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animal shelter or something.’
Even at this time of the night, the tranquillity of the
suburb is marred by illegal immigrants waiting on the
side of the road, hoping to be picked up for work. They
must have been waiting for the whole day. Some were
indeed picked up, did odd jobs such as gardening or
loading and unloading goods and then returned to the
spot to be picked up again by other employers. These
remaining ones will wait here until the morning so that
they are the first to be picked up when new employers
come to look for the cheap labour they can hire far below
the minimum wage stipulated by law.
Tumi and Don are on Beyers Naudé Drive in her
Jaguar. She knows just the right place to get them
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Szechuan tea-smoked duck at a Chinese kiosk at a mall in
Blackheath. He is still sore about the ting but has decided
he’ll take it to the office and share it with his black col-
leagues. He doubts if the white ones would want to ven-
ture into strange African dishes.
At the traffic lights two blind young women come to
the window to beg for money. They come from a
Zimbabwe that has been devastated by Robert Mugabe’s
mismanagement, corruption and savage violence against
his own people. Blind people in South Africa receive
monthly grants from the government and the younger
ones are in educational institutions that cater for the
handicapped. Rarely does one see them begging in the
streets. Except for buskers with their guitars and sighted
assistants. And scammers of different kinds. The blind
beggars at traffic lights are a new phenomenon. It is as
though one morning, Johannesburgers woke up and
intersections were populated by blind Zimbabwean
women, in addition to the regular vendors of coat
hangers, flowers and bootlegged CDs and DVDs.
Tumi rummages in her handbag for some coins.
‘Don’t give them money,’ says Don, grabbing Tumi’s
hand. ‘You are perpetuating the problem.’
Tumi gives him a disapproving look. The traffic
lights turn green and she drives off without giving the
beggars any money.
‘It’s like Zimbabwe has dumped all its blind beggars
in South Africa,’ he says.
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69
Tumi, like other black South Africans who consider
themselves progressive, cringes at the xenophobia that
infects some of her compatriots and hates it when her
own Don seems to suffer from the same malady. It must
be the influence of the people he associates with at work.
Security guards and nightwatchmen, like most unskilled
and semi-skilled South Africans, always complain that
foreigners are stealing their jobs. And their women.
‘They welcomed you with open arms when you were
refugees in their countries,’ she says.
Don is resentful that she, who never experienced
exile, should be so presumptuous as to teach him his
responsibility to the Africa that gave him succour during
the bad days of apartheid.
‘Only when we had documents,’ says Don. ‘We had to
be legal in their countries. It was not the free-for-all that
everyone wants you to believe it was.’
He emphasizes that South Africans did not flock into
other African countries in their thousands and live any-
where they wished. They had to be registered as political
refugees, were closely monitored and were kept in
refugee camps. Only those with the skills the host coun-
tries needed were integrated into the community—the
teachers, the lawyers, the nurses and so on. It was only in
very few countries, like Lesotho and Swaziland, where
South Africans were not kept in refugee camps.
‘Even in Botswana I lived at Dukwe Refugee Camp,
and when I left the camp for Gaborone to socialize with
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fellow South Africans who were working there, I was
arrested and later sent back to the camp,’ he says.
Tumi drives quietly for a while. Then she decides
that if she can’t win the argument over the illegal African
immigrants, she will surely win it over the cat.
‘You know, Don,’ she says, ‘I am serious about that
cat.’
Don is amazed that she should, out of the blue, bring
back the subject of the cat.
‘That is my cat, Tumi,’ he says. ‘It is not going any-
where. You are not going to discard Snowy like you dis-
carded my chair.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re still sulking about that old La-
Z-Boy.’
‘I don’t sulk—I’m not a child.’
At this he sulks. They drive quietly for some time.
After a while Tumi bursts out, ‘You’re an ex-combat-
ant, Don. A hardened guerrilla fighter in the liberation
struggle. What are you doing with a cat?’
7
STEVO HAS A DREAM
Carcasses of cars of all makes and models cover about an
acre at the Visagie scrapyard in Strijdom Park. Shortie is
sitting on the bonnet of a wrecked late-model BMW, the
golden hair on his head and arms bristling in the sun. He
is annoyed at the three men who are not doing a proper
job stripping a Volkswagen Beetle. He barks his instruc-
tions, liberally mixing them with expletives about the
workers’ miserable origins.
