As Oscar Pistorius starts a five-year sentence at Pretoria’s Central Prison the Olympian will need to urgently study the lore and laws of South Africa’s numbers gangs.
More than a century old, the gangs – the 26s, 27s and 28s, dominate South Africa’s prison system with a mixture of arcane mythology, sexual intimidation and sometimes extreme violence.
Pistorius, serving his sentence for the manslaughter of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, will quickly have to learn how to navigate through the darkest corners of jailhouse anthropology.
His life may depend on it.
According to his lawyers he has already had a death threat from the ‘general’ of the 26s, who is reported to be a murderer serving a 33-year sentence.
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He told a South African news agency that if Pistorius is given special treatment then he will die.
This may have been part of the plea for leniency. But it’s also a real danger.
Pistorius will most likely remain in a segregated part of the prison which also accommodates the mass killer of the apartheid regime, Eugene de Kock.
If not, he may have to seek the protection of the 28s or 27s from the threat made by the leader of the 26s.
All three gangs have their roots in the story of how Po, a deity of some kind, met Nongoloza and Kilikijan in the late 19th Century as both men were heading to work in the white-owned gold mines of the Vaal Reef.
