by Ian Patrick
Within seconds two uniformed police officers were with Mavis and Ndileko. Mavis could barely speak. She was still shocked, not only at having run into the three men but also at her own reaction. She hadn’t known that she would ever be capable of such a blow. She recalled Navi Pillay’s tireless exhortations to the class to practice time and time again until the kick becomes as automatic as lifting a hand to shield yourself from a tennis ball aimed at your face. She had done so, and had practiced the movement tirelessly, but had never thought she would ever be in a position to actually employ it. For her, the routine had been simply a way of keeping down her weight.
The police officers made no attempt to follow the fugitives. They knew that in an area like this it would be hopeless without reinforcements, and it was unlikely they would get reinforcements quickly enough at this time of night. Instead, after a cursory look around they stood next to their vehicle with the young couple, who they assumed merely to be the victims of an intended mugging.
Mavis, still trembling from the shock, was now in tears, and Ndileko started to thaw. They both knew they had had the luckiest of escapes. Mavis had to think rapidly through the scenario ahead of her. If she told the two policemen everything she knew about the three men, she would have to follow through in the morning and confess that she had violated all protocols. Taking upon herself the role of private investigator and endangering an innocent citizen would not look good to Nyawula or Ryder or Pillay. Cronje would go ballistic and would be terribly disappointed in her. How could she play the scene?
Ndileko was one step ahead of her. He recognised the dilemma instantly, so he led the way.
‘We were just in Mabaleng’s there, me and my girlfriend, you know, and we suddenly realised how late it was. So we were in a rush to get back to my place in Sikwehle Road, and then these three men they jumped out…’
Ndileko had given Mavis the cue, and she grasped at it. She reinforced Ndileko’s story, and very soon the cops offered to drive them back the short distance to Ndileko’s home. Ndileko gave the officers the number of his address in Sikwehle Road, and they got into the car.
As they drove off there was a movement in the bush. The police car disappeared around the corner. Wakashe stepped into the pool of light at the corner of the building. Thabethe and Mgwazeni were just behind him. They had done a full circle in the dark to re-emerge at the same spot. Wakashe had recovered his voice but still felt the pain of the blow to his throat.
‘You hear what he said, comrades? You hear what that hodoshe said to amaphoyisa? He told them where he is living. He told those cops his address. Right there near my mother’s place. These two, they live in Sikwehle Road.’
‘You OK, Wakashe?’ asked Mgwazeni. ‘Your throat is OK?’
‘I’m OK. Is all OK. She was lucky. But I want that bitch. Come, let’s go and get those two.’
‘You sure it’s OK, Wakashe?’ added Thabethe. ‘If they’re going to Sikwehle Road, you sure it’s safe? The cops they’ll be looking for you there.’
‘Not now at this time, Skhura. Not now. We won’t see amaphoyisa this late. If they’re asking questions there by my mother, that old bitch, they’ll be asking in the daytime. Not now. Now it’s safe, I’m telling you. We must just keep quiet, because all the neighbours there they are impimpis. My mother, too. Those are the ones that are selling us out all the time. Come, let’s go. Now is a good time.’
‘Before the rain comes, comrades,’ added Mgwazeni, looking up at the sky. I’m thinking there’s a big storm coming.’
‘Let’s go, then. I want that woman. I’m going to teach her a lesson. I’m going to make her boyfriend watch that lesson, too. Let’s go. Ten minutes to their place. Let’s go.’
At Wakashe’s urging, the other two followed him as he strode off rapidly. The black night was hot and humid but despite the humidity the tarred roads, which had been losing moisture all day, cried out for water. The skies were mustering the energy to satisfy that demand, with clouds growing darker and more pregnant by the second.
00.40.
Nonhlanhla, Mavis and Ndileko were sitting in the living room. Nonhlanhla was still highly agitated. The other two had calmed down and were comparatively relaxed about the incident. They all cradled mugs of coffee as they spoke.
