Part of the Pride (5 page)

TWO
 
Rogue Male

 

 

 

At the time of writing this book the South African National Parks service is considering reintroducing the practice of culling elephants in Kruger National Park. Although the park has been expanded across the border into neighboring Mozambique, creating what is now known as the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park, it is still a finite area. Elephants were once able to migrate freely over huge swathes of Africa, but these days farming, the growth of cities and towns, and other land uses have confined them mostly to national parks and game reserves. In Kruger National Park, the experts have deemed that unless elephant numbers are managed then the ecosystem will suffer because of overgrazing. Adult elephant bulls eat between a hundred and eighty and two hundred and seventy kilograms—nearly six hundred pounds—of vegetation per day and will knock over fully grown trees to get to roots or leaves out of their reach. While this clearing of the bush has some benefits for the environment, including clearing paths to water for smaller animals and creating microecosystems around the trunks of felled trees, if
there are too many elephants in an enclosed area they will destroy their environment faster than it can regrow.

Whatever you might think of culling—the deliberate and planned killing of animals for management purposes—past experience has shown the national parks authorities that the most humane way to control elephant numbers was to take out an entire herd at a time. In the early 1980s, protests from some sectors of the community resulted in the culling teams sparing some young male elephants from targeted herds. These young males were translocated to other national parks such as Pilansberg, near the Sun City hotel and casino complex, and Hluhluwe-Imfolozi in KwaZulu Natal.

Elephants are social creatures and young ones are brought up in a family environment where they learn how to live and how to behave. The practice of relocating individual young bulls, while done with good intentions, proved to be a disaster. The youngsters grew up in their new homes without the benefit of discipline from older males, or being taught life's lessons from their mothers. As a result, they went crazy. They began attacking other animals and vehicles, and there were even examples of elephants sexually assaulting rhinoceroses. In Hluhluwe-Imfolozi alone they killed thirty-eight rhinos. To remedy the situation, older bull elephants had to be introduced into the reserves to knock the youngsters into shape.

When I was in high school I was like one of those young orphan bull elephants.

One Friday, when I was about twelve, I came home late from my school, Highlands North, after visiting a friend's house. This wasn't unusual as I was never all that keen to get home and I'd almost become the adopted extra child in a couple of my friends' families.

Dad was out of work and was spending more and more time at home. Waiting for me outside the house was my uncle, the one who had given me
Paddatjie
. I immediately knew something was not
right, as we only saw him two or three times a year. My sisters were both working after school at the Dion retail store. My uncle stopped me as I walked in the gate and said, “Come, we're going to fetch your sisters.” On the way to the store he spilled the beans, blunt and to the point. “Kevin, your father's passed away.”

I knew my dad had been for a job interview that day and as part of the process he'd had a medical exam that morning, to make sure he was fit. My brother Gareth was at home and Dad had told him that he was just going for a lie-down. Dad apparently asked my brother to make him some soup, and while Gareth was away in the kitchen doing that for him, my dad passed away from a pulmonary embolism as he lay on the couch. On the outside Dad hadn't seemed a sick person, although he smoked like a chimney and we all knew he drank too much.

My first thought when my uncle told me was, “Oh no, what's going to happen now?” But, even though I'm ashamed to say it, then I felt a small sense of relief. Three years before he died, he'd lost his job completely and went on a bit of a drinking binge. When that happened, even though he was our father, my brother, sisters, and I didn't even really want to be around him. I know that sounds a bit strange, terrible even, but I remember thinking that now we could get on with this life of ours, as a family. It was almost like he was a burden rather than one of the household. It was a bit of a relief for my mom, too. My dad was never violent, but things had been strained between them and she'd been the sole breadwinner for a couple of years by the time he died.

When I work with lions I find that if I've known the lion since birth or a very early age, and I've spent plenty of time with him when he's young, then I'll have a much better relationship with him when he matures. As the saying goes, “As you sow, so shall you reap.” I think it's the same with fathers and sons. A dad who has spent time
with his boy during his childhood will have a better relationship with him later as opposed to, say, one who has been missing from his life until his teens, and shows up late in the piece saying, “Howzit, China, let's go out on the town and be buddies.”

Even if my father had not died and there had been a big change in his life—maybe getting another job—and he had decided to pay more attention to us kids, I still think there would have been too much water already under the bridge for him to be able to stop me behaving the way I did over the next few years. The one strong part he had played in my life, that of the strict disciplinarian, was gone forever the day he died.

Things settled down for a while in the family after he died, but the difference for me was that I didn't have anyone controlling me anymore. As time went by and the grieving process ran its course, I started testing the boundaries of the new situation I found myself in. I'd started off fairly well at high school, but by the age of thirteen I started drinking and going out at nights—
jolling,
as we called it.

My brother's identification book, a document everyone of legal age had to carry in South Africa, had gone through the washing machine, and when he applied for a new one I managed to get my hands on the old, partially ruined one. I took a picture of myself and put that through the washing machine, deliberately, then carefully placed it on the old one where Gareth's photo had been. I did the same thing with his driving license. Basically, I stole his identify and became Gareth Richardson, aged eighteen, which allowed me to drive, drink alcohol, and get into night clubs.

