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A chance to start again
From juvenile offender, to jailbird, to head of a centre that teaches people life skills, Vusi Kweyana has walked the illegal, as well as the legal side of the tracks. He spoke to Myrtle Ryan
With a small smile tugging at his lips, Vusi Kweyana nodded towards Game in Sanlam Centre, Pinetown, "That's where I did my first crime," he said. "I stole a TV game and was caught. I cried so much.'' He was 15 at the time; it was a minor crime... but that was where Kweyana's criminal career began. Housebreaking, robbery and physical violence soon followed. Perhaps if someone in his family had paid more attention, things might have been different, but Kweyana, now 25, and heading up a centre in the Valley of a 1000 Hills, where he teaches life skills, does not dwell on that. He says, almost dismissively, that his mother remarried and he lived with his grandmother. "I was sentenced to three years, suspended, but taken to the Pinetown Place of Safety," he said. "It was like a prison. The boys were fighting, smok- ing dagga, they even tried to stab each other." He ran away and was soon on the streets with the gangs. "I became a gangster, I lived with the gangs." One thing led to another, and he became a regular inmate at Westville Prison, in and out as regular as clockwork. "I was never outside for long," said Kweyana. He spoke about stabbing two people, in the chest and in the arm, and felt no compunction about attacking the elderly. I was on my way to being a killer. If you can stab someone, you can kill them," he said In prison he was a member of 26s gang, headed by an older man whose minions tried to please him by providing him with money "We usually took the money from newcomers in prison, or from visitors." The nights were given over to smoking dagga and talking about making an escape, even though, he says, they knew this was mostly just talk. Experiences "People expect you to change in prison, but all the time you are thinking how you will commit another crime when you get out. "We used to share ideas and experiences with others. That way we learned all the tricks," he said. With sometimes up to 100 people in a cell, when the prison was overcrowded, fights often broke out. Those who had been there a long time got a bunk, but you could buy a night on a bunk for R5 or R10 and a blanket for R5. First-time prisoners would be obliged to pay a "guide" who would look after them and show them the ropes. When it came to
sexual favours, he said the new, "soft" young men were usually
approached in this regard, though he says it was by negotiation, not force.
Nobody ever approached him with such suggestions. "I was a hardened Looking at his open face and friendly smile, it is difficult to equate Kweyana with the portrait he paints of himself. He speaks about sharpening spoons as weapons; using belt buckles as knuckledusters, wrapping the metal arches taken from shoes in towels or T-shirts to beat people with; breaking windows to get shards of glass. Some guards, he said, were ruthless, deliberately provoking the prisoners to do something wrong, so they could be punished. A favourite was to beat miscreants on the soles of their feet. Empowerment But then the light came on in the brutalised young man's life. During one of his stints outside prison, he and a friend, Cornelius Gumede, heard about the World Changers Academy which held empowerment courses. The two signed up, with less than lofty ideals. They thought they might find a way to steal the computers which were used on the courses. But a tiny voice was whispering deep inside that maybe he, too, could make something of himself. He didn't steal. Instead the voice became a clarion call to better himself. Then slowly anidea began to take root: "That originally I came from God, was not on this Earth just to eat, drink and steal; that I had gifts to share." He said he had to kick a Mandrax habit, a love of alcohol and a desire to steal. But he stuck to his goal to better himself and he and Gumede were among the top students. Kweyana said he had taught about 100 children the things that had turned his own life around. Joe White and Sizwe Mthembu (of World Changers Academy) have made a big impact in my life. "1 now have a burden in my heart to share with others… to discover the reality of who they are, and realise their potential." Vusi Kweyana celebrates being a man free of his criminal past |