‘Hau! I’m still shaking,’ said Nonhlanhla. ‘You two! How can you choose such entertainment? I hate that place. The people who go there are scary, man. All those guys are so sexist, all the time.’
‘Hayi, sisi! It’s not that bad. The guys are just having fun. Most of them just like to dance and talk and drink and make no trouble. Maybe sometimes they have too much. It’s only when skelms like these guys come along that there’s trouble…’
Mavis felt terrible. She was worried that she had betrayed the trust of Nonhlanhla. The police constables who had dropped them off were satisfied with their story and had left quickly. But Nonhlanhla had arrived home half an hour before them and had been extremely agitated because she had expected them to be home before her. When they finally arrived, she was so relieved she had burst into tears.
‘I’m so sorry, Nonnie,’ said Mavis.
‘You should have seen her, sisi. She was so fast. She kicked this guy before he could get her…’
Nonhlanhla was caught between relief and surprise, as she listened to her brother. She would never have believed that her long-standing friend Mavis could be capable of any physical action, let alone martial arts. Gentle Mavis, with whom she had studied at high school. Plump Mavis, too, in those days. She looked now at her friend and saw a completely different person. Her tears turned to giggles.
‘What, Nonnie? What?’ said Mavis.
‘Hau, Mavis. I don’t know. You. James Bond. I can’t believe it.’
They all chuckled. Relief all around. At least they were safe.
Then there came a sound from outside the living room window that caused a complete cessation in the merriment. All three of them froze.
00.41.
There was a distant roll of thunder, drawing near. The black cloud lay thick and low, unbroken, stretching its tentacles wide to the horizon like some gigantic spider embracing its prey before injecting its deadly poison into the earth. The wind scattered plastic bags and dust and empty cartons. It sped between the houses, creating eerie sounds as it travelled across the mouths of the many bottles lying scattered in backyards and alleyways.
As Thabethe looked up, the first of the colossal raindrops began to fall. They exploded with dull thuds onto the dirt tracks running between the houses. Where they fell into the dust they left imprints as large as saucers. For the first two minutes the drops were five or six seconds apart, spurting up dust and steam as they plodded into the still over-heated earth. Then they came faster, racing one another to bury themselves into the ground, cascading over one another to join and mingle and create rivulets and puddles. Soon the drops transformed into sheets of water. The dust turned to mud. Visibility fell to no more than a few feet as they approached the house, Thabethe peering through the gloom beneath the window.
Suddenly a thunderclap, crisp and crackling and angry, shattered the heavens.
‘Eish!’ screamed Wakashe, in a moment of shock.
‘Thula wena!’ hissed Thabethe, trying to shut him up.
The three men crouched down low at the window, turning their faces into the wall in an attempt to shield their eyes from the wind-driven rain that was now attacking them from above at a shallow angle to the ground, like the lances of an advancing cavalry.
Inside the house Mavis, Nonhlanhla and Ndileko moved as one to the window to try and identify the sound they had heard. The three men chose the very same moment to stand and peer through the window, and at that precise moment the horizon exploded into a sheet of white light behind them. Like the tangled arteries of Thabethe’s eyes, the lightning forged a mess of jagged lines against the sky, silhouetting him against the horizon. Somewhere in the distance a bolt of lighting hissed into the earth and was ex
punged. It was followed two seconds later by an angry escalating roar of thunder. It rolled out of the blackness toward the house, and encountered an even more terrifying sound in the deep roots of Nonhlanhla’s primeval scream.
Nonhlanhla paused for a moment after seeing the three figures, then screamed because she saw Thabethe. It was the sight of his eyes rather than the mere fact of a man at the window that had prompted her terror. With the thunder and lightning behind him, and the light bouncing back off the window into his face, she would say later, it was as if some evil tokoloshe had arrived to take her away. Mavis and Ndileko would say, later, that for them it had not been the sight of the three men that had terrified them. It had been Nonhlanhla’s scream. It was a scream, they would both say, that chilled their blood.
