Dragons & Butterflies

by Shani Krebs

  ‘Aleksander, mi arai?’ (What’s up?) he greeted me.

  I greeted him back, and then explained to him that one of his gang members had stolen my boy’s bandana and that I would like it back. He called the guy in question over and ordered him to give the bandana to me, which he reluctantly did. I thanked my friend, and he told me that if I had any problems in the future I should come directly to him. I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that the whole picture could have turned very ugly. But this was prison. Unlike my white-collar criminal friend, whose destiny it had been to die, it wasn’t my turn yet. I had survived yet another life-threatening situation. Somebody up there was looking after me.

  Sometimes in prison you are forced to do things you would normally be terrified of doing. Aggression is fought with aggression, even when the odds are against you. Any wavering can result in death, and every day is a gamble. Unpredictability was a real enemy that lurked inside each and every one of us. Your life was only worth what any given moment dictated. I understood this. I also understood that this phase in my prison existence would not only test me on many levels but would also become of great significance. If nothing else, it would make for an interesting chapter in the book I might one day write – if I survived!

  While routine brings a degree of stability to one’s life, it can also cause monotony, and by now I was getting bored. I distanced myself from the action. I was reminded of when I was in DB while in the military, which was worse, in my opinion. I was very restless, and I attributed this to a subconscious yearning to express my feelings through drawing. It had been quite a while since I had last spent any time on my art. On her next visit, I planned to ask Jai to buy me some art supplies. Because of my limited funds, I could only afford some cheap watercolours and an A4 drawing pad, but it would be something.

  The thing that continued to give me comfort in solitary confinement was knowing that there were people back in South Africa, and elsewhere, still working tirelessly towards my release. In a letter from my sister, I learnt that, through a friend, our family friend and the well-known philanthropist Bertie Lubner had had my letter to Nelson Mandela hand-delivered to him. This year, 1999, was to be Mandela’s last as president. I was convinced that if anyone could empathise with the plight of prisoners, it was Mandela. True to her word, Joan had also somehow managed to give a letter to Princess Chulabhorn Mahidol of Thailand, during her royal visit to South Africa, asking her to intercede on my behalf. We both knew this was a long shot, but neither of us was about to give up. Thinking about and planning for the day I would be released kept me positive and strong. I didn’t have any other option.

  On Tuesday 23 March 1999, at 2pm, Okky and my cases came up. I was sentenced to three months’ solitary confinement and all visitation privileges were withdrawn for that period. My prisoner class was cut from ‘excellent’ to ‘very good’. I felt the sentence was harsh, but, in a country where sentences were generally ridiculous, I reckoned I’d got off lightly. At least I knew that I would be out of solitary by the end of June.

  On the same morning, Rabbi Kantor from Chabad House was permitted a special contact visit for all the Jewish inmates. He brought his tefillin (phylacteries) with him and each one of us had a chance to put it on. We recited the appropriate blessings, and the Shema was incredibly uplifting. He also brought us matzah (unleavened bread), sliced pastrami, turkey, cheese and olives. This was an unbelievable treat. Pesach or Passover started on 1 April. I stopped eating bread, and although my only means of keeping Pesach was by eating matzah, my freedom was in my faith. The irony wasn’t lost on me: when the Israelites were being set free from slavery, I was being held captive. And yet spiritually I was freer than ever before in my life.

  Mohammed was still sending me white bread every week, but because it was Pesach I would give it away. There was no coffee shop in Building 10, so, unless you had visits, bread was difficult to come by.

  Because I had paid extra money to be allowed to stay outside, every day from 1 to 2pm I would exercise. Despite keeping fit, I was constantly tired, my body ached all over (I hoped this wasn’t a sign of old age) and I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in five years. Nor had I sat on a comfortable chair. Even my bum got sore.

