Born a Crime

of being poisoned. Which was a thing that would happen. The first family were the heirs, so there was always the chance they mig ...

now and then, and when he was gone the house was in the hands of women. In addition to my mom there was my aunt Sibongile; she a ...

controlling. I remember being told as a child, “If you don’t hit your woman, you don’t love her.” That was the talk you’d hear f ...

remember one day my aunt had really had enough. I was in the yard and Dinky came running out of the house screaming bloody murde ...

was the family matriarch. She ran the house, looked after the kids, did the cooking and the cleaning. She’s barely five feet tal ...

with us as well. We called her Koko. She was super old, well into her nineties, stooped and frail, completely blind. Her eyes ha ...

kitchen. At night someone would come take her to bed. That’s all she did, all day, every day. Sit by the stove. She was fantasti ...

“Koko, did you eat?” “Yes, Trevor.” “Koko, I’m going out.” “Okay, be careful.” “Bye, Koko.” “Bye, Trevor.” — The fact that I gre ...

reasons. Their fathers were off working in a mine somewhere, able to come home only during the holidays. Their fathers had been ...

ask my mom if it was hard for her to raise me alone without a husband. She’d reply, “Just because I live without a man doesn’t m ...

start, and that was his cue to leave. For these prayer meetings, we’d jam ourselves into the tiny living area of the host family ...

strap to your palm, like a percussion instrument. Someone would clap along on that, keeping time while everyone sang, “Masango v ...

Meni-meni-meni. Men-men-men. Ahhhhh​hhhhh​hhhhh​hhhhh​hhhhh​- hhhhh​hhhhh​hhhhh​- hhhhmmmmmmmennnnn​nnnnn​- nnnnn​nnnnn​nnnnn​nn ...

two, I loved to pray. My grandmother always told me that she loved my prayers. She believed my prayers were more powerful, becau ...

children to come unto me,” Jesus said, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” So if a child is praying in English? To White Jesu ...

pray for everyone. She would turn to me and say, “Trevor, pray.” And I’d pray. I loved doing it. My grandmother had convinced me ...

Soweto, because there was no leaving the ghetto, the dream was to transform the ghetto. For the million people who lived in Sowe ...

The most common were the spaza shops and the shebeens. The spaza shops were informal grocery stores. People would build a kiosk ...

backyard and hang out an awning and run a speakeasy. The shebeens were where men would go to drink after work and during prayer ...

later, a third wall and eventually a fourth. Now you had a room, one room for everyone in your family to sleep, eat, do everythi ...