[ South African Short Story]

Chapter 1

Messages on Detective Zandile Cele’s cellphone come thick and fast. Zandile had set the incoming message alert to Toni Braxton’s Unbreak My Heart . It’s her favourite song. But today is month-end and Toni Braxton’s voice means just one thing – another debit order has gone off her account. She switches it to silent and calls her colleague, Detective Gloria Ngcobo.
“My friend, how is it going at your crime scene?”


“I’m almost done,” says Gloria.

“Nothing too bad; just some rich boy who wrecked a car.”

“These debit orders, my friend,” says Zandile, her voice sinking.

Gloria exhales pure stress. “They have taken so much I don’t know where to go for help this month.”

“Once I have paid the transport money for the kids I will have zero as my bank balance,” says Zandile.

“I haven’t bought groceries yet, not paid for water and electricity. Same for the DSTV. Imagine a month without good TV?”

“You can say that again. I won’t have money for school stationery for my boy and nieces. My mom has called already asking for money,” says Gloria.

“I really don’t know what to do. I can’t ask my sister for another loan; I owe her too much as it is,” says Zandile.


“I am seriously thinking of pawning my gold chain,” says Gloria.

“Have you called Primo?”

“I have, but he is giving me excuses.”


“How can he?” Zandile barks into the phone.

“Did you lean on him?”


“I did my best. He won’t budge.”

“Let’s go see him right now. He needs to pay up because we saved him from definite jail time. Let’s meet at my house in ten minutes,” says Zandile.


Zandile presses the accelerator pedal of the police van; Gloria does the same in her van. The two vans arrow forwards and arrive simultaneously, as if choreographed, at Zandile’s house. Gloria jumps into Zandile’s van. They head to Primo’s house.


“So how do we play this?” says Gloria, as they park outside.

“We’ll speak to him in the only language he understands.” A steely expression has appeared on Zandile’s face.

“We’ll just arrest him.”

Primo, twenty-one, is a drug dealer. His house is a ‘blinged out’ Umlazi township four-room. Zandile, Gloria and two constables could not believe the riches they found when they raided Primo’s house six months earlier. His neighbours had complained of a chemical smell coming from the yard. The police discovered a drug lab at the back of the house.


Behind the high walls they discovered all sorts of excess. A TV spanning wall-to-wall, ostrich skin sofas, a cappuccino maker, authentic Persian rugs, sleigh beds, a kitchen fit for a mansion. Cash amounting to R67 000 inside an ice cream container in the fridge. The drug trade was good to Primo. He made a deal to pay the police monthly for a year, for his freedom, but honoured this deal for only three months.
Guns drawn, they approach the high walls of Primo’s house.

Zandile calls the two constables who were at the original raid. “We are at Primo’s. Meet us here in twenty minutes,” she tells them.
The gate is unlocked. Zandile and Gloria stand by it and listen. Faint music comes from the back of house. They creep into the yard. Gloria draws out her Taser to guard against an attack from Primo’s humungous pit bull. During the original raid the beast attacked a constable and bit off a chunk of his calf muscle.

Chapter 2

The detectives inch into the yard, then creep round to the back of the house. The pit bull is locked in its cage; it gives off a belligerent growl. Zandile and Gloria hasten their pace, moving past a brand new C Class Mercedes Benz. It is from this beautiful piece of German automotive machinery that the music comes.


In the shade next to the drug lab at the back of the house they find Primo, passed out, with a friend, each on a camping chair.

Gloria and Zandile tip toe around them and check inside the drug lab. There’s no-one inside.

“Primo, police! Hands up! Primo wake up!” Zandile shouts.


Primo’s friend wakes up, startled, and falls off the chair.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” says Gloria, placing her knee on his back and handcuffs on his wrists.

Primo remains asleep, too deep in the blackout. Zandile pours a bucket of ice cold water on his face. Primo is so far gone that he just opens his bloodshot eyes and silently stares at Zandile, like he’s coming back from someplace far away. The detective handcuffs him and leads him inside the lab.

“We haven’t heard from you in a long time, Primo. How have things been?” Zandile mocks him.

“Things are not going well, my sisters. Business is slow these …” Primo pauses, his train of thought suddenly lost.

“Shut your mouth, Primo! We are tired of your nonsense,” Zandile barks and shoves him towards a couch. Primo falls head first onto the floor next to the couch.

The detectives search the drug lab. In the first drawer of a cabinet they find drugs that are not yet packaged – white powder in small heaps on a mirror, and plastic coin bags. In the next drawer they find cash: stacked, neat hundred-rand notes. Zandile quickly counts it. Nineteen thousand rand. Primo is still coming down off his high. He keeps dozing off. He has no idea of how serious the situation is.

