Under Nelson Mandela Boulevard

by Sean Christie

‘His real name is Chid. He got no documents so he borrowed the passport of Fred Mngini, another Tanzanian guy who has been in the country for one week. If Chid didn’t do that they might not have given him the operation. Or they would have asked for money first, and he has nothing.’

  ‘What was wrong with his balls?’

  ‘We don’t know, but it started one year back. The doctors told Chid he needed an operation but he was too afraid to go, so he left it, and they got bigger and bigger, until he could hardly walk. Two days ago the pain was too much and his friend Suleiman took him to Groote Schuur Hospital. They saw how big his balls were and operated on him straight. Now he looks empty there.’

  ‘Wa Kuchomwa [puncture],’ sniggered the youth with the cut-up face.

  Mege admonished him with a cluck of his tongue.

  ‘Chid says he wishes he was dead but the boys are telling him the pain is good, because it means he can try and stow another ship soon. Before the operation his balls were so big he couldn’t run or climb fences.’

  Mege escorted me down the lane. Since it was drizzling lightly when we reached the Conquest, he climbed into it. I noticed the words ‘Memory Card’ tattooed on his neck.

  ‘Are you good friends with Adam?’

  ‘I only met him in Johannesburg in 2010,’ said Mege, ‘but he’s like my brother.’

  The story of their friendship is a touching one. When Adam had arrived in South Africa for the FIFA World Cup, he had found Mege running errands for Tanzanians ten years his junior.

  ‘He told me I should stand up for myself,’ said Mege, ‘but some of those Joburg guys are mad. If you argue with them they just hit you. “I am not a big person,” I told him, “so it is better to just listen to what they say.” Adam said. “Follow me, we going to fix this.” He went to this tattoo guy and said, “Put this boy’s name here.”’ Mege JoJo clapped his neck with his palm. ‘After it was done, he said, “People gonna know now that they can’t fuck with Mege JoJo, because they will have to fight me.”’

  Just as Adam had predicted, the bullying had ended there. When Adam had moved on to Cape Town, Mege, now established in Johannesburg, had chosen to remain. The friends had been reunited a few months ago, when Adam had journeyed down from Dar es Salaam after having been deported from St Petersburg. This time, Mege had felt ready for a change. He had packed his things and walked with Adam to the Kroonvaal Engen garage on the N1 highway, where they had bought space in a Cape Town-bound truck. The journey had been comfortable enough, although the trucker had coughed incessantly; with hindsight, Mege believes that this is how he had contracted tuberculosis.

  ‘I was coughing two weeks after I got to Cape Town.’

  The shift doctor at Somerset Hospital had referred Mege to the Brooklyn Chest Hospital, just a few hundred metres from the harbour. Here, he’d been informed that he had XDR TB – extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis – and told it would be months before he would be cured and able to leave. Three days later, he had taken a day pass and returned to the Foreshore. For a wet and windy fortnight, he had coughed himself almost to death in his mchondolo. When Adam had learnt of this, he had been furious.

  ‘He asked, “What happened? Why did you leave?” I told him foreigners were being kept in that hospital until death. I told him it was better I die outside.’

  Mege was referring to a specific patient in his ward, a senile old-timer from Somaliland who had been living in the hospital for three years, even though he had been clear of TB for two of those. A nurse had explained that since the old man was unable to walk, and had no family or friends, the doctors did not feel able to discharge him.

  ‘Some leaders in the Somali community had tried to find his people, but they returned with bad news. They said the old man had been living alone on the streets of Cape Town for so long that his clan members had forgotten him. So they left him there,’ said Mege.

  The nurse had said that there were others like him in other parts of the compound: Angolans, Burundians and, yes, even Tanzanians, men with nothing and nowhere left to go. Some had been moved into halfway houses; others had died in their beds. When these patients died, the nurse had explained, their bodies were burned that very same day or buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Milnerton.

  ‘Adam told me I was not going to die. He said the beach would always be there, waiting for me. He called the ambulance and we went together.’

  Adam had listened carefully while a doctor at the chest hospital had outlined the treatment options, which Mege had not understood when they had first been explained to him.

