The one who is taller and leaner is slightly ahead of the other. As the leaner one puts more distance between him and his friend, his friend takes an abrupt right turn darting down the steps to a lower road.
I pull my gaze back to my front, and instantly my eyes are met by two other figures, security guards in grey, storming down on me. As they reach me, they part like the Red Sea, only to rejoin behind me and continue running. My heart has skipped a beat and something tells me to also turn around and run, because by now I have a pretty good idea what is going on.
But I am drunk and my reactions sluggish. I tell myself, I have done nothing wrong, I have no reason to run, and I trudge on. My gaze is straight ahead but my heart beats like a wild bird. In front of me, I see a lanky figure in what I perceive to be the same greyish security clothes. I see him turn around the corner of this building, and dart across the street in the direction of the first two suspects.
Almost immediately he is followed by another security guy from a different security company. Here in Jozi, crime capital of the world, security is big business and guards come in all colours of uniform, but their radios and walky-talkies are linked to the same channel.
I can make him out through the poor glow of the light in front of me, his dark-blue clothes, metal shining here and there, a maroon beret on top of his head, and he is bearing down on me. Just in front of me, he comes to a sudden halt and barks, “Yima lapho, izandla phezulu!” You over there, hands up! I notice deep initiation scars around his cheeks and eyes.
My first response is to almost laugh. Is this guy serious? Even the others passed me, taking me for what I am, an innocent drunk. I look at him with what I know to be a perplexed look on my face.
But again something tells me to consider his demand more carefully. I lift my hands slowly. “Iya phantsi!” he screams. Down!
“Go get the others,” he commands the other guards, who then make off down the road. A small, almost sarcastic laugh escapes my lips, and the black and shiny thing in his hand whirrs in slo-mo as I turn my head away but still catch the blow before my face meets the ground. Palms slap the cold cement as I go down, thousands of cold shock waves passing through my arms and shoulders before entering the highway of my spine.
I want to recoil and hit back but I kill that impulse at its birth. People generally come to be misunderstood in these situations. My knife beckons but the guy is hitting at me like a grandmother sweeping the floor. I expect he and the pack behind him are all armed and will kill me if they see Mr Knife.
Just a fraction of a second after my chin touches the ground on the second bounce, another numbing kick connects with the side of my jaw, which swings my head in the opposite direction. The tendons of my neck keep my skull from flying off. I hear the crunch of a rib and a gasp escapes my mouth. Like a punctured tyre, rapidly losing air, I roll over, dirty, muddy, bloody.
The other guards did see me coming in the opposite direction, did they not? And none of those suspect guys were dressed like me. Hey wena, I begin, about to protest and plead reason, but another kick connects with my ribs.
A white man now stands looming above me, and as I strain my head upwards, all I can see is his red beard.
“Is it this one?” shouts the black guy in the maroon beret, the guard who brought me down, his steel-capped boot pressing my head, and I begin to feel weak as if I am passing out.
But still I register the heavy steel jaws of handcuffs as they click and enclose my wrists twisted brutally behind my back, biting into my flesh, the cold of the pavement water seeping into me through my clothes.
Contrary to popular belief, people in holding cells are not secretive and on edge, but in the centre trying to trumpet or hiccough out their story to anyone who will listen. Been here for two days now.
Jomo over there and four of his friends were arrested when two burglars breaking into a clothing shop in the city took what they wanted and escaped. Then the homeless, including Jomo, poured into the shop to help themselves but by this time the alarm had been sounded. Then there are three guys dressed in expensive tracksuits who look like they were arrested while on an early-morning jog, all with soft faces and some gold jewellery. Something different about them, more like half-grown pimps or gangsters-to-be, the kind who rarely get their own hands dirty. Yes, these boys let it be known that they hijacked a man and his wife last night, wounding the man in the neck, a story they seem a little too keen to promote. The oldest I call Mr Tracksuit. He’s more or less my build and face and generally not all that different either.
