Crime does not pay! Part Two

I had been mugged and that is putting it rather mildly. My executioners were standing over me apprehensively because not only was I still moving; I was trying to bargain with them. In my state I should admit that I was in no position to negotiate. I was down, bleeding, weak and hopelessly outnumbered.

It was a surprise attack where I had been felled by two blows from a half brick, one to the back of my head and the other to my forehead. The last thing I remember was the decoy reaching into his shirt pocket and then ‘Pow!’ According to the inebriated doctor who treated me later, the blows could have felled an ox. At that point, I wished I was one.

The muggers were meticulous, having thoroughly rehearsed their moves. One could tell that they had done this sort of thing dozens of times. They had honed their moves to the point of perfection, much like actors in a Shakespearean tragedy. In reality it was a cold and calculated attack where the thugs held the initiative and retained the element of surprise until the first blow was delivered.

As I leveraged myself into a sitting position I confessed to not having any money on me, which is what they were obviously after. For some reason they were not buying that story. I was not surprised by their disbelief. What was I doing out here, standing out like a sore thumb, in an expensive grey suit and carrying a very conspicuous portfolio case? I was literally written ‘mug me’ all over!

One of them held me up by my expensive suit jacket and yanked me up like a lifeless mannequin. In a flash they descended on me like a pack of rabid wolves all the while swearing and making threats to my life. Sadistic as it might sound; this was the ‘best’ part of the mugging for me. At least they were not stabbing me.

But for a brief moment of weakness that temporarily overcame me, I became fully conscious of what was going on around me. It was as if I was having an out-of-body experience. I took out my wallet to prove that I had no cash on me. Looking back, I realise now that it was a potentially stupid and risky thing to do.

For one, reaching for my wallet might have spooked the muggers into thinking that I was drawing some weapon. On the other hand, by highlighting my temporary poverty, I could have incensed them into a blood-letting frenzy. There is said to be an unwritten rule among muggers that a victim should pay dearly for not carrying any cash on him.

Thankfully, these muggers seem not to have heard about this rule. The physical assault which included crude panel beating, kicks to the mouth, chest and groin, came to a stop. One of them then gingerly reached for my wallet and examined it thoroughly.

I was warned not to scream, something I was not keen on doing for macho reasons. It became apparent that they were not going to extinguish my precious life. The whole ordeal then took a business-like, almost clinical turn. With astonishing skill and speed I was relieved of my expensive grey suit, equally fashionable shoes and the portfolio case.

I still vividly remember the thugs walking away going through the pockets of my suit as if they were going to send it to the dry cleaners in the morning. As I sat there in my shirt, socks and underwear, I was glad that I had survived the ordeal and would live to see another day. Then it dawned on me that the muggers could easily change their minds and come back and finish me off.

I picked myself up and staggered into the darkness. No one else could mug me in this state, I comforted myself. Getting home in a state of near nakedness was indeed a challenge. I had taken off my shirt and made a bandana that would slow the bleeding from my head. If I was to meet anyone looking like this at that hour; there was the possibility that I could be mistaken for a crude version of some comic super hero after a hard day’s work.

I was not keen on making a spectacle of myself by rocking up at the local police station in a state of undress. Even as beaten up as I was, I wasn’t going to give the cops something to joke about for the rest of the millennium. To cut a long story short, I reached home without any unpleasant surprises. My mom, a nurse by profession, took care of the injuries.

I then faced the inquisition in the form of my father. I must admit that his barrage of questions like what was I doing where I was at that time of the night, prepared me well for what was to follow. I must have related my tale over a thousand times! I should admit that the story improved in quality to the extent that I can now submit it as a screenplay for a future television drama. But then I digress.

At the police station it took a good two hours for my turn to have my statement taken. To my relief, I wasn’t the only one who had been mugged that day. It must have been open season for my muggers. By the time my turn came, the cops only added ‘expensive grey suit’ and ‘conspicuous portfolio case’ to the ones they had already recorded saving us all precious time.

