The discourse of criminality in the Western Cape is suffused with the mythology of the Numbers. In the absence of written texts, researchers have had to rely on oral history. According to Jonny Steinberg, members of the 27s and 28s offer different explanations of the origin of their prison gangs. Steinberg, who interviewed gang members serving long prison sentences in Pollsmoor Prison, reveals that a written text was kept. However, it was engraved on a large boulder, and is now lost.

The Rooiland Series relates to this ‘diary’ rock and a bull’s hide that carried an impression of the rules engraved on that rock.

Imagine a tall man called Po who, in the years around 1890, gathered about him a band of robbers. They were free men; men who so loved life and freedom that they would not work deep underground in the gold mines where death was a daily possibility. They made their living by robbing the pay wagons serving the gold mines that were spread out along the Witwatersrand. Motivated by a strong sense of injustice, they divided themselves into two groups – Kilikijan taking six men and robbing by day, and Nongoloza with seven men that worked the night shift. ‘For a long time, working in this way, they terrorized the whites, taking their gold and hounding their army.’

This much is true; Nongoloza dictated his life story to a prison warder in 1912. Lacking paper and quill, the highwaymen decided to inscribe the laws of the gang on a large boulder. As was their custom, and feeling hungry, the gangsters murdered a farmer and stole a bull called Rooiland. According to sanitized mythology, they first offered to purchase the animal, and only stole after their offer was denied. They then returned to the mountains to feast on the meat. Taking Rooiland’s hide, they draped it over the rock on which their history and rules had been engraved. The gang mythology is not clear as to whether this was done in order to make a copy of the rules, but in any event the wet animal hide contracted onto the rock’s surface and picked up an impression of the text. In this way, the rules were imprinted on the animal skin.

The Rooiland Series consists of six calf hides onto which images have been stenciled. These images are derived from tattoos worn by members of the 28 gang.

Dragon, 920×800; A few dollar, 930×800; SPOEG; 1010×800; Romeo/Juliet, 930×800; Nongoloza, 990×800, and Chosen 1, 980×800

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