by Wilbur Smith
That Monday morning, 21 March 1960, a thousand miles away in the Cape townships of Longa and Nyanga the crowds began assembling. It was raining. That cold drizzling Cape north-wester blew from the sea, dampening the ardour of the majority, but by 6
a.m. there was a crowd of almost ten thousand gathered outside the Longa bachelor quarters, ready to begin the march on the police station.
The police anticipated them. During the weekend they had been heavily reinforced and all officers and senior warrant officers issue with sten guns. Now a Saracen armoured car in drab green battl paint entered the head of the wide road in which the crowd ha assembled, and a police officer addressed them over the Ioudspeake system. He told them that all public meetings had been banned an, that a march on the police station would be treated as an attack.
The black leaders came forward and negotiated with the police and at last agreed to disperse the crowd, but warned that nobod, would go to work that day and there would be another mass meetini at 6 p.m. that evening. When the evening meeting began to assemble the police arrived in Saracen armoured cars, and ordered the crowt to disperse. When they stood their ground, the police baton-chargec them. The crowd retaliated by stoning the police and in a mass rushec forward to attack them. The police commander gave the commanc to fire and the sten guns buzzed in automatic fire and the crowd fled leaving two of their number dead upon the field.
From then on weeks of rioting and stoning and marches racked the Cape peninsula, culminating in a massed march of tens of thousands of blacks. This time they reached the police headquarters at Caledon Square, but dispersed quietly after their leaders had been promised an interview with the minister of justice. When the leaders arrived for this interview, they were arrested on orders of Manfred De La Rey, the minister of police, and because police reserves had by this time been stretched almost to breaking point, soldiers and sailors of the defence force were rushed in to supplement the local police units and within three days the black townships were cordoned off securely.
In the Cape the struggle was over.
In Van Der Bijl Park ten miles from Vereeniging and in Evaton, both notorious centres of radical and violent black political resistance, the crowds began to gather at first light on Monday 21 March.
By nine o'clock the marchers, thousands strong, set out in procession for their local police stations. However, they did not get very far. Here, as in the Cape, the police had been reinforced and the Saracen armoured cars met them on the road and the loud-bailers boomed out the orders to disperse. The orderly columns of marchers bogged down in the quicksands of uncertainty and ineffectual leadership and the police vehicles moved down on them ponderously, forcing them back, and finally broke up their formations with baton charges.
Then abruptly the sky was filled with a terrible rushing sound and every black face was turned upwards. A flight of Sabre jet fighter aircraft of 'the South Aicon airforce flashed overhead, only a hundred feet above the heads of the crowd. They had never seen modern jet fighters in such low-level flight and the sight and the sound of the mighty engines was unnerving. The crowds began to break up, and their leaders lost heart. The demonstrations were over almost before they had begun.
Robert Sobukwe himself marched to Orlando police station in great Soweto. It was five miles from his house in Mofolo, and although small groups of men joined him along the way, they were less than a hundred strong when they reached the police station and offered themselves for arrest under the pass laws.
In most other centres there were no marches, and no arrests. At Hercules police station in Pretoria six men arrived passless and demanded to be arrested. A jocular police officer obligingly took their names and then sent them home.
In most of the Transvaal it was undramatic and anti-climactic but then there was Sharpeville.
Raleigh Tabaka had not slept all night, he had not even lain down to rest but had been on his feet exhorting and encouraging and organizing.
Now at six o'clock in the morning he was at the bus depot. The gates were still locked, and in the yard the long ungainly vehicles stood in silent rows while a group of three anxious-looking supervisors waited inside the gates for the drivers to arrive. The buses should have commenced their first run at 4.30 a.m. and by now there was no possibility that they could honour their schedules.
From the direction of the township a single figure jogged down the deserted road and behind the depot gate the bus company supervisors brightened and moved forward to open the gate for him.
The man hurrying towards them wore the brown peaked driver's cap, with the brass insignia of the bus company on the headband.