Make no mistake that I expected the police to rush out to apprehend the muggers like they do on television. I was merely concerned with being able to get hospital treatment because in my country there is a rule that victims of muggings can be attended to only after a statement has been recorded by the police. Never mind the fact that you could be bleeding to death. How else can the police be seen to be doing their job?

After the stupefying bureaucracy, we were driven to the hospital where we queued up to be stitched. They had fish out the doctor on call from someplace, and it wasn’t long before we discovered where he had been.

To be mugged and robbed of my favourite suit was one thing. But to be stitched by a doctor breathing alcohol fumes directly onto your face for the best of an hour is worse. The only good thing about it was that after a few minutes there was no need for local anaesthesia. In a short while I was well and truly knocked out for six. But that’s another story...

Crime does not pay! Part One

None of you would admit that you were beaten up by somebody. It’s usually the other way round, the pugilist being the one boasting about having pummelled someone into a pulp. Unless of course if one was trying to solicit sympathy or use the incident as testimony that would drive some point home or to teach a moral lesson of sorts.
As I grew up I must admit that I was often at the business end of some guy’s or even a girl’s fist. Not that I was weak or what others refer to as a wimp. I had this streak of pacifism running through my veins. It took some effort for me to kill a fly. While boys my age dismembered grasshoppers and tortured frogs, I read comics.


So it was difficult for me to understand why others were so sadistic as to be violent to other human beings. If there was a fight, I quickly removed myself from the scene. But during the few occasions that I was helpless to watch, like those ferocious fights in the classroom, I was horrified by how far my classmates could go at each other.

I am convinced that this violent streak in my former classmates had a bearing on their future. Those who were particularly virulent ended up in jail or worse still dead. In fact, the worst of criminals in our neighbourhood were the bullies during our time growing up. Nevertheless, as I was later to discover, avoiding trouble would not prevent me from being a victim.

Some of you might have heard this story, but this time around I have to retell it to offer a different perspective about being a victim. Those of you who grew up in an urban environment know that one of the important skills of survival is to avoid being mugged. Muggings, the most prevalent of crimes, were very much part of the urban landscape.

While the chances of one being mugged are sure to increase with the amount of time spent in an urban setting, one tends to relax into a discernable routine that will attract the attention of known criminals in the neighbourhood. What is shocking is that these invariably are people you are familiar with.

While you are lost in the familiarity of your routine, you are blissfully unaware that someone has been meticulously planning to mug you. This is a chilling discovery for some but a life of criminality and disposition to violence nurtured from those heady days in junior school has blossomed into a full time career. These guys have been so horned in this that to them there is a thin line between assault to course grievous bodily harm and killing someone.

This is why victims of mugging who survive to tell the tale should thank their maker for coming out alive. I have been doing so ever since that fateful day when my life flashed before my eyes at the hands of the most vicious thugs roaming our neighbourhood. What began as another normal day ended tragically for me.

I had used this particular road countless times but as they say, routine dulls one’s sense of security. Who would have imagined that on this very road running between several rows of houses, one that is more than well lit, and is the main thoroughfare to a bustling housing estate would be the site of an ambush?

However, one should have never lost sight of the fact that this is dubbed the ‘Wild West’ of the city. It is an area where Murphy’s Law reigns supreme, that is to say, if anything could go wrong here, it would! I of all people, having grown here for the better part of my life, should have known that for a fact.

As it turned out, I it just wasn’t my day. It was early by any standard, but in winter it gets dark quickly in the southern hemisphere. The chill of evening usually forces people indoors though they would hardly be asleep at this time. There was also this deceptive presence of a few ‘people’ moving about at that hour that must have lulled me into a sense of false security.

Here I was, walking from home, disarmed of the alertness very necessary in these parts. Lost in my own thoughts I failed to notice that the street was now deserted. I could vaguely recollect someone following me and even more distantly a rather odd whistling. The muggers had managed to retain one critical advantage over me, the element of surprise.

