Born a Crime

Matric dance, here we come. Only two and a half years to go... Then we had the mid-year school holidays. The day we came back, Z ...

“Yeah, she left.” My first thought was, Wow, okay. That’s news. I should give her a call to catch up. “What school did she move ...

“Yeah, she was super sad, too, because she had such a huge crush on you. She was always waiting for you to ask her out. Okay, I ...

could have said, “Hey, Zaheera, I like you. Will you be my girlfriend?” Ten words that might have changed my life if I’d had the ...

In every nice neighborhood there’s one white family that Does Not Give a Fuck. You know the family I’m talking about. They don’t ...

Working people, mostly. Not wealthy but stable and middle- class. Older houses, but still a nice place to live. In Soweto I was ...

Highlands North for the longest time. I had an easier time making friends in Eden Park, to be honest. In the suburbs, everyone l ...

walls for playdates I wasn’t invited to. I’d hear people laughing and playing and I’d get off my bike and creep up and peek over ...

year at the holidays. But a handful of families would let their domestics keep their children with them, living in little maids’ ...

COLORBLIND At Sandringham I got to know this one kid, Teddy. Funny guy, charming as hell. My mom used to call him Bugs Bunny; he ...

you start hanging out and from that day forward you’re never apart. We were both naughty as shit, too. With Teddy, I’d finally m ...

domestic for a family in Linksfield, a wealthy suburb near school. Linksfield was a long walk from my house, nearly forty minute ...

hour hike, just to hang out, and then we’d walk all the way back. Friday and Saturday nights we’d walk to the mall and hang out. ...

but the cinema was still showing movies so the building was still open. There was this stationery shop that sold greeting cards ...

grown-ups’ drinks whenever I could. We reached in, grabbed a few, drank the liquor inside, and then gobbled down the chocolates. ...

weekend for at least a month, having the best time. Then we pushed our luck too far. It was a Saturday night. We were hanging ou ...

And the chase was on. We bolted, heading for the doors. I knew if a guard cut us off at the exit we’d be trapped, so we were hau ...

between parked cars, the guards right behind us, yelling. We made it to the petrol station out at the road, ran through there, a ...

every shortcut you could possibly imagine. As a kid, wherever I went, whatever building I was in, I was always plotting my escap ...

squeeze through and on the far side was an empty field behind the mall that took you back to the main road and back to my house. ...