By Stefan Schutte
In 2018, when Andries “Roof” Bezuidenhout sat down with Riku Lätti to record an acoustic version of Brixton Moord & Roof Orkes’ rock song “Einde van Dae” (“End of Days”), he mentioned that he had once been part of a band named Brixton Moord & Roof Orkes (“The Brixton Murder and Robbery Band”). He said that BMRO had died along with bassist and vocalist Drikus “Brixton” Barnard three years earlier. The recording was made for a compilation album, Die Wasgoedlyn Volume 3, and Bezuidenhout attributed the band’s demise to cancer—Drikus’ death in 2015—and emigration. Steve Savage had left for Zambia shortly before the release of BMRO’s 2002 debut album, Spergebied (Restricted Area), and Drikus had replaced him on bass. Founding drummer Ockert “Moord” Greeff had also left for Montreal shortly after the release of the band’s second album, Terug in Skubbe (Back in Scales), in 2005. Greeff was replaced by Andy Evans when the band recorded a music video for the song “Vis” (“Fish”) at The Bohemian in Auckland Park. The video features actor Melt Sieberhagen, while singer Bacchus Nel can even be spotted in the audience supporting the explosive rock number. The band was already on its third drummer, Louis Graham, by the time it recorded its third album, Slaaptyd in die Suburbs (Bedtime in the Suburbs), in 2014.
What Andries did not mention as he chatted with Riku was that he and Gerhard Barnard—the band’s lead guitarist and Drikus’ older brother—had eight unused tracks between them on an external hard drive. These were rough recordings made by Drikus shortly before his death and given to Andries as a concept for a new BMRO album. Apart from their poor sound quality—Drikus had recorded them using a single microphone, accompanied by a nylon-string guitar that he played like a true bassist—the duo found it too painful to revisit these last remnants of his work.
Their view changed when Louis Graham died of COVID-19 in 2021. Ockert, Andries and Gerhard started chatting over WhatsApp and decided that the time had come to dust off Drikus’ final recordings and see what could be salvaged from them. Despite having previously lived and recorded within a few blocks of one another in the Johannesburg suburb of Brixton, BMRO’s surviving members were now scattered across the country and even across continents. Ockert still resided in Montreal, Andries was living in Alice, and Gerhard had moved from Pretoria to Pringle Bay in the Western Cape.
As Andries listened to the eight tracks, he began writing answers to Drikus’ songs. Ockert and Gerhard also contributed lyrics to two songs each, and the result was fifteen recorded tracks that ultimately became the band’s fourth studio album, Bazaar Punk, released in 2022. It became the band’s first album to be released exclusively in digital format and featured a specific structure in which each Drikus song is followed by a song penned by one of the other three members—almost like seven answers from the band to eight questions posed by Drikus. It is perhaps fitting that Drikus has the final say with the song “Rym” (“Rhyme”), which is, in a way, a biographical portrait of a significant part of his character and life.
For the completed album, Drikus’ vocals had been recorded in Krugersdorp, while Andries recorded his vocals in Alice. Gerhard added not only the lead-guitar parts but also the bass parts, while Ockert recorded the drums in a basement in Montreal. Willem Möller, formerly of Die Gereformeerde Blues Band, was contacted and offered advice on how best to extract Drikus’ vocals from the original recordings. The final tracks for Bazaar Punk were also mastered at Möller’s Sharp Street Studio in Glencairn.
Drikus’ tracks centred on themes that included a return to his origins, personified by his real-life return to his hometown of Krugersdorp, where he and Gerhard grew up. While the band’s previous album, Slaaptyd in die Suburbs, frequently addressed a woman named Mariaan, the new album periodically features someone named Liena. Not only does Drikus address Liena from the very first track, but we also hear Ockert and Andries grappling with her almost mythical existence through their own lyrics and song titles. This adds to the album’s cohesiveness despite the challenges involved in making it.
Bazaar Punk takes us on an emotional journey: we not only accompany a man on his homecoming, but also witness a band returning to its roots and offering proof of life long after it had been pronounced dead.
What follows is a track-by-track overview of the album.
1. Die Sesde Dag Se Eerste Beweging (The First Movement of the Sixth Day) (3:59)
Bazaar Punk’s opener is a sombre snippet of town life, sprinkled with a dash of typical Drikus Barnard humour, as the haircut and tipping incidents below illustrate. It is early on a Saturday morning, and we are at the train station. It is already evident that there is nothing glamorous about his arrival. Instead of being met on the platform by someone holding a sign bearing his name—as we so often see at an airport—Drikus is greeted by an Omo washing-powder billboard on the bridge at the station. There are no familiar faces in sight—only the previous night’s bodies recovering in the morning sun.
