Here I begin to lose interest a little bit. It’s not like we are from overseas or anything and didn’t grow up in apartheid under crowded township conditions.
“Hawkers sold fruit and veg during the day,” continues Don. “Oranges and peaches and apricots and tomatoes piled in these huge high pyramids on their wagons or on the pavements, calling out rhymes like, ‘Nice and firm, got no worm’, ‘Nice and sweet for you to eat.’ At night these fruit-and-veg wagons would be lined up in the narrow, cobbled alleys, leaning against the walls with their wheels taken off so no one could steal the wagons themselves.”
As much as Louis L’Amour – maybe its because I can see and hear Don – maybe even more than L’Amour, Don has the power to take me from where I am to somewhere else. Being a prisoner, I think, also helps our minds and imaginations to be more flexible like. If our imaginations can see and smell and hear the place, it’s like a part of us is no longer here in Piketberg Prison.
Don’s voice comes back, fading out my thoughts.
“As boys we used to jump onto the back bumpers of moving cars, only getting off and running away when the driver slammed on his brakes and got out to try and beat us. And I remember that game we called Fox and Geese, like snooker but with discs instead of balls that you had to slide across a wooden board into the four pockets of the table. In the evenings, in summer, we would play street cricket. Many people joined in and the traffic could hardly move.”
Another brief pause.
“All the races lived together in District 6, but it was no paradise,” says Don. “It had the smell of poverty, the smell of human shit, of blocked drains, overflowing refuse bins and drunks’ vomit on the street. People did not always treat each other so fairly. Malays looked down on other Africans, those they called Hotnots, Boesmans and Kaffirs.”
Remember I told you Don always seemed to cover his forearms with long sleeves? In this lecture everyone learned that Don has some chappies of his own. Just five dots on his right forearm. Four dots for the walls of a prison and the fifth dot in the middle is the prisoner trapped between the four walls. “Even before I went to prison I got this tattoo,” Don explains. “So, you see, a part of me was expecting to end up here. This is true for many young men and I find this hard to accept.”
But the most interesting thing we learned was this. Don, as a young gangster, got caught up in a gang war and a stray bullet from his gun killed a little girl. At that time there were political as well as non-political prisoners on Robben Island, which is where Don landed up.
He ends the lecture talking about how, in the wild, lions and other predators help their young to make their first kill. And that’s the same with gangsters too – a young gangster is encouraged to kill, and the person he kills is most often another young man, often someone from the same community, or someone the killer knows, maybe even went to school with, young men killing each other for no good reason. At the end of the lecture there are lots of questions about Robben Island.
“If you come to my lecture on Thursday,” Don continues, “I speak a lot about the Island.”
It’s time to end the group so we go back to our cell.
Back on my bunk I pick up L’Amour’s The Roving Trail. But I can’t concentrate. I’m more than excited about my group. I feel I’ve had a glimpse of some powerful pieces of writing that might somehow make itself into a book. Not only Don, but the others too. The feeling I have is not that usual feeling that every step we take is like walking through mud – that every breath, word, thought is a waste of time and that we are not in control of our own lives. I also think about Homeless Talk and Jonathan. Homeless. Definitely, I was homeless, but more than that I was directionless. Just surviving, really. And drinking a lot. Funny how easy it has been to stop drinking in prison. Not a drop has passed my lips in six months now.
“You know, before it was like it was something I wanted to boast about, but now I feel uneasy about it, since Don spoke about killing that little girl,” says Sanza.
“Like Don said,” Wesley adds, “my first kill was the thing that makes you break with a certain kind of life or childhood. When you do it you are choosing to become a gangster for life. There is no turning back after that.”
It surprises me that none of them speaks about the details, no boasting, just their feelings and also the pressure to kill.
“I was never told I had to kill someone,” continues Wes, “but there was always that ‘What, are you scared to kill?’ I felt I had to prove myself.”
“You right, there was that,” says Sanza, “but it was also more like if another gang insulted us or beat us in a fight, the next step up was just to kill someone. Like it was just natural and casual.”
