16

 

Nothing will ever be the same again

One sunny day in 2013, I attended a family day at Pretoria Central, rechristened Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre. Long queues of visitors clustered at reception, beach umbrellas under their arms, camping chairs and cool boxes in their hands, looking as if they were on their way to a beach picnic. The pleasure of an informal contact visit of a few hours is a privilege prisoners are granted only once or twice a year.

Minibusses transported the prisoners to a sports field with a high fence. A dirty-white marquee had been pitched; with the other visitors, I made a beeline to its shade. I spread a rug out on the grass and peered into the cool box. Everything Eugene had asked for was there.

It felt like a public holiday. Kwaito music blared over the loudspeakers; a queue formed at the tuck-shop tent. There were cold drinks, sandwiches, pap and meat, and whole iced cakes for sale.

To one side, in long orange rows under a smaller tent, sat the prisoners, waiting expectantly for their visitors. With every new announcement they stared at the warders at the entrance gate.

‘What food should I bring?’ I’d wanted to know from Eugene the previous week.

‘Steak,’ he’d said immediately. ‘A big chunk of good meat, cooked

medium. And chocolate, pudding and salad, please.’

The ideal would obviously have been to bring a steak still sizzling from the coals. Alas, the Spur steak was cold after a night in the fridge – I had to be in the queue at the prison by eight o’clock that morning. Eventually it took Eugene more than an hour to eat the 300-gram steak. His body was just not accustomed to that much meat any more. He was so full, then, that he ate only a small piece of chocolate and didn’t touch the salad. He shared the leftover food with his fellow inmates.

Things got lively. To loud cheering, a woman in a tight-fitting denim outfit started swaying her hips suggestively in front of the food stall.

Eugene turned away from the noise. We talked about music and he told me how he used to listen to Johnny Cash, among others. He also likes classical music. ‘When I write I always put my earphones on and listen to Vivaldi … I’m mad about his “Spring”. It makes me peaceful, but also makes the blood surge and bubble in the veins. I don’t know why it affects me that way. While I can’t play a musical instrument or read music, I can pick up a false note immediately – it’s like a blow to the chin.’

I leaned forward.

‘Can I ask a serious question? Something I’ve been wondering about for a long time.’

He nodded.

‘Could it be that certain commanding officers – how shall I put it? – function on a certain level, a level determined by their emotional make-up? Could one say that every commander has an emotional Achilles heel?’

I explained that the question arose from a conversation I had with a former commanding officer in the police. The man expressed very little emotion; I wondered whether his limited register of emotions was why he was such a successful commander.

‘I see his inability to engage emotionally as a defence mechanism, nothing more,’ said Eugene. ‘But at night, while he sleeps or lies awake, when he is alone, he knows everything: what is just, unjust, wrong. Some commanders stayed for only a month at Vlakplaas, others two weeks, some nine years – or three and a half years under continuous combat pressure in Ovamboland.

‘But then one morning, in the middle of Pretoria, it feels like you’re having a heart attack … after running all the tests, the hospital says you’re fine. Then the dreams and the nightmares start. You’re too scared to go to sleep and when you wake up, you have sweated right through the mattress. And then you are really alone, with no one to talk to, and the load just never gets any lighter. You learn to live with it, but the uninvited guests stay in your dreams and thoughts, day and night.’

We were no longer talking about the other commanding officer. Eugene’s gaze was intense; words fired ever quicker from his mouth.

‘Then one day you decide fuck them all, and fuck yourself, and you just keep going. But the load still doesn’t get any lighter. The men in the grey suits and black shoes say, “More! More! You’re good at this.” It brings them prestige, honour, but for me and commanders like me the load gets heavier.’

Eugene reached for a cool drink and snapped it open.

He struggled to sit comfortably – tried sitting cross-legged, but it didn’t work: a remnant of the injuries he sustained during the Border War.

Suddenly the family day was over. It was three times longer than the usual hour-long visit, but even this was too short; there were still questions I had wanted to ask.

‘See you on Sunday,’ I said, while Eugene rolled up the rug and closed the beach umbrella. He slid it carefully back into its plastic sleeve. Passionate farewell rituals were taking place all around us. The cool box was light. He joined the inmates already in line for the minibusses back to the cells.

