Strong Medicine (2 page)
Authors: Angela Meadon
Transcript of Interview
Inmate Number: 7865649
Bongani Zulu
16 September 2005
CMAX Prison, Pretoria
Detective Tshabalala (DT): Thank you for meeting us today, do you mind if we record this conversation? You’ll need to say it out loud for the voice recorder.
Bongani Zulu (BZ): No, I don’t mind.
DT: Thank you. I am detective Malcolm Tshabalala. I’ll be conducting the interview. Please state your name for the record.
Bongani Zulu (BZ): My name is Bongani.
DT: Your full name, please.
BZ: Bongani Zulu.
DT: And your date of birth please.
BZ: 23 March 1962
DT: Good. As I said before, Mr. Zulu, we need to ask you some questions about your business dealings with a man who calls himself ‘Makulu’. Do you know this man?
BZ: No. I don’t know who you mean.
DT: Mr. Zulu, it’s too late to deny things we already know are true. You’re in the most secure prison in the country, and you will spend a long time here. You won’t see the sun. You won’t see your family until your children are adults and have children of their own. Unless you cooperate with us, you’ll die before you ever meet your grandchildren.
BZ: I don’t know him. I just worked for him sometimes.
DT: What did you do for him? What did you do, Mr. Zulu?
BZ: Nothing important. Errands and things. Going to the bank.
DT: Now, you see what you just did there, with your eyes? The way you looked away from me when you answered. You’re lying, Mr. Zulu. What did you do?
BZ: I said I did odd jobs for him. That’s what I did. Sometimes I fetched his groceries, and sometimes I helped him in the garden.
DT: I find that impossible to believe, Mr. Zulu. You’re in here for kidnapping. Makulu is known to traffic in body parts. Why don’t you tell us the truth? Get it off your chest. You’re going to be in here for a long time, I can help make things easier on you.
BZ: You say you can help me? He can kill me in here!
DT: Please calm down, Mr. Zulu. He can’t get you in here. This is CMAX. Did you help Makulu kidnap people?
BZ: No!
DT: Did you kill for him, Mr. Zulu? Did you take people’s body parts for muti? Did you kill children for him?
BZ: Fuck you!
I turned the handle on the front door of our house and stepped into chaos. Peter, my two year-old nephew, was screaming at the top of his lungs. His voice cut clear through the curtain that divided the lounge from the rest of the house. My mother and her boyfriend, Johan, were arguing about something in the kitchen, probably booze. Above it all hung the smell of something burning. I left the door open so that the house could air out.
We’d moved into the double-storey flat when I was seven years old and my father had passed away in a mining accident. He’d gone down a shaft to inspect the equipment at a platinum mine out near Hartbeestpoort when a section of the mine collapsed. My father had been among twenty-seven people killed that day. My mother used the insurance payout to buy this smaller house. We had been living here for the past twenty-five years.
I’d escaped for a few wonderful years when I lived with Lindsey’s father. I fell pregnant and we moved into a little two-bedroom flat over in Edenvale. The flat wedged between a KFC and a nightclub that blasted heavy metal all weekend. We were happy. I’d never had so much space before, not to myself anyway. Then Lindsey came along and he started drinking. Then he didn’t come home at night, and when he did he smelled of perfume and cigarettes, even though he didn’t smoke. It was more than I could handle. Looking after the Lindsey all day long, I was cooped up in that little house alone with an infant.
It wasn’t long before I fell into a deep depression and everything was too much for me to cope with. Housework, cooking, Patrick’s demands for sex. Except Lindsey. She was my rock, my anchor, the bright point in my day that kept me alive.
When Patrick didn’t come home for a whole weekend, I lost my shit. Threw all our plates and glasses out the window and watched them smash in the street. I’d cut up all his clothes and burned all the photos of us. Then I had packed Lindsey’s clothes and toys into one small suitcase, packed my few things into another and moved back in with my mom. Lindsey was barely a year old.
It took me ages to adapt to the cramped space again. And things only got worse when my brother and his girlfriend moved in. We were still there, living in my childhood bedroom.
The room was dark and empty when I got up stairs. I flicked on the light switch and the weak bulb lit up overhead. There were no wrinkles in the blanket on our bed and the pillows were still plump. There was no school uniform in a heap on the floor, no book bag under the little plywood desk in the corner. I checked under the bed and in the closet. Nothing. Maybe she had left her bags in the kitchen.
