I was spending hours and hours in our big shopping centre called Longbeach Mall, which is only a 30-minute walk from Masiphumelele. I did nothing there other than watching. Watching and more watching.

Where do the security guys patrol? What do they look out for? How to get in the shop without being noticed and, even more important, how to get out again? Which shops are crowded enough? Which are just too small and too controlled? How are the goods protected? Do they have those plastic patches on that make the alarm go off if you walk out without having them removed? Is it better to do the job with others or alone?

Always, I did it alone. Although by that time, I knew most of the gangs of little tsotsis. All of them just as hungry as me. I felt it was better to work alone. You might feel more protected with others, and you could develop different strategies to divert the attention of the security guys. But it always attracts their interest if they see a group of kids, some of them barefoot, entering a shop; how would they ever pay?

I can’t talk about what I did in detail, except to say that. But I honestly never did steal any luxuries. And I never did it in any of the smaller shops. I only stole in the big places, like supermarkets. I walked in and took a trolley like a real customer. I never ran, and I never panicked. I always checked carefully where the security guys were and whether I was out of sight of the cameras. Then I hid what I took under my clothes, especially my big sweater with the huge pockets that Mavusi had given me – or put it in a new plastic bag that I had bought for twenty cents.

I got away with it for almost three years. In all that time, I never did it with anybody else. I always told Atie, when I gave him something: ‘It’s from my auntie.’ Or, when she wasn’t around: ‘Please, don’t ask, Atie!’

And I always shared with him if I got something. When he started at the high school a year after me, I stole two new lightblue shirts with long sleeves for him. The real good ones, from Ackermans. Not the cheap ones from PEP. I was so happy to see him so happy…

I only got caught once. That was the time, towards the end of the third year, when I tried to assist Modise, one of the smaller kids who also wanted to do it alone and not within a gang. Modise was about nine at the time and urgently needed some shoes. It was in the middle of winter and he was still running around barefoot.

‘Let’s try PEP,’ he suggested.

‘Never in my life!’ I laughed. ‘If you go with me, you go for quality. We will try Ackermans first!’

‘But we did it before in PEP, it’s easy there…’ Modise objected.

‘Do you want to learn something new or not?’ I interrupted him firmly.

Tell us what you think is going to happen next.