Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (16 page)

Being an RP is like being on permanent guard duty. In a word, it was fucking boring, even when we were stoned. Some days just dragged. I couldn’t wait for the day to finish so that I could get back to Joburg to smoke and sell my weed.

Then one particular day, around 1pm, I decided enough was enough. The army wasn’t the place for me. I took my rifle, gave it to Larry, removed my RP armband and said: ‘That’s it, china, I’ve had enough. I’m not fucking guarding this gate any more. Please cover for me.’

Larry was shaken.

‘What the fuck are you doing, man?’ he said.

‘I’m leaving,’ I told him.

‘Don’t be crazy,’ Larry said, but by then I was already walking away. I stood right outside headquarters, put my thumb out and hitched a ride to Joburg.

Although the original six friends from the band had been split up, we would still meet up regularly and we all kept in touch. The night I left the army, Larry came to the flat in Hillbrow looking to buy some weed. He told me everything was cool at the camp, and so far nobody had even missed me. I gave him a bank bag for free and asked him to continue covering for me. This went on for two weeks: I kept Larry happy by giving him free dope, and he made sure nobody noticed my absence. Into the third week, Larry phoned my sister’s place saying that Visagie had finally asked where I was. I was having such a good time. We had just made a big trip to Durban in the SSS and had scored about five sacks of weed, each sack the size of an average pillow. Our reputation was growing and our circle of friends was widening.

By now our crew – me, Derek, Mark, Russell and a few other boys – were selling weed to most of our contemporaries who lived in the affluent northern suburbs of Johannesburg. At any given time, there were at least six of us. We were even looking to buy another car. In those days souped-up V8s were very popular, so while looking to purchase something much faster we came across what I think was a 1960 Cadillac Fleetwood limousine. Someone told us it used to belong to former prime minister John Vorster. We paid R3 000 for it.

So there we were, driving our newly acquired Cadillac, but first we had to perform an initiation ritual. We picked up a few friends, shut all the windows, closed the glass partition between the driver and the back seat, and smoked up a storm, forming what we called a hot-box. Stoned and happy, we cruised the streets aimlessly, looking to pick up girls and just generally causing havoc. Driving down Oxford Road near Rosebank, we came across a guy hitchhiking. He was wearing a suit and holding a briefcase. I mean, imagine a limo stopping for a hitchhiker? We pulled over, opened the door, smoke billowing out, and offered the guy a ride. He hesitated at first, but when he got a whiff of the weed, he jumped right in, smiling.

We had a lot of fun with that limo. Unfortunately, the thing guzzled petrol and it also had a serious oil leak. Eventually, it just wasn’t practical to keep it and we sold it off.

There was no way I wanted to go back to the army. By now I had been gone for almost a month. Whenever Larry came to the flat in Hillbrow, I just used to give him one or two bags of weed, no questions asked. Then on one particular day, he declined the weed. He said he couldn’t cover for me any more. He had run out of excuses. The authorities were beginning to suspect that I had gone absent without leave (AWOL). I didn’t really care. Fuck it, man, I thought, let them catch me. The next day I got a message through Joan that my name had been distributed nationwide to all military police to try and apprehend me. I was going to be charged with desertion. At first, I didn’t give a damn. Our flat in Hillbrow was as busy as a railway station. Business was good and I was stoned most of the time. I had also hooked up with this chick from Northview High School, Tessa. She was pretty and no more than 15 years old.

Life was great. I was free and running wild. Not a care in the world.

One night Larry arrived. His face was starting to bug me. ‘What the fuck now?’ I said to him.

‘Shaun, you’re my friend,’ he said seriously. ‘I advise you to come back. You are in deep shit, man. I was told that if you come back, they will be lenient with you.’

It seemed like the odds were against me, so, very reluctantly, the following morning I went back to the base with Larry. I reported straight to Visagie. By now my hair was quite long, longer than the average military-style haircut anyway. I definitely didn’t look like a soldier.

I was charged with abandoning my post, being absent without leave, and something or other to do with my rifle, but because I had come back on my own steam, I was sentenced only to 90 days’ DB, with immediate effect. It hadn’t even been six months since my last stay there, but, thankfully, my friend Corporal Swanepoel had by then been transferred to Pretoria.