  ‘Memory said, “Okay, this is what is going to happen. They will send your file to the clinic in Delft, and you gonna stay in the sick house and only go to the clinic once a week for your medicine. It doesn’t matter if it takes the TB two years to go, nobody gonna mind. That is what Blikkiesdorp is for.”’

  It has been six months, and Mege says he has not yet missed an appointment to pick up his pills and have his sputum tested. He no longer coughs himself awake at night, and believes Allah means for him to live.

  ◆

  A powerful storm, the kind that brings trees down and turns the Cape roads into parking lots.

  It started yesterday morning with wind off Table Mountain, scooping up every loose plastic bag in the city and sending it down to the Foreshore where it snagged in the perimeter fence of the Culemborg industrial area. By the middle of the afternoon, tendrils of ripped plastic were reaching through the metal strands like the arms of raving spirits.

  The rain arrived early this morning: clouds like giant box jellyfish dragging skirts of water across Table Bay. Stuck in traffic on Nelson Mandela Boulevard this evening, I couldn’t help thinking about the Beachboys below, huddled around their fires – and of Adam, now presumed dead by some of his friends. I realise I miss him very much – miss being able to see the world as he does.

  Thanks to Adam, the whole seaward view is permanently changed for me. Whereas before, the light playing off the Atlantic tended to turn the flyovers, cranes and ships into an oil painting, now I see only cracks and chinks: the bent palisade struts, tunnels, portals and hatches not just flaws in a postcard-perfect view, but rents in the great system of human controls.

  ◆

  A fortnight in which my ability to move around the Foreshore has been curtailed by a series of mishaps and misjudgements.

  To begin with, Daniel Peter called to say that he had been picked up by the border police, who sent him 1 500 kilometres to the north, to Lindela Repatriation Centre outside Pretoria. He said he was working on a plan to get himself out, and hung up. When he called back, it was to say that a guard named Salim Hassan had assured him he would be released upon payment of a R1 000 ‘donation’. I told him to go back with an offer of R500. He called back with the details of the guard’s post office account.

  The next day, he called to say that he had stood for hours at the side of the N1 southbound, hoping to catch a lift to Cape Town. Having had no success he was now in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, staying with some small-time dealers he knows there. It will be weeks before he has earned enough from hustling to enable his return to Cape Town, if this is his wish.

  More worryingly, Barak and Sudi are no longer taking my calls. Last week, they were verbally attacked by several Beachboys for leading me through the railway reserve to Maskani. It could be that they have decided my friendship is not worth the trouble.

  In an attempt to stay connected, I reached out to individuals whom I have met only fleetingly, but who have always seemed friendly. One such was Suleiman Wadfha, whom the Beachboys call P Diddy. Diddy’s Dinka-dark skin contrasts memorably with the bright-yellow polo shirt he wears all week and somehow manages to keep clean. He is a natural jester with a square head and free-standing teeth, always feigning hurt or anger and then flashing his comical grin moments later. He speaks very little English, though, and with my
Swahili still restricted to pleasantries we had scarcely spoken until ten days ago when he approached me in the company of a young man who looked like he might, if I talked too loudly, withdraw his head and limbs into his grubby, cerise-pink jacket.

  ‘This is Feisal,’ said Diddy.

  Feisal’s eyes were wet at the corners. When he extended a limp hand, they scanned the area behind me, as if to establish whether we were being watched.

  His first words were, ‘I speak English, German and Swahili, and I’m a qualified tourism operator. I want to ask you if you can help me to put an advertisement for my skills on the Internet. Please, I need your help.’

  I asked Feisal whether he had any substantiating documents. He slipped two laminated A4 certificates out from under his ski jacket, one headed with the logo of the Tanzania Utalii College and the other professing to be the resume of one Msafiri Tungawaza Masaga. He explained that this was his birth name.

  ‘My father was Christian, but he changed his faith in 2009 and we, his children, changed faith as well. Now my official name is Feisal Al-Amin Masaga, though my friends mostly call me Mussa.’

