Born a Crime: Chapters 15–16

Their children are taught the history of the Empire with a kind of disclaimer hanging over the whole thing.

From that point on I worked for Daniel, and then as he was about to matriculate he decided to quit the game.

And, as thanks, he bequeathed unto me his CD writer.

That was the stuff of lore. It was mythical.

I was that dude walking down the street holding a giant phone to my ear with the aerial fully extended, talking to my friend.

Without him, I would never have mastered the world of music piracy and lived a life of endless McDonald’s.

What he did, on a small scale, showed me how important it is to empower the dispossessed and the disenfranchised in the wake of oppression.

For generations, while his people were preparing to go to university, my people were crowded into thatched huts singing, “Two times two is four. Three times two is six. La la la la la.”

It was also where I was playing the most gigs, so to keep earning I naturally gravitated that way.

It was also where I was playing the most gigs, so to keep earning I naturally gravitated that way.

He had a looseness and a fluidity that defied physics—imagine a jellyfish if it could walk on land. Incredibly handsome, too, tall and lithe and muscular, with beautiful, smooth skin, big teeth, and a great smile, always laughing.

I know guys named after Mussolini and Napoleon. And, of course, Hitler.
Westerners are shocked and confused by that, but really it’s a case of the West reaping what it has sown.

The Nazis kept meticulous records, took pictures, made films.

I looked out, and the whole hall was nothing but Jewish kids in their yarmulkes, ready to party.

The hall went dead silent, and she turned on me and she was livid.

So while Sophiatown and other black ghettos were razed and rebuilt as white suburbs, Alex fought and held on and asserted its right to exist.

So while Sophiatown and other black ghettos were razed and rebuilt as white suburbs, Alex fought and held on and asserted its right to exist.

You ride through one of the richest neighborhoods in Johannesburg, past palatial mansions and huge money.

Then you go through the industrial belt of Wynberg that cordons off the rich and white from the poor and black.

There’s nowhere for all that energy to go, no mechanism for it to dissipate, so it erupts periodically in epic acts of violence and crazy parties.

One minute it’ll be a placid afternoon, people hanging out, doing their thing, and next thing you know there’s a cop car chasing gangsters, flying through the streets, a gun battle going off, helicopters circling overhead.

There were a couple of hostels, giant projects built by the government for housing migrant workers.

...the poor mom isn’t thinking, I’m aiding and abetting a criminal by buying these Corn Flakes.

After lunch, business would die down, and that’s when we’d get our lunch, usually the cheapest thing we could afford, like a smiley with some maize meal.

We were upstanding, well-spoken East Bank boys.

Slowly the rush would start to taper off and we’d wind down.

Theft is theft. You’ve desecrated the community.

Yeah, some guy might get fired because of the pallet of Corn Flakes that went missing from the supermarket, but that’s degrees removed.

It’s such a strange thing, but in two years of hustling I never once thought of it as a crime. I honestly didn’t think it was bad. It's just stuff people found. White people have insurance. Whatever rationalization was handy.

Because if white people ever saw black people as human, they would see that slavery is unconscionable.

Soweto was seen as the snobbish township and Alexandra was seen as the gritty and dirty township.

Then he went down the line, slapping each of us across the face, berating us about the gun.

“Spot fine” is the euphemism everyone uses. You go through this elaborate dance with the cop where you say the thing without saying the thing.

Later that day the dad came down and paid the money. The cops kept calling it “bail,” but it was a bribe. We were never formally arrested or processed. There was no paperwork.

The other option is to toughen up, put up this facade. You can’t leave the hood, so you survive by the rules of the hood.