This article by Tom Sharpe was published in the Evening Standard on 29 December 1989.
Exclusively for the Evening Standard, the British novelist tells a story of a Christmas in South Africa which changed his life
I’VE ALWAYS been grateful to those lunatics in the South African government, dear Dr Verwoerd and his lovable Minister of Justice Balthazar Vorster, who saw fit to sling me into Rowland Street Prison in Capetown just in time to share the Christmas jollities of 1961.
Without that experience I doubt if I would ever have had the nerve to write Riotous Assembly or Indecent Exposure and I’d certainly never have heard of Konstabel Els.
The actual saga had begun months before, perhaps years before, because they never told me why they were deporting me. All they would say was that I was an undesirable alien with the sub-heading “political subversive” which put me into the good company of Alan Paton, Chief Luthuli and whoever else got up the Minister of Justice’s nose. I must have done something along those lines because on 16 December 1961 the Special Branch decided enough was enough and I was popped into Maritzburg Jail, or Tronk.
In fact they did me a good turn because that night the ANC started their sabotage campaign and bombs went off all over South Africa. For once they couldn’t pin the blame on me because I was nicely tucked up on the floor of cell number two. I only heard the news when a weary Sergeant Van Rensburg came to take me to the detention centre in Durban on Monday.
After a few days I was carted off by ship down the coast to Capetown. The Special Branch blokes were waiting in their pork pie hats to take me into custody ashore. And it was there that my dear cousin Vergo put her foot in it. The original plan had evidently been to keep me nicely isolated in the undesirable aliens deportation depot down by the docks. Unfortunately there were no other undesirable aliens and the cook didn’t see why he should come in just for one UA and miss the family jollities at home.
“You’re going to have to go to Rowland Street,” said the bloke in the pork pie hat with relish. One of the CID detectives intervened on my side. “If he’s got someone to bring his grub down here, there’s no need for him to have to go into the main jail.” Faced with the prospect of becoming a leaner and hungrier Sharpe in the cook-free depot or spending Christmas in some fearful prison, I remembered my cousin Vergo who lived in Capetown.
She was about 26 years older than me and presumably knew how to cook. So, after some haggling between the Special Branch who definitely wanted me in Rowland Street, preferably in chains, and the CID blokes who didn’t, I was allowed to phone her.
“No problem about bringing your meals, dear,” she said and it was clear from her tone that she didn’t relish it being known in the district that the family convict was doing time in Rowland Street. “You just leave it to me.”
Well, I more or less had to, if you see what I mean, and we’d all just gone out to the police van to get my bag when there was a hideous crackle on the police radio and the police commissioner for the Cape Province came on the line. He didn’t waste words. That communist swine Sharpe was to go into Rowland Street fast. As the two detectives shrugged helplessly and the SB bloke straightened his pork pie hat, I got back into the van. Five minutes later we were hurtling through Capetown. The prison gates loomed and I was in a queue of incorrigibles waiting to be finger-printed.
What had happened? You may well ask. My dear, sweet cousin Vergo had thought to save herself the trouble of coming down to the docks with a tray and napkin—I suppose she wondered what the neighbours would think—and had run up the police commissioner personally to say she had a cousin being deported and could she have him up to the house to stay for the week instead.
So there I was, dropped straight in at the deep end. Presently I was taken by a warder who looked as though he particularly liked hangings and floggings, through half a dozen barred gates until we came to a yard behind more bars, and I was ushered in with the 37 awaiting-trial prisoners. Dear Cousin Vergo!
Still, I’ve known it worse. Anyone who went to school at Bloxham in the period 1941–42 has definitely known worse and he also knows that the next thing is to line up and be assigned your cell and collect your blankets.
All this takes time and since the warder in charge of the yard couldn’t read or write, the job of filling in forms had been given to a bloke called Wiener who was accused of embezzling half a million rand. I hung around in the doorway while Wiener gave the warder a verbal dressing down for voting for a half-baked government that was deporting an educated chap like Sharpe while allowing an oaf like warder to take charge of 37 awaiting-trial prisoners who weren’t even guilty.
During this embarrassing interlude I got chatting with a likeable sort of chap who wanted to know what I was “in” for and who seemed to find the fact that I was a “political” reassuring. Finally he asked if I’d like to have a billet in his cell. Being a newcomer and a bit cautious, I inquired what he was “in” for. “Murder,” he said and of course that settled the question.
This may come as a surprise to those who aren’t acquainted with South African prisons, but murderers there aren’t generally considered proper criminals like burglars, bank robbers and GBH merchants.