  I saw Diddy and Feisal the next day, and the day after that. Each time they insisted that I meet them away from the Beachboy areas and it soon became clear that neither of them had much in common with the others. Diddy initially tried to pretend otherwise, claiming, through Feisal, that he had come to the Beachboy life years ago, after his parents had died.

  ‘They left behind five children, four of which were girls. Diddy came to South Africa in order to support them,’ Feisal explained.

  I knew this to be untrue. Anyone you meet on the steps of Edward VII will tell you that Diddy’s father works for the Tanzanian government, and that Diddy gave up a comfortable home to win back the affections of a former girlfriend, who had left him for a recently returned Beachboy. Diddy clucked his tongue in surprise when I mentioned this second narrative, but then grinned and authorised Feisal to make his confession.

  ‘This is true. Diddy lost his girl to a guy who came back from Dubai with a lot of money. Diddy came here because he thought he would be able to get the same kind of opportunities as this other man.’ Feisal giggled nervously. ‘Diddy loved her very much, I can tell you this for sure.’

  Feisal had come from a relatively stable family background, too. He was born in 1989, the third child of a nurse, Sarah Idd Kaya, and a doctor, Tangaraza Masaga. Growing up, he had been close to his older siblings, Farida and Haroum, and loved his two younger brothers very much when they were alive.

  In 1997, Feisal had just started at Mtendeni Primary School when his father had ‘divorced my lovely mother’, who had then ‘decided to disappear’. His father had moved the family to the island of Zanzibar, where they had all witnessed, first hand, the Tanzanian military’s brutal suppression of political protests in the run-up to the 2002 elections. Feisal’s father had treated victims in the hospital, and the experience had sent him into a depression so debilitating that he had quit medicine.

  In 2005, Feisal learnt that his mother had died without having remarried. His father had remarried almost instantly – a woman from Kondoa District, where Feisal’s mother had come from. Feisal and his stepmother had clashed; to get away from her, he had registered at a hotel school on the mainland, interning in the Serena, Kiwengwa Beach and Tembo hotels. The pay had been terrible, though, and ultimately he had pleaded with his father for a final loan with which he had bought a series of bus rides to South Africa.

  Nothing had gone to plan since his arrival in Johannesburg Park Station in March this year. Within hours he had been both robbed and ripped off. The friend with whom he had intended staying took two days to respond to his many messages and, when he had, it was to say that he had moved to Port Elizabeth. When Feisal had travelled to Port Elizabeth, the friend had stopped answering his phone altogether. Some youths he had met in a KFC had said he could rent a bed in their city-centre apartment. He had used the last of his funds to pay upfront for two months’ lodgings, and had set about looking for work. Some of the tourism companies he approached had said they would hire him if he returned with a work permit. When Feisal had told an official in the Home Affairs office what he needed, he’d been laughed at. Go home, the official had said. You do not belong here.

  On the pavement, he had been approached by a woman who had claimed she could get him the required documents for a fee of R5 000. Feisal had asked his housemates to lend him the amount, but instead of helping they had hassled him for his next rent instalment. When he’d said he needed time to come up with the money, they’d given him two days, at the end of which they had thrown his clothes into the hallway.

  He’d called his father, pleaded for more money. His father had sent US$100 via Western Union, and said there would be no more. This had enabled Feisal to take the bus to Cape Town, where he had bumped into Diddy. He had been living the Beachboy life for three weeks now, and already the conditions had taken a visible toll. The smoke from the cooking fires had gunked up his eyes, and his right cheek had become a sandpaper of little red bumps. The culture of communal eating, he confided, revolted him. The pots were never washed. Hands were never washed. The stews of rice, chicken and beans were eaten off ripped plastic bags placed on the ground.

  All of this information had been written down in the journal I had given Feisal a week ago, and which he handed back to me today. Diddy shook his head sorrowfully as this transaction took place.

  ‘That one no good,’ he said, and Feisal explained that they had both been challenged under the flyovers the night before after Feisal had been spotted writing in it.

  ‘They accused us of giving away Beachboy secrets to the mzungus,’ said Feisal.

