How did Jacob Dlamini end up a few paces from a police cell? This is an extract from the book: Should I stay or Should I go?
I had been detained at the Bramley police station for four hours, sitting in a side office staring at the empty holding cells across the room, when the question came to me: What am I doing here? Here, in this police station on an afternoon when I should have been preparing for my return the following day to the United States, where I was a graduate student, a place that was feeling like home with each passing year.
In truth, I had had several occasions to consider emigration. The first time was in 1992 when, shortly after completing my A-levels in England, I had toyed with the idea of staying on and going to university in the United Kingdom. The second time was in London in 1995 when I had considered staying on after my year-long tenure as a junior correspondent for the Sunday Times. In 2000, I had thought about settling in the United States after completing a year as an exchange student at Bard College in New York. But each time the pull of home had proved stronger than the attractions of life away from kin and country.
But there was something about that north Johannesburg police station and my being there that afternoon in August 2008 that made the question of emigration serious and urgent. What on Earth am I doing here? I knew that road rage had led me from an errand at the Hyde Park mall to the police station in Bramley.
I knew the only reason I was sitting in that office looking at the empty cells instead of being inside them was that the two policemen who had detained me could not be bothered to complete the paperwork that a proper booking would have required. Still, they had said that placing me within sight of the cells was for my benefit. It was, apparently, to help focus my mind. An officer had made a scene of opening and closing the metal door to the cells.
My mind was indeed focused: on the madness that had led me to the police station that afternoon; on the many occasions I had considered leaving South Africa but had not acted on that consideration; and on the reasons why going away was, for the first time in my adult life, a real option. The rage that had driven me to Bramley police station in the first place had slowly given way to humiliation, self-disgust and an impotent anger. What was I doing in this police station and country when I could be some place else? In my mind, my presence at the station and the cause for my being there were all the reasons I needed to leave. I had come as close to prison as I ever had; if that could not make me emigrate, what would?
What would my eight-month-old daughter think of me if she saw me here? What would my late mother think of her only son in detention for silliness? The questions kept coming as I stared at those empty cells, my mind focused on what I had become. The cops had been right. There was indeed nothing like staring at empty police cells to focus the mind. But how had it come to this?
It was late August and I was getting ready to fly back to the US, where I was pursuing a PhD, after the three-month-long break. A friend, a Sowetan who had lived in Boston for the past few years, had asked me to bring him a brand of muesli he swore you could find only in South Africa. He had already asked a cousin to buy the muesli to spare me the schlep of having to traipse around Johannesburg looking for it. All I had to do was drive to the Hyde Park shopping centre in the north of Johannesburg, where the cousin worked, to pick it up.
I was looking for a parking bay when it happened. I had just turned a corner in the mall’s parkade when an approaching maroon Toyota Land Cruiser took a wide turn from the opposite corner. The driver was on his cellphone and I had to swerve to avoid him, almost hitting the parked cars on my left as I brought the car to an abrupt stop. I gave the man the stink eye. He stopped his car, pulled down his window and stared at me. “What’s your problem?” he asked. “Your driving,” I answered. He jumped out of his car; so did I. We started trading blows in the parking lot, chasing each other between cars. He wasn’t much of a fighter — and I had 10 years’ karate experience under my belt.
The fight must have lasted only a few minutes but it felt like we had been duelling for some time. The mall’s security personnel soon appeared and separated us. I returned to my car and got back in; however, as I was about to drive off, my parking-lot antagonist kicked and broke one of my tail lights. I immediately jumped back out and started chasing him between parked cars; the security guards again had to intervene and held us apart. My tail-light was broken and I wanted to get even, but they wouldn’t let me. Instead they let him drive away. In fact, he was about to exit the parkade when I insisted he be stopped so he could pay for my broken light. The security guards consented and caught him at the boom gate. They ordered him to turn around, then escorted us to the mall’s control room to discuss the incident. I told the guards I would not talk to the man about anything except the damage to my car. He, in turn, was smug and patronising and dismissive of my “shit car”.