“Business is not good these days?” Zandile shouts at him.

“No. It is not,” Primo mumbles.

“Well, you should not be in business at all. Seems you have not been true to your word. Remember what we told you last time?”

“Yes, yes, I remember. You said not to sell drugs in this section. And I have stopped, I swear.”

“Lies, Primo. That is your problem.”

“True, my sister, I have not sold a gram here.”

“Lies. You supply all over Umlazi. Little birds tell us. The very same birds that you supply.”

Primo protests innocence.

“It is for this reason that we are arresting you. All the evidence is here,” Zandile says, and points to the white powder.

Backup arrives. The two constables take both Primo and his friend to the back of the police van.

“Please, please my sisters, let’s work something out,” Primo pleads.

“We can’t deal with you Primo. You have already not kept your word. Trust is a fickle thing,” says Zandile.

“I know my sister. I have not been–”

Zandile slams the van door shut and says to the two constables, “Get what you can from him. He is a cash cow.”

The van drives off.

“This should help until month end,” Zandile says when they get to her house and she hands Gloria half of the bounty from Primo’s ice cream container.

“True, my friend. Thank you so much,” says Gloria. “Let me be off. I have to pay for electricity before they shut it off. And get meat for the braai today. Where will you celebrate New Year’s Eve?”

“With my sister in Ballito. We will talk later, friend. Bye.”

Zandile is stashing her share of the dirty money – relieved, exhaling and light of spirit – when the Station Commander calls.

“It has happened again,” says Station Commander Ncube, his voice heavy with worry.

"This time the missing girl is from a shack section down the road from your old neighbourhood. She went missing yesterday.”

“Dear God, not again. How old is she?” asks Zandile.

“She is nine years old.”

“What’s the address?”

“There are no addresses for those shacks. The place is called Mosko. The girl’s family will be waiting for you at Buhle’s Spaza.”

“I’m on it, Commander.” Zandile presses the accelerator pedal to the floor.

In two years, nineteen girls under the age of ten have been abducted from their homes in Umlazi Township. This missing girl makes it twenty. And the police don’t have a single lead to follow.

Chapter 3

The meeting point is less than five hundred metres from the house where Zandile was born. Her mother, grandmother and uncles sent her to buy from the same spaza shop, where the missing girl’s family now waits for her.


She finds them standing by anxiously. Zandile does not need to be told that the young woman with an expression of complete devastation on her face is the missing girl’s mother. She doesn’t look older than twenty-five.


“Leave your car here because the road going down is rough. A 4×4 got stuck here on Christmas day. It had to be pulled out by a tow truck,” says a man, who then introduces himself as the missing girl’s uncle.


Zandile locks the police van door and follows the family on foot in the humid heat.
The way down is steep, and reveals a whole section of shacks.

A decade ago, when Zandile’s family relocated to a better part of the township, the area where the many shacks of Mosko now stand was a forest. Now it’s mostly shacks, but a few small houses are built with concrete blocks, and a few RDP houses are under construction as well.


“They are doing away with shacks. In two years the whole of Mosko will be these RDP houses you see over there. They are the free housing the government promised,” says the missing girl’s uncle, wiping his sweaty neck with a towel.


“That is good. Some promises are kept at least,” says Zandile.


“You would think everyone would be happy but there are complaints already. People are saying the RDP houses are too small,” says the uncle.


“They are too small. They don’t even have toilets in them. I hear we will have communal toilets and showers. I just don’t know …” says the girl’s mother, in what is almost a whisper.


Being the festive season, the sound systems of Mosko blare out the in songs of summer. To this soundtrack walk the people of Mosko. A family in church uniforms struggles with luggage up the steep path. Church trip, Zandile thinks. Behind the church-going folks follows a group of rowdy youths who sip from liquor bottles and look ahead with bloodshot, empty eyes.


Zandile is amazed once again at how life in the shack section functions. They pass a tuck shop that sells everything a home needs, even prepaid electricity recharges. An old man is deep in thought as he fills out lotto tickets. The few houses built with concrete blocks have aluminium doors and window frames. Most of the shacks and houses have DSTV – satellite dishes point out to sea. The quality of the sound coming out of many shacks tells of expensive music systems.


They carry on down, past open doors that reveal the biggest of flat screen televisions.


“I am already late, I have to get going. Keep me posted, my sister,” says the uncle, hurrying into a shack neighbouring the small house that they have reached.


