Hateland (21 page)

    I managed to fall into an uneasy sleep, but the unbearable heat from the rising sun soon made that impossible. In the morning light, I could see that around the wall of my cell ran a cast-iron gutter containing water for drinking and washing. You had to pull a chain to set the liquid flowing. I didn't fancy catching amoebic dysentery, so I avoided the water.

    The accommodation had one other drawback - I had to share it with five others. I introduced myself to my cellmates. All had been arrested for drink-driving. Breakfast was served at sunrise. It consisted of one scoop of cold porridge on a piece of dry bread. I asked the policeman on breakfast duty if I could use the phone. He said, 'Yeah, sure. I'll bring it to you. I'll just fetch it out of my arse.' He slammed the door shut with a sneer.

    I didn't have the stomach for breakfast. I gave my meagre portion to one of the others. I sat there in my torn leather jacket and pondered my options. I hoped Colin was all right, because I knew he represented my best hope of finding a way out. He was probably the only person in the entire country who'd be concerned about my well-being.

    I needed to contact him to tell him to get me a lawyer. One of the other prisoners, a Welshman (no relation to Dai, I prayed), was to be released that morning. I scratched Colin's telephone number on the back of his belt buckle. He assured me he'd ring him to let him know where I was.

    During the afternoon, the police came and moved me to another cell-block. It was marked 'Category A: Serious Crimes'. This worried me, to say the least, because I didn't think a brawl in a club represented a serious crime. The policeman opened the door to my new cell. It looked much the same as the other one. It just smelt a bit more. I relaxed a bit when I met my new cellmates. None had committed any serious crimes.

    Johnny had been arrested for using a stolen cheque book. He'd been in custody for seven months and was still waiting for other matters to be investigated before his case could be heard. Mario was in for drink-driving and driving while disqualified. Two teenagers were in for burglary and theft. The fifth man, Andrew, didn't know what he was in for, because he'd lost his memory. He said the police had told him he'd be staying put until he started remembering things. My colleagues told me to abandon any great hope of getting out swiftly. I could expect to be held for a long time while 'investigations' continued. They told me the police kept some people in custody indefinitely for no reason other than some officer taking a dislike to them. I wished fervently I hadn't tried to grab the desk sergeant. I hoped he wasn't the type to bear a grudge. I wondered if it was too late for an apology.

    Some hours later, as the others dozed, Johnny whispered that I should be wary of Andrew, the supposed amnesia sufferer. He said, 'He's a cop.' Apparently, the police moved him from cell to cell to gather information. Normally, I'd have considered such a suggestion ridiculous. But now nothing done by these upholders of the law could surprise me.

    Around two in the morning, a policeman called me from the cell. He led me to a room which was empty apart from a single chair in the middle. He told me to sit on it. I assumed I was about to be interviewed. I sat there for around 45 minutes before the policeman returned. He ordered me to follow him. He took me straight back to the cell, slammed shut the door, and walked away. I felt a bit unnerved. I asked Johnny if this procedure was normal. He laughed and said, 'Anything is normal in this place.'

    During the day, the heat in the cell was unbearable. It didn't matter where you moved, you couldn't escape it. In the early evening, the rain fell heavily for about an hour, flooding the floor. The clouds cleared and the sun beamed down again, turning the cell into a Turkish bath. It stank to white man's heaven.

    The one other meal of the day, delivered late afternoon, wasn't any more appetising than breakfast. It looked like a bowl of hot water with some sort of plant life floating on top. And more dry bread. Again, I let one of my cellmates have it. The police came for me around seven that evening. Once again, I was led to the room with the single chair. After half an hour, a detective came in and told me to follow him. He was in his mid-40s and looked mean, very mean. I was thankful I wasn't black.

    He brought me into an office, sat me down and stared at me. He said, 'You English bastards. You're worse than the bloody blecks.' That was all I needed: an anti-English racist. His face seemed familiar. I had a feeling I might have met him at that meeting for the Brit-hating Afrikaner Resistance Movement. I could imagine him, khaki-clad on horseback, hunting blacks and Anglos across the veld.

