Bongani Nxumalo ”stole” a firearm from a relative to carry out the robbery that put him in jail for five years. Another firearm, from a friend, was only a call away. ”Guns are easy to get,” he said in an interview recently.
Soft-spoken Nxumalo was recently paroled from the Emthonjeni juvenile section of Pretoria’s Baviaanspoort Correctional Centre, after serving part of an eight-year sentence for an armed robbery at a CNA in Westonaria in November 1998.
His easy-going demeanour belies the ”hard” years he spent in jail.
The Khutsong-born 16-year-old, was still in grade four when he and his three friends decided to rob the shop because it was staffed by four women workers and they considered it a soft target.
When his friend came up with the idea, he offered to get the gun.
As is the norm before tsotsis do a ”job”, they consulted a sangoma. ”He told us what we had come for; said the shop moved money on a Monday; and gave us muti to help us.”
Brandishing a Norinco 9mm pistol the four teenagers locked the shop attendants in a back room before taking cash and cellphones.
They then separated, agreeing to meet later and divide the loot. In fact, the rendezvous turned out to be the local police station. They were quickly identified by their school’s red golf shirts and arrested.
Bongani now lives with his grandparents. His mother, a single parent, lives in Alberton and supported him before his arrest. ”I was okay at home, but most of my peers were drunkards. We would go out and drink.”
He said peer pressure introduced him to the world of crime. ”Most of my friends in the township were robbing; it was the thing to do. My mother thought it was shoplifting; she was shocked to learn it was armed robbery.”
Nxumalo sees his prison experience as a salvation, saying there is no chance he will return to crime. ”I could have died if I didn’t go to jail. I know schoolmates who’ve died.”
He has stopped drinking and completed half the modules of a software engineering degree through Unisa. ”Now I talk to young people in my community and tell them to concentrate on school. Prison life is terrible.”