Dragons & Butterflies

by Shani Krebs

  It was around this time that I first thought of selling marijuana. Everybody was smoking and we were always looking to score, so one weekend, instead of heading for Joburg, I hitched from Potchefstroom, in my army uniform with a small travel bag, to Durban. In those days soldiers had no problem getting lifts. I got to Durban late at night. I had no idea where or how I was going to score. With my monthly allowance, I had a total of R200 on me. Somehow I found myself in Phoenix, an Indian area north of the city centre. The streets were well lit and the houses were far more upmarket than those in the townships of Joburg. As I was walking down a street I was approached by a young Indian guy. He couldn’t have been much older than me.

  ‘Hey, soldier boy, you must be lost,’ he said in a cocky voice. ‘This isn’t a safe place for you to be walking around at this time of the night.’

  ‘Well, maybe you can help,’ I answered.

  Durban’s marijuana was world famous. While we were in Durban over the December holidays after finishing school, whenever we scored weed this would be mainly through the Indian waiters who worked at the hotels. Invariably, they had the best quality. The weed was rolled into brown paper about the length of an index finger and as thick as an earbud. There were 20 pencils to a roll.

  ‘I’m looking to buy marijuana,’ I told the guy before he could answer me.

  For a moment he seemed hesitant. Understandably, he was wary. He wasn’t to know if I could be trusted. He asked where I was from. I told him Joburg.

  ‘My name is Shaun,’ I said, sticking out my hand.

  He took my hand. ‘Cool, man,’ he said. ‘I think I like you – my name is Samir, but you can call me Sam.’

  It was the beginning of a fruitful partnership. As it happened, Samir lived just around the corner, and within an hour he had organised me a big coffee can of loose marijuana, which cost me a mere R150. It was excellent quality. The heads were still slightly wet and had red hairs on them. I also met two of his brothers, maybe an uncle or two, and some friends. We all smoked a pipe together. I remember coughing like hell, which Samir found very funny. The weed was so potent that I almost hit a bummer. For a moment I forget where I was or what I was actually doing there. I couldn’t move, the shit was so good. Sensing how stoned I was, Samir made me a cup of tea, after which he offered to drop me on the freeway as I needed to get back to Joburg as soon as possible. The coffee can fitted perfectly in my bag. It was close to midnight when I was picked up by a trucker in a huge Oshkosh truck, who took me as far as the Pietermaritzburg turn-off. Then, luckily, a travelling salesman who was driving all the way to Joburg stopped for me, and I was home just as the sun was rising. I couldn’t believe it: I had made my first successful trip in just under 15 hours. When I arrived at the flat in Berea, Joan was still asleep, and I was soon asleep, too, still in my browns and boots.

  By the time I woke up my sister had left for work, so I went to the kitchen and made myself a few cheese and apricot jam sandwiches. I phoned Derek and, in as few words as possible, told him about my trip. The eagle had landed, I announced proudly, and he should get his ass over to my place as soon as possible. A couple of months after the blow-up over Melissa, Derek and I had patched up our friendship. It was never quite the same and was sometimes a bit strained, but we got on fine most of the time. First on my list of things to do that day was to go to the bank to stock up on plastic bags (bankies) to pack the weed in. Out of the coffee can stash I managed to get about 70 bags. At R15 a bag, that was almost R1 000 – not a bad profit.

  That Saturday night we hit the clubs, and by the end of the night I had sold almost half my stash. Fuck! Weed, I was discovering, was worth more than gold. Club Xanadu in Braamfontein was popular with the elite northern-suburbs Jewish youth. I bumped into a lot of my friends there. The word was out: we had the best weed in Joburg. By Monday morning I had only five bags left. I took one bag back to camp with me and shared it with the guys in the band.

  Our first official parade was about to happen. We had practised marching and formations for weeks now, and the day was almost upon us when we were required to wear our step-outs and impress the Big Brass. My Jewish mates and I smoked a huge pipe before we were set to perform. I mean, how could we go to a music concert without getting stoned?

