of South Africa library in Pretoria, business economics student Brian Barnes records the existence of 14 government-administered lethal electrical systems, 91 systems operated by state-owned corporations, and one large system in use at a private industrial concern.
Asked about their objections to the use of these radical security systems, the majority of respondents told Barnes that their main concerns related to safety and legal considerations. Ethical considerations were described as “less important”.
PHILLIP #3: Phillip believes I have the power to help him. I doubt his faith. Recently he sent me a handwritten note. Transcribed in neat all-capitals script, it represents the first thirteen pages of his autobiography. “When we are born,” it begins, “everybody’s thought is to be free and happy during our term of living. We expect to enjoy the so-called fruits of lives.”
Phillip wants me to find a TV producer who will turn his life story into a moving image. It has grim potential. Frustrated by the lack of opportunity in Zimbabwe and the routine beatings administered by ZANU-PF thugs in the “rural area” where he spent his adolescence, he decided to head for South Africa. Along the way he met a group of six other young travellers.
Arriving at Beit Bridge, these “partners in crime”, four of them women, hired a guide to show them how to get across the border illegally. “We couldn’t suspect something might be wrong with the guy who was supposed to take us into South Africa,” writes Phillip. After a three-kilometre walk, which included his first river crossing, he heard a loud whistle. Two men joined them.
“We kept on going and not far from us appeared what seems to be about twenty something men wearing in junk clothes and holding sharp pangas and sjamboks. We could feel we were in danger. We were told to strip everything we were wearing and surrender everything we were in possession of. Guma
guma they were.” Brigands. Confidence tricksters. Thieves. Outlaws. “They took everything we had and told us to go and work in South Africa and buy other clothes and cellphones. That was really bad experience even to notice the girls we were with being raped in full view of ourself.”
South African police arrested the group of ragged travellers in Musina the following day. This is not when I met Phillip.
THE FENCE #4: In 1993, South Africa’s two border fences, which caused 89 deaths in a three-year period ending August 1989 – 47 deaths less than the total number of fatalities linked to the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989 – were switched to non-lethal alarm-mode. They are now entirely lacking current.
PHILLIP #4: He looks older. I didn’t recognise him seated by the roadside with his brother, outside the new City Lodge hotel, opposite the Pick ‘n Pay, waiting for me.
“You look like a man now,” I say. We last met five, possibly six years ago.
“Of course, I am a man,” replies Phillip, smiling.
He is wearing a sport coat, fashionably distressed blue denims, sneakers; his hair is cropped short. His brother, Wellington, also wears a branded sweater, taps on his Nokia phone, places it against his ear, which has a fake diamond stud in it. I suggest lunch. Phillip seems hesitant. He is worried who will foot the bill. Me, I say. We stand in front of the take-out counter at McDonald’s, but still he hesitates.
“Anywhere is fine,” I say.
Phillip prefers Wimpy. He says he wants a dagwood.
“Where is my cellphone?” he asks.
“I forgot it in Cape Town.” It is the same answer I gave him on the phone yesterday. But still he came from Bela Bela, north of Pretoria – perhaps to see