It was also a scream that served a useful practical purpose. Coming between the cracks of thunder, the sound penetrated through to neighbours on both sides and opposite. Within seconds lights were being turned on in houses all around. Thabethe and his two companions, also frozen into temporary immobility by the scream, initially hesitated and then decided they had lost the initiative. They scrambled into the dark, running headlong into the slanting rain, finding the tarred road, and sprinting as fast as they could into the night.
01.45.
Mavis and her two friends finally went to bed somewhere around one-thirty. Mavis lay there in the dark, thinking through the events of the night.
The neighbours had been extraordinarily helpful. They poured into the house after hearing Nonhlanhla’s scream. Within seconds orders were shouted, volunteers stepped forward, and four young men had immediately gone out into the pouring rain to search for the intruders. They returned after fifteen minutes, drenched but confident that the intruders had disappeared. They were nowhere in the vicinity, the young men could guarantee that. Meanwhile the other neighbours helped check the house and ensure that windows and doors were secure. They were an efficient and organised group of people who seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Mavis was thoroughly impressed by one sixty-something woman, in particular. She appeared to command the respect of all of them, and functioned as a cross between a matriarch and a battlefield commander, Mavis thought.
Nonhlanhla and Ndileko told her, after the neighbours had left, that there was an active group of people in the street, comprised mainly of women but supported by a few young men, who thought of themselves as an informal Neighbourhood Protection Watch. They were known as the Street Committee. They did not consider themselves vigilantes, but they had no tolerance for crime of any kind in their street. They had even less tolerance for the criminal justice system, Nonhlanhla said.
‘Why, Nonnie?’ asked Mavis. ‘Why do they say that?’
‘Hau! Mavis. I feel bad, with you working with amaphoyisa. I feel bad talking about this. I know how much you like your work. Shall we tell her, Ndileko?’
‘Yebo, sisi. There’s a story, Mavis. But we must ask you not to go and investigate it some more, nè? In this street…’
‘Wait, bhuti. Wait. Mavis, you are OK if we tell you something but you don’t report it?’
‘Yes, my friends. Yes, of course. You can trust me, nè?’
‘OK, Mavis,’ said Ndileko. ‘That woman, the old one, you can see she is the leader, yes? The people in this street they have great respect for her. She is very tough, that one. She is their leader. Everybody, all of them, they do just what she tells them.’
‘If there are skelms coming here, and they bump into her, they have no chance.’ Nonhlanhla laughed as she spoke. ‘Within seconds she will call out the men and they will go hunting for those skelms.’
‘You see,’ continued Ndileko, ‘nearly one year ago there was a man killed at the end of the street, just four houses up from here. Then two months later there was another man killed on the other side, there, six houses away.’
‘The police came and spoke to all the residents,’ Nonhlanhla chipped in. ‘Both sides of the street, up, down, the whole neighbourhood. They spoke to everyone.’
‘No-one saw anything,’ said Ndileko. ‘Not one person. Me and Nonhlanhla, too. We saw nothing. Nothing.’
‘We don’t know, officer.’
Brother and sister paused and exchanged a look as both had said this in unison, then burst into giggles. Mavis got the message. Before she could speak Nonhlanhla continued.
‘I’m sorry, Mavis. You must be shocked. But you must know what it is like here…’
‘No, no, I see, it’s no problem. I understand. I think.’
‘The cops gave up after they had interviewed everyone,’ Ndileko continued. ‘After two, maybe three months they gave up completely, and they probably just reported back to their commander and closed the file. Unsolved murder. Persons unknown.’
‘Hayi! No, there was more, bhuti. Remember that detective who came? Three or four months later.’
‘Oh. Yes. Yes. That’s right,’ said her brother. There was this other detective who came right at the beginning, and then again later. He was clever, that one. We could see he was very sharp. He came back and asked us more questions. We had nothing to do with it, but we were also questioned like everyone else in the street. The first time they asked us, we were genuine. We knew nothing about what happened in those two murders. Nothing at all. It was only a few days after the second murder that we began to realise there was something strange happening. Then we were told by one of the neighbours, and we just kept quiet like everyone else. When police came to ask us questions the second time we just repeated our story, because it was true, we had heard nothing on the two nights in question.’