That I was being discreetly shadowed was lost on me. As I approached a junction that would normally be teeming with vehicles dropping off passengers and vendors plying their trade, my ‘shadow’ was now abreast of me. What perturbed me was how he had managed to get this close without me noticing. He was so uncomfortably close he was right in my space.

Unbeknown to me this was supposed to the decoy. He was short, rather stocky and as the Americans say, butt ugly. I noticed all these things about him because he said one of the most extraordinary things to me.

“Can I pass?” he asked.

How anyone could ask for permission to pass on such a wide road, I wondered out loud.

On hearing my rather surprised comment, he turned round just a couple of metres in front of me. Just then my early warning system otherwise known as instinct, kicked in. Well it kicked in too late as I was to painfully discover.

Noticing my apprehension, the thug became patronising. I should have known there and then that I should be preparing for the worst, or at least glancing at what was behind me. But looking at this pathetic figure in front of me, I thought to myself; what could possibly happen to me? Famous last thoughts, as I was to find out soon enough.

“Pow!” a hard object hit the back of my head with such force that I fell down face first. I could have said that I saw stars but the truth be told, I saw and felt nothing. I turned round to face my executioner, a move I was to regret. A hard object, which I later discovered was a half brick, smashed onto my forehead. Now I knew what a snake felt when its head was being crushed.

The bleeding was immediate and profuse. Feeling faint but nonetheless conscious, I tried to reason with the muggers. Remember that I am the peaceful kind, ready to make amends whenever the opportunity presented itself even when on the verge of certain demise. The fact that was I talking and trying to get up must have perturbed them.

“I have no money on me,” I mumbled as I felt the warm liquid that was blood flowing over my face. To say that I was in a pathetic state is in itself an understatement. Yet in the eyes of these thugs, all six of them, I was a threat because I was supposed to be unconscious or at worst, dead.

To be continued...

Selling a car ain't easy

You should remember the first car you ever bought. In most cases it was because you needed a contraption that would take you from place to place. Even the socialists of our day knew the necessity of owning a vehicle. Former University of Zimbabwe lecturer Professor Shadrack Gutto who drove around in a battered jalopy was confronted by his students as to why this was so.

“A car is a car, comrades. As long as it takes you from point A to point B, it’s a car!” he replied in his East African accent. He could never explain why so many of the female species are so enamoured by cars to the extent that if one tied a plastic bottle filled with petrol to a wheel barrow, they would hop on! That will remain one of the greatest mysteries of or time.

Being so impressionable, I took a leaf from Gutto’s manifesto and purchased a second hand Renault 4 (R4). You know the one with the funny umbrella gear leaver. A friend of mine who is now late (may the Lord Bless his soul) referred to it as an ‘instrument.’

“Lenox is driving an instrument!” he used to shout to all and sundry much to my chagrin.

Nomusa and I knew then that it would take considerable effort to convince our intelligent and blatantly blunt first born son that we had bought the bargain of the century. At least that is what we thought at the time. It was then that he dropped one of those direct questions that begged an equally direct answer.

“Dad, why don’t we buy a better looking car, more like the ones reasonable fathers drive?” It was a tough question coming from a four year old. What stung me most was the word ‘reasonable.’ Put anywhere in a sentence directed at me, it really hurt.

After spending a fortune attempting to transform the R4 classic model into a miniature version of the Space Shuttle, we soon found ourselves seeking to obtain a healthy return on our massive investment. We had it re-sprayed, re-upholstered and serviced, tweaked it, you name it, we did it. If you asked me it was as good as new. Well almost.

Those of you who remember the French cars of the time will know that they had serious aesthetic issues. Take the Citroen for example. If there was an ugly car, that was definitely one. The Renault wasn’t far behind. But again I was the budding socialist who would trash a Merc with a hammer and sickle at first sight! It was the quintessential symbol of ill-gotten wealth. Today I can easily kill someone for that German work of mechanical art.