  The band got together outside the stadium. Staff Sergeant Meintjies was there to lead as the conductor and to make sure everything ran smoothly. As we entered the stadium, flourishing a chopstick he introduced the first note. We all proudly played our instruments. Stoned out of my mind, I happily banged away at the cymbals. I was having the time of my life when I saw Staff Sergeant Meintjies yelling at me. I couldn’t hear a thing, of course, but he seemed to be telling me to stop playing. How odd. And the bass drummer in the centre of the squad kept turning his head and giving me dirty looks. Apparently I was taking the whole band out of tune and out of step. Once this was established, I was given a new role: that of pretending to be playing but not actually playing my instrument at all. Fortunately, in a marching band there are two of you who play the cymbals, so nobody would be any the wiser if I was playing or not.

  Fuck, it was funny!

  After the parade, which by the way went off pretty well, the brass were very impressed with Meintjies’ new marching band, although, sadly, I couldn’t share in the glory or take any credit for our success. Meintjies later called me aside and told me in no uncertain terms not to come to practice any more. And when marching, he emphasised, I should please refrain from banging a single note.

  This charade went on for a few months before some of us were eventually thrown out. After that, one of the other Jewish guys, Larry, and I became RPs (regimental police) at North West Command Headquarters. Imagine that! One of the biggest goofballs in the South African army was now a military policeman. It just got funnier by the day. The two of us were posted at the main entrance and we were required to check every vehicle that went out or came in. We had our own guardhouse at the gate; just behind us was a large parking lot that was more like a scrapyard for damaged military vehicles. There were Ratels, Buffels and Bedford trucks, all of which needed to be repaired or stripped for spare parts.

  Whenever we wanted to smoke a joint, one of us would walk through the parking lot pretending to be checking the perimeter, while the other guarded the gate in the event that a military vehicle might want to come in. Our first few days on the job, we were very serious about it. Whenever the big brass entered, we would come to attention, salute, raise the boom and allow the vehicle to pass through. After a few weeks or so, we were old hands at the job.

  By this time, I had also done three further trips to Durban and back. Samir never let me down. Instead of meeting him in Phoenix, we would now meet in the city centre. Derek and I had also organised, compliments of the Arcadia ‘after care’ (I’ll explain later), a two-bedroomed flat in Joburg in a block situated diagonally across and approximately 150m away from the Hillbrow police station. The block was called Clarendon Place and it was on the corner of Louis Botha Avenue and Empire Road. It was a real dump by any standards. The wooden floorboards creaked, and the high ceilings had these intricate ornamental designs along the top. In my room all I had was an old wooden bed, a double-door wardrobe, a dressing table and curtains that I think were from the Second World War. The bathroom had one of those four-legged steel bathtubs that was so deep you could drown in it. The kitchen was something else; our fridge made such a noise it sounded like there were men at work with earth-moving machinery. I continued to live at my sister’s place, but we would use this flat to meet our friends. Basically, it became the place where we sold dope.

  I remember one Friday night, just before hitting the jol, there were about 30 people in my room, huddled in groups, everybody smoking. There was actually a halo of smoke in the form of a cloud just beneath the ceiling – it was a surreal sight.

  Business was good. Derek and I had made enough money to buy a second-hand Datsun 1800 SSS, canary yellow in colour. It was a real Dutchman’s
car, but we had fun in it. Our reputation for having good weed was growing and our circle of friends was increasing rapidly. People would come and go from our flat in Hillbrow all day long. And whenever somebody came to buy weed, it was an excuse to smoke a joint with them.

  Initially when we rented the flat, we had only the bare basics when it came to furniture. Often on weekends a group of us guys would meet at Arcadia, either to catch a game of football or touch rugby, or just to get together with other Arcadians. Some of the juniors were growing up fast and followed the traditions of their predecessors. One of the boys I had taken under my wing when I had lived there was a kid called Morris. Being the youngest of four siblings made it quite tough for him. At any given time we were no more than 20 to 50 kids at Arcadia so we forged an unusually strong bond. We were more like brothers and sisters than a whole lot of children in an institution. So when we needed something for our flat in Hillbrow, who better to turn to for help than our brothers at Arcadia? Morris and some of the other boys secured pots and pans, eating utensils and other items of kitchenware and we smuggled it all out of Arcadia. There were even times when we ex-Arcadians spent the day there, hanging out at the swimming pool or the soccer field and we had some ever-obliging kids sneaking food out to us.

