Ghetto Ninja: The Junior Khanye Story

By Nikolaos Michael Kirkinis

This book, with its wealth of stories from both on and off the pitch, tells of the making of a soccer sensation. Junior shares his experience of poverty, the death of his brother, soccer stardom, alcoholism, the murder of his father, and raising children, with great honesty. Much more than a sports biography, Ghetto Ninja is Junior Khanye’s tragic, yet triumphant story. It is impossible to put down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Feb 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9780624093206

Nikolaos Michael Kirkinis

Nikolaos Kirkinis is the author of The Curse of Teko Modise, Strike a Rock - The Thembi Kgatlana Story which was selected for the 2021 Exclusive Books Homebru promotion, and Ghetto Ninja: The Junior Khanye Story. He has an honours degree in International Studies. Kirkinis has worked as a journalist for Soccer Laduma. He lives in Johannesburg.

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9780624089810_FC

Ghetto

NINJA

The Junior Khanye Story

Nikolaos Kirkinis

TAFELBERG

Dedication

The story you are about to read is dedicated to Surgent Simon Khanye, the man who appears on the back cover. The man who raised Junior Khanye, the Ghetto Ninja, a man who stuck by his family through the highs and lows, a man who lost his life in the process. May his soul continue to rest in eternal peace.

Sundays eKasi

– bangene grootman

Sundays in the townships are something special. Every street and corner comes alive. There is much to do. Church, football, drinking, eating, socialising. The heartbeat of the township every Sunday is the football pitch. The smell of the sizzling nyama is enough to make a hungry man lose his mind. Smoke from the fire grooves into the pale afternoon sky. The chatter and excitement around the field hums into your ears like a circling swarm of bees. Elders sit in chairs and children sit on the floor. Booze and laughter flow like the afternoon thundershowers.

It is a hot day in 1980 in a place called Daveyton. On the East Rand today are two local teams. One of them is particularly fierce. Manchester Daveyton is renowned for mauling their opponents. In the midfield is the rock-solid Jacob Mlotshwa, nicknamed Uyababa Pelepele. He is a bulky man who splits players in two when they try and dribble him. Up front is a nifty striker named Surgent Simon Khanye, nicknamed Sarge. He plays with the classic flair and rhythm of a township boy. People watching the game dance to the tricks he pulls off on the field, as if he were playing music with his feet. One of the people in attendance is Jacob’s sister, Anna. She has never been particularly excited about football, but she is here today out of sisterly loyalty to Manchester Daveyton’s midfielder. As the game goes on and Surgent becomes more skilful with his touches, she can’t help but move her gaze up the field towards the striker. Anna watches him play. She watches the way the boy moves, the way he dances on his toes, the way his feet stay glued to the ball. Anna scans her eyes over Surgent from head to toe. She sees him, and he sees her watching him too.

After the game, the children waiting patiently on the side of the field run on and crowd Surgent. They hug his legs and jump up to touch his arms. When a man moves a ball like that, he becomes an instant ghetto hero. Surgent fights through the swarm of adoring children and makes his way to the sideline where Anna is standing with her arms crossed, swaying her hips and watching him approach. She tries to suppress her smile but a glimpse of it remains.

‘Hello,’ says Surgent.

‘Hey’, she says.

‘Did you watch me play?’

‘No, I was watching my brother.’

‘Your brother?’

‘Yeah, my brother.’

She doesn’t give any more information, so he keeps on trying: ‘What’s your name?’

‘Don’t worry about my name.’

‘Oh, okay,’ he says, not quite sure how to deal with her answer. ‘So, what are you doing now?’

Anna lets out a chuckle and gives Surgent the raised-eyebrow look. ‘You don’t need to worry about what I’m doing now; all you need to know is that I am not interested in soccer boys.’

‘Don’t be like that, girl.’

‘Ah ah. Don’t even try; all you boys are the same. You forget I have a brother who plays soccer too.’

With that, she unfolds her arms, turns and walks away. Surgent watches her leave, finding himself hypnotised for a moment before a barge to his shoulder snaps him out of it. The shoulder barge comes from Jacob running to catch up with his sister. As he passes Surgent, he shoots him a look of warning.