  This was unfair. Comprising neat cursive, switching between upright and forward-leaning and beginning at the back of the notebook and moving from right to left, the story Feisal told about his life was interspersed with rambling passages about the history of Tanzania Bara (Mainland), notes on the cultivation of cloves on the highlands of Pemba Island and, finally, a comprehensive list of the country’s national parks, after which he had written ‘TO BE CONTINEU …’

  But, of course, there is no convincing the others of this, and I can only hope that the misunderstanding will cause no further trouble.

  ◆

  An SMS from Feisal at 5 a.m. yesterday.

  THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT FREAND, MAY GOD HELP YOU FOR YOUR KINDNESS. WE NEED YOUR IDEAS BECAUSE WE ARE GIVEN TWO DAYS TO LEAVE THE BEACHBOY AREAS. WE ARE BANISHED. WE ARE SCARED. WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. PLEASE WE NEED YOUR HOPE.

  My mind went fuzzy while reading it. A dread message. Surely not, I kept thinking. A misunderstanding. There must be another way …

  I realise now just how much Adam meant to me, in terms of my ability to mingle with the Beachboys. If he were here, I would be able to ask him how to fix this situation. I would be able to establish whether Diddy and Feisal’s plight is as serious as they claim. They could be in real danger, or it could be that I’m being played – I just don’t know. I’ve gone out of my depth without realising it, and now that I know it I want to retreat and forget that this happened, wait for Adam to return before starting again.

  But, of course, I’d be finished if I dropped Feisal and Diddy now, and not just on the Foreshore.

  A social worker friend with whom I shared my predicament suggested that I convince both Feisal and Diddy to enter one of The Haven night shelters until a longer-term solution could be found. I suggested to the pair that we meet outside the Napier Street facility in Green Point to make the arrangements. This was a mistake on my part. The Napier Street shelter is just a kilometre from the Grand Parade, but for the pedestrian it lies over several multi-lane arterials and then under the Western Boulevard flyovers. To make matters more confusing, the roadways that pass beneath the bridges are only open at certain times to keep Cape Town’s rough sleepers
from straying into the upmarket Victoria & Alfred Waterfront precinct at night. The upshot was two hours spent trying to locate Diddy and Feisal, guided only by Feisal’s maddeningly general upper-case messages.

  WE NEAR TO BEACH AREAS

  WE NEAR TO PARKING

  WE NEAR TO CHINESE BOAT CALLED LING CHANG

  And so on.

  Eventually, I spotted the Ling Chang in a dry dock off South Arm Road, where pedestrian life is an odd blend of drifters, dockworkers and camera-wielding tourists. Diddy climbed in the back of the car and shrank into silence while Feisal explained that they had been summoned before a Beachboy ‘court’ the previous night, accused again of ‘sharing the secrets of the beach’. Diddy had spoken up for Feisal, insisting that no such exchange had taken place. He was asked to present the notebook, but of course they could not, having already returned it to me.

  ‘One guy took some wood and hit Diddy on the head,’ said Feisal. Diddy rubbed his closely shaven scalp and looked out the window. ‘They said we have been living nicely with them, peace and love you know, and so they would not give us a hard punishment like a beating with rocks or worse. They just asked that we leave the beach areas in 48 hours.’

  The judgment is irreversible, apparently.

  ‘It is just for Cape Town, not Port Elizabeth or Durban. But even if we go to these other cities the Beachboys there will get our report,’ said Feisal.

  We left that environment of canal-side hotels and singing yacht halyards and, just a few hundred metres inland, stopped at the end of Napier Street, in the shadow of the Western Boulevard flyover. The underpass had once sheltered such a large community of homeless men, women and children that the newspapers had dubbed it The Bridge Hotel. The area had been ruthlessly cleared in 2001 by the hirelings of a new public–private security initiative and, to discourage resettlement, large rocks had been cemented into the traffic islands, like giant teeth in a fossilised jawbone.

  ‘It’s formally known as defensive architecture,’ said the woman who met us at the entrance to the shelter. ‘This particular forest of rocks was inspired by the pigeon spikes you see in places like the Central Station. Nice, hey? My name’s Edna, by the way.’