Once upon a time in 1957, there lived a ten year old boy from the Bloemhof Flats in District Six called Stanford Godfrey Achilles.
One day his mother sent him to buy potatoes from Mister Abdol Sterras, the greengrocer in Rotten Row, off Hanover Street. He liked Mister Sterras and his soccer team of twenty children, including reserves, with whom he played ball every day. Stanford had a dream of one day joining Mr Sterras on his daily horse-cart trips to collect fresh fruit and vegetables at the Early Morning Market in Sir Lowry Road.
He was dream-walking again as he passed the Avalon bioscope at the corner of Russel and Hanover Street. He stopped and stared, mesmerised by a movie poster of The Thief of Baghdad on the Avalon’s notice board and hardly noticed a group of boys playing Indians versus Indians with bows and arrows. An arrow hit the Achilles tendon in his heel and he fell down.
The last thing he saw before passing out was Douglas Fairbanks smiling at him above the heads of the worried Indians around him. But this is not how the story ends. Stanford Achilles woke up and his mother nursed his wound, until it got infected and he was rushed to Groote Schuur Hospital. He died, like his namesake Achilles of the Trojan War, from an infected arrow wound to the Achilles tendon of his heel.
In an ironic twist, the nickname of one of those Indians who was part of the group of boys who shot Stanford was Paris, the namesake of Paris of Troy who shot Achilles in the Trojan War.
Moral of the story? As Karl Marx said, “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, then as a farce.” In other words, shit happened, even in District Six.
Jeremy Vearey het grootgeword in Elsiesrivier. Hy was ’n lid van MK en ’n lyfwag vir oud-president Nelson Mandela. Hy is ’n vorige majoor-generaal in die SAPD en was tot onlangs adjunk-provinsiale-kommisaris in die Wes-Kaap SAPD. Vearey se biografie Jeremy vannie Elsies het in 2018 by Tafelberg verskyn. Sy book Into Dark Water: A Police Memoir (Tafelberg 2021) is benoem op die 2022 Sunday Times Literary Awards langlys.