Days pass and Surgent roams the streets of Daveyton looking for the girl from the soccer game, Jacob’s sister. It is not long before he finds her, and she is as beautiful as he remembers. She is folding clothes on a table in the sunlight. He walks up to her and does not mince his words: ‘You should be mine, I should be yours, and that should be that,’ he says. Anna carries on folding clothes, keeping an ice-cool face and making sure not to look at Surgent.

‘Look, I don’t mind being together, you and me. You look like a nice enough man. But as I said, I don’t date soccer boys.’

‘And why not?’

‘I don’t need someone who is going to waste my time. Every boy in Daveyton thinks he’s the next big thing. I need attention, and I need time. I need a man that’s gonna work, at least as hard as me. I need someone who won’t stop working until we and our children are living in a beautiful house, one we’ve built together. And if you’re playing soccer, you won’t be able to provide that.’

‘Well, look, I really am sorry to tell you this, I would do anything, but I cannot stop playing football. I just cannot. It is in my bones.’

‘Well, then, make those football bones useful and help me fold these clothes.’

The reality though, as it will soon dawn on Surgent, is that he goes home to an unstable house when he goes home. A home drowning in poverty and problems under the brutal apartheid regime, one not much different to the one he knows Anna is living in. Surgent takes a few days to think. A few nights sleeping on the floor, not having water and not eating enough forces Surgent to take a hard look at his life. One day he sets out to find Anna again. When he comes across her, she notices the serious look he now wears on his face and how different it is from the one he was wearing before.

‘Look girl, I have always believed from the first time I kicked a ball that I would make it in soccer. I am sure that I could go far in this sport and make a life for us. And maybe in a different time it would have worked. But hunger is hunger, and when I look around I, see it everywhere. Before football, we need to eat. So I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that I am ready to give up on the dream; I am ready to get to work. I’m ready to work for you.’

Daveyton is a truly massive township. One can walk around for days looking for work, never seeing the same street twice, and never coming across job opportunities. Surgent eventually finds work as a labourer on a farm called Mkhulu Plaas on the outskirts of Daveyton. He wakes up at 4 am every day to make the long journey to the farm. When he leaves in the evening, he is handed a pitiful payment, barely enough to buy food to fill his stomach. The farm is run by Mnr Van der Merwe. Just like so many farms run by so many Mnr Van der Merwes across the country, it is a living hell for the Black men and women who have to work under him. Mnr Van der Merwe fully understands the broken backgrounds from which they come, the limited opportunities with which they are faced and the desperation which they feel when they come to ask him for a job. Surgent would love to tell his old, vile and racist boss to jump, but he thinks of his woman back home and the promise he made to her. She is also breaking her back, working as a cleaner in Benoni, near Daveyton.

After two years of working their respective jobs, Anna falls pregnant. Surgent takes on extra shifts at the farm, putting away every spare coin for his future child’s education. On the 18th of June 1985, in a public hospital in Benoni, their first child is born. They name him Junior Thabo Khanye.

Missing Mom

– mama wam’

Junior is not born into a family of excess, but he is born into a family, nonetheless. He has a mother and a father who are both committed to working and earning what they can to keep their son’s belly full. Three years after Junior is born, Anna and Surgent welcome their second child into the world, a girl named Simangele, and three years after that, Anna gives birth to their last born child, a fragile boy named Tebogo. The two new parents get by at first, but when Junior turns six, his mother starts coughing. It starts off as a light cough, just a tickle in the throat. But soon Junior watches the cough worsen before his eyes. Sometimes he sees his mother having to stop in her tracks to grab her stomach out of pain. As the days pass, she walks slower, talks softer and eats less. Junior watches his mother’s body disappear before his eyes.

One brutally cold winter’s morning, Junior awakes to the sound of his mother crying. The pain has become too much. He watches as his father lifts her off the bed and carries her out of the room. Anna reaches out to her child as she is carried away, but she can barely lift her arm. She locks eyes with her son as she passes him by; the life may be draining from her body but the love she has for her child still shines in her eyes. Surgent carries her out the door into the icy morning air and makes off in the direction of the hospital. It is the last time Junior will see his mother for a very long time.