“Killing is the moment when you get labelled enemy number one by the other gang and the family of the person you killed. From then you are headhunted,” explains Wes.
“That’s right, yes,” agrees Sanza. “There were times I wanted to leave the gang but once you’ve killed someone and are headhunted, if you leave your own gang you will be found dead in a gutter because you don’t have protection any more.”
“Another reason you can’t just leave a gang,” continues Wes, “is because there are a lot of secrets that you know from being in the gang. If the police get information about a murder even five years after you’ve left the gang, the gang will think you gave the information to the police and they will come to get you.”
Then both Wes and Sanza, and this other guy Alphonse, they all speak how their first kill was the one that haunts them the most. It is always the first kill that visits you in your dreams.
I think about this conversation the whole day. It’s like Don just wants them all to stop being gansters, but it’s not as easy as that.
Don’s first lecture is a blockbuster. It’s all about Robben Island, which in the 1970s was known as ‘The University’. Not only was Don there, but his lecturers were the likes of Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela and Mac Maharaj. When Don got to Robben Island the senior members of the ANC on the Island were shocked at how little both the non-political prisoners and the young political prisoners knew about the history of the ANC as well as about the history of apartheid and colonialism. Of course, the lectures and discussions could not be done openly so they were conducted in the stone quarry. The way lecturers organised the courses was like this… If you wanted to attend a certain lecture series, you made sure you got into a particular work gang that was sent to the quarry where the lecture takes place. While you are working, handling a shovel or a pick, at the same time you are listening to the professor – and often not only listening but also discussing the topic with your professor and among the group.
Then Don, right in the middle of this, his first lecture, drops a bombshell. He tells us he has an agenda, that his vision is that we too at Piketberg Prison can have a culture of learning, of respect, so we can find ourselves and our roles in the great river of history. He tells us that he respects gangs and gangsters, that they are very organised and very disciplined, but that he thinks they have not thought enough about how to and where to direct all that rightful anger and frustration. As he says this, I think he is either very brave or very stupid to be insulting the gangsters.
The short powerful man called Benny, who I have heard is the leader of the 26s, raises his hand and asks Don about the Numbers. Were they not there on Robben Island?
“They were there,” continues Don, “in a medium-security section on the other end of the Island, but they did not flourish. They found it hard to recruit new members. Something else was going on there, on the Island, that was much more interesting. That was the University that I just described to you. And, also, if you stab a white warder there on the Island you die, you just get thrown into the sea.”
With that, Don adjusts his spectacles, bows his head just a fraction and gathers up his notes and his books.
Today is the day for my third group meeting. I am fighting hard not to let Don’s project make me lose my motivation and I feel a
little irritated with him because that is just what I do feel. I admire what he’s doing but I also feel he’s stolen my fire. It was a non-eventful day out at the farm. To get onions to swell nice and fat and round, you must trample their leaves so that the growth goes into the bulb and not the leaves. So it was an easy day, just trampling onions, lots of time to talk because we walk shoulder to shoulder down the rows of onions. No bending and digging like when you’re harvesting potatoes.
I get back to the prison at normal time, have a quick supper and go to my cell to wait for the guys. After ten minutes of waiting, only Buks and Major arrive.
“Don is sick,” mumbles Buks, not looking me in the eye.
“I don’t know where Wes and Sanza are,” says Major, shifting from one foot to the other. I feel more than a little jealous that Don’s lecture group is more popular than mine.
Buks is in a bad mood as usual and says very little. We begin anyway and Major reads something about taking some girls to a township cinema and moving their panties to one side during the movie while the girls sit on the boys’ laps. Sure, any page-turner needs sex, but I wonder about this piece. Is it good enough for a book? What kind of book is this going to be?
And as for Buks’ writing, he hands it to me, saying he doesn’t feel like reading. It’s got more crossing-out than anything else and is more or less unreadable, the handwriting more like a child’s than an adult’s. I think, where the fok is all that good stuff he told me about how he was a member of the AWB but got into trouble for falling in love with his coloured maid’s daughter and had a child with her, a child he loved? Not a word about that.
