The Piper System Blog

Hi all

I wanted to put this up on the web site, which I will do, however I felt it was relevant to post as a blog. Japie Cilliers is one of our affiliates, an instructor in the Piper System (and many others) who knows has a rich history in the military, law enforcement and the martial arts. Even he has come under undeserved fire from elements in the local MA world. Japie is a great guy, as is his whole community of instructors and students. English is not Japie’s 1st language. Here’s Japie in his own words.

People may feel that because we are in Kimberley we are all country bumpkins. To begin dispelling that view, here is a short martial arts history of myself. First , I am not a sensei, shihan, guru, maha guru, fundi, or what ever, I am just Japie Cilliers, martial arts enthusiast. I have been doing martial arts for 51 years now, having started when I was 5 years old.

I have numerous ranks in different martial arts, all forming my own martial arts jigsaw.

• COMBAT KARATE - 7TH DAN
• TRADITIONAL OKINAWAN KARATE - 7TH DAN
• TOKUSHIMA BUDO INTERNATIONAL - 6TH DAN
• WAKO (KICKBOXING ) - 5TH DAN
• KODOKWAN JUJUTSU - 5TH DAN
• FILIPINO DOCE PARES - 4TH DEGREE

I am a certified and registered instructor in Goju Ryu karate (my instructor certificate was personally signed by Grandmaster Gogen Yamaguchi, 10th dan Hanshi).

I have the following teaching licences from the Tokushima Budo Council International - Renshi and Doshi.

I am a certified instructor of the Doce Pares International organization (certified by Grandmaster Dionisio Canete, 10th degree).

I am also a Piper instructor, having hosted Nigel and Lloyd on several occasions.

I am instructor registered in Kodokan Jujutsu, close quarter combat (SA).

I started studying Chinese Kuntao when I was 5 years old. When my instructor died his family moved back to Canada and Hawaii. He always told me to study as many arts as I can, and it must be a lifelong journey. I then started learning Judo from Sensei Norman Robinson. He used to travel to Kimberley on a Friday from Johannesburg, take classes on a Saturday and get back on the train to Johannesburg on Saturday night. I also started to train in Karate under James Roussouw sensei, who used to come from Bloemfontein to Kimberley every second Saturday morning. The biggest moment of my life came in 1962 when I graded to yellow belt in Karate. When James moved to Johannesburg I joined the JKA, later achieving my Shodan in front of the late great Enoeda Sensei.

I was then sent to the army at the Army Gymnasium at Heidelburg. At that stage it was an infantry junior leadership school. This changed my whole martial arts life, overnight. I first witnessed an unarmed vs knife demonstation by an ex Rhodesian named Captain Ben Mangels. This guy was out of this world, his knife system was like nothing I have ever seen. This sparked my interest in knife “fighting”, and then something happened which really changed my life - I was sent on a Hunter Group course for ten weeks.

Here I met a man who would change my whole way of thinking - Joe Grant-Grierson. He was the armed, unarmed and quick kill instructor and, like Ben Mangels, an ex Rhodesian. Joe had trained the Rhodesian SAS. We immediately found an ever-lasting friendship, which continues to this day. I still regard Joe as my mentor, teacher and Grandmaster. Joe is by far the best armed and unarmed instructor ever in South Africa, past and present.

The army then did me another great favour - they sent me to Mozambique to study Guerrilla Warfare with a guy by the name of Danny Roxo. An ex big game hunter turned terrorist hunter, he taught me the most valuable martial arts lessons of my life - survival. He taught me the value of a knife as a survival tool and not a weapon. I returned fom the army and continued my martial arts research, continuing my contact with my old instructors.

Later through my connections with Hawaii I managed to contact Dionisio Canette, this was about in 1979. Unfortunately South Africans were banned from the Philippines, so my instruction came via Super8 films, and by the periodic visits to Durban by a Filipino freighter. Usually I would get a letter long before hand, then I would catch the train to Durban. I would meet a Filipino who would show his method of training. I was fortunate, as I saw a lot of different systems. In 1989 I was set to go to the Philippines, but because of our policies of that time my visa was turned down although I was already an accepted Filipino student. It would only be in 1994, after election of the ANC government that I would have the opportunity to meet my Grandmaster.

