Bullet The Path to Revenge

By Ashwin Jooste

Bullet the path to revenge is the auto biography of Ashwin Jooste, who was shot 8 times by one of his friends and went seeking revenge. He got caught up in gansgterism and drugs and got involved in crime and violence. Received a 9 year prison sentence at the age of 17 and joined the brutal 26 gang members in prison to survive.

After 4 years in prison he decided to change his lifestyle and only did 5 years of his sentence before being released. Being rejected by the community and not being able to get a decent job he almost fell back into crime, and just when things was finally starting to go his way, the person who shot him was also released from prison. Hate and the urge to take revenge overwhelm and clouds his judgement. Faced with the past and armed, Ashwin is now placed before a decision...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ashwin Jooste
• Release date: Jun 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463830161

Book preview

Bullet

The Path to Revenge

Bullet

The Path to Revenge

Ashwin Jooste

Copyright © 2019 Ashwin Jooste

Published by Ashwin Jooste Publishing at Smashwords

First edition 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Ashwin Jooste

Dedication

Dedication to my daughter Genevia: The world can be a very cruel place and I hope you one day understand why I had to walk this path, and that this will help you to make better decisions in your own journey. To Ms Yolanda Freysen-Hugo who decided to take a chance on me. And a special thanks to Melodie for encouraging me to write this book.

Contents

Introduction

1. Childhood

2. Influence

3. The Drugs and Gangs

4. Encounter with the Law

5. The Shooting

6. Emotionally Unstable

7. Prison

8. The Confrontation and Transfer

9. The Change

10. Hope

11. The Challenges and Realities of life

12. Confronting the past/ Path to Forgiveness/ The fruits one reap

13. My Conclusion

14. Motivation

Introduction

Bullet The Path to Revenge is a true story of a young man who was born in the Cape Flats and who was exposed to a life of crime and violence at a very young age. He relocated to the West Coast, did well in school, but the influence of the world and the absence of a father figure in his life, allowed him to make bad decisions and led to him becoming a school dropout. When he turned thirteen, he started drinking alcohol and doing drugs and got involved in criminal and violent activities. This notorious lifestyle led him to being shot eight times at the age of fifteen by one of his friends, and somehow, he miraculously survived the incident. Consumed with hate, he embarked on the journey to take revenge; however, he escaped from the hospital only to discover that the one who shot him had already been locked up in prison. Feeling a sense of shame and resentment about the shooting and how it ruined him, he decided to display a tough guy act, hiding the true fact that he felt pain, was broken, and bitter inside.

He lived a careless life and got involved with gangsters and crime which led him to be imprisoned a week after his seventeenth birthday. After which, he received a nine-year prison sentence and, at the age of 17, became a gang member. He was moved from prison to prison and after four years and six months of imprisonment, decided to make a change in his life by giving God a chance. He met people in prison that impacted his life positively; they helped him further his education and gave him the opportunity to be released from prison sooner than he was supposed to. This book focuses on how he struggled to get a job and the frustration he felt with when no company would hire him because of his criminal record, it also looks at the emotional rollercoaster (feelings of revenge and hate) he was faced with when the man who had shot him was released from prison.

Childhood

I was born in Cape Town, Somerset Hospital, on 18 July 1990. It was in the ending of the apartheid era and the beginning of Democracy in South Africa. I grew up living with my mother, Wilma Jooste, in Maitland, she lived with her uncle and aunty who managed the sports grounds at that time. There were lots of people who would come through our yard on a daily basis and I was too young at that time to understand the reason. On some occasions, even the police would come to search us and the yard. As I grew older I began to understand that my uncle was selling drugs and we were always surrounded by gangsters. My mother’s brother, her uncle, and their friends were always going away for a while and when they returned, they always had more tattoos. For me, my little brother, two nephews, and niece, who were the only children in the yard, this was nothing new and had become acceptable.

Sometimes it would be nice when my uncle Chris would play the guitar and make us all laugh and dance at the same time. It brought us joy when everyone would join in and sing around the fire at night. Other times, we as children, would stand in confusion when some of the people working for my uncle Willy would get beaten up by him and he wouldn’t stop until he saw blood. Most of the time my mother was at work and would get home a bit late, so we were being looked after by our uncles and his employees (if I could call them that). I soon learned that our family was a respected family amongst other gangsters and even feared by some.

Christmas and birthdays were the best for us kids. My uncle Willy always had the best car and was a very good driver. He would come and pick us up and take the car for a spin, and we would always have fun with him. I aspired to be just like him. He would buy us presents and let us play with him. Uncle Willy was always a busy man seeking new business, but when we got the chance to be with him, we made good use of it. We lived close to the train station and at that time I remember there was someone going around abducting and killing children, they called him the Stasiemoordenaar, but uncle Willy always assured us that nothing bad will ever happen to us. He made us feel safe, and he was a man of his word. My uncle Willy was to me the father that I never had. Whenever I would ask where my real father was, my family would avoid my question, later I found that he was in prison and that he and my mother were no longer together. I took comfort in the fact that my mother was there, looking after me and my brother, and from the love that we received from our family, but deep down I always wanted to see my real father and ask him personally why he left my mother.

When I was 4 years old my mother used every little time she had with us to teach us. I learned how to write our name in the sand. The manner in which I used to concentrate on doing it right is something I will never forget. I just wanted to impress her and see her happy, to see her smile and to make her proud. When she got home from work, there was always something in her bag, and she would always bring something for everyone. As a child, her coming home after a long day was all I looked forward to.

One day, while one of the guards on the yard went to hide the drugs that he was supposed to sell, my cousin Mark saw where he put it, and my mother warned the guard to remove the drugs from that spot since Mark had seen where it was hidden. Later that same day, in the evening, the police came around for their usual routine; they searched the yard and all who were present. One of the cops approached us, the children, and asked if the older people were selling drugs, without even thinking about it, Mark said yes. He even went with the cops to show them where the drugs were hidden, but after a few minutes they came back without the drugs, luckily the guard had taken heed to my mother’s request to change the place where it was hidden.

We had this awesome dog named Face. Honestly, I am unable to describe what a wonderful dog he was. One time he saved one of my mothers’ siblings when he got shot and managed to carry him from the scene back home. Face was always there and would protect us from anyone who came to the yard to buy drugs. Things started heating up, and as kids, we began being exposed more and more to violence, so my mother decided to send me and my little brother to Vredenburg, where I began going to school, at that time I was only 6 years old. It was so sad to leave Face, my