Sipho Vilakazi (Interview for the History of Goju Ryu in South Africa)

Sipho Vilakazi’s body has a latent energy about it. He sits stern and cross-armed across from us, but five minutes later, while recounting his memories of his karate training, his gestures are expansive and his face is animated. He started his Goju Ryu training in 1972 at the age of 12 in a community hall in Dobsonville in the township of Soweto. He recalls sharing a portion of the hall with weightlifters and boxers, one of them being the future South African Flyweight Boxing Champion, Terror Mathebula. And, he remembers having to skip training on a Friday because that is when the drum majorettes used the space.

His sensei, Stats Mgomezulu, having migrated from Judo, to training Goju with James Rousseau, had started the dojo at the hall. As he travelled for work, he taught them intermittently, and it says a lot about the dedication of those youngsters, who continued their training in his absence. And, in 1975 when Cecil Mokoena took over their training, he was impressed enough with their level of expertise that he graded them up a belt. Cecil Mokoena had already been training with James Rousseau for quite a while and had been trying to establish a dojo at the Orlando High School, when one of the karateka approached him and asked him to meet with the twenty or so Dobsonville students. Sipho remembers, “When he came there he found us training, we were white belts. The highest grade at the time was an orange belt, but we trained and trained. Then he [Cecil] said, Okay, I’ll take you guys for two weeks, and you will choose if I’m the right guy to train you, and I will choose whether I’ll continue with you or not. That was the agreement.” Two weeks later Cecil was satisfied that he had students who were willing to accept him as their new sensei. After receiving Stats blessing, Cecil offered to connect them with his Sensei, James Rousseau, at the Fox Street Dojo in Johannesburg.

There was very little integration between the races during the apartheid era. When asked whether black and white students were allowed to train together, Sipho shook his head and said, “But with Sensei James and Sensei Arnold it was different. Sensei James trained Cecil alone, and he was a black guy. And, at that time, they [the police], could go and check whether he was training a black guy. I think Sensei James took a decision to say, no one is going to tell me what to do. He trained Cecil alone, and it was not allowed. But as black people we had hindrances as to who you could train with, especially when it comes to people of a different colour.” Sensei James held mini gashukus exclusively for the black karateka, and graded them at the Fox Street dojo. Although he did go to the Dobsonville dojo, he felt it was important that they needed to know their Hombu. Several Senseis like; Arnold de Beer, Johan Roodts, Roger Mahon, Pikkus Windell, and others, trained Sipho there too.

The Apartheid ‘Pass laws’ also hindered his training, as his freedom of movement was limited. “There was this stability unit which was moving around. Those are the men who were arresting people. But, I think that somewhere along the way they got tired, because we would always go and come back. They would see that this is the bunch of people with bags and gi’s, because we would show them. [They would ask] ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Town.’ ‘Who are you training with?’ ‘So and so.’ ‘Is he allowed to train you?’ ‘Yes.’ And that was the end of it. People had to make that decision, if I am arrested, it is fine, but I am going to train. I was one of them.” He remembers early morning bag searches when he was catching the train to Johannesburg for the 6 am training sessions; and then again on his return. “So we had these random problems, but after a while I was no longer worried. If they came, here’s the bag, search. I knew they won’t find anything. They were just frustrating themselves. We then found [out that] some of the police guys were doing JKA. Maybe that helped as well, so that they started to know some of us, because then some of them started to ask, ‘Who are you training with?’ ‘Oh, ok.’ Then it was fine, you know. This guy is going to training, so it also established relations in terms of us moving freely.”

When “the splits” happened, it became a lot more difficult for the black students to train, as they were allocated regions and Senseis. “The barrier was that we couldn’t train wherever we wanted to because this thing of the West, South, East, it was a problem. If you stayed in Dobsonville, and they saw you coming from the other side, they (the police) would ask, ‘Why do you go and train there, because in terms of the boundaries you are supposed to go to the West.’” Sipho struggled to travel to Sensei Johan Roodts in Krugersdorp; he remembers walking long distances as the only transport available at the time was the train. And in 1979, he found that training with Sensei Roodts was no longer practical. He started looking for a more convenient dojo, and decided to train with Sensei Arnold de Beer instead. This decision was not one he made lightly, as it came with a certain amount of risk. “To be quite honest, when Sensei James left things fell apart. That’s where we had the problems, because now we had this demarcation type of thing, where you belong to the West, you belong… then Cecil left, but we remained. I said, ‘No man, if they arrest me, let it be.” It was the right choice, as under Sensei Arnold’s mentorship Sipho travelled to Okinawa, and was the first African black male to be taught by Ko Uehara at his dojo. He also opened a successful dojo in Soweto in the eighties, and he still assists at Sensei Arnold’s dojo today. He is the only remaining karateka from the original 1970’s Dobsonville group.

