It’s June 16 in Soweto, a massive township outside Johannesburg, South Africa. The date is the annual commemoration of the notorious 1976 student uprising against the Apartheid regime’s education policies, which left more than 100 people dead at the hands of the riot police. We’re in Dobsonville, one of Soweto’s suburbs, at a four-way intersection filled with upwards of 2,000 Sowetans in various states of inebriation and celebration. Traffic pushes through the crowd where it can, until word gets out about the event and it slows to a trickle of brave or urgent souls.

The wintry sun is setting over the traffic lights that wink green-orange-red vainly, as the first gusheshe (that’s slang for the BMW 325i) starts spinning in the small circle-gap left open by the crowd. Flashes of sparks from its rims coruscate in the rapidly darkening air. The gusheshe spins and twists and roars in figure-eight patterns across the tarmac, throwing doughnuts and powerslides, cutting swathes, leaving bushels of rubber scattered. Every second or third powerslide takes the tail swinging towards the spectators, who dodge with practiced ease. Whenever there’s a long enough lull in movement, they rush forward, piling onto the car, trying to touch the driver, until he takes off again. A woman is knocked over in this fashion; about an hour later, four or five people are sent flying in the scramble to avoid a particularly reckless slide.

Every now and then, the passenger door will open and its occupant will clamber out, hanging backwards with his head a few inches off the ground, or through the window, to run along the side keeping hold of the roaring, revolving car. There are a few marshals in plainclothes walking around with sjamboks (bullwhips), but at a certain point the crowd becomes simply uncontainable -- the atmosphere of youth and revolt, the heady scent of 16 June, has taken over.

It’s basically a huge street party, billed as Mphephetho. During breaks in the spinning, the punters breakdance or groove to the kwaito house music burbling from a house on the corner of the road. Two shebeens (unlicensed liquor traders) operate down the road, keeping the masses supplied with booze. The event is organized via social media by a spinning crew called Sakhi Spirit. By 7 p.m., when we’re plunged into a frosty Jozi winter’s eve, it is absolutely packed. Those in front push back to avoid a spinning gusheshe, and those at the back push forward to see. Many more stand on the hoods of their cars, or climb onto whatever surface is available. The atmosphere is electric, turbulent, swaying with a lurching abandon.

A gunshot rings out into the night -- I gaspingly realize it is only a tire bursting. The crowd goes even wilder; popping tires is part of the game. Once you’re spinning on a rim, you’re done; you’ve proved yourself for the night. The spinners drive for one minute to five, the longest even 20, depending on what their car can handle. They prefer old tires, buying them secondhand with worn-down treads or simply using the ones they’ve yet to burst.

June 16 in Soweto. Pierre Rommelaere

It’s known simply as “spinning.” It’s not drifting -- more a sub-genre of it, if that. Spinners hit no more than 60 kph (around 37 mph) in most instances, and there is no track, or competition, other than that for street cred and bragging rights. At this level, on the streets, where it is illegal, where it was birthed, it is primal, pure and bears many of the hallmarks of its crime-tainted origins in the '80s: an exhibition, a no-holds-barred celebration at the cusp between life and death, where tsotsis (gangsters) would steal cars and spin them at fallen comrades’ funerals. This developed into a common street sport, until the noughties came round.

The preferred models in the early days were the 5- and 7-series BMWs. These days, the most popular car is a BMW 3-series, the 325i, albeit one generally fitted with a 5- or 7-series engine. Truthfully, most rear-wheel drive cars can be spun, but the gusheshe has the right balance and image. Chevys, Fords, even Nissan Skylines have all made the grade, but the gusheshe, named for the sound its revving engine makes, has stood the test of time. A BMW 325i might be cheap second-hand (R20,000, or roughly $1,640), but many spinners will spend more than half of that again to repair engines due to the original’s scarcity. The sport gets very expensive very quickly; consequently, most spinners have day jobs affiliated with cars in some way, even the celebrities. On average, they won’t earn more than $300 at a legitimate, regulated event.

Although the same kind of reckless automotive exhibitionism can now be found in many places around southern Africa, including Zimbabwe and Swaziland, its origins are most probably Sowetan. Every second spinner will tell you that they were the first to jump from the car while it was still moving, but there’s no real certainty. What is for certain is how adept people have become at it -- spinning videos are rife on the Web, almost unbelievable footage of spinners hanging from open doors, balancing on roofs while the car doughnuts maniacally, getting out, busting a few moves and then forcing themselves back into the thrashing car. They use bicycle chains to lock the steering wheel in place, or have a co-driver or partner who takes over the wheel.

And with its proliferation came celebrity status -- names like Jeff James, Magesh Ndaba and Ngamshi hold great public sway in Soweto. Some events specifically exclude celebrity spinners in order to attract those who wish to attend “for the love of the sport.” It’s an indication of the growing gulf between the purists and the progressives, a gulf that has come to define the transitional nature of the sport in its difficult teething years from street to stadium.

Buying and outfitting a BMW for spinning can get expensive quickly -- and in that respect, spinning is exactly like every other motorsport. Pierre Rommelaere

By no means is spinning an underground, clandestine activity -- local car specialty mags run regular features -- but neither is it able to be separated completely from its origins.

It’s been about seven years since the push for legitimization and its subsequent debate at the grassroots was sparked. Pule Earm is a filmmaker and spinning promoter who describes himself as the link between spinners and the broader public. For Earm, there has to be a way to maintain the adrenal rush, the stunts, the ridiculous flouting of survival instincts, yet keep spectators safe and eradicate any and all criminal implications. To this end, he’s founded Soweto Drift, an association of spinners and spinning role-players dedicated to furthering the activity as a legitimate and safe sport. There are two spinning stories, according to him -- the illegal one, and the legal one, the latter being the recently added chapter which Earm is endeavoring to author. He’s not exactly disdainful of the purists, the street-spinners; just exasperated.

