The man with the funny accent at security

“Have you heard that security guy’s accent,” remarked Gavin as he dumped his man bag on his desk and began preparations for the working day.
“I know the guy you mean,” replied Simone. She’d noticed him too. “He’s a black guy with a fully English accent.”
“Ja. And it’s not a Model C accent either,” remarked Gavin. “Every morning when I come in, the guy’s like, ‘Howzit, man. Fine thanks, yourself.’ Hey Gift, what’s the story with that security guy with the white accent?”
“I don’t know,” replied their colleague. “He always speaks Zulu to me.”
Meanwhile, downstairs, at reception Khulani Dlamini was checking the morning’s third visitor into the building.
“There you go, sir. Freeflight is on the second floor. You have a nice day, now.”
As often happens, the guy did a slight double-take when he heard Khulani’s accent, but he soon disappeared into the lift.
Someone’s accent isn’t usually the kind of thing you ask them about.
And a person seldom contemplates their own accent any more than they wonder why their nose is narrow. So Khulani, or KK, was not thinking about his accent as he rearranged his pens and sat back down at this tiny security desk with this week’s copy of You.
He wasn’t thinking of his youth growing up on the farm outside Mkuze. Nor was he thinking of his mother, and how she had raised him and his three brothers on her tiny salary.
As he straightened his tie and shrugged his blazer into position, he certainly wasn’t thinking about the 16 summers he had spent chewing sugar cane on the banks of the vast Jozini dam, near the place they called Ghost Mountain.
Nor was he looking back on his lifelong friendship with Mark Longdon, the farmer’s son.
The last thing on KK’s mind was the time him and Mark had hitch-hiked to Richards Bay to go swimming and been arrested for having friends of a different colour. And how they’d only been released when Mark convinced the cops that KK was actually his garden boy, whom he had brought along so he could carry his shopping.
No, that’s not the kind of thing you think about when you’re manning the security desk at a Midrand design agency.
You don’t dwell on the fact that your English accent sounds like a white person’s because your blood brother, your soul buddy from long years was a white guy.
Of course, someone checking in with you on their way to delivering some agency proofs to Freeflight would be totally unaware that somewhere in the world there’s a white guy named Mark, who speaks Zulu without any trace of an English accent.
And how even Mark’s English accent was coloured by a lifetime spent in the wilds of Zululand, by a thousand afternoons spent fishing in Jozini Dam, by a hundred evenings spent dancing to Phuzekhemisi’s maskandi music on the stoep outside KK’s place.
These are things not dwelt upon. You don’t think about how your voice sounds, or why your face looks the way it does, or why you have a habit of scratching the skin behind your ear.
Those idiosyncrasies are simply part of the complex matrix of in-born, and in-bred, characteristics that go into making a person a person.
And what a unique person was KK, as he sat at his security desk, spotless in his corporate blazer, perfectly positioned tie and sparkling leather shoes.
In his heart lay an understanding of another culture matched by few of his people. It had taught him love for his fellow man and respect for other human beings. That sense of empathy had brought him to the city, despite his rural heritage. He’d gained an affinity for the bright lights from his old mate Mark.
Mark, in turn, had found he missed the countryside, and had long ago left Johannesburg to become a game ranger at a private lodge in Maputaland.
Straddling Zulu and European culture had made Johnny Clegg an international superstar. It had earned KK a job as a multilingual security guard and made Mark Longdon a game guide who got on with the locals.
But KK never thought about that. He simply sat at his security desk, perfectly turned out in his blazer, shiny shoes and nicely positioned tie, and awaited the next visitor to Freeflight Design. He simply sat, the sum of all he had ever learnt.
And when a customer arrived, he’d say, “Hello, howzit. How you doing?”