That Friday morning he called from a payphone. He had queued for a long time: each floor is supposed to have a phone but only one phone on the three floors near his cell was working. I heard shouting and jostling around him. He swore under his breath.

‘Let’s cancel Sunday’s visit. There is no water. Even the fire department’s reservoir is empty now. The conditions are dreadful and will be even worse in the visitors’ area. I still have enough water to drink and can flush the toilet once more. I’ve eaten no uncooked food since yesterday because the kitchen doesn’t have water either.’

I asked him why the water supply had not been repaired.

‘They probably will at some point, but I must admit this morning I feel like a tired old bear,’ he said.

I thought about the prisoners getting their supper at three o’clock in the afternoon then being locked into their cells for the night. Eugene is alone, then, in his cell until the next morning. He usually makes himself a small supper with the two pieces of cooked chicken he receives. ‘I make a mixed salad of tomato, green pepper, cucumber and a bit of onion, with a splash of vinegar and a quarter of a teaspoon of Aromat or a pinch of salt. It’s enough. With a cooked potato chopped into it.’

An extract from a letter I had received earlier from Eugene also streaked through my thoughts. It had worried me because it told of how his experience of the world had shrunk: ‘I’ve always liked cooking with herbs and spices, to experiment with tastes. But food – you know, people really buy cat and dog food to eat. I have already thought about how I would cook mouthwatering dishes with it if I get out. Onions, garlic with tomato, putupap [maize porridge] with spices, and other vegetables. I have no problem with that.’

An inconceivable world, on the other end of the phone line.

In his book Fado, André P Brink explains that the Portuguese fado is a song ‘in which a timeless melancholy is expressed, a nostalgic searching back to a past that is long gone, a deep yearning for a future sensed far in the distance … a call in which yesterday, today and tomorrow will be united … it is always an admission of insignificance against a fate that conquers all.’1

I imagine this is the kind of saudade, or melancholy, that Eugene experiences regularly in prison. As expected, his is a sombre existence. It is the same thing, over and over, day in and day out. ‘It’s a grey hell of continuous noise, stench and boredom – everything is coated in dust and rubbish. I move around, but not enough. I don’t have a problem with moving among the other prisoners, but they are loud and use drugs. Dagga, nyaope … anything you can think of – it’s all a big problem here.’

He is a stickler for neatness and has tried to maintain certain standards. ‘I get furious and hopeless when some of the inmates throw pieces of food for the rivers of rats that stream past in the corridors every night. But I scrub my cell, keep it as sterile and hygienic as possible. I make a plan, with the cockroaches too and the other pests and plagues.

‘Many of the prisoners let themselves go. Personal hygiene and care is the first thing that slips. This is where discipline comes in. I shower every single day of my life. In the morning only the first two or three inmates get hot water – after that, it’s cold. But I shower winter and summer, whether the water’s cold or not.’

He also told me that he purposely kept his cell in a slight degree of disorder and for a reason. I gathered it had to do with the regular searches to which the inmates are subjected at any time of the day or night. ‘I get by with very few possessions. The day I am out of here, I’ll be able to carry everything I will ever need on my back.’

Top: The business card of Badger Arms, a company Eugene was involved in and which imported and exported weapons in the early 1990s.

Top: A letter the spy Kevin Woods wrote to Eugene when incarcerated in a Zimbabwean jail.

Gangs control life in the prison. According to a former C-Max prisoner, they even have their own language, called ‘Stariaan’.2 Loners who have no gang affiliations are called ‘franse’. Eugene was a frans.

‘I can count the friendships I have made with prisoners in the last twenty years on one hand,’ he said. ‘They will tell you, also: De Kock is a frans, he does his own thing. In the prison hierarchy I am classified as an assassin. It’s a status others aspire to. Paedophiles are the lowest on the prison ranking. I have never been a member of any gang. I have needed to defend myself before. I will take anyone on – with my bare hands, any time, in any way.’

‘But you’re in your sixties!’ I said in disbelief.

His smile was sardonic. ‘I am strong and fit and fear no one. I understand the system and play the game. And I don’t look for trouble.’

I was shocked that Eugene has to defend himself physically against other inmates. In the book 6 Ster: Binne die ingewande van Pretoria-Sentraal by former prisoner T Rex, I read: ‘In prison only one rule counts between the gangsters: Do it to others before they can do it to you.’

This is the law of the jungle and of warfare – the very law that applied during the Bush War and at Vlakplaas.