He tells Liena that he walked these streets a long time ago. He refers to them as “our streets”, signalling both his return to his hometown and an acknowledgement that he is part and parcel of this town, and the town is part and parcel of him. Every now and then, he spots a demolished memory, explaining that some shops had to die to make way for someone else’s dream. What he remembers as a bicycle shop has now been replaced by a dressmaking business. Drikus does this so well: he uses the metaphorical demolition of his memories to portray the town’s physical decline without overselling it.
The “Fresh Fish” advertised on a café poster is viewed as an outright lie—surely it cannot be fresh, as we are in mine-dump country, far from the ocean. To emphasise this, he steps into a restaurant or coffee shop, where he orders fish paste on toast. He mentions to Liena that the waitress—a beautiful hostess with a youthful body—also brings him coffee. He describes her as “haar lyf nog vol lente”, which literally means “her body is still full of spring”.
The young woman promptly asks whether he would mind smoking outside. This recalls Drikus’ lament in his 2005 song “Kleurvolle Tradisie” (“Colourful Tradition”) that smoke-free shopping centres were, in his view, the worst law ever imposed in the country.
The short-lived “relationship” with his beautiful hostess ends abruptly when she brings him his bill, with Drikus telling Liena how they effectively exchanged a tip for a single peppermint.
He leaves the breakfast restaurant and stops for an impromptu haircut. The barber, operating from the pavement, is friendly and has his radio blaring while he gets to work on Drikus. Despite initially feeling embarrassed by the awkward situation, Drikus taps his foot to the music as the barber tells him that Orlando Pirates are going to win the day’s soccer match.
His request for a “short back and sides; keep the top” is quickly met with the barber’s retort: “No, my brother, then you’ll look like a mop.”
The opening track ends with Drikus continuing his lonesome journey while telling Liena that she is probably still sleeping, although the sixth day has already begun. And so has the new BMRO album—amid the distant calls of a pair of hadedas.
2. Duiwelsbrood (Devil’s Bread) (7:21)
It is fitting that Gerhard is given the first opportunity to respond to his brother’s final work with the band as we settle into the album’s rhythm. The album’s second track—and second single—is also its longest, at over seven minutes. “Duiwelsbrood” also marks the first time that the older Barnard was credited as a BMRO lyricist, albeit under his alias, Kapelaan Pat Plank, despite having received credit for his musical contributions to five songs across the band’s two preceding albums.
Barnard’s lead guitar, screaming out of Pringle Bay, is quickly joined by Greeff’s drums thumping out of Montreal. Early on, there are moments when the song’s opening sounds as though it comes straight out of Temple Studios in Malta, where German industrial metal band Rammstein recorded “Du Hast”.
The mood briefly settles before Andries’ vocals join in from Alice, but not an ounce of intensity is lost as the tempo slows and BMRO’s three remaining members go about their business.
Metaphorically, the song mentions a “tear in your heart” and the rebellious act of “spitting at the sun without reason”. The inevitable darkness—perhaps the painful loss of someone—arrives uninvited and punctually, bearing intimate studies of your naked soul and your blood. Blood is reiterated, underlining its dual associations with family and with labour on this earth—a hard living earned through blood, sweat and tears.
Bezuidenhout’s vocals gradually morph into the voice of a holier-than-thou cleric addressing a lowly subordinate and talking down to someone who is eventually called “our loyal slave and uncut gemstone”—someone whose rough edges can still be polished and refined. While preaching to the servant, the cleric warns him about the deep-rooted decay in the cellars of “our sovereign state”. In a country with a history in which church and state were closely intertwined, he mentions the Nederduits-Gereformeerde Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church) and the Trap der Jeugd booklets as literature for the “lumpenproletariaat”—those forming the dispossessed and marginalised underclass of South African society, who no longer recognise their own free will or ability to think for themselves.
The cleric then implores his loyal subject to stand steadfast in his crusade to reach the untouched woman, later described as a blonde catechist. The subject’s little boat—a vessel carrying his soul through life—sails on until he disappears into unconscious, unfulfilled, tearful nothingness.
The cleric tells the servant to kneel, close his eyes and bow his head so that he can receive God’s richest blessings—blessings that sound more like a burden than a source of comfort in this context. That seems to be the end of “Duiwelsbrood”, until Gerhard’s guitar and Ockert’s drums ride the song out, leaving the listener acutely aware of a simmering undercurrent in which someone dares to question—and even lash out against—his Calvinist upbringing.
