“GBH? Robbery?” asks Siya, confused.

“Yes, Grievous Bodily Harm and Robbery,” says the policeman.

“No, officers, you have it the wrong way round. That piece of garbage behind you, pointing his finger at me, is the one who should be arrested because he stole from me,” Siya says. He starts to explain what happened.

“I advise you to shut your mouth and come with us,” says the policeman. “Stop explaining because you will incriminate yourself further. Get dressed. You will explain your side of the story in court.”

“Court? Are you serious? This piece of shit stole from me! Why am I getting arrested?” Siya cannot believe what is happening. He feels like he is in a nightmare. Like he’s still asleep.

“Further protesting amounts to another charge of resisting arrest. So shut up and let us do our job. Get dressed or we will take you in your pajamas,” says the other policeman, who has been quiet until now.

Siya tries to explain further, angry now, until he feels his mother’s hand on his shoulder.

“Just do as they say, Siya. You will explain everything at the police station,” she tells him.

Siya changes into a tracksuit, and takes fifty rand from his pay from the taxi gig. He leaves the rest of the money with his mother. He can’t believe his bad luck. He thinks briefly of bribing the cops, but squashes that idea because he knows he did nothing wrong. The truth will come out when he explains everything at the police station. This misunderstanding will be over soon, he tells himself.

He catches the time on the clock above the dashboard in the police van: 2:45 a.m. Siya looks back to his home as the van drives off with him in the back. The whole thing has turned into a spectacle. The neighbours are out, standing in their yards watching. His mother is in her nightgown, looking deeply worried, her eyes following the van as it drives away. Nonhle is in tears, holding Owethu, who is also weeping.

Siya quickly learns this lesson: When you have joined the conveyor belt that is the justice system there is no getting off until your day in court. When the process is on it is on. No-one lends an ear. He tries to explain his side of the story to the cops at the holding cells.

“You will have your day in court to do all the explaining you want,” they say, slamming the cell gate shut.

He tells his story to those he finds inside the holding cell, and even whispers it to himself.

Then, “Siya, come here,” says a voice from a dark corner of the holding cell.

It is a soft voice, almost a whisper. Siya is trying to remember where he knows it from when a match strikes to light a cigarette. The frame that the match light reveals is of a large fellow. Surely a voice this soft does not belong to this hulk of a man? Siya is thinking that the person who calls him must be standing behind the smoking giant, when he suddenly connects the dots.

The voice is indeed coming from the smoking giant. His nickname is ‘Small’. He’s a car thief now, but Siya went to high school with him.

Siya is happy to see a familiar face but more so because it is Small. Small has been living on this side of life for years. He had started his car-stealing career back while they were still in high school so by now he must be ‘connected’. Word had got around that no-one dared harass him in jail because he turned into a beast when pushed.

Siya has finally found a willing ear in Small. He tells Small how his room was burgled and everything else that followed.

“But Small, what are you in for?” Siya asks at the end of explaining his story.

“They found me stripping a Golf VI GTI. I know it won’t hold. Cops harass me all the time. They wanted a bribe but I was not willing to pay them. I just hope we get bail tomorrow because Friday is a holiday. I can’t afford to spend the long weekend in jail. It’s my son’s birthday this weekend,” says Small.

Siya cannot sleep so he studies the characters he is spending the night with in the holding cell. Killers, rapists, fraudsters and robbers are sharing the same cell as someone caught stealing a bar of chocolate at a supermarket. It makes no sense to Siya. Surely offences should be graded? Minor offenders should not be placed in the same cell as the hard cases. At the moment that he comes to this conclusion the cell gate opens to let in a killer whose hands and arms are still dripping with the blood of his victim!

Siya has the fifty rand in his tracksuit pants. He gives the note to Small: protection money. Small had explained, plus Siya knew a bit about this side of life because he had an uncle who had done some time in jail. Siya knew he needed to pay over this money so that his stay would be humane – should they be taken to Westville Prison.

But it was one thing to hear stories from an uncle and another thing going through it himself. Siya stays awake until morning, sitting on a dirty piece of sponge, silently cursing his bad luck.

*****

They are taken to court in the morning. What he and Small feared would happen, happens. Their cases are postponed to Monday morning. They are to spend the long weekend at the Westville Prison holding cells.

Nonhle is at the court and able to hand over a plastic bag with a change of clothes, fruit and another fifty rand before Siya is led down to be taken away to Westville Prison.

Small is a known crook so they don’t get hustled by the numbers crews when they get there. Siya is witness to the economy of the prison, run by inmates. Everything is for sale – phone calls, protection, good food, cigarettes for smokers. Even the privilege of killing time by playing cards is reserved for those who pay. Siya stays close to Small so he does not receive the harsh treatment met by those who get arrested penniless.

Yet, regardless of staying out of harm’s way he is still in jail, and jail seems like a version of hell to Siya. He witnesses behavior so inhumane that he decides to instantly forget it, for it will affect him forever if he keeps what he sees in his mind.

A few people who have been awaiting trial for several years have lost their minds completely. At night they scream like demons are inside them. A murderer in their cell wails all night because he sees the person he killed in his dreams, and wakes up bleeding from his ears.

Siya stays awake the whole long weekend, not wishing this experience on even his worst enemy. The screams of the prisoners and the sounds of prison keys echo in his ears even as Monday comes and he is taken back to court.

***

Tell us what you think: Does this kind of prison experience stop people from committing more crimes?