White Paper, White Ink

by Jonathan Morgan

  There has been a lot of buzz around the prison this week. Tonight on SABC 1 there’s going to be a screening of a documentary about the Numbers gangs.

  The TV section of the newspaper that talks about it – just a few lines – just states: “Killers Don’t Cry, SABC 1, 7.30–8.25. A never-before investigation of SA’s prison gangs and secret rituals.”

  The scrap of newspaper has been passed around many times until it’s not readable, but the words are already in the minds and on the lips of the convicts and are passed from cell to cell. “What secrets will be given away?” is what most of the Numbers gangs brothers are asking. I still don’t understand too much about these gangs, but I’ve heard it said that die Nommer se besigheid moenie oorgesprooi word nie – the Numbers’ business should not be spread around – and that those from within the Numbers who share deep Numbers knowledge with outsiders are heavily punished, more often than not by death.

  At 7 pm everyone is on their beds, parked in front of the TVs. First they watch the news, but talking all the time, and then silence for the Toyota bakkies ad and then the one for Sanlam insurance. Then the long-awaited programme.

  I’m with a group that includes Sanza, Major, Oom Buks, Wes, Don and a few others. The top brass of the Numbers have their own private viewing but a few lower-ranking guys are watching with us.

  The words Killers Don’t Cry scroll across the screen in blood red. The programme begins with opening music with no words, then on comes this white guy with a British accent.

  “I am Allan Little, special correspondent for the BBC, at the maximum-security prison, Pollsmoor, Cape Town. This is the story of a dark and until now impenetrable secret. It is the story of a brave and at times breathtaking experiment in human nature. In this prison a brutal and all-powerful gang system reigns. It is known as the Numbers.”

  Allan Little looks like he’s been around the block himself. He has a few tattoos and a shaven head.

  Off-screen you can hear loud knocking.

  Allan Little’s voice. “This is the story of an attempt to reach into the hearts of evil men, to understand their depravity and to try to change them. After months of negotiation we were allowed to enter the secret world of the Numbers gangs. We were warned that the prison houses mass murderers, multiple rapists and armed robbers. The gang system rewards violence. Only those who are willing to commit atrocity, to maim and murder, can rise to the top. Mogamat Benjamin has killed more people than he can remember. It has made him the highest-ranking gangster here. He is a general.”

  The camera zooms in on a face pocked with tattoos.

  “I am Mogamat Benjamin. In the camp of 28s, a person’s life is in my hands. The final decision is mine. There are people who I order killed and they are killed. On my file written in red it says, ‘Notorious. Dangerous.’”

  The soundtrack changes to prisoners chanting and singing.

  Allan Little. “Most prisoners here are awaiting trial. It can take up to four years for a case to come to court. While they are here the Numbers gangs can trap them for life.”

  Then this coloured warder, who is head of security at Pollsmoor, is interviewed and he tells us how the gangsters know no language other than violence. Allan Little says the prison warders patrol the passages, but behind the steel doors the territory belongs to the gangs. He then says that the gangs have their own laws and punishments, “which we will see today but until now were under unbreakable secrecy”.

  “Fok that!” shouts Wes. “Who does that Mogamat think hy is, spraying our secrets?”

  Allan Little. “Mogamat has been in prison for 34 years. His appearance belies his record, for multiple murder made him a general, and his status entitles him to a uniform.”

  Mogamat Benjamin. “The ranks of our gangs and all we do is based on the military. The uniforms we wear today are all in our minds. I am a man of gold. Everything in me is gold. My rank is gold; my cap is gold; the buckles on my boots are gold; even my belt is gold. In other words, I am a blood officer.”

  Allan Little. “Mogamat lives up in Cell 191 with 36 other prisoners. Pollsmoor is 300 per cent overcrowded. The gang known as the 28s is the oldest gang of all. It was founded in 1906 as a revolt by 28 black prisoners.”

  “Dis kak, shit, rubbish,” says a guy to my right. “Where they get their information? We called the 28s because Nongoloza, our forefather, had eight generals, long before anyone was in prison. Fok this Mogamat, he is spreading lies.”

  Allan Little. “Members of the 28 live alongside two other gangs – the 26s and the 27s, crowded together in this one cramped room. The men of the 28s have sex with each other in the night. There is no doubt about who has absolute control.”

  “Fok him! We’ll kill this Mogamat…” spits the same guy near me, the 28 who got upset just now.

  Mogamat. “There is no man in Pollsmoor with a higher rank than me. I earned every rank by stabbing a warder.”

  Allan Little. “Mogamat’s second-in-command is Erefaan Jacobs. He holds the rank of judge in the 28s. His job is to enforce gang law, and to punish those who break it. He too has killed fellow inmates.”

  Erefaan Jacobs comes on. He is also covered with tattoos, even across his face. He has a beak nose and a scar across his cheek like an initiation scar but it goes through his lip.

  “When you join the gang,” says Jacobs, “we develop you so that you are fearless. A lot of men are scared, but once you’ve attacked someone you’ll do it again and feel brave. You can only come into the camp by spilling blood.”