I thumped down the stairs two at a time, away from the calm of my room and back into the clamor of the household. Thomas was shouting at Sue above the sound of Petey’s wailing. I could still hear my mother’s self-righteous voice in the kitchen.
Six bowls formed a neat line on the counter. My mother had her back to the door. Her broad hips jiggled as she filled each bowl with something brown and lumpy from a stainless steel pot. Smoke hung in the air above her head like a winter mist. A pot of rice smoldered on the drying rack next to the sink. At least that solved the mystery of the smoke. The thin lace curtains danced in the open windows. Fresh air gradually replaced the smoke.
Johan sat at the table with a Black Label in one hand and a belligerent expression on his narrow face. He always got mean when he drank beer. The cheaper the brand, the meaner he got. This was not going to be an easy night for my mother.
“Have you seen Lindsey?” I asked as I walked into the room.
My mother turned around and smiled at me. Johan leered.
“Just in time for dinner,” my mother said with a rubbery smile that was the first sign she’d already had too much to drink.
“Ma, have you seen Lindsey? Did she come home from school?”
“No, I—”
“And you?” I glared at Johan. He shook his bald head and sipped his beer.
I went over to the lounge and dragged the curtain aside.
“Can’t we get any privacy?” Thomas said as I strode into the cluttered mess that was his home. He threw his hands in the air and pulled at his hair. When Sue fell pregnant she’d moved into the house to live with Tommy. They’d taken the couches out of the lounge and replaced them with a double bed and a cot. Two chests of drawers dominated one wall. But there were so many dirty clothes strewn through the room that I’m sure those chests were empty.
“Have you seen Lindsey today?” I asked.
“Not since this morning.” Thomas shook his head, his too-long hair flopping over his ears as he did.
“Erin, Erin…” Petey walked up to me and held out his hands, asking me to pick him up. I ignored him, looked down at my watch: 18:15. My pulse throbbed in my neck.
No, no, no! This can’t be happening.
I put my hand on the wall to steady myself.
“She should have been home three hours ago.” I said.
“Maybe she’s just late?” Sue said. She scooped Petey up and kissed the boy’s soft cheeks, like she was rubbing his child’s presence in my face.
“She’s never late!” I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice.
It was unfair, I shouldn’t have shouted at her. Petey’s little face scrunched up and his cheeks turned bright red. He was about to cry. My throat constricted and I sucked a deep breath in through gritted teeth.
“I should do something, call her friends.” I shoved the curtain aside and left Sue with a sobbing toddler in her arms.
My stomach churned as I headed up to my room to fetch Lindsey’s phone book. She was always home on time from netball, but it was possible that she’d gone home with a friend and forgotten to tell us. I’d phone around, find her, and she’d be back here in an hour eating dinner at the wobbly kitchen table.
I’d have to make sure she didn’t do this again. I’d drill it into her that she must always let me know where she’s going.
I opened the drawer on my bedside table and dug through the old bills and dead batteries until I found the little pink telephone book. It was a gift from my mom two Christmases ago. Lindsey thought it was
kinda lame
, her words, but she’d filled it in to make my mother happy. I breathed a sigh of relief that she had. I thumbed the book open and dialed the first number. There weren’t many names in the book, this shouldn’t take long.
If she had her own cell phone I could just call that, maybe it was time to get her one. I’d have to talk to her about it when she got home.
My fingers were white where they clutched the phone. If I squeezed any tighter, the plastic case might crack. I’d already phoned Lindsey’s best friends. Neither had seen her since the netball game.
“I think it’s time to phone the cops,” Sue said, her green eyes darting between my face and Petey’s.
I could see the panic in her eyes. I knew what she was thinking - what if it was her child who’d gone missing? How would she cope?
In three years I’d never connected with Sue. She was an interloper, a woman barely out of high school who’d told my brother she was on the pill, then fallen pregnant the first time they had sex. Then she moved into our house, without a job, and sponged off what little resources we had. And she was a bitch.
The circle of concerned faces nodded in unison and the kitchen table jounced along with them.
My mother put a cup of tea onto the table in front of me. The steam curled up around my head, carrying the sweet tang of whiskey with it. Tea and whiskey, her two favorite solutions to any problem, neatly splashed into one cup. She must be as worried as I was.
“Don’t you have to wait forty-eight hours to report a missing person?” Thomas asked. My brother’s face was taught, his forehead creased in worry and dark circles had formed under his eyes. A pile of broken toothpicks littered the table between his hands and he broke another one as he spoke.