That’s what you get when you employ casual labour
on the cheap, he blames himself. What choice does he
have but to pick up illegals at the roadside? With Stevo’s
continued incarceration things have been tight. What
makes things worse is that Stevo demands too much of
his time for his mission for vengeance, and when he is
gone from the scrapyard the workers rob him blind by
selling car parts and pocketing the money.
A car honks at the gate and the workers give a collec-
tive sigh of relief as Shortie goes to open it. It is Ma
Visagie in her Volkswagen kombi—a rickety sixties’
model painted with flowers and peace signs all over its
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body. It is older than the boys and is her own special pride
that she used to drive to music festivals as far afield as
Durban and Port Elizabeth during those heady days of
free love and psychedelia. Inside it is still plastered with
fading memorabilia of the bands of the time—Dickie
Loader and the Blue Jeans, the Four Jacks and a Jill and
the Freedom Children. The roof is wall-to-wall with their
tattered posters. These days the kombi stays parked
and covered with a tarpaulin most of the time, and
Shortie knows that when his mother is driving it she
means business.
He notices that there are four or five young women
in the kombi as well as Aunt Magda. He knows immedi-
ately what his mother has come to complain about.
Ma Visagie gets out of the kombi and Shortie follows
her into the office, which is a shipping container near the
gate.
‘What gives, Ma?’ he asks.
‘You gotta do something, Shortie. The girls have got
to start working again.’
‘But, Ma, that’s Stevo’s side of things. My side is the
scrapyard.’
‘Stevo’s rotting in jail right now, boy. Things can’t
stand still till he comes back.’
Shortie tries to assure his mother that Stevo will be
back soon because Krish Naidoo is working hard to get
him out. He is appealing to the high court to overturn the
unjust sentence. The high court judges must be taking
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their time because they are giving serious consideration
to the matter, as Krish Naidoo has assured them. All they
need at this trying time is patience because Krish Naidoo
knows what he is doing. He is a good lawyer like all
Indians are. Just like the Jews.
‘Well, maybe we should have gone to a Jew ’cause
Stevo is still in jail,’ moans Ma Visagie.
‘For now we gotta cool it a bit, Ma,’ Shortie says. ‘Till
Stevo tells us what to do. Plus the law will still be sniffing
around.’
‘We are the Visagies, boy,’ says Ma Visagie. ‘We’re not
afraid of nothing.’
She orders Shortie to get into the minibus because
they are going to Diepkloof Prison.
‘All of us?’ asks Shortie. ‘They won’t let us see Stevo
with all this gang.’
Only Shortie and his mother will see Stevo, explains
Ma Visagie. The rest are going to ‘case the joint’ because
Aunt Magda has come up with a new plan of taking mass
action right to the gates of hell, otherwise known as
Diepkloof Prison or Sun City.
Shortie barks orders at the workers to continue
working without messing things up and without stealing
any of his parts because he will know if they have and
will chase them out of South Africa after giving them a
thorough beating that they will remember for the rest of
their lives.
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Ma Visagie nurses her kombi as it coughs along the
N1 Highway amid zooming traffic. Shortie reassures her
once again that Krish Naidoo will get Stevo free.
‘How do you know this Naidoo has not been bought
by the magistrate?’ asks Aunt Magda. ‘Lawyers can easily
be bought, you know. My uncle was a lawyer, so I know
all their tricks.’
‘Just like you know about mass action,’ says Shortie
and the girls giggle.
‘It’s nothing to joke about,’ Aunt Magda says firmly.
‘Lawyers go to the highest bidder.’
They shouldn’t have worried about Krish Naidoo
going to the highest bidder. At that very moment, he is
running after the magistrate as she walks out of the
building and down the steps. She has her black briefcase
and her gown over her shoulder, and is going home
for the day. Krish Naidoo calls after her but she does not
stop.
‘I don’t have time, Krish,’ she says as she hurries on.
Krish Naidoo catches up with her.
‘It’s wrong, Kristin,’ he says, almost out of breath,
‘seeing my client behind my back. It’s improper. It’s not
procedural.’
The magistrate keeps on walking and the lawyer
walks alongside.
‘Your client is harassing me, Krish. I just wanted to
warn him to stop.’
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‘How do you know it’s him? He denies he has any-
thing to do with those calls. He heard of them for the first
time from you.’
She stops in her tracks when Krish Naidoo tells her
that if she does not cease and desist from harassing his
client he will lay an official complaint with the Depart-
ment of Justice.
‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘Try me,’ he says and walks away.
She calls after him, ‘You don’t walk away when I’m
talking to you.’
