Fighting to build a better life in 1950s South Africa

The West Rand Jive Cats Boxing Club

JOHANNESBURG, 1958. 12-year-olds Chris and Tommy live among the rough-and-tumble of a small mining camp on the outskirts of the city.

Theirs is a life of mischief and adventure, though one about to change in the course of this heat-frazzled summer. A coming-of-age novel in the most traditional sense, the small lives of the West Rand boys are about to be blown open by boxing, rock ‘n’ roll, and grown-up questions.

Though Chris and Tommy’s world begins as one of Lone Ranger serials, it is gradually transformed by the pulse of Elvis mixing freely with the kwela-kwela rhythms of the ghettos. Jukeboxes grind out a dirty soundtrack while the moves and grooves of Jailhouse Rock wash down from the screen and into the souls of the boys. Music provides just as much release here as sparring does, the violent expression of the town’s dance floors counterpointing that of the boxing ring in almost cinematic fashion.

While issues of race do not directly impinge on the protagonists, the mining camp is cruel and poverty-stricken in a way that stems directly from South Africa’s troubled past. “Machine boys” and “convulsing drills” abound; black miners are never trusted with explosives and though GMTS officially stands for Government Mining Training School, most characters here regard it as shorthand for ‘God Made Them Slaves’. Chris and Tommy may only be 12 but they already know you “had to keep the Zulus separate from the Shangaans, who had to be kept separate from the Ndebele, who had to be kept separate from the Tonga”.

It is a world Lauren Liebenberg knows well. Born in what was once Rhodesia, the author’s experience of living through that country’s Bush War dominated her debut, The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam. While this book is less autobiographical, relying on her background for flavour more than for plot, Liebenberg is still indebted to the South African vernacular for the energetic way in which her characters express themselves. For the reader, too, there is pleasure in the novel’s rush of Afrikaans and Zulu wordplay. It feels authentic, and though a glossary is provided, it is a more enjoyable experience to try and decipher language from context.

Yet where the novel stumbles is with the boxing, in particular the local club’s trainer and “Celtic mongrel” Jock, a character who lacks distinctiveness. Yes, he introduces the boys to the merits of atheism and he rails against apartheid, but for such a crucial figure he never escapes the stock cliché of the anti-establishment rebel. A certain amount of this is due to the child’s perspective adopted by Liebenberg, with Chris, Tommy, and Tommy’s sister Cecilia all taking turns to narrate, but it is unrealistic for children who understand the intricacies of African tribal grievances not to see Jock as the poser he is.

Liebenberg’s sure hand elsewhere manages to offset this, with a captivating sense of time and place evoked in the early chapters and a growing apprehension fostered by the book’s central mystery, the disappearance of Cecilia. The conclusion, bleak but not unrelentingly so, redeems the few flaws.