by Wilbur Smith
‘Well, Lothie,’ he said heavily. ‘I’m going to miss you.’ He smiled at the gleam in those alert but strangely pale yellow eyes. ‘Ja, my young friend,’ he nodded, ‘your transfer – you leave us at the end of May.’
Lothar leaned back in his chair and smiled. He suspected that his own father had been instrumental in keeping him so long on this station, but although it had been increasingly irksome to waste time in this little backwater, hfs father knew best and Lothar was grateful for the experience he had gained here. He knew that a policeman only really learns his job on the beat, and he had put in his time. He knew he was a good policeman, and he had proved it to them all. Anybody who might be tempted to attribute his future promotions to his father’s influence had only to look at his service record. It was all there. He had paid his dues in full, but now it was time to move on.
‘Where are they sending me, sir?’
‘You lucky young dog.’ The commander shook his head with mock envy. ‘You are going to CID headquarters at Marshall Square.’
It was the plum. The most sought-after, the most prestigious posting that any young officer could hope for. CID headquarters was right at the very nerve centre and heart of the entire force. Lothar knew that from there it would be swift and sure. He would have his general’s stars while he was still a young man, and with them the maturity and reputation to make his entry into politics smooth and certain. He could retire from the force on the pension of a general, and devote the rest of his life to his country and his Volk. He had it all planned. Each step was clear to Lothar. When Dr Verwoerd went, he knew that his father would be a strong contender to take over the premiership. Perhaps one day there would be a second Minister of Police with the name of De La Rey, and after that another De La Rey at the head of the nation. He knew what he wanted, what road he had to follow, and he knew also that his feet were securely upon that road.
‘You are being given your chance, Lothie,’ the commander echoed his own thoughts. ‘If you take it, you will go far – very far.’
‘However far it is, sir, I will always remember the help and encouragement you have given me here at Sharpeville.’
‘Enough of that. You have a couple of months before you go.’ The commander was suddenly embarrassed. Neither of them were men who readily displayed their emotions. ‘Let’s get down to work. What about the raid tonight? How many men are you going to use?’
Lothar had the headlights of the Land-Rover switched off, and he drove slowly for the four-cylinder petrol engine had a distinctive beat that his quarry would pick up at a distance if the vehicle was driven hard.
There was a sergeant beside him, and five constables in the rear of the Land-Rover, all of them armed with riot batons. In addition, the sergeant had an automatic twelve-gauge Greener shotgun and Lothar wore his sidearm on his Sam Browne belt. They were lightly armed, for this was merely a liquor raid.
Sale of alcohol to blacks was strictly controlled, and was restricted to the brewing of the traditional cereal-based beer by state-controlled beer-halls. The consumption of spirits and wines by blacks was forbidden, but this prohibition caused illicit shebeens to flourish. The profits were too high to be passed by. The liquor was either stolen or purchased from white bottle stores or manufactured by the shebeen owners themselves. These home brews were powerful concoctions known generally as skokiaan, and according to the recipe of the individual distiller could contain anything from methylated spirits to the corpses of poisonous snakes and aborted infants. It was not uncommon for the customers of the shebeens to end up permanently blinded, or demented, or occasionally dead.
Tonight Lothar’s team was setting out to raid a newly established shebeen which had been in business for only a few weeks. Lothar’s information was that it was controlled by a black gang called ‘The Buffaloes’.
Of course, Lothar was fully aware of the size and scope of the Buffaloes’ operations. They were without doubt the largest and most powerful underworld association on the Witwatersrand. It was not known who headed the gang but there had been hints that it was connected to the African Mineworkers’ Union and to one of the black political organizations. Certainly it was most active on the goldmining properties closer to Johannesburg, and in the large black townships such as Soweto and Drake’s Farm.
Until now they had not been bothered by the Buffaloes here in Sharpeville, and for this reason the setting up of a controlled shebeen was alarming. It might herald a determined infiltration of the area which would almost certainly be followed by a campaign to politicize the local black population, with the resulting protest rallies and boycotts of the bus line and white-owned businesses, and all the other trouble whipped up by the agitators of the African National Congress and the newly formed Pan-Africanist Congress.
Lothar was determined to crush it before it spread like a bush fire through his whole area. Above the soft burble of the engine, out there in the darkness he heard a sharp double-fluted whistle and almost immediately it was repeated at a distance, down near the end of the avenue of quiet cottages.
‘Magtig!’ Lothar swore softly but bitterly. ‘They’ve spotted us!’ The whistles were the warnings of the shebeen lookouts.
He switched on the headlights and gunned the Land-Rover. They went hurtling down the narrow street.
The shebeen was at the end of the block, in the last cottage hard up against the boundary fence with a stretch of open veld beyond. As the headlights swept across the front of the cottage, he saw half a dozen dark figures pelting away from it, and others were fighting each other to get out of the front door and leaping from the windows.
Lothar swung the Land-Rover up over the pavement, through the tiny garden, and braked it into a deliberate and skilfully executed broadside, blocking the front door.
‘Let’s go!’ he yelled, and his men flung the doors open and sprang out.