We know the main bust on the agenda – for which many of us are suspects – is a break-in to a computer spares shop on Rissik Street. Parts worth R100 000 are missing.
Each one of these guys in my cell tells me a story but I realise that I cannot hold all these stories in my head. I am struggling to hold even mine. The way I figure not to go mad is to blot out and not to take too much in. I’m even busy telling myself and the prison authorities a new story about myself. The less they know about the real Sipho Madini the better. Perhaps I can protect his innocence and leave his name untarnished, whatever I need to go through. That’s why, when I had to fill in the forms, I called myself Michael MacLean. Got a nice clean ring to it, don’t you think? And, after all, I never burgled that business in the city.
A noise at the door startles me, and I glance up. The black policeman with a forgettable face comes in struggling with a lot of blackboards hanging with strings from his hands. A young white cop hurries over to help the one with the boards and together they stumble over just to dump their goods at the first available spot close to us. The boards fall with a clatter on the ground, dust curling in front of their feet.
By now I know what is going on. From tavern TVs and Hillbrow-half-price matinee-double-features. It is an identification parade. Excitement swells in me. I had always wondered how it must feel to be part of one. And this should be the camel’s straw that gets me out and footloose again.
“Okay, everybody,” shouts the black policeman, “get yourselves boards!”
We are herded into a courtyard that suddenly comes to life as though an invisible wand has been waved. The prisoners storm over to the heap of boards, each with a number. As if on cue, even the self-styled shiny-tracksuit boss, who elbows his way through the crowds, clutches a board, and exclaims almost panickingly, “I want 3, my lucky number!”
A few extras are here now too. All of us, now holding our boards, line the walls, across the doors, waiting to see if we live or die. Only Mr Tracksuit looks animated, relishing centre stage. I move with the pack and it’s board number 9 I get.
“You ready?” shouts the white cop from across the yard. “Hold your boards up like this to your chest, don’t cover your face.” The kid next to me whispers, “I think we should have gone for a lawyer?”
Suddenly Mr Tracksuit – the one who I noticed from the start looks like me – breaks rank on the other side of the circle and pushes in between me and the kid.
“Hola, bru,” he says, his face breaking into the widest grin.
“Hola, gazzie…” I grunt, the beginning of the dropping penny.
Next thing they lead in this shortish, slightly built man in his neatly pressed blue uniform. I know this part from the movies too. This is the guy who saw something at the crime scene – and when he points the finger you’re history. Hey, the beret is not there but this is the security guard with the initiation scars who busted me. And there is a white guy with a red beard… Didn’t I see a red beard above me when I was down on the pavement? Maybe he’s the owner of the shop? Maybe he saw something on a security camera?
The cops and these guys all get together. The black cop stands to one side at the door, and they confer awhile, occasionally nodding towards us. “Ready? Okay, go.” Red Beard and Initiation Scars move.
Reluctantly Red Beard comes like a small child being sent into the world, dragging his feet, looking at each person’s face as if we are portraits in a gallery.
Initiation Scars is bolder, and walks much closer to each of us, challenging us as he stares into our faces.
I can hear an unseen clock ticking and also Red Beard’s heavy breathing, the rattling breath of a smoker. Then out the room they go and we wait. No one talks – until they come in again, this time both entering with fast strides, flying past. Both pause in front of Mr Tracksuit. But they are not finished. They whizz on, and Initiation Scar’s eyes narrows, homing in on me, but he flies past and exits once again.
And one more time. This time only Red Beard comes in again, the big black cop prodding him, “Go – make sure.” This time he comes in slowly, scrutinising every face as he passes in front of them. Slowly he comes towards me, our eyes lock, he wavers a bit, face clouds as if searching for a mental picture of the me he has met before, and then he moves on and stands for a while staring at the boy beside me. Then he leaves again.