A distinctive feature of Bazaar Punk is its effective use of additional sounds to create atmosphere and enrich the tracks—especially those built around Drikus’ rough recordings.
We hear a subtle chime, followed by the sound of a door closing at Ahmed & Son’s Wholesale Emporium, as Drikus describes his latest visit to a place where there is so much to see that he hardly knows where to start.
It is not his first visit: he mentions that there is “always a man with a beard and a robe in the corner”. There is also always a woman covered from head to toe in accordance with her religious beliefs, but he believes that she harbours a defiant spirit—he claims that he can see it in her eyes.
Her attire leaves everything to his imagination, and soon his imagination runs wild. He sees her dancing at night amid the smell of incense. He sees the rhythm softly landing on her hip and can almost feel her grip in a glittering maze, in rooms lined with satin.
This is where Drikus cleverly blurs the line between his character’s fantasy and the physical setting in which he finds himself. It is also noticeable that this woman, despite her concealing attire, makes a similar impression on him to the one made by the young waitress in “Die Sesde Dag Se Eerste Beweging”.
Back in the present, it is time to swap his old clothes for something a little fancier. The snap of his fingers appears intended to establish him as the one calling the shots in the ensuing negotiation with, presumably, Mr Ahmed.
He wants a dark suit like Jim Belushi’s, a collared shirt—but with no frills—Chelsea boots and a hat to top it all off. He throws the items onto the counter, and it is time to negotiate: nou praat ons pond (“now we’re talking serious money”).
By the sound of it, Mr Ahmed soon takes control of the bargaining: “The shoes are six hundred, but I’ll give them to you for four hundred. Twenty per cent off the suit—you know that’s a score, my friend.” He sweetens the deal by throwing in a pair of cufflinks and matching socks. He draws attention to the quality by mentioning that everything is handmade from double-knit material.
The song ends with a final chorus without ever revealing whether the shopkeeper and his customer managed to strike a bargain.
4. Met Main Reef Road Langs (Along Main Reef Road) (4:26)
The fourth track on the album is the first written by Andries Bezuidenhout.
It documents the journey of a traveller who has been hemmed in for too long by the mountains and the sea. The Afrikaans word used is ingeperk, which became strongly associated with lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cape fynbos and designer rooibos tea are mentioned, suggesting that the journey begins somewhere in the Southern or Western Cape.
The track is calm and relaxed, allowing plenty of time for reflection along the road. It is an overnight journey as we travel through Beaufort West and Bloemfontein, then past Brandfort, Welkom and Vanderbijlpark. After paying the toll at Grasmere, he feels the first rays of the morning sun near Soweto.
The chorus poses the recurring question: what has he lost while driving along Main Reef Road? Something he was looking for appears to have vanished somewhere along the way.
Main Reef Road symbolises the connection between the mines and the working class—the mineworkers labouring underground while living in hostels. Bezuidenhout’s academic background—he is a professor of sociology—and the fact that his great-grandfather is buried in Braamfontein Cemetery may both have significantly influenced the track. The traveller’s journey is anchored by a gravestone in the cemetery, tying the song to the lyricist’s own family history.
Andries’ family ties to the Main Reef area run deep, as he describes his ancestor as both a mineworker and a “terrorist”—see the earlier BMRO song “Trane van ’n Terroris” (“Tears of a Terrorist”). The “terrorist” had blown up railway tracks during the South African War (1899–1902) before being captured and sentenced to death. An administrative error resulted in him being sent to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, instead. He later returned to the Johannesburg gold mines and died of silicosis at the age of thirty. The deadly respiratory legacy of the mines resurfaces later on the album when Drikus mentions tuberculosis in the final track.
Andries effectively uses towns, streets and other landmarks to keep the journey moving forward. At Robert Broom Drive, he starts digging into the past before arriving back in the present as he reaches Beyers Naudé Drive.
He asks himself what he is looking for between Springs and Randfontein—like so many others who spend their lives toiling in the shadows of overhead power lines and mine dumps.
It is a song that reminds us that there are not always answers to life’s questions. Even though the traveller’s final destination is a gravestone in Braamfontein Cemetery, there is still plenty to experience, endure and even appreciate along the way.
Brixton Barnard takes the listener back into the marketplace, where he offers advice on how to navigate the community auction, commonly called a vendusie in Afrikaans.
To secure a good spot, you need to be up early and ready before sunrise. He rattles off all the things—and people—you need to watch out for if you intend to earn your living as a regular trader at these events. Watch out for Jaap: he likes to drive up the bidding price, and the only way to deal with him is to double-bluff him. Also keep an eye out for the kind of person who will sell you a piece of cow dung after convincing you that it is something entirely different.
