My life, my routine, is always the same… We wake up at 5 am not 4 am, like at Sun City, and have enough time for shower-basin-toilet routine. No big push either. We go one at a time. Then we make our bed and sit and wait for warders to come count us. At 7 am it’s breakfast – phaka time. In the dining hall we sit on our own chairs and not those benches attached to the tables. The skaf tin is a nice government-issue one, with a metal cup and spoon (also with the handle cut off so there’s no stabbing). After the morning meal we file back to our courtyard and roam around in it for most of the day.
Afternoon: At 3 pm, we go back to the dining hall to have our last meal of the day. Instead of two slices of bread, we get six slices – almost a half-loaf – with butter and jam or peanut butter, porridge with two different kinds of vegetables, pumpkin and beetroot, which is grown right here. And meat might be chicken today if yesterday was pork or beef – and real meat, not just gravy, but chunks of meat. Yebo-yes, when it comes to food, compared to Sun City this is A-okay. To be honest, I have never eaten so well in my life, every night guaranteed to sleep on a full stomach. Then after the last meal, it’s back to our cells. We are about 24 to a cell. The door will clang shut behind us and a key clunks in its lock. Then an hour later the cell cleaner is given his first warning about putting the lights off. Real time to rest, with no lights or TVs on all night.
Can you believe it, they have a library here – and I’m allowed to borrow at least one book a week. The library’s like a temple for me, the only place in the prison where I feel kind of okay. Almost normal, you could say. Makes me think of all those mornings, afternoons too, I used to spend in the Jo’burg City Library, reading books, reading the newspapers, keeping warm, keeping cool, sometimes nodding off to sleep if the night had been rough. The librarian here is a tall thin guy of about 55 who loves his books and gives you hell if they come back damaged. The weird thing about him is how he talks. There is a trace of coloured accent but it’s like he speaks the Queen’s English. No slang, not prison slang nor Cape coloured slang. It’s like he chooses each word that comes out of his mouth so carefully – but not like he’s trying to sound like a whitey. So much about him reminds me of Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption. His height, for instance, but also the way in which he is always cool, understated but keeping his authority. Guys use the pages of his books to roll zols to smoke, which makes him mad, and he checks that each page is there when you return the book. He won’t let you go until he has gone through it from cover to cover. If pages are missing, no more books! Ever! Whenever I go to the library he is sitting there reading and taking notes from whatever book he is reading, always with an old dictionary open in front of him.
There are only 73 books in the whole library, but my three best authors – Stephen King, Louis L’Amour and James Hadley Chase – are all there. To be exact, there are seven Kings, thirteen Hadley Chases and nine L’Amours. You are only allowed one book at a time. Given the long afternoons and the speed at which I read, I could finish a book in two days. I have to force myself to read real slow or there will be no more books for me by the time I’m done here. You take it one day at a time, one week at a time, while you wait for next week.
This week I couldn’t hold myself back and I read three of the L’Amours. Jirre, I dunno why I like these books so much. In a way, they are really bad, and what could be further from my reality than a cowboy, right? Maybe I like his writing because his grandfather was scalped by Sioux Red Indians. Some of my great-grandfathers must also have been killed by boers and I like to think of myself as a frontiersman and adventurer too. In each and every one of his books I re-read the ‘About the author’ page where it says his writing began as a spur-of-the-moment thing “prompted by friends who relished his verbal tales of the West”. This got me thinking. Since leaving his hometown at the age of 15 (I left Kimberley at 17), L’Amour lived the lives of his fictional heroes. He had been a longshoreman (what the fok is that?), lumberjack, elephant handler, hay shocker (hay what?), miner, professional boxer, flume (huh?), builder, fruit picker and sailor. His personal library has more than 2000 volumes, L’Amour said he could sit in the middle of Sunset Boulevard (must be a kind of town square in America) on his knees and write. He wrote 189 books! Me, I could spend the rest of my sentence just reading one L’Amour a month and still have some more to read when I come out.
Saturday and Sunday our section will almost be empty because most of the convicts have gone out of the section to watch football on the soccer ground next to the prison. That’s reading time for me. Hey, and remember shikisha from Sun City? All that forcing us up and down on the cloth to polish the floor for hours every day? Here the cells have a cleaner. He is one of us but he gets paid R15 a week from the prison. All we have to do is keep the place reasonable.
