by Shani Krebs
‘Motherfuckers stole my gun,’ I told the black dude, who was also supposedly a friend of theirs. He seemed equally concerned. If they weren’t back in an hour, I said, I was calling the cops. Then I slipped my .38 Special under the leather couch, lay down and put up my feet up. I tried to watch TV. Actually, I was really worried that the idiots might shoot someone. The next thing, I saw two plainclothes policemen jumping over my garden wall. The glass sliding door leading into the lounge was open but I had security gates that were locked. Gun pointing through the burglar bars, one of the cops shouted: ‘Shaun Krebs!’ Before I could even answer, he shouted again. ‘Don’t fucking move! Where’s your handgun?’ As I tried to get up to show him, he said, ‘E-e-e-asy! Real slow, with your left hand give me the gun.’
As soon as the cops were inside the house I had my face pushed up against the wall and the black dude was on the floor face down. We were both thoroughly searched and so was my entire apartment. My stash of cocaine and freebase pipe were well hidden, thank goodness, and they didn’t find them. After explaining to them that the black dude had only come to my apartment that morning (I didn’t even know his fucking name), they let him go. Apparently, Rufus and whatshisface had been caught jumping a red robot in Rivonia, near where the shooting incident had taken place the night before. They were pulled over and the cops found the shotgun. When Rufus and his mate were threatened with being charged for the shooting of the cop, they had ratted me out. They had even gone so far as to give the cops my home address!
I was taken to the Morningside police station, where I was questioned by the head of the detective branch. I stuck to my version of the story and repeated that I’d suspected that the cop who had grabbed the gun out of my hand the night before had been drinking. It had to have been an accident; why else would they have told me to fuck off? Anyway, they still charged me with attempted murder, as well as with firing a weapon in a built-up area. My guns were confiscated and, after some intense negotiations to establish that I didn’t pose a flight risk, I was released on my own recognisance. As I was leaving, I heard my name being called. The voice came from the holding cells – it was Rufus and his mate! They couldn’t believe that I was walking out. They asked if I could help bail them out …?
‘Oh, no problem,’ I said. ‘See you tomorrow.’ Like a fucking hole in the head! Did they really think that, after stealing my shotgun, I was going to help them? If anything, I wanted to shoot them with it. I let it go, though. If you hang out with scum, you can’t expect any better. I appeared in court and was officially charged. I pleaded not guilty. My case was remanded to February, but by then I had got myself a lawyer. On the day of my appearance, none of the witnesses, namely, none of the policemen who had been there that night outside the Rivonia club, including the guy I supposedly had shot, turned up in court. My case was postponed to 29 April 1994.
Then one night – it was close to midnight, I remember – who should arrive on my doorstep but Rufus, apologising profusely for stealing my shotgun and blaming the other guy. I was slightly intoxicated. No problem, I said. Actually, I was on my way to collect an outstanding debt for cocaine from one of my customers and I said he could come along for the ride. We arrived at the guy’s flat. His front door had these French windows so you could see inside. After I’d been ringing the bell, shouting his name and pounding on the door for a few minutes, he finally stumbled down the stairs. He came and stood by the door but refused to open it. So I punched through the glass pane, missing his face by millimetres, and at the same time slashing my finger down to the bone. (It was a deep cut, and fucking painful.) He let us in. There was a lot of blood. He helped me clean my injury and I tied one of those checked dish towels around my finger to stop the bleeding. I needed some booze to numb the pain, so I downed half a bottle of the guy’s whisky. After that I was in a much better mood. Then we agreed a deadline for him to pay me, and Rufus and I left. I was supposed to be the bad guy, with intentions to hurt the good guy, yet I was the one who got hurt – what an idiot I was!
