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Every afternoon after school, on my way home, I would actively collect waste fencing wire, bare and insulated electric cables for car chassis, old Doom and Baygon and Aromat containers and some rubber for tyres and old paint tin lids for steering wheels.
These were to be the main material for my cars and that’s exactly what made the cars I made unique and sought-after. They were different.
The sales skills from bra Coks’ initially came in handy, for I was indeed experienced, persuasive and charming.
But, I later realised, none of them ever had to work, for I needed no experience to persuade and charm anyone into buying, because my cars were just great and the prices even sexier.
Sonnyboy was my accountant: he kept all the monies made and maintained records of all orders, sales and clients who still needed to close on their balances; just so the company could remain financially viable and legislatively compliant. At the end of each hard day’s labour, the staff would excitedly go buy iikota ezikleva at M&M’s and, occasionally, amagwinya at bra Coks’.
Ndabazakhe was my marketing guru. He would come back from school and inform me of two of his classmates who each needed a sedan to don at an important black-tie event and, right there and then, I would build them. We would go deliver the cars and be paid on the spot. Cash on delivery! In celebrating the sales, we would come back home to the workshop munching oopayots and chocolates from Mamtshawe’s.
In addition to their fat, daily salaries of filled quarte breads, sweets, chocolates, pyotts and amagwinya, Ndaba and Sonny were also further incentivised with branded company cars – the former donning a brand new FuraFunyenye and the latter a shiny FuraMafuretse– all mahala!
Gradually over time, I gained a reputation in the neighbourhood with parents who fancied my cars for their little boys. “Yhu, hay sanauyakude lo mntwana, ezinjeukubantleiimoto?” they would complement. And, expectantly, I would blush.
My orders came from as far afield as the Red Location, Limba Road, Emotheni, Avenue B, Ngqolombe, Naude, Zondi and Singapi streets and a bit abroad. And I was based in Gunguluza.
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My client base included the famous Prince family in Gunguluza. I remember once being asked by one sisi to custom-make Mlungisi and Nono 4X4 each. I did exactly that and got paid, handsomely.
The workshop, our backyard, was always full of “irritating” pieces of wire and tin stuff that could turn out to be dangerous to our own little, bare feet; bra Suz would complain. Clients were coming in and out, test-driving, riding and submitting CVs for various, inexistent positions. One chap I ultimately agreed to hire, albeit strictly on commission, was Mbombozi; a fellow
classmate who frequented the workshop and constantly expressed his dire interest in collecting wire and tins for us because his area had it all in abundance, he claimed.
One great benefit to my business was that it was hundred percent black-owned and based in New Brighton - a township - and so the occasional consumer boycotts aimed at destabilizing the white business establishment only served to boost my then imminent commercial monopoly and
popularity amongst the disenfranchised ...my own.
I was driving a personally exclusive, executive Fura Fukufuku, a sure eye-candy. It was a very, very big 4X4. It was nothing like anyone had ever dreamt of nor seen before, custom-made only for and by the conceptualist himself… the designer, the manufacturer, the dealer, Skhumba!
This beauty – Fura Fukufuku - was the envy of all, with requests from all and sundry to sell it to them. But because I just could not face my conscience over the possibility of ever losing the mgrugra, I shrugged off the requests. It just could never happen. Not while I was still breathing, I swore.
But again, because uSathana akalali engatyanga, the possibility of kissing my car a permanent goodbye became clearer and even scarier as a persistent Roro’s mother kept pestering me to please sell it to her for her equally crazy son.
After a few more teary requests from Roro’s mother, and with my trusted accomplices – Ndaba and Sonny – feeling her pain and sommer begging me to sell her Fukufuku and design myself an even better car; and the more than incentivising price she put forward; I told her I would sleep on it and, because I was not very eager; I kept on sleeping-on-it, for something close to a month.
But what matters, I guess, is that I finally gave in.
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I asked them to give me a few more drives before ultimately delivering it. They gave me a week.
Yho! No one could miss the excitement in Roro’s bubbly face. The poor boy!
On the day of the actual delivery– that fateful Friday evening - you would swear a treasured close friend had been lost to death. I was crying. Even as I stretched my hand to receive the whopping, unprecedented R250 for the sale; with Roro beaming olukaBlankethe, I could not help but release a tear or two, not from the eyes though, but from deep down in the heart.
And because the average price for my cars was 70 cents; at R2.50, Fukufuku proved to be my biggest-ever, single sale for a car.
I do not really know where I lost it exactly but I sadly never did go further than hopes with the car manufacturing business, neither with sales, as I so wished. I suspect parting ways with my treasured car had much more to do in terms of influence.
That was my biggest-ever, single car sale.
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