Sometimes my eyes are hungrier than my stomach and you can take a chance and go back in the lending queue and pretend it’s your first time. If you are new they don’t recognise you. But if they do, you blow their trust and they don’t give you the next time, saying you got already. So, all in all, it’s better than Sun City, but I still don’t know how I’ll get through four years – that’s about a thousand days! One sixth of my life so far.
The knife, plus the knowledge of the knife, has got me through some tough times, but I sense that it’s done its job. If I’m going to survive here I am going to have to think of something else.
Late one night I can’t sleep and I find myself sketching a face. I’m not even sure who it is when I start out, but before I know it there is Don, the librarian, his clear but frowning, slightly wrinkled face staring at me as if asking, “Now what?”
That author page about L’Amour has planted a seed. I’m not trying to collect stories or even showing much interest in anyone else’s sorry tales, but the writer in me can’t help but notice that you just have to touch a prisoner with a little bit of interest, and the stories flow like wine. It was L’Amour’s own experiences that turned his books into bestsellers. This place is a library of stories just waiting to be written. Only there is no one to write them down because most of these guys can hardly write.
Speaking of libraries, I’m getting to know the librarian pretty well. Like I said, his name is Don. He’s tall and gangly, but has the body of an ex-athelete. He has greying hair, and wears these small round specs with a silver frame. It looks like in his day he could take care of himself. Not a single tattoo on his body that we can see, but I notice that his forearms are always covered with long sleeves even when it’s hot. I wonder what it is he’s hiding. In my mind I call him Prof.
“Morning,” I say as I enter the library, giving him the politeness and respect I think he deserves. My feeling is that he is not the kind of guy you have to act tough around. I clear my throat and ask him whether he is writing his own book. He must be, I think, because he’s always writing.
“No, it’s not a book, it’s a lecture series,” he tells me. “Maybe you should come, I am giving the first one next week.”
“What are the lectures about?” I ask.
“South African history,” he tells me. “But not your standard apartheid school diet. More like how to free your mind from mental slavery. Come have a listen – I have a feeling you’ll like it.”
“I’ve got a project of my own I’m working on,” I tell him. “I don’t have the time to go to lectures.”
He just shrugs, but I get the feeling I have hurt him a little bit.
Getting back to my own project, writing stories about these guys – I could, you know. I could do just like Jonathan did with us. For a few days I stew on this idea, keep it boiling, listening more carefully to the stories people tell me, asking more questions than usual. But then I go the other way. Hold a writing workshop with convicts? Me, who would rather read than talk? Do this? No way. The last time I talked to more than two people at the same time was at the Homeless Talk offices in Jo’burg, and even then Jonathan was there to facilitate. And the last time I spoke to an a
udience larger than that, I was still in primary school playing one of the Three Wise Men.
The yellow glow of the overhead light glistens off the wall. It is night and it’s not our turn for the TV, but the radios are playing softly, with music from different stations competing with voices of talk-show hosts poking through here and there. Few convicts are up and about. Lights-off time is near and the day rounds to another end. The ceiling is of heavy, broad concrete. It’s got to be one of the nine wonders of the world. How do they keep that much weight up there anyway? The cell is a long, deep cave, and the one who came up with the colour is a murderer. He deserves to be shot on sight. It’s a deep grey running into a glowing orange at waist height.
I lie on my bed, the top bunk, and follow the peeling grey-green paint flaking off the ceiling. If I strain my eyes maybe I can get it into some kind of form or maybe if I twist my head like this… It’s like looking at clouds and finding pictures.
Sometimes the shapes look like a jigsaw, and then I take a piece from here to join pieces over there. Other times it’s like looking at the faces of people I know. If I stare too hard it changes. That bit like a W, is a bird flying free. And that face looks like a face on the moon, but also like the face of Bradley, my Angolan street kid friend, who may be dead by now. Those curves there are that girl Marina in Kimberley who I could have naaied but never did.
