by Wilbur Smith
He related every detail of the meeting, and every word that Sobukwe had spoken, to Amelia. Her lovely round face seemed to glow with excitement as she listened and she helped him print the sheets announcing the demonstration and to pack them into the old liquor cartons in lots of five hundred.
On the Friday before the planned demonstration, Raleigh ran a shipment of liquor down to the Buffaloes' shebeen, and he took a carton of pamphlets with him. The Buffaloes were waiting for him in the darkness beside the track, and one of them flashed a torch to guide the pick-up into the scraggy patch of black wattle, and they unloaded the liquor and trudged across to the township fence.
In the cottage Raleigh counted the empty bottles and the full ones and checked these figures against the cash in the canvas bank bag. It tallied and he gave a brief word of commendation to the two Buffaloes, and looked into the front room which was packed with cheerful noisy drinkers.
Then when the door to the nearest bedroom opened and a big Basuto iron-worker came out, grinning and buttoning the front of his blue overalls, Raleigh squeezed past him into the back room. The girl was straightening the sheets on the bed. She was bending over with her back to Raleigh and she was naked, but she looked over her shoulder and smiled when she recognized him. Raleigh was popular with all the girls. She had the money ready for him, and Raleigh counted it in front of her. There was no means of checking her, but over the years Hendrick Tabaka had developed an instinct for a cheating girl, and when Raleigh delivered the money to him he would know if she were holding out.
Raleigh gave her a box of paaphlets and she sat beside him on the bed while he read one of them to her.
'I will be there on Monday,' she promised. 'And I will tell all my men these things and give them each a paper." She placed the box in the bottom of the cupboard and then came back to Raleigh and took his hand.
'Stay a little while,' she invited him. 'I will straighten your back for you." She was a pretty plump little thing and Raleigh was tempted.
Amelia was a traditional Nguni maiden, and she did not suffer the curse of western-style jealousy. In fact, she had urged him to accept the offers of the other girls. 'If I am not allowed to sharpen your spear, let the joy-girls keep it bright for the time when I am at last allowed to feel its kiss." 'Come,' the girl urged Raleigh now, and stroked him through the cloth of his trousers. 'See how the cobra awakes,' she laughed. 'Let me wring his neck!" Raleigh took one step back towards the bed, laughing with her then suddenly he froze and the laugh was cut off abruptly. Out in the darkness he had heard the whistle of the lookouts.
'Police,' he snapped. 'The leopard--' and there was the sudden distinctive rumble of a Land-Rover being driven hard and headlights flashed across the cheap curtaining that covered the window.
Raleigh sprang to the door. In the front room the drinkers were fighting to escape through the door and windows, and the table, covered with glasses and empty bottles, was overturned and glass shattered. Raleigh shouldered panic-stricken bodies out of his way and reached the kitchen door. It was locked but he opened it with his own key and slipped through, locking it again behind him.
He switched off the lights and stole across to the back door and placed his hand on the door knob. He would not make the mistake of running out into the yard. The leopard was notoriously quick with his pistol. Raleigh waited in the darkness, and he heard the screams and the scuffling, the crack of the riot batons on flesh and bone and the grunting of the men who swung them and he steeled himselfi Just beyond the door, he heard light running footsteps and suddenly the door handle was seized from the far side and violently twisted. As the man on the outside tried to pull the door open, Raleigh held it, and the other man heaved and swore, leaning back on it with all his weight.
Raleigh let the handle go, and reversed his resistance, throwing his body against the cheap pine door so that it burst open. He felt it crash into human flesh and he had a glimpse of the brown-uniformed figure hurtling backwards down the stairs. Then he used his own momentum to leap up and outwards, clearing the police officer like a steeplechaser, and he went bounding away towards the hole in the mesh fence.
As he ducked through it he glanced back and saw the police officer on his knees. Though his features were contracted and swollen with pain and anger, Raleigh recognized him. It was Ngwi, the killer of men, and the blue service revolver glinted in his hand as it cleared the holster at his side.