It must have been after he had said something about my “shit car” for the umpteenth time that I snapped. I smacked his face, grabbed his horn-rimmed glasses from his face and smashed them to pieces in my hands.
“Do you know how much those cost?” he cried. “You’ve just broken a R5Â 000 pair of titanium glasses for a R150 tail light!” My actions had, however, made me unpopular with the security guards.
They had taken the attack as a personal affront and a sign of disrespect.
We were now even: we both had some damage with which to contend. But, of course, that is not how he saw it. He had destroyed a light worth R150; I had damaged a pair of glasses that cost R5Â 000. The security guards said we would each be allowed to go our way if we agreed to reimburse the other. There was no way that was going to fly. The man seemed to have a high estimation of his worth and I did not trust his valuation of his glasses. I said I would only fix his glasses if he gave me three quotes from reputable optometrists. He told me to take a hike. The security guards threw their hands in the air and called the police.
An inspector and a constable soon arrived. The inspector did all the talking. He was not interested in opening a case; he wanted the two of us to sit down and work out a solution. The man would fix my damage; I would get him a new pair of glasses, provided he gave me three quotes I could verify. Simple, you may think — and yet we were too wound up to reach an agreement. Eventually, the inspector gave up: “This is it. We’re arresting these men. They are wasting our time.”
The inspector called the episode by its name: road rage. This was a serious charge, he informed us, and because he could not get us to see sense he was taking us to the Bramley police station. “I am giving you one last chance to sort this out. There’s no turning back once I open a docket.”
The station is about 15 minutes from the mall and the inspector used the drive to good effect. He interviewed me about my background and, having found out about my impending return to the US, told me how silly I had been. “You don’t want to go to prison. You don’t want to throw your future away.”
I didn’t. But I also wanted the damage to my car fixed. The constable must have had a similar conversation with my adversary because when we got to the police station, he seemed ready to sit down and work out an arrangement. He didn’t want to spend time in the cells; neither did I. But neither of us would admit any guilt, making it difficult to settle. Yet there was something about our proximity to the cells that kept us on point. We finally agreed to fix each other’s damage.
By the time we signed a contract overseen by the inspector, we had been in the police station for four hours. My day was gone. But not the question: What am I doing here? Is it not time to leave a country where violence and stupidity are never far away from the surface?
A former girlfriend once accused me of “checking out” on her. By this she meant I had abandoned our relationship long before we decided to end it. I had loosened the emotional bonds that tied us together long before we sat down to say things weren’t working between us. I had checked out on our relationship, she said.
If I could check out on a relationship, why not a country? Checking out on a country was not that difficult. There are multitudes of South Africans already in Australasia, Europe and North America. There are thousands more waiting in long queues to check out. Some of these queues are real, such as those outside Western consulates where people apply for visas; others are imaginary, as people consider what it might be like to turn their backs on South Africa.
Many of those leaving, planning to leave or already checked out are from the middle classes. They are the folks with the means, the qualifications and the nous to leave.
Yet not every member of the middle class wants to leave. Black professionals might be joining the exodus but they are a minority. Many more black professionals are staying and making a go of it. They are keen, I suppose, to give meaning to liberation.
However, would it not be sheer madness to sit around here, where my nerves are forever frayed? Which would be the greater madness, leaving or staying? The question detains me, focuses my mind on a future I can only imagine and a past I know only too well. What must I do? Should I go or should I stay? Am I mad to even think about the possibility of leaving permanently? But would it not be greater madness to wait for the next bout of rage? Who knows — I might not have lazy policemen to deal with next time.
Jacob Dlamini is the author of Native Nostalgia (Jacana), which is in the running for the UJ Debut Award. This edited extract is taken from Should I Stay or Should I Go? (Two Dogs), a collection of essays about the South African emigration dilemma