by Ian Patrick
After another minute Mrs Xaba had got it all out, or a good portion of it, anyway. Pillay then spoke, and she took the line that she was in agreement with Mrs Xaba’s main points, and that she knew the police needed to do better work, and after a minute of such ameliorating verbiage she felt that the old woman started mellowing. Indeed, she then started to back-track a little, saying that she knew that policewomen like Pillay were only trying to do their job, and that it was really the government that was at fault and not amaphoyisa, because they didn’t provide the police with enough support, and that those government people were busy siphoning off money for themselves instead of giving it to the police so that they could do their jobs better…
Pillay interrupted her before the next lesson began, and managed to tie the woman down to a more focused discussion. Once the volume abated somewhat, other neighbours joined it, and after twenty minutes Pillay had gained a sense of how the residents in the area communicated with Mrs Xaba and how they had protocols for reporting the arrival of newcomers in the area, and how Mrs Xaba then acted on the information.
Pillay did not get the full picture from this discussion, however. She had a distinct feeling that there were things the residents were not saying, which had to do with what happened after Mrs Xaba decided to act on any given report made to her. Pillay decided not to pursue that line of questioning. Instead, she wrapped up the discussion with profuse thanks and walked back to her car thinking that if the three escaped prisoners had indeed been present in Sikwehle Road, they would very soon have learned about Mrs Xaba and her supporters, and would most likely have scarpered.
Pillay drove away thinking that Sikwehle Road was probably a dead end as far as the hunt for Thabethe and his gang was concerned. But she had one more visit to make on the same street. She drove to the address at the other end of Sikwehle Road, an address that the constables had provided. The woman in question was staying there with her sister and according to the Westville constables she apparently knew one of the three men who had abandoned the car. The constables had shown her a photo of the prisoner Mofokeng, and she had nearly exploded, they told Pillay.
Pillay stopped her car outside the house and walked up the neat gravel walkway skirted by carefully maintained plants and flowers. The woman responded to the knock within seconds and immediately identified herself to Pillay as the mother of one of the men who had escaped from prison. Yes, he was the man known as Mofokeng, she responded to Pillay’s specific question. She was in an incandescent rage as she spoke about her no-good son. Pillay talked to her and her sister over a cup of tea, and then they all went in Pillay’s car over to the shack in Dada Road, where the mother immediately started cleaning up as she was speaking to the detective. Now that her son was on the run again it was unlikely that he would reappear in Dada Road, she said, so she could get the house back in shape. She was quite happy for Pillay to search the place thoroughly while she was cleaning up.
After a cursory search of the place, there was nothing of interest for Pillay. The house gave up no further clues, and it didn’t seem as if the three men had any intention to return, so she thanked the woman and left.
14.20.
Mavis read the first page summary with some difficulty. Given the very untidy handwritten notes by someone attempting to summarise the latest information for the file on the prisoner Mofokeng, she had struggled to decipher the meaning of the scrawled words. Eventually she worked out the facts being recorded. It was a copy of a note sent back to Westville Station Command from Durban Correctional Services, only yesterday. It followed the processing on Friday last week of a new prisoner named Mofokeng, who had been sent for internment in the prison in Westville.
The note stated that upon his admission to the prison Mofokeng had tried to bribe the officer taking his fingerprints. Failing this, he had caused an uproar with his frenzied efforts to avoid being finger-printed.
Breathless with excitement, Mavis quickly paged through the file to find what she already knew must be there, and she found it within seconds. A copy of a note in her own handwriting, buried in the middle of the file, in which she had reported to various Station Commanders across the province on the DNA evidence linking a man called Philemon Wakashe to a string of crimes. On her note was a further scribbled comment from the Westville SC himself, stating that with this helpful evidence from Cst. Tshabalala they had been able to arrest one Philemon Wakashe, also known variously as Vusi Gumede, Silas Mofokeng, Sipho Mphahlele and Sugarboy Modisane.
