To produce convincing stories on difficult topics such as violence, crime and prison, conventional writers tend to look everywhere, everywhere that is, except in their own lives. John W Fredericks thus does not qualify as your typical, run-off-the-mill wordsmith. For his thrilling book Skollie: Oneman’s struggle to survive by telling stories, Fredericks has never had to go beyond his own front door. His life is the story. As far back as his earliest childhood memories inside a matchbox house, right up to adulthood as a backyard dweller, such experiences formed the eerie backdrop of the harsh life that his book courageously owns up to.
From the alcoholic, abusive father to his criminally-inclined friends, to leering pedophiles and the general dread of growing up in the ganglands of the Cape Flats, Skollie puts the reader in the shoes of characters who’ve had to grow up real tough, real fast. This riveting autobiographical novel, written in the wake of the award-winning film Noem my Skollie, takes the reader into the sort of life that your parents used to warn you against. Right down the rabbit hole of how tough things can sometimes turn out even for the toughest guys.
Although a shy recluse who prefers reading and doing household chores, the young John finds himself in the sort of environment where such things leave him feeling missplaced. Around people who take a dim view to such worthless occupations. His father, who works at a municipal dumping ground, is a heavy-handed man; his mother is a church going “happy clappy” which John later finds out is a derisive term for what we’d nowadays call “born-again Christian.” Set during apartheid, the story also alludes to how that system not only sowed deep divisions between members of different races but within people of the same race as well. This is evident in how John’s neighbour, a certain Mrs Lubbe takes issue with the fact that John’s family think they are better simply because they happen to walk around with straight, kinky hair whilst hers is somewhat frizzled.
At school John befriends Gif, Gimba and Shorty and following a violent incident, they take up the idea to stand up for themselves by forming a gang. The Young Ones, as they decide to call themselves, initially start off committing petty crimes. Inevitably these become increasingly more daring and dangerous until Gimba and John find themselves behind bars, handed a two year jail sentence at the old Pollsmoor prison. Housed alongside hardened criminals of the numbers gang, John tries by all means to avoid joining their ranks. Despite the tough circumstances that come with not having protection, he starts telling stories to the inmates, eventually somewhat earning their respect. So as not to spoil the book for you let’s just say it’s a powerful tale of courage, betrayal, disappointment, faith, redemption and all those traits that make up the human condition.
Also, one can pick up on Fredericks’ forebodings in as far as the unforgiving nature of prison culture is concerned. How it has the habit of lurking over one’s shoulder, following you around even when you’re on the outside.
To the unfamiliar, one gets the sense that he is starkly mindful not to write too elaborately on the inner workings of the culture because there is seemingly a heavy price to be paid for those who dare to. This is demonstrated when the film adaptation is released and one of the actors is viciously assaulted by real-life gangsters supposedly for not having depicted their gang favourably in the movie.
During the course of making the adaptation, Fredericks got to meet Magadien Wentzel, a notorious gang member who spent some 25 years in jail and who is the subject of Johny Steinberg’s equally brilliant book TheNumber. In it, Steinberg traces the history of the culture; interviewing scores of the rank and file and delving deeply into its origins. But this he does in English and more in an explanatory, academic fashion than attempting to translate the cryptic creole. By the little glimpses that Fredericks gives, especially when he puts the jargon down in Afrikaans one is able to pick up on the intricate, unique and idiomatic depth of this enduring patois of criminality. A master storyteller is Fredericks and the book bears testament to his talent. It functions on its own terms, does not try to be grandiose or overly poetic, just a raw telling of a street story by the “skollie” who lived through it. One of my favourite quotes (of which there are many) is this one, it struck a particular chord; “Life was good, but deep in my heart I knew that was not what I really wanted. I got bored with the daily drinking and dagga smoking, the dice games and the tough-guy banter. Bored with the drudgery of township life. There was a yearning in me that I could not explain to my gang fellows. There were no dreams to share with them.”
Throughout the book you will find many such introspective nuggets, the sort that tug at your heartstrings, that allow you to peer into the mind of a man trying to find himself.
David Max Brown who wrote the foreword encourages the reader to “find a comfortable place to sit, because once you start reading…you will not be able to stop.” Had sleep not overwhelmed me around 5am one Saturday morning, he would have been spot on.