As fate would have it, we soon found ourselves having to sell it, the family Renault 4 I mean. Confident that we would get a good price for it we set out to market it first to sympathisers, then to anyone who cared to listen. There were several things going for the car besides the touch ups we had tastefully done.

For a start, it could move... from point A to point B. It was definitely “better than walking.” The fuel economy of these little shopping baskets made it much more valuable than in dollar terms. I can vouch that it could took us from Luveve to the city centre (12 k’s away) and back at the whiff of petrol from a soaked rag. Our first prospect, an old white lady who said she wanted a car to “run about with in town” was too punctual at our appointment. She caught me with the gasket down if you know what I mean. I assured her she wouldn’t be disappointed only if she signed along the dotted line.

But then I assumed that she might have been thinking: A black man selling a car must either be desperate or there is something dreadfully wrong with it and is eager to dump it voetstoets on me!

“So you spent a lot of money on it?” she said with sarcasm not at all lost on me. It was a rhetorical kind of question which I chose to answer. It went along the lines of if you don’t want to buy it, just save your breath and hit the road, though I did not say it in so many words. She never looked back.

I must admit that the car looked a bit unkempt, having just collected it from the spray painters who, by the way were asking for my arm and leg. That added to my desperation. They wanted their money like yesterday. You don’t want to mess around with these backyard panel beaters. They can use their expertise on you at the drop of an engine block if you failed to pay up.

Anyway, I assumed that by waving a fistful receipts and job cards from reputable car mechanics at prospective buyers that would convince them of the veracity of my claims. After a run in with several bush mechanics, one learns pretty fast the folly of going the cheap route when getting a car fixed.

While the cost of going the legitimate mechanic route for repairs can give anyone a massive coronary, it was the price of some of the ‘genuine’ parts they fitted that stupefied the guys at the local AA (Automobile Association). It was later that we realised that the bulk of the costs went towards ‘labour’ as if they had done anything fantastic.

You see, mechanics prey on your ignorance. The most dreaded sound you won’t want to hear is the sound of a low whistle coming from a mechanic under your car. After such an experience, I was convinced that the breakdown of the labour costs were actually as follows:

Opening the car hood, $10; disconnecting the battery, $10; checking the oil, $3; changing oil (excluding cost of oil), $10; cleaning oil (from mechanic’s hands), $5; blowing air filter(using own breath), $25; dipping finger into radiator, $25; getting overalls dirty, $25; consulting manual (ad nauseum), $30; taking a nap under the vehicle, $2; dislodging cockroach from fuse box, $50; risk allowance; $50...and so on. However, occupational rules dictate that they should not show you this breakdown for obvious reasons.

In my case, the fact that they had to import a number of new parts straight from France did not seem to impress prospective buyers. In fact it would take another mechanic to identify the said parts in a car after repairs. What was obvious was that this was an old piece of junk with a couple of new parts thrown in.

The truth be told, under the circumstances, any buyer, real or fake, would wish we gave away our car for next to nothing. That is the kind of arrogance we had to contend with, no matter how much of our hard earned cash we spent fixing it up. In fact one very nasty little old man said that it was a miracle that our car was still moving and that all he wanted to do was to reward us for our act of faith!

I could have throttled him there and then had the wife not reminded me that my income was still an essential aspect of our marriage contract. Then again, one had to look at it from the bright side. We were selling an antique that could easily fetch a few thousand in France or Europe from classic car enthusiast. The only catch was shipping our dear old Renault 4 there which would require, you guessed it right, a few thousand!

So we were left with no option but to literally give it away. At least with the proceeds we were able to purchase groceries that lasted eh a couple of days. It was better that turning the car into a hatchery. The worst past was been downgraded from a driver to a pedestrian, literally from R4 to R Two!

I found myself missing the incredible experiences of driving. Anyone who thinks a wounded lion is the most dangerous living creature on earth has never overtaken a commuter taxi driver like I was to find out to my near peril. And what about the car travelling at 5 kilometres per hour hogging the fast lane and driven by an elderly lady whose licence was issued when the Egyptians still worshipped an insect.