Tired of being inundated with emails from people who think he is the mysterious man behind the Loose Canon column, SONNY SERITE unmasks the man who had become an enigma.
‘Once upon a time there was a tavern, where we used to raise a glass or two. Remember how we laughed away the hours and think of all the great things we would do…” – Mary Hopkin
For me it had become an addiction. I couldn’t go to sleep without reading page 8 of the Sunday Standard every Saturday night. It is the page that carried the Loose Canon column.
One Saturday night, I found a group of people eagerly waiting at a convenience store in one of the filling stations in town. Suddenly, a Sunday Standard van pulled over. The driver drew out a stack of newspapers from the back of the van and made his way into the shop. He never reached the shelves. Everyone scrambled for a copy of the newspaper, leaving him holding only the strip of plastic that holds the newspapers into a bundle. As we queued at the cashier, I noticed that everyone had their eyes glued on page 8.
Loose Canon was everyone’s favourite. In fact I was among those would kill for Loose Canon. He once wrote a very controversial column titled ‘Zuma will sort out white people’, in which he suggested that white women in South Africa should be distributed amongst black men. Many white South Africans got all worked up because they had read Loose Canon out of character and context. The Sunday Standard received close to 1000 letters from furious readers in South Africa. The newspaper’s editor, Outsa Mokone, as well as some of us diehard fans, had to come out in defence of Loose Canon.
‘‘Loose Canon is a fictional character. His face, the face that appears on the opinion pages of the Sunday Standard has been created by a computer. He is like a cartoon strip character, more like a male version of EVE, the character in the South African popular cartoon strip MADAM and EVE, only that he is presented in text not as a cartoon strip,” Mokone wrote at the time.
“The true meaning and import of Loose Canon’s speak must therefore be sought on another level ÔÇô different from that of hard opinions like editorial comments and analysis. Removing all those facts from discourse unfortunately can colour white as black and good as bad, as is the case with the current controversy. Removing the column out of its true context and presenting Loose Canon out of his character presented mockery of vice as exaltation of vice.”
For those learning for the first time the true identity of Loose Canon, they are not alone in shock. Botsalo Ntuane’s wife will learn for the first time, through this article, that her husband is the man who wrote the column. That is how closely the secret of who Loose Canon is has been kept.
After six months of playing elusive, Botsalo Ntuane finally agrees to grant me an interview. We meet at Europa Cafe at the Airport junction mall and the fun begins. I look at this enfant terrible and burst into laughter as I ponder over how this guy’s brain is wired. He laughs and says, “Those were the days my friend. I was rocking and rolling.”
How did Loose Canon come about? Ntuane says during its inception, the proprietors of the Sunday Standard approached him with an offer to become a partner. Though Ntuane hails the setting up of the newspaper as “the best idea ever”, he nonetheless turned down the offer to become a shareholder. Instead, he offered to help through writing.
On why he refused the partnership offer, Ntuane gives an explanation that can only be expected from Loose Canon. He says his principle, which will make him poor, is that a business should not have more than two proprietors. In fact he prefers a situation where he is the sole proprietor.
Why? Because he doesn’t want a situation where he would be broke on a weekend without money to go buy beer but can’t sign himself a cheque from his company because he would have to consult with his business partners. Ntuane says he prefers to flourish or collapse on his own account.
Initially when he started the column, Ntuane didn’t know what to focus on. He was writing about anything and everything. It was after six months that he found his footing. He realised there was lack of humour in the country. Our local newspapers, he reckons, are extremely political in a non political country.
Ntuane never thought Loose Canon would become so phenomenally embraced by the readers. “The magic for me was the anonymity,” he says. “I have had conversations with people discussing the column unaware they were talking to Loose Canon. A lot of guys hooked up nice girls just because they claimed to be Loose Canon.”
He doesn’t have any problem with such imposters and says, tongue in cheek, that he believes people have to share even that glory.
His relatives, including his wife, will only know today that he is Loose Canon. Even his friends, save for one or two, will get this revelation for the first time through this article. To keep the magic, one has to keep the secret, he says.
While a lot of local Rastafarians may have convincingly claimed to be Loose Canon because of that blurred portrait with a long hat that is synonymous with Rastafarians, that portrait is of Linton Nkosi Johnson, a British poet.
Ntuane says his greatest satisfaction was to make people happy. He wanted people to laugh and look forward to the next Sunday. Many will be surprised to know that Ntuane never struggled to come up with those hilarious stories. “I am a people observer. I read a lot and through my observations of the world and my community, I fused everything into Loose Canon.”
We discuss his pet hate, Robert Mugabe, whom he always wrote about without ever mentioning his name. He addressed him as Old Man and called his wife Pretty Face. “I did few names – but did a lot of characterisation. Old Man and Pretty Face were a nice saga in that people could relate and understand who I was referring to without revealing their names.”
Loose Canon coined phrases such as Zimbo to refer to Zimbabweans. He labelled uneducated people as those “who didn’t stay long at school”. He referred to Jesus as “that pale white man with blue eyes who died on the cross”.
Loose Canon loved America and always wrote about how a great nation they were. He once wrote, “The United Nations is housed in New York. For those of you who didn’t stay long in school, New York is in America. ?“Apparently life is so good that diplomats posted there weep when they are recalled home. Folks, unlike a lot of people in small, poor countries that cannot even tie their shoe laces, I love America. I certainly don’t love Osama Bin Laden. ?He is an enemy of America. And America’s enemies are my enemies.”