Makes me sad, Marina. A nice, beautiful, very yellow-coloured girl. Built like a horse, straight body, head not leaning forward, narrow face and nose, and light, light-brown eyes. I was still at school in Standard 9, but drinking a lot. I was stressing because I like this girl and she’s okay with me, but I have no decent clothes to wear on dates so I begin drinking a lot of Black Label and hanging in the shebeen. My school was in a black area and hers in a coloured area and that made things complicated. If I was sober I’d be so ashamed of my clothes that I’d walk past her and see the confusion in her eyes and the only times I spoke to her was when I was drunk.
At night I would lie in bed and imagine arriving outside her place with a navy blazer with a crest on the pocket. I’m holding a gold cane as I step out the limousine, my nice two-tone shoes hitting the dusty pavement, allowing my clothes to do the talking, proposing to her. But the best I could do was my school uniforms. I say ‘uniforms’ because we had two – to allow one a chance to get washed and dried. Monday, Wednesday and Friday it was white shirt, grey trousers. Tuesday and Thursday khaki trousers and shirt. These were the only decent clothes I had and, after greeting her, I would have to go home to change because the school rules say you can’t be seen chatting in uniform.
The first day I chatted to her she wore a white shirt and grey gym skirt down to her knees. I was trying my luck, not really even expecting her to stop – but she did. I told her she’s the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, that I’d like to meet her to chat further or take her to a movie.
“No,” she said, “but on Sunday when there is a dance at the dance hall, come pick me up and meet my parents.”
I couldn’t believe what she had just said and moved on before she changed her mind. On the way I bought a Milky Bar. If she accepts this when I fetch her, I thought, we’ll officially be boy and girl. Sunday came and my only decent clothes were still my school uniform. I tried on some old pants of my uncle, but they were huge and even when I pulled in the belt, they gathered like curtains in a huge hall. I tried covering them with an old grey shirt that was also too big and belonged to my grandfather, but the result was just comical so I didn’t even leave the house.
The memory of Marina makes me take out my pen and paper and draw a picture of her. Not just her face, but her standing there in her school dress about a hand’s height above her knees.
Lost in my drawing, I am startled by Mossie and Oom Buks arguing. They are the only whites in the cell. To my left, at the entrance near the lockers this very warm night, is Oom Buks – a fatter, bearded Eugene Terre’Blanche-like character – in his green Bermuda shorts. His old and dry skin peppered with freckles almost makes him look like an alligator. Although old, he has a harsh tongue, like red pepper, and is full of bull in the mix. Mossie is huge, with the body of a Springbok forward – the one who jumps in the lineout and who can also run like the wind. But he is not as scary as Oom Buks. I hear them shouting at each other, but I ignore them. It’s not serious, I can tell.
Wesley lies there on the top bunk, just staring at the same ceiling. He’s covered in tattoos and holds the rank of sergeant in the 28s. That’s not that high up, mind you, but he’s still the highest-ranking gang member I know and he has the voice of an angel. At night I hear him singing to himself, making the sounds of a guitar with his voice. Whenever I ask him to sing, he refuses. It’s hard to understand people in here – I’m not that easy to understand either, I suppose, but not on Wesley’s level, I hope. He thinks he’s wearing an old Boer uniform, complete with brass buttons and medals, even though he’s just wearing plain ol’ prison clothes.
And then there’s Major. Somehow he manages to smuggle needles into the prison and more often than not he is sewing. Major adapts the prison uniforms and makes them stylish, changing the pockets, adding turn-ups to the trouser, making the shirts into jackets. The Numbers guys with money are his best customers. But I learned something else about Major. He is not only good with a needle but also with a pen. On scraps of paper he draws these tiny pictures of the warders and of some of the other prisoners. If you have a slightly long nose he will make it look like the trunk of an elephant or the horn of a rhino. If your nose is flat, he will make you into a bulldog. If your arse is a bit big it will stick out so far he will put a few plates of fried eggs and chicken legs on it, with some other people sitting around eating like at a dinner table. If the warders had to get their hands on some of these drawings – I mean the ones of them – Major would be in deep kak. Sometimes I show him my drawings, and I guess we have become friends. The characters here are really, really unbelievable. Perfect for a book. It hits me like a mule kick at the pit of my stomach so that I sit bolt upright.