“Thank you, my brother, I will,” says the girl’s mother as she opens the door to her house.
Zandile and the missing girl’s mother have just settled on sofas when the uncle waves from the door. He is off to his job as a security guard.


“He is very learned, you know,” says the girl’s mother. “He has a diploma in business management. But there are no jobs so he took the one he got. The hours he works are terrible but what can one do? We have mouths to feed.”


She casts her gaze upon the three children in front of her. “Those two are his,” she says and points to two young boys sitting on the sofa opposite Zandile.

“I have two girls. We are orphans, my sister. We have been looking after each other since he was twelve and I was eight. And now this has happened,” she says, looking into the distance.


She is quiet for a while as tears well in her eyes.

“Can I get you anything to drink? There is Coke in the fridge.” She tries her best to stay present but her mind is somewhere else, wondering every second what is happening to her daughter.


“Cold water will be fine,” says Zandile.

She smiles at the younger children, who look at her with childish curiosity, but they reciprocate with eyes full of sadness.


Zandile looks at the photos above the TV. There are pictures of a young girl holding certificates for academic excellence. And photos of the same girl with several running medals draped around her neck. There is another photo with all four children smiling at the camera. Two boys and two girls.
So the missing girl is clever, and fast, she thinks.


“Do you have children, Detective?” asks the girl’s mother from the kitchenette.


“My boy is seven, my little princess is four years old.”


“I also wanted a boy but was only blessed with girls. Here is your water. I hope it’s not too cold. ”

Zandile sips and proclaims the temperature just fine for this weather.


“OK, let’s start. What is your name?” asks Zandile, notepad and pen in hand.


The girl’s mother exhales and says, “Dudu Khumalo.”


“Your girl’s name?”


“Philasande Edith Zulu. She uses her father’s surname.”

Chapter 4

“When did you realise she was missing?”

“I don’t know how it happened. I sent her to the spaza shop yesterday and she just disappeared. She has gone to that spaza shop many times before. This area is safe; Mosko is very safe. The people here look out for each other,” says Dudu, tears cascading down her cheeks.


“What time was it? Where is the spaza?”


“It was around 8:30 p.m. because Generations had just ended. She wanted Fanta Orange, her favourite cold drink. She had been asking for it since the afternoon. The spaza shop is right over there.” She points out of the door to the spaza shop, hardly a hundred metres away.


From the couch in front of the TV where Zandile sits she can see all the way there. At night it would not be so easy, but there is a tower light nearby, she notes.


“When she had not returned after fifteen minutes, I began to worry. I sensed that something was wrong. A mother always knows. That’s when we started searching. And nothing. Nothing. We called the police as soon as it was light.”


“What was she wearing? And do you have a picture?”


“I took one of her yesterday. She looked so pretty. She’d had her hair braided. I’d promised it for coming top of her class. I got it printed in the mall in D section, but she stayed at home because she was tired. She was asleep when I got back. And only woke up in the evening, asking for Fanta Orange.”

She looks at the photo with a longing sadness and hands it to Zandile.

Philasande, the missing girl, is a pretty child. In the photo she is making a peace sign and beaming a hearty smile. She is a bundle of colour. Her braids are red and blue, her top is lime.


“Have you spoken to her friends?”


“Yes we did. None have seen her. She is only nine years old. I should never have let her go alone to the spaza. But Mosko is safe. We have never even had one break-in here. The people make sure that nothing funny happens in this area. Never in Mosko.”


“Did she get to the spaza?”


“People that were there said she did not.”

“Where did she go to school?”

“Gugulabantu Primary School.”

Zandile writes the name down on her pad and puts a star next to it. All the missing girls went to this school. That’s one thing they have in common.


“You sit where you sat when she left. I will walk the path she took. Tell me to stop in the area where you last saw her,” Zandile says.

Zandile walks the path, looking back frequently. Dudu breaks down with each step Zandile takes. Zandile knows it must be heart-breaking for Dudu to re-live what may be her little girl’s final steps, but for Zandile this is crucial. Besides getting a clearer picture of where exactly the girl disappeared, she hopes this will jog a memory in the girl’s mother. A detail that may have skipped her mind.

Zandile walks thirty metres down the road. Dudu can still see her from the couch while the door is open.

“Stop!” Dudu shouts and nods. “I last saw her there.”

Zandile digs her boot into the ground, marking the spot and walks back to Dudu.

“I last saw her where you were,” Dudu wails.

“Did you see anything else? Try to think. Behind her, in front of her? Was there anyone looking at her? Try to think Dudu; anything can help.”