 

 

Maverick

“I had an old boyfriend who said it was always better to buy books by the bakkie load.”, she said as we walk through the retirement village library, and talk while we look for the new titles that Penny has added to the shelves. “He used to go to auctions and buy these ‘lots’ of books and other bits and pieces, enough to fill the back of his bakkie. Then he’d go home, sort through them and put the books he didn’t want outside on the pavement.” She sees the incredulous look I give her and quickly adds, “They were gone the next day. Theo said that the Bergies who stayed on the mountain were the most literate homeless people in the world. They were ex doctors, lawyers; professional people who went nuts and couldn’t live in the real world anymore.”

 

We walk up the stairs; I take my time with each step and make sure that she does not need to rush to keep up. “Theo loved to collect stuff. His house was full, and there were books everywhere. They were in piles on the floor, in the kitchen, in the bathroom; everywhere. He once found this old couch at the side of the road. He loaded it onto his bakkie and he brought it home. It was in terrible condition, the fabric was torn and the springs stuck out; but he just chucked a throw over it and used it. He was very good with his hands. He loved to fix things. I gave him half a propeller that my ex left behind. He sanded it down, polished it and hung it on the wall. It looked beautiful. He always found value in everything. In one of the auction lots he found a series of pressed dried flowers that a woman had collected and framed. He said that she had taken the time to create that, and now someone was just throwing it away. It made him angry that people could be so dismissive of other’s feelings and achievements. He said it was precious, so he hung it up, and of course it fit right in with all the other things he had in the house.”

 

I check the notice board inside the entrance of the village clubhouse, my advert is still tacked under the portion labelled ‘Social’. We walk down the stairs onto the road that leads to my car. “My daughter loved Theo, she called him Maverick, because he was unorthodox. She said that he was her favourite boyfriend of mine. She would spend hours at his house, snuggled in a chair reading, or just chatting to him. She said the house reflected his personality, that it was full of character. She loved how it was full of things; not in a hoarder kind of way, or old person knick knackie; just comforting, like a good book. She felt comfortable amongst his clutter. I had another boyfriend whom she hated. He was a minimalist and everything in his house was stark, white and bare. She said that it was the same as his personality, that he did not have one, and the house was a true reflection of his character. He only spent some of the year here, and he had another house overseas. He told me that when his wife died he got rid of most of her things, oh, he kept some photographs and paintings, but most of the other things went. He made it minimalist too. My daughter said that it was like he was wiping her out of his life so that he could move on, I thought she was too harsh. She really hated him – but she loved Maverick." 

We take our time walking to my car. She picks at a plant here and there, pinches off a leaf, and removes an old flower. “We got together after his third wife. He had an affair while we were together. She was an art professor at the university. He broke it off with her when I found out; he said he wanted to try to make it work between the two of us. Then one day soon after the breakup she arrived at his house, caused such a scene, screaming, throwing things, and when Theo wouldn’t humour her she stormed out in a rage. Later that night he got a phone call from her, she was in hospital. She said that she had caught the train home, had been attacked, and been raped. He rushed out to be with her. He supported her in her recovery for a long time after that. We didn’t last much longer after that. Something never felt right about what happened. Many years later, when I spoke about it to his son, he said that he thought that it had all been a figment of her imagination. He said he never really believed her story, and that he thought she was psychotic. She never really seemed normal to me, she didn’t live in the real world, and I did not understand how she managed to teach at a university. But, it is funny how academia seems to draw the strangest people.” 

