Man of 12 trades and 13 triumphs

IT IS a windy Wednesday at 15:00. A new, unpredictable world order has dawned. The day feels like bland food that has grown stale. At least not for long.

I'm waiting for my guest, Chris, who lets me know he's headed to Dias Tavern, the other Portuguese bar in the city basin. Those parts these days are called East City by hipsters with pointed shoes and numb faces.

Time Out and Condé Nast Traveler have tagged it as one of the Cape Town neighbourhoods with the best places to eat. To me, it remains part of the industrial outskirts of District Six. There is not even a memorial plaque honouring its history.

Many people confuse the Vasco da Gama Taverna in Green Point with the Dias Tavern. The story goes that years ago the two owners fought as fiercely as peri-peri chilli seeds, and one took his stuff and opened Dias using the same menu. A real sneaky Pete.

As I wait for Chris, I see Donald Trump's face on all seven of the Vasco's enormous TV sets. The news is final, the man with the Alpha daddy bear attitude is in charge.

Just then Chris arrives. This is the first time we have met in person, although we have been Facebook friends for years.

I have been following his writing forever and am quite the groupie. He is mild-mannered and more balanced than I thought; journalists can be rather moonstruck.

He speaks without commas or periods, in a type of stream-of-consciousness, and I wonder how he can go on without taking a breath. Not that he's a chatterbox, it just seems like so many things are going through his head simultaneously.

I love his healthy cynicism, without being a bitterbal. There are journalists in their sixties who keep choking on long-term cantankerousness in a tank of dark oily sludge.

So Chris gets going and talks about the days when he worked in the world of TV for, among others, the SABC. He made serious documentary programmes, as well as satires and comedies, talk shows and an art programme called But is it Art?

In this industry he was a writer, producer and director. We talk about his documentary on the erotic dancer Glenda Kemp, famous for doing nude shows with a python. She did not have an easy childhood and was in an orphanage until she got adopted by a certain “aunt and uncle Baumbach" from Swartruggens.

“She has survived a lot, I have a soft spot for her, she is defenceless. She just wanted to dance among the mielies and do her own thing. She went off to study teaching after school," he says.

I tell him how years ago I tracked down Glenda's email address and contacted her to find out what had happened to Oupa, the python. Not long after, she let me know there actually were three of them.

One died while she was dancing somewhere, but she continued with her shows with a new recruit, and the last python someone bought from her in London when she was performing over there. After that, we became Facebook friends and I soon discovered how widely read she was.

Glenda was ahead of her time, one of the first feminists in South Africa. She did with flair what she wanted to with her body and wouldn't let men police it.

Chris has an intense interest in African music and made a highly regarded programme, The Whistlers, a 90-minute documentary on the history of kwela (pennywhistle) music in South Africa.

Another programme was about a butt reader, somewhat like a palm reader. People had to bend over with their buttocks in the air and then he read them for you.

“He wasn't a bum butt reader, he knew his story," says Chris. “One man he told to go easy on the alcohol, otherwise a sanatorium would read his future to him."

Joking around, they brought him a covered leg of mutton. He caressed this “butt" and said: “Hmmm, janee, this butt would go perfectly with garlic."

An American by birth

Chris du Plessis was born in New York where his father, Dawid, was a diplomat. They lived there until he turned six. He had a sister, Vida, who died unexpectedly of an aneurysm at the age of 56.

The first six or seven years of a child are important formative years. I suspect the wild energy, creativity and cosmopolitan touch of this world city had a great bearing on his perception of everything around him.

He remembers the strong cycles of the seasons, especially the snow in winter and in autumn all the leaves that go yellow, brown and then fade away.

His father and mother, Kristina, met as pen pals when they were youngsters. Dawid was artistic, played the piano and wrote short stories for Huisgenoot.

“The soul-destroying and bureaucratic work of a civil servant I think made him unhappy," says Chris. “His creativity was suppressed. He was miserable. He tried to drink himself into affability."

“My mother was an eenkantmeisie [girl keeping to one side] from the Karoo. There was something of a Glenda Kemp to her. She had a soft heart, was a sociable woman," he says.

Chris's family moved back to South Africa from New York, but his father was transferred to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) within 18 months. He went to school there. Halfway through Chris's standard 7 year his father was transferred again, this time to Germany.

He was put into Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool in Pretoria's hostel. It was somewhat of a shock. His open-minded upbringing in New York was invigorating. In Lourenço Marques there had been very little exposure to Afrikaner nationalism, the DR Church and the suffocating thinking that accompanied it.

He excelled in sports, loved football, and even ran out for Northern Transvaal schools rugby, but detested the cramped academic and social milieu.

“It was a nightmare, I hated it, this elite Afrikaans school from that era, especially the residence," he says. He developed an interest in black people's music on home soil, going to Marabastad to listen to musicians in shebeens on Fridays when school was out.