  Allan Little. “The gangs demand constant demonstrations of loyalty. They cut the emblems of their allegiance into their skin. This is their uniform. It carries their rank. For in prison a spoken oath is not sufficient. The Number demands that you be marked indelibly for life.”

  Then this heavily tattooed man comes on the screen and he says that people won’t believe you if you tell them you are a 28, that words count for nothing in prison.

  “He’s telling us that tattoos tell the real story. At least one ou is telling the truth,” chips in Wes.

  Allan Little. “Some go further still and tattoo their faces. It is the absolute abandonment of all hope of a life outside.”

  Then Mogamat shows Allan Little how to make a weapon from a toothbrush and a blade stolen from the prison hospital.

  Mogamat. “With this weapon I am going to go for your neck or your eyes. It won’t help to go for your head. I’ll stab you in your eye and when you grab your eye I’ll stab you in your neck and then I stab you to death by cutting your artery.”

  Then his second-in-command tells how if the warders give them grief – anything the 28s don’t agree with – they stab them and take them out.

  And Allan Little chips in like he’s commentating on a National Geographic wildlife film. He says that the prison warders are the gang’s natural targets and that they are only lightly armed with batons and tear-gas canisters and that they are underpaid and overworked. And that they are outnumbered one hundred to one. Then this white warder, a big strong boer called Barry Coetzee, comes on the screen and tells us it’s not the warders that control the prison but the Numbers. The Numbers make the decisions. Allan Little then reveals that someone in the Numbers gangs has been ordered to stab Barry Coetzee as a test of courage.

  “Fok, this is better than reality TV or Rambo,” says Sanza. That draws hard stares from a heavily tattooed guy.

  Warder Barry Coetzee then says, “A Number has been called on me, which means I’ll be stabbed or cut with a blade. My blood has to flow. So it could mean either I die or I bleed. There’s no way you can defend yourself. It’s terrifying. It’s a psychological war. You never know where. You never know when. I’m scared to come to work but I must [so that I can] earn a salary. I get up in the morning and know sooner or later it will happen.”

  Then it’s Erefaan Jacobs, the second-in-command, again. “We are like people hunting this person. Maybe we won’t find him today, but then there’s always tomorr
ow. It’s cruel, man. It’s like a lion hunting down its prey, then ripping it apart.”

  Allan Little. “Nearly half the warders in maximum security have been stabbed at least once. Behind the steel doors the hours of darkness belong, unchallenged, to the Numbers gangs and to their rituals of punishment and recruitment. Their codes are spoken in a language known only to them, a hybrid of all South Africa’s tongues that can only be learned in prison. This is the moment of initiation into the secret all-embracing world of the Numbers. The moment the new recruits must pledge their oath to the gangs. An intricate and carefully balanced interplay between the gangs decides which camp a new recruit will enter. The gangs consider the commitment made at this moment sacred and lifelong. It has never been filmed before. For the new recruits, the birds or the franse, showing fear at this moment is disastrous.”

  Erefaan Jacobs. “We don’t have scared people in our camp. If you’re scared you could betray us. If we see you are scared we’ll kill you. It’s happened. Many people’s heads were cut off in cells where I was present. I would see that tonight they would kill you. The whole day I know it. You talk to me, I’ll laugh with you, but I know tonight we’ll kill you.”

  Mogamat Benjamin. “I was naked so that the blood wouldn’t splatter my clothes. I was the first to sever the artery. The heart was removed and eaten. I personally ate first.”

  The rest of the programme was a bit boring. Allan Little gaaned aan about this new warder Johnny Jansen and how he wanted the prisons to change along with the new South Africa. After the programme, Wes joined the other Numbers guys in our cell. They just pulled the curtains over their beds and talked late into the night. Me, I went to sleep pushing toilet paper into my ears to keep their voices and the TV out.

  While we were out in the onion fields today there was a lot of discussion about the TV programme last night but it was like the Numbers guys in the work gang kept it to themselves. I had my mind on my own group.

  We are meant to meet tonight. I am not sure if I have what it takes to squeeze good-enough stories out of these guys and then turn it into a book. That is quite a tall order, if you ask me. After work I shower and come back to the cell and arrange the beds and I wait and wait. Not even Don comes.

  After 20 minutes I go looking for Buks, Major and Sanza but I can’t find a single one of them. It’s like they’re avoiding me. Don I find on his bed, but he doesn’t wake up when I shake him gently. He just turns over and buries his head under the blanket, mumbling something about talking tomorrow.

  I keep looking for the others and eventually Sanza comes home to roost in our cell.

  “What happened tonight?” I ask. “Why did none of you come back to the writing group?”

  He just shrugs.

  “Why? Why?” I ask.

  “You’ll find out later,” he tells me. “The generals want to talk to you and will call you tomorrow at the latest. But keep your cool – things are not good between the gangs at the moment. There’s talk of war. In some of the other prisons the 27s and the 28s are battling for power, and the two top generals here – of each of those gangs – things are tense with them. They on edge, so don’t try be a tough nut with these guys, cos they will make you pay.”

  I’m dead tired and just pull off my shoes and pass out on my bed. If someone wants to steal my shoes or my knife, they can have them.

