Extract 2: Trouble in Paradise

Back in South Africa, I became part of the Homecoming Revolution. The first time I heard about the project was when I was living in Sandton. I ran into Chris Meintjes, whom I have known since we were four. He had just returned from London, where he had attended a Homecoming Revolution function. Its purpose was to encourage productive South Africans to return to the country, to help build the New South Africa.

Six months later, the organisers asked me to endorse the campaign. I agreed with everything they promoted and was happy to do so.
But the decision wasn’t without heavy irony.

A few months later, I became a victim of crime. On 3 June 2005, I was conducting swimming clinics in Stockholm when I received a frantic call from my Sandton neighbour, telling me that thieves had broken into my home. That triggered a deluge of phone calls: Radio 702, SAfm, Radio 2000, the Star newspaper, the police. And there I was, sitting in a hotel room in Stockholm on my way to Spain for a holiday. My bags were packed and the taxi was on its way. What the hell was I supposed to do?

Some prize money was stolen from inside a bag that was in a jacket pocket. I didn’t own a safe and thought it was hidden away securely enough. A whole box of medals, including my World Cup gold medals, was taken, along with some laptops, expensive watches and smaller items.
I was furious and upset, especially about the medals. I’m not the kind of person who will flaunt my medals, but they were mine and I treasured them. It made no sense to steal them.

Two months later, I decided to move to Pretoria, where I purchased my first house. If I thought things would get better, I was horribly wrong.
In September 2006 I was on my way to a Reach for a Dream function in Johannesburg for a dying girl. Soon after I left home, I received a call that my home had been broken into.
It was ridiculous. I had lived in the house for all of two weeks and there was barely anything inside. This time, the thieves got away with my digital camera and DStv decoder.

It wasn’t the value of the items that troubled me, but rather the brazen nature of the burglary and how vulnerable it made me feel.
But my bad luck wasn’t at an end. Three months later I was taking a nap upstairs in my home. I was awoken by a banging noise. Thieves were trying to get in, in broad daylight. They had forced the gate in the driveway off its tracks and pulled it open. I was furious, positively boiling, and ran towards them screaming and shouting, which chased them off. Thinking back, it may have been a stupid move on my part – they could have been armed – but I had had enough. They had no right to invade my space or take my possessions.

Unbelievably, my patience with and warmth for South Africa was then tested again. I was on holiday in Ballito when I received a call on 27 December 2006. It was another of those calls. The bastards were at it again.
My neighbour called to say thieves had struck again. This time, one of the robbers had badly cut his hand on a pane of glass he had broken to gain entry. There was blood everywhere he’d walked and on everything he’d touched. He had rifled through my clothes, which were now stained with blood. The carpet was blood-soaked. It looked like a murder scene.

It was the usual story, and I started feeling very negative about the state of affairs in South Africa. On the same weekend, across the highway, three innocent people were shot and killed in separate incidents.
For a long time the area was under siege from criminals. People were nervous; I was one of them. The thieves had only been in my house for four minutes – I know this because of the alarm activation – but the police and the security company had arrived after six minutes. It was a fast reaction time, but not fast enough – the thieves were wise to how much time they had. My housemate Neil’s laptop was stolen and not much else.

And then Elsje made the incident public, informing News24, for which she works, about the break-in. Of course everyone then started asking about it, which continued to remind me of the incident. I was angry and upset, because the break-in was my business to deal with. My house in Pretoria is the first I’ve ever owned. I have an attachment to it and I hated the fact that it had been vandalised. But the worst was the murder of a family member.

In 2005, Inge Lotz was killed in her apartment in Stellenbosch. She had been stabbed numerous times in her chest and her neck, and she was bludgeoned too. It was an awful case, not just because of the cruel nature of her murder, but because she was family. Her father, Professor Jan Lotz, is my mom’s cousin.
Inge and I weren’t particularly close, but whenever our family visited Cape Town, we went to see the Lotz family. Obviously my parents and sisters spent more time with the Lotzes than I did, as I was in America for many years. Ironically, though, I happened to be in Cape Town when I heard of her death the morning following the murder. I couldn’t comprehend it. Being killed in an accident or dying of an illness is bad enough, but to be bludgeoned to death is simply devastating. Inge was beautiful and in the prime of her life. To make it even worse, she was an only child. Her dad lived in Cape Town but worked in Bloemfontein. Consequently, I bumped into him at the airport. Although he’s much bigger than me, he was stooped; a broken, shattered man. That’s when her death really hit me.

The murder was front-page news all across South Africa, even in a country with so many killings. It was close to home for me in more ways than one, because the man originally accused of her murder, Fred van der Vyver, was an Old Grey. My friends Neil Cloete and LJ van Zyl, the champion 400 m hurdler, went to school with him. They would talk about him when we discussed the case, mentioning how smart he was. I remarked that smart guys could also make big mistakes. In the event, Van der Vyver was found not guilty and released in 2007. I was very disappointed that there was no closure in the case or no punishment for her killer. It was a real tragedy.

The contradictions of the New South Africa hit me hard. For the first year and a half after my return to the country, I lived in Sandton and was so happy to be back. I loved the African feel and the vibe of Johannesburg: the newspaper-sellers who would whistle and dance, the energy on the streets, the friendliness of the people who recognised me. I would phone my dad. ‘Jis, I’m so glad I’m home,’ I would tell him.
And then these awful things happened. I started getting scared. What if I was the next victim? I constantly read about people being shot in random acts of violence. If I got shot and wounded, that would be the end of my career. It’s scary, but I consoled myself with the fact that I had lived in America, which had its issues too, although the violence and crime were not on the same level.