Many of the spinners we met at the Dobsonville event admit, to us at least, that they’d rather spin in a safe environment. They want to spin, but to spin safely, they need the facilities. To gain the facilities, they need funding, state subsidization, certification and permission. Global executive power lies with the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, which recognizes only one governing body in most countries, South Africa’s being Motorsport SA. MSA has a stringent checklist of safety precautions and other proclivities which must be met for licensing to be granted; Earm was the first to organize such an event in Soweto in 2010, one where MSA officials were present. He was met with hostility by the spinning old-guard, who came to the event “guns blazing” in anger at the upstart who sought to “exploit” the sport.

Earm says that many of those have now come over to his side, though -- several of the big names, in fact. But there are still those who resist, and Earm says that he sometimes fears for his life. The sport does have its roots in gangsterism, after all, and although Soweto is far from the crime-ridden mess it was under Apartheid, criminal elements remain. The manner in which spinning is done, and certain modifications to cars, are statutorily illegal under the National Road Traffic Act 93 of 1996. Most spinners and Earm are quick to downplay the fact that chop-shops seem a perfect fit with a sport that’s all about beating up your car and living on the edge of the law. In their view, the sport is fast on the way to complete disassociation from its roots -- which is precisely why it could be understood that some of the old-guard are so dissatisfied.

Events in sanctioned venues is probably the future, but it can be a tough sell for old-school street spinners. Pierre Rommelaere

Evidence of this progression is found at places like Wheels and Smoke in Alberton, 10 minutes away from Soweto. Here there are stands, barriers, paramedics and marshals. Though proceedings remain highly informal, the event, held every Thursday evening, is evidently safe. The owner of Wheels and Smoke is Monde Hashe, a land surveyor by profession. He pays the spinners, and holds them to strict standards in their private lives with regards to public spinning. The place has been running for two and a half years now. Hashe is in favour of legalizing the sport, but is not as enthusiastic as Earm. It feels almost like he’s afraid of that ultimate cliché: selling out. Hashe is working with MSA, for now, because he has no other choice. But he’s not completely happy -- he doesn’t feel that there is a reciprocal relationship of trust, but refuses to expand further. He says that he knows many of his friends will “always feel better in the streets,” and that gangsterism hasn’t been completely eradicated, although he stresses the fact that nothing of that sort happens in any of the legitimate spheres of spinning.

Thursday nights at Wheels and Smoke sees an average of 300 to 500 people through the door, with attendance in the thousands not uncommon. The sport is wildly popular, and growing every day. Renting the venue, as a promoter, to host your own event, will cost you the equivalent of about $2,900 -- a steep price when you still have to pay the spinners, the officials and the overheads. This is another reason why spinning is still rife in suburban streets, and the reason Sakhi Spirit gave for their toy-toy (protest) in Dobsonville: there aren’t sufficient facilities. Wheels and Smoke is one of very few up to scratch. Why drive to Alberton when the spinning takes place right in front of your house in Soweto?

The dichotomies of spinning are apparent everywhere you look, in everything its practitioners and promoters say. Earm sees spinning as a unifier, an everyman’s game that brings together different colors and creeds. South Africa is a country with a massive car culture, though like most everything else here, that culture is divided down racial lines. But as the sport progresses, gaps like these are filled and bridged.

Skop As is a young white guy who speaks fluent Zulu; he spins a gusheshe with a V8 engine. He’s employed by Hashe and refuses to spin illegally after a serious injury falling from a spinning car in 2013, losing a friend to a car accident and spending too much time in a jail cell for it. He’s only 25, born a scant four years before democracy. “Drifting is from Tokyo. Spinning… it’s ours.” What he means when he says “ours” is less apparent than the universal love of the sport.

Earm has big plans for opening a venue in Soweto very soon, a legitimized one that he wants to use to bring spinning in line with other motorsports in the country. Considering its wild popularity, it’s safe to say that support won’t die down. What’s also apparent is that illegal spinning won’t die out completely, either. With the push for legitimization gaining ground every day, it’s hard to see a future for the old-guard. Guys like As and his crew represent the face of what’s to come, the merging of the worlds; what’s happening at Wheels and Smoke feels like both an end and a beginning.

A spinner brings the smoke to a sanctioned, organized (at least compared to what happens on the streets) Wheels and Smoke event. Pierre Rommelaere

A young man comes flying past, his eyes wide and his tongue lashing at the cold air, as all but his right arm hangs outside a BMW as it powerslides within an arm’s length of the safety barrier. He’s probably too young to remember why his forebears did this in the first place. But in his eyes, in his driver’s every slide, remains the intrinsic, unspoken spark that ignited the tsostis of yore -- the spark that drives us to dance with death when the world has lost meaning, the spark of change, that doesn't need to be uncaged to make a mark.

In whichever form it eventually takes, spinning is here to stay -- and to stay as alluringly dangerous as ever.

Pierre Rommelaere

Karl Kemp is a 23-year-old law student and freelance journalist based in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Picking up the art of photography in 2011, Pierre Rommelaere, 23, has covered a wide variety of genres including music, landscapes, portraits and candid photography. When not behind the lens, Pierre enjoys reading and philosophy, and is a fan of live music and the nightlife.

This story originally appeared in Autoweek's 30 & Under issue -- download a copy for free today.

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