We Are Not Such Things (48 page)

Pinky was with Easy from the time she was sixteen until she was twenty-two, when he went to prison. They met on the train, and she moved into his family’s home for two years, along with her baby son from another man—a child Easy loved so much that he wanted Pinky to tell everyone that the kid was his. Kiki and Wowo accepted Pinky as one of their own.

“He was a good boyfriend. He was taking care of me. He introduce me to his friends. I stayed there, like his sister, stayed there with them for two years. His mom used to support me, buying me uniforms because my mom was not working permanently.”

On August 25, 1993, Pinky and Easy met up at the Langa Secondary School rally; like many poor young people of color, whose subpar education was often interrupted by life circumstances, both Pinky and Easy had attended high school into their twenties. After the rally, they separated. She returned to NY1 in time to throw a few stones at a truck, which she said drove away. Then she saw a little Mazda ambling down the road.

“And they started to shout, ‘There’s a settler.’ I think there was two ladies with a guy. So I just stand in the corner with the other people, watching. A lot of people were hitting the car with the stones. I just saw she was running and I didn’t even saw her when she was stabbed. I was far away. I just saw her far away, just a lady like your size, trying to run to the garage. I saw her fallen. I saw them trying to beat her.”

“Who was beating her?”

“I saw Mongezi Manqina. I saw him. I didn’t knew all of them. There were lot of people. Manqina he was one of the group that took the car, hitting her, carrying stones. I know him from the organization, but the other people who were there were coming from different school.”

“Where was Ntobeko?”

“He was there, carrying stones. I did notice Ntobeko, I knew him.”

“He was there, throwing stones?”

“Yes. He was just throwing stones to the car. Ntobeko Peni, I knew him a long time. He was a nice guy. He was involve politically the way we were. But Manqina, he was in front. I didn’t even know that boy Vusumzi. I never saw him in our meetings. I saw him for the first time at the courts.”

“What about the other guys who got arrested?”

Pinky shook her head. She remembered seeing the fifteen-year-old named Terry pluck a bag from the back of Amy’s car and rush off, passing close to her. “But I didn’t know the other guys there.”

“And Easy wasn’t there?”

“I didn’t even see Easy at that time. I was just standing on the corner, watching everything. I’m just speaking honestly. He was not there. I really didn’t see him.”

“Was his brother Monks there?”

“Yes, yes. He was there. He was a good friend of Ntobeko.”

Pinky watched the attack, toyi-toyi-ing a little, until the police arrived, and then she wandered back to the Nofemela house on NY111. There, she found Terry, who was rummaging through the bag he’d stolen. He pulled a camera out and handed it to Pinky, who took snapshots of everyone.

“Whatever happened to the camera?” I asked.

“I think Terry burned it because he found an ANC card in the wallet so he’s suspecting the lady was an ANC member, and then he want to burn everything to hide the evidence.”

“When did you next see Easy?”

“The one that I met later on is Easy and I asked him, ‘Where were you?’ and he said, ‘No, I was not even here; I just pass on the train to Khayelitsha, and we did the toyi-toyi in Khayelitsha, and were beating the cars.’ ”

“But Easy says he went in the bakkie to get food for Viveza and passed by Amy after. Quinton and Steyn also told me this.”

“Now I’m confused that the people were saying he was at Viveza store,” Pinky said. “He never worked for Viveza. He would tell me if he had been there, because we always spoke truthfully to each other, so I believed him when he said he was in Khayelitsha.”

“She just protecting me,” Easy insisted when I later brought up the Khayelitsha angle. “I never go to Khayelitsha that day. I was with Viveza on the bakkie.”

I didn’t necessarily think that Pinky was deliberately lying. There could hardly be a grand conspiracy when nearly everyone had a different memory of that day. But people often have false or doctored memories of certain events, especially newsworthy ones. What they’ve read or repeated or heard can slowly solidify into what they perceive as real and accurate memories. Researchers have found that people routinely remember events as they want them to have occurred—slowly reshaping them over the years until they become “true” in their minds. And memories can even be created out of nothing. In one study, researchers selected a group of people they had identified as having highly superior memory—the type of person who remembered historical events as well as minute details of their lives down to the hour, years back. The researchers, when discussing the events of September 11, mentioned nonexistent TV footage of the plane crashing in Pennsylvania; later, 20 percent of the subjects claimed to remember, sometimes vividly, seeing such footage.

That night, Pinky continued, the whole area was talking about what had happened to Amy Biehl. “I was shocked, because we didn’t know she passed away until later. Easy was surprised that something like that happened.”

“What about Monks?”

“Monks didn’t say anything.”

“How did you feel about her death?” I asked.

“I was not happy, I was not disappointed. Our commander gave us the order to do what the operation was. As long as you are white, they will think you are enemy. I just told myself she went on the wrong direction at the wrong time, but she didn’t do anything to anyone wrong. She just went at the wrong time.”

“Was Easy nervous that night?”

“He was not nervous and I slept by him, and in the morning I hear a knock and it is the police. They didn’t even want to listen that he was not there that day. They just arrested him in his pajamas.”

“Pinky, why do you think that the witnesses accused Easy of being there?”

“I know exactly who the witnesses are. I know they are staying near where Easy and Ntobeko stays. When Easy was growing up, he was sort of a gangster. Maybe there is something behind it. Maybe the witnesses, they had a problem with them. Or maybe is a mistake. Easy was very active in politics in the township, and the brothers all look alike. Maybe the witness saw someone who look like Easy and told themself, ‘Okay, it’s Easy, it’s him.’ Then the witness got on the stand and said was Easy, and she cried in front of the judge.”

