Five am.
“Vuka vukani. Kuze jele kuyavukwa,” someone from Japan screams. Wake up, wake up. This is prison, in prison we wake up early.
The Chinas are still asleep. It is still dark. Upon being woken by the vuka vukani siren I move to the shower-toilet area, to find no soap, no toilet paper but thankfully some newspaper. After a hurried shit and a wash, the Japans bark at us to clean, jeli cleana. This means standing on blankets and polishing the floor by skating and sliding up and down and across the floor for two hours. If you slack you get a klap with the hand across the face and told that you’re a motherfucker. There are some things I will fight for, but cleaning is for everyone so I take the klap and the abuse and do my bit.
As I ride up and down and the first light begins to dawn outside, I think of Jonathan. He must still be sleeping nice and cosy next to his wife. Six am comes and we hear guards clanking open the gates of the cells down the corridor. Sheets come down in Japan and China and on the newly polished shiny floor we sit on our knees to be counted by the warders. Once that is over, its phaka – food – time. Every one needs to have his own skaf tin, a lunch tin. Some use ice-cream buckets, some prison-issue stainless-steel tins with little compartments, but most prefer the plastic ice-cream bakkies because they are deeper and if you’re lucky you might end up with more food. Some have metal spoons with the handle cut off so that it can’t be sharpened into a knife. Many have spoons made from the corner of a plastic container. Like a giant snake curling its length from the cell to the hall, we inch our way toward our first meal of the day. In the hall are steel tables and steel benches. When you reach the guys serving up the food – ‘serving’ is the wrong word, because everything is spilled or thrown at you – you get two slices of bread, a tin mug of coffee, thin pap made from mealie meal and a spoonful of margarine. Most guys eat only one of their slices of bread; the other is sold for cigarettes. Like dogs we quickly eat what is dished up before someone steals it. Then the snake makes its way back to the cells where we are locked back in.
On the first day I expected – and hoped – that at least in this time we wouldn’t have to clean and be allowed to sleep, rest, play dice, or watch TV for a few hours till the last meal at 2 pm. But no such luck. Japan forces you to shikisha some more. You wash the sheets of the Japs and Chinas in the shower or basin. Then you fasten the sheet to a window and have to wave it up and down for two hours until it dries. As you do this, others fold the clothes of the Japs and Chinas, place them under plastic and tread on them until they are ironed. I have become not only a prisoner but also a slave. The only thing left is to become a maid and then a wife. Thank God for Mr Knife to draw the line.
By the time the second meal comes at 2 pm you’re so tired you can hardly stand when they slosh watery samp and a little bit of gravy at you. My blurry eyes see buckets of meat being smuggled past the noses of warders. That meat is meant for us but it’s fished out and all we get is an oily hint of it in the watery gravy.
At 4 pm there’s another head count in the locked cell. Those lucky enough to have things to trade (bread, cigarettes, money) can always get some rest from the cleaning. I have not touched the money rolled up in my underpant. I have no visitors so once they know I have money they will know it is hidden on me and I will be hunted and robbed. For the rest of the day it’s more cleaning of an already clean cell till you are put in a circle, all 80 of us, and forced to sing songs of violence.
We will come shooting
Shooting
Shooting
Shooting
When we arrive in Hillbrow
All they’ll be hearing is shooting
Shooting
Shooting
We will come a shooting
Shooting
Shooting
Shooting
When we arrive in Alexandra
All they’ll be hearing is shooting
Shooting…
When the lead singer, who is also a Japan, points his finger at one of the inmates as if shooting him, the latter will have to fall to the ground in a convincing manner. The lead singer will do this mock shooting until all of us have fallen into a heap of bodies. When the last body has fallen and the mountain is huge, he raises us up with his finger and the song continues. Woe on him who does not fall to the ground in a convincing manner. The Chinas fall on him, kicking and hitting.