I was driving from the age of fourteen, and that was partly my mother's fault, though through no intention of hers. I learned early on in my teens how to take advantage of the kindness of others and my mom was a prime target. I wanted to learn to drive so she started by letting me drive the car up and down the driveway, practicing driving forwards and in reverse, and getting used to the
stick shift and the clutch, brake, and accelerator. “Mom, if I wash the car, will you take me driving on the street?” I would pester her, even though I still hadn't reached the legal age to start learning to drive on public roads.

When Dad was alive she had taken the bus to work and had never needed to drive, but as the sole parent she now had to learn all over again. She saved her pennies and bought a smart little yellow Mini Clubman. My sisters were old enough to start learning—legally—so all of us would cram into the Mini and go out for driving lessons together. We would find a quiet road or a parking lot, and my sisters and I would teach my mother how to reverse park. It took Mom ten tries to get her license and we all cheered when she finally made it.

Once I learned to drive I realized that it would be a piece of cake for me to take the car out at night, when everyone else in the house was sleeping. I had a couple of mates, Dave and Dino, whom I used to get into trouble with. Dave was Jewish, Dino was Italian, and I'm Anglican, so we were a representative sample of the kids at Highlands North, which was a government-run school. We also had quite a few Lebanese kids, and our school had a richly deserved reputation for fighting with other schools, as well as among ourselves. Dino was a big oke—a six-foot guy who played rugby, and his size and strength came in handy when it was time for me to steal Mom's car. Dave and Dino would come over after dark and wait for me outside. I would creep into Mom's room and make sure she was sound asleep, then tiptoe outside and meet the boys.

“Right. Coast is clear,” I would say.

Our driveway was quite steep and it slanted uphill away from the house. We had a heavy steel security gate and the three of us boys had to lift it carefully and slide it along its rails so that it didn't make a screeching noise. I couldn't risk starting the car's engine in
the driveway, in case the sound woke my mom or sisters, so Dave, Dino, and I would scrum down, as if we were playing rugby, and push the car up the hill and out onto the street. It would have been impossible without Dino. As we rolled down the street I would start the car on the move once we were out of earshot from my house. After that, it was time to drive and time to party. I used to race that car as fast I could, ramping it up over pavements and pushing my own boundaries as a driver more and more.

“Come shopping with me, Kevin,” Mom said to me one Saturday morning as I lay in bed.

Hungover, I rolled over and rubbed my eyes. My mouth tasted like the bottom of J.R.'s cage and my head throbbed from too much cheap brandy. I mumbled, “If I'm going to go shopping with you, then you must give me money to go jolling, Mom.”

She gave in, and on the way to the supermarket, she kept glancing down at the dashboard. “Kevin, I think there's something wrong with this car. I filled it up yesterday, but now the gauge is only showing half full.”

“
Ja
, Mom, I know all about that.” I wound down the window to get some fresh air and burped, hoping she wouldn't smell the booze on my breath. Despite my state I was still thinking fast. “I found a little hole in the fuel tank, but I fixed it for you. Since I did that for you, can we go driving this afternoon?”

Mom believed everything her darling baby boy told her. By nine o'clock she'd be in bed, and by ten my mates and I would be at a club. We'd go to places such as Balalaika in Sandton; Bella Napoli, the Dome, and the Summit, which was a strip club. Back in the late eighties discos were big. It wasn't the whole rave and drug era that goes on today, but we were drinking anything we could get our grubby little paws on. We'd buy the cheapest stuff that would get us drunk the quickest. Our specialty was a two-liter bottle of Coca
Cola topped up with cane spirit—spook and diesel, it was called. We'd fill up on that and then we'd charm girls into buying us beers at the clubs. I've never really been a smoker, though I would take drags just to get a head spin. I tried dope, but it just made me sleepy and hungry. There was no way I wanted to get the munchies and be stuffed full of food and in bed by ten. We just wanted to go out, party, and get laid.

If we weren't going to a club we'd find a house party. Rich kids from Sandton, Parkhurst, and Rosebank would make money while their parents were overseas on holidays by putting on a party and charging an entrance fee. Once inside there was free alcohol and women galore. On nights when I couldn't risk taking the Mini we would walk or hitchhike all over town, and have an all-nighter. I couldn't imagine doing it in Johannesburg these days, because of the crime problem in the city.

We were invincible and not even the cops could stop us. I was pulled over one day by a policeman for no apparent reason while driving a friend to a weekend rugby game. The cop asked to see my license and I produced my fake identification. I told him my driver's license had also gone through the washing machine, but was in even worse shape than my ID and that I was waiting for a new one to arrive. He wasn't satisfied with my excuse and told me that I, Gareth Richardson, would have to report to the local police station the following Monday with a valid driver's license. When I got home I called my brother, who was at vet school at Onderstepoort. As luck would have it, he was coming home for a few days.

“Howzit,
bru
?” I said to him with unusual friendliness. “Guess what? You have to report to the police station on Monday.”

“Why?”

“Because you're you, and I'm you, but the real you needs to prove you're the real you . . . to the cops. All right?”

Amazingly, and to his credit, Gareth did this for me. I owed him one, but somehow I doubt I ever repaid the debt. I abused the
goodwill of my family, and even took advantage of my sister Corrine, who for some reason would often stick up for me when I got in trouble. I convinced her to give Dave and me a lift in the Mini when she was on her way to work, at a restaurant in Sandton City. I told her we were going to go to the movies. She dropped us at the mall and went to work, but a short time later I went to the restaurant and asked if I could borrow her car keys, telling her I'd left my jumper in the car.