They grabbed the bewildered shebeen drinkers who were trapped between the Land-Rover and the cottage wall. As one of them began to resist, he dropped to a practised swing of a riot baton and the limp body was bundled into the back of the vehicle.
Lothar sprinted around the side of the cottage, and caught a woman in his arms as she jumped through the window. He turned her upside down in the air and held on to one ankle as he reached out and seized the arm of the next man through the window. In a single swift motion he handcuffed the two of them together, wrist to ankle, and left them floundering and falling over each other like a pair of trussed hens.
Lothar reached the back door of the cottage, and made his first mistake. He seized the handle and jerked the door open. The man had been waiting on the inside, poised and ready, and as the door began to open he hurled his full weight upon it and the edge of it crashed into Lothar’s chest. The wind was driven from his lungs, and hissed up his throat as he went over backwards down the steps, sprawling on the hard sun-baked earth, and the man leaped clean over him.
Lothar caught a glimpse of him against the light, and saw that he was young and well built, lithe and quick as a black cat. Then he was racing away into the darkness, heading for the boundary fence that backed up to the cottage.
Lothar rolled over onto his knees and came to his feet. Even with the start the fugitive had, there was nobody who could outrun Lothar in a fair match. He was at the peak of fitness, after months of rigorous training for the Currie Cup match and the national trials, but as he started forward the agony of his empty lungs made him double over and wheeze for breath.
Ahead of him the fleeing figure ducked through a hole in the mesh of the fence, and Lothar fell to his knees and snapped open the holster at his side. Three months before, he had been runner-up in the police pistol championships at Bloemfontein, but now his aim was unsteady with agony and the dark figure was merging with the night, quartering away from him. Lothar fired twice but after each long bright muzzle flash there was no thumping impact of bullet into flesh and the runner was swallowed up by darkness. Lothar slid the weapon back into his holster, and
fought to fill his lungs – his humiliation was more painful than his injury. Lothar was unaccustomed to failure.
He forced himself to get to his feet. None of his men should see him grovelling, and after only a minute, and even though his lungs were still on fire, he went back and dragged his two captives to their feet with unnecessary violence. The woman was stark naked. Obviously she had been entertaining a client in the back bedroom, but now she was wailing tragically.
‘Shut your mouth, you black cow,’ he told her, and shoved her through the back door of the cottage.
The kitchen had been used as the bar. There were cases of liquor stacked to the ceiling, and the table was piled with a high pyramid of empty tumblers.
In the front room the floor was covered with broken glass and spilled liquor, evidence of the haste with which it had been vacated, and Lothar wondered how so many customers had fitted into a room that size. He had seen at least twenty escape into the night.
He shoved the naked prostitute towards one of his black constables. ‘Take care of her,’ he ordered, and the man grinned lasciviously and tweaked one of her tawny melon-round breasts.
‘None of that,’ Lothar warned him. He was still angry at the one who had got away, and the constable saw his face and sobered. He led the woman through into the bedroom to find her clothing.
Lothar’s other men were coming in, each of them leading two or three sorry-looking captives.
‘Check their passes,’ Lothar ordered, and turned to his sergeant. ‘All right, Cronje, let’s get rid of this stuff.’
Lothar watched as the cases of liquor were carried out and stacked in front of the cottage. Two of his constables opened them and smashed the bottles against the edge of the kerb. The sweet fruity smell of cheap brandy filled the night and the gutter ran with the amber-brown liquid.
When the last bottle had been destroyed, Lothar nodded at his sergeant. ‘Right, Cronje, take them up to the station.’ And while the prisoners were loaded into the two police trucks that had followed his Land-Rover, Lothar went back into the cottage to check that his men had not overlooked anything of importance.
In the back room with its tumbled bed and stained sheets, he opened the single cupboard and distastefully used the point of his riot baton to rummage through it.
Beneath the pile of clothing at the bottom of the cupboard was a small cardboard carton. Lothar pulled it out and tore open the lid. It was filled with a neat stack of single-leaf pamphlets, and idly he glanced at the top one until its impact struck him. He snatched up the sheet and turned it to the light from the bare bulb in the ceiling.
This is the Poqo of which it is said, ‘Take up your spear in your right hand, my beloved people, for the foreigners are looting your land.’
Poqo was the military branch of the Pan-Africanist Congress. The word Poqo meant pure and untainted, for none other than pure-blooded African Bantu could become members, and Lothar knew it for an organization of young fanatics already responsible for a number of vicious and brutal murders. In the little town of Paarl in the Cape Poqo had marched hundreds strong upon the police station and when driven back had vented their fury upon the civilian population, massacring two white women, one a girl of seventeen years. In the Transkei they had attacked a road-party encampment and murdered the white supervisor and his family in the most atrocious manner. Lothar had seen the police photographs and his skin crawled at the memory. Poqo was a name to fear and Lothar read the rest of the pamphlet with full attention.
On Monday we are going to face the police. All the people of Sharpeville will be as one on that day. No man or woman will go to his place of work. No man or woman will leave the township by bus or train or taxi. All the people will gather as one and march to the police station. We are going to protest at the pass law which is a terrible burden, too heavy for us to carry. We will make the white police fear us.