This was a very tearful meeting. One thing that would stand out in my mind for ever is the double standard of teaching. Most foreigners would be taught one way, and the Filipinos another way. We were lucky we were taught the same way as the Filipino Instructors. I asked one of the seniors why we were taught different from the other foreigners, he then explained that unless you are accepted in the inner circle you would only be taught “El Tablio” - in other words for the table, show system. Only a handfull would be taught the “El Materdor” or fighting the bull, the real art. You must first prove yourself.

I was also very very fortunate again, in 1994 I spent a week on Badian Island in the Philippines with some of the greatest Filipino masters, who shared their knife techniques with me. Grandmasters Mamoy Canette,Tatang Illustrisimo, Itin Carin, Hortensio Navales, Richard Bustillo, Dong Cuesta, Siok Glariaga, Dionisio Canette.

I returned to South Africa and continued my research in the blade arts, even travelling to Kwazulu Natal, Swaziland, the Eastern Cape and Lesotho to study the different stick fighting methods of the various tribes (This was a very big eye opener).

Then on a fateful day a Sergeant Major of the Kimberley Regiment who was previously a warrant officer in the prison services in Cape Town told me of the gangs in Pollsmoor prison. He did a study on their methods and he mentioned their dangerous knife methods. It had no name, but he was aware of it. He then contacted old friends in the Prison services. I then heard of the names Nigel February and Lloyd De Jongh for the first time, and then the word ‘Piper’ started to appear - the name given to the collection of knife techniques used by inmates of Pollsmoor and the gangs of the Cape Flats by Nigel. But to get hold of them was a different matter. We battled for weeks,t hen a guy I know in Cape Town, Eric Peterman, who unknowingly mentioned that he was also a part of Piper, gave us a telephone number. It was actually at a Karate tournament that one of my students actually met them. He phoned me and a visit to Kimberley was arranged. Eventually the fateful day arrived. They arrived in Kimberley, they looked at us, we looked at them, both sides very sceptical of the other side. We started to share ideas, and when they left the Monday morning they were our blood brothers. We have since then, with the help of Kancho Joe Grant-Grierson, started to experiment with the Filipino systems, Piper and the Special Forces knife concepts.

Today I teach my brand of Filipino Espada y Daga, which is a bastardization of all the systems we learned. Somebody one day asked me if I was ever on the receiving end of a knife. Yes. I was stabbed 7 times. I was a member of the old South African Police Force, serving on the crime squad as a detective, and also later as a narcotics detective. I was stabbed 4 times with a knife and 3 times with a broken bottle. It was a very frightening experience, believe me.

What are the aims of my martial arts system?

To teach people the ability to survive - is my system better than other knife systems? N0, not at all. All the systems: PIPER, AMOK, GOLANI, KRAV MAGA, JKD UNLIMITED, RUSSIAN SYSTEMA, ESPADA Y DAGA of the other Filipino instrucors are all excellent knife systems.
I am aware of a few other systems in South Africa, but they prefer to keep a very low profile. What do I see for the future? To expand my system together with the Piper System and to return to the Philippines in 2008 for a 5 months stay. This has already been cleared by my Grandmaster in the Philippines, Dionisio Canette.

For any references to my martial arts background kindly contact Grandmaster Joe Grant–Grierson (Telephone +2711 485 3963).

Japie.

(My contact details: Mobile +2784 742 3904)

P.S.
I will also gladly give my instructors phone numbers to anyone who wishes it.

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Hello everyone. My name is Jason Williams. As I type this I am over-whelmed, to say the least. I cannot believe how much controversy Piper is causing… AGAIN! I for one had though we had gotten over all this. In all honesty it won’t be the first time I have been hopelessly wrong. Maybe I should include confused into the equation. Confused because I fail too see how our little problem here on the Cape Flats in South Africa can give so many people, who are so far removed from our culture, so much trouble.

