Kappy the original bares all
Eddie Kuhlmann | Saturday March 1, 2014 18:11
In the sprawling township of Peleng in Lobatse where he was born and bred, this self-styled go-getter goes by many names. Some call him ‘Boston,’ others ‘Scatola,’ ‘Kaapse Dans’ or ‘Capzela. All the nicknames fit like a glove.
This is the original Paul Kappy Sebolao. A Lobatse businessman who has proved to himself and others around him that with a little grey matter and a lot of perseverance, things can get done.
Like his elder brother, wheelchair-bound Bruce ‘Boy’ Sebolao, one of the best goalkeepers to have tended goals for current Gaborone-based beMOBILE campaigners, Notwane, in the 1970s and 1980s, he was also destined to feature for Gunners.
His other elder brother, Khrushchev, in goals for Gunners, took the team to the Super League in 1990 and starred for that successful outfit of those years. Victor, the other sibling, is involved with Uniao Flamingo Santos.
Kappy was headed that way until a splinter led by, among others, his cousin the late Nicholas ‘Carly’ Sebolao, saw him throw his weight behind Peleng United Brothers (PUBS).
There he teamed up well with the likes of Polar ‘Siberia’ Ramanyai, a Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) exile from SA, and Poela ‘Mguyo Sehlola, Zantar Diphoko, Isaac ‘Teenage’ Nageng, John ‘Magwegwe’ Gwebu. They mesmerised in the lower division for a while, but for lack of funds, the team went into oblivion.
Kappy subsequently returned to Gunners where he served as chairperson of Lobatse Supporters’ Committee for two years, succeeding Bernard ‘Mzee’ Kagiso, and thereafter as team manager for five years, succeeding Rashid Chopdat.
Kappy now owns a butchery, a bar, a bottle store and a distributor company in Peleng, a stone’s throw from their old family home, among his several business interests. With a deadpan face, Kappy maintains that he was never involved in shady deals but acts carried out in pursuance of liberation from apartheid in neighbouring South Africa. “And I am proud to have played an active part,” he says
He discloses that he received regular payments from the African National Congress (ANC) during his youth for his part in the network that the organisation ran in its quest for uhuru and used the money to set himself up for life.
Kappy was born the fourth son in a family of seven children – four brothers and two sisters - to Phineas and Elizabeth Sebolao on 17 July 1964, a staunch Catholic family.
Like other children in his neighbourhood, he played football in the dusty Peleng streets and went along with the mischievous way of life as it demanded – scavenging at Marangrang (Lemi), the local rubbish dump, fisticuffs with his peers, sniffing glue, fishing and swimming at Peleng Dam – a dangerous pastime as the dam has claimed the lives of many Peleng youngsters, then and now.
In between, Kappy frequented Jo’burg and Soweto where his father was born and grew up, and where he worked and sired another family. His SA and Botswana offspring kept contact as a single family.
These were the apartheid years, and for blacks it was touch and go with the Boer machinery still in top gear. “These visits sort of paved the way to what I was later to become,” Kappy says.
On one such visit, he was arrested by the police in Jozi under the notorious Group Areas Act that prevented ‘darkies’ to be in what was termed ‘blankes net’ or whites only areas.
“They also mistakenly identified me as the operative they sought, Kaplan van Wyk, who had planted a bomb in a whites only train at Laanglagte Station and incarcerated me at the notorious Pretoria Central Station,” he recalls.
His coloured classification under apartheid South Africa saw him locked up with inmates of his ‘race.’ Coloureds under apartheid South Africa got better treatment from their masters.
“Now you are talking about the gangsters from the coloured townships of Eersterus, Noordgesig, Eldorado Park, Newclare, Westbury, you name it,” he reminisces.
“I was not Kaplan, but because of my middle name, the police believed I was. The coloured gangsters named me ‘Kappie Die Oorspronklike’ (Kappy The Original) as a sympathetic gesture to my claim of innocence. This nickname is emblazoned in big red letters at his business in Peleng and some of his other companies.
“These inmates opened up to me and I realised that poverty, the attempts for survival with the odds stacked up against them, had driven them to the wrong side of the law and into jail,” he says.
“I vowed to avoid poverty even if it meant ruffling a few feathers along the way,” he adds with a mischievous smile.