“Dammit, I can do it!”
Okay, so this writing group is about to happen. I have tried to recruit a few of the most obvious suspects, the ones who seem really interesting to me. And the ones who won’t shaddup and keep telling me stories of varying believablity. Is that a word, ‘believablity’? Plus one or two who seem to have an interest in writing. Add to that some of the Numbers I have got close to. I definitely think some of the Numbers’ stories will spice up this book.
Tuesday, 7 pm, my cell. The first meeting. The line-up… okay, it’s a bit of an exaggeration to call it a line-up, only five guys but, hey, five is better than nothing, right? In the writing project with Jonathan we were eleven. A full team with a goalkeeper/coach (Jonathan), a goal (to write a bestseller), strikers (Valentine, me before I got arrested, and Virginia) and defence (David, Pinkie, Gert, Patrick, Fresew, Steven and Robert). We were all trying to get a grip on who we were. There was Valentine, from Cameroon, whose grandfather taught him to catch mermaids. Pinky, who was eight years old in the middle of the 1976 Soweto student uprising. Gert, the horse thief who never attended a session and who Jonathan met in a park. Patrick, the cartoonist who was forced to eat live birds. Fresew, the Ethiopian chemist. Steven, the ex-boxer who could change the colour of a stolen cow so the owners wouldn’t recognise their own livestock. And Robert, who knows how to remove prison tattoos using condensed milk. I wonder if my prison group will be able to produce the kind of powerful writing like those ouens in Jonathan’s group.
Okay, so here’s the current line up here in prison… From the Numbers gangs there is only Wesley, the Cape Flats coloured gangbuster who only has a Standard 6 but who is sharp as a razor and likes to sing. It took him no time at all to join the 27s and get branded with tattoos. Then there’s Sanza, your typical Xhosa homeboy who fell into crime at the drop of a hat. So far he has not joined any prison gang. Then Major, the tailor/artist. He sounds intere
sting, right? Major told me if he’s going to join any gang it will be the Airforce because they plan and execute escapes. And Oom Buks. With a name like that you expect him to be different. And before I forget, my latest recruit, Don the librarian. Don is definitely on his own mission. He is much more political and philosophical than the rest of us, more like a political prisoner from a different era. But there’s also something mysterious there. Like that tattoo on his forearm he does his best to cover up.
But don’t get the wrong idea, hey – like I have all the time in the world to run creative writing groups like that larney Jonathan. If I am going to do the writing project, I need time to write. So why I became a farmer, as I like to call it, is because even though I would have more time without this day job, there’s no place or privacy to write. I signed up as a farmer just to get out of here a little bit and then to earn some free time when the prison is not too crowded.
As a farm we get to work both on the prison farm as well as other boers’ farms for which the prison gets paid.
Outside we have to wear these bright orange overalls in case we make a run for it, in which case we will be instantly recognisable, especially from a helicopter. But who knows, I might even be able to run away.
When I decided to become a farmer, I got the option to be transferred to Section C, but chose to stay in my cell with Buks, Sanza, Wes and Major, and with Don nearby. Section C is empty during the day because most of its residents are out at the farms. The farm workers wake at 4 am and wash. That’s an hour earlier than the others. At 5 am there’s the head and body count, then we eat and wait in the courtyard until they call us. Then we’re marched out of the prison gates by six armed guards to the prison’s farm area where they grow sweet potatoes, potatoes, mealies, sorghum, beans and peas. We’re not handcuffed because much of the time our job is to pull out weeds. One warder stands on either side of the row watching us. If we are not weeding, we’re sowing seedlings from the nursery. At the end of the field is a big mountain, which signals the horizon. Both are under a big, blue sky. To anyone flying over in an aeroplane we must look like ants or at least dwarves. There is a hosepipe on a big frame that looks like a giant insect, always spraying water with pesticides and fertiliser in it. A road passes the field but few cars use it. We wear prison hats, green floppy ones, which go nice with the orange uniforms. We return at 2 pm and this is the rub about my new job: at 2 pm we return to the prison to eat and then can watch soccer on TV for the rest of the day or do whatever we want, which, in my case, equals write…
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