference between the three rounds of an amateur fight and the ten of a professional. It struck me that if I could keep him moving around the ring, the black fighter might just dehydrate enough to weaken in the last two rounds.
An old woman wearing a tired looking fur coat over a shapeless dress was haranguing the crowd from the ring. Her high-pitched voice carried to where we were standing on the steps of the school building. As she came to the end of her talk the crowd responded in thunderous applause. Two men entered the ring and lifted her and two others standing outside the ring took her from them.
‘It is time. We must go now, please,’ Mr Nguni said, and he led us down the narrow human corridor to the ring, following a rubber electrical cord which connected with a microphone. Gideon Mandoma and his seconds had preceded us by a few yards and the whole football field thundered to the roar of the crowd. We entered the ring almost together, though from opposite sides, and the human roar increased. Hymie and Solly were my seconds and Hymie moved over to the black fighter’s corner to check the glove-up, while a large Zulu in a mismatched suit with the jacket straining at its single brown button came over to do the same for us. I could feel the sweat running down from my armpits as Solly taped my hands and gloved me up.
Mr Nguni held his arms up and slowly the crowd grew silent. The microphone on a stand had been lifted into the ring and his voice echoed around the field as he addressed the crowd. First he introduced the referee, pointing out that he was an Indian who had come from Durban especially for the fight. The point of his neutrality was not lost on the crowd who gave Natkin Patel a big hand.
Mr Nguni then told the crowd that they all knew why this fight had been arranged. It was not for him to talk about it anymore. The talking would now be between the two spirits and the stronger would win and the people would know what they could think. The crowd was completely hushed as he spoke. He then introduced Gideon Mandoma who, arms held high, moved to the centre of the ring to huge applause. Mr Nguni held his hands up for silence and then asked the crowd to sing ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ i Afrika’, the African national anthem.
Ten thousand voices sang in perfect harmony and I shall forever remember the beauty of the moment. The yearning and love Africans put into this anthem is a hugely emotional experience. I was hard put to keep my concentration. Gideon Mandoma had the perfect reason to win the fight and now had been given the greatest inspiration any boxer ever had.
I was having trouble keeping the steel trap in my mind closed. Images of Nanny swept through my head. A sweet, dark woman who gave me unstintingly of her love, who never once mentioned the child torn from her when her breasts were still firm with milk. Gideon Mandoma had a right to hate me and hate is a good friend in a fight.
Next Mr Nguni called me to the centre of the ring, and, to my surprise, the applause was just as thunderous. As I stood there he began the chant of the Tadpole Angel, his voice ringing out to the silent crowd. When it came time to respond with the chorus ‘Onoshobishobi Ingelosi… shobi… shobi… Ingelosi’, ten thousand voices rolled like thunder. I stood in the centre of the ring, the tears rolling down my cheeks. It was perhaps the greatest single moment of my life. The people wanted to know. This was not a fight between black and white, it was a testing of the spirit, the spirit of Africa itself. Two kids, not fully grown, on a hot summer evening that smelt of wood smoke and sweat, would decide if there was hope for white and black and coloured, for the people of the great Southland.