Murder is a “one-off” job, except in the case of the South African Police who aren’t even classified as murderers, no matter how many blacks they bump off. Consequently you can rely on your average South African murderer to be clean, thoughtful—and in a country where they still hang people every Friday morning—not someone the other villains want to mess with.
Get in solid with a murderer and you don’t get fleas or lice and at the same time you’re guaranteed steady protection.
As it turned out, I had done better than one murderer; I’d got two, though both for the same job. All told we added up to five in that cell with an abductor and a hardened car thief making up the other two. Naturally it was a bit cramped in a cell 8ft by 12ft and in those days everyone slept on the floor with a piece of underfelt for a mattress.
Being the last arrival I had the bit in the middle between the two small containers that looked like miniature dustbins, one of which contained drinking water and the other most certainly didn’t.
Between 6pm and 6am we were locked in and it was then that my time at Bloxham in 1941 really came in handy. I mean, no one who has been to a really bad public school can complain about prison conditions of the most primitive kind. And things weren’t particularly bad. There was always something to natter about.
The car thief was a fairly lugubrious bloke but even he waxed fairly lyrical on the evils of the cat o’ nine tails which he was almost certain was coming his way. Chris and Fred weren’t all that in favour of the death penalty in spite of the fact that they had handed it out to the bloke they’d bumped off.
In normal life they’d been crayfishermen and now spent their time doing press-ups and discussing what they intended to do going to the bloke who had shopped them. As far as I could make out it considered of cutting his air-supply line when he was down collecting crayfish.
Even the abductor had something to contribute, mainly by way of comments on the character of his future father-in-law and how unfair it was he was going for trial as an abductor. The other blokes thought so as well.
Anyway we passed the evenings very pleasantly and the only difficulty was getting to sleep because the long-term convicts on the floor above had been shackled for some offence and kept up a tremendous din banging their dustbin lids and chains. During the day we were allowed out into the yard and it was there that I knowingly met my first rapist.
He was a little middle-aged bloke who had been awaiting trial for 18 months and was clearly off his trolley. Every morning as soon as the cell door was opened he’d dash out with the horrid dustbin and empty it, wash it out and then with a bottle of Brasso and some rags spend the rest of the day polishing the beastly thing.
On Christmas Eve he caught me staring through the bars at the blacks in the next compound. I’ve got something to show you, he said and produced the dustbin lid from behind his back. The thing gleamed up at me like a concave mirror. “You could eat your dinner off that,” said the rapist and rather unwillingly I agreed. For 18 months he had been polishing that dustbin and the prison food rivalled that at Bloxham in 1941 in awfulness. So that bucket lid would have made an appropriate platter for the muck. The little man went back to his polishing and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there is some lunatic asylum in South Africa where a little wizened rapist is sitting in a corner with his tin of Brasso and a chromium-plated dustbin.
There was another, even more dangerous psychopath in the next cell called Prinsloo. He was 17 and had murdered a black by hurling ammonia in his face and then stabbing him in the stomach. He used to come into our cell occasionally for a wrestling match with Chris or Fred.
If Fred was wrestling, Chris would sit in the corner keeping a wary eye on Master Prinsloo just in case he went off his rocker again. He didn’t, presumably because they were white and he had a strong sense of the law.
On the one occasion we had any sort of conversation he said when he was freed he hoped to go into the South African Police. And so we passed the time until Christmas Day. I must admit I’d anticipated another frightful dinner but, no, it was a truly excellent one. Our friends Chris and Fred had their wives bring in extra portions of turkey and pudding and we squatted on the floor, all five of us, having about as good a meal as anyone could wish for. Even the prison officers relaxed a bit.
In the afternoon we were all lined up and the chief warden came along the line dishing out a packet of sweets and a slice of Christmas cake. When he came to me I was certain I glimpsed a rather sinister glint in his eye. After all, he was used to murderers and rapists and even psychopaths and embezzlers, but I was a political, a subversive dedicated to the overthrow of white supremacy and apartheid and a very dangerous influence. So what was I doing in with a whole lot of ordinary criminals? Clearly subverting them. I could almost see the thoughts crossing his daft mind.
Even so, he had the decency to leave it until Boxing Day before ordering me to be moved out and sent down to Caledon Square Police Station, and it was there that I had the good fortune to meet Konstabel Els.
In reality Konstabel Els was a charming good-natured fellow and a long way along the road to a hob-nailed liver if his consumption of brandy was anything to go by.
It was there too that I encountered the white drunk who’d been to a shebeen, had been beaten black and blue somewhere along the line—presumably after having broken the Immorality Act with the black lady I saw them hoist into the van with him—and who was trying to work out what the hell he was going to say to his wife.