  I had to smuggle some of my letters out because you could be sure every word I wrote was being closely monitored, and Jai’s friend Sheila was still up to her tricks. I had no doubt she was still reading them and reporting the contents to the embassy. My sister sent all her letters by registered mail, and registered mail was opened in front of us by Joe, who was one of the guards and in charge of the foreign section, but, personally, I never trusted anybody. For all I knew, even Jai could be working against me. I really hoped this wasn’t the case, as I was becoming more and more dependent on her, not only emotionally but also to keep helping me to secure all the daily things I needed. She was my connection to the outside world. Whatever she did, I believed she did out of love. At this stage all I could afford to give Jai was R100 a month, enough to cover her return boat trip to the prison.

  I constantly had earache while I was in solitary. I thought that this was probably from the dirty shower water, although there was always the possibility that some insect had crawled down my ear canal. I didn’t want to think about that too much. I was eating well, though, and exercising regularly. My hair was getting long again and my beard was filling up.

  Most of the guys with us in solitary were killers and had no consciences. Fortunately, after five years in prison, I was already well established in Bangkwang, and I was also feared, mainly for my size and for my reputation as a no-nonsense person. The Thais thought I was some kind of Mafia boss on the outside, and so, as they were all gangsters, I commanded a lot of respect. One day a foreigner, a British guy who owed money to one of the dealers, came to me for protection. He was expecting family to visit from abroad. Word was out that some of the Bad Boys planned to grab him on his return from the visit. They would seize whatever foodstuffs his visitors had brought him, and chances were that he was also going to be stabbed. The dealer in question was on 24-hour lockdown. He had sent written notes warning this guy to pay his debt or else he would have him taken care of. The British guy ignored his threats and simply scored his heroin from another dealer, whose name was Rusta. This pissed off the first dealer big time. I agreed to get involved, but only because an attack on one foreigner by the Thais could result in an escalation of violence against the rest of us. When the British guy returned from the visit, I met him at the gate, protecting him from whatever ill fate awaited him. We walked up the stairs. The Bad Boys were lounging around waiting for him. Nobody made a move. I escorted him straight to the dealer’s cell, as an act of good faith. There I told the British guy to give Rusta half of what he’d got from his visitors, and I also told him that he had to promise to settle his debt. In prison everybody gave credit. At some time or another everybody’s money ran out, but you knew also that at some stage you would receive money from your family or friends or wherever. I told Rusta that if he ever had a problem with any of the foreigners, he should call me and not involve the Thais.

  Just then, the leader of the Bad Boys appeared. He pointed his finger at the Brit and said in broken English, ‘No, Aleksander, today you die.’ I warned the Brit that he’d better settle his fucking debt or else he would be on his own. Owing money in prison was the cause of a lot of fights. If you didn’t pay your debts, word would quickly spread among the inmates that you were a chancer. And once you had a bad reputation, from then on people would avoid you. In prison, good credit makes for good friends.

  I was taking a shower in my cell one day when an inmate who had owed me some money for quite some time, and hadn’t paid on the due date, knocked on my door. He went on his hands and knees and begged for my understanding. Whenever I lent money I gave it without ever expecting it back, but if you didn’t pay, you couldn’t ever come and borrow more. Generally, however, I preferred to avoid lending money. It was like buying a headache. Wh
en you wanted your money back and it wasn’t forthcoming, you could end up looking like the bad guy.

  Since the news had spread of my being in solitary confinement, I was receiving parcels from abroad almost every day of the week, which also meant that I got to go out of the building and to see my friends from Building 2 and get the latest news of what was happening over there. For example, I heard that the Building Chief who had sent Okky and me to solitary hadn’t lasted very long. He had been removed two weeks after our fight, although that wasn’t the specific reason. He had apparently caused so much contention among the prisoners that the authorities feared a riot. Good riddance, I thought.

  Meanwhile from back home came some unpleasant news. My sister’s boss and close friend, Joel, had got shot up fairly badly in a hold-up that had gone wrong. My brother-in-law Malcolm’s father had died. And a good friend of mine, Hilliard, with whom I used to smoke cocaine, had been shot dead by some cocaine dealers. While I could express my sympathy, I was so far removed from their reality that I honestly didn’t feel anything. Was I becoming so hardened by my circumstances that I was losing that ability?

