Violent Death on a Strawberry Farm

By Cyril James

Three weeks after his birth, Johnny America was abandoned by his biological mother, who handed the infant Johnny, to his parental grandmother at the funeral of his father who had passed away. She then vanished into thin air.
There is no substitute to a mothers love, not even for the street smart Johnny. He was to face a tough life of poverty, with love and affection being rare commodities. The substitute mothering he received from his grandmother, although loving and godly, was inadequate. It caused long- term damage to his self esteem, his ability to relate to other people, and overall feelings of security and ability to trust others.
This emotional turmoil condemned Johnny to the streets of Cape Town and to live as an unpopular Bergie on the inhospitable slopes of Table Mountain, where he was constantly harassed by the clean-up-squad.
He adopted his street family, and together they engaged in petty theft, prostitution and alcohol abuse, resulting in Johnny serving time in the notorious Pollsmoor Prison. While serving one of his many prison sentences, Johnnys friend was killed violently in the strawberry fields, where they were employed as convict labour by correctional services. A notorious ex-prison gang member is convicted for the crime for which Johnny is a state witness.
Johnny is scared for his life.
His quest to find his mother takes him to Durban, together with the love of his life, Marie.
His first encounter with his mother is not the reunion he expected. Her dedication to her gangster husband and her unresolved emotional baggage make it difficult for her to give and receive love.
He returns to Cape Town with Marie back to the process of opportunistic survival, to increased risks of exposure to H.i.V-aids And TB, to dwelling in the informal settlements, and finally Redemption.
Cyril James is a writer of rare calibre. And he tells a terrific story.
Lorraine Richards Editor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Jan 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781499090406

Cyril James

Cyril James, a coloured man, was born and raised in the slums of South Africa in 1945. He was educated at a primary school named St. Theresa’s in Sydenham, Durban. At the age of fourteen, he left school after doing his Standard 5 and went to work at Durban Harbour, cleaning the cargo holds of ships after they had been offloaded. He became a seaman, working as a cook, and when he left the sea, he worked at many leading hotels in the Durban and Cape Town until he felt the urge to go elsewhere. For the next twenty-five years, he went into engineering, working as a piping material supervisor at many projects around South Africa and some other countries in Africa. He is married to a coloured girl named Linda who is working with him.

Book preview

Prologue

Johnny heard them coming from afar, six mountain rangers riding on motorbikes zigzagging up the slopes of Table Mountain. Johnny, a traveller, had come to love the mountain. He waited now, looking quietly in the moonlight, amongst the rocks and mountain plants, knowing that as long as he remained hidden he would not be seen from any distance. He waited and listened. Overhead a bat circled and dived, fluttering about in an endless quest, to find insects to eat. He listened for sounds first close to him, then for those farther out. The sounds came from the south, perhaps a little south-westerly. He would have to go and see for himself, he thought.

He quietly got out of his cave and got dressed and stealthily made his way down the ravine. Deliberately, he chose the soft sand. The soft surface was easier to walk on; it made less sound. He was afraid of them, because of the many stories he had heard from friends of how they had been ill-treated by these monsters. He knew if he was caught, there would be hell to pay, because the last time he had been lucky to have escaped from their clutches after hiding in one of the caves. According to law, people were not allowed to live in the mountains in case of fires and many other dangers, but the mountain was his home, because of him being an outcast. Johnny was now focusing on how to move from where he was. He sat still, not wanting to offer too much of a silhouette to them.

Unfortunately for Johnny, the leader had seen him, but he was too fast for them. As he ran down the gullies trying to escape, he slipped and rolled down a bank until he came to level ground. He could not get up and felt the pain in his right leg which started to swell. At that moment the pack was on top of him and he was surrounded by motorbikes, with their sjamboks beating him all over his body, while he lay groaning and screaming for help. With his leg throbbing, they made him walk on a gravel road below the mountains to where a police van stood, waiting to to arrest him.

The two policemen sitting in the van were happy to see him because he had been involved with them twice in the past. Every time these policemen arrested him, he was released when he came to court, making them look like fools before the magistrate. With his leg bleeding, Johnny was thrown in the back of the van which stood on the road for quite a while. The rangers went back to the mountain to see if they could find any more trespassers. Minutes later more people were rounded up and brought to the van, one of them a cripple walking on crutches who struggled to get in.