Mavis returned the file to the helpful constable. He in turn gave her a one-page summary of reported crimes in the vicinity since the three prisoners had broken out on Saturday. Nothing there to match what Ryder was looking for. Three GBH assaults, two robberies involving firearms, one attempted sexual assault. Nothing involving a mugging with the loss of cash. The constable pointed out that this was by no means normal. He would have expected at least a couple of assaults involving the theft of wallets or handbags or purses but in this instance nothing had come up. Nothing that has been reported, anyway, he added.
Mavis thanked him profusely. Still excited by the information she had gleaned from the file on Mofokeng she rapidly took her leave and headed back to Durban Central, knowing that she had far more news for Captain Nyawula than he was expecting from her.
14.45.
Koekemoer and Dippenaar had little success in questioning people in and around Nomivi’s Tavern. Not one of the staff members was willing to engage in any discussion with amaphoyisa, especially white Afrikaner detectives. They all knew the possible consequences of doing so, if not at the hands of the people these two cops were looking for then at the hands of friends and acquaintances of the drug dealers.
Nevertheless, not knowing their rights, two of the staff reluctantly showed the detectives around and even opened the locked back rooms for the policemen.
It was not Dippenaar’s first visit to the place. He had assisted Ryder some months earlier, when Ryder investigated a few possible connections to drug dealers at Nomivi’s Tavern. Upon questioning the cleaners about the whereabouts of the man known as Spikes Mkhize, long-standing friend of one Skhura Thabethe, he noticed the give-away pause and stumble and correction as she first said she had never heard of the man, then said oh, yes, perhaps she remembered seeing the man once, and then said yes, now she remembered, he had stayed for a while in the back rooms but he had disappeared a few months ago and had not been seen since.
Dippenaar stared at her in silence and let her stew a little before he spoke.
‘Yissus, sister. You better go and see a doctor sometime soon.’
‘Excuse me?’ she replied, while Koekemoer chuckled, standing with his arms crossed as his companion handled the questioning.
‘You got a real problem there with your memory, hey?’
‘I’m not understanding the question.’
‘First you tell me you never heard of the man. Then you tell me yes, maybe. Then you tell me of course, yes, he was staying here. Did you forget, maybe, that you shared a bed with him? Was the guy so bad in bed that you can’t even remember the experience?’
Koekemoer interrupted, speaking in faulty isiZulu, and managed to extract more information from her. The man known as Spikes had left and was living somewhere in the Transkei, she said. He had disappeared three months ago and had since then telephoned from Umtata to say that he wouldn’t be coming back. Since then the rooms had been locked and no-one was using them.
A cursory look around the rooms indicated to the detectives that this version was probably accurate. The place was filthy and did indeed look as if nobody had entered for the last three months.
There was no way the two detectives were going to get any reliable information from Nomivi’s Tavern, so they left after no more than twenty minutes.
17.30.
Nyawula, Ryder, Pillay, Koekemoer and Dippenaar all enthusiastically praised Mavis for her work. They all digested the further feedback from KoeksnDips and Mavis, and Nya
wula was in more of an upbeat mood than any of them had seen for a while.
‘So what we have, people, is this. Thabethe, Mgwazeni and Wakashe, aka Mofokeng, are working together right under our noses. They’ve made no attempt to leave the province or to even lie low for a while. These guys are unbelievable. They’re back in the nyaope business within a couple of days of breaking out.’
‘Lucrative business, Captain,’ said Pillay.
‘You’re right, Navi,’ he replied. ‘These guys obviously have easy access to suppliers as well as customers. Jeremy, any developments yet with the use of the stolen bank cards?’
‘Piet tells me he’ll have the information from the various banks first thing tomorrow, Captain. They’ve got information, apparently, showing that Thabethe and his crew visited various ATMs at specific times. There are apparently a few photos from the ATM security devices, but it seems that the three of them were wise about ATM cameras and there’s nothing very clear. But they’re sending the photos across to Piet anyway. We’ll have a look tomorrow when they arrive.’
There appeared to be a natural break in the conversation, so Nyawula chose that moment to switch the subject.
‘How’s the report going, Jeremy?’
