Kirsten Ruether

The Burial of Dennis the Goat

Living Through the Maelstrom of the South African Transformation

1. Eccentricities
Dennis was a dandy. He needed the stage. Known to many for his eccentric behaviour and glamorous
lifestyle, he made people laugh and sometimes just smile. In some of his fellows he aroused curiosity.
Others were openly angry. Dennis lived in Umlazi, in the midst of people who struggled for daily
survival and who yet claimed their space to be. In a world in which values had been contorted over
such a long time and new ones were emerging with the possibility of life after apartheid, Dennis
accomplished personality. He was not in a position to defy the uncertainties of the times. But he
could pretend he did not care. Partly ignorant and partly resilient to the maelstrom around him, he
commanded the ability to show off. He entertained others who liked him for who he was, expecting
little favours only in return, and he felt astonishingly free to choose what he liked best in life. He was
full of enthusiasm. With ease he turned the good things of these riddled and unfinished times into his
personal aura. People admired him for just that. Everybody knew, for instance, that he loved smoking
cigarettes, Craven A Menthol of all things. Never, however, did he, the thorough connoisseur, reject
the puff of a self-drawn cigarette, especially when it was offered to him by his friends. When it came
to drinks, he preferred a strong black beer: Castle Milk Stout, 6% vol. This was a truly masculine
brew. And the bottles were large. As for food, after much trial and error, Dennis had developed a
taste for curried meat and rice. Yummy yum – how tasty! He never took to any of that green stuff
people thought he should eat.

More particularly, Dennis enjoyed his seat in the front of a car, smiling or dozing along next to his
trusted driver, Xolani Sabelo. Such moments were one of his favourite pastimes. From his elevated
position in the passenger seat he took delight in observing the passing scenery of the township
through the front and side windows. To his own satisfaction, he could well be seen and noticed by
others. Some people waved their hands at him. Others jeered and shook their heads in disbelief.
Truly he was over the edge? Dennis was beloved, almost like a regional celebrity. People adored him.
Others were envious. It was his behaviour that some found controversial. Not everybody appreciated
Dennis’ style. He also attracted some media attention when a handful of journalists “discovered” his
lived eccentricities and turned them into tales for their commercially sold newspapers, the radio and
even television.

There were questions and rumours about the role of Xolani Sabelo in Dennis’ life. Did this man
intentionally meddle with his companion’s personality and preferences? To which end? For Xolani,
who in all these situations played a much smaller role than Dennis, Dennis’ existence must have been
a way of asserting his own presence. Because people were interested in Dennis, they also took not of
him, Xolani. He was not insignificant. And, oh yes, together they made a good team.

Then, suddenly, and to the shock of many, death rushed in on a Thursday night. In the early hours of
14 August, 1992, Dennis’ dead body was found in the streets. From later reconstructions it appeared
that he had staggered back home from his favourite shebeen in Umlazi’s V section when, out of the
blue, he had been assaulted, probably by youth, or thugs, who had dealt him his final blow.
Hammered down in the dark, Dennis had suffered a fate as too many others in the township, both in
Umlazi and elsewhere in the country. Any help came too late.

It soon turned out that this was actually not the first attempt that somebody had tried to take his life.
Two years previously, he had already been shot at, then also during the night. Shortly afterwards, in
1991, he had been viciously attacked by a severe case of osteo-arthritis, a condition affecting the
bones so that temporarily he lost the capability to move his legs. At the hospital the nurse on duty
had explained that Dennis’ painful condition could have been caused by a sharp object such as a nail
or a thorn. Dennis’ friend and companion, Xolani Sabelo, however, believed otherwise. He suspected
that others had tried to stab his beloved charge in the knee so as to inflict a permanent injury.
Fortunately, Dennis had then survived such malicious attacks. The most recent attack was the third
now, and it proved fatal. Xolani Sabelo’s only remaining task was to mourn, shout out loud and lay
his friend to rest in peace. The struggle to find an appropriate place for him set the agenda for some
weeks to come.

