A week ago I was on a work assignment in Alexandra with a colleague. About 11am, I posted a WhatsApp status, praising a kota I had bought that I thought was the best thing to come out of Alex.
Two hours later, tears rolled down my face after a traumatic situation that plunged me into an existential crisis; we were hijacked. It wasn’t so much the hijacking as that almost everyone around us went about their business as if this was routine.
As the gun-toting cowards drove away and tears gushed, schoolgirls in uniform expressed pity, with one of them sarcastically saying: “This is Alex” — as if I should have expected something so traumatising, so life-threatening, to happen there. Instead of processing the hijacking, I found myself wondering about the children who have grown desensitised to violent crime and trauma. What part of the ordeal we went through looked normal to them? Why was it normal? How could it be normal? What type of future are parents and society curating out of the lived experiences of young people who witness and normalise such deeds?
Short story long, Alex’s main road, London Road, by local standards seemed normal before the sudden turn of events. There was sewage in the busy street, heaps of dirt here and there, a loitering child and adults going about their business in the hurly-burly of township life. The village girl in me even lamented how goats on the roadside were hustling for food — it’s not exactly foraging if nothing is green — in the dirty streets. I feared they would swallow plastic and other hazardous substances.
Alex's narrow streets are always jammed and it’s hard moving around, notwithstanding the rickety, corrugated-sheet structures that make up most houses built right to the edge of the streets.
It seemed normal when a car stopped in front of us at an intersection. But my sense of being and time was betrayed when I saw two men coming from the back of the car with guns. There was a commotion and I saw a silver gun through the windscreen. Within a second there were harsh knocks on my window and on that of my colleague.
A man forced open the door and started swearing at me. He snatched my cellphone but I did not register that I was in grave danger until he pointed the gun to my face and said “voetsek, khipha [take it off]”, pulling my wedding ring off.
My body immediately went into survival mode. His left hand struggled with the ring for a second and I had to intervene, taking it off and handing it to him. All my everyday valuables and my colleague’s equipment were taken. My heartbeat accelerated, my stomach shrivelled, my body felt small. And the hoodlum hijacking us easily tossed me aside and climbed into our company car.
I ran towards a parked car on the side of the road, hoping to hide but the lingering vision of the gun in my face still made me feel unsafe. I thought he would come back to shoot me (so I couldn't identify him in the unlikely event police arrested him). But I just stood there, my inner core shaken. I felt stranded and couldn’t see my colleague. My eyes searched frantically. My vision temporarily failed me. As my eyes locked with his across the street, he ran towards me. He had been looking for me too. At this point my legs were trembling. I started crying.
I had an unfathomable feeling that I was sweating, yet my skin was dry. Perhaps an internal sweat, I thought. Being pregnant, my mind raced, and I quickly looked down, praying I was not bleeding, that I was not miscarrying. There was no blood, relief, a smile despite the tears.
As our ordeal came to an end, there was a lot of noise and whistling from primary school children on their way home. They did not run for fear of stray bullets or scream at the sight of such an injustice. They were neither scared nor shocked.
Instead, they seemed affected by an unexplainable adrenaline. A sickening excitement. A few of them yelled: “Ke Alex mo [this is Alex].” One even said: “Shame uyakhala [she’s crying]” and gently rubbed my back. It was surreal. They were telling me I should have been more careful. I did not know whether to continue crying, laugh or simply be sad for them. This is the cultural milieu of a township.
When we say townships are themselves a crime scene, we mean the physical and psychological onslaught on the beings whose futures must be carved out here. Those who grow up witnessing what I and many other South Africans are subjected to daily accept it as normal.
As our hijackers disappeared into the small streets, an eyewitness offered us a lift to the police station. We got there just after 2pm, and our statement was taken after 5pm. There was no shred of urgency from the officer we dealt with. The nightmare may be deep and haunting to me, but for them this was normal — so you were hijacked? So what?
Needless to say, I still think the kota is the best thing to come out of Alex.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.