I unlock my car with the remote and put my bag in the boot. She carries on walking down the path that leads to her cottage. I open the windows in my car to let the stifling air out and lean against the passenger side door. She rests her arms on the balustrade that lines the path and waits for me to finish. The sun is hot on my face and arms. She stands in the shade. “He always said I was the only normal one he ever dated. He said that he loved women, he didn’t care what they looked like. He could manage long-term relationships He was married three times, but he also had many affairs. He was attracted to psychologists, and you know what they say about why psychologists choose to go into that profession; it is to fix themselves. It never worked out with any of them. He said they were all nuts. I told Theo he projected his issues onto them, that it wasn’t them that had the problems, that the issues were all his, and that he was looking to them for solutions. I often told him that he should see someone to help him work through things, but he refused. Years later, he phoned me and said that he had finally gone to see someone. He said that he walked into her office, they looked had at each other and she said ‘I don’t think this is going to work out, I think we should have an affair.’ And, they did. I couldn’t say that I was surprised, that kind of thing happened to him a lot.”  

“Was he that attractive?” I ask. My arms are tingling from the sun; I slide my arms behind me and lean on my hands. “Well, he had the most beautiful green eyes, with long dark lashes. He had curly dark hair and a small beard. He was a climber and so he was broad shouldered, and had a lean body and legs. He was reverse rich. He came from a very wealthy family, but he hated them, so he went out of his way to look as scruffy as possible. He wore button down shirts, but they always had stains on them, with cut off jean shorts, and slops. Those slops you get at the Zimbabwean markets, the ones made out of tyres. And, he never wore underwear. He is a wildlife conservationist. He once went into the bush to track some animals in the wild; he spent those two weeks naked. That was the type of guy he was.”

 

“Mentally he wasn’t right though. I know he said that he loved women, but I thought he actually hated them. He hated his mother. He said ‘What kind of mother abandons her son, how could she send a six year old to boarding school?’ She sent him to Bishop’s, it was a very expensive Catholic boys’ boarding school. Well, it was what the rich did in the fifties. He hated it there. There were rumours about molestation and abuse that floated around about the school, but I never really believed them. Then one night I went to a party at a friend’s house, he had gone to Bishop’s. I asked him about the rumours; he gave me this funny look, and said that whatever I had heard was true, and worse than I had heard. Then he turned his back on me, and walked away. I didn’t know what I had done wrong. Later that evening his wife, a psychologist, spoke to me about it. She said that I had upset him, that he was still traumatised by his time there, and that 60 percent of her patients came from Bishop’s. I never questioned Theo’s stories about Bishop’s again.” 

 

She straightens up and takes a step down the path. I start to walk back to the driver’s side of the car. “Even though we broke up after the art professor, we still stayed in touch. Every few months I used to get a call to see how I was doing and to catch up. He’d ask me to marry him and I’d laugh and say no. A few years back he bought a piece of land in the Cape. It had a small house on it, and he converted everything so that he could go ‘off grid’. He asked me if I would like to come for a visit. I said no because I didn’t want to drive on my own to the middle of nowhere. So he offered to come and pick me up when he had to come to town to do a collection from the university. And he would drop me off a week later. I agreed, and I went. It was ok for the first few hours, but by the end of the first day I couldn’t take him anymore. It was terrible. I wanted to leave and I was trapped there. He was okay in small doses, for a few hours even, but not for a whole week. He was too intense, his moods fluctuated, and I couldn’t take it. It was a horrible experience. I don’t know how I lasted the whole week. I remember taking a lot of long walks. He still phones me and asks me if I want to come and visit. It is easier to say no now that I am in Joburg. My daughter still loves him.”

 

She smooths her hair back, and takes a step away from me. “He is semi-retired now. He works about three hours a week at the university, consulting and handling the overseas students. He is in his sixties, and the twenty-year old girls still throw themselves at him. He is that type of man, he is attracted to women, and women are attracted to him. You should meet him some time.” “I don’t think so,” I say, as I climb into my car and close the door, “He sounds dangerous.” She laughs, turns away, and waves without looking back.

 

Author’s note: The basis for this story was a conversation I had with an elderly student. I have adhered mostly to her portrayal of the facts as she experienced them.

Sources regarding abuse at Bishops Diocesan College, Cape Town:

News24 – Police investigate sex claims at Bishops. 2014/08/03. http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Police-investigate-sex-claims-at-Bishops-20140803

Accessed 2017/05/07

 

IOL News – Boys expelled from Bishops for bullying. Williams, M. 24 March, 2000.

http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/boys-expelled-from-bishops-for-bullying-32643

Accessed 2017/05/07