And the time the baboons – real baboons, although he also calls darkies baboons – were stealing and ruining all his fruit in his orchard so he caught one baboon and painted it white. The rest of the troop thinks this white-painted baboon is a man so they run away from it. But the painted baboon doesn’t know that it’s white, so it runs to keep up with the pack, who are running from it. So they all keep running and they all – that is, the white baboon and the others – they run themselves to death far away from Oom Buks’ fruit orchard. Probably the kind of bullshit story that Buks heard over a beer at the pub, but a good story all the same. Nothing about that either. Just all these false starts and more crossing-out than writing.
After the group, when we’re alone, I ask him why he didn’t write about that other stuff. “I tried to write it, but it wouldn’t come out right,” mumbles Buks. “Those darkies can write better than me,” he adds, a fierce pride in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Mike.”
I hunt down Wes. I find him in his cell sitting on his bed doing nothing. He doesn’t meet my eyes. “Can I talk to you alone for a minute?” I ask. “Why didn’t you come to the group? I thought you were a man of your word.”
“I cannot talk about it,” says Wes, “but those up the line in the Number, they’re not so into your group. I think you should forget it, for your own good.” I try to press him for more information, but he just closes up like a shellfish.
The kitchen has run low on salt and the food tastes even worse than it usually does, so many of the prisoners are in a bad mood. This makes me think of freedom – not only at home, but even in taverns, because if you order food sitting right there in front of you are the salt and pepper and you can control how salty or peppery you like your food. All those freedoms all free people take for granted. And even if you’re homeless, you are free in certain ways. Makes me think of all the street kids I met who had families. Yes, they were broken families but still families and still the street kids ran away from them to run free and live on the streets.
Today is Don’s second lecture. The room is a little fuller than last time. Besides Buks and Major, and Wes and Sanza – who couldn’t even make it to my group – there are six other guys, all gangsters, all covered with tattoos. Looks like two from each gang. The three from last time, but also three more. I don’t know them but some of them, I think, are in the high command. Maybe even the top guns. I am jealous, to be truthful. Why is it they come to and support this group and not mine? Jealous, but also divided in my feelings because I am enjoying Don’s talks so much. I used to enjoy History at school, and in Don’s lectures I even find myself taking notes, as well as following up by taking the books from the library he bases his lectures on.
In my mind I can’t help linking this stuff Don is telling us with me being in prison. If our land wasn’t taken from us I wouldn’t have been poor and homeless and landless and arrested just for walking down the street. This lecture is about famous outlaws who fought against the colonisation of South Africa and who also spent time in prison. Don tells us about a Khoi chief called Kora who, with his men, killed a boatload of Portuguese explorers when they tried to leave their ship to set foot on African soil. This same Kora was kidnapped by the British and taken to England so that the English could, through Kora, understand the minds of the Khoi. Kora made it back to his people and, after his time in England, he knew what was what and he stopped his tribesmen from trading bits of junk and scrap metal for sheep and cattle. It was for this reason that Kora was eventually hanged by a Dutch captain.
Don then tells us that by 1654 the Dutch had established a refreshment station at the Cape that was fast growing into a settlement with market gardens stretching all the way to Stellenbosch, which is 200 kilometres away from Cape Town. Many Khoi clans were forced from their own traditional pastures by the Dutch East India’s own cattle herders, and by the Company expanding gardens and farmlands. Twenty years later the Company had taken the whole of the Cape peninsula and with it all the hunting and gathering grounds of the Bushmen and all the grazing pastures of the Khoi.
Today there is great excitement. A guitar has somehow found itself into the prison. We are sitting in Section C and most of the warders have gone home. No warder would risk sleeping on the same side of the locked gates as us – he wouldn’t wake up, that’s for sure.
