Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (23 page)

If companies refused to allow us in, claiming that we would distract their employees from their work, we would return during lunch break and find an agent inside who was willing to work for us. Each agent would be provided with a colourful catalogue that featured African models showing off our fashion range, which included clothes for the entire family. They would pass our catalogue around to their co-workers and then take orders, which they would either phone through to our company or give us as order sheets during our weekly visits.

I would see and call on 30 to 40 agents a day, covering five different industrial areas a week. I would deliver orders of goods, show the agents our new lines and provide them with new stock. The amount they sold, and the amount of money they collected, determined their income. Their commission was anything from R1 to R50, a sure thing of 10 per cent from R50 to R150, and they got 15 per cent over and above that, which guaranteed them a flat 20 per cent, which we paid out weekly, or when requested by the agent. Some agents preferred to allow their commission to accumulate.

You had to be really vigilant when entering the townships. Sales reps carried a whole range of stock in their station wagons, and there were a few isolated incidents where reps had been robbed of their stock and the cash they carried. On many occasions when an agent had left his employment, I would drive into the township and collect what he was owed and, in certain instances, continue doing the business. During the Sebokeng riots of the mid-1980s I still drove through the townships, even though it could be really scary. Once a mob of angry protesters attempted to attack me, but luckily I always kept the car engine idling and I made my getaway, leaving their disappointed faces covered in a cloud of dust. If they’d caught me, I might have been lynched or had a burning tyre thrown around my neck.

When an agent sold or delivered an item of clothing, they were required to collect half the cost as a deposit from their customers and they were also responsible for collecting the weekly instalments thereafter. There was a daily flow of cash coming in. The more agents you served, the more money in your pocket. (In my case, the more
I
earned, the more I would spend on drugs.) Because I was dealing with factory workers, I would dress very casually, mainly in jeans and a T-shirt, although this was against company policy; reps were expected to dress semi-smart. Still, all my agents, despite my appearance, respected and liked me.

My manager at Jabula Clothing was a real arsehole. He was this tall Afrikaner, built like a rugby player, who was as lazy as hell. His grey curly hair and anaemic pinkish complexion, combined with a glaring lack of fashion sense, reminded me of a circus clown. In short, the guy was a fuck-up. In my circles he would have been a social pariah, and it was hard for me to conceal my dislike of him.

Whenever new salesmen took over a round, some of the agents who had run up huge accounts would disappear. After some investigation by the managers, these salesmen mostly couldn’t be traced and so the account would be written off as a bad debt. In my previous job, the salesmen were required to canvass at least two new calls a day for agents, but at Jabula the deal was that I wouldn’t have to do this. This became a point of issue when the clown insisted that I canvass. One day, after a heated argument, I was summoned to the boss’s office. Sitting in his chair behind an oak table, Len, one of the three shareholders, tried to reason with me. On principle, however, I wouldn’t compromise, so they fired me on the spot and told me that I could collect my salary at the end of the month. I got really pissed off and demanded that they pay me my full month’s salary right away. The .38-calibre pistol sticking out of my pants might have been enough to convince them that I was capable of hurting them, and, small feat though it was, I walked out that day with a full month’s wages in my pocket and my pride intact.

I caught a taxi back to the commune. It wasn’t even midday yet and the place was buzzing with activity. When I told my friends and the rest of the gang that I’d been fired, they all cheered.

I had been in and out of quite a few jobs by then, and it was becoming pretty apparent to me that I wasn’t exactly cut out to work for anybody. What I knew how to do best was use and sell drugs, and that was the world I inhabited.

A person can only fool himself for so long, though. All the signs were there. It would only be a matter of time before my luck ran out.

For a long time I had been thinking about moving Mandrax on the streets of Durban. George was buying Mandrax in packets of 1 000; in Joburg, the wholesale price was R2 a tablet. Street prices were determined by supply and demand, and varied between R8 and R15. We’d heard that in Durban the prices were double and even triple at times. Our idea was to take one packet of 1 000 tablets, test the market and use the profits to set up shop. We’d have a couple of younger runners do the street-to-street distribution.

The South African government had some strong laws in place in its efforts to combat the smuggling of Mandrax, whose distribution was linked with the then banned African National Congress. It was commonly known that the proceeds from the drug trade were being used to arm the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. If anyone was caught with a sizeable quantity of Mandrax, you were immediately labelled a dealer and dealing carried prison sentences of up to ten years.

I drove down to Durban on my motorbike, with Dennis and Brett following me with the drugs hidden under the spare wheel in the boot of Dennis’s mother’s car. We left Joburg at midnight. The agreement was that if I came across a roadblock, I would turn around and come back and warn them. Fortunately, the roads were clear all the way and we arrived in Durban as the sun was rising. It was already getting hot and the humidity clung to our skin.

Dennis and Brett were going to stay at Dennis’s sister’s flat in the suburbs, and so they went off to check in with her. I took a drive down to the South Coast, clocking speeds of up to 200kph (for some reason the bike’s performance always improved at the coast. I would lie on the tank with my feet resting on the rear indicators – what a rush!) My two friends, meanwhile, went into the city, looking to score Mandrax in the hope of finding a connection we could sell our stash to. We’d arranged to meet back at the flat that afternoon. I returned shortly after midday and called in to see my mother, who was by then living in Durban.

In the early 1980s, when I was living in Berea in a furnished apartment, my mother returned from Hungary and, for a brief period, came to live with me. I had seen her very infrequently over the years (once a year was a lot) and the gap between us proved impossible to bridge. It was my sister Joan who kept in more regular touch with her, and she would fill me in on whatever was going on in her life.

