Bafana Khumalo
Whitey didn’t know what hit him. One minute he was walking down the crowded early evening street and the next, bang!
The film of alcohol in his eyes, which made the piss-smelling streets seem as safe as Disneyland, rudely cleared. A film which made the redlined people around him seem as friendly as Donald Duck hit a snag and rudely started jumping about violently.
He awoke to the reality of the ugly streets – — streets populated by scum who will take anything they want from you.
“Leave me alone!” he screamed as four brothers pounced upon him. I don’t know what made them brothers, for, in their ugliness, pigment was not enough of a qualification for kinship.
Whitey was poor. His clothes had not been replaced in a long time. I, staring at this drama unfolding in front of me, had more money on me than he could hope to have for the rest of his downhill life. Not that I am offering myself as a candidate for a mugging instead of him.
He had no intention of giving in quietly. “What do you want from me, I don’t have any money, what do you want from me?” he screamed. The people around him scattered as a knife was wielded, maybe to stab him, maybe to frighten him.
One man grabbed him by his belt as they tried to drag him into an alley. This should have been an easy task given that whitey wasn’t that strong. In fact, the man who had him by the belt succeeded in lifting him off the ground. “Fuck off! I told you I don’t have any money!” He was kicking, fighting a battle that he was destined to lose.
In his statement of fact was a sub-text which said: “I understand all that bulldust about how oppressed you have been by whoever. How you need to do this to feed your families or out of greed or whatever you hold dear. But I cannot give you what you want, for I don’t have it.”
I stood frozen by fear in the middle of the street, though later, I told friends of mine that I had coldly observed this drama of our decay. I was in a way grateful that I had not been the one whom they had tried to violate, for I also did not see it coming. I, however, was not seen as a legitimate target, unlike whitey.
I could not move and I listened to this man first plead and then fight, not for his money for he did not have any, but for his dignity, for pride. “If I had money or anything of value on me, I would have given it to you. All I have is a semblance of dignity and you cannot have that,” he seemed to say.
Finally, after a struggle, the attackers realised that this battle was not worth any of the spoils. They let go of him and melted into an alley — not before one of them maliciously kicked whitey on the buttocks and told him to “Voetsek!”
Somebody tittered in the crowd that had gathered at a safe distance.
Whitey got up and dusted himself while repeating his demand that he be left alone. As he started walking away, his eyes locked on to mine and he asked, not really expecting an answer: “What is wrong with these people? I have nothing!”
I wanted to look back into his eyes and spit: “You are reaping what you have sown. This is none of my business.” That would have been a lie of unparalleled proportions.
My gaze shamefully took to the ground.