2: The Corruption Of My Understanding
Hands locked behind our heads we are sitting on the cold concrete floor in front of each others laps, our elbows on the knees of the person behind us, stale invective spits from the cops searching the curtains, the mattresses, every broken item in the room is broken, they search the door frame cracks for crack, cracks in everything – they tear the newspaper coverings on the broken windows letting the light in.
They will find nothing, or something, or plant something or pretend to plant or whatever, it's daily this shit. They're here for money, they're here to get something if there's no money, the magosha are already undressing in the room next door, they are here to steal our time, because they have time to waste, we only have to wait, they'll move on, so we can remove our drugs from the various places we've hidden them, the cracks in the door frames, the mattress, the curtains.
It's daily this shit, we all have holes to fill, some fall on you like a stone and sometimes you dig your own. Sometimes you get poesed in the face with the back of a gun for upsetting the balance of power. For control.
The scrawled phones numbers of various policemen, a particular policeman, on a decaying scrap of the back of a flyer for a penis enlargement sangoma service, and a side of the road pay by the second phone, whenever all else failed we can always pimp our dealers. The guys who give us squalid and dash us Sundays, who we wheedled and bothered and whimpered at, begging and scraping and then finally selling out, because they were careless under which rock or in which fucked switch can they hid their stash.
You sleep on the pavement next to where they ply their trade and you watch them pay off the cops daily and you call the cops and they pay you off with the drugs you can't afford to buy and the dealers pay off the cops with money they need to buy the drugs the cops are paying you off with to get money that they need to buy food at home and the dealers trade drugs for food from the shoplifters and the fraudsters, and for phones from the phezula boys and two finger kids and sometimes someone goes to prison but it's all just time.
The Quantum appears on the security cameras twice a day. Before even they are banging at the gate Mike or Prince or Dave or whatever name interchangeable is already counting out, looking at the screen, “How many are there? Six. Okay.” He counts out three hundred in the smallest dirtiest notes possible. If he's been shat on by the boss today he'll sometimes rub the notes up his ass crack. For control.
In the drug houses, where we sometimes crash, on the floors of the magosha's rooms, between clients -the larnies have the mapusa's phone numbers and sometimes if a client is out of hand, too much meth, too much no sleep, beating the dogs is fine but beating the magosha, damaging the merchandise for resale, they will call the cops and they will come quickly. Fights on the street reported by the neighbourhood embattled whatsapp group have no such swift luck. This is an informal relationship that is often a solution for the woman trapped by a raging ego high on crack raining blows down on her, because she is merchandise.
Unless the raging ego high on crack is mapusa himself. These are the exceptions. This is not daily and treated with force and phone calls and conferences and the redrawing of lines. The money that is paid daily to the Quantum or the Manchester Boys or the Polo comes from the money the magosha bring in. Cops on drugs are slowly edged out of circulation. For control.
Trapped by economics, living above a Tanzanian restaurant, in a tiny room, with all my things I can't afford a lock, so I can't leave my things in my room because I'm one flight up from a busy restaurant in a street where I buy my drugs. Out of one window I can call to the Somalian shopkeeper for supplies, out of another window I can wave my late night food order to the Bangladeshi take away, out of the sliding door that opens, an abandoned idea of a deck, dizzying to the street I can throw down my bank card to my dealer who throws up my supplies for the day. I sit online earning, asking, failing. I am always in my room.
I don't know how they get in. It's past midnight, my drugs have run out and I am passing out while trying to subtitle a you tube video at $0.25c an hour. Three of them in full body armour and more crashing through the kitchen below. I am the only one here at night and they want me to call the restaurant owner, the obviously suspected Tanzanian drug lord.
They find not even drug evidence and then they resort to violence, one of them has me against the wall. I don't bother to ask if they have probable cause or a warrant. I am not Dick Wolf. The mapusa in charge is going through my belongings on the floor, my technology, my clothes and he pulls out a hoodie and says, “This looks too small for you but it will fit my son.” They are shopping now. I tell them, sure, and take them through a tour of what I no longer need.
One of them shifts a piece of rhinoboard and finds a makeshift cupboard, gleefilled they assume they have found the drug stash. They fully empty out the only furniture, these recessed makeshift shelves, jumper cables, hello kitty hot water bottles, a assortment of those tiny tool sets that come in either red or blue plastic, boxes nondescript, half used bags of pollyfilla, three different parts of three different vacuum cleaners, a less shiny but more valuable guitar, reams of now rat shredded blue plastic, a small child's car seat, a now broken set of plates with Olde English recipes glazed on to them... these are less the contents of some feared drug dealers apartment, and more that of a struggling suburban dad. Which of course is what the proprietor is. The policemen's glee is palpable. They are also suburban dads. I donate some pots and pans to the officer who had just poesklapped me. For control.
Its a golden hot afternoon I am selling dog food samples gleaned from a pet store to the dealer who is looking after the dog I am trying to rescue from him. In the yard of the sprawling three property nymandawo we are unconcerned by the circling sirens, we are after all doing nothing illegal, we are merely in proximity to illegality, we don't anticipate heat. But I am white and in this particular yard and the quantum boys are hungry and I am dragged through the golden dusk to the police van.
I am well dressed, clean, without any drugs on me and they do not give a fuck. Someone must cry. They make me wait in the cells with everyone else waiting in the cells, people squeezing the last battery life out of their should have been confiscated phones, begging their people to send ewallets. There is a another cell, behind the main cell, where we are encouraged by a junior officer to go, to make calls, so no one can see. Call your people she says with care, these guys, they will take money.
There is an ATM around the corner from the police station. I am driven by this young officer. I have negotiated a spot fine of R800. For feeding a dog. In the wrong place. This is not something I wish to defend in court. I have a record. A first offence admission of guilt for possession and assaulting a police officer. It's easier to pay the spot fine. To buy the cool drink. To drink the Kool aid.
The ATM is out of order and I have to go into a shop to do a cashback. The officer asks me politely if I can also get her some things. But to please not tell the other police. She needs some maize, some salt, some maybe a few vegetables please. Its mid month and there is no food at home.
An age ago, drunk on the way home from a bar the two of us stopped to swing in the park, and were arrested, me for solicitation, her for soliciting. She chose an admission of guilt fine, paid to the policemen directly. Admitting guilt for fear of going to prison, which is where the guilty go, ergo not being guilty. I opted to go to the holding cells for the weekend, and ended up in Westville Prison, where I begged, because I was afraid of Gen Pop, and was sent to the Psychiatric Section, three days cowering under a sheet while faeces was flung about. At no point did either of us campaign for prison reform.
The power goes off in the beach house I am renting. The landlord is unreachable. I try to figure it out phoning Eskom. It is a maze of an unfathomable tangle of departments before I find out that my landlord owes a size-able amount, even if he pays today, the power will only, because of the backlog, because of load shedding and cable theft, be put back on the week after I leave. And I can't reach the landlord.
Driving home I pass an Eskom truck at a sub-station. It seems to me so much easier to make them an offer, to pay the workers directly, to side step this behemoth of a failing system, to not contribute to it's obviously corrupt ways, and so two men, working for the the crippling civil service minimum wage (I am helping them, I tell myself) come to the box in the street outside the beach house where I am on holiday and reconnect the power for R500. There might be a fine to the landlord later. I won't be there.
Often I am caught driving without my driver's licence, because I simply have not had the time and it is simply easier to pay a spot fine. So I slip a clippa to the officer. For control.