  My wash boy’s time in solitary was up and I decided to do my own laundry. I was now doing a major clean-up of my cell only once a week. I had no reason to complain. In fact I had much to be grateful for. I had learnt to treasure every moment of the present. We exist in the now, which is today, and, for the most part of that moment, I had everything I could wish for. It may not sound like much, but to me it was a blessing. I was a deep thinker and I didn’t want to waste my time in solitary. We evolve every day. I wanted to better myself as a person. I tried not to think too far into the future, because anything between now and then might never happen, but neither would I allow myself to dwell on the past. My attention was focused on the now. Every day was a new day and every day was filled with new challenges. True happiness, I was discovering, comes from within. I was also content with the little that I had.

  One of my Jewish brothers, the American journalist I’d got quite friendly with, wound up in hospital. I heard he had gone off the rails. Actually, I suspected he was pretending, but one never knew. This place was enough to drive the sanest person crazy!

  Around the middle of May, four months into solitary confinement, I started sketching and painting in colour, getting back to my art for the first time in a long time. I can’t remember ever feeling more liberated. The transition from expressing myself in only black to colour was a major breakthrough and something that I directly attributed to my spiritual growth.

  After five years in Bangkwang, little, if any, progress was being made on the prisoner treaty with Thailand, I was completely fed up with the South African government and their lack of support or even interest in our conditions. We believed that Jackie Selebi, then director-general at Foreign Affairs, had actually shelved negotiations. Whatever the reason for the lack of progress, I advised our embassy that they should only visit if and when I requested them to. European countries were far more civilised, in my opinion, and they actually seemed to care for their citizens. I remember back in 1997, there were two Polish guys who received royal pardons. One of them had been caught with 1kg of heroin but they both got life sentences. The first guy served five years and two months and the other served four years. Like South Africa, Poland didn’t have a prisoner transfer treaty with Thailand, but the Polish embassy supported their cause. Rumour had it that a high-ranking Polish official was paid to grease the wheels of their release. Whether this was true or not, I cannot say, but the result was that both prisoners were granted royal pardons and walked free. Stories such as these sickened me and sometimes made me very downhearted.

  Even if the embassy wasn’t exactly championing my efforts to get a royal pardon, there were still some things I needed them for. Once my time in solitary came to an end, I needed to make sure that I went back to Building 2, and so I wrote to the embassy asking them to request the prison authorities that, on completion of my punishment, I be returned to the building of my origin.

  Often I would try to imagine how I would feel when the day came, when they would call my name and say the word ‘kabarn’ (go home).

  I kept encouraging my sister to go public with my letter to Mandela, even though I knew that the Thai government did not take kindly to negative publicity. There could be two possible outcomes, I reasoned: they could consider me a thorn in their side and get rid of me by granting me a royal pardon; or, they could simply reject my submission for a royal pardon and that would be that. If things went that way, then I would never get out. The odds were 50-50. I was willing to take my chances.

  ‘Let’s keep up the negative publicity,’ I instructed Joan.

  While lying in my cell, my mind would often drift back to my life before Thailand and prison, and especially to certain events that had transpired just before I left South Africa. I had recently received a letter from a prisoner who was doing time in Boksburg. He told me about a fellow inmate named Rufus, who claimed he was a good friend of mine. I wrote back and very rudely told him that Rufus should go fuck himself …

  After Sarah-Lee had moved out, I became even more reckless with my life. It was drugs, sex and more drugs, and everything I owned was walking out of my apartment. As long as I was getting high, I didn’t care. After all, they were only material things. It was New Year’s Eve and I was out on Rockey Street at one of the many bars there. My mission that night, besides celebrating the coming of another year, was to be on the lookout for some of my customers who owed me money for cocaine. It was in Rockey Street that I met Rufus and his mates. After a couple of drinks, we each popped a cap of LSD, and then Rufus started telling me a story about how, just a couple of nights before, the bouncer across the road had beaten up some harmless kid. The more alcohol we consumed, and as the LSD took effect, the angrier we became about this, so we decided to go teach the bouncer a lesson. I went to my car and, from behind the seat, pulled out my pump-action shotgun. As we walked towards the club, we shouted at the bouncer, ‘HEY, MOTHERFUCKER!’ The guy took one look at our faces and then, when he saw the gun in my hand, ran for dear life. We tried to chase him, first on foot and then in my car. I let off one or two shots in his direction with my .38 Special. We lost him, probably just as well.

