Johannesburg - I met mercy on a Metrorail train from Naledi to Johannesburg about 15 years ago, and she led me a merry dance with death at the hands of a somewhat very reasonable thug. This was not my first dance, neither my first encounter with a thug with a conscience.
Albert Barnes, the American clergyman and writer, said that nowhere do we imitate God more than in showing mercy.
Though bloodshed was in the air, I was not in the mood to get stabbed that night.
I was filled with nothing but gratitude after I had just been robbed at knifepoint, my bag and shoes taken. I used to work as a waiter while studying, and I had saved and just bought that pair of black Converse All-Star when he made me take it off, or bleed.
I met mercy that night. Many have bled, and many have died – my older brother is one of them, he was robbed and stabbed in the heart in Hillbrow about 15 years ago.
What a piercing reality it would have been. Had I not met mercy at that encounter, my father would have lost his two sons to stab wounds in the same year; one with an Okapi knife, the other with a screwdriver – my older brother was the other.
Here is why the thug was reasonable: he made it very clear, in a very calm tone, that he would not hurt me if I co-operated.
It was just the two of us in the coach from Naledi and we started chatting, even shared a cigarette. We were almost friends until the train arrived at Mzimhlophe, his destination, and he climbed out. And when realising that the train has stopped moving, “my friend” came back into the coach and I didn’t recognise him. His face was of something else, with a horrid scowl, that I had seen before.
He already knew what was in my bag, just a change of clothes, and he had complimented my new shoes. I know it was a ruse, but I also know there was a connection. We were just two guys learning lessons about moving in the shadows, lessons that determine if you stay, leave or die in the shadows.
After he had stripped me of my things and jogged out of the train, I followed him and said: “I have my keys in the outside zipper of my bag, please throw them to me.”
He stopped, perhaps thinking about the trip to Krugersdorp I was making; the wait at Langlaagte station, he knew there were people worse than him there. And the 15-minute walk from Krugersdorp station, past an isolated bridge and an open veld, to my home, if I made it there.
He unzipped, reached, and threw the keys to me, and off into the shadows he disappeared. I suppose his conscience told him the least I could have is entry into my home if I made it there, from that Metrorail train from Naledi to Johannesburg.