Apparently some guy had died in Upington DB and because of that there was an inquiry going on into the conditions and treatment of inmates around all the DBs in the country. Instead of the normal three-hour PT session in the morning, this had been cut down to one hour and then another hour in the afternoon. At least something about DB was in my favour.

I was checked in by a new corporal whose name was Naude, a good-looking guy with blond hair and a thin, wiry frame. He spoke fairly good English. He was holding my file. ‘I see you are a troublemaker,’ he said. Then he got to his feet, lifted his fists and starting throwing punches at me. Fuck! It seemed I was in for another hard time. Instinctively I dodged and blocked him and at the same time threw a few punches of my own. He was pretty quick and appeared to be enjoying our little sparring session. Once it was over, and after signing in, I walked around outside and noticed a whole bunch of guys in blue overalls sitting in the open-walled mess hall praying. Then I walked around the back to where the shower area was and met up with one of the regular inmates. He was an Afrikaans dude, and quite a friendly guy. I asked him who the blue-overalls boys were.

‘Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ he said and added something about them being conscientious objectors who refused to do military training on moral and religious grounds. What else could the army do with them but throw them into DB to serve their two years. Lucky them, I thought.

Then I heard this voice from behind me saying, ‘
Wat die fok doen julle
?’ (What the fuck are you doing?) ‘
Sak vir veertig!
’ (Drop for forty).

The guy I’d been talking to instantly dropped to the ground and started doing push-ups. I turned around to see which corporal it was and I saw that it was actually a fellow detainee giving the orders.

‘Fuck you,’ I said in English. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ I reached down and pulled the other guy up. ‘Don’t do it,’ I told him.

This was my second stint in DB. I was an ‘
ou man’
now and there was no way I was going to allow anybody to order me around. I was also thoroughly irritated and in a bad mood.
And
dying to smoke a joint. The fucker gave me a dirty look but marched off. The Afrikaans dude looked anxious and hurriedly disappeared. So far, two people already thought I was trouble.

As I made my way to my cell, I passed the first cell in the building and was rushed by an inmate. He grabbed the front of my overalls, pulled me into his own cell and shoved me up against the wall in the corner. He was strong, but he couldn’t wrestle me to the ground. We were locked arm in arm. The guy was my size, and as ugly as hell. After a minute or so of grappling on our feet, three MPs came running in. They pulled us apart and pushed me out into the passage.

My attacker pointed his stubby finger at me. ‘
Jy is dood!
’ (You are dead) he yelled.

Fuck, I thought to myself, this is really a bad start. I might have been a lot better off doing the 40 push-ups. That night in my cell, the same guy who had been so quick to do the push-ups let me know that my new enemy was none other than the most feared guy in DB. Even the MPs were afraid of him. He was there for military car theft, going AWOL, resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. Over and above that, he was at least a good four years older than me. His name was Daisel. He was the main man. Daisel
ran
the DB.

I struggled to sleep that night, wondering what events daylight would bring. We were now woken at 4am, but the usual routine of polishing the floor and cleaning the toilets remained in place. Daisel wasn’t around and the guys in his cell were fast asleep. During PT I realised I was getting dirty looks from everybody, especially from Daisel, but nothing happened. It was obvious he wanted to deal with me personally. When I took my place at the table for lunch, nobody sat anywhere near me except for Daisel, who took the seat directly opposite me. He just sat there, giving me foul looks. Any moment, I thought, he is going to mount the table and rip out my jugular.

Nowadays, before meals – and I assumed this might have had something to do with the Jehovah’s Witnesses – prayers were said. I remember the words that lunch time: ‘Close your eyes, in the name of Jesus …’ I didn’t dare close mine. I noticed Daisel didn’t close his eyes either.

Daisel was slightly shorter than me, about 1.7m tall, I reckoned, but he had an athletic build and must have weighed about 80kg. Both his front teeth were missing and he had unusually big canines. He also had pointy ears, which gave him the appearance of a wolf – not a great combination.