  Rufus and I and one of his mates then drove to a club in Rivonia that I knew was frequented by one of the guys who owed me. The three of us marched inside together. I had my .38 tucked neatly into the waistband of my trousers and my shotgun was in my hand against my side. I had to hand the shotgun in at the door. By this time we were all out of our heads. We had a drink and I looked around the club for the guy in question. The cunt took coke on credit and never paid me. Fifty grams was a lot to write off. I couldn’t see him anywhere, so we left the club. As Rufus reached my car, he put his beer bottle on the roof of my car and said, ‘Shaun, I bet you, you can’t shoot it.’ He meant it as a joke, but I didn’t hesitate. I loaded the shotgun, aimed and fired. The beer bottle disintegrated in a cloud of fragments. Because the parking lot was below road level by a good few metres, the noise of the shot was amplified. Fuck, it was loud!

  As I reached my car, in the far corner just near where Rivonia Road passed, five policemen dressed in full riot gear and armed with R4 rifles came jumping down the wall. They proceeded to rush a couple who happened to be parked opposite to where I was, which bought me a couple of seconds to hide the shotgun under my car, close to the front wheel. By now the couple were pointing at me, Rufus and his mate. All five cops ran over, and in seconds we were surrounded. They found the shotgun straight away. Naturally, I claimed ownership but told them the gun had gone off accidentally. I was ordered to follow them, so I climbed back up onto the road with them, one of the cops carrying the shotgun. He went to the passenger side of their car, a yellow Opel Kadett 200is hatchback, while the other four cops hung around, waiting. Then one of them began walking towards me, and as he got closer I pulled out my .38 Special, really just intending to show hi
m that I had another piece. Both firearms were licensed. I’m not sure what he was thinking, but the next thing I knew the cop tried to grab the gun out of my hand. In what seemed like less than a split second, there was a shot, there was screaming. My gun fell to the ground, but so did the cop! I quickly picked up the .38 and slipped it back into my pants as the first cop came running back from the car, still with my shotgun in his hand.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he shouted.

  ‘He shot himself!’ I told him, adding, ‘I think he’s drunk, officer.’

  The policeman shoved my shotgun back at me. ‘Fuck off!’ he said.

  He joined the rest of the policemen crowding around the fallen cop while I jumped down the wall and ran as fast as I could to my car before he changed his mind. Rufus and his mate were nowhere to be seen. As I was driving out of the parking lot they jumped out of the bushes and flagged me down. They were wide-eyed and pale. ‘What the fuck happened?’ Rufus asked. They had heard the gunshot and the screaming. I told them it had been an accident, but I don’t think they believed me. They thought I’d shot the policeman, grabbed back my shotgun and made my escape.

  That night we jolled till the early hours of the morning, going from one club to another. Around 7am we picked up this really cool black dude who was a marijuana merchant. We all went back to my townhouse in Dowerglen. While the three of them sat in the lounge preparing a joint, I hid my shotgun in the bedroom under my mattress. After smoking a couple of joints, I gave Rufus and his friend some money to go to the bottle store and buy some more booze as soon as it opened. Then I passed out stone cold on the couch. I woke up around 12.30. The black dude was still there.

  ‘Jesus, where the fuck are Rufus and whatshisface?’ I said.

  It was three hours later; they should have been back long ago. I jumped to my feet, ran straight to my bedroom and lifted up the mattress. The shotgun was gone. I sobered up very quickly.