Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (65 page)

Meanwhile from back home came some unpleasant news. My sister’s boss and close friend, Jol, had got shot up fairly badly in a hold-up that had gone wrong. My brother-in-law Malcolm’s father had died. And a good friend of mine, Hilliard, with whom I used to smoke cocaine, had been shot dead by some cocaine dealers. While I could express my sympathy, I was so far removed from their reality that I honestly didn’t feel anything. Was I becoming so hardened by my circumstances that I was losing that ability?

My wash boy’s time in solitary was up and I decided to do my own laundry. I was now doing a major clean-up of my cell only once a week. I had no reason to complain. In fact I had much to be grateful for. I had learnt to treasure every moment of the present. We exist in the now, which is today, and, for the most part of that moment, I had everything I could wish for. It may not sound like much, but to me it was a blessing. I was a deep thinker and I didn’t want to waste my time in solitary. We evolve every day. I wanted to better myself as a person. I tried not to think too far into the future, because anything between now and then might never happen, but neither would I allow myself to dwell on the past. My attention was focused on the now. Every day was a new day and every day was filled with new challenges. True happiness, I was discovering, comes from within. I was also content with the little that I had.

One of my Jewish brothers, the American journalist I’d got quite friendly with, wound up in hospital. I heard he had gone off the rails. Actually, I suspected he was pretending, but one never knew. This place was enough to drive the sanest person crazy!

Around the middle of May, four months into solitary confinement, I started sketching and painting in colour, getting back to my art for the first time in a long time. I can’t remember ever feeling more liberated. The transition from expressing myself in only black to colour was a major breakthrough and something that I directly attributed to my spiritual growth.

After five years in Bangkwang, little, if any, progress was being made on the prisoner treaty with Thailand, I was completely fed up with the South African government and their lack of support or even interest in our conditions. We believed that Jackie Selebi, then director-general at Foreign Affairs, had actually shelved negotiations. Whatever the reason for the lack of progress, I advised our embassy that they should only visit if and when I requested them to. European countries were far more civilised, in my opinion, and they actually seemed to care for their citizens. I remember back in 1997, there were two Polish guys who received royal pardons. One of them had been caught with 1kg of heroin but they both got life sentences. The first guy served five years and two months and the other served four years. Like South Africa, Poland didn’t have a prisoner transfer treaty with Thailand, but the Polish embassy supported their cause. Rumour had it that a high-ranking Polish official was paid to grease the wheels of their release. Whether this was true or not, I cannot say, but the result was that both prisoners were granted royal pardons and walked free. Stories such as these sickened me and sometimes made me very downhearted.

Even if the embassy wasn’t exactly championing my efforts to get a royal pardon, there were still some things I needed them for. Once my time in solitary came to an end, I needed to make sure that I went back to Building 2, and so I wrote to the embassy asking them to request the prison authorities that, on completion of my punishment, I be returned to the building of my origin.

Often I would try to imagine how I would feel when the day came, when they would call my name and say the word ‘
kabarn
’ (go home).

I kept encouraging my sister to go public with my letter to Mandela, even though I knew that the Thai government did not take kindly to negative publicity. There could be two possible outcomes, I reasoned: they could consider me a thorn in their side and get rid of me by granting me a royal pardon; or, they could simply reject my submission for a royal pardon and that would be that. If things went that way, then I would never get out. The odds were 50-50. I was willing to take my chances.

‘Let’s keep up the negative publicity,’ I instructed Joan.

While lying in my cell, my mind would often drift back to my life before Thailand and prison, and especially to certain events that had transpired just before I left South Africa. I had recently received a letter from a prisoner who was doing time in Boksburg. He told me about a fellow inmate named Rufus, who claimed he was a good friend of mine. I wrote back and very rudely told him that Rufus should go fuck himself …

After Sarah-Lee had moved out, I became even more reckless with my life. It was drugs, sex and more drugs, and everything I owned was walking out of my apartment. As long as I was getting high, I didn’t care. After all, they were only material things. It was New Year’s Eve and I was out on Rockey Street at one of the many bars there. My mission that night, besides celebrating the coming of another year, was to be on the lookout for some of my customers who owed me money for cocaine. It was in Rockey Street that I met Rufus and his mates. After a couple of drinks, we each popped a cap of LSD, and then Rufus started telling me a story about how, just a couple of nights before, the bouncer across the road had beaten up some harmless kid. The more alcohol we consumed, and as the LSD took effect, the angrier we became about this, so we decided to go teach the bouncer a lesson. I went to my car and, from behind the seat, pulled out my pump-action shotgun. As we walked towards the club, we shouted at the bouncer, ‘HEY, MOTHERFUCKER!’ The guy took one look at our faces and then, when he saw the gun in my hand, ran for dear life. We tried to chase him, first on foot and then in my car. I let off one or two shots in his direction with my .38 Special. We lost him, probably just as well.

Rufus and I and one of his mates then drove to a club in Rivonia that I knew was frequented by one of the guys who owed me. The three of us marched inside together. I had my .38 tucked neatly into the waistband of my trousers and my shotgun was in my hand against my side. I had to hand the shotgun in at the door. By this time we were all out of our heads. We had a drink and I looked around the club for the guy in question. The cunt took coke on credit and never paid me. Fifty grams was a lot to write off. I couldn’t see him anywhere, so we left the club. As Rufus reached my car, he put his beer bottle on the roof of my car and said, ‘Shaun, I bet you, you can’t shoot it.’ He meant it as a joke, but I didn’t hesitate. I loaded the shotgun, aimed and fired. The beer bottle disintegrated in a cloud of fragments. Because the parking lot was below road level by a good few metres, the noise of the shot was amplified. Fuck, it was loud!