When it was time to go, the police wished the rangers well, before leaving for Camps Bay, where they dropped off Johnny and the crippled man called Tommy. They left them deep in the dense bush to find their way back. The bushes were situated along the roadside near the beach, and they were told not to return to Sea Point again; otherwise, they would be dealt with viciously. It had become dark by now, with not a soul on the road. They walked back slowly, with Johnny complaining about his sore leg to Tommy who felt the same. They had to keep on the side of the road in case the police came back. As they were limping, the pair came across two white youngsters parked close to the sandy road leading to the beach. Johnny greeted them warmly and asked one of them for a cigarette. The man instead pulled out a gun and fired a shot close to his body that made Johnny run towards the bushes and hide. He stood shivering in the bush for the rest of the night until the following morning when he felt it was safe to come out. When he called for Tommy there was no reply. Johnny ran around as if he was crazy. He searched for him everywhere but still the man could not be found. Tommy was never seen again.

Chapter 1

On a cloudy day In November 1943, a military jeep was speeding through a dusty road of Lansdowne, a coloured suburb of Cape Town in Western Cape. It came to a stop at Number 2 Denham Road, where Diana America, a coloured lady lived. She had been sitting under her porch daydreaming when she saw the military car stop at her gate. She stood up startled as two members of the South African defence force walked into her yard and stood facing her. After a greeting, they told her that they had come with the shocking news to inform her that her husband, Koss, a coloured man, had been killed in action near North Africa. She was startled and stunned at the news and had not expected to hear anything so terrible.

Koss had just left home five days before in a cheerful mood and was planning to hold a birthday party for her when he returned from abroad. She stared at the messenger and was unable to speak for a few seconds and then burst out crying hysterically. It seemed as if something had also died inside her. They had been together for such a long time that it was hard to believe that she would never see her husband again. After listening to the appalling news, Diana went inside the house and sat down to grieve.

Her mind went back to all the wonderful years they had shared together from the time when she was fourteen, while she was still a schoolgirl. At the time they did not take each other seriously, because her parents were very strict about her having a boyfriend and did not want her to date boys at her age. They met again in a Cape Town suburb years later when he was on a weekend pass. At that time he was going through his military training at an army base nearby a place called Faure. It was just after Diana arrived from her hometown in Worcester, a farming village outside Cape Town. At the time she had been working as a domestic maid in a Simons Town suburb. After going out for a while, they decided to live together as man and wife.

Soon afterwards, the two were so much in love that they could not be separated for long and decided to get married and spend their lives together. A few months later, after saving a few pounds, they decided to tie the knot. Those wonderful years she could not forget, as they did many things together such as going to bioscope and walking in the main street of Cape Town doing window-shopping. They had just been married, when Koss was called to serve his country during the war. He had to leave his job at Table Bay harbour, where he worked as a stevedore to enlist in the army. It was sad and heartbreaking to hear that he had been killed when the army truck he was driving blew up, after being attacked by enemy fire.

Ever since he passed away she had been living on a government grant. They had six sons, and one daughter, all of whom she was very fond of and spoilt them tremendously. Her sons Johnny, Daniel, Erick, Victor, Norman, and Eddie and daughter Bettie were the best things that ever happened to her. Johnny was the eldest of the children and very sickly. He was in and out of hospital and lived daily on tablets. She kept him at home most of the time so that she could help nurse him.

Living with Diana was a young girl called Doreen, an orphan, whom she had brought up from an infant when her mother deserted her. While they were growing up, Johnny and Doreen became very close and did lots of things together. As they grew older, Johnny fell in love with her, and a baby was born on 16 October 1952, with curly ginger hair and light blue eyes, whom they named Johnny David. After Johnny Junior was born, they felt it was time they got married, as they had been going out together for almost two years and Diana would not allow an unmarried couple to live in her home. After living as a married couple for almost a year, tragedy struck, when Johnny Senior was rushed to Groote Schuur hospital with cardiac arrest. He passed away, with Doreen keeping vigil at his bedside. Doreen could not believe that her husband was dead and would not leave his bedside, until a nurse came to take her away. She was so heartbroken to lose Johnny, that twice afterwards she tried to commit suicide, but was saved in the nick of time by members of his family.