Before I continue, let me first tell you more about myself. Right, so ya’ll have my name. I have been involved with martial arts for just more than 10 years now. I still have so much to learn with so little time. My base art is Ninjutsu. I was an instructor for a few years and realized that i was not really ready to teach Ninjustu, so I respectfully declined the offer to continue teaching. Also all the time i spent teaching I could have been out learning, but that’s neither here nor there. I have some experience with Philipino stick and knife, mainly from the Doce Pares camp; some JKD, various Japanese systems, Silat, Krav Maga, Capoeria, etc. Basically I have dabbled in a lot.

What I am spending most of my time on now is Piper and Xhosa/Zulu stick fighting. The reason I have looked at so many arts is to try and find out if any of them could shed some light on my problem, and my problem is getting knifed on my own street because some thug on tik (a local drug) wants to take my shoes and cell phone. I am not slagging any arts, I love them all.

My problem is that we are not getting attacked by Filipinos, Japanese karateka, Ninjas, Silat stylists or Jkd practitioners etc. This is unfortunately what most of the instructors of many of the arts I have seen are training people for. When on a training mat they are defending themselves against other martial artists doing the same thing they are, not against actual street assaults. Now maybe it’s different overseas, I don’t know, because I have never been. But on my block, no one has ever, ever come at me or one of my people with a neat forward thrust, or a well timed slash like i have trained against so many times in a dojo. So in essence our real problem is not with the systems but with its instruction.

I met Nigel and Lloyd several years ago, at a time when I began questioning the street cred of the systems I was studying. I became concerned when i realized that the defenses we were learning would literally get us killed on the street. I live in and have grown up in an area called Mitchells Plain on the Cape Flats. It’s supposed to be the crime capitol of the Cape. I still call it home though. Since I can remember a knife is nothing special around here. It’s a way of life, everybody has one and we all learn to use it through playing on the streets. Young kids sit on the corner with their older brothers, uncles, fellow gangsters (yes, you can be as young as 10, be a member of a gang and be recruited as an assassin) and watch how these guys demonstrate and boast , with knife in hand, how they robbed several people that day. We would sit in the park on the merry-go-round when rival gangs, (50 or so thugs) would rush the park with knives, saale (machetes), spades, axes and the lids of old-school metal bins for shields and go to war. What i am saying is that knifing is part of our culture, not a pleasant part but a part none the less.

The movements we possess are closely linked to that culture, and it’s a very mixed culture. I am not looking for cred here, just telling it like it is. Now I think we have seen enough violent knife assaults and battles to know how it gets used, which is a good thing because it has enabled us to take the training that we have and tweak it to protect ourselves against real assaults.

Anyways…back to where I met Nigel. I met Nigel about a year before i found out about the Piper System. I actually met him while looking for Capoeira instruction. A year after that meeting when looking for other forms of blade instruction i met him and Lloyd. I went to Lloyd’s house where he showed me what they have been working on. When a saw it I was like, bro, you’re showing me gangster assaults, I know this shit from the street, why would I want to learn it. This is what i want to defend myself against, I already know how the assault side works. And then it clicked - Know Thy Enemy. For so long I had been doing martial arts to combat against the threat on the street, I never realized that what I already knew about street violence was the bulk of what I need to save my life on the street. About a week later I attended one of their seminars at a JKD gym, and the rest as they say is history.

Now that we have gotten all that out the way lets get to the issue at hand. I will try to be as polite as I can here. For years now we have been getting flak from all parts of the world from 2nd hand, so called knife experts and their students. All the shit started when someone in the states wanted some Piper footage and in return got the infamous 7-min tape. I am not going to go into great detail concerning the keyboard battles that ensued after the tape was released. What I will say is that first it was welcomed and respected for what it was, and that is the way our criminals assault their victims. Suddenly everything went downhill. People started defaming Piper and it’s practitioners. So called knife experts had watched the 7min tape and said that it was easily combated. They would say things like,”you just have to kill the son of a bitch”. Now if someone is dangerous enough that the only thing left for you to do is kill him, then you have a problem on your hands.