The chorus is sung from the perspective of a merchant who buys second-hand goods from members of the public. He counts the R100 notes as he implores sellers to bring him everything—their fridges, televisions, toolboxes, sewing machines and books, and even their copies of the Rolling Stones’ Hot Rocks. He will buy it all voetstoots—as is.
6. Stofdorp (Dusty Town) (6:45)
“Stofdorp” was written by Ockert Greeff and sung by Andries Bezuidenhout. It offers a slice of everyday life in a typical small South African town, where the setting and its characters have become so interwoven that they almost blend into one another.
Ockert’s first lyrical contribution to the album ties in seamlessly with Drikus’ overarching theme of someone returning to his hometown after spending many years elsewhere.
Between two dusty stop streets, contrasting realities are pitted against one another. At the town’s first stop street, the returning traveller spots an old couple sitting in their run-down bakkie in the oncoming lane. Both have smiles on their faces.
The lyrics confirm that this is the traveller’s hometown: it is the small, dusty town where he slipped into the world without much fanfare.
He reaches the second stop street and looks back in his rear-view mirror. He sees the old bakkie stuttering forward.
In the final verse, the old man squints at the returning traveller in his shiny new black car and reaches out to the old woman beside him.
The chorus tells us that the old man behind the bakkie’s wheel has a wry smile and poor eyesight, while the old woman wears a smile of resignation, brought about by so many years spent struggling through their hard existence.
It is unclear whether they have always lived in the town or moved there in their later years. Not only is there a stark contrast between their material possessions—the shiny new car and the old, dilapidated bakkie—but their trajectories also differ. The younger man enters the town in seemingly better health, while the older couple prepare to leave it.
The same stop street is described differently depending on the perspective. For the younger man, it is the town’s first stop street, signifying something new, albeit familiar, since he was born there. From the older couple’s perspective, it is the town’s last stop street—possibly signifying that they have reached the end of their life journey.
“Roer” is Drikus’ homage to the social Afrikaner subculture centred on cooking and baking.
He likens the women gathered around the kitchen table to clucking hens. He sings of cakes surrounded by puffed-up plastic bags, vetkoek (fried dough) and mince, and of how everything is made with love while the proceeds go to the church.
This is more than an ordinary church bazaar. He later explains that every church gets its turn to provide food at the vendusie, including the NG Kerk, the Hervormde Kerk, Pentecostal churches, the AGS and the Volle Evangelie Kerk. Drikus’ unapologetic humour shines through when he sings that this rotation excludes the Buddhists—because nobody wants to eat their food.
His curiosity about what happens behind the scenes of the baking operation appears to stem from his interest in someone within this baking fraternity. He even lends a clumsy hand as he struggles to open the cupboards and retrieve the pots and pans: ek kry die kaste oop na ’n moerse gespook (“I get the cupboards open after one hell of a struggle”).
He suggests that she put down the Afrikaans lifestyle magazine Rooi Rose and read Kook & Geniet instead—a well-known cookbook in Afrikaans culture that has been around since 1951.
When he sings about the fruit suffocating inside a Consol jar, destined to rest in syrup forever, he cleverly employs a play on the word ingelê: ek wens ons was ook ingelê / gee nie om wat jou mamma daarvan sê (“I wish we were also preserved / I don’t care what your mother says about it”). On the literal level, ingelê is the Afrikaans term for preserving fruit. By wishing that he and the woman were also ingelê, however, he implies something rather more flirtatious without becoming too explicit.
His disregard for what her mother might say also refers to the traditional Afrikaans song “Suikerbossie”, which, according to an article by Deon Maas published in Rapport, was once banned in South Africa.
8. Die Groot Ska-benga (The Big Ska-benga) (3:49)
Skabenga is a South African slang term that can mean anything from a bandit, criminal or gangster to a mischievous troublemaker or rascal.
Gerhard Barnard’s character brings a healthy dose of comic relief halfway through the album. The Big Ska-benga fancies himself something of a Don Juan in the sack, calling himself the “master of disaster”, die meester van die peester and even “Le Coq Sportif”. He gets in over his head, however, when he meets a confident woman who intends to teach the Big Ska-benga a thing or two.
He is up for the challenge when they arrange for her to pick him up on a Friday after work. He looks forward to what he regards as a routine “wine and dine and sixty-nine—it’s fine, I am the Big Ska-benga”.