After school, he completed a year of his compulsory military service and then enrolled for a BA at Tukkies. The university and the narrow-mindedness there were unbearable and he took to the road through the rest of Africa, Europe, North America and the East, travelling for two years.

Upon his return, he went to Rhodes University to study for a BA in literature, psychology and art. The English-language ambience made him feel more creative and at home. He was politicised there. Chris actually wanted to become a cartoonist, but after Rhodes became a copywriter at an advertising company.

“The advertising industry came up with its own nonsense," he says. “Middle-aged men with ponytails and all that wasted money. My mother then told me she knew of someone at Nasionale Pers.

“I went for an interview and got a job, first at Tygerburger and later at Die Burger. At Tygerburger I wrote lekker stories about big pumpkins.

“At the time, people still smoked in the office, and the news editor, Harry Shaw, a big nob at Die Burger, kept complaining that it was cold, with that burr of his. There was a crime reporter who slept in a caravan just around the corner. Right there in the Heerengracht area.

“At Die Burger I wrote for the Kaapse Draai. My first byline was an interview with Johnny Clegg. We talked for hours and hours and were great friends until his death. If I needed him on any level, I was always able to call him."

Another person he interviewed was Miriam Makeba. Her life was one of freshened hell: She was banned when she left the country, had been kidnapped by Sophiatown gangsters, and there were five marriages (among others to the belligerent leader of the US Black Panther movement, Stokely Carmichael). There was a plane crash, breast and cervical cancer, crushing psychotic episodes and the death of her only child, Bongi, during childbirth.

“During this interview, she became more and more depressed. She felt abandoned by the people of her own country and that she did not get the recognition she deserved. Miriam was right, it was a shame."

The other Vula

He got involved with the underground magazine Vula, which wrote about subjects and music in which other local media were not interested. They had no idea what was going on in other cultures.

“The security police thought the magazine was related to the ANC's Operation Vula. They visited the building where the editorial staff worked and asked them for information, but no one wanted to cooperate. The police didn't stop calling.

“Vula was fresh, rebellious, and the page layout innovative. When Nataniël was still unknown and preparing for a show at the old Nico Malan theatre complex, I took pictures to Die Burger and Rapport to help him with publicity.

“The people there laughed at me. Vula used the photos. So the wheel turns. When I went to live in New York in 1986, I took a lot of Vulas with me.

“I made contact with Solly Simelane and Neo Numzana, attached to the ANC office in New York, and gave them some of the magazines. I remember their faces, pure wonder when they read about all the new “alternative" music and theatre in South Africa. It's a shame, isn't it, that after the ANC's victory, the arts have been sidelined."

Payment at Vula was rare; advertisers were mainstream and did not like it. Jane Raphaely did write a letter of support, though, and the publication had loyal readers, almost like a family.

Chris joined the Cape Times where he worked with Molly Green on the arts page where Fiona Chisholm was the editor. Here he again wrote to his heart's content about music from Africa. He couldn't understand why everyone was going on about Madonna when some of the best music was here on our own soil. Chris made his name with a picture byline column about African music.  

He himself had learnt to strum the guitar at a young age and played the harmonica. One day there was a call from Max du Preez, who was starting a new Afrikaans newspaper. Did Chris want to move to Johannesburg to work as an arts editor?

“It was a great opportunity to get involved in something completely off-beat and new," he says. “I enjoyed it but, yo, we sometimes had to work up to 18 hours a day. But it was really lovely to be part of a wider rebellion, the Black Sun, all those places, a type of Haight-Ashbury counterculture animus."

He recalls him and sub-editor Koos Coetzee going off after the deadline to buy minibar tots of brandy, like those on planes, to help them relax.

Soon the media company Caxton got hold of him. He joined the glossy magazine Style, which was kind of the country's own version of Vanity Fair. He wrote features by the ton and also compiled its annual 80-page travel supplement.

In between, he was part of a band called Die Radiators. By the way, in his youth, he worked in a Datsun factory to pay for his university studies. His father insisted that he should take care of himself after his 21st.

The band released a CD, Somerlied, with songs like Fokkit maar dis warm in Johannesburg (Fuck it but it's hot in Johannesburg) and Sy's Afrikaans maar sy wil net Engels praat (She's Afrikaans, but wants to speak English only).

Then Chris opened the Xai-Xai Lounge in Melville. It was inspired by Mozambique, the music, the people, the food. It did so well that Time magazine wrote about it.

Chris says the place was popular from its opening night. “There were over a thousand people. All the money I put in, I made back just like that. In one night. After all, the Xai-Xai Lounge, years later, is still one of the most famous places in Melville."

“Later the place managed itself, the people who worked there knew what they were doing. I really don't know how I tackled all these things in my life, I've overreached the initial expectations of myself," he says.

