Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (17 page)

In DB we were allowed visitors once a month. Joan had got engaged to a guy named Malcolm, and the two of them came to visit me, bringing Tessa with them. Tessa wasn’t allowed in at first because she was only 15, but then the MPs relented. The visit area was just outside the DB and adjacent to the obstacle course. My head had been shaved completely and my sister was quite distraught at the sight of me. But even though none of them was used to seeing me without hair, they also couldn’t help remarking how healthy I looked. The visit was over quite quickly and pretty soon we all had to return to our cells.

I felt alone and lost. Seeing my family and my girlfriend had unsettled me more than I had anticipated. A couple of days after that, Daisel was released. It was only after he had gone that I learnt that he’d spent time in almost every DB in the country. My friend was quite a notorious criminal in army circles. On his last day we embraced each other and said our farewells, and I reminded him to stay out of trouble – unlikely though that was.

My remaining days without Daisel were boring but, luckily for me, because of good behaviour, once again my term was adjusted. After spending a total of 45 days in DB, I, too, was released.

On my first weekend pass I went straight to our flat in Hillbrow. The place was deserted; you could see nobody had been there for weeks. The shelves of my wardrobe had been ransacked and my stuff was lying all over the floor. Someone had been here and conducted a very thorough search. Because nothing seemed to be missing, I immediately knew it had been the
boere
, a term we used in South Africa at that time for the police. When I had last been in the flat, the whole bathtub had been full of weed. Now of course it was empty.

During the past 45 days in DB I’d smoked weed only on two occasions and I looked forward to getting back into my routine. What was it about the green herb that made me a slave of my own desires? For a moment I felt a sense of loss, perhaps the loss of my innocence, the loss of youth. What did it matter, though? I was young and invincible and what better way to pass the time while in the army than getting stoned? I couldn’t claim to be a victim of circumstances. I’d made a choice. Choices don’t choose us … or do they? But destiny always has an ulterior motive, I would come to discover, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Just when you think you have it all figured out, there’s a twist in the road that, more often than not, will alter the course of your life. Nothing is set in concrete.

I had nothing of real value in the flat. It was basically just clothing, which I could collect at any time. I hitched a ride to my sister’s flat and got in touch with Derek, who quickly filled me in on how the cops had raided the Hillbrow place. Fortunately, by the time they came most of our stash had been sold, and whatever remained had been moved to another flat before the raid. This was a flat in Yeoville that Derek rented. We had both known it was only a matter of time before the cops would get wind of what was going on in Clarendon Place, with so many people coming and going at all hours of the day and night. Our new flat, we decided, would be out of bounds to everybody.

Over New Year a few of us took our seven-day pass from the army and I drove down to Cape Town with four friends: Gerry, who was from Durban, Sam from Pretoria and Mark and me from Joburg. We drove in Sam’s light blue Chevair and it took us just over 12 hours to get there. Our first destination was the renowned tattoo artists, Adams, in Woodstock. It was Gerry who had planted the idea in our heads. I wasn’t all that keen.

All the way down to Cape Town, we smoked weed through a small clay pipe. Perhaps smoking weed at the coast is different to smoking on the highveld. You seemed to be on more of a buzz – or it could just have been that we all had that holiday feeling. When we got to Woodstock, we found Tattoo Adams totally fucked out of his head, but he claimed he worked best when he was stoned, so we trusted him. One of the reasons why I was against having a tattoo was because Jews are not allowed to mark their skin. If we do, then, when we die, we cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery. However, once I was inside the studio I was mesmerised by the different designs stuck all over the walls, from floor to ceiling. What made it even more enticing was that I appreciated art. Suddenly I couldn’t resist having a tattoo.

My friend Sam, also of strong faith, also succumbed to temptation. He had a small devil’s fork tattooed just above his private parts. I decided to have an eagle done, explaining to Tattoo Adams that the eagle should look as if it was about to pounce on its prey. It goes without saying that my tattoo turned out to look nothing like I had envisaged. Gerry, on the other hand, had a small ‘Hot Stuff’ tattooed on his right arm and a beautiful eagle on his left, with an American flag.

We jolled in Cape Town for an exciting five days, visiting clubs and bars and picking up chicks. We had to get back to Potchefstroom before our pass expired, and, as it happened, time ran out the night before we made our way out of Cape Town. We hadn’t been travelling for much more than an hour when, as dawn was breaking, Sam fell asleep at the wheel. As we were rounding a bend the car started to drift over into the oncoming lane. In the distance we could see a vehicle approaching. I tried to yell out from where I was sitting, behind the passenger seat, but, in that moment, I became paralysed. I couldn’t move a muscle and the words that I uttered got lost somewhere between my brain and my vocal cords.

Sam’s head dropped to the side and, fortunately for all of us, this small movement woke him up. He frantically corrected the steering, veering back from the wrong side of the road and avoiding a head-on collision. But there was quite a steep drop on our side and the Chevair went flying down the embankment, plummeted under a fence and plunged into a vineyard.