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Years later, Diana, his grandmother, told Johnny that he was only three weeks old at the time, and that his mother was at the tender age of sixteen. While his father was being laid to rest at the local cemetery, his mother decided to give him over to his granny with the words ‘I won’t be able to care for him’ and vanished into thin air. The family and the police searched for her everywhere, but she could not be found. They even went to a morgue to try to locate her, but still there was no sign of her. It seemed to the family that she had disappeared from the face of the earth. She did not want to be found. Rumours had gone around that she might have committed suicide after losing her husband.

It came as a shock to him years later when Johnny heard from his family that people had told them that she had been seen in Durban and was married to an Indian man, but all these stories were never confirmed. With his uncle and he living with his grandma, they soon became a close-knit family. Although being a burden to her, she never complained even when things became tough at home. Work was scarce because of the war and life became a struggle. Whatever food they had, used to be rationed, and sometimes they went to bed without having anything to eat.

At the age of seven, Johnny was registered at the Myhof primary school in Lansdowne, later named Oakland’s High School, Western Cape Province. His first day at school, which he vividly remembered, was when he stood behind the classroom door the entire day doing nothing as there was no desk for him to sit at. He felt sad, thinking he might be sent home again. He wanted very much to sit and learn to write. A teacher, Miss Millar, who noticed the sad look on Johnny’s face decided to help him and told him to wait aside so that she could try to find a desk for him. A smile lit up his face when Mrs. Millar went out of the classroom and returned with a new desk and told him to sit down. She even offered him two slices of bread and jam to eat, but he refused politely, because all he ever wanted was to begin his school work.

Early the next morning, he was the first to arrive at school, which pleased his teacher, Mrs Millar. He noticed that she was a pretty lady, fair in complexion and had straight black hair with rosy cheeks. Looking at her hand he was surprised to see she was polydactyl, with an additional tiny pinkie on her left hand. She looked at him with sympathy, and it made Johnny to believe that his grandma may have told her of their situation at home, because she wanted him to spend every second weekend at her home.

Miss Millar lived alone in a council house with the lawn neatly trimmed and a few grape trees growing in the garden. She had a black cat as a companion and a charming lady who always gave him a plate of food whenever she invited him there. He could not remember the number of times he slept at Mrs Millar’s house, but one particular afternoon after she had finished listening to a program on the radio, the lady came to his bed in her panties, and he could see her tits were sticking out straight.

When he fell asleep that night, Mrs Millar crept into his bed and after stroking his hair, she gently took his seven-year-old hand and rubbed it between her legs and made funny sounds as if she was crying. Although he was very young, his penis began to swell and stand up erect, which made Johnny feel so great that he kept on asking her not to stop. After a while she grabbed him so tight that he felt afraid and began to cry.

That Sunday afternoon when she took him home as usual, which was a minute’s walk from his home, she pretended as if nothing had happened. Before she could knock at his granny’s door, Mrs Millar told him in Afrikaans ‘Jy se niks vir ma nie’ meaning ‘You must not tell your grandmother what had taken place’. Johnny kept it a secret and said nothing to his grandmother, because it would have been a great disappointment, if she ever found out the truth. Instead he told her that in future he wanted to stay at home for the weekends, as his friends were missing him. His granny did not ask him anything more and left it at that, because she felt he needed to be with friends his age.

Once a month, a child welfare society official came to visit him at school and asked him all sort of awkward questions about his mother and Ouma, which he could not understand. She wanted to know if he was happy at home or was his granny ill-treating him. He could not answer anything about his mother and became confused, really confused, because he never knew her. He always believed Ouma to be his biological mother, as he always called her ‘Ma’. After that whenever he asked his granny what had become of his mother she always changed the subject. As for Mrs Millar she was such good sweet lady that he took a liking to her from the moment they first met. Whenever the welfare people came to question him they brought him a few sweets which were shaped like a fish after he had answered their questions.

Chapter 2

In 1964, when Johnny was in standard five, they were thrown out of Lansdowne due to the dreadful Group Areas Act and relocated to a council house in Heideveld. Moving from one place to another, he had lost many friends, who had all been scattered around the Cape. The first term he had to walk daily from his home to the school, as travelling fares had become a problem. He failed all his subjects due to the fact that his granny had no money for him to attend school regularly. Some of the days while going to school, he had to steal rides on trains going that way. A few times they were caught by the guards who had them thrown off, and they had to walk back to their homes. There were many arguments at home when he decided to stay away from school. The following year he passed and went to standard six and failed once more. His granny was so fed up with him that she took him out of school and told him to start looking for work. He had to borrow the daily newspaper vacancies column from people in the neighbourhood to see if he could find work, but still all this was to no avail. The neighbours were so sick and tired of him borrowing the paper that they often hid it.