The guitar, a lekker pale, almost yellow wood, one with a dark stem, is in the hands of a guy called Boelie. Everyone who knows how to play guitar wants to show off their skills. So far no one has played it yet – it just gets passed around and each guy is allowed only to strum it a few times and test if their fingers remember how to play a few different chords. First guy to play proper is Boelie, who must be the guy who got the guitar smuggled in. He sings in Afrikaans in a very low, sweet voice.
Suikerbossie ek wil jou hê
Suikerbossie ek wil jou hê
Suikerbossie ek wil jou hê
Wat sal jou mama daarvan sê?
Dan loop ons so onder deur die maan
Dan loop ons so onder deur die maan
Dan loop ons so onder deur die maan
Ek en my suikerbossie saam.
A song about a girl called Sugar Bush and the singer wanting her but what will the mother say, and then the guy and the girl walking together under the moon. Jeez, this ou is good, I tell myself. His voice is so soft, but it’s like it totally gets into you, almost making me want to cry.
Then it’s a guy called Elridge, his style totally different to Boelie. Firstly, he stands up, and Boelie was sitting. Elridge comes at you like he’s Elvis fokken Presley, loud strumming and thumping the guitar every now and then with the palm of his hand.
The third guy is a ou called James, who’s not very good and after half a song he’s asked to hand the guitar over.
One of the best is this Xhosa guy Thembelani who stamps his feet a lot like a gumboot dancer and does more than one voice. At times it sounds as if he’s backed up by a whole Xhosa choir. Sometimes his voice sounds like a young girl and other times like the deep noises he is making are coming from his stomach.
“Hey, didn’t Don say he could play the banjo?” asks Wes. “That’s almost like a guitar.”
Don had mentioned in one of his talks that his family was big into the Coon Carnival and that he had been part of a troupe. I had also been wondering where Don was and how much he would enjoy
this.
So Wes goes off to call him and a few minutes later Don arrives looking sleepy. The guitar is taken from another guy who is also not all that great and handed to Don. As Don takes the guitar I see the excitement in his eyes. At first he handles the guitar like he holds books, very gently. Without him even strumming any of the strings it seems to answer to his body and make some humming sounds. Then it’s as if the guitar takes over. Don just turns into this jukebox, the fingers of his left hand moving so very fast across the neck and his strumming also so very confident.
First he plays golden oldies like we listen to on Cape Talk Solid Gold, and then it’s like we are tuned to a boere channel where they only play Afrikaans country and western, and then some moppies from the Coon Carnival. Don, I see now, is a real crowd pleaser. The amazing thing is that almost any song that anyone asks he knows how to play.
The more he plays the more the cell fills up and soon there is no more room. At about midnight he stops taking requests. “Can we do it tomorrow night again?” asks one guy and all the others echo this request. Don doesn’t answer him for a long time, he just thinks and thinks. Not tomorrow, he says eventually, “I need two weeks. In the meantime you guys meet and play – there is talent aplenty without me.”
I haven’t been here long enough to read what is going on but there is definitely tension in the air. I never saw it, but I heard that the 28s’ general, Pieter, nearly beat another prisoner to death. He suspected this prisoner of being vuil, in other words dirty, which means having the tattoos of another gang or leaking gang secrets. They say Pieter tied a tin cup to a piece of chord and laid into this guy till you couldn’t even recognise his face.
Wes told me there’s talk of gang war breaking out here. He told me that if there is a gang war in another major prison, it spreads to all the others, even if the different gangs have been getting on okay in one prison or another. If your country goes to war, you go to war. Don has also been acting weird. I have seen guys entering and leaving the library at odd times and he locks the door once they are in, but I have made a point to get a glimpse of them when they come out. The odd thing is that more than one group goes in, each at different times, and the groups are different races. The first group I noticed were all dark-skinned, mostly Xhosas. And the second were coloureds, although there seems to be two coloured groups. So I wasn’t surprised when the last group was made up of Buks and a few other whites. I don’t know why he hasn’t invited me. When I asked him, he says to me it’s top secret. Has this got anything to do with the looming gang tension, I wonder.
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