Once at the woman’s house, things quickly go south as he finds himself in uncharted territory: a collar around his neck, a safe word that he mishears when she whispers it into his ear, and a strange harness that she straps on before taking a run-up from the door.
After 42 hours of pain and suffering—including her second wind after returning from church on Sunday—the Big Ska-benga has to concede that the tables have turned and that she is henceforth to be known as the Big Ska-benga.
The song concludes playfully, with the woman offering to pay for his taxi home. He replies that it would probably be better for the medics to come and fetch him. He also asks her to keep what happened between them, as he used to be the Big Ska-benga.
9. Getrou aan die Wit Baksteengebou (Loyal to the White Brick Building) (5:48)
The album’s first single was released on 11 December 2021. It showcases not only Drikus’ songwriting prowess, but also the band’s ability to transform the raw material into a polished product bearing the BMRO hallmark.
In the promotional video accompanying the song’s initial release, one can hear roughly the first thirty seconds of the original recording that Drikus sent to Andries. The white noise in the background and the absence of drums and electric guitar are immediately noticeable. When it is compared with the completed version, it becomes apparent that an ambient sound resembling cars passing in the distance was mixed in to mask the white noise before it fades out completely.
Very much in the mould of “Die Sesde Dag Se Eerste Beweging”, the returning character has moved on from his pavement haircut and now tells the story of the town’s semi-abandoned hotel. The picture is bleak: the chairs and rooms are empty, apart from the ghosts—but they do not pay rent. Only the clerk and one lonesome patron named Sarel remain: two characters who never left the town and are both described in detail in Drikus’ ensuing lyrics. The sad art on the wall is hardly worth mentioning and, with nothing to do, the passing hours feel like detention to the clerk.
What impresses is Drikus’ seemingly effortless use of three rhyme techniques within the same song: internal rhyme, end rhyme and monorhyme. This leads to one of the cleverest pieces of wordplay on the entire album, when Drikus continues to describe the mood as follows:
In die voorportaal sukkel ’n TV-verhaal met reception
Daar’s iets fout met die kabel se male en female connection
It is worth noting that voorportaal is the Afrikaans word for a foyer or reception area. It is typical of Drikus Barnard to introduce this kind of witty humour into his songwriting—the kind that makes you smile before you fully realise what he has just pulled off. He follows it by blurring the line between the television programme’s literal reception and cable problems—the male and female connectors—and implied problems between the male and female characters in the soap opera. It is nothing short of exceptional songwriting.
This thread could even be extended to the awkward situation between Sarel and the clerk. Sarel claims that the reason he remains at the hotel, where the returning character left him seven years earlier, is his loyalty to the white brick building—from which the title “Getrou aan die Wit Baksteengebou” is derived.
The clerk, described as a romantic, passes the time by reading Mills & Boon novels while studying through Unisa and dreaming of obtaining a visa to somewhere else. The reality is that she has acquired a reputation for accepting chocolates and flowers in exchange for sex, as people gossip behind her back. Even the returning character concedes that there was once a time when he wished she were his, but that was long ago. He is not even sure whether she remembers him, but he greets her politely.
The attention turns to the returning character’s interaction with Sarel. Sarel explains that there is a new shopping mall elsewhere in town and that everyone prefers it as their Saturday hangout.
Sarel spends his time at the hotel after his wife left him following just two years of marriage. His breakfast is beer, and so is his lunch, as his early pension from the mine slowly disappears over the bar counter. The dry vocal delivery, the mood of the song and Drikus’ mention of beer for breakfast and lunch echo Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”.
The hotel does not stand alone as a symbol of the town’s decline. Drikus also sings about the death of the drive-in—Slush Puppy has gone to the SPCA—before Sarel invites his old friend to his apartment, suggesting that they buy a bottle of alcohol from the hotel’s off-sales outlet. He has a flatty (spatchcock chicken), charcoal and a grid, and they can braai together.
The two leave the hotel and stroll through the desolate streets, littered with pine cones, on their way to Sarel’s place, where the late-afternoon sun appears just a little too bright from the balcony.
10. Liena Mondegreen se Filosofie (Liena Mondegreen’s Philosophy) (6:14)
The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term mondegreen in 1954 after mishearing “and laid him on the green” as “and Lady Mondegreen” while listening to an old Scottish ballad.
There are, of course, plenty of famous mondegreens across many musical genres. In Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”, some listeners heard “excuse me while I kiss this guy” instead of him kissing the sky. Some thought Elton John was asking Tony Danza to hold him closer rather than addressing the tiny dancer. Then there were those who believed John Fogerty was directing patrons to a bathroom on the right instead of warning them about a bad moon on the rise.