‘Getting there, Captain. Getting there. Slowly.’
‘What report’s that, Captain?’ asked Dippenar.
‘The donor who paid for Jeremy’s trip to England needs a report on what Jeremy picked up there, Dipps. I know that Jeremy would rather be filling in IPID reports than doing this report.’
Ryder thought how very true that was. He was struggling with the report. He would much rather be out there on the front line doing the dirty work, rather than trying to make sense on paper of the realities of policing in the province. He had been trying to get to grips with the impact on his work of over-zealous reporting from some journalists who were drawing inferences from some statistical reports and ignoring contrary reports, as they strove to build their cases one way or another either for or against the police in the province. On both sides he saw massive oversimplifications of what were in practice very intricate institutional dynamics. Ryder thought back on his visit to Oxford, especially Professor Hutchinson’s analysis of the equivalent dynamics in the United Kingdom. How would the gentle professor view the various imperatives of research, as he saw it, in the South African context? In this province population demographics could be mapped directly onto the geographical reporting of violent crime, and there was a distinct difference between KwaZulu-Natal and the United Kingdom in one major area: the number of uniformed cops who were murdered every couple of months. This was a population that was miles away from consenting to being policed, he thought.
‘Those English okes teach you anything useful, Jeremy?’
‘Not really, Dipps. Well, I lie. There was some interesting information and there were some very useful ideas. The most interesting was from this nutty professor. Nice guy. He was something of an expert on some of the more esoteric arguments, you know?’
‘Like what, Jeremy?’ interjected Nyawula. ‘Why not chat about it now? It’ll help you write your report.’
Ryder saw the sense in that. Much easier getting his thoughts together in a situation like this: better than staring at a desk wanting to be somewhere else.
‘OK, Captain. If you like. Well, Dipps, what I mean is that this Professor Hutchinson had some interesting things to say, even though most of it was relevant to British policing and wouldn’t transfer over here. Some of it, maybe, but not all of it. Prof Hutchinson is very big on what he calls building community alliances against criminal networks. Getting local communities involved, more work on restorative justice, building consensus in neighbourhoods…’
‘You mean, like, Jeremy, maybe we should call Mr and Mrs Khuzwayo and the six okes in hospital, along with old Thabethe, and give them tea and cake and have a nice chat?’
Koekemoer’s intervention was not what Nyawula had intended, but he let it go, while the others all muttered their own views, none of them positive about the Professor’s suggestion. Ryder cut through the hubbub to continue.
‘Not quite, Koeks. I think Hutchinson would modify a couple of his ideas after a week in KwaZulu-Natal, but he certainly does have a few good points to make. I think he’s right, for example, when he talks about the need for a thorough investigation of penal culture, policy and practice in this country. That might be…’
‘Penal culture?’ said Koekemoer, to guffaws from Dippenaar and Pillay and a sigh from Nyawula.
‘Do you know something, Koeks?’ interrupted Ryder, getting in before the Afrikaner could get going. ‘This is uncanny. When the professor used those words on me I made a conscious note not to repeat them in the presence of my good friend Detective Koekemoer. How could I have forgotten that? As he said those words to me, there in Oxford, I could see your face. Damn. I forgot. No, Koeks, before you say anything, let me assure you it’s not what you think.’
Ryder went straight on, and despite the occasional jibes and comments and snide remarks from his colleagues about the British, Nyawula had been correct. It was a useful session and he was able to pull some of his own thinking together. Writing the report for the donor would be a little easier than he had assumed. He found himself traversing a lot of the ground he had covered with Hutchinson and others in England, talking briefly about Hutchinson’s thoughts on public order, community and urban renewal, and their connection to substance misuse and rehabilitation programmes. He linked the work of Thames Valley police on crack-cocaine and heroin use in relation to homelessness, and drew the parallels, as he saw it, with local work in Durban, and the impact of nyaope and other drugs. He called on Pillay to tell them briefly what she knew about the Qalakabusha work in Albert Park, and the discussion developed more generally among them all about their role in the context of various other initiatives.