This book retells that struggle. It is about the story, the saga and the media hype unfolding in
connection with Dennis’ burial. It can be stated in advance that his journey into an afterlife was
anything but smooth. Happening at a delicate moment in the country’s and the township’s history, at
a virtual un-time moment indeed, the burial prompted a phalanx of questions on political, human
and even philosophical issues among those who had known Dennis and shared part of their lives with
him. Animated discussions kept the public on their toes for two to three weeks.
And like in so many stories of life and violent death, there were some after-stories when, years after
the burial, Dennis re-emerged as an icon in other tales through which people kept remembering him
in more or less distorted ways. Each time he was remembered his personality was adapted to the
respective new times.

2. So Who was Dennis?

Dennis was indeed “Umlazi’s wonder goat” – yup, a goat! – as one journalist, Fraser Mtshali, had
dubbed him a year prior to his death. 1 Mtshali “broke the story” for The New African, laying the basis
for the media hype that somewhat later followed Dennis’ death. 2 The journalist had described
Dennis as the “unusual namesake [of] Dennis the Menace” known by many “the world over” as a
popular comic strip character. Dennis the Goat, however, was much more than a mere human
cartoon character borrowed from the world of American popular culture and turned goatish in the
bold, if not slightly exalted, imagination of a South African news writer. He was funny and flamboyant
and, here in Umlazi, he was real. Xolani Sabelo, the goat’s 25-year-old owner, who considered
himself Dennis’ friend, brother and who even loved to style himself as the “father” of Dennis, was
devastated when his beloved charge died in the streets. For more than seven years he had protected
his companion from the cruelties of life. He had treated him like a human being and pampered him in
many ways. He had also taught his strong-minded soulmate – and Dennis was to him indeed a son, a
companion and a soulmate all in one – a number of tricks to entertain, please and surprise others.
“He eats bread, munches sweets and feels satisfied after downing a quart of Castle Milk Stout! […]
Dennis … has acquired celebrity status in the neighbourhood and has become a legend in his own
lifetime.” 3 Now Dennis had fallen victim to heinous murder.

The story that unfolded lends itself to a reflection of what it was like for many ordinary South
Africans, especially if they refrained from social and political activism, to live through their country’s
transition. It offers insights into ways of coping with uncertainty and maintaining a dignified sense of
the self in the midst of turmoil, violence and disorientation, albeit fuelled by immense feelings of
hope and expectation. As will be explored in subsequent chapters, the transition years have been
widely discussed in terms of policy change, socio-economic options and rights, negotiation outcomes,
the emergence of new responsible elites and mechanisms to cope with and address the many
injustices, familial catastrophes and brutal denigrations of the African population in need of truth,

1
Fraser Mtshali, “Umlazi’s Wonder Goat”, in: The New African, 15-21 August, 1991.
2
Interview with Fraser Mtshali, Durban, 7 August, 2000.
3
Fraser Mtshali, “Umlazi’s Wonder Goat”, in: The New African, 15-21 August, 1991.
corrective action, redress and reconciliation. Less attention has been paid to the sphere of the
ordinary and the everyday, which simply went on. Here as well, major decisions and developments
taken in the realms that mattered in terms of politics, social visions and recognised cultural
production – be it theatre, music or literature – impacted on social life, but did not bring immediate
improvement, of course. The story of the burial of Dennis the Goat opens up a perspective on the
lives, responses and coping mechanisms that people had at their disposal when they were just
ordinary persons in the masses. The ordinary produces the extraordinary – even if it is not meant to
last. It is perhaps only now, when the transition itself has turned into history and lost its immediate
character, that it has become possible to look at the surfacing of this extraordinary in the realm of
the ordinary. The account presented here will show that a closer look at the burial of Dennis the Goat
adds to, and to some extent even challenges, the ways in which the experience of the transition has
become framed in the narratives that emerged in more immediate connection with the experience of
transformation itself.

And so it will become evident that Dennis’ subsequent move into an afterlife where he could rest and
from where he would not haunt others who still toiled on in this mad yet promising world was
anything but a straightforward journey. In the weeks following his physical death the burial of Dennis
the Goat became a public spectacle, extraordinary in many ways. In his grief, Dennis’ owner, Xolani
Sabelo, gathered an unprecedented amount of energy to honour the now stiff body of the deceased
who, he steadfastly maintained, deserved a human burial. Many supported this wish. Others were at
least prepared to sympathise with the man’s unusual feelings. Still others were openly puzzled. “I
personally had grave difficulty understanding my son’s love for this animal,” Xolani Sabelo’s father,
Moses Sabelo, was reported to have confessed to several newspapers when they began to echo
some of the strong opposition to the idea of a burial. Indeed, Moses would soon become the
mediator between his son, the media which were hyping the unfolding events, and the township
residents who were either in favour of or against the “human” burial of the goat.