Ockert Greeff’s final contribution to Bazaar Punk—at least as its main lyricist—uses the term as Liena’s surname in the song’s title. The narrator describes himself as a cross-eyed, crooked and bent character. In the chorus, Andries repeatedly asks who would want to be happy all the time, always perfect and always showing off.
The trio of Andries, Gerhard and Ockert would no doubt have debated the exact wording of Drikus’ lyrics, and the process evidently made enough of an impression on Ockert to inspire a song about it—sung by Andries as BMRO’s only remaining vocalist. Even now, it is sometimes difficult to determine beyond doubt whether Drikus is singing “Liena” or, occasionally, “Rina” in two of his other songs.
Liena ultimately features in four songs on the album. In a way, this echoes the appearance of another woman’s name, Mariaan, in three songs on Slaaptyd in die Suburbs, Bazaar Punk’s predecessor.
The narrator describes himself as little more than a spelling error or a song that has been misheard. To illustrate this and reinforce the mondegreen theme, three similar-sounding lines follow:
The moon that went behind the clouds
The moon that wept behind the clouds
The moon that’s wet behind the clouds
Greeff’s choice of these lines to illustrate the mondegreen motif is no coincidence. They originate in “Pierneef-blou” (“Pierneef Blue”), the album’s thirteenth track. In that song, Drikus describes a character who enjoys listening to Hank Williams before echoing “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” with the phrase “the moon wept behind a cloud”.
Ockert’s song closes with an uplifting verse explaining that the incorrect word is where the narrator can find shelter, because it provides a place where the moon can weep. He finds that beautiful. He likes it that way.
11. Die Sesde Dag Se Tweede Beweging (The Second Movement of the Sixth Day) (3:14)
Drikus addresses Liena again, this time on a Saturday afternoon. The vendusie is done and dusted, and despite the array of handmade confectionery and other offerings—all made with love, even though the church takes the proceeds—people still gather at the local SPAR to buy provisions for the rest of the weekend.
Texan steaks, popular at South African supermarkets, are bought. Mum gets chocolates and Dad gets biltong, while the children receive sweets for helping to carry the bags to the car.
Beer is needed because you have to pace yourself before moving on to the hard liquor. Drikus mentions the poor people loitering around the parking lot, lamenting that he will never understand this country and its stark contrasts.
Silent prayers are offered for a Lotto win. Even the singer concedes that he occasionally dabbles in games of chance and would love to buy Liena a big house one day. He lives in hope of swimming in a chlorinated swimming pool, just like a rich man.
The focus returns to the pavement, where people from different cultures mingle sociably around crates filled with quart bottles of beer. Eventually, the mood turns sour as blood mingles with vomit and sadness, and a knife is drawn.
Our character moves on and encounters a bustling spaza shop selling everything from counterfeit NikNaks to loose cigarettes.
The song concludes with Drikus singing that some of us leave this world hoes-hoes (“coughing and coughing”), while others choose a healthier lifestyle that includes veganism and foods such as couscous. The near-rhyme between hoes-hoes and couscous supplies another flash of Drikus’ characteristic wordplay.
He signs off with the thought that the only thing that matters to him now is his date with Liena and that, with the shops closing, “Mammon’s slumber brings Saturday’s rest”.
12. Deurnagtrein Kaap Toe (Overnight Train to the Cape) (3:54)
In a way, the final four songs on the album form a fitting dialogue between Drikus and Andries—BMRO’s two lead vocalists.
Following Andries’ earlier account of a traveller journeying from the Cape to Gauteng, apparently by car—or at least by road—we now follow a couple travelling from Gauteng back to the Cape, this time by train. The journey begins at Krugerstraat se perron, which strongly suggests Pretoria Station—the same station that appears to provide the setting for Bacchus Nel’s “Treine”, where the clock stopped long ago, either at 19:28 or perhaps even in 1928.
The female companion is none other than Liena, who accompanies Andries’ narrator as they travel through the night past Klerksdorp and Christiana in North West, and then Warrenton in the Northern Cape. Somewhere along the route, she quietly slips out of their second-class sleeping compartment and leaves the train without him noticing. She does not even take her luggage with her.
It occurs to him that she might have left at Kimberley, De Aar or perhaps even Hutchinson. Thinking back, he recalls noticing earlier that something was wrong: she wanted to say something but reconsidered and turned away. It is only when the breakfast gong sounds that he realises he is alone in the compartment.
