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Torture as a spectator sport?

Why has the human race stopped using this tried and trusted method for punishing perpetrators who have committed heinous crimes? Yes, I’m talking about that old favourite of our forebears: Torture.

Now, before you do your crappy-in-the-nappy thing, hear me out.

During the Middle Ages, torture was quite a popular spectator sport in the UK and Europe. It was right up there with sacking, plundering, pillaging, looting, burning, and raping.

In South Africa today, torture is against the Law. However, sacking, plundering, pillaging, looting, burning, and raping, have a large number of adherents amongst our people. And we’ve even added a few new items to the list: throwing poo, stoning cars, blocking roads, and burning tyres. Pick up any newspaper, or watch the news on TV, and you’ll see what I mean.

But, be that as it may, nothing discourages a would-be criminal more than the thought of being tortured if caught.

The Spanish Inquisitors had torture down to a fine art. They had methods and devices that could make the toes of even the blood-thirstiest spectator curl with pleasure.

The Torture Methods:

Bone breaking, Chinese water torture, listening to Steve Hofmeyr, blinding, boiling, scalping, listening to Steve Hofmeyr, branding, flaying, listening to Steve Hofmeyr, castration, force-feeding, listening to Steve Hofmeyr, denailing, tooth extraction, etc. Oh, and listening to Steve Hofmeyr.

And the Torture Devices:

The Rack, Iron Maiden, Tongue Shredder, RSG, Brazen Bull, Eskom, Idols, Instep Borer, Big Brother, Thumbscrews, Afrikaans is Groot Festival, Skull Crusher, and many, many, more mouthwatering devices.

But, just to give you an idea of what we are missing, let me tell you a story about a guy named Guy Fawkes. (Actually, “Guy” is pronounced “Ghee,” in French.) So this story is about a ghee named Ghee. Or a ghee named Guy, or whatever.

To make a long story short, Guy, or Ghee, or whatever – together with some other English ghees – plotted to blow up Parliament House with gunpowder.

The conspiracy was discovered, and Fawkes was arrested along with three of his fellow maplotters. Fawkes was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered (HDQ).

Now this is where the plot thickens. Not many people seem to know what it means to be “hanged, drawn, and quartered.” It wasn’t fun. Let me tell you:

(Pissies and sissies, close your ears and eyes, and leave the room. Now!)

To be hanged, drawn, and quartered, was a statutory penalty in England (from 1351 to 1870) for men convicted of high treason. Convicts were dragged on the ground behind a horse from prison to the place of execution. There, they were first hanged (almost to the point of death, but not quite), then circumnavigated and penalised (their penises were cut off), disemboweled, beheaded, and had their remains quartered (chopped into four pieces).

Their remains were then scattered far and wide across the country – making it extremely difficult, even for the best British physicians of the day, to put their body parts together again. (Although they were partially successful with Keith Richards who later played lead guitar for the Rolling Stones.)

Note: For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were never hanged, drawn, and quartered. It would have been inhumane. Instead, they were slow-roasted at the stake, over a pleasantly warm fire, until well-done.

But back to our story:

On the day an HDQ sentence was to be carried out, the peasants, dressed in their finest rags, would gather at the main square in the village CBD. Free popcorn, ice cream, KFC, ANC T-shirts, and *Cock Ale, would be distributed. (Along with promises of free houses, jobs, electricity, and education.)

Filthy little street urchins would be hoisted up on their parents’ shoulders. Rats, old hags, chickens, mongrel dogs, wenches, louts, lice, and other vermin, would be trampled into the mud and muck on the ground as the locals tussled to get ringside seats at the scaffold.

The very air would be aquiver in anticipation. (“Very air?” Where the hell did that come from, Sakkie? Never mind…)

The cloppity-cloppity-clop of the horse’s hooves, and the bloodcurdling screams from the convict being dragged up to the finish line, would mark the beginning of the day’s entertainment – much like the referee’s whistle at the start of a modern-day sporting event.

And then the Torture Show would begin…

So what happened to Guy Fawkes?

On the 31st of January 1606, Guy Fawkes’ fellow plotters were all HDQ. Fawkes was the last man to take the stand on the scaffold. In a strong voice, he addressed the crowd: “Hear ye! Hear ye! Can you all hear me there at the back? Good. **Ek wys julle ‘n nool!”

With that, he leaped off the scaffold, and broke his neck.

The crowd went wild! They wanted their money back.

“Pay back the money! Pay back the money!” they shouted. Only to be klapped with a flat ignore from the Powers That Be – just like our people, when they wanted the money back from the most unscrupulous “leader” this country has ever seen.

Now be honest. Wouldn’t you also like to see a couple of our local “peppa traytas” sentenced to a good old fashioned HDQ show on Church Square?

I certainly would.

Epilogue: Guy Fawkes’ lifeless body was nevertheless quartered and, as was the custom, his body parts were distributed to the “four corners of the Kingdom.” He was never reassembled.

*How to make Cock Ale (This is a genuine recipe from a book published in 1742, by Eliza Smith: The Compleat Housewife. I kid you not.)

“Take your large cock, the older the better; and ten gallons of ale, parboil the cock, flay him, and stamp him in a stone mortar till his bones are broken (you must craw and gut him when you flay him); then put the cock into two quarts of sack, and put it to three pounds of raisins of the sun stoned, some blades of mace, and a few cloves; put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has done working, put the ale and bag together into a vessel; in a week or nine days time bottle it up; fill the bottle but just above the neck, and give the same time to ripen as other ale.”

**Ek wys julle ‘n nool! – From the Russian: I’m showing you a “dulya!” (Look it up.)

PS       Some material used here was garnered from Wikipedia. No animals were (seriously) injured during the writing of this episode, i.e. chickens, mongrels, louts, lice, rats, and roosters. Most of them can still walk. After a fashion.

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