South Africa: The Interrogation and My Mom, the Actress
Eventually this guy puts me in this room with two Pakistani gentlemen to do nothing but sit and wait. I ask one of the men why they are here, he says “I do not know, I am here on business. I sell cars” I ask how long they’ve been in here for and he replies, “Two hours.” Two hours? Are you kidding me? About five minutes later, 4 mandarin women with a young man walk in, all the woman in hijabs, and only one of them speaks very broken English that I could barely interpret. The man from Pakistan I was speaking to, Raja, was able to communicate with them and tells me they don’t know why they are being held either. They had student visas and were here on a school trip. It was at that point I thought, “oh my god, they’re racist as hell.” A tourist, some students and two car salesmen sat in a room because of what I thought was the color of our skin, guess I got a taste of what many people go through. Granted, I’m the only one who cursed so for me it may have been a bit more than racial profiling.
After a few more minutes, Raja and his companion are allowed to leave, I bid them farewell with a sense of hope that I will get out of this situation. After a few more minutes of waiting, they tell me to come into this room where I was essentially interrogated about the “incident” that happened at immigration. I tell my side of the story, leaving out quite a lot of my personal opinions about the situation, I could tell I had to choose my words carefully. They tell me that cursing is a strong enough offense in this country to be denied entry and sent back home. The man who took me into the room was there listening to my “interrogation” looking at me with a face of disgust that I could not think was funnier; my inner rebel reaching the surface made it a challenge to keep my head, but I kept my composure. An officer told me I had to apologize to the immigration attendant I said the word “shit” to because apparently, cursing at an “immigration enforcer” was an unlawful offense in this country. Keeping my head in the game and my manners in mind, I gave as sincere an apology as I could and put my hand out to shake his, to which he replied, “I don’t believe him.” Now, at this point I have lost all respect that I might have had for these workers and considered them a joke.
Luckily for me, not long after this happened the officer who told me to apologize takes me out of the area where I was being held. Apparently, my mother, bless her heart, went to the police station at the airport and, in her words, put on an “Oscar worthy performance” that clearly worked. Even though the attendant did not like my apology, I was walked right past him (took a lot of effort not to flick him off with both hands) and finally the police officer took me to an attendant to process me. The officer said something along the lines of “Don’t use bad words and be respectful. You can indeed get deported for being disrespectful.”
Now, I just had to go onto the internet and see if they were straight up lying or if there was some truth to this. So, after about ten minutes doing google searches, I found nothing at all along the lines of getting deported for cursing or “being disrespectful.” The closest thing I could find was it being a crime of moral turpitude. This basically means that any act done with evil intent that shocks the public. Okay, I can see that, however, crimes such as theft and murder are considered crimes of moral turpitude, so I do want to make an argument that what I did is just maybe a few levels… or a lot of levels below theft and murder.
Anyway, my mother gets the cops to get me through and takes me to the station to thank them for their help which I gladly did. This was sincere. They got me out of such a surreal experience that happened within a half hour of me entering the country. While we were there, the other officers at the station said they often have problems with immigration at the airport. So, if you ever fly into Johannesburg at O R Tambo International Airport, keep your composure and just play nice. Deal with the bullshit. Trust me, it is better than the alternative.
When the whole debacle was over, me and mom were finally able to check into our hotel for the night, get some dinner and drinks. At last, the adventure was going to start.