Fear sped Raleigh's feet as he darted away into the darkness, but he jinked and twisted as he ran. Something passed close to his head with a snapping report that hurt his eardrums and made him flinch his head wildly and he jinked again. Behind him was another thudding report but he did not hear the second bullet and he saw the dark shape of the Ford ahead of him.
He tumbled into the front seat and started the engine. Without switching on the headlights he bumped over the verge on to the track and accelerated away into the darkness.
He found that he still had the canvas bag of money clutched in his left hand, and his relief was intense. His father would be incensed at the loss of the liquor stocks, but his anger would have been multiplied many times if Raleigh had lost the money as well.
Solomon Nduli telephoned Michael Courtney at his desk in the newsroom. 'I have something for you,' he told Michael. 'Can you come out to the Assegai offices right away." 'It's after five already,' Michael protested, 'and it's Friday night. I won't be able to get a pass to enter the township." 'Come,' Solomon insisted. 'I will wait for you at the main gate." He was as good as his promise, a tall gangly figure in steel-rimmed glasses, waiting under the street lamp near the main gates, and as soon as he slipped into the front seat of the company car, Michael passed him his cigarette pack.
'Light one for me, as well,' he told Solomon. 'I brought some sardine and onion sandwiches and a couple of bottles of beer. They are on the back seat." There was no public place in Johannesburg, or in the entire land for that matter, where two men of different colour could sit and drink or eat together. Michael drove slowly and aimlessly through the streets while they ate and talked.
'The PAC are planning their first big act since they broke away from the ANC,' Solomon told Michael through a mouthful of sardine and onion. 'In some areas they have built up strong support.
In the Cape and the rural tribal areas, even in some parts of the Transvaal. They have pulled in all the young militants who are unhappy with the pacifism of the old men. They want to follow Moses Gama's example, and take on the Nationalists in a head-on fight." 'That's crazy,' Michael said. 'You can't fight sten guns and Saracen armoured cars with half bricks." 'Yes, it's crazy, but then some of the young people would prefer to die on their feet than live on their knees." They were together for an hour, talking all that time, and then at last Michael drove him back to the main gates of Drake's Farm.
'So that's it then, my friend." Solomon opened the car door. 'If you want the best story on Monday, I would suggest you go down to the Vereeniging area. The PAC and Poqo have made that their stronghold on the Witwatersrand." 'Evaton?" Michael asked.
'Yes, Evaton will be one of the places to watch,' Solomon Nduli agreed. 'But the PAC have a new man in Sharpeville." 'Sharpeville?" Michael asked. 'Where is that? I've never heard of it?
'Only twelve miles from Evaton." 'I'll find it on my road map." 'You might think it worth the trouble to go there,' Solomon encouraged Michael. 'This PAC organizer in Sharpeville is one of the party's young lions. He will put on a good show, you can count on that." Manfred De La Rey asked quietly. 'So, how many reinforcements can we spare for the stations in the Vaal area?" General Dame Leroux shook his head and smoothed back the wings of silver hair at his temples with both hands. 'We have only three days to move in reinforcements from the outlying areas and most of those will be needed in the Cape. It will mean stripping the outlying stations and leaving them very vulnerable." 'How many?" Manfred insisted.
'Five or six hundred men for the Vaal,' Dame Leroux said with obvious reluctance.
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br /> 'That will not be enough,' Manfred growled. 'So we will reinforce all stations lightly, but hold most of our forces in mobile reserve and react swiftly to the first hint of trouble." He turned his full attention to the map that covered the operations table in the control room of police headquarters in Marshall Square. 'Which are the main danger centres on the Vaal?" 'Evaton,' Dame Leroux replied without hesitation. 'It's always one of the trouble spots, and then Van Der Bijl Park." 'What about Sharpeville?" Manfred asked, and held up the crudely printed pamphlet that he had tightly rolled in his right hand. 'What about this?" The general did not reply immediately, but he pretended to study the operations map as he composed his reply. He was well aware that the subversive pamphlets had been discovered by Captain Lothar De La Rey, and he knew how the minister felt about his son.
