Dudley Viall is an award-winning Namibian video journalist, film-maker, artist, conscript soldier and volunteer SWAPO spy. He has been imprisoned, shot at (repeatedly), has spent two and a half months manning a machine gun on top of a water tower by the war-torn Angolan border, has been promoted to corporal then busted back to the ranks the very same day for gross insubordination, has received death threats from people who mean them and was branded a coward for refusing to shoot an un-armed man.He travelled the northern war zone extensively armed with a Hi-8 video camera, two Nikons and a tape recorder, helped found Namibia’s best loved newspaper back in 1985 (it’s offices were severely bashed about by Apartheid agents) and he has generally lived a life that has surged from the madly comic and bizarre, to the fantastically heroic, to the positively nerve wracking.Dudley founded his own film company Quiet Storm Films in 1995 and won a Hollywood award for a natural history film (his ambition is to win another one for an unnatural history film).His political cartoons have unswervingly struck sensitive parts of the authorities both during the Apartheid occupation of Namibia and in post-independence Namibia under black majority rule.  He is currently, it is rumoured, on a death list compiled by irate politicians including the ex-President Sam Nujoma. But, unlike Anton Lubowski, a friend and fellow human rights activist who was assassinated, nobody has shot Dudley.Yet.Not even his numerous ex-girl friends.Which just goes to show that despite him being a self-professed “devout atheist and social deviant” Dudley’s guardian angel still hasn’t resigned. And God still appears to be on his side. I reckon this makes sense. Dudleys are few and far between. They need preserving!

Some Dudley Quotes on his Time in the South African Military and in the War-torn North.

 

Q. Could you have been described as a spy for the enemy?

A. Yes, very much so.

Q. Have you killed anybody.

A. Never. I never pulled a trigger and pointed a gun at anyone. That doesn’t mean I never wanted to. It was just the people I wanted to kill were on my side. I did assault a senior officer. I was on guard duty up a tree in an ape cage and a Unimog pulled up below with two black guys with sacks over their heads. The soldiers were throwing them at tyres half buried in the sand and all I could hear were their screams. So I jumped out of the ape cage – I’ve no idea how I survived the drop – and hit the lieutenant. They tied me to a tent post for that.

Q. Two and a half months on a water tower? How was that?

A. I spent a lot of time shouting abuse and getting shot at. I had no idea who was on the other side of the border. I’d shout “Viva UNITA!” and if they opened fire I’d know it was the MPLA. If I shouted “Viva Dos Santos” and shooting started I’d know it was UNITA. In a way I enjoyed it. I used to swim in my water tank and do a lot of singing. There were the most tremendous echoes. The guys over the border must have thought I was insane. I think I did go a bit nuts.

Q. Did you contemplate deserting?

A. We were sent out on a 4-day patrol once. There were nine guys, we were a sort of renegade section. Base refused to recall us for two weeks even though we only had provisions for four days. They told us we’d had wilderness survival training and should use that. We eventually decided this shit was enough. We mutinied. We buried our weapons – why I’ve no idea – and we walked into Angola. It’s incredible how war works. We walked into an enemy village and asked for food and they gave it to us. Personally if I’d been them I’d have told me to fuck off. After that I wanted to keep on walking north and get as far away from South Africa as possible but – it’s a long story – we eventually re-crossed the lines.

Q. You want another beer?

A. Yes. No. Make it a single malt. Christ, I used to get so drunk. I walked into a tent once and peed on a corporal. He didn’t take kindly to being peed on. Another time I was eavesdropping on a radio playing a boxing match in the chaplain’s tent. I fell asleep and woke up under his bed with the chaplain pointing a pistol at my head. I must have just burrowed under the tent without remembering it. They asked me why I did it. I said ‘My mother told me to.” The idea was to make them think I was sleep-walking. That quick thinking back-fired. After that they tied me to a ‘14 foot rope’ each night to stop me doing it again. Q. Your promotion and demotion came at speeds unusual in more conventional career patterns. Care to elaborate?

A. I’d been up all night on guard duty. They promoted me but then, because I hadn’t shaved, the officer called silence in the aircraft hanger where 250 of us were billeted and demanded the skuzziest, bluntest razor. Of course the Afrikaans scum-balls were only too keen to take out their skuzziest razors. In their minds I was English and an enemy. I had to dry shave and Christ that hurt! Not the pain. The humiliation. Then I had to leopard crawl round the hanger. My knees and elbows were just dripping blood. Raw. I insisted that the officer take off his uniform and then we could have a real fight. He was small and he saw the look in my eyes. I frightened him. He didn’t take off his stripes. I didn’t get to put mine on.”

 

FINAL DUDLEY QUOTE

“I saw a lot of horrors on the border but to be honest my army life was a bit of a joke. The bigger horrors were to come later.”

The Homunculus Illustration: What was the inspiration? Why’s it so bloody horrible?

Dudley responds in writing –

“Back in the turbulent 1980s, Windhoek (the capital city of what is now Namibia but was then known as South West Africa) was a hostile place. We found ourselves wedged between South Africa’s apartheid beast to the south and the bloody war they waged to the north. Monsters were everywhere, spreading hatred and terror. So we started a newspaper. We were immediately branded communist subversives and the beast turned its ugly head and stared at us. The horror.

One fine afternoon while walking around the Windhoek Agricultural Show with my wife-to-be, I was approached by a 30-something year old monster who grabbed me by the front of my shirt and shook me violently. He was from the apartheid press. With his face right up against mine he screamed that he was going to kill me. I believed him. The naked hatred left me shaken and etched out an indelible piece of ugliness in my brain. In the years to follow it would start looking like a fucking gallery of ghouls. The horror.

A couple of years later I was drinking beer at a dubious bar in the war zone when two South African soldiers approached. They looked agitated, ordered drinks and snarled at us soft media liberals and “kaffir-boeties” (nigger lovers).

Suddenly one of them grabbed me and pushed me up against the bar. He was shouting incoherently. He really didn’t like me. He then assured me that he was going to kill me. His eyes were manic and glazed. His companion – people like those don’t have friends – then took over and dragged me away from the bar and into the toilet.

Oh no! Found dead in a toilet! I was shaking like a leaf. He screamed that he had been sent to kill kaffirs and that he wasn’t getting the chance to do so because he had to stand fucking guard duty for a bunch of fucking journalists.

I told him that I worked for a South African military publication. This relaxed him somewhat. He then dictated (shouted) his idea for the next edition’s cover story and I was released. The only thing different in this monster’s eyes was that hatred had turned into insanity. Oh, yes, the horror.

It was this insanity in the eyes of these human monsters, and countless more like them I met over the next few years that made me illustrate the way I do. And this is the scary bit. The monsters haven’t gone away. Now there’s greed in their eyes.

The horror.”

 

HUGH PAXTON’S VERDICT.

Dudley’s Homunculus cartoon is without a doubt the only possible cover design I would accept for this novel. It arrives afire with recent history, personally observed experience, humour, fury, horror, a demented and oppressive rage, and it lunges at the viewer.

More to the point it only cost a bottle of single malt. The Laphroigh. A fine sip. And Dudley for company drinking it and swapping stories. Who could ask for more?