“So you think the witness saw Monks instead of Easy?”

Pinky looked unsure. “I still don’t know if Monks did anything, but I did go to see Easy in jail. I ask him about this. He said, ‘It’s fine. I will stand as long that my brother is safe.’ ”

Soon thereafter, I came across Masana, the craggy soldier-slash-gangster-slash-miner whom Easy had called his “commander” on that rainy day a year earlier. Masana, who’d drunkenly taken my loose change. But no harm, no foul. Masana was delighted to see me when we passed each other on a street in Gugulethu.

“My sister!” he exclaimed, wrapping me in a warm hug. “How are you, Justin? Me, I’m surviving.” He gave me his phone number. I then called him in the hope of a second interview, to which he happily agreed.

Masana met me outside the Nofemela house on NY111. He brought with him a stern-looking man in sunglasses who introduced himself as Seven. (“Because I lived at house number 7,” he said; “
Ach
, nonsense. Is because he killed seven people,” Mzi later countered.) Seven, whom I would see a few more times and who always waved and smiled, hanged himself in the Eastern Cape two years later, and left no note.

The two men slid into my parked car, my primary interview location. In the townships, where most people lived with extended families and there were no coffee shops or quiet bars, the car was the only place I could ever get any privacy.

“You know, Justine, my understanding of that Amy Biehl issue is that Easy and Ntobeko and Mongezi, they were handpicked because people knew them,” Masana said, settling in the front seat as Seven made himself comfortable in back. “The witnesses just pointed to the ones they knew.”

“Check the characters,” Seven piped up. “Easy and Ntobeko weren’t violent. They were just youngsters who didn’t have the capability to kill someone. Those other guys were tall, were violent.” He was referring to the APLA trio. “I never understood why they got away and Easy and Ntobeko went in. Maybe those boys were younger so they were soft targets.”

“We Africans have our ways,” Masana said. “Even gangsters have rules we have to adhere to.”

“So Masana, were you a gangster or a freedom fighter?”

“Honest? Both. First, we were in gangs. You have to be. It is peer pressure, or the others will call you a sissy. You need protection, too. It is about keeping our territory safe. In the old times, when people see us coming, they call the cops. Then the PAC leaders approached us. We had secret meetings at night with these PAC leaders, talking about the negativity of gang membership. But we can’t leave the gang entirely or they will crucify us. So we became members of the PAC and the gang. We signed forms and we got membership cards for PAC. Easy and Ntobeko and their group, they were younger. They followed us, and every decision we take, they take also.”

I floated the Monks story: that Monks had done it and Easy had taken the fall.

“I know that story,” Seven said. “Others said it was Monks. Others said it was Easy.”

“The cops could have dug deeper but maybe they just wanna show they got them, just to close the book,” Masana said.

“You can never know,” Seven said. “It was hear and say.”

“You should go to the houses of the people who saw this thing,” Masana suggested.

“Do you think if I just go by, they will answer my questions?”

Seven and Masana looked unconvinced but tried to nod politely. “Maybe?” Seven said.

Mzi was always up for an adventure, and in addition to being my guide he slowly took to acting as a historian, researcher, sleuth, and bodyguard.

Mzi may have gained his GED equivalent in prison and he may never have held down an office job, but he had the mind of a lawyer, detective, and psychologist. Sometimes, when I approached an interview incorrectly, Mzi would take over the conversation and subtly guide the subject to answer, leaving me ashamed at my own sloppy technique.

None of that organic intelligence mattered much to Mzi’s daily existence. Once, we ordered two cappuccinos and a vegetable quiche to share at a spacious coffee shop near Parliament, and when I went to pay the bill at the counter, Mzi stepped outside. Within moments, a black Zimbabwean waiter approached him.

“Are you looking for something?” he asked.

“Why?” Mzi asked.

“My boss wants me to ask you to move away,” the waiter said. Inside the restaurant, a woman in an apron averted her eyes. A few feet away, several white people loitered, absently staring at their iPhones or smoking.

Mzi leaned toward the waiter. “Listen here, my brother,” he said. “You are an African from outside of South Africa and I am an African from South Africa.”

Mzi extended his hand and the waiter, now stricken, took it.

“You remember apartheid but you won’t know apartheid,” Mzi continued, beginning the long-form African handshake. “Go and tell your boss I fought for this land and I have the right to be wherever I want to be. I respect all Africans, who have a right to be anywhere in Africa, and I ask that you also adopt this attitude.”

The waiter muttered several thank-yous and walked slowly inside, where he sat down at a table, deflated.

“Verwoerd was brilliant, an innovator, an inventor of the future,” Mzi said as we walked away. He was speaking of Hendrik Verwoerd, the prime minister infamous for perfecting apartheid. “He still rules from the grave, that guy. The waiter must be happy I am a Buddhist.”

Together with this Buddhist ex-militant, I combed the township for witnesses and came up with Miss A, Pikker’s star informant and Niehaus’s key eyewitness. She was the woman who had handed the sheet of paper to Rhodes naming Easy, Ntobeko, and Mongezi as Amy’s killers. She had not been referred to by name in any court documents, but her identity was no secret. Pinky, Easy’s ex, had told me that the police had called her and revealed Miss A’s real name and address, “and that’s why I never trust the police,” Pinky added.