  Life in the city was fast-moving, and having to go back to the army every day was a pain. I was growing more and more restless. As regimental police, Larry and I were required to wear red armbands marked ‘RP’. This gave us quite a bit of authority. To liven things up, one day we decided that, whenever any cars arrived, we would give them a thorough search – just for the hell of it and to relieve the boredom. I would run into the middle of the road, in front of the boom, and point my rifle directly at the driver, while my partner would check the identification and sometimes, when the mood took him, force the driver and passengers out of the vehicle, check inside, then make them open the boot and, lastly, check under their vehicle with a mirror. Then, one day, some high-ranking officer, who I think was a lieutenant general from Pretoria, came to North West Command dressed in civilian clothing. We put him through our standard vigorous checking procedure. I thought he was some retired staff sergeant or sergeant major and we didn’t even bother to salute him. He wasn’t impressed; in fact, he was quite annoyed. After allowing him in, not even five minutes later I was summoned to Sergeant Major Visagie’s office. He was a short, stout man, probably in his mid-forties, and he had one of those handlebar moustaches that was so long I’m sure the ends could have met at the back of his head. He went ballistic! How could I point a rifle that had live ammunition in it, he demanded, and shake down the second-highest-ranking officer in the entire military? I was lucky he wasn’t going to throw me into DB. From now on, I should conduct myself in a military fashion. Dis-missed! When I told Larry back at the gate, we laughed so much I almost pissed myself.

  Being an RP is like being on permanent guard duty. In a word, it was fucking boring, even when we were stoned. Some days just dragged. I couldn’t wait for the day to finish so that I could get back to Joburg to smoke and sell my weed.

  Then one particular day, around 1pm, I decided enough was enough. The army wasn’t the place for me. I took my rifle, gave it to Larry, removed my RP armband and said: ‘That’s it, china, I’ve had enough. I’m not fucking guarding this gate any more. Please cover for me.’

  Larry was shaken.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, man?’ he said.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ I told him.

  ‘Don’t be crazy,’ Larry said, but by then I was already walking away. I stood right outside headquarters, put my thumb out and hitched a ride to Joburg.

  Although the original six friends from the band had been split up, we would still meet up regularly and we all kept in touch. The night I left the army, Larry came to the flat in Hillbrow looking to buy some weed. He told me everything was cool at the camp, and so far nobody had even missed me. I gave him a bank bag for free and asked him to continue covering for me. This went on for two weeks: I kept Larry happy by giving him free dope, and he made sure nobody noticed my absence. Into the third week, Larry phoned my sister’s place saying that Visagie had finally asked where I was. I was having such a good time. We had just made a big trip to Durban in the SSS and had scored about five sacks of weed, each sack the size of an average pillow. Our reputation was growing and our circle of friends was widening.

  By now our crew – me, Derek, Mark, Russell and a few other boys – were selling weed to most of our contemporaries who lived in the affluent northern suburbs of Johannesburg. At any given time, there were at least six of us. We were even looking to buy another car. In those days souped-up V8s were very popular, so while looking to purchase something much faster we came across what I think was a 1960 Cadillac Fleetwood limousine. Someone told us it used to belong to former prime minister John Vorster. We paid R3 000 for it.

  So there we were, driving our newly acquired Cadillac, but first we had to perform an initiation ritual. We picked up a few friends, shut all the windows, closed the glass partition between the driver and the back seat, and smoked up a storm, forming what we called a hot-box. Stoned and happy, we cruised the streets aimlessly, looking to pick up girls and just generally causing havoc. Driving down Oxford Road near Rosebank, we came across a guy hitchhiking. He was wearing a suit and holding a briefcase. I mean, imagine a limo stopping for a hitchhiker? We pulled over, opened the door, smoke billowing out, and offered the guy a ride. He hesitated at first, but when he got a whiff of the weed, he jumped right in, smiling.