In Rex’s book I learnt that survival methods drive ordinary prisoners’ day-to-day existence: ‘There are a few things you can choose: get dagga-drunk and forget; learn to satisfy the other gangsters with sex; steal something from another gangster; or survive by scoring off other gangsters.’3

Eugene had to develop his own survival strategy too. He was one of the lucky ones who received financial support from outside for practically the entire time he was imprisoned.

When I started visiting Eugene regularly, people approached me, increasingly, to arrange visits for them. I became the unwitting intermediary for former comrades who wanted to make contact. So it happened that Pine Pienaar, chairperson of the Koevoet Bond vir Veterane (the society of Koevoet veterans) phoned me in 2012 to find out if they could assist, possibly by buying Eugene a new pair of boots. Eugene was surprised and very grateful – his boots dated back to 1994 and had just the previous week started coming apart. He had repaired them over the years with glue, but now they were beyond fixing.

He knew exactly what he wanted when I told him about the offer: ‘I wear only Hi-Tec boots that come to just above the ankle. Leather is easier to clean and I have Dubbin.’

He told me that while he was moved by the sudden assistance after eighteen years, he was also sceptical: ‘The bitterness is just beneath the skin sometimes, which is not others’ fault but my own,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know what’s going on outside. I must be careful not to alienate people who don’t deserve it and who just mean well – not to become my own worst enemy.’

In due time, the Koevoet Bond collected R12 000 to replace Eugene’s computer when his old one gave up the ghost. General Hans Dreyer, his former Koevoet commander, contributed R2 000.

Eugene’s perspective, however, was that in C-Max, and initially in Medium B, he’d had very little moral support. He still wrestled with the feeling that the SAP and his former comrades left him in the lurch. But studying the massive collection of notes, letters and documents on the hard drive that he gave me for safekeeping, I did find a few faithful supporters.

Wildlife artist Helena Mulder, whom Eugene met during the TRC sittings when she testified about the death of her husband, kept in touch through correspondence, sketches and wildlife paintings she made for him. Katia Airola visited him twice a year and offered moral support through letters, books and journals. A few loyal fellow ex-policemen also stayed in contact.

Another person with whom he corresponded regularly was Kevin Woods, a former senior member of Robert Mugabe’s feared Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) in Zimbabwe. Woods was a double agent for the National Party government, sentenced to death in Zimbabwe in November 1988 for politically motivated crimes for the apartheid government. He was held in the Chikurubi maximum security prison 15 kilometres east of Harare. Eugene persuaded Ferdi Barnard and others to correspond with him, building up a support network.

From 2005 Eugene was eventually treated as an ‘ordinary’ prisoner, held in a single cell in Medium B. His diary entries from that year show the daily challenges and realities of prison life, and that that survival and parole became all-consuming. I quote parts of this diary directly.4

 

12 August

1. Phoned dentist. Ordered two gum guards. He says I will have to come in to fit them, but don’t know when that will happen, nobody and nothing works in this place.

2. Saw Dr Verster. He wants me to undergo narco-analysis to get everything on tape. He says he injects Ritalin, a stimulant, and Valium. As far as I know Ritalin is a sedative for hyperactive children. I get the idea there is more to the analysis than my best interests and my post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis. Now he and others will say that I am paranoid and see the world as an enemy. Why am I so ‘careful’? …

Why does it take nearly five years to get my medical files and documents? Why the delay? Why – too many whys.

3. Had a problem at the gate to go through to the psychologist. The student/new [staff] member has absolutely no manners and this led to a discussion between me and a member (senior) who resolved the situation. There is virtually, as in 98% of the time, no control in the prison.

13 August

1. Verster cancelled his visit.

14 August

1. Visit from Ina and her husband … M van Biljon cannot come. Blackie Swart was sick and he could not come either.

2. A Coloured man, presumably [from a] gang, don’t know which ‘number’, wants my weights. Don’t know why he sought me out. Anticipate problems because in the whole prison he sought me out to borrow my weights.

Top: Notes written by Eugene about his experiences in C-Max.

Top: Some of Eugene’s diaries, as well as a telephone book that dates from the Vlakplaas era.