    He began questioning me about the guns that had been in my flat when I'd been arrested. I explained they'd been issued to me by my company. I admitted I didn't have a work permit.

    'What?' he said. 'No fucking permit? You're a tourist, and you think you can stroll round our city, armed to the teeth, assaulting and threatening our citizens? You've come to the wrong place, sonny.' He said that, come what may, he'd make sure I was deported. He seemed to take my presence in his country very personally. I'd really upset him. I prayed the desk sergeant wasn't his mate.

    He questioned me about the assault on my friend Colin and about my threats to kill the Portuguese which he said I'd shouted at them during the disturbance. He seemed to be fishing around to see what charges he could bring. I tried explaining that everything stemmed from the incident some weeks earlier when I'd been cut by one of their mates outside my flat.

    This seemed to turn on a light in his head. He left the room and returned a moment later with a file. He sat there reading it for a few minutes. Then he held up the statement I'd signed regarding this earlier incident. He said, 'Is this yours?' I said it was. He tore it up into about eight pieces, threw the remains in the bin and said, 'Well, we won't be needing that then.'

    He led me out of the room to the reception area where I was charged with assaulting the Portuguese woman two weeks earlier. I felt gobsmacked, but for the moment there wasn't much I could do. The detectives told me they'd be seeking my deportation and therefore needed my last address outside the Republic. I didn't want to give them my English address in case they contacted the English police, who'd no doubt inform them of my wanted status. I gave them the address of Angie's flat in Amsterdam. I was told that, when the time came, I'd be deported to Holland.

    They photographed me, fingerprinted me and noted all distinguishing marks on my body before returning me to my cell. The other prisoners told me that, now I'd been charged, I'd be taken to court the following morning.

    At night, the cell turned into a fridge - the frozen-food compartment. My mind filled with ifs and maybes, and I couldn't sleep. The cells never fell silent. The slamming of doors and the despairing cries of prisoners didn't stop. Around midnight, I heard shouting outside. A woman started screaming. I heard the door of our adjacent cell being slammed shut. As the jailer's footsteps faded, I could hear a woman sobbing uncontrollably. I called out to her and asked if she was all right. Her voice conveyed a sense of absolute terror. She said, 'Please help me! Please help me! The guards have threatened to rape me!'

    I told her they were just trying to scare her. I said nothing would happen to her. She shouldn't show she was scared, because they'd just play on it. In truth, I couldn't be sure nothing would happen to her. As Johnny had said, and as I'd already found out myself, in this place anything was possible and everything was normal.

    She said she'd been arrested for 'stealing' a car which she'd bought legitimately from a showroom two weeks earlier. 'They want me to say I stole it. I've never broken the law in my life. I'm married with children. Please help me.'

    I spoke to her on and off throughout the night. She became a lot calmer.

    I never found out what happened to her, because in the early morning I was loaded with several other prisoners into a truck with a wire-mesh back door. About 15 minutes later, the truck drove into a courtyard. We all got out. Police led us into what seemed like a long tunnel under the courts.

    For the first time since my arrest, I found myself sitting with black prisoners. One black youth sat there sobbing. He had a gaping wound in his side. It had been dressed, but badly. I was told he'd been shot by police as he ran from a car that had been broken into. Another man stood there completely naked. His clothes had been taken away, supposedly for forensic examination, and hadn't been replaced.

    I kept thinking about my ex-colleague Dougie and the events I'd witnessed; the events I'd allowed to happen. No doubt, our black victims had ended up down here, bewildered, humiliated and terrified, yet usually guilty of nothing. I felt like scum. I wanted to fly a thousand miles away from this demented country. I could hardly believe that only a few weeks earlier, I'd wanted to defend this system and way of life.

    After a few hours' waiting, I heard my name being called out. A jailer escorted me upstairs to the courtroom. I looked up into the public gallery and saw Colin. For the first time since my arrest, I felt a surge of relief. He indicated with hand gestures that he'd got me a solicitor. South Africa had no legal-aid system. Either you paid for justice or you didn't get it. That was another reason so many black people ended up being railroaded to jail - or the gallows.