Indeed Dame Leroux shared the general high opinion of Lothar, so he did not want to belittle him in any way or to offend his minister.
'There may well be disturbances in the Sharpeville area,' he conceded. 'But it is a small township and has always been very peaceful. We can expect our men there to behave well and I do not see any immediate danger. I suggest we send twenty or thirty men to reinforce Sharpeville, and concentrate our main efforts on the larger townships with violent histories of boycotts and strikes." 'Very well,' Manfred agreed at last. 'But I want you to maintain at least forty percent of our reinforcements in reserve, so that they can be moved quickly to any area that flares up unexpectedly." 'What about arms?" Dame Leroux asked. 'I am about to authorize the issue of automatic weapons to all units." He turned the statement into a query and Manfred nodded.
'Ja, we must be ready for the worst. There is a feeling amongst our enemies that we are on the verge of capitulation. Even our own people are becoming frightened and confused." His voice dropped, but his tone was fiercer and more determined. 'We have to change that. We have to crush these people who wish to tear down and destroy all we stand for and give this land over to bloodshed and anarchy." The centres of support for the PAC were widely scattered across the land, from the eastern tribal areas of the Ciskei and the Transkei to the southern part of the great industrial triangle along the Vaal river, and a thousand miles south of that in the black township of Longa and Nyanga that housed the greater part of the migrant worker force that serviced the mother city of Cape Town.
In all these areas Sunday 20 March 1960 was a day of feverish effort and planning, and of a peculiar expectancy. It was as though everybody at last believed that this new decade would be one of immense change.
The radicals were filled With hid feeling of infinite hope, however irrational, and with a certainty that the Nationalist government was on the verge of collapse. They felt that the world was with them, that the age of colonialism had blown away on the winds of change, and that after a decade of massive political mobilization by the black leaders, the time of liberation was at last at hand. All it needed now was one last shove, and the walls of apartheid would crash to earth, crushing under them the evil architect Verwoerd and his builders who had raised them up.
Raleigh Tabaka felt that marvelous euphoria as he and his men moved through the township, going from cottage to cottage with the same message: 'Tomorrow we will be as one people. No one will go to work. There will be no buses and those who try to walk to the town will be met by the Poqo on the road. The names of all who defy the PAC will be taken and they will be punished. Tomorrow we are going to make the white police fear us." They worked all that day, and by evening every person, man and woman, in the township had been warned to stay away from work and to assemble in the open space near the new police station early on the Monday morning.
'We are going to make the white police fear us. We want everybody to be there. If you do not come, we will find you." Amelia had worked as hard and unremittingly as Raleigh had done, but like him she was still fresh, unwearied and excited as they ate a quick and simple meal in the back room of the bakery.
'Tomorrow we will see the sun of freedom rise,' Raleigh told her as he wiped his bowl with a crust of bread. 'But we cannot afford to sleep. There is still much work to do this night." Then he took her hand and told her, 'Our children will be born free, and we will live our life together like men, not like animals." And he led her out into the darkening township to continue the preparations for the great day that lay ahead.
They met in groups on the street corners, all the eager young ones, and Raleigh and Amelia moved amongst them delegating their duties for the morrow, selecting those who would picket the road leading from Sharpeville to Vereeniging.
'You will let no one pass. Nobody must leave the township,' Raleigh told them. 'All the people must be as one when we march on the police station tomorrow morning." 'You must tell the people not to fear,' Raleigh urged them. 'Tell them that the white police cannot touch them and that there will be a most important speech from the white government concerning the abolition of the pass laws. Tell the people they must be joyful and unafraid and that they must sing the freedom songs that PAC has taught them." After midnight Raleigh assembled his most loyal and reliable men, ncluding the two Buffaloes from the shebeen, and they went to the homes of all the black bus drivers and taxi drivers in the township and pulled them from their beds.