And if they’re not songs of shooting, they’re songs of lamentations:
If I listened to my mother I wouldn’t be in jail
My mother
My mother
If I listened to my mother
I wouldn’t be in jail
Here in this jail
Here in this jail…
Dead on our feet, singing till 11 or 12 pm. If you refuse your head is pushed to the wall as a warning before being beaten. These are the rituals that enforce superiority and obedience, allowing not an inch of independence or challenge. Throughout all of this the Japs sit and watch while the Chinas enforce.
The only respite is Thursday, which is visiting day. But respite only comes if you are lucky enough to have someone who wants to visit you. This is my life in Section A, the most brutal, the bottom rung of Sun City. Section A, where there are no TVs and no luxuries, where everyone dreams of Section B (TVs and no singing). And in Section B everyone dreams of Section C (TVs, no singing and walks in the courtyard).
I still don’t know the reason, but last week I got transferred to Section B. Maybe it’s because the Chinas observe me as not so easy to tame. Maybe it’s because the authorities have something in store for me. I honestly don’t know, but here I am with TV, which as it turns out is as much a curse as a blessing. The big machines are mounted to the ceilings and are on 24/7. Serious – these TVs are never ever switched off!
Last night, more out of tiredness than principle, I refused to wash some tough guy’s tracksuit and to make his bed. I fell asleep wondering how soon payback would come.
It is morning, but with the lights and TV on all night, what’s the difference? I am trying to doze on my bunk, light, noise, shouting and movement all around.
“Go and wash these clothes,” I am commanded as a pile is thrown on my face.
“Uh-uh, I’m trying to sleep.”
It is like the pack was ready and expecting that answer. Suddenly, there’s a whole gang beating me with broomsticks and mops. I feel the blunt end of a broomstick hard against my cheek, then I’m pulled off the bed – now not a hope of reaching Mr Knife. There are just too many of them. If I show the knife I will kill one or lose it. Now I have this horrible cut and bruise on my cheek, the price for refusing to become a wash maid, only one step away from being a wife.
Spend the day cleaning the toilets. They are kept remarkably clean, driven by the prisoners and gangs and not the warders. They may be imprisoned but the gangs are also driven by a military kind of orderliness and discipline. Freedom but not pride has been taken from them. Don’t get me wrong, I will happily clean the toilet as part of my communal duty but don’t try force me to clean your own clothes or your sheets.
These very thoughts appear to invite a challenge. It’s Monday and here is an outjie full of tattoos behind me as I scrub the rim of the toilet bowl with a brush and bucket full of soapy water. This guy I have seen around, acting friendly like, smiling, forgotten that he has also been one of the bastards who gave me a hard time. He has gold teeth and a broken nose. Goes by the name of Kat.
“Are you a Number?” he asks.
“Yes, I’m a 28,” I lie to see if this will wash and cut me some slack.
“Which camp? Gold or silver line?”
This I can’t answer. He laughs, “I see you are not a 28. The 27s could use a guy like you, MacLean, but I must discipline you… Don’t worry, it’s the law and it won’t hurt. My name is Kat.” He comes up close to me and gives me seven soft slaps across my cheeks and, seeing as he’s being so decent about it, I just grin and bear it.
At breakfast
, phaka time, guess what? The same guy approaches me. “There was a white man here yesterday, looking for you. Did he find you?”
I frown. “What white man?”
“He had a photo of you, getting down into a street drain and all these posters with you on it.”
It can only be him; he’s the only white guy I know, here in Johannesburg or anywhere for the matter.
“Look out for me at last meal. I’ll get something for you,” says Kat.
At dinner Kat comes to sit with me and hands me three A4-sized posters with none other than my photo on the front and the word ‘Missing’.
“Come see,” says Kat. Unlike me, he has access out of the dining hall, and I’m allowed to follow him. Out we go along the corridor to Section A, and at the end where the corridor meets the phaka hall and in the phaka hall itself are lots of the same posters. For some reason, they must have thought I could only be in Section A – or that’s the only place they’ve been allowed to put up posters.
