Eleanor Momberg
Alex Krebs looked tired yet healthy as he walked through the doors of OR Tambo International Airport yesterday.
When the man known by friends as Shani left SA for a holiday in Thailand in 1994, it was a smaller airport in a different world. South Africans went to the polls to elect the country’s first democratic government the day after his arrest in Bangkok.
About 50 friends, relatives and supporters of the organisation working to release South Africans in prisons abroad met him at the airport, waving a banner and wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Welcome Home Shani” and “We Love You”.
Krebs’s sister, Joan, and his childhood friend, Morris van Zyl, were among the first to embrace him as he came through from customs pushing the trolley bearing some of the luggage he had taken with him 18 years ago.
Overcome with emotion, Joan asked a friend to please hold her as “my legs are about to collapse”.
“I cannot believe he is here. I cannot believe this,” she said between the tears.
Friends and supporters jostled for position as they lined up to pose for photos with him.
Standing quietly to one side, Cathy Nick, his 88-year-old mother, and Krebs’s father, Mihaly Nick, looked diminutive and concerned, while Joan’s children Keri and Daren stared at an uncle they barely knew.
“I am just so happy that I have survived these years to see him again,” said Cathy Nick, clutching a bunch of roses and waiting for a few quiet moments with her son.
Her husband said: “I am happy, very happy.”
Krebs refused to discuss the circumstances around his arrest and incarceration at an impromptu press briefing, adding: “Nothing is registering in my mind.”
He described walking into the international arrivals hall as “overwhelming” and “unbelievable”, saying he was especially happy to be back in South Africa.
“I haven’t seen much yet. I have just walked through the airport, but there has been an absolutely great atmosphere, so it’s really great to be home. When I was walking through the gates I was thinking this is my country, these are my people and I am home.”
Krebs said because he had not slept much since his release from the prison, popularly called the “Bangkok Hilton”, into a transitional holding area until he boarded his flight home on Friday night, he had spent most of the flight sleeping.
Krebs was among a group of foreigners convicted of drug trafficking who were granted amnesty by King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand in December. The 52-year-old said: “I was really nervous and having butterflies, but above everything I am extremely excited and happy to be here.”
Because he had pleaded guilty to the drug trafficking charges, Krebs was never going to be executed.
He was instead sentenced to 100 years in Bang Kwang Prison in Bangkok, which was later commuted to 40 years.
While he had hoped to be released last year, he never doubted that one day he would be able to return home.
“In Thailand a life sentence is like you just don’t know – it’s 100 years. I never gave up hope, I kept up hope. I knew that some day I would come home, so I just stayed strong and did what I know best, and that is painting.”
He said all he wanted to do was go home and have a long, hot bath. His mom had arranged a family lunch, to be followed by a get-together with the support group members.
Speaking about changes he would have to face in a world he had not known for 18 years, Krebs said he looked forward to seeing sunshine.
“I am ready to embrace all the challenges that lie ahead,” he said. “There are a lot of things going on in my mind. I have been invited to talk and maybe I will do some drug counselling – I am not really sure. I may want to open an art academy. I am writing a book that is called Dragons and Butterflies, which I hope to publish later this year or maybe next year.”