Rufus and I went on to Rockey Street and drank ourselves into a stupor. Around 5am my finger really started throbbing. Drunk as lords, we drove to the hospital. Casualty at the Joburg General was busy – surprisingly so, I thought, for that time of the morning – still dealing with victims of accidents and stabbings from the night before. But South Africa has always been a violent society. I was told there would be at least a 40-minute wait before I could see a doctor. Rufus said he was really tired and asked if he could go and sleep in my car. Judaism teaches us that all men are born inherently good, but I must have been born naive as well. I handed over my keys and jokingly said, ‘Don’t fucking go steal my car!’ Rufus laughed, took the keys and off he went. Finally it was my turn. The doctor stitched me up and gave me a prescription for an antibiotic. As I walked out into the parking lot, it was beginning to get light. It was going to be a beautiful day. I looked around. My car was gone!
Motherfucker Rufus!
I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been to trust him. I hardly even knew the guy. I ran back into the hospital, found a phone booth and called the police in Norwood to report my car stolen. Then I phoned my sister, and Malcolm came to fetch me straight away. The keys to my apartment were on the same bunch as my car keys and Rufus knew exactly where I lived! When we got to the townhouse complex in Dowerglen and drove down the driveway, I could see the rear lights of my car parked outside and breathed a sigh of relief. At least my car was in one piece; my biggest dread had been Rufus crashing it. As we got closer I saw that my biggest dread was in fact a reality. The whole front on the right side of my car was completely smashed in. How on earth Rufus had managed to drive home like that still baffles me to this day. Then I saw that the back door to the townhouse was wide open, and I knew immediately that my brand-new Kenwood four-in-one hi-fi was probably gone, and my video machine, too. I was right.
Funnily enough, Rufus sold my hi-fi to somebody I knew, so when I put word out on the street that I was looking for him, one of my buddies phoned me and gave me the exact location I would find it. Not wanting any trouble, when I went to retrieve my belongings I took a friend with me who was a policeman. The people who had purchased my music system were shocked when I stealthily entered their property and made my way into their house but retrieved my stuff without incident. Now all I wanted was to find Rufus and put a bullet in him. Just as well for him I didn’t find him.
My time in solitary confinement was almost over. Although I enjoyed the privilege of being alone in a cell, life in Building 10 was really boring. When I had only nine days left to go, strangely, a part of me wanted to stay on where I was, which I could have arranged to do, but another part wanted to get back to the general population.
One morning the British guy was called to collect a parcel, but the American guy who had the same first name as him answered the call. Pretending the call was for him, he went and collected the parcel. The British guy had ordered from his friends who had visited him two cartons of Marlboro cigarettes, tuna, soap, instant noodles, a peaked cap and some other items of clothing. His friends had also put in two music cassettes, Queen and the Beatles. The American came back to the building and started walking around selling all the items. After successfully selling most of the stuff off, he then had the nerve to approach the British guy, who had heard he was selling Marlboros but hadn’t thought anything of it. Until, that was, the American tried to sell him the two music cassettes! What a lowlife. In prison we all suffer, and stealing from another prisoner is considered very low.
In fact, the British guy lodged a case of theft against the American, and the Building Chief called for a meeting. I was asked to act as the interpreter. To cut a long story short, the Building Chief told the American in no uncertain terms that he had to pay back all the money he’d made, at 500 Thai baht a week, or else …
As my release day grew closer, I sent a note to Mohammed and two envelopes, one for the Building Chief of Building 2 and the other
for the head of security who signed off on the transfer papers. The notes inside said that I was due to return from solitary and wanted to return to Building 2. I then attempted to pay our Building Chief in solitary to make sure that he put my name on the list to transfer back to Building 2, and I had a separate envelope for him. I thought I had covered all possible angles, including asking the consular officer to request the prison authorities to send me back to my building of origin. The chief of solitary declined my envelope, saying I was too late and would only be eligible for the next transfer in three months’ time, which would mean I would have to stay a total of nine months with chains on my legs in solitary.