Incidentally, though he loves America so much, Ntuane has never been to America. He says if Americans knew how much he loved their country, they would have long given him the Green card. He says America is the greatest country in the world. Ntuane loves America so much it hurts. He once refused to visit the country. Yes you got it right. Ntuane has refused to visit the country he so much loves. He gets into the Loose Canon mode as he gives reasons for his refusal to visit America.
Firstly, he fears disappointment. What if he arrives in America and finds that the America that exists in his mind is completely different in reality?┬á “America exists in my mind, in the books, in my television set, the movies, in people like Mohamed Ali, James Brown, Bill Clinton and other people who have made America a great country,” he says.
The other reason Ntuane is afraid to visit his dream country is that he may never come back. He says will do exactly what some African athletes do whenever they go for Olympics in developed countries. “America should never give me a visa or allow me to visit. I will just melt into the population and never come back home,” he says and I laugh out so loud the white lady sitting nearby gives me an odd look.
On the controversial article that enraged many white South Africans, Ntuane says his only sin was commenting on taboos. He says white people were only angry because he had reminded them that they have lost power and will never regain it. He says Southern Africa is the only part of this continent that has experienced a large settlement by colonialists. According to Ntuane, in other parts of Africa white people came as administrators while here they came as settlers. He says now white South Africans couldn’t imagine a kaffir suggesting they should lose their women as well. “Blacks saw it as humour while whites took it serious. It was humour but they didn’t see it. For me life went on,” Ntuane says.
I ask him which of his columns remains his favourite and he points to the one about Roy Sesana. He says the Roy column was his most bombastic. Ntuane says Roy Sesana came out of nowhere and instantly made it big in the country. He always wondered how people would react if Roy Sesana was to bring a white wife from London through his connections with Steve Corry.
Loose Canon also liked Kofi Anan, “because he has managed to do what many of us can only dream of. He has a white wife.”?
As we discuss his column, there is nostalgia for the good old days when Loose Canon made all of us laugh. People related to what Loose Canon wrote about. I ask him about his greatest love, Marion Jones. Ntuane cups his head and shakes it before declaring, “I miss my babe.”
Loose Canon loved Marion so much he once wrote, “I was not amused when I learnt Marion was in love with a short putter called Hunter or something like that. I don’t like the Hunter character one bit. Hunter was also a huge man. He was a giant. Whenever thoughts of him on top of little Marion, squashing the life out of her came across my mind, I hated Hunter even more. I used to console myself by thinking that because Marion spent so much time training and racing, she probably denied Hunter conjugal benefits.”
During this past London Olympic Games, Ntuane sent me a message telling me how the athletes reminded her of Marion Jones. I sent back a message asking him the name of Marion’s boyfriend. He responded, “CJ Hunter; how can I forget him? Then she married a sprinter called Tim Montgomery; was later found to be a drugs cheat; her story is tragic!”
According to Ntuane, America is a country of both dreams and tragedy. It is not only Marion Jomes he has a crush on. There is Marcia Turner, the Lux model. Ntuane says Marcia was the dream of every boy of his generation. During their youthful days, Ntuane and his buddies would page through catalogues and pick ‘girlfriends’. Everyone dreamt of marrying Marcia.
Many will remember Loose Canon for his amazement that radio DJ’s and footballers are paid for doing what they would still be doing even if they were not paid; playing music and football. He once questioned the rationale behind paying footballers lots and lots of money, many of whom are not educated and cannot even count their money.
Of South African comedian, Trevor Noah, who is making money out of jokes, Ntuane recently engaged his Loose Canon mind and wrote, “With hindsight, I shouldn’t have listened to my parents. I shouldn’t have listened to my teachers. They destroyed my future. They told me that clowning in class was wrong and all you should do is buckle up and study hard. They said I must stop the joking. They said joking doesn’t pay. Fine, I did as advised and where did it get me?”
Loose Canon also wrote advice columns for University of Botswana first year students and implored female students to dump their secondary school boyfriends and go out with working men who could take care of their city needs. He laughs and says, “I still think UB students must wear uniform. Ga kere they are students and students wear uniform.”
Loose Canon has always depicted Africans as hopeless people. To this Ntuane says, “All I was trying to communicate to fellow Africans was; introspect and look into yourself. Ask yourself why you’re unable to do things like other races. As an African, I was best suited to ask such questions without fear of being labelled racist.”
Ntuane says the challenge for him was writing in English, which is his second language. He says there were times when he would struggle to find the right words to truly express what he wanted to communicated to the readers.
Did Ntuane actually read Loose Canon like some of us? “No, I don’t read what I write because I fear picking up mistakes,” he says. There are times when Ntuane misses Loose Canon.
Will Loose Canon make a comeback? “Loose Canon is dead my friend. All good things come to an end,” he declares. He says he felt the magic was gone. In fact the reason he took so long to grant me the interview is because he had to counsel himself and accept that Loose Canon is dead.
He says people must cherish the memories and apologises to his readers for the withdrawal symptoms they endured from not getting their dose of laughter from Loose Canon. He is toying around the idea of making a compilation of ‘the Best of Loose Canon’ into a book.
“Loose Canon is dead. Long Live Loose Canon,” Ntuane says in his closing remarks and asks me to tell Sunday Standard owners that they must write him a 1 million Pula cheque because “when they were new and still struggling, I came to the party for them.”
