I should have listened to my intuition when it told me to stay home.
On April 15, 2026, we went on a class trip to Kgosi Mampuru II Prison in Pretoria. The main attractions were the museum and the gallows. The museum was fine. Necessary, even. The Correctional Officer told us about uniforms, rehabilitation methods, and workshops where prisoners learn poultry and woodwork, among other things. She explained the difference between the A-group and the B-group, and how, after six months, social workers and psychologists decide who gets to walk unchained, but supervised, and who gets to work.
She told us dinner is at 14:00. I remember flinching. Dinner at 14:00, then nothing until 08:00 the next morning. I cannot imagine that hunger. But I understood. This is discipline. This is a consequence. From the description, the food sounded unappetising, but when you have lost your freedom, food is grace. The museum was an educational experience.
Then we hiked to the C-Max section; the walk there was long.
At the gate, the other correctional officer, Mr. Kgomo, asked, “Does anyone have physical challenges?” Silence. “Spiritual challenges?” My hand went up before I could stop it. I am spiritually gifted, which means I feel things other people cannot. Energies cling to me. They make me sick. I do not talk about it. People do not understand, and what they do not understand, they demonise. But I could not lie. Not there.
The Gallows, a place where apartheid legalised murder.
Once I stepped over the threshold, it hit me. A weight, sudden and violent, pressed into my chest. My head split with pain. My ears rang. My eyes burned. I knew, instantly, I had made a mistake. That place is not empty. It is crowded. It is full of ancestral rage, betrayal, and grief. I could smell blood, though the floors were scrubbed clean. I could not see them, but I felt them; the men whose fate was already decided. They walked in alive and left in boxes. I could hear the cries of people who died fighting so I could have freedom.
The echoes of ancestors who never got named. Lost souls pacing because no one came to claim them. I felt my stomach turn. I wanted to leave and cry. But I could not. Not there. Not with classmates watching. Not when being gifted is already something people whisper about. So, I swallowed it, and I carried it. The same way those men had to carry their pain.
Days later, and I’m still sick; my spirit has not settled. My body aches in places medicine cannot touch. Death does not scare me. But historical death fuelled by hatred, oppressive laws, and a system that weighed a Black man and found him disposable, scares me.
I found Mr. Kgomo extremely insensitive when he said, “God loves us all,” basically preaching about forgiveness. That to me sounded much like he was justifying the brutality imposed by the apartheid government.
You do not have to understand what it is like to experience a room full of souls pressing against your chest or understand generational trauma freezing up your blood. Just understand that it happened.
They died so I could be free.
FEATURED IMAGE: A portrait of Naledi Maraisane. Photo: Alaistair Russell
