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“Hey, let’s make a deal. We’ll bring the girl to your party and you get to hang out with
her. How much can you give us?”
“I don’t have money,” he’d say, “but I have some cases of beer.”
“Okay, so tonight we’re going to this party. You give us two cases of beer for the party.”
“Cool.”
Then we’d go to the party. We’d invite the girl, who was usually thrilled to escape her
mother’s prison. The guy would bring the beer, he’d get to hang out with the girl, we’d write
off the mom’s debt to show her our gratitude, and we’d make our money back selling the
beer. There was always a way to make it work. And often that was the most fun part: working
the angles, solving the puzzle, seeing what goes where, who needs what, whom we can
connect with who can then get us the money.
At the peak of our operation we probably had around 10,000 rand in capital. We had
loans going out and interest coming in. We had our stockpile of Jordans and DVD players
we’d bought to resell. We also had to buy blank CDs, hire minibuses to go to our DJ gigs, feed
five guys three times a day. We kept track of everything on the computer. Having lived in my
mom’s world, I knew how to do spreadsheets. We had a Microsoft Excel document laid out:
everybody’s name, how much they owed, when they paid, when they didn’t pay.
After work was when business started to pick up. Minibus drivers picking up one last
order, men coming home from work. The men weren’t looking for soap and Corn Flakes.
They wanted the gear—DVD players, CD players, PlayStation games. More guys would come
through selling stuff, too, because they’d been out hustling and stealing all day. There’d be a
guy selling a cellphone, a guy selling some leather jackets, a guy selling shoes. There was this
one dude who looked like a black version of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. He’d always come
by at the end of his shift with the most random useless crap, like an electric toothbrush
without the charger. One time he brought us an electric razor.
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s an electric razor?”
“An electric razor? We’re black. Do you know what these things do to our skin? Do you
see anyone around here who can use an electric razor?”
We never knew where he was getting this stuff from. Because you don’t ask. Eventually
we pieced it together, though: He worked at the airport. It was all crap he was boosting from
people’s luggage.
Slowly the rush would start to taper off and we’d wind down. We’d make our last
collections, go over our CD stock, balance our accounts. If there was a party to DJ that night
we’d start getting ready for that. Otherwise, we’d buy a few beers and sit around and drink,
talk about the day, listen to the gunshots in the distance. Gunshots went off every night, and
we’d always try to guess what kind of gun it was. “That’s a nine-millimeter.” Usually there’d
be a police chase, cop cars flying through after some guy with a stolen car. Then everyone
would go home for dinner with their families. I’d take my computer, get back in a minibus,
ride home, sleep, and then come back and do it all again the next day.
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