There I am on walls, in the eating hall, in the laundry, all over the fokken place. Most of the posters have been torn down to roll cigarettes, I’m sure, but enough seem to have stuck to the walls. Is this good news or bad? Firstly, the poster has got my real name, Sipho Madini. That’s not too much of a problem, I think – most darkies have at least three names. A birth name usually unpronounceable to white tongues. Easy Christian Yes-Baas name. And then at least one name to keep you out of the trouble the other two names might have got you into. For the rest of the afternoon I think this over. I’ll hang on to MacLean. Within a few days I’m certain all the posters will be rolled and smoked up. There is a shortage of paper for dagga cigarettes here, and I have begun to tear some posters down as well. Not too many at a time, though, not wanting to draw any more attention to myself.
For days I wonder whether I should contact him. He’ll only think I’m shit, a big disappointment. Instead of sticking with the writing group, I did what was expected of me: got into trouble, got into crime. The book cannot be all that far now, that is if it and the group are still going. Jonathan probably gave up on that lot too.
On the way to a meeting of the Homeless Talk writing group coordinated by Jonathan, Valentine passes a long line of the posters with Sipho’s mug shot on it – about 30 of the posters in a row, pasted along a corrugated-iron wall on the perimeter of a construction site. Fired up to use his investigative journalist skills to find Sipho, Valentine addresses one of the posters. A group of construction workers stare at him as if he is mad.
“Sipho, my friend,” promises Valentine, “if you are alive, I will find you, I will. I will.”
Been here in Section B for two months now. I never stay in one cell for too long because I am always on the jikeleza, the turn. I am always the first one to be chased away when somebody has to come and go. A new wife for someone means that I have to make room for that person and that’s what usually forces me on. Which suits me, because I want to stay as shifting and anonymous as I can.
The total in a cell has to remain constant. What scares me is landing up in a certain cell in B2 where its owner, Rasta, is reported to rape any young man who expects a place to sleep. Only in Sun City could you, a criminal, own or rent a cell. Rasta has to pay the 26s, who deal with rent money, to be a cell lord. Now, when I think of a Rasta, I think of a very dark beautiful skin and a friendly guy with dreads, whose take on life and fondness for herb makes him peaceful and mellow. The only thing rasta about Rasta is his hair and dagga, and even that is adulterated by his addiction to mandrax tablets, which is mixed and smoked with the green weed. The sickly sweet smell of burned mandrax fills the air of Sun City every single night. As for dark beautiful skin, this guy has pockmarked scar tissue and a body covered with ugly tattoos.
The cell is empty, like a ghost furniture shop that sells only scaffolded beds. I am sitting on my bed, legs dangling over the side, the only person in the room. It’s not often you get to be alone. But not for long. Three of the other inmates who live here join me. Not only is one guy white, but he’s super white. He’s very, very pale, with hair and colouring like Boris Becker. And he has a gold earring. How long can he hang onto that? Having no money, no visits and no respect, he does the washing of some other white guys. The other guys who come in are Willem, a coloured from near Kimberley, and his friend Gert who is even younger than me.
Word has reached us that Rasta will pay us a visit. I am sitting in the second row, from where I can see the lockers. None of them has doors, only neatly aligned boxes of squares, and here and there a piece of clothing pokes out.
Then I hear the clanging of tin cups from the cells down the passage. This is not noise, it’s code. I listen. No, he’s not coming here, he’s going to B7. Two loud slow clangs for A, B, then seven fast ones, 1234567. I relax several notches and so do the others. If this is the best they can offer, there is nothing to fear.
The buzz of prison conversations picks up. Nervous laughter. Then suddenly zols are lit, and in clouds of smoke we celebrate like fathers after the announcement of the birth of their baby boys.
But this was just the calm before the storm. Misinformation.
“Motherfuckers! Voetsek! Shower!” I look up as Rasta storms in, long arms, a bush of dreadlocks on top falling down to the tattoos on his chest, large bloodshot and yellow eyes that seem to want to pop out of their sockets. The voice hoarse, hysterical. The three others jump to it but I lag. “Motherfuckers, didn’t I say… all shower!”