I would have preferred to have made the choice myself and so I was not happy. I became even more determined to leave Building 10. By now I was respected by the guards. My beard was fully grown, which made me look older. Some of the Thais called me ‘Rambo’ and the foreigners said they thought I looked like Chuck Norris. Generally, the inmates were wary of me to the point of fearing me. If only they knew what a gentle, soft person I really was. It was crazy, though, because if the necessity arose I knew I could kill, just like that, and not feel any remorse whatsoever. Something inside me had died. Sometimes I began to think I was losing it or perhaps that I was taking prison existence too seriously, but that is what prison does to you. The things I had witnessed there in only a few years, many people would not believe. Physically I was powerful and I also had a strong mind. The dragon inside me had awakened. I called myself The Warlord.
I was the only white guy on the third floor. The rest were Nigerians. The Nigerians are a very proud nation and they can be difficult to reason with. Every day there was a problem with them. Aside from my run-in with Okky, which had landed me in solitary, personally I never had a problem with any of the Nigerian guys there, and in fact one of them, Lawal, was a good friend of mine. But the shouting to one another from one cell across three other cells late at night irritated the shit out of me.
Lawal was a dealer, and the same American guy who had ripped off the British guy ripped off Lawal, too. It was Lawal who was freaking out the most, saying that he was going to kill the American, shouting his head off, making a whole performance. I decided to put him to the test, so I went and got a knife from one of the samurai. I rolled it in a dishcloth and the samurai and I went and put it on the floor of the Nigerians’ cell. I said to Lawal, ‘Go on, take the knife and let’s go kill the fucker.’ When he opened the cloth and the knife dropped out, he panicked. He said that he was really angry, but that didn’t actually mean that he would kill the American. I said, ‘You got to teach him a lesson, man. This guy has fucked many people over. I will come with you.’ Lawal said he would rather just leave it. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘but if you can’t do it yourself, my friend here will kill him for you. Just give the order.’
The samurai just stood there, totally expressionless. If Lawal hadn’t been black, I swear he would have turned white. He insisted we leave it. No, I told him, this was prison and if you threatened to kill somebody you had better do it, or the chances were that that person might come and kill you.
In those last days, Joodt the chef borrowed a 4-inch black and white TV for me. I was living like a king but still, I had had enough. I needed to get out. I told Joodt that if the Building Chief didn’t put my name on the first transfer list, I would let the embassy know just how corrupt he was and that he closed his eyes to all the illegal activities in Building 10. This was a dangerous game I was playing, and I knew it. The Building Chief was one of the big Mafia guys, and he could have had me stabbed just like that, but I took my chances.
The next morning, I was summoned to his office. He started telling me how he rode a bicycle to work every day, blah blah blah. I understood that he was crying poverty, but I acted dumb. Then he told me that I was on the transfer list and that I would be moving in two days. I thanked him and shook his hand but failed to drop an envelope in his lap. I had given him a chance before and he had tried to fuck me over. Now it was too late.
On the morning of 21 July 1999 I headed back to Building 2, with ten times more stuff than I’d had when I’d arrived there. I was put back in the same cell and got my old sleeping space back. My first day back was a busy one. An army of cockroaches had invaded my lockers, so first I had to clean them. I requested that my shackles be removed, and although I had to pay a bribe for this, they took them off me. What a relief that was – it was an incredible feeling. I felt light and jubilant. I felt like I could fly.
One day, soon after my release from solitary, I was sitting on the lawn near the front gate with Mohammed, eating ice cream. It was just after two in the afternoon when an outside guard walked through the gate carrying a whole lot of papers in his hands. Mohammed jokingly said maybe one of those papers was his royal pardon. ‘You wish,’ I answered. ‘Maybe it’s mine.’ Not even three minutes later Mohammed’s name was called out over the loudspeaker. He ran to the office where he was told the magic word ‘kabarn’ (go home). It was a moment I will never forget – that look on his face, knowing he was free.
