by Wilbur Smith
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 baton-charge 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 ‘Vereeniging 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 Lothar 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 commander’s 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,’ Lothar 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 mm 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 Lothar 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.
Lothar 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 inuscled 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 v
iolence 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?’
‘Yes, 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.
Michael watched him in the rear-view mirror until he was out of sight, and then he lit a cigarette and drove sedately on in the direction from which the police vehicle had come in such desperate haste. The police captain’s agitation had confirmed that he was heading in the right direction and Michael smiled with satisfaction as he heard the distant sounds of many voices.
At the end of the avenue he turned towards the sound, and then pulled in to the side of the road and switched off the engine. He sat behind the wheel and stared ahead at the huge crowd that poured down the street towards him. He was unafraid, detached – an observer not a participant – and as the crowd came on he was studying it avidly, anxious not to miss a single detail, already forming the sentences to describe it and scribbling them in his notebook.
‘Young people in the vanguard, many children amongst them, all of them smiling and laughing and singing—’
They saw Michael in the parked Morris and they called to him and gave him the thumbs-up signal.
‘The good will of these people always amazes me,’ he wrote. ‘Their cheerfulness and the lack of personal antipathy towards us ruling whites—’
There was a handsome young man in the van of the march, he walked a few paces ahead of the rest. He had a long confident stride so the girl beside him had to skip to keep up with him. She held his hand and her teeth were even and very white in her lovely dark moon face. She smiled at Michael and waved as she passed him.
The crowd split and flowed past on each side of the parked Morris. Some of the children paused to press their faces against the windows, peering in at Michael, and when he grinned and pulled a face at them they shrieked with laughter and scampered on. Once or two of the marchers slapped the roof of the Morris with open palms, but it was rather a cheerful greeting than a hostile act and they scarcely paused but marched on after the young leaders.
For many minutes the crowd flowed past and then only the stragglers, the latecomers, cripples and the elderly with stiff hampered gait were going by, and Michael started the engine of the Morris and U-turned across the street.
In low gear he followed the crowd at a walking pace, driving with one hand while he scribbled notes in the open pad on his lap.
‘Estimate between six and seven thousand at this stage, but others joining all the time. Old man on crutches with his wife supporting him, a toddler dressed only in a short vest showing his little burn. A woman with a portable radio balanced on her head playing rock ‘n’ roll music as she dances along. Many peasant types, probably illegals, still wearing blankets and barefooted. The singing is beautifully harmonized. Also many well-dressed and obviously educated types, some wearing government uniforms, postmen and bus drivers, and workers in overalls of the steel and coal companies. For once, a call has gone out that has reached all of them, not just the politicized minority. A sense of excited and naive expectation that is palpable. Now the song changes – beginning at the head of the march, but the others pick it up swiftly. They are all singing, doleful and tragic, not necessary to understand the words. This is a lament—’
At the head of the march Amelia sang with such fervour that the tears burst spontaneously from her huge dark eyes and glistened down her cheeks:
The road is long
Our burden is heavy
How long must we go on –
The mood of gaiety changed, and the music of many thousand voices soared in a great anguished cry.
How long must we suffer?
How long? How long?
Amelia held hard to Raleigh’s hand and sang with all her being and her very soul, and they turned the last corner. Ahead of them at the end of the long avenue was the diamond-meshed fence that surrounded the police station.
Then in the hard china blue of the highveld sky above the corrugated-iron roof of the police station, a cluster of tiny dark specks appeard. At first they seemed to be a flock of birds, but they swelled in size with miraculous speed as they approached, shining in the early rays of the morning sun with a silent menace.
The head of the march stopped and those behind pressed up behind and then halted also. All their faces turned up towards the menacing machines that bore down upon them, with gaping shark mouths and outstretched pinions, so swiftly that they outran their own engine noise.
The leading Sabre jet dropped lower still, skimming the roof of the police station, and the rest of the formation followed it down. The singing faltered into silence, and was followed by the first wails of terror and uncertainty. One after another the great airborne machines hurtled over their heads. It seemed they were low enough to reach up and touch, and the ear-splitting whine of their engines was a physical assault that drove the people to their knees. Some of them crouched in the dusty roadway, others threw themselves flat and covered their heads, while still others turned and tried to run back, but they were blocked by the ranks behind them and the march disintegrated into a confused struggling mass. The men were shouting and the women wailed and some of the children were shrieking and weeping with terror.
The silver jets climbed out and banked steeply, coming around in formation for the next pass; their engines screamed and the shock waves of their passing rumbled across the sky.
Raleigh and Amelia were amongst the few who had stood their ground, and now Raleigh shouted, ‘Do not be afraid, my friends. They cannot harm you.’
Amelia took her lead from him and she called to her children, ‘They will not hurt you, my little ones. They are pretty as birds. Just look how they shine in the sun!’ And the children stifled their terror and a few of them giggled uncertainly.
‘Here they come again!’ Raleigh shouted. ‘Wave to them like this.’ And he cavorted and laughed, and the other young people quickly imitated him and the people began to laugh with them. This time as the machines thundered over their heads, only a few of the old women fell over and grovelled in the road, but most of them merely cringed and flinched and then laughed uproariously with relief when the machines were past.
Under the urging of Raleigh and his marshals, the march began slowly to disentangle itself and move forward again, and when the jet fighters made their third pass, they looked up and waved at the helmeted heads under the transparent canopies. This time the aircraft did not bank and come around. Instead they winged away into the blue and the terrible sound of their engines dwindled and the people began to sing again and to embrace each other as they marched, celebrating their
courage and their victory.
‘Today you will all be free,’ Raleigh shouted, and those close enough to hear him believed him, and turned to shout to those farther back.
‘Today we will all be free!’
Ahead of them the gates of the police station yard were closed and locked, but they saw the ranks of men drawn up beyond the wire. The uniforms were dark khaki and the morning sun sparkled on the badges and on the ugly stubby blue weapons that the white police carried.
Lothar De La Rey stood on the front steps leading up to the charge office, under the lamp with the words POLICE – POLISIE engraved upon the blue glass, and steeled himself not to duck as the formation of jet fighters flashed low over the station roof.
He watched the distant mob pulse and contract like some giant black amoeba as the aircraft harassed them, and then regain its shape and come on steadily. He heard the singing swell up in chorus and he could make out the features of those in the front ranks.
The sergeant beside him swore softly. ‘My God, just look at those black bastards, there must be thousands of them,’ and Lothar recognized in the man’s tone his own horror and trepidation.
What they were looking upon was the nightmare of the Afrikaner people that had recurred for almost two centuries, ever since their ancestors moving up slowly from the south through a lovely land populated only by wild game had met suddenly upon the banks of the great Fish River the cohorts of this dark multitude.