Any man or woman who does not march with us on Monday will be hunted down. On that day all the people will be as one.
Poqo has said this thing. Hear it and obey it.
Lothar read the crudely printed pamphlet through again, and then he murmured, ‘So it has come at last.’ He picked out the sentence which had offended him most, ‘We will make the white police fear us,’ and he read it aloud.
‘So! We will see about that!’ And he shouted for his sergeant to take the carton of subversive leaflets out to the truck.
There was an inevitability in Raleigh Tabaka’s life. The great river of his existence carried him along with it so that he was powerless to break free of it or even swim against the current.
His mother, as one of the most adept of the tribal sangomas of Xhosa, had first instilled in him the deep awareness of his African self. She had showed him the mysteries and the secrets, and read the future for him in the casting of the bones.
‘One day you will lead your people, Raleigh Tabaka,’ she prophesied. ‘You will become one of the great chiefs of Xhosa and your name will be spoken with those of Makana and Ndlame – all these things I see in the bones.’
When his father, Hendrick Tabaka, sent him and his twin brother Wellington across the border to the multiracial school in Swaziland, his Africanism had been confirmed and underscored, for his fellow pupils had been the sons of chiefs and black leaders from countries like Basutoland and Bechuanaland. These were countries where black tribes ruled themselves, free of the white man’s heavy paternal fluences, and he listened with awe as they spoke of how their families lived on equal terms with the whites around them.
This came as a total revelation to Raleigh. In his existence the whites were a breed apart, to be feared and avoided, for they wielded an unchallenged power over him and all his people.
At Waterford he learned that this was not the law of the universe. There were white pupils, and although it was at first strange, he ate at the same table as they did, from the same plates and with the same utensils, and slept in a bed alongside them in the school dormitory, and sat on the toilet seat still warm from a white boy’s bottom and vacated it to another little white boy waiting impatiently outside the door for him to finish. In his own country none of these things were allowed, and when he went home for the holidays he read the notices with his eyes wide open – the notices that said WHITES ONLY – BLANKES ALLEENLIK. From the windows of the train he saw the beautiful farms and the fat cattle that the white men owned, and the bare eroded earth of the tribal reservations, and when he reached home at Drake’s Farm he saw that his father’s house, which he remembered as a palace, was in reality a hovel – and the resentment began to gnaw at his soul and the wounds it left festered.
Before Raleigh left to go to school, his Uncle Moses Gama used to visit his father. From infancy he had been in awe of his uncle, for power burned from him like one of those great veld fires which consumed the land and towered into the heavens in a column of dense smoke and ash and sparks.
Even though Moses Gama had been absent from Drake’s Farm for so many years, his memory had never been allowed to grow dim, and Hendrick had read aloud to the family the letters that he had received from him in distant lands.
So when at last Raleigh matriculated and left Waterford to return to Drake’s Farm and begin work in his father’s businesses, he announced that he wanted to take his place in the ranks of the young warriors.
‘After you have been to initiation camp,’ his father promised him, ‘I will introduce you to Umkhonto we Sizwe’!
Raleigh’s initiation set the final stamp on his special sense of Africanism. With his brother Wellington and six other young men of his initiation class, he left Drake’s Farm and travelled by train in the bare third-class carriage to the little magisterial town of Queenstown which was the centre of the Xhosa tribal territories.
It had all been arranged by his mother, and the elders of the tribe met them at Queenstown station. In a rickety old truck they were driven out to a kraal on the banks of the great Fish River and delivered into the care of the tribal custodian,
an old man whose duty it was to preserve and safeguard the history and customs of the tribe.
Ndlame, the old man, ordered them to strip off their clothing and to hand over all the possessions they had brought with them. These were thrown on a bonfire on the river bank, as a symbol of childhood left behind them. He took them naked into the river to bathe, and, then still glistening wet, he led them up the far bank to the circumcision hut where the tribal witchdoctors waited.
When the other initiates hung back fearfully, Raleigh went boldly to the head of the column and was the first to stoop through the low entrance to the hut. The interior was thick with smoke from the dung fire and the witchdoctors, in their skins and feathers and fantastic headdresses, were weird and terrifying figures.
Raleigh was smitten with terror, for the pain which he had dreaded all his childhood and for the forces of the supernatural which lurked in the gloomy recesses of the hut, yet he forced himself to run forward and leap over the smouldering fire.
As he landed on the far side the witchdoctors sprang upon him and forced him into a kneeling position, holding his head so he was forced to watch as one of them seized his penis and drew out the rubbery collar of his foreskin to its full length. In ancient times the circumciser would have used a hand-forged blade, but now it was a Gillette razor blade.
As they intoned the invocation to the tribal gods, Raleigh’s foreskin was cut away, leaving his glans soft and pink and vulnerable. His blood spattered on to the dung floor between his knees, but he uttered not a sound.
Ndlame helped him rise, and he staggered out into the sunlight and fell upon the river bank, riding the terrible burning pain, but the shrieks of the other boys and the sounds of their wild struggles carried clearly to where he lay. He recognized his brother Wellington’s cries of pain as the shrillest and loudest of them all.