As could be gleaned from various of the journalistic accounts, Xolani’s relation to Dennis had
originally caused quarrels between the father, Moses, and his son, Xolani. This had changed at some
point. “When he told me he would bury it if it died I was shocked beyond words. I said I would not let
that happen and that Dennis should be eaten like other goats.” Lakela Kaunda, then a young and
upcoming journalist with the Natal Witness, went on to report that “He [Moses] said Xolani
disappeared and returned with 22 chicken, seven goats and a cow and said his father should cook
this instead of Dennis.” Xolani Sabelo’s position was clear. How can you eat your companion? “‘It was
then that I decided to support Xolani in everything to do with Dennis,’” Moses finally relented,
according to the newspapers. 4 After all, goats were not only for eating but also for bonding, and
connecting people, at least in some instances. Xolani’s special feelings, however, his grief and
determination to bury Dennis in a human place did go beyond what was easily accepted.

Claims to personality and identity often go hand in hand with a struggle for place in South African
history more generally. Throughout South Africa’s history, black individuals in particular have been
told to “know their place” as one of not aspiring to either equality or wealth. Black South African
townships, planned from the late 1940s through the 1950s and into the early 1960s, had become
notorious spaces of deprivation and the experience of removal. The townships represented the
intertwining of deliberate planning and the application of modern scientific knowledge to the
shortage of housing. Anyone who had lived there learnt to develop a heightened sense of alienation.
With the rise of the anti-apartheid struggle, many of these places became crucial sites of resistance
and the assertion of dignity. 5 Xolani Sabelo’s claim for proper space and place for Dennis may be
regarded in this context.

The original idea was to bury Dennis on 17 Cemetery in Umlazi. This was a respectable place for a
dead body. The mayoress, Maria Xulu, strongly objected to what she perceived as a madness of
Xolani’s. After this first defeat, Xolani tried to arrange a burial in Umbumbulu with a sympathetic
chief, in the area where he had once bought his beloved companion, who later then became so
human and such a gimmick. Once again, the deal fell through. The media followed suit. Meanwhile,
preparations were made for a memorial service, and a night vigil commenced so that Dennis’ coffin
was actually put on display outside the Umlazi Cinema for a whole Saturday night. About a thousand
people attended, either to share in the grief or out of simple curiosity. It all looked, however, as if
cremation was the only way out of the problematic scenario. This, of course, would have been the
most un-African way of giving space and time to a corpse.

In the setting of Umlazi, and at a time of imminent change, the clear demarcations – if there ever
were any – between what was a traditional symbol and age-old practice and what it had come to
mean in urban surroundings, especially under the conditions of apartheid – diffused. A goat was a
goat, but it was also no longer a goat only. What was a human being in such a case, and more
generally? Up and again, the story of the burial of Dennis the Goat will oscillate between deep
cultural symbolisms, essential questions of dignity and humanity, and a persiflage of everything that
can be taken seriously in life, death and with regard to the afterlife. The story thrived on humour and

4
Kaunda, Lakela, “With beer to eternity”, in: Natal Witness, 20 August, 1992.
5
Barnard, Rita (2007): Apartheid and Beyond. South African Writers and the Politics of Place. Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, pp. 6–7.
jokes. Sometimes they were hilarious. Sometimes they were deadly serious. Often it is not a
straightforward affair to tell what exactly they were.

