The author of the following factual material does not wish his name to be published. Since so little seems to be known about South African Judicial Caning, Stephan Kay thought it was important that this material be published. Please note that this is NOT the story of Stephan Kay's experiences, but of those of a South African man who wishes to be anonymous.
BY AN ANONYMOUS SOUTH AFRICAN MAN, AS TOLD TO STEPHAN KAY, REVISED to include answers to readers' questions (Part 1):
MY FIRST JUDICIAL CANING AT AGE 12 [1944]
My first judicial caning was a quite mild, 'little boy' hiding for shooting out street lamps.
My parents had gone away for a few days and left me in the charge of my older sister. She was busy with her boyfriend, however, and didn't pay much attention to what I was doing. On Thursday night I slipped out with my friend Jimmy, also aged 12. Jimmy and I went out in black navy T-shirts and running shorts in aid of invisibility, [forgetting that long, lightly tanned legs would be a dead give-away] and bare feet, for speed and mobility - big mistake on uneven surfaces and in the dark. We had some fun shooting out street lamps with our sling shots. Eventually we were caught by a policeman, who took us down to the local station. My sister was informed. We spent that night in a cell. The next morning, Friday, we were brought before the 'Beak' (A Magistrate or Justice of the Peace). He bawled us out. He reminded us that it was wartime (1944, Second World War), there were shortages of everything, so destroying public property which was hard to replace was a serious offence. By the time he finished yelling at us, we were both crying. He sentenced us each to be given four "cuts". "Cuts" was simply the slang name which was used for the strokes that made up any juvenile beating [school or judicial], whether on hands or backside.
We spent the rest of the rest of the day in our cell, and at 3.45 pm a policeman came to get us. We were then taken to the bathroom, and told to relieve ourselves. After that we were taken to the cell where the canings took place. We were still barefoot, dirty and in tatty clothes as it was summer and that was how we had slipped out the previous night. We were told to take off our trousers and underpants, and put them on the floor next to the wall of the cell. My friend Jimmy refused. The policeman simply told him that if he refused to take his pants off, they would take them off by force, and then leave him to be the last one to be caned, so he would have to stand there in his bare bum the whole time while everybody else was being caned, and watch them suffering before his turn came. So he took his pants off. Our shirts both happened to be very short, just about hip length, with the result that when our pants came off we were effectively naked from the waist down and everything was on view.
Each of the boys to be caned was examined by a doctor, who checked for hernias, and listened to his heart. After all the boys had been examined and approved, the caning began. They started with the smallest boys, so Jimmy got it first and me next.
The caning was given with you lying flat on a bench. One policeman held your hands, and another your feet, so you couldn't move around and try to avoid getting the cuts. Jimmy's four cuts made him yell and cry, because a hiding always hurt him a lot more than me. When they let him get up, he immediately ran over and pulled his underpants and trousers on. He was always quite a shy kid.
I got my cuts in the same way, but it wasn't too bad and only made me yell the one time when the cane got me right where my bum and my legs joined.
After me there were two big boys to be caned. Both the two big boys had ordinary 'tail' shirts on, which kept their bits and pieces covered except while the doctor was busy with them, until they had to go and lie on the bench, when the back tail was pulled up to make their bums bare for the stick and I got a good look at the rest of their equipment as well.
When I got up I was so interested in watching the next boy get caned that I forgot that I was half naked and that my front and my bright red bum were in full view. This kid was about 16 years old, and I got very excited watching him and the next, even bigger boy, who was black, get it. I had an erection the whole time they were being caned. They were caned a lot harder than we were. The first one got six and the other one eight and it made both their bums bleed quite a bit, mostly where the marks crossed. Only after watching their canings did I put my own clothes back on.
After all the canings were finished, we were allowed to go home. My sister fetched Jimmy and me by car after we had been thrashed. We weren't too sore. Even Jimmy could see that they hadn't hit us nearly as hard as they could have.
My parents came back on Sunday night, but neither my sister nor I told them about what I had done or how I had been punished. Only years later did I tell them about it. They were quite shocked!
By the way, Jimmy and I both got six of the best with the strap on our hands on Monday, for 'bunking' (not coming to school) on Friday. That hurt me, at any rate, far more than the four with the cane on my bare bum had done.
MY SECOND JUDICIAL CANING AT AGE 16 [1948]
My second caning was when I was nearly 17. I had simply driven a car, perfectly competently, but without having a driver's license [I was only 16], got caught through sheer carelessness, couldn't pay my fine, didn't dare let my folks find out and so bunked school to go to Court and to beg the 'beak' to give me cuts instead of the fine. I had a battle, but he did agree and gave me 7, but during the morning tea break a young policeman had teased me by saying I would probably get 15 which he said was the maximum you could get, so I was quite relieved. It still turned out to be a bit more than I had bargained for. This was because I had done something that wasn't really 'caneable', but I had literally sat up and begged for 'cuts' instead of a (quite small, but, to me, nevertheless unpayable) fine, so I was given a really good hiding, as much for my cheek as anything else. I discovered later on that the 'Beak' had intended to let me go with a warning until I became so persistent; talk about shooting yourself in the foot!!
