CHAPTER ONE

- Ma gents, I'm telling you, it's easy pickings. Easy. I could bloody push it down the road and have it for myself if the handbrake wasn't on … because of that, I need your help. And because I’m a good man to his friends, you know what I'm saying? Something tasty for all three of us.
- And it's fully loaded?
- The whole back seat, clothes, hi-fi, CDs, everything.
- Haai, man, not me, I'm not in.
- Why not man? You scared?   
- I'm not scared, but I'm not stupid either. I haven't forgotten last time, ne? When you two and Fly crammed in the front and guess who was left running after a car with a surfboard in the back and the bloody childlock on the back door? Not again, my brothers. Not when this brother gets two cops on his back and three broken ribs and four months to think about it on my own while you get all the women you want with your flashy clothes and an extra cut. Look at you two, like two bloody murungus with your cellphones and all this. Aikona, I didn't break out just to run back to prison like a dog because my old friends have spent too long in the shebeen without me and now they want to drive home drunk in a stolen car! It's you who's gone stupid.
- You finished, Shakespeare? Or have you forgotten that we are south of the Limpopo? Murungu … Mugabe … No, this is about moola, my friend. And having a cellphone doesn't make you white. That was the bloody old New South Africa. 
- Eh, sorry comrade Mbeki. I forgot about your African Renaissance …
- Shut up both of you! Are we doing this job or not?
- I'm in.
- No guns?
- Only one. Just in case.
- Okay, I'm in.

*


Here begins the journey, he thought to himself.
        The lights of the 24-hour shop were too bright, forcing their artificial dawn into the bleary early morning squint of his eyes. Three hours' sleep was not enough, he knew, the night before a thousand mile drive, especially with only him in the car.
        A thousand miles. He preferred to think of it that way, even though he knew it was actually only fourteen hundred kilometres. Somehow it seemed a more appropriately epic figure. This was, after all, going to be his own great voyage to a new, unknown life. And if he was going to be a hero, he needed a heroic challenge. Yes, a thousand miles sounded better for his own Odyssey, his own Great Trek. But at that thought he knew he had given himself away. White, undeniably; African, certainly, but with all that pseudo-European baggage; how could he be the hero of an epic journey in South Africa in the twenty-first century? It was a deflating thought. He was white, and that was a problem. If he was black, there would be something more significant about his ultimately insignificant little cross-country jaunt. Black was the thing to be. He could be Everyman, representing all the fresh new beginnings and the challenges faced and the obstacles overcome. But he wasn’t black and, barring some kind of skin pigmentation treatment - even then it wouldn’t really be enough - there was nothing he could do about his second-grade hero status. So be it. He would make the most of it anyway.
        He didn’t mind the trip. In fact, he was looking forward to it; he was leaving early enough to get the bulk of it done before the midday heat descended. Hell, he thought, midday will be the Karoo. It was almost enough to make him wish it would be raining by then. At least he had some good music waiting in the car. And the reward at the end: the fairest Cape of them all.
        You couldn't blame the Capetonians for their arrogance, after all. And soon enough he would be one of them … No, he stopped himself, a Vaalie born and bred is a Vaalie ’til he’s dead. He liked that. Should write it down and offer it as a slogan to the Jo’burg tourist board. Was there a Jo’burg tourist board? He didn’t know. Besides, it was a bit macabre, probably be considered bad taste with all the hijackings. They always say you neglect it until it affects you personally; well, it was true, how could it be otherwise? We are a selfish people, are people.
        People are a selfish people we.
        We, a selfish people, people are.
        A selfish people, we are people.
        He really should be back in bed. Mom would be horrified if she knew he was leaving so early.
    Mom. If he had given her half the chance she would have come over to help him pack. Checklist: underwear for every day and a spare pair - no, two; shorts and t-shirts in case it’s hot, trousers and jackets in case it’s cold. This time round, there was no checklist to run through. Everything he owned was in that car, everything except a bagful of old clothes that either didn’t fit any more or were full of holes, which he had proudly heaped onto the pile of blankets and clothing being collected for the homeless to help them through the winter. How many hours ago was that? He remembered stepping out into the fresh midnight air to take a breather from the unpacked mess strewn on his floor, and reflecting guiltily that the motley collection of thin-worn summer clothes he had oh-so-generously donated would hardly offer comfort to a streetkid freezing to death in the harsh highveld winter. You will always have the poor with you. Cold comfort.
    Now he was unloading a basketful of goodies onto the checkout counter. Two-litre bottle of Coke, four packets of chips, a chicken-and-mushroom pie, two blueberry muffins and a bag of chewy peppermints. Praise be for the universally licensed over-indulgence of padkos. He paid with one of the R100 notes he had just withdrawn from the ATM and, quietly horrified at how little change he was given, began a quick mental calculation as he walked through the automatic glass doors. With his head lost in figures, it was a full minute before he realised that his car was no longer parked where he had left it.
        His car was no longer parked where he had left it. His car … no longer parked … Surely not. He scanned the carpark around him. It was empty. He began to feel very empty too. Slowly it became clear that his car was no longer parked anywhere. Stolen! He ran towards the road and stood for a moment, looking left and right, seeing nothing, straining his ears for a sound. Nothing. Nobody. A gentle breeze rustled the plastic packet in his hand, and for a while all he could think about was the food he had just bought, now destined, it seemed, to remain forever uneaten. He walked slowly - despite his loudly pulsing heart and the surge of adrenalin he felt building in his veins - deliberately, he walked slowly back to the shop.
 
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