As I reached my car, in the far corner just near where Rivonia Road passed, five policemen dressed in full riot gear and armed with R4 rifles came jumping down the wall. They proceeded to rush a couple who happened to be parked opposite to where I was, which bought me a couple of seconds to hide the shotgun under my car, close to the front wheel. By now the couple were pointing at me, Rufus and his mate. All five cops ran over, and in seconds we were surrounded. They found the shotgun straight away. Naturally, I claimed ownership but told them the gun had gone off accidentally. I was ordered to follow them, so I climbed back up onto the road with them, one of the cops carrying the shotgun. He went to the passenger side of their car, a yellow Opel Kadett 200is hatchback, while the other four cops hung around, waiting. Then one of them began walking towards me, and as he got closer I pulled out my .38 Special, really just intending to show him that I had another piece. Both firearms were licensed. I’m not sure what
he
was thinking, but the next thing I knew the cop tried to grab the gun out of my hand. In what seemed like less than a split second, there was a shot, there was screaming. My gun fell to the ground, but so did the cop! I quickly picked up the .38 and slipped it back into my pants as the first cop came running back from the car, still with my shotgun in his hand.

‘What’s going on?’ he shouted.

‘He shot himself!’ I told him, adding, ‘I think he’s drunk, officer.’

The policeman shoved my shotgun back at me. ‘Fuck off!’ he said.

He joined the rest of the policemen crowding around the fallen cop while I jumped down the wall and ran as fast as I could to my car before he changed his mind. Rufus and his mate were nowhere to be seen. As I was driving out of the parking lot they jumped out of the bushes and flagged me down. They were wide-eyed and pale. ‘What the fuck happened?’ Rufus asked. They had heard the gunshot and the screaming. I told them it had been an accident, but I don’t think they believed me. They thought I’d shot the policeman, grabbed back my shotgun and made my escape.

That night we jolled till the early hours of the morning, going from one club to another. Around 7am we picked up this really cool black dude who was a marijuana merchant. We all went back to my townhouse in Dowerglen. While the three of them sat in the lounge preparing a joint, I hid my shotgun in the bedroom under my mattress. After smoking a couple of joints, I gave Rufus and his friend some money to go to the bottle store and buy some more booze as soon as it opened. Then I passed out stone cold on the couch. I woke up around 12.30. The black dude was still there.

‘Jesus, where the fuck are Rufus and whatshisface?’ I said.

It was three hours later; they should have been back long ago. I jumped to my feet, ran straight to my bedroom and lifted up the mattress. The shotgun was gone. I sobered up very quickly.

‘Motherfuckers stole my gun,’ I told the black dude, who was also supposedly a friend of theirs. He seemed equally concerned. If they weren’t back in an hour, I said, I was calling the cops. Then I slipped my .38 Special under the leather couch, lay down and put up my feet up. I tried to watch TV. Actually, I was really worried that the idiots might shoot someone. The next thing, I saw two plainclothes policemen jumping over my garden wall. The glass sliding door leading into the lounge was open but I had security gates that were locked. Gun pointing through the burglar bars, one of the cops shouted: ‘Shaun Krebs!’ Before I could even answer, he shouted again. ‘Don’t fucking move! Where’s your handgun?’ As I tried to get up to show him, he said, ‘E-e-e-asy! Real slow, with your left hand give me the gun.’

As soon as the cops were inside the house I had my face pushed up against the wall and the black dude was on the floor face down. We were both thoroughly searched and so was my entire apartment. My stash of cocaine and freebase pipe were well hidden, thank goodness, and they didn’t find them. After explaining to them that the black dude had only come to my apartment that morning (I didn’t even know his fucking name), they let him go. Apparently, Rufus and whatshisface had been caught jumping a red robot in Rivonia, near where the shooting incident had taken place the night before. They were pulled over and the cops found the shotgun. When Rufus and his mate were threatened with being charged for the shooting of the cop, they had ratted me out. They had even gone so far as to give the cops my home address!

I was taken to the Morningside police station, where I was questioned by the head of the detective branch. I stuck to my version of the story and repeated that I’d suspected that the cop who had grabbed the gun out of my hand the night before had been drinking. It had to have been an accident; why else would they have told me to fuck off? Anyway, they still charged me with attempted murder, as well as with firing a weapon in a built-up area. My guns were confiscated and, after some intense negotiations to establish that I didn’t pose a flight risk, I was released on my own recognisance. As I was leaving, I heard my name being called. The voice came from the holding cells – it was Rufus and his mate! They couldn’t believe that I was walking out. They asked if I could help bail them out …?

‘Oh, no problem,’ I said. ‘See you tomorrow.’ Like a fucking hole in the head! Did they really think that, after stealing my shotgun, I was going to help them? If anything, I wanted to shoot them with it. I let it go, though. If you hang out with scum, you can’t expect any better. I appeared in court and was officially charged. I pleaded not guilty. My case was remanded to February, but by then I had got myself a lawyer. On the day of my appearance, none of the witnesses, namely, none of the policemen who had been there that night outside the Rivonia club,
including
the guy I supposedly had shot, turned up in court. My case was postponed to 29 April 1994.