After thinking hard, Dudu says, “I don’t remember anything, I am sorry. I looked away from her to the TV because Isibaya had started,” Dudu starts to sob.


“It’s OK,” says Zandile, comforting her.

“It’s not your fault.”

“If she comes back to us she will lead you straight to the person who took her. She has a photographic memory, you see. And she runs like the wind.”

The children join Dudu in a huddle, all in tears. Zandile joins the huddle.

“We will do all we can to find Philasande,” she promises.

Detective Gloria Ngcobo and more police officers arrive in Mosko a few minutes later. They find Zandile still locked in the huddle of tears with the missing girl’s family. A trauma counsellor takes over.

Zandile wipes away tears and leaves the house.

She walks the path that little Philasande Edith Zulu took. She crouches at the spot she marked earlier with her boot. Sweat and tears fall in the morning heat.

Zandile looks around. To her left – an elderly couple sit in the shade of their shack. To her right – rowdy youths look like they partied all night. In front – the spaza shop. Behind her – Dudu’s house.

In her decade on the police force she has shown the gift of piecing things together. But when each of these girls has gone missing, she has not had a clue.

Chapter 5

Philasande- The missing girl


I wake up in a daze in this fast moving panel van.

I remember what happened before everything went black. I was drinking a cold drink. Mrs Kweyama offered it to me when I was on my way to the spaza shop. Before that I was so thirsty. I was craving cold Fanta Orange so much I could taste it in my mouth as Ma looked for money in her purse.
I could smell it as I made my way to the spaza shop and could not wait to drink it.

I was close to the spaza when I heard my name. I knew that voice even before I turned. I knew that smell too. I recognised it from my last prize-giving ceremony when the Principal bent down to hand me my prize.

She asked my name, congratulated me on my seven As and asked what my favourite cold drink was. I thought it was a funny thing to ask me at prize-giving, but of course I answered. ‘Fanta Orange’, I told her.

I turned. Mrs Kweyama was holding a cold can of Fanta Orange and she was smiling at me.

“Philasande, how are you? I see you are top of your class again,” she said, standing next to a white VW panel van with the number plate NX 231 5672.

“Hello,” I said. “Yes, I am doing well in school.”

“Very good, little one. Here, to congratulate you on your good marks, I have your favourite,” she said and handed me the Fanta.

I looked back at my mother; she was watching the TV.

“Do you live here now?” I asked her and sipped.

She didn’t answer my question but asked me, “Are you going to the spaza shop?”

“Yes.” I gulped down another sip.

“Can you buy me an electricity recharge? The card is in my car,” she said, walking towards the door of the van. It was a funny thing to ask me. Why didn’t she do it herself? But I followed her.

“Here, I have it in my bag,” she said and opened the van door. I was standing next to her. I was about to take the card when everything went black.

I wake up in the speeding van. I can see Mrs Kweyama driving, from where I am lying. She knows how to handle a car, and such a big car at that. The time on the dashboard: 5:45. I see it because the blindfold over my eyes is not tight enough. It must be morning because the shadows are not yet long.

I can still taste the Fanta Orange in my mouth, but it’s not the same as usual, there’s another bitter taste with it. She must have put something in it. The rope around my wrists is so tight I can hardly move my hands. My feet are tied too.

I need to remember everything so someone can find me. My teachers say I have a photographic memory; they say I am a genius. I guess it is true. I remember everything if I have seen it once. Everything.

Here is how I will describe Mrs Kweyama: She has a beauty spot on her chin. Wears gold rings on her right index finger, and left middle finger. She wears a lemon smelling perfume. She has a gold slit next to her top molar tooth and a full gold front bottom tooth. She likes bright coloured clothes. When she called my name yesterday she was wearing an orange T-shirt and a green pair of jeans. Her sunglasses were Giorgio Armani.

The windows are open just a bit. I smell sugar in the air. It smells like the sugar mill we passed on a school trip to the South Coast. Now I hear a roaring river. I black out again.

I wake up at 7:30. The car has slowed down a lot. The road is bumpier, the windows are open. I don’t hear the sounds of other cars. Birds chirp; it sounds like a rural area. The blindfold is still loose. I see a signboard out of the window. It reads: ‘Imfume Mission 10’.

“Check on her,” says Mrs Kweyama.

I didn’t know there was another person in the car.

I close my eyes, and pretend to be asleep.

“The blindfold is getting loose but she is still out,” another lady says. I glimpse her under the blindfold as she moves and tightens it. Why didn’t I see her before? She must have been in the passenger seat.


We turn left onto a gravel road. I store it all in my photographic mind.