He doesn’t stop but walks on to his car parked in
front of the building. She rushes after him and grabs his
arm just before he opens the door.
‘We don’t have to fight about this, Krish,’ she says,
pleadingly now.
‘I have to look after the interests of my client,
Kristin,’ he says. ‘That’s what attorneys do. Have you even
sent the matter to the high court for review?’
The magistrate does not answer. It becomes obvious
to the attorney that she has not sent the matter for review.
He loses all patience with her. She was obliged to send the
case to the high court within three days of the summary
judgement. That is the requirement of the law with all
summary judgements. He threatens to appeal to the high
court on behalf of Stevo Visagie. He will put it to the
judges that his client had no intention of insulting the
court but merely responded to the provocation and
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uncalled for remarks by the magistrate. The law expressly
states that there must be an intention on the part of the
accused to insult the court.
‘I hope you have a good night, Krish Naidoo,’ she says
as she leaves in a huff.
Krish Naidoo gets into his car but before he drives
off he calls after her, ‘Next time you receive threats on the
phone you call the police, Kristin Uys. You don’t go
around harassing innocent people.’
At the Medium B Section, Diepkloof Prison, the
warder says he will allow Stevo only one visitor for the
day, unless the visitors can buy him a cold drink so that
while he is drinking it he can turn a blind eye to the extra
visitor. Both mother and son know that a ‘cold drink’
means not just the actual price of a can of Coke but a
number of hard-earned bank notes. Ma Visagie is not in
any mood to enrich prison warders and orders Shortie to
go see his brother so that he may brief him on what has
been happening to the business and why the girls can’t
lie low for ever but need to start working. She herself will
wait in the kombi with the rest of the gang that is ‘casing
the joint’.
Stevo is in high spirits, which makes Shortie nervous
because it is not normal for Stevo to be in high spirits
even when he is not in jail.
‘I have a dream, Shortie,’ he tells his brother as soon
as he takes a seat. ‘I have a dream.’
‘ Ja? So what did you dream about, my broer?’
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77
Shortie can be so dof sometimes, which irritates
Stevo no end.
‘I didn’t dream about nothing, you fool.’
‘Don’t play games with me, Stevo. You said you
dreamt.’
‘I said, I have a dream,’ says Stevo, his eyes looking
up at the ceiling and his open hands raised in a prophetic
fashion. ‘I have a dream that when I get out of here, we
gonna be big, Shortie. Real big, my china. Nobody’s
gonna call us small-time hoodlums no more. Nobody’s
gonna call us tickey-line gangsters.’
‘We’re not tickey-line gangsters mos, Stevo,’ says a
perplexed Shortie.
‘And nobody’s gonna call us that no more, my china,’
says Stevo. ‘And you know why?’
‘I don’t know why, Stevo. I don’t even know what
you’re talking about.’
‘Because we gonna be big, my china. We gonna run
big-time syndicates. We gonna go international, Shortie,
and nobody’s gonna stop us. We gonna be kings of the
world.’
But Shortie has more urgent things to worry about.
‘What about the girls, Stevo,’ he asks. ‘They are get-
ting restless. And Ma is getting restless too.’
‘Ma’s always restless,’ says Stevo dismissively.
‘ Ja, but now she’s more restless because I can’t run the
girls and the scrapyard at the same time.’
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Stevo bursts out laughing.
‘That’s our Shortie. Can’t chew Chappies and walk at
the same time.’
‘I don’t wanna chew Chappies, Stevo,’ says Shortie
desperately. ‘I just wanna know what about the girls?’
Stevo loses all patience with him.
‘To hell with the girls,’ he says through clenched
teeth. ‘The more urgent thing is the damn magistrate. We
need something drastic, china. Something she will not
forget in a short while.’
On the way to their home in Strubensvallei, Aunt
Magda teaches the passengers in the kombi a song that will
come in handy when a new wave of mass action takes place
outside the prison gates. It is one of those Zulu protest
songs about shooting a number of named Afrikaner
leaders with a mbayi-mbayi, supposedly a machine gun.
The irony of the song is lost on mother and son whose
leaders these used to be because the song is in a language
they don’t understand. They cannot even identify the
names of the leaders in question—some of whom are
long dead anyway, such as the bad Doctors Verwoerd
and Malan—because their names have been Zulufied.
Verwoerd, for instance, is Velevutha, which means ‘he
who appears engulfed in flames’. But then even an expert
in the Zulu language would not have followed what the
song is about because Aunt Magda herself is a stranger
to the language and mangles the words of the song and
