Dogs. I remember the guard called us dogs.

Prison for us 'dogs' who lack the right papers 

B. Tshabangu

Dogs. I remember the guard called us dogs. And when I worked in the 
clothing factory they called us makwerekwere because South Africans 
say that the voices of black immigrants scrape against their ears, 
like insects. I've got good at pretending I am the same as them. I 
pay tax, I have health insurance, and I go to gym. I dress like them. 
I've seen South Africans darker than me. What is it? Somehow they 
"sniff me out". 

I am a black woman in a country with a black president, why should 
people ask questions? But they do. "Hey, where you from?" At first 
even my husband, Henk, did (he is white). He wanted to know why I 
didn't have a bank account or why I refused to take the train. They 
throw us off the trains; it's in the newspapers. The immigration 
officials wait for us at the station and won't let us off the train 
until they check our passports for the right stamp. 

I didn't have that stamp. I never told Henk until he asked me to marry 
him. For four years I beat the immigration officials at their paper 
game. Now I've saved up enough to go, anywhere in the world but here. 
Nothing ties me here, except him.
 
I can't go home. My sisters have all left Zimbabwe. My father is old 
and he won't leave his land, even if Mugabe's youths come to him in 
the middle of the night to beat him with sticks for voting against him. 
I miss lying in the sun on the veranda and chewing ice. I miss seeing 
nothing but bush and sky. 

I couldn't see the sky from prison, except for half an hour each day. 
I'm not talking about a camp for illegal immigrants, I mean Pollsmoor, 
the big prison we always drive past just before the turnoff. I got 
sent there before I met my husband, for pretending to be South African. 
I wasn't charged, I couldn't make a phone call, I didn't get to see a 
lawyer and I had no trial. I just disappeared for five weeks. 

My new boss had been asking for my identity document proving I was 
South African. Just before the last election the home affairs 
department stayed open late so that people could get their missing 
identity documents, which they needed to vote. I dressed like I was 
poor, and pretended that I couldn't speak English. I thought that the 
clerks would be too tired to question my story. I said that my parents 
had died under apartheid and never registered my birth. When they were 
taking my fingerprints, two officials called me into a room and asked 
me questions in Zulu. My language is almost the same as Zulu but I gave 
my identity away when I used one wrong vowel, kuhle instead of kahle . 

They took me down to the police station nearby and put me in a holding 
cell. There was nowhere to sit that wasn't covered in urine, so when I 
got tired of standing I crouched, and when my legs went dead, I stood 
up. All I could think of was that my new job meant I could save enough 
to buy a ticket out of South Africa, and now I thought I had lost it.
 
In the morning they took me to Pollsmoor. A woman searched my armpits 
and my mouth. I had to take off all my clothes and bend over so she 
could search my anus. I got sent to a cell with about 15 other women, 
mostly doing time for shoplifting and housebreaking. 

I didn't have the privileges of the other prisoners: I didn't get to 
see the doctor, I had no phone access. No one told me how long I was 
going to be inside. After five weeks I was put in a truck and then 
pushed into a train going north to a detention centre.
 
They were sending 1,500 Zimbabweans home each week. I had to wait my 
turn. The South African guards, who were all black, called us dogs, 
but only if we were black - whites were left alone. I don't hate South 
Africans. Most of them grew up in a kind of prison, shut off from the 
world until Nelson Mandela was released. 

I found a telephone and called my sister. She approached a guard who 
was willing to take money from "dogs" under the table. On the day I 
was supposed to be deported back to Zimbabwe a guard drove me out of 
town and left me there.
 
When I got my job back, my boss didn't ask questions. My story is not 
important - it's something that happens here every day. At least I'm 
not afraid of prison any more. I shut my eyes. I can hear the sea and 
the rain against the glass. I want to see the world. All I can think 
of is "go, go, go", and for my husband to come with me. 

Story as told to Henk Rossouw 

Ntone Edjabe
Chimurenga Magazine - who no know go know
27-21 4264478
www.chimurenga.co.za 

------------------- 

www.nu.ac.za/ccs