15 August

1. Visit from Advocate James Clark [one of Eugene’s previous legal advisors]. Going to make statements.

2. Bad flu and feel very sick.

3. The same Coloured man and another man came to my cell; he said he wants my weights. Says that I can have my weights back when I need them. He says he stays in Medium A – has a scar on his cheek. He is insistent. I don’t think it is about the weights as such – it’s about having to pay him to use my own weights, a question of domination by the gang. He, the leader, must seek out the big man and dominate him.

I mix or interact with very few people and ask nothing from anyone – I fear the future as far as this person and his group is concerned, whoever they are. I have already been here for almost three full weeks and now suddenly he wants the weights – it must be for another reason – the weights are just a ruse. They have already discussed this and really intend something else. I will have to be very vigilant, but there aren’t solutions for everything in prison, you are alone. If needs be I will defend myself against him and his group … rather than getting into trouble. Will never give up.

2. There are, dead simply, no warders in the prison. Everyone is off because it’s payday. It is desperate times when the inmates complain about the staff not doing their work.

16 August

1. Flu very bad.

2. Gary and Alet [Wright] won’t be able to visit on Sunday.

3. Discussed matter of the gang member with Nardies – told him it is about the theft of my computer and not about the weights.

4. Arranged for clothes to be made that fit.

5. Clear that some of the other white prisoners think their sentences will be reduced if I do something illegal that they can report – very irritating because I simply don’t break the rules.

6. Received medication from the medical personnel at 14:30: Warfarin, Zokor and Adalat and Prexum.

7. A medical staff member brought it to my attention that the other inmates say I get preferential treatment – this matter is becoming boring because they do nothing for themselves, they are just lazy and useless and can’t pull themselves together.

8. Walked a few laps – not too bad but I can feel my nose and throat are blocked – ears completely blocked too.

9. Strange how contact lenses degenerate after about the 10th to 12th day – probably from cleaning and protein build-up – also it is very dirty here and there is lots of dust. The chances of pulmonary tuberculosis, as miners get, is far greater here than in a mine from all the muck and disease in the air – a pigsty is healthier because there is better ventilation. The prison is generally on autopilot.

17 August

1. Spoke to Colette Dekker in connection with medical matters. There has clearly been NO progress – for whatever reason. I may need to think about getting another legal representative.

18 August

1. Flu is better but far from cured.

2. Have started devoting more time to studies – it has now become more bearable to learn and pay attention.

3. I hear they are confiscating computers and equipment from those who have unauthorised items on their computers. I have nothing illegal on mine and thus fear nothing.

4. Almost no staff members today. Large numbers of prisoners are crowding at the gates waiting for someone to come past.

19 August

Consultation with Dr Verster. He is trying hard to get me to undergo narcoanalysis. Asked searching questions about Japie Maponya – who had shot him, also about the Nelspruit shooting. Maybe he wants to help, but I think it has more to do with his friendship with the judge who heard my case. I get the idea that he [Verster] is getting itchy because he can’t dominate me. I asked him what it would achieve if we did the narcoanalysis – talking about things won’t help, even less so if he can’t treat me while I am in prison or even outside.

I get the idea he is eager for knowledge and might want to use the incident as case study material, to find out everything possible about the Generals (or anyone else who could be compromised). There is no doubt he thinks I am the most stupid, idiotic fucker who has ever breathed … he battles with the crimes committed by others that I tell him about …

15 September

Got called to the head of the unit’s office. He is very full of himself and spiteful – I told him that my milk was not fit for drinking – he simply smiled complacently. The milk cartons are badly damaged and milk has leaked into the bag – some of the cartons are wet – looks as if there could be damaged packages [for medical reasons Eugene had permission to use fat-free milk].

The head talks the whole time about my ‘preferential treatment’. Won’t say who says so, could it just be him? I remember how he said to Clive Derby-Lewis that Derby-Lewis still needed to get to know him. He asked Derby-Lewis if he ‘knew’ him – suggesting trouble down the line. My milk had been there all morning – was lukewarm – had definitely been flung down with the aim to damage it. It looked as if someone had trampled on the bag, the plastic bag was very dirty – the head said that he would organise with BOSASA that I should get fat-free milk.

Asked if my contact lenses were cosmetic – he would talk to the doctor about them – said the whole time that I am getting preferential treatment. I asked for everyone to get the same preferential treatment – then they can also be thrown into C-Max and be treated just as I was.

