Darling, November 29, 1972, By Angela Malan

All hell was breaking loose. Bombs were exploding, machinegun bullets were splatting against the wall – and in the precarious shelter of a shrapnel-scarred villa, South African singer Zona Visser was keeping body and soul together with cabbage and a small packet of dehydrated potato.

She’s a pretty little blonde with a warm smile on her lips and a mischievous flutter to her long eyelashes. And she has a backbone of tempered steel.
She has needed it since she decided 10 years ago that she wanted to sing, and singing was going to take her around the world. Now 29, South African singer Zona Visser is a bright star in the cabaret business and she has achieved her ambition of seeing everything – or almost everything – in the whole wide world.
She has sung in 35 different countries. Now she has switched to comedy and is obviously equally successful in that because as female lead in Adam Leslie’s latest satirical revue, Sweet Fanny Adams, she and her co-stars Mel Miller and Edward and Raymond Davies are packing them in at the Leslie Theatre.
But how does a girl go about reaching the top in a tough career like cabaret singing?
Zona must have been born determined because life in a small town like Springs, and a convent education, don’t always provide a petite blonde with the toughness to fight her way through places like Vietnam and the equally difficult concrete jungles. Music was definitely in her blood and after matriculating at Springs Convent she completed her final exams in classical piano at Trinity College, London, and the Royal School of Music, as well as with the University of South Africa.
But even then she still wasn’t sure what she wanted to do – certainly nothing mundane as teaching music. She worked as private secretary to the Director of Civil Aviation at Jan Smuts for two years and then became a ground hostess for a year.
But the musical itch was always there, so during this time she started singing with various bands like those of Archie Silansky and Baleson brothers.
She worked up her own cabaret act, and then she got her first big break with a performance that pleased the crowds at Durban’s Edward Hotel. Her second break was when she recorded Suki Yaki and it not only hit the South African charts, it also featured in Holland and France.
And then came her biggest break when the top London agent Nat Berlin came to South Africa with Marlene Dietrich, heard Zona sing, and told her to look him up if ever she went to London.
She did go to London and she did look him up, and within three weeks she was working at top nightspots like the Celebrity, the Astor, and Murray’s Cabaret Club. From the West End she went touring and worked in major clubs all over Britain as well as being included in the Frank Ifield show in the Winter Garden Theatre in Bournemouth.
Britain was not enough for Zona – when she said she wanted to see the world she really meant it. Nat Berlin used to fix her up with work permits that ran for six months at a stretch, so every time one came to an end he would book her somewhere on the Continent. Naples, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Germany, France, Majorca, Crete – you name the place or country and she has sung there. She even flew over to Paris to appear on the supporting bill with Bill Haley and his Comets while touring Europe when rock’n’roll was making it big.
She had seen Europe so she went off to Australia for three months and the three months turned into eight. Then it was New Zealand, back to Australia, to Noumea, New Caledonia and Tahiti, and then a Far East stint with trips to Japan, Okinawa, Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.
For many years she lived out of a suitcase, happily, energetically, and very successfully. “Sure there was danger,” she says, “But generally it was a ball.”
The danger…that was when she entertained American troops in Vietnam, the only South African entertainer ever to be sponsored by the United States Government for that tour.
Saigon, the civilian capital of South Vietnam, was bustling and gay with thousands of Vietnamese celebrating their Lunar New Year. Zona leaned from the window of the villa in which she had been staying since her arrival the previous week, enjoying the fresh air and surveying the colorful scene.
A truck piled high with exotic flowers came weaving through the heaps of vegetables and floral tributes to Buddha. The driver grinned and waved, and underneath the brilliant blooms, unnoticed by the celebrating crowds, lay a suicide squad of a dozen Vietcong armed with machine guns and grenades. Their target was the American embassy, within sight of Zona’s villa.
For three days the Vietnamese had been exploding fire crackers in the belief that the more crackers they let off and the more pink cracker papers left lying outside their front door, the more good luck they would have.
The noise was deafening, along with the happy screams and yells of the celebrating Vietnamese. War or no war, they were enjoying themselves.
A new, regular beat added itself to the din echoing through the midnight scene. It was as if someone had dropped a light into a whole box of crackers and they were exploding rapidly in succession. Still the crowds shouted and yelled greetings, still the war seemed far away.
But the war was not far away. Suddenly it was there, in the middle of Saigon, and the yells of joy changed abruptly to screams of fear and pain. Even now no one knew exactly what was happening.
Zona still leaned on her window ledge, not knowing what was happening. But not for long! Fifty meters from her window something landed with a thud, rolled a short way, and set the night alight.
A hand grenade! Zona dived for the floor, rolled under her bed and lay there, shaking.
It was the start of the famous Tet Offensive when an unsuspecting Saigon came under its most dangerous Vietcong attack yet, and the attack was to last two weeks.
The following night the Vietcong sent in another suicide squad to attack a South Vietnamese training camp, and the battle raged on while Zona and her fellow entertainers huddled together in the villa. She was to come out of it in one piece, but seven kilograms lighter. The only food they had for two weeks was Chinese tea, a little packet of powdered potato, and cabbage! They ate cabbage boiled, cabbaged fried, and cabbage stewed, until despite their hunger, the thought of cabbage made them ill.
Their only means of talking to the outside world, the telephone, was cut off, and the batteries in their single radio began to go flat until they were scared to use it for anything except to pick up news bulletins. But they were luckier than most – at least they had a spare tank of water and a gas cooker.
But Zona hadn’t got to her position in the entertainment world by being namby-pamby. Instead of crying at her predicament she slipped on her yellow bikini and crawled on to the flat roof to make the best of a bad job and at least get a sun tan while she couldn’t do anything else. She didn’t dare stand up for fear of collecting a stray bullet, but lying there she watched the American helicopters bombing houses that had been taken over by Vietcong, and waved at the occassional low-flying pilot.
At the end of the two weeks she weighed 43kg, but she had the best tan she had ever achieved. She was also a nervous wreck and wanted one thing – OUT. And even on the way out they ran into trouble because between Saigon and the airport they drove slap bang right into the middle of an ambush. However, after the Saigon fighting, that was a minor skirmish and they just took cover until it was all over.
Bubbling bright Zona hadn’t finished with the Far East, despite her narrow escapes in Vietnam. Before flying back to South Africa in 1970 she worked at nightspots in Singapore and Seoul and then once again went entertaining American troops, this time in South Korea which was more peaceful than Vietnam.
Zona must like the army boys, because she hadn’t been back a year when she was off to entertain them again, although this time it was the lads of the South African Army and she had to go only as far as the Caprivi Strip to make them happy.
Where does a fireball like Zona get her incredible energy from? She averages about seven hours sleep a night, but she stays fit by going to dance lessons, rides horses, plays golf and swims whenever she can. And at the moment she’s on a fruit and vegetable health kick.
She’s enjoying theatre as a change from the cabaret work. “I like making people laugh,” she says and she loves laughing herself. “I find myself giggling at funny situations, people, anything.” It’s way below the giggle you find the steel, because making her own career and traveling on her own hasn’t always been easy. A single girl has to fight for her rights.
But right now she is happy and just wants to settle in her own flat and furnish it the way she wants after years in hotel rooms. She’d love to get married – some day.
Meanwhile the world is her oyster and the audience is loving her.