  We had a lot of fun with that limo. Unfortunately, the thing guzzled petrol and it also had a serious oil leak. Eventually, it just wasn’t practical to keep it and we sold it off.

  There was no way I wanted to go back to the army. By now I had been gone for almost a month. Whenever Larry came to the flat in Hillbrow, I just used to give him one or two bags of weed, no questions asked. Then on one particular day, he declined the weed. He said he couldn’t cover for me any more. He had run out of excuses. The authorities were beginning to suspect that I had gone absent without leave (AWOL). I didn’t really care. Fuck it, man, I thought, let them catch me. The next day I got a message through Joan that my name had been distributed nationwide to all military police to try and apprehend me. I was going to be charged with desertion. At first, I didn’t give a damn. Our flat in Hillbrow was as busy as a railway station. Business was good and I was stoned most of the time. I had also hooked up with this chick from Northview High School, Tessa. She was pretty and no more than 15 years old.

  Life was great. I was free and running wild. Not a care in the world.

  One night Larry arrived. His face was starting to bug me. ‘What the fuck now?’ I said to him.

  ‘Shaun, you’re my friend,’ he said seriously. ‘I advise you to come back. You are in deep shit, man. I was told that if you come back, they will be lenient with you.’

  It seemed like the odds were against me, so, very reluctantly, the following morning I went back to the base with Larry. I reported straight to Visagie. By now my hair was quite long, longer than the average military-style haircut anyway. I definitely didn’t look like a soldier.

  I was charged with abandoning my post, being absent without leave, and something or other to do with my rifle, but because I had come back on my own steam, I was sentenced only to 90 days’ DB, with immediate effect. It hadn’t even been six months since my last stay there, but, thankfully, my friend Corporal Swanepoel had by then been transferred to Pretoria.

  Apparently some guy had died in Upington DB and because of that there was an inquiry going on into the conditions and treatment of inmates around all the DBs in the country. Instead of the normal three-hour PT session in the morning, this had been cut down to one hour and then another hour in the afternoon. At least something about DB was in my favour.

  I was checked in by a new corporal whose name was Naude, a good-looking guy with blond hair and a thin, wiry frame. He spoke fairly good
English. He was holding my file. ‘I see you are a troublemaker,’ he said. Then he got to his feet, lifted his fists and starting throwing punches at me. Fuck! It seemed I was in for another hard time. Instinctively I dodged and blocked him and at the same time threw a few punches of my own. He was pretty quick and appeared to be enjoying our little sparring session. Once it was over, and after signing in, I walked around outside and noticed a whole bunch of guys in blue overalls sitting in the open-walled mess hall praying. Then I walked around the back to where the shower area was and met up with one of the regular inmates. He was an Afrikaans dude, and quite a friendly guy. I asked him who the blue-overalls boys were.

  ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ he said and added something about them being conscientious objectors who refused to do military training on moral and religious grounds. What else could the army do with them but throw them into DB to serve their two years. Lucky them, I thought.

  Then I heard this voice from behind me saying, ‘Wat die fok doen julle?’ (What the fuck are you doing?) ‘Sak vir veertig!’ (Drop for forty).

  The guy I’d been talking to instantly dropped to the ground and started doing push-ups. I turned around to see which corporal it was and I saw that it was actually a fellow detainee giving the orders.

  ‘Fuck you,’ I said in English. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ I reached down and pulled the other guy up. ‘Don’t do it,’ I told him.

  This was my second stint in DB. I was an ‘ou man’ now and there was no way I was going to allow anybody to order me around. I was also thoroughly irritated and in a bad mood. And dying to smoke a joint. The fucker gave me a dirty look but marched off. The Afrikaans dude looked anxious and hurriedly disappeared. So far, two people already thought I was trouble.

  As I made my way to my cell, I passed the first cell in the building and was rushed by an inmate. He grabbed the front of my overalls, pulled me into his own cell and shoved me up against the wall in the corner. He was strong, but he couldn’t wrestle me to the ground. We were locked arm in arm. The guy was my size, and as ugly as hell. After a minute or so of grappling on our feet, three MPs came running in. They pulled us apart and pushed me out into the passage.