Ha, Raleigh said grimly. 'We have missed one of them,' and he signalled his men to intercept the black-leg driver.
The driver saw the young men ahead of him and he stopped abruptly.
Raleigh sauntered up to him smiling and asked, 'Where are you going, my uncleT The man did not reply but glanced around him nervously.
'You were not going to drive your bus, were you?" Raleigh insisted.
'You have heard the words of PAC of which all men have taken heed have you not?" 'I have children to feed,' the man muttered sullenly. 'And I have worked twenty-five years without missing a day." Raleigh shook his head sorrowfully. 'You are a fool, old man. !
forgive you for that - you cannot be blamed for the worm in your skull that has devoured your brains. But you are also a traitor to your people. For this I cannot forgive you." And he nodded to his young men. They seized the driver and dragged him into the bushes beside the road.
The driver fought back, but they were young and strong and many in number and he went down screaming under the blows and after a while, when he was quiet, they left him lying in the dusty dry grass.
Raleigh felt no pity or remorse as he walked away. The man was a traitor, and he should count himself fortunate if he survived his punishment to tell his children of his treachery.
At the bus terminus Raleigh's pickets assured him that only a few commuters had attempted to defy the boycott, but they had scurried away as soon as they had seen the waiting pickets.
'Besides,' one of them told Raleigh, 'not a single bus has arrived." 'You have all begun this day well. Now let us move on to greet the sun of our freedom as it dawns." They gathered in the other pickets as they marched, and Amelia was waiting with her children and the other school staff at the corner of the school yard. She saw Raleigh and ran laughing to join him.
The children giggled and shrieked with excitement, delighted with this unexpected release from the drudgery of the schoolroom, and they skipped behind Raleigh and his young pickets as they went on.
From each cottage they passed the people swarmed out and when they saw the laughing children, they were infected by the gaiety and excitement. Amongst them by now there were grey heads, and young mothers with their infants strapped to their backs, older women in aprons leading a child on each hand, and men in the overalls of the steel company or the more formal attire of clerks and messengers and shop assistants, and the black petty civil servants who assisted in the administration of the apartheid laws. Soon the road behind Raleigh and his comrades was a river of humanity.
As they approached the open common ground they saw that there was already a huge concourse of people gathered there, and from every road leading on to the common more came swarming each minute.
'Five thousand?" Raleigh asked Amelia, and she squeezed his hand and danced with excitement.
'More,' she said. 'There must be more, ten thousand - even fifteen thousand. Oh, Raleigh, I am so proud and happy. Look at our people - isn't it a fine sight to see them all here?" She turned and looked up at him adoringly. 'And I am so proud of you, Raleigh. Without you these poor people would never realize their misery, would never have the will to do anything to change their lot, but look at them now." As Raleigh moved forward the people recognized him and made way for him, and they shouted his name and called him 'brother' and 'comrade'.
At the
end of the open common was a pile of old bricks and builders' rubble and Raleigh made his way towards it, and when he reached it he climbed up on top of it and raised his arms for silence.
'My people, I bring you the word of Robert Sobukwe who is the father of PAC, and he charges you thus - Remember, Moses Gama!
Remember all the pain and hardships of your empty lives! Remember the poverty and the oppression!" A roar went up from them and they raised their clenched fists or gave the thumbs-up sign and they shouted 'Amandla' and 'Gama'. It was some time before Raleigh could speak again, but he told them, 'We are going to burn our passes." He brandished his own booklet as he went on. 'We are going to make fires and burn the dompas. Then we are going to march as one people to the police station and ask them to arrest us. Then Robert Sobukwe will come to speak for us--' this was a momentary inspiration of Raleigh's, and he went on happily, 'then the police will see that we are men, and they will fear us. Never again will they force us to show the dompas, and we will be free men as our ancestors were free men before the white man came to this land." He almost believed it as he said it. It all seemed so logical and simple.