On the day of the vigil, to the surprise of many, the newspapers trumpeted another turn of events.
The Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg, located some 90 km away from Umlazi, a somewhat dozy
centre of administration and the capital of what was then the Province of Natal, had stepped in with
an offer to stuff Dennis and add him into their prestigious, historically renowned animal collection.
This sounded quite like a twist of fate. After a few days, however, it became publicly known that the
arrangement had fallen through, too. The reasons were not explained. By then, Xolani Sabelo had
spent two and a half weeks running “from pillar to post,” as Sunday Times journalist Ryan Cresswell
described Xolani’s seemingly endless journey. He had been trying to find a place for the “dead but
not forgotten” goat, as Cresswell’s colleague Daizer Mqhaba of Bona Magazine wrote in his version
of the events. 6 While Xolani was rushing around “battling to find a place to bury the famous beer
drinker” 7 and while many journalists were busy avalanching the plot of the story into ever new
directions, Dennis himself was being kept in the Durban mortuary. There he lay, cooled to near-
freezing temperatures, the first goat ever to occupy space in an institution normally reserved for
human corpses. To some extent at least, it sounded like another of Dennis’ eccentricities from which
he had gained his reputation when still alive. 8 In the end, Dennis was cremated by the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) at Cato Manor. In those years they were mainly “destroying”
abandoned cats and dogs found roaming in the streets. Now their facilities could also be used for
disposing of the body of Dennis the Goat. The media spoke of cremation rather than destruction.

This first rough outline of events will be the basis from which to trace and reflect upon the
meandering path that Xolani Sabelo and his beloved goat, Dennis, had to walk in order to lay the
body of a deceased being to rest. The text will follow an essentially chronological line, but will take
the reader along several open-ended thematic loops. In doing so, it will suggest ways of reading this
unusual story which, as I would argue, deserves to be seen in the context of the violence, insecurities
and uncertainties that were then unfurling in South Africa’s transitional period. The account
presented here is not a political history, but sometimes it is a history of the political approached
through social and cultural history, as through the history of the everyday.

The story of the burial, which began as a murderous attack in mid-August 1992 (more will be said
about this moment in the next chapter) and continued as a journalistic tale well into early

6
Cresswell, Ryan. “Museum butts to save Dennis from a fiery end”, in: Sunday Times, 30 August, 1992;
Mqhaba, Daizer. “Dennis the Goat. Dead but not forgotten”, in: Bona Magazine, October 1992.
7
Witness Reporter, “Natal Museum says it wants to keep Dennis”, in: Natal Witness, 28 August, 1992.
8
I have been unable to establish how Xolani Sabelo managed to have Dennis kept in the morgue in the
first place.
September, unfolded at one of the most precarious moments in South African history. People were
tired. They wanted to be free. There was a lot of suspense. And they were not yet in a position to
take a pause, or relax. The end of apartheid did not imply a clear-cut and straightforward, one-
directional path towards a hoped-for and aspired state of being. Even more confusing and disturbing
was the fact that what was to come remained, for the time being, largely unnameable. The
obstructed and yet relentlessly pursued burial of Dennis the Goat will help us, as witnesses to
another age, to revisit that moment squeezed between the formal end of apartheid, the rising levels
of violence and the temporary halt of further constitutional negotiations between powerful men,
their parties and institutional constituencies.

Truly new times seemed to be still receding until, finally, months after this stunning burial story, the
prospect of free democratic elections in 1994 and the path towards a society in which every life
could hopefully be valued began to materialise. At the time of Dennis’ death, however, it was not yet
evident whether such elections would ever see the light of day.

And then there were several reimaginations of this original story years after the burial, or the
cremation, had been achieved. There will be chapters in this book attesting to at least some of these
reimaginations and the changed political and social contexts in which they occurred.

3. Mid-1992, a Virtual Un-Time Moment of What Later Became

Part of the Transformation
1992 was a turbulent moment, both at the time and in retrospect. Since Nelson Mandela’s release
from prison in February 1990 and the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan
Africanist Congress (PAC) and the readmission of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and a
number of subsidiary organisations, the country and its political representatives had moved
themselves into a deadlock. Violence was on the rise, particularly in the townships, while
representatives of the government and the liberation movement were unable to reach a consensus
on how to resolve various issues that were necessary to determine the future path of a newly-
emerging society. For a long time, controversies about the carrying of so-called traditional or cultural
weapons at gatherings of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and in areas of “unrest” had halted the
negotiation progress and, caught in disagreement over issues of the saving of white minority
domination into the future, not all the working groups of the Convention for a Democratic South
Africa (CODESA) met their targeted deadlines. 9 Moreover, the issue was still at stake of how to legally
frame the return of the members of the resistance movement from exile. Should they be granted
immunity from prosecution? 10 The transition required strength, sometimes more than people could
afford to arrive in a new state of being.