Seems his goons have rounded up some others too. People are moved into the shower area like chickens whose heads had been slashed off, jostling with each other. Rasta moves to one side, making way at the door for others to slip by. And he walks back, passing me, not even beginning to think he might be challenged.
For a brief second I had thought his command would be disobeyed and I would then have joined the ranks of the rebels. I look around, and I’m the only person not stripping off his clothes. As much out of curiosity as fear, I move to the shower just outside the cell. There’s a puddle of clothes on the floor. Our dark bodies mingle like eels against the once-white tiled background of the shower.
“You, jou fokken moer!” barks Rasta, staring at me. “Into the shower – now!”
Slowly I begin to undress, the knife foremost in my mind, wondering how to play this one. Maybe it’s best not to be the hero here. Rather lose the battle and win the war. But I also think that I only get one chance to draw the boundary, after that you’re dead meat.
“Hurry, you,” barks Rasta again. “What you waiting for, jou moer?”
I take off my knife shoe with the big toe of my other foot, and kick it carelessly, sending it gliding on the floor, away from most of the shoes and towards the shower. I take off the other shoe and throw it to join its other.
In the shower, the coldness hits me, sending my face into an automatic grimace. I shiver – as does everybody else, young and old, slim and tough. As the jet of water rushes over us, goosebumps rise like sandpaper. Some slip bare hands across their bodies in an action of washing themselves.
And as I glance back through the water, I see a crazed Rasta and a group of four young men sifting through our clothes. Rasta walks over to where the shoe with the knife lies, hesitates, then kicks it across the floor back to the pile of other clothes.
There’s a scream and a procession of dull thuds as if somebody is hitting a wet blanket. A gurgle. They have lost interest in us, keeping only two young guys. They are holding victim number one down over a bucket of water and occasionally his head pulls back, screaming for air. Rasta stands by, raining fiery slaps to the side of the boy’s neck.
“Voetsek! Drink, you!” shouts Rasta, shoving the boy’s head back into the bucket. The kid is now struggling, hands shooting up, grabbing at nothing as though seeking branches. Another one of Rasta’s goons hits the drowning boy over the shoulder with his fist, each blow steady and swift. The kid only has on a blue underpant. I see Rasta rip these off and he kneel
s behind him. Someone else kicks the naked boy from the side.
With a dullness at the pit of my stomach, I gather my clothes and shoes with the idea of slipping past them and back to the cell not wanting to see or hear any more. But I am not yet in the clear. Although Rasta is down on all fours he notices me, the only one who didn’t get in the shower sharply.
“Daai ou, vat hom! He took his time. I think he is hiding something.”
I drop my clothes and prise the knife out the sole. It’s now in my palm, blade released, and I move into the corner so that no one can get me from behind. Two of Rasta’s sidekicks come for me, but Mr Knife takes over, limber from all those practice sessions in my ma’s yard.
My hands float outwards, the blade extending from my palm, inviting them in, smiling, showing no fear at all. Just pure confidence. Make Mr Knife proud, do it to them like Oupa would have. Shaved Head, one of Rasta’s sidekicks, moves first. It’s easy. I make as if to go for his friend who is just standing there. Shaved Head comes within striking distance and next thing his stomach is cut open, not deep enough for derms to be spilling out – intestines don’t get back in so easy once they are out – but enough to make him cry. And while the other stunned ou just looks, I crouch low, push off from the wall and spring at his face, slashing his cheek.
Maybe they are not used to guys fighting back. Rasta gives up on the naked boy who lies over the bucket and commands, “Los hom! Leave him. We’ll save him for later.” And to me, “Expect a visit from us…” And I’m left in the shower with the vomiting, shaking boy whom I help to dress.
That night I draw a portrait of Rasta – don’t ask me why, because this is a face I would rather forget, but drawing helps me, like, digest what I went through today. A part of me feels proud that I stood up to Rasta and his gang, but I also know I have drawn more attention and maybe trouble to myself. As I’m thinking about today’s incident a moth with circles on each wing flies in through the bars, makes for the fluorescent light, then changes its mind and flies out again into the night.
White Paper, White Ink Page 5