So they lit the fires, dozens of them across the common, starting them with dry grass and crumpled sheets of newspaper, and then they clustered around them and threw their pass books into the flames. The women began swaying their hips and shuffling their feet, and the men danced with them and the children scampered around between their legs and they all sang the freedom songs.
It was past eight o'clock before the marshals could get them moving, and then the mass of humanity began to uncoil like a huge serpent and crawl away towards the police station.
Michael Courtney had watched the Evaton demonstration fizzle out ignominiously, and from a public telephone booth he phoned the Van Der Bijl Park police station to learn that after a police batoncharge on the marchers, all was now quiet there also. When he tried to telephone the Sharpeville police he could not get through, although he wasted almost ten shillings in the coin slot and spent forty frustrating minutes in the telephone booth. In the end he gave up in disgust and went back to the small Morris station wagon which Nana had given him for his last birthday present.
He set off back towards Johannesburg, steeling himself for Leon Herbstein's sarcasm. 'So you got a fine story of the riot that didn't take place. Congratulations, Mickey, I knew I could rely on you." Michael grimaced and lit another cigarette to console himself, but as he reached the junction with the main road he saw the sign Wereeniging 10 miles' and a smaller sign below it 'Sharpeville Township', and instead of turning towards Johannesburg, he turned south and the Morris buzzed merrily down the strangely open and uncrowded roadway.
Lothar De La Rey kept a toilet kit in his desk, complete with razor and toothbrush. When he got back to the station he washed and shaved in the hand basin in the men's toilet and he felt refreshed, although the sense of ominous disquiet that he had experienced during his night patrol still remained with him.
The sergeant at the charge office saluted him as he entered.
'Good morning, sir, are you signing off duty?" but Lotbar shook his head.
Has the kommandant come on duty yet?" 'He came in ten minutes ago." 'Have you had any telephone calls.since midnight, sergeant?" 'Now you come to mention it, sir, no, we haven't. That's funny, isn't it?" 'Not so funny - the lines have been cut. You should have seen that in the station log,' Lothar snapped at him and went through to the station commandefts office. ' He listened gravely to Lothar's report. 'Ja, Lothie. You did good work. I'm not happy about this business. I've had a bad feeling ever since you found those damned pamphlets. They should have given us more men here, not just twenty raw recruits. They should have given us experienced men, instead of sending them to Evaton and the other stations." I have called in the foot patrols,' Lothar told him crisply. He did not want to listen to complaints about the decisions of his superiors.
He knew there were good reasons for everything. 'I suggest we hold all our men here at the station. Concentrate our forces." 'Ja, I agree,' said the commander.
'What about weapons? Should I open the armoury?" 'Ja, Lothie. I think you can go ahead." 'And I'd like to talk to the men before I go out on patrol again." 'All right, Lothie. You tell them we have everything in hand. They must just obey orders and it will be all right." Lothar saluted and strode back into the charge office.
'Sergeant, I want an issue of arms to all white members." 'Sten guns?" The man looked surprised.
'And four spare magazines per man,' Lotbar nodded. 'I will sign the order into the station log." The sergeant handed him the keys and together they went through to the strong room, unlocked and swung open the heavy steel Chubb door. The sten guns stood in their racks against the side wall. Cheap little weapons of pressed steel manufacture, they looked like toys, but the 9 men parabellum cartridges they fired would kill a man as efficiently as the finest crafted Purdey or square-bridged Mauser.
The reinforcements were almost entirely from the police college, fresh-faced and crew-cut, eager boys who looked up at the decorated captain with awe as he told them, 'We are expecting trouble. That's why you are here. You have been issued stens - that alone is a responsibility that each of you must take seriously. Wait for orders, do not act without them. But once you have them, respond swiftly." He took one of his constables with him, and drove down to the main township gates with his sten gun on the seat beside him. It was well after six o'clock by then, but the streets were still quiet. He passed fewer than fifty people, all of them hurrying in the same direction. The post office repair truck was waiting at the gate, and Lothar escorted it down to where the telephone wires had been severed. He waited while a linesman scaled the pole and spliced the wires, and then he escorted the truck back to the gates. Before he reached the broad avenue that led up to the station gates, Lothar pulled to the side of the road and switched off the engine.