Suddenly everyone not from our country was an expert in Piper. They have found ways to combat and nullify it. Let me tell you this. If someone can watch a 7-min tape about any particular system, never-mind a tape that was put together in a garage on a week night for shits and giggles, and then think they know everything about that particular system and how to combat it, then they are they out of their f*cking minds. Whats more is that the majority of these idiots have never even set foot on my country’s soil let alone spent a Saturday night on my block drinking beers in a yard full of gangsters and murderers, but they are experts on defenses against my people’s assault strategies because they watched a whole 7-mins of video. Who are these people? Are these the great masters that most of us aspire to be? Is this how these guys learn systems and then teach the rest of the world? If that’s the case then we are all on a very slippery slope.

On the flip side of the coin there are those that value knowledge. Those that are willing to learn about other people and their cultures like the guys on the TPI forum and the Sayoc forum. I am a Cape Coloured, but enjoy learning Kali and any other martial arts I can get my hands on. These are the people we enjoy interacting with. We value their opinions, input and criticism. I just wish i had more time to talk with them on the forums. What I have come to realize is that these types of open minded individuals are more often than not, not only good people, but excellent martial artists because they have taken the time to understand and learn about other things, they think for themselves and have awesome bull-shit detectors. These are the people that we like to make contact with.

The rest of you closed minded individuals can piss off as far as I’m concerned. Your opinions and input are not welcome.

Now I have described two types of people above, and those reading this know exactly which group they fall into. I am sick and tired of the close minded group who happily pound on their keyboard because it makes them feel good to defame others. I wonder if they would say the same things to my face? Probably not. Cowards usually like some sort of cover and then go behind your back and start shit-slinging.

In closing i would just like to say thanks you for reading my ranting and more especially thanks to those of you who have taken the time to find out more about our culture by listening and researching. Those of you who just run of at the mouth blindly….you know what I think of you.

PS: One final little bit of fact here for everyone… No matter what anyone says about Piper, no matter how much crap you put across the net and defame us, that is not going to change the way we are getting assaulted here at home, in South Africa, on the Cape Flats. Like Nigel and Lloyd have said, this is OUR problem, NOT yours, this is OUR culture, NOT yours, and nothing any of say will change OUR reality, so deal with it.

Ho$h

Jason

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This entry is a distillation of forum posts. I wanted to clarify what I could of Piper to interested individuals who asked a variety of questions.

To me, knife combat is not a civilised affair. It’s an ugly, vicious bloodletting indulged in by what I feel are sick people. It often makes me bristle when I have to talk about this, so please excuse my 3rd world lack of sophistication.

The Urban Shield project that I initiated - http://urbanshield.za.net - and developed in conjunction with a great deal of expertise from around the world, covers the social, emotional and pre-conflict aspects of violence. It further researches what happens in the mind and body before, during and after conflict - and what may be calculated from that.

Piper is the result of Nigel’s looking at how our criminals committed violent crimes using their weapons from a Martial Artist’s perspective and documenting it in a systematic way. When I met Nigel the two streams of research were a perfect complementary match. “Piper” is what criminals physically do, the techniques they use and typical scenarios. Please look at the web site for a treatment of this issue. It involves techniques, sure - however we are also greatly interested in the specific context and rationale behind those techniques. Piper is me showing you exactly how Johnny next door killed Sally and Jimmy and Mark and the policeman with his knife and then stole their wallets and shoes. What we’ve extracted from our analysis is used conceptually. It?s like having a caged wild fire-breathing dragon that you can examine and study, and a bunch of dragons in the wild near your house you can observe if you need to learn something about dragons - as opposed to a legend about dragons and a few mythical tales.

If I were to “kill” you using Piper that would be an accurate enactment, and we can freeze-frame it so we can then include the scenario or explore the specific techniques (footwork, postures, momentum, angles, targets, distractions etc.) There?s enough history, police accounts, eye-witnesses and victims for us to draw a complete picture of what occurred. I can draw on a range of actual assaults. In that sense I model the criminal.