From the city to the forest

Then came the birth of his daughter. After seven years at Xai-Xai, he decided it was time to leave Johannesburg and move to Knysna. His daughter's mother had family there and they wanted to move closer to them so that they could all feel like an extended family.

“Yes, that child is teaching herself Japanese now, can you believe it," he says. When she was little, he played the guitar for her at night while she bathed.

Knysna 18 years ago was a beautiful town when he arrived there. The woods created an atmosphere of mystery.

“It was gothic, almost ominous, with this physical scenery, forests, waterfalls. There is also an Art Deco district, nice man, nice," he says. “Then the ‘Plettification' of this quiet town began. They are now building the eighth mall here."

In my own mind's eye, I see a place with thick forests, a type of damp  air, and women walking with broken hearts into the trees and disappearing. If I remember correctly, I visited a woman in a caravan there, as a child, with my father.

It was a long time ago. She lived among big tree roots standing like dead people's hands and didn't speak a word. Maybe it was a dream? Knysna was that type of place, where you could misconstrue what you saw among the masses of trees. A fata morgana of the soul.

Now huge monolithic, indifferent houses have started to pop up, plantations are being destroyed, developers have poured in. It is, as it were, overdeveloped.

During those times, Chris continued to write articles for a wide variety of online and print publications. He considered himself semi-retired.

He travelled the globe, ate wonderful foods in faraway places, and led a full life, but it was time to tickle the guitar. The phone rang. It was a call from the community newspaper Knysna-Plett Herald.

Didn't he want to come over and keep an eye, they were looking for an editor. Ah, local newspaper, he thought. Cute stories about the biggest sweet potatoes and leguans.

“No," he says. “It wasn't like that at all. There was and is a lot of corruption, big money at stake, assassination attacks that are planned in secret." But he prefers not to talk too much about it; some court cases are still ongoing.

When he retired there at 65, he wrote in his farewell letter: “Tumultuous as it might have been at times during the post-wildfire epoch given a global pandemic, the dramatic local political shifts, a threatened print-media industry and so forth – the peaks thankfully outweighed the troughs and our towns and their primary source of information are still thriving.”

During his editorship, the Knysna-Plett Herald received numerous media trophies, including best front page (among the more than 100 community newspapers in SA), best community newspaper and best headline awards.

When the big fires broke out around Knysna in 2017, I saw on Chris's Facebook page that something was coming. His posts were more and more desperate and then the unthinkable happened, his own house burned down.

Seven people died in this inferno, almost 1 000 houses were destroyed and about 10 000 people were left homeless. More than 16 000 hectares of forestry and native vegetation were destroyed.

In what reads like a dystopian Cormac McCarthy novel, Chris wrote a piece for the Daily Maverick: “Inside the Knysna inferno: Smoke on The Water – what to save when you are about to lose it all.”

He wrote: “As I drove up into my suburb it looked like any other American disaster movie. Vehicles lined up along the suburb’s exit roads with some breaking rank and moving off to who knows where, people hunched against the weather trying to fasten goods to their roof racks, or gathered in groups to finalise arrangements. Everything had slipped into dead-slow-motion in a silent, surreal landscape of figures on an old-fashioned board game.

“As I exited my road and sunk back down the hill towards town, I caught glimpses of the fervid juggernaut. The renegade crush of grey-black clouds fed by flicks of bright orange reaching up the rising was being mimicked in several other places around Knysna – some manifesting in massive hissing, spitting banks of quivering heat up to 20 metres high.”

With the soot from the fire in the past and after his retirement from the newspaper, what now? He started working on his one-man piece during the lockdown: Moordballades en ander minder vrolike versies uit die Groot Vreseboek (Murder ballads and other less cheerful verses from the Groot Vreseboek [a play on the Groot Verseboek, a compendium of the best Afrikaans poetry].)

The solo show has built up a large following, as he travelled from venue to venue with his guitar and harmonica. “If people want to know where I will be performing, look in the press or on my Facebook page. I should probably have a web page with all this information on it, but I haven't gotten around to it yet," he says.

The verses from the Groot Verseboek he set to music are a mixture of nature poems and ones with a more Gothic theme, including murder ballads, war poems, drunken ditties and tales of inner anguish. The accompaniment varies from traditional folk tunes and ballads to Zulu street guitar music, reggae, bluegrass and rock 'n' roll.

Why should people go see the piece? I ask. “It's funnier than the title sounds and a lot of sacred cows are slaughtered," he replies.

As he writes in the song Fokkit maar dis warm in Johannesburg, which he also sings in his show: “Spring is over, summer is back, fuck it but it's hot in Johannesburg."

You're telling me? Looks like the man is only one long summer – and that in Knysna? Laat waai papegaai!

♦ VWB ♦

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