‘But when this other detective, the big one, when he came back, some months later,’ interjected Nonhlanhla, ‘we were worried because he was very sharp. We were still able to repeat our story, even though we knew by that time what had really happened, and we had no problem. But then the detective asked us if we knew anything about the two girls.’
‘What two girls?’ asked Mavis.
‘This detective,’ explained Ndileko, ‘he told us he had done some research of his own. Maybe he was trying to scare us so that we would tell him more, but he gave us some more details about the murders of the two men.’
‘Those details we hadn’t heard about before, from the people in the street,’ clarified Nonhlanhla.
‘That’s right. This detective, he asked us if we knew how the two men had died. We said that we heard they had been burned, and maybe stabbed or shot before they were burned. But the detective said that he had studied the pathologist’s reports and all those documents and he said that before they were killed, their…’
Ndileko suddenly found himself embarrassed and did not know how to address his next sentence to Mavis, but his sister stepped in to rescue him.
‘Those men, Mavis, both those men, before they were killed they had their things cut off.’
‘Hau!’ said Mavis. You mean…’
‘Yes, continued Nonhlanhla. The autopsy and all of that, the detective told us, showed that the men were tortured and – hayibo, Mavis – the detective told us that they found the men’s genitals in their mouths. Then they poured petrol over the men, and burned them.’
Mavis was shocked but started understanding the picture her two friends were painting for her. Before she could comment, Ndileko picked up the thread again.
‘The detective was telling us these things, I think, because he was trying to scare us so that we could tell him more. But Nonhlanhla and I, we couldn’t tell him any more anyway, because we definitely didn’t know anything about what the people did to those guys. That was the first time we had all the detail. From the detective, not from the people in the street.’
They went on to tell Mavis more of the detail they had gleaned from the detective. The two unsolved murders in the street were suspected by the police to be the work of vigilantes. The two men had been brutally murdered in separate incidents nearly two months apart, but after months of investigations the police had giv
en up on the cases because of a total absence of witnesses. The investigating officers had found it extraordinary that in both cases the men had been brutally tortured before having been burnt to death, yet despite the apparent brutality involved in the removing of the genitalia, and the likelihood of massive disturbance and screams and chaos in the street, which should have brought residents running to the scene, not one single neighbour could be found who had heard anything or seen anything on the two separate nights in question. In both instances the bodies had been discovered the morning after the events by passing motorists who had notified the police.
Months later the big detective’s research into the two separate murders, they told Mavis, had taken him to the nearby KwaMashu Community Health Centre. Here he had discovered that in regard to each of the two nights in question a young rape victim had been admitted earlier in the day for counselling and treatment. In both cases the women had given addresses in Sikwehle Road.
‘Eish!’ said Nonhlanhla. ‘It was scary, Mavis, being interviewed by that detective the second time. He told us about his visit to the Health Centre and what he found there. He told us about his interviews with the two young girls, months later. Then he asked me, and Ndileko too, if we knew why it was, in his interviews with each of the two girls, that they would have replied to him in exactly the same way. He told us he asked each of the girls, separately, why they had chosen not to report the rape to the police after they had been processed by the clinic. In each of those interviews with the two girls, he said, they had replied to him with exactly the same statement. Amaphoysia can do nothing. There are better ways to deal with rapists.’
‘The detective was watching us, Mavis,’ said Ndileko. ‘He was sharp, that one. Black man. Big man. Six foot five inches. Maybe more. He worked there at Durban North at that time. He watched me, and Nonhlanhla too, at the same time, when he asked that question. We were terrified. But we were OK, because we really didn’t know about the murders. It was only later that we heard from people in the street about some of what had happened. Not all. But some.’