With regards to some of the knife systems I’ve experienced, here’s my perspective: Some nice middle-class guy from a foreign country creates a knife system, he takes knowledge that he is told is “real” (because 4382.5 generations ago in some other dude?s Granddad?s village, far far away in a distant country they used this to fight other vilages over goat grazing territory) - he throws in ideas that are “scientific” and “efficient”. Then he proclaims himself a knife fighter to people who don’t necessarily have any exposure to killings with knives.

Next you have a culture that have killed thousands of people, are STILL killing people today and don?t use any of that sh*t you see this dude talking about and a lot that he turns his nose up at. Now who do you believe?

I hate delving into this too much cos it means I’m gonna piss in somebody’s pool. I have every respect for someone who makes the effort to be schooled - I make every effort to be schooled in things I can only approach second hand too, however maps are not the territory.

Piper uses extensive gross body movement, the movements are explosive and can be very draining. There are also some very fine motor techniques that are used under high-stress conditions. Mmovements are often large and contain huge amounts of momentum, with plenty of rolling and twisting. So is “efficiency” a worthwhile goal? Efficiency is more accurately seen in terms of economy of motion. Piper isn’t necessarily the most economical in motion. So is economy of motion the best premise to start from?

Is Piper efficient? Yes. People die, I’d say it’s working. Is it neat or artistic? Not a f**k.

So we look at what’s happening when this thing is employed by killers who use it and go - hmmm… they’re doing this and that, when my brain and all my learning and all my friends are telling me they should have been doing those and the other, why is that Too many people have instead gone - hmmm? these guys don?t have neat movement like me, they?re inefficient, lots of poor footwork, feet close together, bad posture, poor balance, arms all over the place, blade close to the body, tucked in to the forearm - not out where it creates ?tactical? space/a reactionary gap, ugly movement, no neat angles, nothing special - not like my system where we do things properly.

So the killer, at a guess, knows what he?s talking about - but he?s dirty, smelly, has poor education and no front teeth - and the “expert” has a degree, a Mercedes Benz, a house in an upmarket burb, can speak intelligently for hours about research and trains only with the best and can proudly call himself a knife fighter - and knows full well he?ll get the crap kicked out of him.

Piper is ugly as hell to me on more than one level, although there are those who enjoy its aesthetics. You see, I have a problem with some of the aesthetically beautiful, efficient, neat blade systems I’ve seen. They’re too civilised. Like Bruce Lee said, they lack emotional content. Piper is about brutal intent - and then some guy goes advertising an effective, ?efficient? system of blade combat that’s “Fun for the whole family”. Now there’s somebody I’d like to slap. And he knows I’d kick the cr*p out of him too.

Sure, the system is efficient. Sure it’s technically precise and well-researched. Is it any good? Well… we do know it’s fun for the whole family.

Cape knife fighting was a loose assortment of gang and prison techniques. After much hard work, we assembled it into what we call Piper. There was no system before that - but there was method. We learned the method - “What’s he going to do to me if he wants to stab me?”, then learn from the method itself how best to prevent or deal with it physically - a parallel third was “Why is it done that way?”.

We learned the movements, then examined the history of the culture behind it, working backwards to see why this and why that. It was first reconstruction and then deconstruction. Along the way we got interested parties asking us about what we’d learned, and inadvertently p***d off a world full of defensive “knife fighters”. Now I figure, what the heck, I’m speaking my truth bluntly and everybody else can deal with it as they see fit. As it is, I have a few roots in Cape Flats culture.

So what are some of the elements that may be found in Piper

• Ambush tactics. Check
• Murder. Check
• Rape. Check
• Torture and maiming. CheckFeints and set-ups. Check
• Overwhelming violence. checkRaidly escalating violence. Check
• Concealed weapons with quick draws. check
• Sole reliance on the blade. No
• Cutting. Hardly
• Stabbing and penetration. Check
• Ruin muscle tissue. Check
• Chip bone. Check
• Ruin nerves. Check
• Attack vital points. Check

Relentless, pounding, forward pressure, feinting, angular forward movement, backward movement, sideways movement, upward movement and downward movement. Often several at the same time.