The constable in the back seat shifted in his seat and began to say something, but Lotbar snapped at him, 'Quiet!" and the man froze.
They sat in silence for several seconds, before Lothar frowned.
There was a sound like the sea heard from afar, a gentle susurration and he opened the door of the Land-Rover and stepped out.
The whisper was like the wind in- tall grass, and there was a faint vibration that he seemed to feel in the soles of his feet.
Lotbar jumped back into the Land-Rover and drove swiftly to the next road junction, and turned down it towards the open commonage and the school. The sound grew until he could hear it above the beat of the engine. He turned the next corner and tramped so hard on the brakes that the Land-Rover shuddered and skidded to a halt.
Ahead of him from side to side the road was blocked solid with humanity. They were shoulder to shoulder, rank upon rank, thousand upon thousands, and when they saw the police vehicle ahead of them a great shout of 'Amandla' went up, and they surged forward.
For a moment Lothar was paralysed by shock. He was not one of those unusual creatures who never felt fear. He had known fear intimately, on the clamorous field when standing to meet the concerted rush of muscled bodies across the turf as well as in the silent streets of the township as he hunted dangerous unscrupulous men in the night. He had conquered those fears and found a strange exhilaration in the feat. But this was a new thing.
This was not human, this was a monster he faced now. A creature with ten thousand throats and twenty thousand legs, a sprawling insensate monster that roared a meaningless word and had no ears to hear nor mind to reason. It was the mob and Lothar was afraid.
His instinct was to swing the Land-Rover around and race back to the security of the station. In fact, he had already slammed the gear lever into reverse before he had control of himself.
He left the engine running and opened the side door, and the constable in the back seat blasphemed and his voice was thick with terror. 'Sodding Christ, let's get out of here." It served to steel Lothar, and he felt contempt for his own weakness.
As he had done so many times before, he strangled his fear and climbed onto the bonnet of the Land-Rover.
Deliberately he had left the sten gun on the front seat and he did not even unbutton the holster on his belt. A single firearm was useless against this sprawling monster.
He held up his arms and shouted, 'Stop! You people must go back. That is a police order." But his words were drowned in the multitudinous voice of the monster, and it came on apace. The men in the front rank started to run towards him and those behind shouted and pressed forward faster.
'Go back,' Lothar roared, but there was not the slightest check in the ranks and they were close now. He could see the expressions on the faces of the men in front, they were grinning, but Lothar knew how swiftly the African mood can change, how close below the smiles lies the violence of the African heart. He knew he could not stop them, they were too close, too excited, and he was aware that his presence had inflamed them, the mere sight of his uniform was enough.
He jumped down and into the cab, reversed the Land-Rover and then accelerated forward, swinging the wheel into a full lock, and he pulled away as the leaders were within arm's reach.
He pushed the accelerator flat against the floorboards. It was almost two miles back to the station. As he made a quick calculation on how long it would take the march to reach it, he was already rehearsing the orders he would give and working out additional precautions to secure the station.
Suddenly there was another vehicle in the road ahead of him. He had not expected that, and as he swerved to avoid it he saw it was a Morris with lacquered wooden struts supporting the station wagon body. The driver was a young white man.
Lothar slowed and pulled his side window open. 'Where the hell do you think you're going?" he shouted, and the driver leaned out of the window and smiled politely. 'Good morning, Captain?
'Have you got a permit to be here?" Yes, do you want to see it?" 'No, hell,' Lothar told him. 'The permit is cancelled. You are ordered to leave the township immediately, do you hear?" ryes, Captain, I hear." 'There might be trouble,' Lothar insisted. 'You are in danger. I order you to leave immediately for your own safety." 'Right away,' Michael Courtney agreed, and Lothar accelerated away swiftly.