Andrew Babeile felt like it was "a newborn day" when he signed with his parole officer for the last time. "That was how I felt, but at the very same time, there is something I will miss," he says, the warmth in his voice rapidly disintegrating.
"My entire lifetime, I will bond with my criminal record. This means there are certain places I will never reach."
Babeile - who was first sent to prison after he lashed out with a pair of scissors at a fellow Vryburg High School pupil 10 years ago - finally stepped out as a free man a week ago. He'd spent nearly seven years of his 29 under prison sentence or parole, and will, he fears, forever be known as the black boy who stabbed a white classmate in a racist attack.
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His is indeed an unfortunate, contradictory chronicle. Babeile was labelled dangerous a decade ago in different political weather, paraded as one of the few brave enough to directly take on the anti-democratic establishment of a fascist small town. The media took him apart, and that enhanced his cachet. But the political embrace is long cold.
Now Babeile - who was a teenager when he struck out at a taunting Christoff Erasmus in the playground as the bell rang for the end of break - says he experiences persistent reminders from whites in the town of their perception of his cowardice. In his own community, convicts are shunned.
On the day he walked alone into Vryburg from his grandmother's two-roomed house in the adjacent Huhudi township to sign for parole for the final time, "sore and excited in my heart", four white murderers not much younger than him were considering this week's appeal against their sentence for a race killing seven years ago.
The Pretoria families of the notorious Waterkloof Four - who were teenagers when they beat a man to death - say they will fight to the last, standing with their sons as they have suffered deeply.
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