Does it extrapolate a known response? Most definitely. Typically the victim moves backwards in a straight line, which is perfect for the assault.

Fun for the whole family? Well… can I get back to you

The set up includes fear, hesitation, doubt, indecision, value transfers, denial, rapid escalation etc. It has achieved its skill through countless stabbings and muggings and ambushes, it didn?t sit down and mentally work out what would be a ?scientific? way to do this.

Does it dominate the OODA loop, as someone asked me? Ummm… we try to speak English here
As educated Westerners we develop a theory. We then construct something based on that theory. Piper was different. We had this fire-breathing dragon, and we examined it against given theory. The theory of how to construct a dragon didn’t quite weigh in so well compared to an actual dragon.

Piper is also a very simple system, it’s hardly going to fill 15 DVDs, 30 books and 6 documentaries.

Take “efficienct” and aesthetic movement again. Why do we stress these movements (a fine motor skill set) when at the end of the day we will be using inefficient (gross motor movement) anyway? Maybe that gross motor skill set should be adapted for effective use.

I’ve had too many FMA stylists deride this thing - when they, their instructors, their instructor’s instructors and the students have never stabbed anybody or been stabbed. Why? Well, they’re from polite middle class society where that kind of thing is just not on.

But they’re knife experts. To them Piper is flawed, look at how “wrong” it is because these principles are missing and it doesn’t have that principle and they have this technique and that fancy counter - but they definitely won’t come out and play with me.

Lloyd

“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is”. — Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

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The last week has been quite interesting what with all the attention we seem to be getting on the various forums. The Piper website is ruffling feathers, especially those various F.M.A adherents, who claim that we are agressive, arrogant, wanna-bes who are trying to pass ourselves off as dynamic super-killers? Wow, the website says all that!?!?! If thats the case, then I say, ?Bloody good marketing?. Here?s a question though? Isn?t the aim of every martial arts site on the internet, er, marketing?

How else are they going to sell themselves, their merchandise, DVDs, t-shirts etc? The fact is that since we are doing the same by entering the ?market?, we get ridiculed, called names, yadda yadda yadda. You see, we are perceived as a viable financial threat now, get this, without having yet left the country. Now what befuddles me is that none of these people on the various F.M.A forums are actually from the Philipines, yet they defend the arts of a country none of them would even live in.

The forums run by real Philipinos, such as the Atienzas & the Sayocs are honest, pleasant, professional environments that speak more truly about reality and hardship than our detractors. When we made contact with Sayoc and the Atienzas a few years ago, the 1st thing those guys did was speak of the similarities between their systems and Piper with regard to growing up in similar rough areas and hanging out with the wrong crowd. When we analysed their material we found a group of guys who could back up what they claimed, and yet they made no overt claims - but came across as really open and honest folks. We regard Sayoc kali as the most sophisticated system in the knife fighting world. Their system is the most polished and usable out there - their system can teach us much in evolving and polishing the Piper System.

Let me go on record by saying that I didnt claim that FMA was ineffective, but rather not practical on the Cape Flats. Piper may be similarly impractical in Cebu City against machetes. However, it seems that the non-Philipinos, who are nothing but students, have taken it upon themselves to fight for the honour of a 3rd world country they would avoid if they could because the Philippines is too ?violent? a place anyway. So is Cape Town - and Cape Malays make up a good portion of the population in the city. Our critics have never been to Cape Town, or maybe they?re just afraid we might, er, run into them??

Piper is a Cape Town problem, and if you?re not from here then dont let it worry you. Leave it be, man? the kind, middle-class people will never run into us so they can practice their reality knife-fighting in unmolested peace and safety. Just think, if Piper were to come out before FMA , everybody would be trashing FMA right now.

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