'Nobody will leave Sharpeville tomorrow,' they told them. 'But we do not trust you not to obey your white bosses. We will guard you until the march begins. Instead of driving your buses and taxis tomorrow and taking our people away, you will march with them to the police station. We will see to it that you do. Come with us now." As the false dawn flushed the eastern sky, Raleigh himself scaled a telephone pole at the boundary fence and cut the wires. When he slid down again he laughed, as he told Amelia, 'Now our friend th leopard will not find it so easy to call in other police to help him." Captain Lothar De La Rey parked his Land-Rover and left it in a sanitary lane in a patch of shadow out of the street lights and he moved quietly to the corner and stood alone.
He listened to the night. In the years he had served at Sharpeville he had learned to judge the pulse and the mood of the township. He let his feelings and his instincts take over from reason, and almost immediately he was aware of the feral excitement and sense of expectation which had the township in its grip. It was quiet until you listened, as Lothar was listening now. He heard the dogs. They were restless, some close, others at a distance, yapping and barking, and there was an urgency in them. They were seeing and scenting groups and single figures in the shadows. Men hurrying on secret errands.
Then he heard the other sounds, soft as insect sounds in the night.
The whistle of lookouts on the watch for his patrols and the recognition signals of the street gangs. In one of the dark cottages nearby a man coughed nervously, unable to sleep, and in another a child whimpered fretfully and was instantly hushed by a woman's soft voice.
Lothar moved quietly through the shadows, listening and watching. Even without the warning of the pamphlets, he would have known that tonight the township was awake and strung up.
Lothar was not an imaginative or romantic young man, but as he scouted the dark streets he suddenly had a clear mental picture of his ancestors performing this same dire task. He saw them bearded and dressed in drab homespun, armed with the long muzzle-loaders, leaving the security of the laagered wagons, going out alone into the African night to scout for the enemy, the swartgevaar, the black danger. Spying out the bivouac where the black impis lay upon their war shields, waiting for the dawn to rush in upon the wagons. His nerves crawled at those atavistic memories, and he seemed to hear the battle chant of the tribes in the night and the drumming of assegai on rawhide shield, the stamp of bare feet and the crash of war rattles on wrist and ankle as they came in upon the wagons for the dawn attack.
In his imagination the cry of the restless infant in tile nearby cottage became the death screams of the little Boer children at Weenen, where the black impis had come sweeping down from the hills to massacre all in the Boer encampment.
He went back to the Land-Rover and drove slowly through the streets. Time and again he glimpsed small groups of dark figures, but when he turned the spotlight upon them, they melted away into the night. Everywhere he went he heard the warning whistles out there in the darkness, and his nerves tightened and tingled. When he met his own tbot-patrolling constables, they also were nervous and ill-at-ease.
When the dawn turned the eastern sky pale yellow and dimmed out the street lamps, he drove back through the streets. At this time in the morning they should have been filled with hurrying commuters, but now they were empty and silent.
Lothar reached the bus terminus, and it too was almost deserted.
Only a few young men in small groups lounged at the railings. There were no buses, and the pickets stared at the police Land-Rover openly and insolently as Lothar drove slowly past.
As he skirted the boundary fence, passing close to the main gates, he exclaimed suddenly and braked the Land-Rover. From one of the telephone poles the cables trailed limply to the earth. Lothar left the vehicle and went to examine the damage. He lifted the loose end of the dangling copper wire, and saw immediately that it had been cut cleanly. He let it drop and walked slowly back to the LandRover.
Before he climbed into the driver's seat, he glanced at his wristwatch. It was ten minutes past five o'clock. Officially he would be off duty at six, but he would not leave his post today. He knew his duty. He knew it would be a long and dangerous day and he steeled himself to meet it.