MY MOTHER WAS ALSO ON my mind.
Slowly I had realised that I needed to get out of this situation I had found myself in, and stop blaming people for what had happened to me. The bruises from the beatings and waking up in the hospital, all the time wandering from one street or shelter to another, with no support – all these things made me want to change.
I decided to return to my mother in Cape Town, to see if I could make my way, to start some sort of ‘new life’ away from the immediate past. I was now nearly twenty-eight, and I hadn’t been back to Cape Town since the age of eighteen; ten years before.
But to get to Cape Town, I needed money.
I started sliding back into my old habits. I knew outlets in central Johannesburg which pushed drugs around the country, so I took up one offer and flew to Cape Town for a drop.
There, I reunited with my mother. She was still in the same house in Khayelitsha, where she lived with my two half-brothers. Richard had died by then. But in that house it felt like I was nine years old again. From the very beginning, my mother and I fought a lot: it was the same scene over and over again. She was just interested in the money, and she encouraged me to go back to prostitution to make money to support us both.
My way was becoming unclear again – I became confused about my purpose and my spirit. I had been trying to ease my way back into a society I had never really been part of.
But with the pressure and the fighting and the pain and the fear, my drug habit raised its ugly head again.
Taking drugs means paying for drugs, and as soon as the drugs were in my system, I fell back on my profession of stripping and prostitution.
One night, while visiting the strip clubs in Cape Town, looking for clients, I was invited into a network run by a leading ANC politician, Mr M. He helped organise ‘lounges’ for VIPs in and out of Cape Town, with us girls carrying out strip shows and serving clients.
It was there that I met and befriended Lindiwe. A skinny, very proud Xhosa woman with short hair which she sometimes wore in a weave or braids, Lindiwe looked like a model. Her dangling earrings and fashionable African designer clothes highlighted her smooth brown skin. I was happy for her that she wanted to make it on TV. She was younger than I was, about twenty-one, and we plied around Cape Town’s strip joints together.
Lindiwe had never visited Joburg and she had dreams of going there. She had heard about this Methodist church all the TV celebrities attended, and she wanted to go there. She didn’t know that it was the same Methodist church that had helped rehabilitate me after the painful Port Elizabeth abortion, and that I intended to return to them.
So we both had spiritual goals. And while we were waiting to fulfil them, Lindiwe and I moved about Mr M’s VIP lounges. Mr M particularly liked me and we spent one night in bed, but he was so drunk that we never had sex. When he woke up, he assumed we had, and remarked, ‘Oh, you know what? I don’t think we used a condom.’ He gave me R500 and told me to buy a morning-after tablet. I was thinking all along how I needed the money for my mom, just to keep her quiet.
But I blackmailed Mr M for several months after that.
I convinced him I was pregnant with his child and wanted to keep the baby. In my whole life, I’d never had a bank account until I met him. But he felt sorry for me and paid me a monthly allowance directly into a bank account he set up for me.
He also tried to convince me to have an abortion, thinking his reputation would be at stake. When I refused, Mr M told me, ‘Please, I need you to show me your pregnancy results every month.’
I found another pregnant woman friend, and told her: ‘Take your urine to the lab and get a copy of the test. I’ll pay you R100 a month.’
On the original urine test results each month, I Tipp-Exed out her name and stuck my own typed name onto it, then faxed the photocopy off to Mr M, who was based in Joburg.
Seven months into the fake pregnancy, I was still receiving funds from him, as he had promised.
‘Now I need to buy baby clothes, shoes and bedding,’ I explained to him.
And he sent me more money.
After the ‘birth’, Mr M asked to see photos of the baby.
‘But I have twins!’ I said, thinking that I could get double the money.
The problem arose when I couldn’t find any mother with recent twins to photograph. Nor did my proxy pregnant friend have twins. He had been sending me about R1 800 a month, but I now asked for between R7 000 and R8 000 for baby clothes and my own care.
He kept asking to see the ‘babies’. I started avoiding his calls and acting funny. I told him he must come to Cape Town to meet my mother, who demanded that he pay lobola for me.
That’s when he went quiet. When he stopped his pursuit, I started calling him, even sending him threatening SMSes. He knew that if he didn’t pay up, I could bring his case to the media, or to his family.
I received another allotment of money.
It was not the right thing to do, but his money helped me avoid more prostitution.