From my pre-teen years till my early 20s, I grew up in a poor, rough, violent neighbourhood. I grew up with many unmet basic needs but also so many fears. One fear that haunted my mind was being knifed and dying violently. I will never forget Herman, an older boy who used to bully me and whom I wished dead, actually dying in front of me and the other boys in the neighbourhood. That evening, Herman had been bullying me. He would taunt and push me and run around the block laughing. The next time he appeared around the corner he was staggering toward us, holding his chest. He flopped down next to us. Walking nonchalantly behind him were a couple of guys, ditsotsi, as we called guys like that. I may be wrong, memory is a devil, but I recall one of these ‘sgebengus not even hiding the knife he had in his hand. They just walked past us, daring us to do anything. Herman was on the ground struggling to breathe. Blood was spurting from his stab wound. The ambulance arrived too late. I don’t know if the murderers were ever arrested. Violence and death had always been part of our lives. For some people, our lives did not matter as much as the lives of white people in nearby Germiston or Alberton.

Another fear I had was of being arrested and ending up in jail. It was not as if I was a fearsome tsotsi or the hardened member of a gang. I did carry a knife at some point in Grade 7 (what was referred to at the time as Standard 5), when I was newly arrived in the township and another boy, Budou, was bullying me. To be sure, we did not call someone like Budou a bully, for there were too many people like me who were ‘bullied’, children and parents. To be harassed, pushed around, tormented and have your life restricted was simply a fact of life.

My mother took the knife from me, and whipped out of me the habit of walking around armed with a knife.