“Anyway, I picked up a few pointers on how to treat the other side of life that were to stick with me forever before my late uncle Pius Sebolao secured my release.
At St. Theresa Church in Lobatse, Kappy served as an alter boy and went up the standards with ease at the adjoining Catholic primary school under the stern guidance of Sister Rosinah. It was thus perhaps only natural he later excelled in Science at Lobatse Secondary School. “Me and Monty (Mooketsane who once attempted to form a political party for the unemployed) were among 10 students earmarked for PESC when it began at UB,” he recalls.
But that was not to be. He became intimate with a Peace Corps teacher at the school and in the final year she took him along with her to Boston, Massachusetts in the US.
“The jaunt was for a month but I overstayed by three weeks,” he says. “Upon my return, I was suspended from school. This was in the run-up to my final Cambridge exams and I faltered somewhat.”
The legacy of the US trip is the nickname ‘Boston.’ On to the Botswana Meat Commission where he undertakes a Meat Technology Course with the likes of Richard Mapogo, a former Sales and Marketing Manager at BMC.
“Of course, there was promise from the Human Resource Office of further education abroad on completion of the training,” he remembers.
Kappy says a strong way of doing things along ethnic lines prevailed at BMC then, and “I strongly resented it”.
A trainee colleague who benefited in this manner was to bear the brunt of Kappy’s wrath for what he terms abuse of basic rights – that of doing things on merit. “I wrote him a dismissal letter on the company letterhead and fired him. I was in turn sacked for the act,” he says.
“In those days, a Cambridge Certificate could easily land you a cushy job and I was headed for Standard Bank as a teller in my town. However, I was recruited into the ANC by its Lobatse operative, Mxolisi Nyembezi.
Jerry Sibisi, a hardened PAC operative working out of Lobatse who assisted incoming cadres on the long route to and from Lusaka, Tanzania and elsewhere, got him into the car smuggling and transit racket for vehicles to be used by liberation organisations in exile.
“Twenty Million,” as Nyembezi was called, convinced me to join TEBA instead of the bank. This was an organisation entrusted with recruiting Batswana to work in South African Mines. Sibisi saw this as a golden opportunity to get liberation cadres into South Africa.
“At the time, the local travel document did not have any foolproof features,” he recalls. “All you needed was a stapler to change the photos in the passport.
In that way, we got many cadres into SA, infiltrating through the country’s gold mines.
“It was after some cadres who had entered South Africa with my help were arrested that I panicked and left TEBA, having worked there for 10 years. I believed the Boers would come looking for me. Afterall, they used to enter Botswana with impunity.
After leaving TEBA, Kappy focused on ferrying vehicles stolen in South Africa to Lusaka for the liberation organisations.
“At one stage we had a cargo of 20 vehicles stuck in Francistown that we could not get out as the authorities at Kazungula Border had wizened up,” Kappy remembers.
“With the help of my trusted friend, Benedict ‘Chicco’ Makgabenyane, we offloaded the cars locally to people who bought them through the government car loan scheme.
“The poilice later unveiled the scam and I was arrested. I was locked up in Francistown where I stood trial but was discharged and acquitted.”
Kappy says a white policeman, a Captain Barlow of the Zeerust car theft unit was sympathetic to the liberation struggle. He gave friendly evidence that resulted in Kappy’s acquittal.
He was to have another brush with the South African apartheid police – this time at the volatile coloured domain, Cape Flats in the Western Cape.
“I was staying with my girlfriend Veronica Smith at Elsies River were I was to convey an ANC message when I was arrested by the police acting on a tip-off.
It later emerged that a certain Andile Malamba, a fake South African refugee who schooled at Itireleng CJSS in Lobatse, had ‘shopped’ me.
Kappy’s brushes with the law and what he describes as “a breathtaking way of life” saw his Peleng girlfriend, Pearl Gupta - a bank employee - refuse to marry him in community of property, to the dismay of their parents, relatives and friends.
He says his breakthrough in life came when he bought a fleet of 20 taxis of the same Toyota Tazz model and five minibuses. “I never looked back,” he recalls. “I later sold them off to my drivers while others got them for free after a certain period as per an agreement. I was made.” Asked to comment about life in Botswana generally, Kappy says simply: “With a population of two million, we still have space and time to improve and enjoy the good life. But we should also take note of the fact that complaining is part of people’s nature; it should build us, and not break us apart.