So… you plan to write a Jolly Account about the four-marathons-in-one, the WASHIE 100 Miler.
That’s 100 miles/161km of True Grit Lit, a July full moon mission from Cathcart to East London, in the Border region of the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
Then, just as you’re sharpening your pencil, bang!
Two women are abducted and shot and burned and hacked up. The charred chunks of what’s left of them are dumped in a dam.
Zoleka Gantana and Kholosa Mpunga lived and worked in Ncera villages. So what? Hmm. The villages are the home of the WASHIE 100 Miler’s defending champion, Monwabisi “Rasta” Ntozini.
Your Jolly Account wakes up in the real surreal South Africa. It assumes a contemporary view.
You see terror, fear and silence, valour and excellence, determination, doggedness. Every. Day.
The balancing of it! It teeters to tip.
You can’t ignore context when blood reeks in the streets; when the feral and fetid breathe vile intent. Spew putrid actions. Communities cower.
The toxic conspiracy to conceal means witnesses know, don’t say, don’t show. It’s steroids for treachery. Honour shrinks, dark force dazzles. Silence = survival.
Don’t write. It’s not worth it, says a friend. Will anything change?
You’d told them about a photographer gunned down after answering a knock at their door.
KwaZulu-Natal, the province of the Zulu kingdom, where izinkabi or hired assassins slaver to kill: hits for cash. Jealousy. Revenge. Politics.
Anyone, really, is fair game. Anywhere.
Bongani was shot dead at their home; murdered in view of their family. Hit and run.
JG too. You sat at the table in the couple’s kitchen listening to your play on the radio. JG said: “You got the humour right.”
That was then. Now, life is no laughing matter: there’s a widow in pieces, spitting blue curses at killers… everywhere, the pieces, bloody pieces; whole yesterday, pieces today.
Zoleka and Kholosa. JG. Bongani. Statistics dehumanise the thousands dead; 70 a day murdered.
Your proximity to violence, trauma, to loss… it’s chilling. Scary. It unsettles you.
Anecdotal evidence swells, a cacophony of chaos climbs, climbs… the unruly throes of the Great Unravelling yet to crescendo. A nation unhinged.
Other people have died in your district, in a spate of attacks.
Hit squads, they say, and bodies thrown over a bridge. Why? Why? Stories of stock theft rasp dry tongues, eyes wide. Eleven cattle were stolen from one person in the villages, in one night. Seven not found. Four crippled, lying there with their tendons cut.
A bull’s tail is sliced off and its stomach is slashed on one side.
Stories abound: of protection rackets to secure shopkeepers, cash-in-transit heists, kidnappings for ransom, the incessant filching of fruit and vegetables.
Sellers laugh on the side of the road. Roaming dogs, poisoning dogs, and the fallout, no more jackals, raptors and dead dogs, contaminated.
And, while the full moon and runners’ headlamps reveal the intrepid WASHIE way, it’s also poaching time at the coast, when the feral cook up plunder; light, tide… just right; and farmers flurry to secure their stock under heaven’s beam. Dogs growl. Guns cock. Don’t move. Packs bay for prey.
It’s a sport. Run, dog. Run. Grave. Depraved. No trust.
Counter narratives discouraged.
Don’t question. Head down. Scurry hurry, drenched in dread, in a rut.
Oh, mind the potholes, sinkholes of the soul. The reek of perfidy pervades your province, the Eastern Cape, first for killing.
Amid the bedlam, and the despair of dilapidation (where ruin can trip you), Ntozini and Yose train. Focus.
They get into the grind.
Indeed, Mcebisi Yose (2016 Port Alfred-EL) and Monwabisi Ntozini (2022 Cathcart-EL) are WASHIE winners; and it was Yose, many times one of the top WASHIE finishers, who handpicked Ntozini to become an inaugural member of the R72 Smart Pacers AC in Kidd’s Beach. There’s synergy. Our local champions of the ultra-marathon clinched first and third in 2022.
How will they do this year?
The overnight expedition 2023, the 45th WASHIE of the Buffalo Road Runners Club (BRRC), kicks off in rural Cathcart, ECZA, on Friday July 28th at 5pm. It ends on Sunday, after the presentations: tracksuit tops, handmade wooden trophies, permanent numbers for five runs and then, for 10 WASHIES, a bronzed shoe.
They don’t do the WASHIE for the prize money… there isn’t any of that.
The 4-in-1 ultra is a test of South African dedication, endurance and tenacity; of planning, where a runner’s seconds become their brain and nurturer; feeding, warming, guiding, gearing.
The team leader is boss. The runner runs, for about 13 hours or so if they’re quick, not more than 26. Steady does it.
As the WASHIE faithful and novices congregate on Friday evening, the temperature will be dropping towards freezing. There’ll be snow on the mountains. Wind chill. Excitement will rise. Trepidation.
Rain’s predicted en-route, all the way to the Buffalo “Once a Buff, Always a Buff” Club in Buffalo Drive, East London.
About 100 athletes are expected to limber up at the Cathcart Country Club.
Their priority will be to keep warm and dry for anything up to 26 hours on the road: longs, jackets, beanies, gloves, rain wear. They’ll need the right food, the right hydration, the right rest, the right pace, all at the right time. That’s what it’ll take to survive the N6 WASHIE adventure.
You trust the local champs will thrive. After all, they’re running in their own back yard.
Route and checkpoints
1. Cathcart Country Club. Start 5pm/17h00 Friday
2. 82.7km Stutterheim, just more than halfway
3. 118km Bursey farm. One more marathon to go!
4. Buffalo Club, Buffalo Park Drive, EL. Cut-off 26 hours after start. 7pm/19h00 Saturday.
5. Presentations on Sunday.
©MichelMuller WA +27(0)716104772 michelmuller58@gmail.com
afrodykie 
You write so brilliantly!