Once again I was placed in a cell to wait for my hiding later that day. When that same policeman came to take me to the caning cell, he teased me the whole time about how they were going to thrash all the skin off my bum for my nonsense. Before coming over to the court, I had been so worried about what I was doing that I clean forgot about wearing a long shirt. I had smuggled 'civvies' over to my pal's house and unthinkingly changed out of my 'school' shirt, with its long, flapping tails, which would have preserved my modesty quite nicely, and into one of those short-sleeved, square-bottomed sports shirts which was of just 'tuck-in' length, not even reaching the top of the patch of hair above my _c_o_c_k_. So, again, once I had to take my pants off, my whole mid-section was bare and that time I not only had a lot more to show, but it was as stiff as a poker most of the time, which was bloody embarrassing, to start with, anyway.
As I remember, four other kids got it with me that day, all smaller than me, so I went last that time. That meant that I didn't pay nearly as much attention to their hidings as I would have if mine had been over already and I don't remember catching more than a couple of glimpses of quite small hard- and software until, of course, they were stretched out, bare bum, on the bench, when length of shirt ceased to matter, as it was pulled up, anyway.
It was very embarrassing because I got an erection, which we called "the horn", and it lasted the whole time. Once again there were spectators of both _s_e_x_es and there was nothing I could do to hide my stiff _c_o_c_k_. This never worried me the first time, but it sure did the second!!
The caning hurt so much and cut my bum to ribbons to such an extent that I STILL don't know if I won or lost that case. After being released I had to ride home – standing up on my bicycle's pedals the whole way. I had to change my clothes at a friend's before I could go home for supper.
However, it was worth it to me and I've still got 'my' cane, which I swiped before cycling home, so it wasn't really TOOOO bad.
Q. IN WHAT YEARS WAS CANING DONE?
It was done in the (then) Union of South Africa, until the early 1990's. "Cuts" was simply the generic name which was used for the strokes that made up ANY hiding (at school or judicial) on the hands or backside; "lashes" was reserved for strokes with the "cat" on a convict's (always bare) back.
Q. HOW DO I KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT IT?
I spent 18 months in charge of some Court holding cells attached to a VERY busy juvenile court many years ago (early 1950s), when bare-arse caning was almost the punishment of choice for the steady stream of teen and sub-teen Juvenile Delinquents (JDs) that passed through the courts. In that time I must have thrashed literally hundreds of bare backsides, in doses ranging from 3 to 10 cuts.
Having been caned twice myself, I had decided that I wanted to be one of the policemen who did the caning. One reason was that I wanted to be sure that it was done properly, and not cruelly (with blood drawn) as had been done to me at age 16. But also – I admit - I quite deliberately wangled the job for myself because I wanted some of the action that had turned me on so much a few years earlier, and thought that it would be fun to have an endless supply of bare bums to tan as hard as I liked.
Q. WAS THERE A CEREMONY?
There was NO 'ceremony'. When the District Surgeon arrived, all the kids who were going to get the cane were herded into a big cell. There they all had to get bare bum and go for a quick medical check-up. After that they lined up. All that was said was the kid's name and how many cuts he was going to get. Each boy, when his name was called, went forward to lie flat on a bench with his shirt pulled up to his ribs and his tail naked for the cane. Only the cop with the cane, and probably the kid himself, kept score. I know I did, when it was my bum that was being thrashed.
Q. WHAT KIND OF A CANE WAS USED?
The 'light' canes used on juveniles were between 2'6" (75 cm) and 3' (90 cm) long and just under three-eighths of an inch (one cm) thick. They were kept pickled in a solution of salt water and vinegar so they were quite supple and stung like hell. The tips WERE carefully rounded off because when you hit hard, as we had to, the tip often whips round and bites in to the kid's side anyway, so if it had sharp edges it would have cut the bare bums up very badly. Anyway, we tried not to do more damage than absolutely necessary; it was sore enough without mangling the poor kids' arses.
The canes were mostly malacca, but smooth bamboo or rattan was also used; however, malacca was the most durable and, when wet, packed a really nasty sting on a bare bum.
Q. DID THE BOYS CRY?
Funnily enough, the under-13 brigade mostly took their hidings more quietly than the 'big' boys; maybe their bums were more in practice from being caned at home or in school? It almost seemed to be a point of honour for the 11 and 12-year olds, not to yell, but then, again, that only applied to the 'white' kids; the 'black' cultures award NO prizes for not letting on if you get hurt.
Q. WAS BLOOD DRAWN BY THE CANING?
It did quite often happen that, in the course of a juvenile judicial caning, particularly of six 'cuts' or more, that blood was drawn here and there, but I wouldn't say that the strokes 'cut' the skin, in the sense of leaving long open weals across the cheeks; it was rather where the tip of the cane dug in or, perhaps, if two stripes overlapped. Speaking for myself and for all my colleagues with whom I have ever discussed this point, we always did our best NOT to carve the kids' tails up - there is no art in making mincemeat of a bare bum with a soaking wet cane, but there IS in giving a JD a memorable dose of really sharp pain down there without HURTING (i. e., injuring) him more than is unavoidable.
E. g., in some cells you had to 'buk' [bend over], but I always made the kid lie flat on a bench, so I could give him his hiding in more or less equal doses from both sides, especially if he was getting 6 or more, so as to avoid bruising one cheek, only, to 'blistering' point or leaving it raw. I also NEVER gave 'DIAGONALS' (which ALWAYS break the skin at the intersections of the stripes). 'FOLLOW-THROUGH' whacks (see Q. WHAT WERE THE DIFFERENT WAYS OF HITTING WITH THE CANE? below) were VERY rarely inflicted and then only in very bad or 'subsequent offence' cases involving 'late' teens, as they usually peel strips of skin off a bare tail if the thrashing is at all 'serious', as those always were.