Diary of a ministry trainee: June

Just the other day I was arrested.  Arrested, handcuffed, and locked in a cell.

I was at Park Station, Jo’burg’s central transport hub, taking a couple of the homeless guys I work with to the minibus taxi rank.  All was going well: I was excited that the guys were going home, I’d negotiated the mayhem of the city streets.  But then the police stopped and searched me.  I wasn’t particularly worried – this is a fairly routine occurrence – but then they asked me.

“Where’s your passport?”

My passport? I thought to myself.  Why on earth would I carry my passport around pickpocket paradise Park Station?

“It’s at my place,” I replied, perplexed.

“Well then,” the policeman said.  “You are an illegal immigrant and we must arrest you!”

I actually asked him if he was serious, but he was. Deadly.  So they handcuffed me and led me out of the railway station to the police complex next door.

The truth is, I’m not an illegal immigrant, and my South African friend Pule, was already on his way back to my house to get my papers, so I was fairly sure I’d be out soon.  I wasn’t particularly worried.

“You know,” one of the policeman said, “you’re lucky you were caught by the good police.  Otherwise you might have got a beating!” He wasn’t joking.

And so I found myself locked in a sixth-floor holding cell full of other young men from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique – basically South Africa’s poorer neighbours.  Things here are tough, but they’re better than elsewhere, so thousands of people are desperate to come in.

My heart ached for these guys.  Like them, I’d been arrested and sat against the wall on the floor just like them – the police would yell if we talked or moved – but I knew that I had my papers and that I’d be out soon.  These guys would soon be on a bus back to the border.

The police guarding us were generally decent guys – one of my fellow-prisoners offered one officer a bribe, and he mused for a moment, before replying loudly in English:

“A bribe?  Yes, good, but you’d better make it a million rand – so that I’ve got something to live on when I lose my job!”

At times they’d even sing together and encourage us prisoners to join in.

Eventually the other guys were taken elsewhere and I was left talking to a Zimbabwean girl.  She looked about my age and had been working as a domestic worker in Hillbrow for about a year.  And she was terribly ashamed to have been arrested.  It just broke my heart talking to her – Zimbabwe is in serious trouble with 80% unemployment and inflation running at over 1000%.  She was going back there with nothing.

I had nothing either – my wallet was still in the car – so I tried to give her my shoes.  Maybe she’d be able to sell them, I thought.  Maybe they’d be some help.  But the police were not so keen.

“People will think that we took you shoes,” they reasoned with me.  I saw their point.

Some of the other police there were puzzled at my actions.

“You mustn’t worry about them,” one told me.  “They’re our neighbours – we know what they’re like.”

And I know it’s difficult – there are now 3-million Zimbabweans in South Africa and resources are already stretched tight – but what I’m trying to work out is how exactly to love my neighbours.

(Not long after that Pule arrived with my passport and they let me go.  The police treated me well, and I was only locked up for two hours or so.  I have no idea what happened to everyone else.  I know of some people who’ve been deported three times. So I might see them again.)

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