16 September

Sent reports on: a) Spoiling of milk b) Report about spoiling by the Department of Correctional Services c) Application for contact lenses d) Application for milk e) Why there is constant reference to my receiving preferential treatment f) The handling of visitors and their being searched.

3 October

Phoned H and thanked him for the visit. He says and confirms that he will come on the 14th – and then says that this is a Friday and that he will thus come on the 15th. I must just tell him whatever I need, no matter what it is. He says he will bring his daughter with him and asks whether I mind. I replied no, I don’t mind, but I now know this visit and bringing his daughter with him is designed to ‘soften’ me. He and the others, and he in particular, thought nothing of destroying my family, stealing from me and bankrupting me. I told him I would phone again.

7 October

1. Saw Advocate James Clark. Handed over more statements.

2. Talked to a woman in the passage at legal visits. Very friendly. After all the problems I had getting my computer, everyone is now so pleasant. What a bunch of sick buggers.

3. My fresh milk – l litre – fat-free is not available. They say there was a problem with the deliveries.

4. No Effexor [an antidepressant] since Monday. The first three nights the nightmares were terrible and unmanageable. Irritation level is high but controllable. Ringing in my ears and a sort of ‘static’ in my head is still very bad. Damage to my hearing and who knows what else. Nightmares are still very bad. So much so I feel as if I am being suffocated and almost fall off the bed to put an end to the nightmare. Luckily the cables I have strung [next to the bed] help me not to tumble down.

8 October

1. Still no milk.

2. There was a problem at the telephone this afternoon. Prisoner in cell no. 17 tried to intimidate me by saying that he had to use the telephone before anyone else and that I was corrupting the telephone users. He didn’t stand in the queue, went walking around, then wanted to push in at the front. I made it clear to him that I was not one of the useless whites who let themselves be intimidated, that numerous intimidators did not scare me in the least. I called staff member Brian Pedi who resolved the issue and let everyone go their separate ways without any trouble.

 

Surviving in Pretoria Central is a monotonous business. To stay occupied, Eugene took various courses, including one in journalism. This allowed him to have a computer in his cell. Later he started practising what he had learned by writing articles and book reviews for newspapers such as Son and The New Age.

For years he also worked in the prison’s woodwork section. But his diary suggests that the constant uncertainty about his possible parole later overshadowed everything.

By mid-2014 Eugene had already been in prison for twenty years. Did his sentence bring about a change in the man who was once the assassin for the state?

In the most important ways, yes: he showed remorse for his actions, and appears to have gained true insight into the sorrow and grief his actions had caused others. He will never tread the path of violence again either.

Yet his resentment towards those who deserted him is a persistent theme. While I could understand the incredible bitterness he must once have felt, I had to ask him whether it wasn’t time to let it go: bitterness, in my experience, is an all-consuming emotion that bars you from living a fulfilled, meaningful life.

I also felt that he could use his experiences in jail to inspire people on the outside. His penitence, resilience and will to survive could perhaps make people see their own lives differently.

‘You have a chance to be human, to be normal again when you walk out of prison,’ I said to him one day. ‘No more war and death and bitterness. You can start working on a new legacy. After twenty years of purgatory, could you become a mentor and example for others?’

He looked at me closely.

‘I don’t know how to see myself. I don’t feel like a mentor,’ he answered. ‘People can note my behaviour, and then disapprove or approve. I regard myself as just another life, no more important than anyone else … a minute speck in the universe, completely insignificant.’

He laughed. ‘My father would have said: “Gene, you are so full of kak.” So let me think about your question.’

I enquired about his solitary life in prison, the heartache, the grief.

‘I allow myself just five minutes per day to torment myself or yearn for what I no longer have,’ he replied. ‘Then I let it go.’

‘And how do you see life now, after everything that you – all of you – have done?’

‘Let me explain it this way: in the book Op soek na generaal Mannetjies Mentz,5 the daughter tells her father, who returns from exile to his devastated farm, that everything will be all right again, everything will be the same. To this, her father – who, meanwhile, has become such a “quiet man” – replies, “Nothing will ever be the same again.”

‘Whatever we do, we must shield those we love from hurt. And there must be no regrets ever for having known, cared for and for having loved one another. When I look behind me, all I see is shattered lives and places, the distance between each devastating event only a matter of time. I can never, ever go back into that desert. I won’t. Nothing will ever be the same again.’