It is beginning to get warm. A gentle early-morning wind blows through the courtyard. Again Red Beard enters, this time like a fish eagle taking a dive. He doesn’t even look at the other faces. His eyes fix on me, swallowing the distance between us. I push out my chest and a smile twitches at the corner of my lips, a challenging look in my eyes.
Between me and my lookalike he stands, then he lifts his hand to place on a shoulder. Will the hand fall to my right shoulder or on the left shoulder of my lookalike in the tracksuit?
I can see pools of sweat under white man’s armpits, then his feet shuffle so that he is nearer me. His waist swivels.
I twist my face into the ugliest expression I know – this might make him lunge right for me or run away. I give him the face of a skollie, daring him, then I close my eyes like Gogo taught me to do when I pray. I feel his heavy cold fingers on my shoulder.
Jonathan at home: “Hello.”
Voice: “Hello, this is Virginia.”
Loud music in the background.
Jonathan: “Is something wrong?”
Virginia: “I heard Sipho is dead. Another street kid told me he tried to steal a cellphone and was shot in the back.”
Jonathan replaces the receiver and phones Valentine straight away.
An hour later.
A group of men paging through a photo album stand beside a high wooden counter. It is difficult to determine who works here and who is visiting. Jonathan, wearing his red drawstring trousers, and Valentine, in designer jeans and sporting spiky dreads, enter the waiting room.
From his backpack Jonathan takes out a photo of Sipho standing half in and half out of his drain.
A woman called Maria, who works there, eventually helps them. She slides a huge book across the counter towards them. DEATH REGISTRATIONS, STERFGEVALLE, GOVERNMENT MORTUARY.
Ledger pages with red columns have been divided into eight. Each space has a photo of a person lying on an aluminium cot. Down the middle of each body is a rough line where the corpse is sawn open and stitched shut. The final effect is a platted thong. On each photograph is a green sticker that corresponds to the number tagged to each body. Some bodies have more than one tag. One photograph is of a pile of bones and a pair of boots, a tag threaded through the skull’s eye socket, and another through an eyelet of a boot. Nearly all the bodies are black and there are more men than women.
“If you see him in the photos, tell us and we will let you look for him in the bodies,” says Maria, leaving Jonathan and Valentine with the book of the dead and alone in the waiting room.
When they let themselves out the only other live person is a woman sitting on a six-metre-long wooden bench.
The cell is dark and underground – like a parking garage. In one corner is a single shower and a single steel toilet bucket covered with a couple of blankets to quell the stench so we can still breathe. I’m in the holding cell of John Vorster Square, the high-rise building in Jozi centre where they used to torture political prisoners. John Vorster Square is not some village police station jail but the HQ of the world’s crime capital. The most infamous apartheid security centre in the country. They put special shutters on all the outside windows so that the people in cars on the freeway that runs alongside it couldn’t see white boere cops torturing enemies of the state.
With me are dozens of men who I have no interest in at all. All my energy goes into creating another prison wall around me. A big sign that says, “No Entry. Just Leave Me Alone.” First evening three guys move in on my food, four slices of bread and a curried hard-boiled egg. Before I know it they have taken it all. Then a big coloured guy with a broken nose and tattoos on his forearm offers me some from his plate. I know what it means to accept something from someone here. A gift turns into a loan turns into a debt. There is nothing for nothing, so I say no thanks.
It is time for this guy’s next move – as if this is a board game, like chess. I remember the giant board and pieces they used to have in Joubert Park. He takes out a twist of newspaper full of dagga. Sitting round all-night fires in Jozi City I met all types, many of whom have passed through the prisons. Like old Robbie in the writing group, who spent time in prison and who Jonathan was trying to get to be part of our book. Yes, these little packets of dagga and where they go, I have heard about.
“This is a bullet, my bru,” the guy with the broken nose and tattoos tells me. “And you going to take it up your arse to Section 8 in Sun City, and I’m going to put it inside you, you check?”