The time my mother stayed with me, I nearly went crazy. Her over-protectiveness and sudden displays of love and caring tended to irritate me more than anything else. When I was high on marijuana I could just about tolerate her, but when I wasn’t I would experience extreme mood swings. When I was straight or sober, I simply couldn’t cope with her. Her incessant questions – where was I going, what time would I be back – to say nothing of the continual advice that poured out of her mouth, drove me mad. Eventually, it got so bad I threw her out of my apartment.

It was soon after this that my mother was introduced to a Hungarian man by the name of Mike, whose wife had committed suicide by dousing herself in petrol and putting a match to her clothes. Two days after they met, Mike sent my mother an air ticket to visit him in Durban, where he lived. It turned out that they were a match made in heaven; my mother moved down to Durban, and they got married.

My mother hated my motorbike and was always warning me of the dangers, but she was happy to see me when I showed up at her door, and she insisted that I stay over that night and join her and Mike for dinner. To make sure that I would come, she promised roast chicken with stuffing.

I met up with Brett and Dennis back at his sister’s flat around 5.30pm. I was the first to arrive and I waited outside, sitting on my bike. A woman who was probably in her early thirties, who lived in the same block of flats, walked up to me and asked who I was waiting for. We got chatting and I learnt that she was a divorcée and a high school teacher. When I was at school, I often used to fantasise about fucking my teachers. It was clear that she was interested in me, and so I asked what her flat number was. Then I asked her if she’d like to spend the next day with me at the beach. Just then, my mates arrived, and she quickly leant forward and whispered her flat number in my ear. Just the warmth of her breath on my ear aroused me.

Dennis and Brett seemed awfully pleased with themselves. They had met up with a guy called Flattie and his friend Twigs. Flattie wanted to do a deal: he was willing to buy the entire packet of 1 000 Mandrax tablets, but told them he needed a sample first. I became suspicious and expressed my reservations. I asked them if this Flattie was from Joburg. He was, but Dennis and Brett claimed to have had dealings with him in the past. Still, I felt uneasy. I knew Flattie, too, and I was certainly not as trusting as they were. Anyway, we agreed that at no time would we part with the drugs without money changing hands. I went to the boot of the car and took out a few tablets for them to give to Flattie as samples and off they went to meet with him. I went upstairs to get an education from my new high school teacher. I rang the bell and she opened the door. I started to explain about how I wasn’t sure that I could make it to the beach the next day after all when I found myself wrapped in her arms. We didn’t even make it to the bedroom, nor did I catch her name. Actually, I don’t think she told me.

Somehow I still made it on time for dinner at my mom’s place.

Over coffee on Sunday morning, Dennis explained that the deal was set for that night.

My instincts were still telling me that something was wrong. I knew better than to trust Flattie, or his mate Twigs for that matter. Although I didn’t know Twigs personally, in the early 1980s he had been a member of Jeffrey Anthony’s gang. As a precaution, I insisted that Dennis and Brett show me where Flattie lived with his brother, so they drove me to a high-rise block of flats in the suburb of Morningside. Then we split up and I drove down to the beachfront and spent the day catching a tan and bodysurfing.

Back at the Durban flat, as soon as I saw the expressions on Dennis’s and Brett’s faces, I knew something was wrong. ‘What the fuck happened?’ I demanded. They both spoke at the same time. Twigs and Flattie, they told me, had pulled one of the oldest con moves in the book on them. What was even worse was that they had both fallen for it. It turned out that Twigs was acting as the middleman, claiming that the buyer wanted to see the Mandrax before handing over the money and saying that the buyer would only deal through Twigs. Dennis, being a guy who could handle himself pretty well, trusted that Twigs wouldn’t dare con him.

Once Twigs had the drugs, he left Dennis in the car and walked into a block of flats deep in Redhill, one of Durban’s coloured areas. He never returned. After waiting for over an hour, in an unfamiliar neighbourhood where people were starting to stare at them, they decided to leave and contact Flattie. On the phone, Flattie sounded panicky. He told them the police had raided the Redhill flat and they had locked Twigs up, along with everybody else who had been there. He advised Dennis to keep a low profile. Worried that they might also be apprehended by the cops, Dennis and Brett thought it best that they head straight back up to Joburg.

I told them to go, but said I would stick around in Durban a bit longer. Once they’d left, I thought I would try and investigate what had really happened. I drove to the flat in Morningside where Flattie was supposed to be staying with his brother. The brothers looked nervous when they opened the door to my knock but they invited me in. There were a few of Flattie’s friends there. They seemed quite surprised that I had chosen to stay in Durban, but they were very friendly and even offered to let me sleep over if I wanted to, which I actually agreed to do.

In the early hours of the morning, Twigs pitched up. When I confronted him, saying I thought he’d got arrested, he spun me some story about how he’d managed to get away and had come over to Flattie’s to celebrate his close shave. He had brought something to smoke. Out came the marijuana and a broken bottle neck. Twigs crushed three Mandrax tablets in with the weed, folded in a piece of paper.

Flattie and Twigs both had a reputation for pulling moves. I knew they were unlikely to have R10 to scratch their arses with, but I held my peace. I didn’t ask Twigs where he’d got the money to buy the Mandrax. When the pipe was loaded, I was given the honours of busting it and having the first hit.

The taste was too familiar. I knew, right there and then, as I was rushing out of my mind, that I was smoking my own tablets. We finished smoking the three buttons and Twigs pulled out another two. Before he could crush them this time, I asked to see them. I held the two pills up to the light and said, ‘Fuck, you guys, these are my pills.’