With no one to help him raise the children at home, Surgent tells Junior and his siblings to pack their few belongings and they head off together on a very far walk to the other side of Daveyton. There they find Anna’s mother. Like many grandmothers in the township, she cares deeply for the children in the community. Her house is crowded with tiny feet. Many children who lose one or both of their parents end up at this house in Daveyton, and she always has space in her heart for another child, so she welcomes the Khanye children in with open arms. Surgent leaves some money with ugogo to help look after the kids. He says goodbye to his children and then heads back out the door and into the world. Surgent will have to work hard over the next few months, early to rise and late to sleep. He will only see his children briefly on the weekends as he returns to drop off money for school.

Caring for a dozen energetic children is no easy task. Ugogo has her hands full most of the time, but she is a seasoned professional. She knows the best way to keep all the children out of trouble and sitting on the floor is to switch on the television. SABC, for whatever reason, has a habit of showing one genre of movie more than any other – kung fu classics. Many South African children grow up to the sight and sound of martial arts. It may be strange to read, but actors like Bruce Lee are truly township heroes in South Africa. From his athleticism to the flair with which he defeats opponents and the fearlessness in his eyes – many children in the township go to bed at night dreaming of Bruce Lee. Junior is one of these children, captured by what he sees on television. He dreams of himself as a karate kid, with the eye of the dragon, ready to dismantle anyone who dares cross him. When the movie ends, Junior and his friends spend hours practising their kung fu and karate moves, re-enacting scenes from the movie, play-fighting, jumping off of walls and perfecting their backflips.

There is one person with whom Junior is closer than any other. His younger brother, Tebogo. They find so much comfort in each other amidst the chaos of life in the township. They do not have much, but they have each other, and to them, that is all they need. They spend hours playing, and they spend twice as long talking with each other. They share jokes, they share hopes, and they share dreams. They sleep next to each other on the floor of ugogo’s house. At night, they whisper so as not to wake the others in the house. They make each other a promise that one day they will get out of the township. They will become successful and they will return to build a house for their parents.

One day, Junior and a friend are circling each other on the street. They have their arms extended and they are just getting ready to battle when something makes Junior stop. Above the hum of the township buzz, Junior hears footsteps, but there’s something different about these footsteps, something familiar. He turns around and sees a woman approaching. Her Sunday dress swings from side to side with each confident step. The woman looks up and locks eyes with Junior. A smile sets off across her face. She is glowing. The last time Junior saw his mother, she was on her back, in poor health, and on death’s door. The mother who stands before him now has life in her eyes.

For the six months that Junior’s mother is in hospital, the doctors struggle to pinpoint exactly what her ailment is. All the tests reveal nothing and all the specialists remain puzzled. The family strongly believes that it is a spiritual issue which plagues her, a problem that exists outside of the realm of Western medicine and logic. Regardless, her children are elated when they see their mother walk proudly down the streets of Daveyton again. Her reappearance means that the family can be reunited again, and the children can all move back into the family mkhukhu. The joy is short-lived though, as it is not long before another mysterious disease comes to haunt the Khanye family.

Tebogo collapses for the first time when he is about five years old. He has some kind of a fit, although no one is sure what the cause is. No one in the community has seen anything like it before. He begins losing weight, and soon his little chest struggles to breathe. Within three months of his first fit, Tebogo goes to sleep one night and never wakes up again. His death leaves a hole in Junior’s soul that will never be filled. He will never know a brother like Tebogo again.

A Country at War

– sisemjondolo

Junior is seven years old and his mother has found work at a hotel in Benoni. She has a white boss there, nicknamed Shikwembu by all who work for him. He is a kind and gentle man and is well-loved by his staff. He is particularly close with Anna and places her in a good position working in the kitchen behind the stove. Junior’s father has managed to find work as an electrician. He drives around the East Rand all day with a white colleague, fixing broken lights all over the land. The two electrical men get on well. There is a healthy level of respect between them and they talk for hours about different aspects of their work. Even though both his parents are working, they do not earn much at all. Definitely not enough to have their own place. Landowners across Daveyton rent out spaces in their yards for people to assemble mkhukhus and it is in one of these yards that the Khanyes assemble their shelter.