One day he was fortunate to have found a job at the Lansdowne Textile Industries, earning seven rand a week. He worked so well at the firm that his granny could not stop boasting about him to her friends. People looked up to him as a role model to other children. Then at the end of that year, with the little money she had saved for him, his grandma bought him his first suit. He was very excited and could not get over it, because it was to be worn on Christmas day, when all his family came to spend the day with them and celebrate the birth of Christ according to their religion (Pentecostal). His uncles had been married for a number of years and were now scattered around the country and had to look after themselves ever since the Group Areas Act came into force. Whenever his cousins visited the house, they would have lots of fun singing, laughing, and sharing jokes, and of course, the opening of presents. His family was so proud that they could not stop talking about him. Alcohol was out of the question as none of them drank because of their Pentecostal connections.

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The following year he left the place where he had been working, when he was hired at the Groote Schuur hospital as a porter, earning fifty-five rand a month. Most of the money which he earned went to his studies. Johnny soon matriculated through the International Correspondence School by post and became a happy man. Now in his twenties, although he had not heard from his mother, Doreen Elizabeth Williams, in his entire life, he began to loathe her.

Whenever there was a discussion about her in the family, he turned and walked out of the room to sulk; it enraged him. He felt that she had been the cause of his problems at school, which was stuck in his mind. Although Heideveld soon became a dangerous place with daily stabbings and killings, he was never engaged in any of those unlawful activities such as violence and swearing. If any person was not known in the vicinity, they would be robbed at any given time. Then he met Felicity, a girl who had the most wonderful and charming smile, beautiful legs, and rosy cheeks. They soon became inseparable, and nobody could part them. As their relationship grew, his granny was against it, because she felt Felicity was not good enough and was a few years older than him. They met in the bushes, where lots of petting occurred. She always wanted them to have sex, but he refused because he did not know how to go about it. Johnny felt he was too uninformed as far as sex was concerned, and this was evident when he told her that a woman falls pregnant just by kissing. She then realised that he was not only uninformed, but inexperienced, and still a virgin. Nevertheless, he felt relieved as it was only puppy love, and as time went by, he soon got over the relationship. He was doing well at work with his boss who kept on praising him. Although he was beginning to drink and cause a few problems it was overlooked by his superiors who had taken a liking to him.

Chapter 3

One winter’s morning, Johnny’s supervisor sent for him to tell him that he had to report to a Mr Smith, who was to become his new boss. This had come as a shock, because he did not know whether he would be demoted or promoted. While walking to the man’s office, his stomach began to flutter nervously as he was uncertain as to what it was all about. His mind was going around in circles, thinking he was about to be fired. The only thing he remembered was that on the day before, he had imbibed alcohol during working hours, and wondered if he had somehow been found out. Walking nervously to the man’s office, Johnny knocked on the door and walked in and stood in front of his desk waiting for his marching orders. He was taken by surprise when the man greeted him politely with a smile and said good morning cheerfully. He reacted in a similar manner and told the man he was pleased to meet him. He was told to sit down and relax because what he was about to be told would not take long.

Mr Smith told Johnny that he had heard many good things about him and had decided to dispense him of his duties of being a porter and give him a promotion which he deserved. He was to report to a Mr De Jager on the C floor at the outpatients’ department, where he would be trained as a reception clerk with a much higher salary. Mr Smith explained to him that his new job was to write out new folders for patients and charge them according to their salary, which had become government policy. After the interview he thanked Mr Smith and walked out to report to C floor where his new office would to be situated. Johnny was happy that his wages had been increased by a hundred rand more. Even his granny and the rest of the family were overjoyed at his good fortune, which had come just when they were going through financial difficulties.

The increase Johnny received caused him to have lots of friends, and he enjoyed himself, going out a lot. He only stopped when his money ran out. Although he had never been a smoker, now and again he took a puff on a cigarette just to please his friends and show them that he was one of them. While he was having a drink he would take a few puffs of dagga, as most of his friends were habitual drug addicts. To be honest, he hated drugs, which he only smoked to please his friends so that they would not think of