“Could you wait two days if Petey went missing?” Sue scooped a spoonful of stew into the toddler’s mouth. No one else was eating. Five bowls lay forgotten on the counter where my mother had dished them up.
Sue was right, even though I hated having to agree with her. We’d hardly agreed on anything in the three years since she’d trapped Thomas by falling pregnant. Why did it have to be a missing child that finally put us on the same page?
My stomach roiled, like a dozen snakes trying to squeeze their way up into my throat. It was time to phone the cops. Time to admit that my daughter was not just late home. She was missing.
“Do you know the number for the station?” I asked.
Blank stares and shaking heads returned the group consensus.
“Isn’t it one-oh-triple-one?” Thomas said.
“No, they changed it a few years ago,” I said. “Fuck!”
“Okay.” My mom put a soft hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t we go down to the station? Johan and Tommy can drive around between here and the school looking for her, and Sue can stay here and call us if she comes home.”
I nodded. Of course, someone should be out looking for her. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I couldn’t think of anything except the awful possibilities. I kept flashing back to the news on the radio this morning about the child’s body found in Soweto.
Hot tea and whiskey scalded my throat.
That couldn’t happen to Lindsey.
God, please don’t let that happen to Lindsey.
#
That woman
had parked in a cop’s designated parking bay. He’d rammed his car into hers then shot her three times in the chest. Far safer to park on the street outside than risk getting killed by some crazy cop.
I nosed the Uno into the open space. A pair of eyes in a dirty face scowled at me from the edge of the pavement. Empty bottles and polystyrene food containers littered the space around the man.
“Watch your car for you, missus?”
I tried not to frown at the man who shuffled to the front of my car. Layers of clothing hung from his stick-thin body. A scraggly white beard, with lumps tangled in the frizz, stood out against dark, leathery skin. I held my breath until we were out of the cloud of stale urine and wood smoke which clung to him.
“
Ja
, okay.” I nodded to him. I double-checked that I had locked the doors before we walked into the police station.
The reception looked like something straight out of the eighties. Small windows dotted the wood-paneled walls and a heavy counter ran the length of the room. Two rows of wooden benches stood before the counter. People sat pressed into the benches so tightly that they could barely move. A queue of bored-looking people snaked away from the benches, reaching toward the door. Besta and I took our places at the back of the queue.
Seven booths occupied the counter, each separated from its neighbor by a thin plywood partition. Three of the booths housed bored-looking officers who stood behind the counter transcribing the troubles of the person opposite them. Half a dozen more cops sat laughing at a table behind the counter.
The combined body heat of all these people made the room stuffy and stale. The stench of sweat and beer and something sour all vied for my attention.
The snakes in my gut buckled and writhed again, and I had to swallow hard. I counted the heads between me and the counter: twenty-seven.
A lady in green stepped away from her booth and the officer signaled the next person in the queue. Two elderly men stood and shuffled over to him while the rest of the queue moved along the chairs like the legs on a millipede.
A clock ticked on the wall, it was half past eight. More than five hours had passed since Lindsey had been due home. A digital display next to the clock flashed red demo text across a black screen. I watched it for a few minutes. It was hypnotic in a way; the dotty letters slid and flashed and faded their way back and forth across the narrow screen.
“Is there anywhere else she might have gone?” Besta asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know,
Ma
. She doesn’t really tell me who her friends are.”
“And she’s always home before dinner,” my mother said.
I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and checked the screen, hoping to see good news. There were no SMSes or missed calls, just an old picture of Lindsey and me eating ice cream. We were at the zoo. I could just make out the elephant enclosure behind us. She was five in the photo. I’d spent twenty minutes that morning brushing her white-blond hair before pulling it into pig-tails and tying pink ribbons around them. White ice cream ran down her fingers, a drop captured as it was about to fall to the floor.
Another person stepped away from the counter and everyone concertinaed forward. We’d been here for almost half an hour and there were still twenty-four people ahead of us in the queue.
“This is
fokken
crazy.” I glared at my phone, my knuckles white around the edges, willing it to ring. I started tapping my foot, drumming my hands on my thighs, chewing my nails, anything to try and pass the time while we were stuck in limbo in this queue. Fifteen minutes passed, one more person moved to the front of the queue.
“Why don’t those lazy fuckers do something?” I glared at the group of cops chilling behind the counter. I counted to ten, taking deep breaths between each number, trying to slow my pulse and gain control of my temper. Then I counted to fifty. It didn’t work.
