Have you ever felt the sub-zero chill of a gun barrel on your skull — execution style?
When you have a gun to your head, thinking seems impossible. No coherent answers come in
response to the queries your assailants pose. Your brain’s vaporised — like 10 minutes ago.
Then the unmistakable happens. You develop a splitting headache. I call it the omega
headache. The kind that crowns all the headaches you’ve ever had on earth, as if to say: your
earthly headaches are over.
I’ve had a gun to my head twice. Kingston, a few years ago outside some ghetto club.
Two knock-around Jamaicans thought they’d found the tooth fairy in me. They wanted a Rolex
watch, credit card, coins and anything sellable. We wrestled in the dark. The Uzi spewed no
bullets. It wasn’t loaded. Jerks.
Fast forward. Kempton Park. The gun’s loaded. It’s South Africa. Don’t fumble. They
are Russian black market dealers. Three of them with drawn guns stand around me like a pack
of starving wolves over a bull calf. I’m helpless, half naked on a soft pink duvet — the one on
which moments before, a Russian blonde was massaging me. Soon it may be covered with blood.
I know the end is near. I can smell it. I’m certain my name’s already inscribed on a tombstone.
With guns gaping at me inside a love nest filled with the sweet fragrance of air freshener and the
blonde’s Chanel, my emotions become horrid premonitions as I try to recollect the odyssey that
has brought me here.
It’s true: At the point of death, your past hustles and bustles at you at the speed of
light.
Like many scribes, I refuse to be inoculated with a vaccine the ancient Greek scholars
called Elected Blindness, or what crawlers of the underworld call “mind your own business”.
If I hadn’t taken an interest in the restless people around Hillbrow’s defunct Mimosa
Hotel and the nearby petrol station, I wouldn’t have met the Nigerian drug peddler Chibike.
After meeting him, I could have resisted the temptation of accompanying him to change his
rands into dollars on the black market. In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe writes: “What kills
a man begins like an appetite.”
Inside a room at the Park Lane Hotel, I watch Chibike count the money we’ll be trading.
R70 000. He’s hoping to get $11 000 from his pile of rands. It will be the second time in four
months he’ll be changing rands to dollars. He says he intends going home this Christmas with
no less than $35 000. He changes money when he has a rand equivalent of $10 000.
I urge him to check the news for the exchange rates so that he can bargain better. He
refuses. On the black market it’s R6>$1 and it will remain so until the rand appreciates. Then the
Senegalese will adjust their prices to about R5.50 to the dollar. After some persuasion he agrees
to watch the news. The rand’s trading at R6.42 to the dollar. No luck.
We pack the R70 000 in several pairs of black socks. We top up the medium-sized
handbag in which we pack the socks, with shoes and other clothing items. Then we place fruit
on top to discourage cops from searching the bag too thoroughly.
“Karri dis,” Chibike says to me, handing me a 9 mm pistol. “You know di rules,” he
says. Then he whispers something to his South African girlfriend, Thandi. She walks slowly out
of the room.
“Nigga, if I don’t come back my girlfriend will know what to do wit di rest of di money.
If you make it, remind her dat my corpse cannot be buried in a foreign land.”
“We’re going to change money at the blackies right? We go hand them the money, get
$11 000 and we all go home, right?” I ask tremulously.
It’s the first time I see fear in his eyes. Chibike the brave, talkative, strong, proud ... is
reduced to a slacker of few words. “Hillbrow is unpredictable. Kristmas period is also di period
Nigerian huzzulers become hunted,” he says slowly, his muted despair capsizing my hope.
He asks for a cup of water as if a stranger in his own room. Three short knocks on the
door. That’s how Nigerian drug peddlers herald their presence to fellow tradesmen. “Gimme di
gun,” he whispers.
Slowly the door opens. Two hulking Nigerians fill the room. One carries a pen and a
piece of paper. “Don’t point it at us,” they chorus. Then they begin speaking in Ibo. The face
of the one with the writing materials is frozen in a rictus of grief. I can hear a little bit of what
they’re saying. Someone killed the wailing one’s brother in Durban. They’ve come to collect
money from each Nigerian in the area, to repatriate the body.
Chibike reaches for his special black hat and peels out R1 000 and signs. I tell them I’m
not loaded. They vamoose to the next room. As in rural Nigeria, drug peddlers in Johannesburg
have meetings where members contribute to the wellbeing of others, especially in the event of a
death.
Chibike says Nigerians buried in South Africa were too proud to seek help from their
compatriots.
The door swings open again — this time without any knock. Thandi’s carrying something
in her handbag. She empties it. A sparkling semi-automatic pistol. Chibike tells me it’s unlicensed.
He’s given me his licensed gun so I don’t get into trouble should the cops become involved.
He shoves the semi-automatic into the breast pocket of his brown leather jacket.
“Thandi, don’t forget what I told you,” he says to her and embraces her. She’s sobbing.
Outside, some guys are plastering posters on the wall. The posters are of three Nigerians
killed in separate incidents. Chibike says at this time of the year one rarely finds a building
without posters such as these.
Witberg, along Olivia Road in Hillbrow, is just few blocks away. Chibike insists we take
a cab. He gives the driver R100 instead of the normal R20. “If I die, dat’s how he’ll remember
me.”
Although the Witberg apartments have been shut down, its previous occupants,
Senegalese black market dealers, still skulk in its shadows. Suspecting a West African, the dealers
approach passersby, and start negotiating rates. “One for 6.3. Everybody here knows I’m good
for it. If you don’t have 6.3, take my 5.7 for one. Don’t let the banks eat you. You’re West
African and a foreigner here, don’t be stupid. I’m your reliable banker ... ”
By “one for 6.3 ...”, they’re telling clients they sell $1 for R6.30 and they buy $1 for
R5.70. The moment they find out you’re a South African, they either scamper into the darkness
or offer astronomical rates to scare you off. And should you arouse their suspicion, you’re
begging for a bullet.
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