A few others in the cell laugh, some say nothing.
“Wag ’n bietjie,” I say. Hold on a minute. I take off my left shoe, then my right so he thinks I am taking off my pants. From his face I can see how pleased he is that this is going so well. A walk in the park. I dig my thumb into the sole and next thing the knife is open in my hand. I spring in close and cut him under the armpit. Where there is lots of flesh and blood vessels but no organs.
He screams and the others laugh, even those who took my food. For the rest of the day he lies down, pretending to sleep, and avoids eye contact.
That night I keep to myself, eventually finding a corner on the cold floor with one blanket and a colony of lice crawling and biting all over. There are a few bunk beds but only enough for less than half of us. This is not a permanent cell, but a sorting house for those who might be sentenced and those who might be released without sentencing. I think about my mother and what she would see and think if she saw me now. But more than anything, I am tired. It seems like a week of continuous time with no sleep since I slept my last night in my drain there in Braamfontein.
Even though I am so tired I wake up in the middle of the night, and not long after that the guards bring bread and tea. I eat sitting on my blanket, keeping to myself and wishing I had a book to read. At about 11 am, the door to the cell is unlocked by a warder and in comes this other guy full of tattoos, really full of them, bits peeping out from under his collar, on his knuckles, his arms, his face, everywhere. He comes straight to me.
“So, you handy with a knife,” he says, cutting to the chase. I shrug. “That is okay, but listen and listen good, we only tell you this once. Only us 28s can stab, we the ones who work with blood but not the blood of prisoners, only warders. You must hand over your weapon.”
If I hand over Mr Knife, I am nothing here, so I stand up, take a grimey piece of toilet paper out my pocket and blow my nose to give me some time to think.
Just then there is a commotion at the entrance.
“Okay, time’s up,” shouts the warder who unlocks the gate, and screams at us to make our beds and get ready for a head count in ten minutes. To the tattooed guy, the warder barks, “Ek’t vir jou een minuut gegee. One minute. Your time’s up – get outta here.”
After the head count the atmosphere begins to chill again, but a few minutes later the same warder is back. “MacLean, come now – you being transferred to Sun City.”
First I ignore him, then after a few seconds it hits me: MacLean. That’s me, Michael MacLean. No point in giving these guys too much information, but it takes a bit of time for y
ou to remember the name you booked in as and who the hell you are supposed to be.
Beyond the walls they loiter
The walls of no reprieve
Banished to walk the walls
The walls of no reprieve
Perhaps you know him
Perhaps you don’t
He is the ever abandoned
The cause of your sorrow
The disgrace to a nation
He is the one who defiled his father’s name
Brought tears to a mother’s heart
Uncertainity to a sister
and shame to a brother
Who is he, I wonder
Is he a beast, an ogre or a goblin
I do wonder
But total human he sure ain’t
Died a thousand times
Sold my soul for a million
I live by the gun, and die by the sword
Destined to rove the walls – the walls of no respite.
– ‘Beyond the walls’, Sipho Madini,
Homeless Talk, February 1999
The cold steel of the truck rattles slowly as we come closer to our destination. Through its heavy grilled windows, the hot sun moving across the dark-blue sky fails to warm the dark interior and the close to 40 bodies in regulation orange convict clothes, each man handcuffed to another, heavy chains on our feet. There are five armed warders in the back with us and one convict called Sleek, a tall and lithe coloured man who looks dangerous, evil to the marrow. This Sleek is not handcuffed. His job, no doubt commissioned by the warders, seems to be to take valuables and cash off the passengers, most of whom are too fresh and in shock to resist, especially since it is under the gaze of the warders. Most of us range from the age of 18 to 24, with a few olders dotted between us.
Destination, Sun City. A springboard for other prisons around the country and, as a rule, holding only awaiting trialists. Once sentenced, one way or another you are out of there. But I have heard that it can take ages to be sentenced.
White Paper, White Ink Page 3