Their mkhukhu has two rooms, meaning Junior has to sleep on the floor. It is not a place of comfort, and it is not a place of peace either. In the yard where the Khanyes sleep, there are three other tenants also renting a space on the property. Early one summer’s morning, Junior is awakened by the sound of water gushing. He hears shouting coming from outside and goes towards the door, peering through a gap. Outside, his parents are arguing with the landlord and with the other tenants on the property. A water pipe has burst and is flooding the property. The landlord wants to know who should be held responsible for the broken pipe. The tenants all point fingers at each other. The argument gets steadily more heated until two sets of adults start swinging punches at each other. Junior’s mother and another woman pull at each other’s hair and slap wildly while the fathers grip each other’s shirts and grab at each other’s throats. This is just one in a long line of similar incidents that will play out over the next decade of the Khanyes living in that yard.

Outside the yard, the situation throughout the country is no calmer. It is 1992, and it is a very dangerous time to be in a politically charged township like Daveyton. Nelson Mandela has been out of prison for two years, but the situation remains very tense on a political level. The Afrikaner Nationalist Party’s iron grip on power over the country is coming to an end, meaning that the position of ruling the state is up for grabs. The African National Congress (ANC) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) are engaged in a bloody war that terrorizes every aspect of Black South Africa. The Khanyes try to stay inside as much as possible. Life is cheap in these times; it can be taken from you at any point and for any reason. Daveyton, given its size, is a particularly bloody battleground and the area where the Khanyes stay, Los-my-cherry, is a renowned danger zone. Hostels are raided, shacks are torched and rocks are thrown through windows. A young Junior watches people run all day. Young men holding sticks and other weapons, always running, always chasing, always shouting, always fighting. There is no help for the people, and the police never seem able to stop the violence. In fact, sometimes they appear to be the main orchestrators.

Junior walks with a friend to school one day. They stroll casually, kicking a rock between them and discussing Bruce Lee. The two young boys round a corner when a commotion makes them stop. Junior sees a man running desperately, wide-eyed with fear. Further down the street, a mass of people holding sticks moves closer. They march in rhythm, hunting down the man like a buck in the bush. They trap him, circle him and knock him to the floor. The man looks up into Junior’s eyes and starts to mumble a prayer. Another man emerges from the crowd, holding a gun. Some words are said, a bullet is fired and the hunted man lies dead in the middle of the street in the morning sun. Junior and his friend turn and continue their walk to school.

For a long time in Daveyton, there has been one group of people that holds a lot more power than the ordinary person on the street. They are referred to as councillors, and every inch of land in Daveyton falls under their control. They are responsible for allocating space to people in the township and also play a role in finding work for the unemployed. Any matter, big or small, has to be reported to the councillors. The system is not perfect, but it has worked for many years. However, as the problems in the area increase, so does the anger and resentment towards the councillors. In 1993, the violence intensifies. Outside a small house in Boksburg, not far from where Junior and his family live, the revolutionary hero Chris Hani is assassinated by a Polish man. The anger on the streets boils over; it can be felt and seen on every face of every young man and woman in the township. There is not much for people in the townships. Jobs are scarce and services are non-existent. The people are broke and broken.

This leads most people to take their frustrations out on the councillors, blaming them when the taps run dry and the lights flicker out. Unfortunately for the councillors, the war between the ANC and the IFP leaves them powerless and there is little they can do for the people. Because of the sorry state of the economy, it feels near impossible to find work in Daveyton in 1993. As a result, crime in the area reaches astronomical levels.

In April 1994, South Africa goes to the polls. It is the first time that Black South Africans are allowed to vote. Lines stretch out of community halls and wrap twice around the neighbourhood. There are people in the queue who have lived on this land for nearly 100 years and are just about to taste freedom for the first time ever. The ANC wins the election by a landslide.

The process of finding land for the landless begins. In Daveyton, families with official ID documents can apply for land with local administrators. Receiving land is not guaranteed, though, and some families pack up their belongings