Sipho's workshop stands at the corner of two dirt roads, in Diepsloot, between a phone-credit kiosk and a wall where last week someone wrote a word against foreigners. Sipho has repaired engines for twenty-two years. His mechanic is called Tapiwa, he is from Zimbabwe, and he has worked with him for six. This morning Tapiwa is in the back, where Sipho keeps the spare parts, and the curtain that divides the back from the workshop is drawn.

It is past nine. Tapiwa arrived at seven, like every morning, with his tea in a jar and his bread wrapped in newspaper, and he washed both their cups in the bucket outside, and set them upside down on the counter to dry, like every morning. Then they started on the carburettor of Mandla's taxi, which has to be ready for tonight. It is a morning like the others. On the wall across the way, the word against foreigners is still fresh, someone wrote it on Tuesday and no one has rubbed it out, and besides in Diepsloot the walls are covered with writing and no one rubs it out.

Outside you can hear the group coming up the road. They are the young men of Operation Dudula, about fifteen of them, with green vests and lists. They knock house by house. They ask for papers. Whoever has none, they take to the bus station, and at the bus station there are the coaches for the border, and the coaches leave full. Last week, they say, they filled forty of them in a single day.

Sipho is out in the small yard, finishing a carburettor. He does not lift his head when they reach the gate. After all it is his job, to keep his head down over the engine. He goes on turning the screw until the shadow of three of them falls across his bench.

One of them asks whether he has foreign workers. Sipho wipes his hands on the rag, calmly, one finger at a time. He says only he works here. He says the room they are looking at, the one in the back, is the store, there are only spare parts in it. He offers tea. The tea is ready anyway, he says, come into the shade a moment.

On the workshop counter five cups are drying upside down. Sipho takes three, pours the tea from the thermos, hands them to the young men in the doorway. The other two stay there, upside down, their bottoms still damp. No one counts them. No one asks why in the workshop of a man on his own there should be five cups washed that morning.

The young men drink the tea standing. It is warm even in July, which here is winter, but the midday sun on the tin roof heats it like an oven. They talk about this and that, about a man they picked up yesterday in Cosmo City, about one who had false papers. Sipho nods and says nothing and every so often looks at the open carburettor on the bench, like a man in a hurry to get back to work.

Then the one with the list asks to see the store.

Sipho sets down his cup. He goes to the roller shutter at the back, the one that opens onto the alley, the one that from outside looks like the entrance to the store. He takes the key from the nail. He says, I'll show you now, there's nothing, only boxes. He fits the key. But instead of raising the shutter he lowers it, the one that was already half open, he pulls it all the way down with a sharp bang, and the padlock clicks shut, and he says, there, it's been shut for days, the lock has jammed, in any case there's only filters and belts inside.

The young man with the list looks at the lowered shutter. He looks at the padlock. A store shut for days cannot be checked, after all, and they have another twenty houses to do before evening. They mark something on the sheet. They give back the cups. They go off up the road, towards the credit kiosk, towards the next house.

Sipho stays in the yard until he sees them turn the corner. Then he goes to the shutter and raises it again. In the back, among the shelves of spare parts where the light comes in only through the slit above the door and cuts the dark in two with a blade of dust, Tapiwa is standing against the wall, still, holding a size-fifteen spanner that was of no use to him, in the exact spot where Sipho had left him half an hour before, telling him only, in his usual voice, stay in there a moment. They say nothing to each other now. Tapiwa comes out of the back, returns to the counter, picks up again the hub he was stripping. He still has the size-fifteen spanner in his hand and he sets it down softly, as if even setting it down made a noise.

Sipho puts the key back on the nail. He returns to the carburettor. He screws the bolt back where he had left it. The tea in the thermos has gone cold, and he pours himself half a cup all the same, and drinks it lukewarm, looking at the road where the green vests are no longer there.

On the counter, next to the oil filters, the two upside-down cups are still there. Their bottoms have dried now. No one puts them away. They stay there all afternoon, two clean cups too many, on the counter of a workshop where, in any case, a man works alone.