Go Well, Metal Moffie
Ironically, just when Cape Town is at it brightest, festooned in flags and festivity, the city has lost one of its most colourful citizens. Leonard Wichtman, Cape Town’s self-styled Metal Moffie, died suddenly in his sleep on 17 June.
Leonard & Gemma, circa 1993
Being an openly gay man from an Afrikaans family in the South Africa of the 1970s and ‘80s was not an easy lifestyle choice, and no doubt led Leonard to any number of potentially violent confrontations. Military service must have been, in one of his often-used Gay-lic expressions, ‘sheila’ in the extreme. But for the whole time I knew him, I don’t think he ever compromised or tried to hide his identity for anybody. Repeated call-ups to military camps led him to seek, if not political, at least cultural asylum in Amsterdam, where he ended up spending the next decade or so, studying and making art.
Back in post-liberation South Africa, Leonard’s penchant for piercings saw him become a well-known figure in Long Street and Greenpoint. Often dressed in black leather, he looked like some sort of piratical S&M biker baron. But behind his extravagant, multi-pierced persona and bristling, Dali-esque waxed mustachios was a gentle and incredibly compassionate individual.
He lived on little, and gave away much. While working in Bruce Tait’s antique shop at the bottom of Kloof Street, ‘Uncle Lenny’ would collect clothes for street kids, and money for homeless people to use to take a bath or a shower at Long Street Baths – and he’d watch with a pair of antique binoculars to make sure they did! He also organised Christmas parties for Aids orphans, something he said made him happier than anything else in his life.
Fittingly, Leonard’s funeral was anything but ordinary. According to his wishes, the wake began before the service, with mourners taking vodka shots from his coffin as he lay in state on the pool table of Bob’s Bar in Long Street.
No wonder the hearse arrived late at the Maitland Crematorium, the driver having apparently got lost along the way!
Leonard's famous tea parties often involved beer!
The service was a bizarre mix of pain, loss, gaiety and humour, underpinned by the thought of how furious Leonard would have been with a moping, mournful send-off. It ended with a lovely tribute from Zolani of Freshlyground, recounting how she had met Leonard for the first time, and concluding with a moving, unaccompanied version of ‘I’ll meet you at the river’.
Yes, Cape Town is a duller place without Leonard, and how sad he didn’t live to see the mass parade of orange-clad Dutchmen swarm up his beloved Long Street. He would have been in his element! But he has certainly brightened the lives and hearts of many, not only by his compassion, and his outrageous sense of humour, but above all through his refusal to compromise his right and his desire to live a joyous bohemian rhapsody of a life on his own terms.
Rest in pierce, Leonard. We love you.
WONDERFUL Post.thanks for share..more wait .. …
I only found out today( almost two years later) that Leonard passed on- we have neen friends in the 80’s in Pretoria and what fun we had! Also corresponded during his stay in Amsterdam. Looked him up regularly when I went to Cape Town (always found him in Church street at his “shop”) Will mis the knowingness that you are there- but will see you again my dear friend.