“Hey!” I shouted at the cops and all the eyes in the room were on me in an instant. “Why don’t you help? Can’t you see how many people are waiting here?”
One of the cops, a woman with half-finished braids in her hair and a stain on the front of her blue uniform, glared at me for a long moment. She sucked her teeth and turned back to her conversation.
“Don’t ignore me, bitch!”
A chorus of gasps ran through the queue. Nobody spoke to cops like that; you could get yourself thrown into jail, or worse. Besta put her hand on my shoulder and mumbled something. I shrugged off her hand and, brandishing my phone like a sword, marched to the counter.
“There are twenty people in this queue and you’re sitting on your fat ass doing nothing.” My ears rang and I felt dizzy, but I was in it now, might as well see how far I could push it. “We’ve been here an hour already and you haven’t done a
fokken
thing. My daughter is missing, she could be dead already and you’re having a picnic.”
I put my hand on my mother’s shoulder. Dead. I’d been resisting the idea all evening and now it twisted in front of me like a corpse on a noose. My baby might be gone.
“Calm down, lady.” One of the cops who’d been helping people spoke in a firm voice, but I could see the worry in his large eyes. His teeth were stained dark yellow behind his wary smile and he pushed a pair of wire-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose when he spoke.
“My daughter is gone.” I spoke each word slowly and carefully, trying to choke the fury back down into my stomach by deliberate action. It didn’t work. “If she’s been kidnapped, it might be too late to help her, and you’re sitting there doing nothing.”
I turned to a woman in the front row, who held a bunch of tissues in one hand, dabbing at tears as they ran from her eyes. “How long have you been here?”
She looked at the people on either side of her, desperation clear in her eyes. They looked at the floor, the ceiling, anywhere but at her. “Since seven,” she said in a high, reedy voice.
“More than two hours! Why are you here?”
“To report a… I was assaulted—” Her voice broke and she sobbed into her tissues. The man on her right raised his hand to soothe her, but it hovered there for a moment before he lowered it again.
“This woman has to sit here in this
fokken
queue for more than two hours while you have a fat chat and ignore her?”
“Listen.” The woman who’d sucked her teeth stood and came around the counter. “You can’t talk to us like that. We’re police. Show us some respect.”
“Respect! How about you show this lady some respect and do your job? Or is this a holiday camp?”
Two more of the cops stood and followed their colleague out from behind the counter. They crowded close to me. I could smell the tang of their sweat.
“Honey,” my mother said from behind my shoulder. “Just sit down. I’m sure they were busy.”
“These pigs haven’t done a thing since we got here,” I sneered at the woman who stood directly in front of me, her companions flanking her. Other voices in the crowd behind me echoed my words, calling for them to do something, complaining about wasting tax money.
“If you’re going to cause a disturbance we’ll have to remove you from the reception area,” the woman had a nasty grin.
“Do you need to clock in before you do that? Or have you been charging us for your two-hour tea break?” I looked at her badge and put as much disdain into my next words as I could. “Inspector Zuma?”
“Hai!” The cop raised her hand over her head, palm open, and brought it down toward me. Her eyes burned with anger, her lips pulled tightly over her teeth. The room went deathly silent. I held my hands up in front of my face to ward off the blow I knew was coming. It never landed.
“Enough!” It was the cop from behind the counter, the one with the bad teeth and glasses who had tried to calm me down when I’d started my ranting. He was standing between us, his hand gripping the woman’s arm firmly. “That’s enough. Inspector Zuma, why don’t you take over at my station while I escort this lady to a holding cell?”
The man obviously had some authority, because Zuma glared at me for a moment before sucking her teeth again and stomping off to the counter like a scorned child.
I looked at the man’s badge. “Thank you, Sergeant Sibanda.”
He shot me a withering glare. “Don’t thank me yet. Let’s go.”
He led me and Besta behind the counter and down a narrow passage that went deeper into the police station. The reception area erupted into shocked conversation as we left.
“That was incredibly stupid,” the sergeant said. “You should keep your mouth shut.”
The sergeant stopped in front of a battered wooden door with a small glass window at shoulder height. White metal letters mounted on the door told me it was Interview Room 1. He unlocked the door and held it open.
“What’s your name?”
“Erin du Toit. I’m here because-”
“I know,” Sergeant Sibanda said. “Your daughter is missing. Wait in here. Someone will come help you soon.”