One cannot help but think of Gert Vlok Nel’s “Beautiful in Beaufort-Wes”, in which the breakfast waiter’s ding-dong gong serves as the narrator’s wake-up call. It is worth mentioning that Drikus used to play bass during Gert’s live performances in Gauteng. According to Andries, Drikus also once nearly drowned and would not have survived had Gert not saved him.
But Liena is gone. She has left without saying goodbye or offering any explanation. Perhaps it was Laingsburg, Worcester or Wellington.
13. Pierneef-blou (Pierneef Blue) (6:21)
There is a strong possibility that the man now living in a flat above a café is Sarel, who earlier invited the returning traveller to a spatchcock-chicken braai on his balcony. The first clue is the reflected sunlight he sees while gazing at the cars in the street. The second is the protagonist’s resentment that memories of his former wife’s breasts continue to haunt him.
There are other things he dislikes, including the colour of the light in his living space, which is described as Pierneef blue. J.H. Pierneef was a South African landscape artist considered by many to be one of the finest of the old South African masters. The distinctive lines and colours of his work will give anyone familiar with his paintings an immediate sense of what Drikus means when he sings about this colour, which the narrator does not particularly like.
The landlord allowed his tenant to keep the furniture left behind by the previous occupants, including a blue sleeper couch. The cramped living space is all that his wallet can afford. This recalls Sarel’s mine pension slowly disappearing over the counter in “Getrou aan die Wit Baksteengebou”.
Eskom can get lost—the geyser is allowed to run throughout the night. He reads in the newspaper about the government pilfering millions, leaving him uncomfortable and unsettled as he wonders about the slippery slope his country is on.
He dislikes taxis and the middle class. He hates a certain type of person from his own lily-white race. He also hates emigration and common destinations such as Australia and Britain.
He feels nothing for the colours of the old South African flag but is equally indifferent to the country’s unified national anthem—they can keep “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” and “Die Stem”. He dislikes not only Mandoza and Theuns Jordaan, but also memories of his childhood holidays in caravan parks.
Sarel is not entirely negative: he likes thunderstorms, railway tracks and especially those who undermine Gauteng’s controversial e-toll system. He also likes Hank Williams and quotes the mondegreen “the moon wept behind a cloud” from “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”. Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan both receive nods without being named explicitly: the first through an allusion to the loneliness of Sundays and the second through the phrase “no direction home”.
Sarel is reflective and nostalgic, recalling the pulp photo-story magazines that formed a significant part of South African popular culture during the 1970s and early 1980s. He mentions Ben Brand, better known as the Ruiter in Swart. The character was portrayed by Danie van Rensburg, better known as Vonk de Ridder, who died in March 2026. Writing in Rapport, Bun Booyens observed that Ben Brand was more than merely a black-clad man on horseback: he did for South African photo-story magazines what Johnny Cash did for country music.
James Phillips, also known as Bernoldus Niemand, receives a mention as the narrator sits on his balcony, even though it feels more like a stoep—probably the same one where the earlier flatty chicken braai took place. He busies himself by trimming his ferns, his whisky glass full beneath the African sun that once again appears just a little too bright.
“Val” is Andries Bezuidenhout’s lyrical farewell to his friend Drikus Barnard. Andries apologises for getting straight to the point: Ek’s jammer dat ek sommer so met die deur in die huis val (“I’m sorry for coming straight to the point”).
Bezuidenhout proceeds to use val in its various forms and meanings throughout the song, creating a downward spiral that begins lightly but steadily gains emotional weight and momentum. Even the fact that he happens to be thinking of Drikus today must be a coincidence—a toeval. In the chorus, he sings that it occurs to him—dit val my op—that people like them are better at dancing than walking, and better at singing than talking.
There is a reference to Drikus’ preference for composing songs in his head, in contrast to Andries, who writes his songs down. Andries points out, however, that paper deteriorates—verval—and that one eventually runs out of space in notebooks. Drikus’ lifelong habit of composing and storing his songs entirely in his head was one of the reasons it would have been so difficult to revisit his eight original recordings after so many years: there was no written record against which the lyrics could be checked, leaving ample room for the mondegreens mentioned earlier.
Andries touches on Drikus’ stubbornness when he sings that Drikus burned two bridges for every one that Andries tried to build. He then concludes that their chosen road of rock ’n’ roll has no bridges—only a crossroads.
Reflecting on his relationship with Drikus, Andries describes what they created as a lokval van woorde en bouvallige klank—a trap made from words and ramshackle sound. Together with the rest of the band, the two nevertheless wove something through their music that held more tightly than any family bond.