No one moved. We were all in shock. It took a while for us to realise what had happened. Then I rolled down my window and stretched out my arm. I turned to my friends. ‘Grape, anyone?’ I asked. I don’t know whether it was shock or what, but at that we all burst out laughing and couldn’t stop until tears were pouring out of our eyes. Eventually we got out of the car, gathered our bags together and hitched back to Cape Town. Sam phoned his family, who arranged a tow truck, and then he and Mark caught a plane back to Joburg. Gerry and I decided to hitch back because neither of us could afford a plane ticket.

After an abortive attempt at doing a physical instruction training course, I returned to my unit, where there were a couple of us
ou manne
who now had not very much to do. We were put in tents and given odd jobs here and there, such as maintaining the gardens and helping with the garbage disposal.

Meanwhile, back in civvy street, our weed enterprise was still growing. On weekends, during the day, when we were not playing football we would be running around selling our bank bags. At night we were at the clubs. By this stage I was popping Obex, a diet tablet that, when mixed with alcohol and weed, put you on quite a buzz.

Our crew had also gained some new members. In fact, there was a whole generation of girls and boys our age who were fast becoming part of the trendsetting drug culture of Johannesburg. And when you had drugs, there were always girls around.

I was 19 years old, almost 20, without a worry in the world. I lived in the moment and had no plans for the future. Why plan ahead when anything could happen? Enjoy the moment as if tomorrow will never come, that was my philosophy. Once caught up in the fast lane, the thrill was too exciting. I knew that I would keep pushing myself to the limit, and so far I had no idea what the limit was.

The year was almost over. It was 15 October 1979, the day I came into the world. Once again I was AWOL from the army. On my birthday about ten friends congregated in two cars on the soccer field at Arcadia, which was where we kept part of our stash. It was a central place, well concealed and was easily and quickly accessible. We made a couple of pipes. Then one of the guys offered me a pill. When I asked him what it was, he said, ‘Don’t worry, man, it’ll make you feel good.’

What the heck, I thought, it’s my birthday. What better way to celebrate than to get completely fucked out of my head. I popped the pill. We smoked a few more pipes.

One of my friends had driven there on a Yamaha XT 500 Thumper, which was a scrambler but also a road bike. We were about to leave when I asked him if I could take the bike and fetch my chick. I would meet them all at our prearranged rendezvous at the Killarney shopping mall. They all left before me, as I first wanted to make sure our sack of weed was well hidden in the dense foliage at the bottom of the driveway. By now the pill had kicked in; I felt light-headed and, compounded by the effects of the marijuana I had smoked, I was ready to rock and roll. I jumped onto the motorbike, kick-started it and pulled a slight wheelie, lifting the front end of the bike in the air and leaving a trail of dust and grass behind me. I turned onto Oxford Road. The engine beneath me roared like a beast. It was a powerful machine.

Man and machine racing together against the wind – it felt fantastic! I opened her up full throttle, through all the gears. I must have been clocking anything between 140 and 160kph, passing and overtaking cars at such a speed that they seemed to be standing still. All I was wearing was a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, my canvas tackies and an open-face helmet. The speed I was travelling at made tears stream from my eyes.

The next thing I knew, a woman in a midnight blue BMW turned in front of me without using her indicator …

It happened right outside Temple Emanuel. Whether I was slow to react or not wouldn’t have made a difference at the speed I was going, and I hit her squarely between the front wheel and the driver’s seat. Luckily, the bike and I were airborne. I landed on the pavement to one side and crashed into the concrete wall, while the bike wrapped itself around a tree. Besides being grazed all over, I couldn’t move. My left leg was twisted to one side in what anyone could see was an abnormal position. It was obviously broken. I was screaming from the pain. Then I heard a loud crashing sound. The BMW was blocking the traffic on the oncoming side of the road, and an Audi and a Mercedes had ploughed straight into the bitch’s car.

I felt this hot liquid on my body; I looked down and saw blood, but I couldn’t understand where it was all coming from. Then I saw that my baby finger had been almost completely severed. It was hanging by a piece of skin. This made me forget about my leg and start yelling, ‘My finger, my finger!’

Then I heard my friend Mark, aka Long John, screaming my name.

My friends, who had been waiting for me, had obviously realised something was wrong and had come looking for me. Mark later told me that, when he saw the point of impact where the bike was and where my body lay in a twisted position on the pavement, he thought I was dead for sure. Mark was in a red Datsun 1200 with four of our other friends. I’d heard the screech of brakes, which was actually Mark driving into the back of the other two cars in the pile-up. Fortunately, only the front of his car got smashed.

I was taken by ambulance to the General Hospital in Hillbrow. I had to inform the clerk who checked me in that I was a soldier. This was a standard regulation for all soldiers in civilian clothes who were injured while on weekend passes.

The doctor told me that they couldn’t treat me, that I would have to be moved immediately to 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria. I pleaded with him to at least give me something for pain. At first he refused, until my friends, who had followed the ambulance, almost fucked him up. He then quickly administered a shot of pethidine.

The ride to Pretoria was terrible. With every bump the ambulance went over, I felt a rush of pain from my leg to my brain. Once we got there I was rushed to theatre for surgery. When I woke up, I found myself in quite a big ward, but I was still only semi-conscious, and moaning and groaning. My entire body ached. My right leg was so stiff and sore it might as well have been broken, too. I was stretched out on my back, with the broken left leg in a full plaster cast and elevated on two pillows. It throbbed like I couldn’t believe. I couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down my cheeks.