  It has been a tough week. Tomorrow has come and gone thrice and still no word from the generals and no one, not even Don, will explain why they won’t come to the group any more. When I asked Don why he stopped coming, all he would tell me was something about a tactical choice and that I shouldn’t worry.

  The food this week has been worse than usual. For one thing, there was less and, second, everything had that kind of almost-rotten taste. Not only the meat but the vegetables too. Even the bananas they gave us were black on the outside and all soft and rotten inside. What I miss the most in here are my breakfasts when I was homeless. No matter how poor I was, I often still managed to buy myself a bix box of Coco Pops and a carton of milk now and then. I’d hide the Coco Pops in this secret place close to my drain. The best was to drink the sweet chocolate-flavoured milk left over in the bowl once the Coco Pops were finished.

  There I am standing alone and instructed to remain while the rest of the class is told to step forward to go on a school outing to the fun fair. I keep on asking why I’m the only one to be left out but no one can tell me. This goes on and on until my aunt Nomawhetu tells me it’s because I don’t know how to talk to people. I try tell her that it’s not true, then I wake up and realise it’s a dream. I am taking it badly, my group not working out, but a part of me is relieved because it didn’t come that easy to me. A voice in my head was always telling me I have bitten off more than I can chew. A loner is what I am, and a poet. I never said I was a group leader or a writer, never mind an editor.

  Two weeks later and we’re waiting for Don’s promised music session. It’s been a frustrating time because it’s been raining heavily, with some thunder and lightning, so for four days in total the work gang couldn’t go out to the fields. It made me realise how much I miss it, not so much the exercise, but just leaving the prison, even though we’re accompanied by guards with guns.

  About 40 of us are packed into the cell. Lights can never be completely switched off in prison so Don asks us to shut our eyes. The first thing we hear once the murmuring has settled down is a rattling sound… then a whistle… then clapping. Then he tells us that we can open our eyes and I see that the rattling is coming from a few guys who have some pebbles or beans or something in their tin cups, the whistling just from their mouths. There are no pipes or flutes or anything like that and the clapping is coming just from the hands of some other guys.

  Don is whistling as well, but he is the conductor, nodding at that guy, pointing at that one, keeping the whole orchestra going. Then Don gets about 20 of us to form a circle and follow the rhythm, shuffling and stamping, going in a clockwise direction circling the musicians who keep a steady rhythm going. Then the music dies down a little and we hear Don’s voice.

  “This is trance music,” he says, “not like, but also not completely unlike, the kind of music young people in cities listen to these days in those clubs where they take that drug called ecstacy, listening and dancing to that music with no words, dancing to just a simple rythym that repeats itself over and over.”

  Keeping in time with the whistle, clapping and rattle rhythm, Don’s voice is almost like a voiceover: “For the San, trance music was mostly used for healing and for overcoming hardship.”

  I now see what Don is doing. He got us to come here for music but he gives us history. Clever bastard.

  “The San recognised an energy in all life and also in their own bodies,” Don continues. “They called this energy Kun, and with the help of music and dancing they used to heat it up till this energy boils and boils and rises up and up in your body till you feel it rise to the very end of the furthest, highest hair on your head.”

  All of this he says in his nice voice to the simple rhythm of whistle, one blow, clapping, two claps, rattling of beans in tin cups, two rattles, over and over, but speeding up gently.

  “Give yourself over to this rhythm, just follow me,” says Don and we do. “The sounds you are hearing now may have been very close to the music made by the San tens of thousands of years ago. Their rattles were made from wild fruits, seeds, shells and cocoons filled with bits of ostrich shell and strung together with leather, or the ear of a springbok filled with dried berries or small pebbles and then sewn up.

  “For the San, the boundary between animals and humans did not exist as it does in Western cultures today. But there is more about this in a later lecture… Ankle rattles were used to mimic sounds of animals, but it was more than just trying to sound like an animal, or to communicate with them – it was also about becoming an animal. Feather headdresses were worn to become the bird, animal skins and paint on the skin to become
zebras or lions, all of this under trance. And it was not just animals… We could also become the stars.”

  Eventually Don brings the music and dancing to an end and takes a mug with a hole in the bottom and a long string that goes through the handle.

  “Try be quiet,” says Don. “Make your mind still and just listen to some of these beautiful sounds.”

  A young Bushman-looking guy begins to whirl the mug round his head faster and faster, all of us stepping back so it doesn’t hit us. The sound it makes is like the buzzing of bees.

  One old man then opens his palms and shows us a simple blade of grass, which he then holds against his mouth, inhaling and exhaling while plucking the loose ends forwards and backwards with his fingers. At first the sound it makes is like a horse’s hooves but then it sounds just like a bird.

  Then out of nowhere the old man produces a bow, little more than a branch tied together at each end with fishing line. There is no arrow. He plucks the string, which produces a guitar-like sound but only one note.

  “Hunters would pluck the string of bows to pass the time,” continues Don. “And on that musical note,” he adds, with a smile at his own joke, “let’s call it a night till tomorrow when I am going to introduce you to some remarkable Bushman freedom fighters and poets.”