Free Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda Page A

the evenings, he slept in the watchman’s shelter at the gate of the mill. He got to sleep there because he offered to help the nightwatchman guard the place, while he went to drink beer and play with women in the shebeens. Toloki’s intention was to work for a few days, and then to move on as soon as he received his first weekly wages envelope.
    Some days he went to visit the man who had got him the job at the labour camp, where he lived in a shack with his father. The three of them sat in front of the shack and gossiped about the neighbours, and drank beer. Sometimes they discussed the state of the nation, and the protests and demonstrations that they heard were beginning to happen in the cities. They triedto persuade Toloki to forget his quest, and keep the good job he had. Such good jobs were hard to come by, they said, and it was fortunate for him that the owner of the job had just been sacked.
    â€˜Why was he fired?’
    â€˜Oh, they accused him of stealing some bags of maize from the mill.’
    His problems, Toloki was told, began one morning when he reported for duty at the milling company. The foreman ordered him to go to the manager’s office, where he found policemen waiting for him. They took him away to the interrogation chambers at the police station. There they stripped him naked, and asked him to confess. But he did not know what to confess, so they beat him up. He screamed, and began to confess all the sins he could remember doing since the time he was a child. ‘That’s not the confession we want to hear,’ the police shouted. ‘We want to hear about the bags of maize you have been stealing to sell to one farmer whom we know very well.’ The man denied any knowledge of stolen bags of maize, and his interrogators got angry and punched his testicles. Then they tied him to a chair and attached wires to his fingers and neck. They connected these to the electricity outlet on the wall, and the man screamed in agony and lost control of his bowels.
    â€˜Who is the farmer, and where does he stay?’
    â€˜Honest, my baas, I do not know him.’
    â€˜You sold him the maize, and yet you do not know him?’
    â€˜I never sold any maize, my baas.’
    Even with all the torture they could not get any confession from this man. So they let him go. Although he was not charged with any crime, the mill refused to take him back. He lost his job, and his manhood. His wife was very angry with the police for what they did to him, and to their conjugal life.
    Toloki wanted to know about the selling of maize: did it really happen? Yes, some senior workers did this from time totime. A farmer would sell a truck-load of maize to the milling company. His labourers would unload the bags at the mill. After being paid cash for the maize he would then drive back to his farm. That same afternoon, one of the drivers and the foreman at the mill would instruct the mill labourers to load a truck with the same maize. At the gate they would pretend to the security people that they were delivering mealie-meal to some wholesaler, and sign false papers. They would then take the maize back to the farmer, who would pay the driver and the foreman some money. For a long time the labourers got nothing from these transactions. But they were aware of what was happening. When they began to grumble aloud, the drivers and the foremen would buy them a lot of beer and meat after such expeditions, and they would forget about the whole thing.
    â€˜But the poor man who lost his manhood had nothing to do with the scam.’
    â€˜How can you be sure of that?’
    â€˜He was just a simple labourer. A very junior person. Only the drivers and the foremen are involved in this business. Even I, who have worked there for so many years, cannot just instruct labourers to load bags of maize onto a truck.’
    â€˜So is there nothing he can do now? Can’t he go to the law?’
    â€˜Whose law? Was I not