Andries sings that feet that dance like theirs are also prone to stumbling and that, once you begin to free-fall, very little can stop you. They sometimes describe themselves as poets, yet they often become trapped in words and language: val ons vas in woorde en taal.
The song closes with a description of Drikus’ sudden death—toe val jy weg—with half a farewell and a question mark on your face. Andries asks whether Drikus still stumbles on the other side before asking him to pass on his regards to Louis Graham and Paul van der Zandt—the real-life figure immortalised by Drikus on the band’s second album, Terug in Skubbe.
It is fitting that the last word on the album belongs to Drikus Barnard. He built this remarkable album closer around an extended monorhyme, reinforced by occasional internal rhyme, near-rhyme and repeated variations on the -ein/-yn sound.
“Rym” is unmistakably a Drikus tale that is, in a way, autobiographical—especially when he refers to himself as a skugter digter (“shy poet”) in a literary desert. His ability to rhyme—in contrast to his struggles with subjects such as mathematics—caused his peers to belittle him and undermine his attempts to develop and excel at this gift.
Starting with the song’s recurring refrain, he sings that this town is enclosed by nostalgia—or, more literally, fenced in by longing or nostalgia:
Hierdie dorp is met heimwee omhein.
He mentions rotten maize in the silos and tuberculosis in the mine. This recalls the opening track, in which he sings about the town being surrounded by mine dumps, far from the ocean.
The devil has taken Jesus’ place in the wine, resulting in a brawl at a wedding that causes the police to clear the hall. Jesus’ place in the wine refers to the biblical account of Christ turning water into wine at a wedding.
The nostalgia takes us to a moment before sunrise, showcasing the young Drikus’ poetic ability as he sings about how the dark day pleaded while the sun still had to decide whether she wanted to shine. By then, he was already wide awake, with words from the Afrikaans language flowing into his brain—even before the windows had misted up, the kettle had whistled like a train, or they had eaten rusks with coffee or bitten into marmalade toast.
He thinks back to a time when he used to smoke on the sly—skelm gesigaret het—and how the radio reported that a family had disappeared into a giant sinkhole. This is likely a reference to the Oosthuizen family, whose house disappeared into a massive sinkhole while they were asleep. Even though this happened in 1964, five years before Drikus’ birth, he would no doubt have been aware of the incident as a young boy growing up in a gold-mining community.
The radio has Constable Elias, the first responder to the scene, on the line. He has to admit that the training he and his team had received did not prepare them for a tragedy such as this. The policeman’s initial bravery, involving a rope and torch, quickly subsides as the hole proves too wide, deep and dark, and the enthusiasm for the search begins to fade.
Drikus closes the song and the album by mentioning that the café does not stock John Rolfe cigarettes, so now he has to smoke Rembrandt van Rijn. He breaks the fourth wall towards the end of the song with a final piece of wordplay. He sings that the dogs are singing the koortjie, while he merely helps with the refrein—two near-synonyms in Afrikaans, with refrein fitting neatly into the song’s extended monorhyme. He adds that he could still have used a sentence somewhere in the song ending with the word pyn (“pain”). He effectively does exactly that, as it becomes the final word we hear Drikus sing on a BMRO album. This echoes a comment Andries made at Drikus’ memorial: there were still many songs in Drikus’ head that he believed he would one day share with the world, but never had the chance to.
Hadedas calling in the background, accompanied by a solitary cough from Drikus and bells tolling in the distance, provide a fitting backdrop to the album closer. It is hard not to recall Drikus singing earlier that some of us leave this world coughing and coughing as the bells continue to toll in the distance.
A final note on the album cover: four hadedas sit on a tennis-court fence behind a hedge. The photograph was taken by Andries in Judith Street in Observatory, Johannesburg, and was chosen as the album cover after the band had considered using images of a church or cemetery. Andries joked that practically every South African recording needs a reference to the noisy birds, since almost every vocal track recorded in the country has a hadeda in the background.
Upon the release of the album’s first single, “Getrou aan die Wit Baksteengebou”, Andries mentioned that it would soon be followed by “Duiwelsbrood” before the full album’s release on 28 January 2022. He proudly announced Bazaar Punk as BMRO’s fourth—and probably final—album.
Thankfully, this proved not to be the case, as the band—albeit without Drikus Barnard and Louis Graham—released its fifth studio album, Strate Sonder Bome, in 2023. As of August 2026, reliable rumours suggest that a sixth BMRO album is already in the works.
Bazaar Punk is dedicated to Louis Graham and Drikus Barnard—the two band members whose lives helped shape BMRO and whose deaths ultimately led to the album’s completion.
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