Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (15 page)

Then came the day that our instruments finally arrived. This was the moment of truth, and the moment I’d been dreading. Once we were issued with instruments and music books, we were briskly informed that we had two weeks to practise and prepare for the audition. The pressure was on. Every day we sat in the hall and practised. I tried, I really did, but I couldn’t blow a single note on my trumpet. Smoking weed was much easier. At intervals we would jump into our cars, go for a drive and smoke a joint. By the end of the second week, with the help of some of the other band members, and to my surprise, every one of us Jewish guys had learnt to play – everyone except me.

D-day was upon us. One by one we had to go up on the stage where Staff Sergeant Meintjies was sitting, proudly waiting to audition us. Everybody made it through. I hung back to the very last, and then I couldn’t delay any longer. I held the trumpet to my mouth, took a deep breath and blew with all my might. My cheeks puffed up and my eyeballs nearly popped, but, except for a farting sound, not a single musical note emanated from my instrument. Jesus, I was embarrassed. Staff Sergeant Meintjies turned red and then went pale. He looked like he was going to faint.

Thinking quickly, I said, ‘
My mond is nie gebou vir hierdie ding nie
’ (My mouth is not built for this thing), and I pointed scornfully at the mouthpiece. I will never forget the expression on Meintjies’ face. He was totally gobsmacked. I quickly added, in English, before he had a chance to say anything: ‘Perhaps I could play the cymbals?’

Meintjies’ face lit up immediately and regained its normal colour. He stretched out his hand and took my trumpet away from me, nodding curtly. There was no way he could return me to my unit. This would have been not only a loss of face for him, but also a sign of incompetence, over and above which was the fact that most of our battalion had already moved to the border. (Although the civil war in Angola had formally ended in 1975, guerrilla warfare was still being waged by UNITA forces who, supported by South Africa, were fighting the MPLA, who in turn were armed by the Soviet Union and Cuba.)

Over the next days and weeks, I would sit around and bang the cymbals together, which, I reckoned, could be done by any fool. Still, the best part of being in the band was that we could go home every night. Captain Henrico was really very fond of us. On one occasion I even brought my sister Joan to visit him, and he proudly escorted her onto the parade ground while inspecting the men.

We were having the time of our lives, on the jol almost every night, loafing about during the day. All I had to do was clash those cymbals now and again. Joan’s flat had become a regular sleepover place for my friends; there were times when there were four or five of us crashing there, sprawled all over the lounge. One guy even slept in the bath one night. My sister, bless her soul, was very accommodating and never really complained until, one day, while we were smoking up a storm in her flat, one of my friends blew weed into her parrot’s face. The poor creature then committed suicide. When Joan came home, she found that the bird had stuck its head through the bars of the cage and broken its neck. She went totally ballistic and immediately banned my friends from the premises. When Joan was out at work, though, we would still meet there and smoke weed.

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.