Mid-1992 was so troubled and turbulent that it constitutes a perfect lens through which to revisit the
country’s transition and attempts at transformation. It also was a virtual “un-time moment.”
Borrowing from the idea of “non-places” that Marc Augé once introduced to open a debate on
spaces that are not constructed in a socially meaningful way, 11 I want to denote by this term a
temporal void. Mid-1992 was hanging in a nowhere. Like non-places, an un-time moment has little to
offer in the way of sustained emotional attachment. As we will see, however, the story of Dennis the
Goat, in contrast, did. 1992, that year, that moment, that turning point, or whatever it was, was no
longer the moment of the once established and now expiring version of apartheid. Nor was it the
moment in time yet for knowing with certainty that a new era would dawn. It was a moment when
direction of what was to come was difficult to discern, when options remained unclear, and when
nevertheless people were paying a heavy toll each day for moving on through this state of limbo,
especially as the insecurities and daily violence (to be explored in the next chapter) narrowed
possible outlooks even into the very near future. This virtual un-time moment can serve as a
challenging vantage point from which to retell critical historical experiences in South Africa’s
impending change.

In mid-1992, time floated and history meandered. At times, what was happening now seemed
tethered to a set of past experiences that many would have preferred to discard. But transformation
is about more than rejecting the old and done. It is about arriving at something new, about exploring
imminent yet unfixed new horizons. Facing them takes time, trouble and effort. What was it like for
people to be caught up in that moment, especially if they were not the ones actively and publicly
campaigning for change or taking political decisions? In their own lives, they had to take decisions
about life and death on a daily basis. They met life and death each day. But did that matter
politically? What was it like to carry on in that moment of transition? More importantly, how does
the written history of such a moment look like, if we do not assume that it was a moment that simply
dissolved, evaporated and melted away into what from hindsight we know would come later?

Probably, one needed many coping mechanisms to go through that un-time. Amongst them, humour
may have been one to at least occasionally shake off some of the encroaching everyday realities,

9
For a detailed reconstruction of the chronology see Simpson, Thula (2021): Negotiated Revolution.
10
Asmal, Kader/ Asmal, Louise/ Roberts, Ronald Suresh (1996): Reconciliation Through Truth. A
Reckoning of Apartheid’s Criminal Governance. Cape Town: David Philip Publisher, p. 57.
11
Marc Augé (2014): Nicht-Orte. Fourth edition. München: C.H. Beck
thus moulding them into some fabric one would wish to wrap around body and soul. So, for a
retelling of that moment, how much space should we accord to laughter and exuberance despite the
harshness permeating lives all around? It is at this critical junction that the story of the burial of
Dennis the Goat matters. Can we retell the history of the transition not through an assessment of
ideologies, political visions and philosophical impulses such as the attainment of a Rainbow Nation,
not through emerging national heroes and elites acceding to office through their parties, not through
a focus on the state’s institutions, power shifting and resolute steps to think in terms of redress and
reconciliation, but through the story of a goat to be buried in one of the biggest townships in South
Africa? This text is bold enough to attempt just that. Resorting to some of the techniques of social
and cultural history, it will suggest a reading of a political moment – through the story of a celebrity
goat’s burial that captured both media attention and controverse public opinion.

What kind of historical narrative can be the result from all this? Changes, especially grand
transformations, bring disorientation, fragility and open-endedness, even to those who have waited
for them all their lives, perhaps even vied for them at heavy personal expense. This text will suggest
rather than determine the way in which the larger political context related to the burial of a special
goat, and vice versa. It will thus provide only one possible rendering of a re-read transition. The
narrative presented here is based on archived newspaper reports and the recollections of township
residents, journalists, one cartoonist and a community artist, who either left written, spoken and
visual evidence “in situ” or who remembered Dennis later and much, much later again, when as an
icon Dennis was assuming new meaning. All this varied evidence will be reflected upon more
elaborately once it will be used in the respective chapters.

….