We sat there staring at each other. I never batted an eyelid. Then, in Afrikaans, I said to him, ‘
Dink jy miskien jy’s sterk?
’ (Do you think you are strong?).

Daisel turned red. I thought the veins in his forehead were going to burst. He was just about to stand up and, I’m sure, throw the table at me, when I stuck out my hand inviting him to an arm wrestle, adding, ‘
Soos manne
’ (like men).

A smile spread across his face, and he nodded his head in approval. Then he rolled his shoulders around, moving his head from side to side and looking around at his followers as if to let them know this was a battle he had already won. Everybody gathered around, even the MPs. We locked hands, our eyes fixed on each other. Daisel’s hands were slightly bigger than mine. I thought I might lose, and if I did, I understood that I would be in shit.

Jesus, the fucker was strong! And he used all his strength to push me. My arm started to bend millimetres at a time. I could see it dropping. But then, I don’t know how, using all my strength I managed to get him back to the starting position. Arm to arm, eyes to eyes, I held on for dear life. Neither of us budged. I’m sure not more than a minute or two passed, but it seemed like an hour. I was aching, my arm felt numb, but I could see that Daisel was also starting to feel the strain. I knew I couldn’t hold out much longer, so I said, ‘Draw –
gelyk
.’ Daisel agreed. He stood up and stretched out his hand, and I could see in his eyes that I had gained his respect. I was happy to shake his hand, even though I couldn’t feel my own fingers by then.

Daisel wasn’t very smart, but he turned out to be one of the most honourable guys I’d met in a very long time. After lunch he came to me, put his arm around me, and told me he wanted me to come and stay in his cell. We became instant friends. Daisel was so organised it was unbelievable. He had cartons of cigarettes, a guitar and coffee whenever he wanted, and as his ‘china’ I didn’t have to do any work. On weekends Daisel would actually be allowed to leave the DB, use one of the MPs’ jeeps and go to town to the local disco, returning in the early hours of the morning.

The nights were long and lonely. Ever since the inquiry into DB conditions, things had got pretty lax. There were three bunk beds in our cell. I was given the bottom one. I wasn’t sure that I was happy about someone sleeping above me, but it was better than sleeping on the concrete floor. Those first days were difficult. I had not smoked any weed and my throat was raw from nicotine. Besides struggling to sleep, which was nothing new, I was restless.

Foremost in my mind was how Derek was handling my share of the marijuana sales. And I couldn’t stop thinking about Tessa, my schoolgirl girlfriend. Through Daisel, I arranged to have a note sent to a friend of mine, asking him to send me some weed. A couple of days later, a matchbox full of weed – ‘Swazi reds’ – was delivered to me in my cell.

Daisel’s job was washing the inmates’ overalls. The washing was done outside the actual DB in a shack made of corrugated iron. He arranged with an MP for me to work with him, which gave us an opportunity to smoke without anybody seeing us. On this particular day Daisel had prepared a broken bottle neck. At the mouth end he fitted a rolled-up piece of silver paper, which formed a filter. This was known as a
gerick
. We crushed the Swazi reds, separating the seeds from the leaves, mixed the weed with a little tobacco and loaded it into the broken bottle neck.

I gave Daisel the honours of busting the pipe. It was my first
skyf
since I had turned myself in. I sucked really hard. I could see the weed burn down the side of the bottle neck as smoke filled my lungs. I held it as long as my breath allowed, then slowly exhaled. My mind went into a spin and my perceptions of my immediate environment altered to the point where I didn’t know where I was. My mood was one of absolute bliss. It didn’t matter where I was. I could have been anywhere. At that moment in time and space, I lost myself within the realms of my being and just let myself be taken higher.

When Daisel and I were washing the overalls in what looked like a primitive steam bath, we used a coal fire to keep the water hot. Once the overalls were placed in the steaming water, Daisel took a piece of soap from a bucket full of broken-up pieces of deep-red Lifebuoy. He made some remark about the soap looking like Rooibart, which was a potent quality of weed, difficult to acquire, and he burst out laughing at his own joke. I couldn’t help but laugh as well. I mean, when you’re stoned, everything seems funny. And the more Daisel laughed, the uglier he looked. It really cracked me up.