    I couldn't understand what was being said, because my solicitor and the court officials spoke in Afrikaans. But after a few minutes of, to me, incomprehensible jabber, my lawyer leaned over and said, 'You can get bail if you're willing to surrender your passport and pay 1,000 rand in cash.' I said, 'Tell them it's done.' I told him to sort out the cash with Colin.

    Moments later, I was being led back down the stairs into the tunnel. It's hard to describe the awful atmosphere below. The air stank of sweat and fear. Everybody sat staring at the floor. Everyone looked troubled. Some looked desperate and defeated. I could barely imagine the suffering this miserable place had witnessed over the years. You could sense it in the heavy air.

    I'd relaxed considerably, because I thought I'd soon be walking out. But, to my alarm, the police loaded me back into the truck and said I was being taken to the notorious Deepcliffe Prison. I kept saying I'd been granted bail, but no one wanted to listen. My heart sank to my toes.

    In the truck, I sat near the exit, looking through the wire mesh as the driver pulled out of the courtyard. Then a little morale-booster brought my heart back up: Colin was following in a car. I had one of those strange, dreamy moments when everything seems peculiar. Here I was being driven through the streets of Johannesburg in the back of a prison truck on a beautifully sunny day with my friend in desperate pursuit. This was hardly the new life of which we'd dreamed.

    We reached Deepcliffe in an hour or so. They unloaded us and led us into a reception area. One by one, we were called forward. When my turn came, I had to stand on a wooden box and answer a series of mundane questions from a screw standing behind a counter. Name, age, address, religion, birthmarks, mother's maiden name. I told him I shouldn't be there. I said, 'I got bail, mate. Check with the courts.'

    He gave a look of mock concern and said, 'Oh, really! Don't tell me - we're swapping you for Barabbas. Put this name-badge on, hold these papers, stand over there and shut up.'

    I had to stand there for another half-hour as they documented everyone. Then they led us through the prison. I'd just about resigned myself to another spell in custody when I heard my name being called. I was taken back out to the reception area and into the office of a man I assumed was the prison governor.

    He said, 'Your bail's been paid, O'Mahoney, and your passport's been lodged with us. Do you understand that if you don't appear in court, your friend who paid your bail will lose his money?' I said I did. I wasn't concerned about the money. I'd told Colin to take it from my own account. I signed a form and in two minutes I was walking back out the main gate as a free man. Colin was waiting for me.

    It was 30 December 1985 and I had only one thought in my mind: how to flee the country before New Year. Trying to travel without a passport presented a significant hurdle. But I had an idea. I drove with Colin to the capital, Pretoria, where a few months earlier we'd tried to enlist in the army. I already had an open return ticket. I went to a travel agent's, showed them my ticket and said that, because of a bereavement, I had to get back to England as soon as possible.

    The earliest available flight, leaving on New Year's Day and taking me as far as Brussels, involved flying via Nairobi, Cairo, Madrid and Geneva. I said, 'No problem. I'll take it.'

    Ticket in hand, I then went to a nearby police station. I told them I'd been visiting my sister to help her pack. She was moving back to England to get married. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my passport. I had a horrible feeling I'd accidentally packed it away in my sister's belongings, which were now on their way to England.

    I had to fly out the day after tomorrow. What could I do? I showed him my plane ticket. He walked off, returning moments later with a lost-property form. He filled it out, stamped it and told me to take it to the British Embassy down the road. At the embassy, they checked I held a valid passport before issuing me with an emergency 'one-way' passport. This 'passport' was in fact just an A4 piece of paper declaring my right to travel on one journey only from Johannesburg to England.

    I now had all I needed, apart from the certainty that I'd get out of the country. I knew if they carried out proper checks at the airport they'd suss me out. I'd be arrested and wouldn't get bail until my case had been dealt with. I imagined the next year stuck on remand in a South African prison cell.

    I'd let a few people in on my plan. Not everyone thought it was a good idea. Someone suggested it might be better to cross a river on the northern border. But I discovered the river was crocodile-infested - and the far shore a haven for anti-apartheid guerrillas. Someone else suggested travelling to Durban or Cape Town and stowing away on a ship. I felt on balance that my own plan was the best, so long as I kept my head and didn't appear suspicious at the airport.