There ensued a useful discussion about the realities of their work on the ground compared to perceptions of the public, and they then moved into discussing the growing sense among so many local commentators that crime was spiralling out of control. Ryder pulled the discussion back to the matter of prisons. They came to some consensus and acknowledged that anecdotal rumours of conditions in prisons were one thing, but even formal reports were horrific, revealing almost medieval conditions. Some enterprising journalists had probed deeply into allegations of torture in prisons, ranging from electric shocks to injecting prisoners with dangerous levels of sedatives. As well as some other chemicals, they were sure, that went way beyond sedation.
The lively and profitable conversation then ran into a brick wall with a comment from Dippenaar.
‘Ja, manne, the real problem is recidivism.’
There was a long pause as they all looked at him. Mavis giggled loudly in the corner as she saw Koekemoer’s expression, and she tried to muffle her amusement as Koeks broke the pause.
‘Yissus. Ou soutpiel. What’s wrong with you, Afrikaner boy? Three syllable words not good enough for you? Good old one-syllable Afrikaner words not good enough for you, hey? Now you need five syllables?’
‘Ag twak man. Jy praat kak, Koeks, jy weet?’
‘Ja. Sien jy?’ Koekemoer jumped in with alacrity. ‘Dis reg, ou boet. There, that time. You got it right that time. Every word there was one syllable. Now we can understand what you’re saying, ou boet. Keep your fokken five syllable Engelse words to yourself, man. Praat Afrikaans, jong. Soutpiel.’
There was a flurry of arguments about whether Koeks was wrong and whether recidivism wasn’t actually five syllables but four, and counter-arguments saying that it was indeed five syllables.
‘That’s only because you pronounce film as a two-syllable word, Koeks,’ said Pillay. ‘If you want to…’
‘OK, guys. Calm down,’ said Nyawula. ‘Let’s give Jeremy a chance.’
The discussion continued and proved more helpful than Ryder had anticipated, as he began to get his thoughts in order for the report to the donor. By the
time they concluded and left the Captain’s office, teasing and cajoling and punching one another like playground children, there was some agreement that as desirable as the notion of community consent to being policed was, there was a more urgent consensus. This was that Skhura Thabethe needed to be found, and quickly.
Koekemoer added the thought as they walked out toward the car park that he did not think Thabethe would consent to being arrested, but maybe he could be enticed to consent with the offer of a straw of whoonga.
‘You think so, Koeks?’ said Pillay. ‘You going to invite him to your place for a straw? What if he brings along his nice sharpened spoke?’
‘He can come along any day with his spoke, that ou. If he shows me his spoke I’ll show him my hunting rifle. Yissus. I’d like to get that guy in my sights.’
‘You should come along to Navi’s kick-boxing this evening, Uncle Koeks. Then you’ll be able to handle any guy with a spoke.’
‘Mavis is right, Koeks,’ said Pillay. ‘If a guy pulls his bicycle spoke on you it’s not likely that you’ll have time to say excuse me for a minute, I just want to fetch my hunting rifle and I’ll be back. Why don’t you come along to the class this evening? Mavis is coming. Six-thirty. It’ll be fun. Just for an hour. We’ll get Mavis to demonstrate and kick your shins.’
‘No thanks, ladies. The women in this unit are too tough for us. You go and enjoy yourselves. Me and Dipps, we’re gentlemen. Dipps is coming along for a bite to eat at our place tonight. We’ll think of you two when we have our boerewors and pap and beer.’
‘OK guys,’ said Pillay. ‘Have fun, grow fat and become weak and feeble. Come on, Mavis. Let’s go and have fun, grow thin and become strong and sexy.’
6 WEDNESDAY
00.25.
Nadine Salm and Pauline Soames finished a late dinner and worked together for a while before going to bed shortly after midnight. Pauline was worried. Nadine had been behaving in a distracted manner. Over dinner her occasional laughter at some witticism from her companion had sounded forced and unnatural. It was far removed from the normally infectious belly laugh and high-pitched giggle that Pauline had become accustomed to.