It was close to shower time, so we took our last shower together, as we normally did at that time, while a crowd of his friends and other inmates gathered to bid him farewell. We all helped him pack his stuff. Before he left, Mohammed gave me two lists: one of people who owed him money and another of money that he owed. He left me a wad of foreign currency to settle some of his debts. We agreed that I would buy his house for 30 000 Thai baht. I didn’t know then that the money he’d entrusted to me wasn’t enough to cover his debts, which also exceeded the value of his house. Mohammed was a staunch Muslim, who prayed every day. We had become as close as brothers. He had helped me out in all my troubled times. There was nobody else that I could depend on as much as I depended on him. It was very emotional for me to see him leave.
When he was ready to go, I walked him to the gate. He promised he would write and send me parcels. I told him that he was a free man now and that he should forget about me and about prison. ‘Start your life again, Mohammed,’ I told him, ‘and may you succeed in everything you do.’ We shook hands and Mohammed went on his way. I felt lost.
On her next visit, I asked Jai to email my sister and ask her to urgently organise me US$1 500. The house Mohammed had sold to me would make a huge difference in a place where 900 convicts had to coexist. I could do my art there and also use the house for worshipping. Mohammed had instructed me in a letter to pay out the old French Israeli man, whose name was Simon Dahan, who also lived there, for his share in the house – 10 000 Thai baht – and to ask him to move somewhere else, but I didn’t have the heart to throw him out. The man was in his early sixties, and, besides, he was Jewish. I explained to Simon that I would buy his share from him, that the house now belonged to me, but that he was welcome to stay on in it.
I’d noticed that the overhead fan in Mohammed’s house was broken, and one of the first things I planned to do was get the electrician in and have it replaced. Things were going smoothly and it felt great to be out of solitary confinement. After months in shackles, though, I was struggling to walk and my knees were giving me a lot of trouble. For some months I’d also been having a lot of toothache, and at the end of August I finally got to see the prison dentist. I hadn’t been for a dental checkup for over eight years. I had heard the horror stories about how prison dentists used a hammer and chisel if they had difficulty pulling a tooth out, not that I really believed them. But I had always been terrified of the dentist, so stories like this didn’t help my nerves. Twenty-two of us were ordered to line up outside the dentist’s room. I was the 19th person in the queue, and I can tell you my hands were sweating. But it was amazing. The whole thing was practically painless. I didn’t even feel the injection. Each prisoner got his anaesthetic with a new syringe and needle. As one person came out, so the next person followed. The whole tooth-pulling process took hardly any time at all. Imagine – 22 people having teeth pulled out in 25 minutes flat. Now th
at should be one for Guinness Book of Records!
Mohammed had given me his lockers next to the bakery, which meant that I now had three lockers there. He had also asked me to burn all his letters and documents. While I was doing this, I came across a letter from the Iranian embassy supporting his royal pardon submission. I kept it in order one day to show the world how supportive other countries were of their prisoners, in comparison to the South African government. After reading Mohammed’s support letter, I realised how unlikely it was that I would be granted a royal pardon without something similar from the South African embassy. I decided I would do my best to stay positive, if only for my sister’s sake, and patiently await the day that I would eventually be released. I was not counting on anybody intervening. In fact, I was expecting to stay in prison for many more years. Joan wanted to hire a Thai lawyer to follow my royal pardon application and apply some pressure, but I was dead against this. In my experience, Thai lawyers were corrupt and crooked. Firstly, they charged a ridiculous fee and, secondly, they could deliberately jeopardise your chances. The lawyer my sister had contacted had already made her all kinds of promises. If your application was rejected, he told her, he knew somebody in the Royal Palace and that, second time round, a royal pardon was guaranteed. I told Joan that I would rather donate the money to the King’s charity, and anyway, according to the embassy, my application was already at the Palace.
Round about this time, the Department of Corrections adopted a new policy. Anybody with less than a life sentence was to be moved to prisons in the provinces. One such place where foreigners were going to go was a prison called Klong Pai. It was situated in a valley with a great view in the middle of nowhere, approximately 600km out of Bangkok. In comparison to Bangkwang, apparently it was hell. A lot of Asian foreigners got transferred there, and saying goodbye to our friends, knowing we would probably never see them again, was really hard.
