We had won most of our games to that point, but the big one still lay ahead. Durban Boys’ High had the reputation of being the team to beat in our league. For weeks Mister Venter, our coach, had been drumming into us the importance of beating them. If we won this game, he told us, the season would have been worthwhile. If we did not win, we might as well have spent the winter playing chess or been at choir practice or some equally unmanly pursuit.
‘You have to hit them hard right from the start,’ he told us. ‘Hit them with tackles they will never forget. Drive them back with every tackle.’
In most of our games our defence had not been bad, but Mister Venter was determined that the Durban Boys’ High team were going to feel our aggression from the first moment of the game. ‘In the first ten minutes, you show them how tough it’s going to be,’ he told us again and again. ‘Seize the advantage in the beginning.’
I am not certain that his exhortations had the desired effect on all members of our team, but they certainly worked on me. I trotted out of the changing room and onto the field ready to die rather than let Durban Boys’ High win.
The unfortunate truth is that I have never been a great team player and rugby is a team game. It is a tendency that I believe comes from my father, the way he could not see the need for Mister Brown’s team building exercises. I prepared for my role in our rugby team, but gave no thought to how I would combine with other team members. So it was that my inclination towards ignoring what the team required was to have an effect on our big game of the season.
The school had organised a bus for the team, but I rode my bike to Durban Boys’ High. After the game, we were supposed to stay to support the first team, made up of the seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, but having my own transport meant that I could leave when I liked and go where I liked on the way home. Mister Venter hated my doing it, but I always used the excuse that my mother wanted me to run an errand on the way home. It was a solid excuse and it avoided explaining that the big game was being played close enough to North Beach for me to spend an hour in the surf after the game, rather than cheering on the first team.
The first half of the game went well, neither side having scored by the time the half-time whistle went. I had played hard, making my share of the tackles and expending plenty of energy in the scrums. It was in the second half that their better combinations started to take effect. By the closing minutes of the game, they were ahead, but not by much. If we could score a try and kick the conversion, we would win.
It was at that stage of the game that one of those inexplicable occurrences took place that makes rugby interesting. I had scooped up the ball as it was bouncing around in what is termed broken play. There were plenty of opposition defenders around, so I did what our coach had trained us to do under those circumstances: I turned my back on the opposition and reversed into them so that I would be free to pass the ball back to my comrades. To my astonishment, no one stopped me. I suddenly realised that I had passed through the knot of defenders without anyone even touching me.
I spun round and ran. The goal line was open in front of me, but it was all of eighty metres away. If I could get there before any of their fleet-footed defenders overtook me, the game was ours.
I fled down the field, the ball tucked under one arm, only vaguely aware of some of the opposing backs closing in on me from the open side. I have since read that great sportsmen always know exactly what is happening around them. Apparently, it is that clear-headedness that makes them special. I had none of that. The world was whirling past me. I passed the halfway line in what seemed like just a few seconds, but that left another fifty metres to go. In the blur around me and through the turbulence within me, I saw the defenders closing in. But so was the goal line. A few defenders were definitely faster than me, but the line was agonisingly close.
It was at this point that, through the confusion that filled my brain, I heard a voice at my shoulder. One of our backs, the fastest member of our team, had caught up to me and was calling to me to pass the ball to him. But the goal line was not far away now and the ball was mine. ‘Pass, pass,’ I could hear my team mate yelling. Out of the corners of my eyes, the defenders were an unfocused confusion of their school colours. I thought I could hear the sound of their boots on the turf. The goal line was no more than ten metres away. ‘Pass,’ was the despairing cry of the boy next to me.
The defender who tackled me had caught up to me from behind, so I did not see him dive, but his shoulder caught me just below my knees and his arms closed round my legs. I went down hard and the ball flew from my grasp, bouncing across the goal line and into the hands of our opponents. A few seconds later, the final whistle blew and Durban Boys’ High had won.
I was not popular in our dressing room after the game. Mister Venter stopped in front of me where I was sitting on the bench taking off my boots. His hands were on his hips, not a good sign. ‘Dear heavens,’ he said. ‘Vorster, all you had to do was pass the ball. Smythe was on the side away from the defenders and he’s faster than you. Why the devil didn’t you pass?’
‘I didn’t know he was there,’ I lied.
‘Have you gone deaf? From the side of the field, I could hear him screaming at you to pass.’
Most of my team mates just shook their heads. They knew me better than Mister Venter did and most of them had not expected me to pass.
As soon as the main game started and all eyes were fixed on what was happening on the field, I made my getaway. The kit bag that held both my rugby togs and my swimming pants was on the carrier behind me.
The ride to North Beach was an easy one, not more than ten minutes and downhill most of the way. The route I took was down St Thomas Road, which would lead me into Old Fort Road and then on towards North Beach.
On the way, I had to pass the gate of Currie’s Fountain sports ground. It was a place that had a bad reputation among people like my father and my school teachers. On most days, nothing more sinister than soccer matches and practices occupied the fields. But during the revolution in Mozambique, the police had broken up a number of gatherings by agitators who wanted to bring the revolution to our country. Without fail, the police broke up their gatherings. As they should, my father said.
The choice of Currie’s Fountain for protest meetings probably had to do with it being near the centre of town, not being well fenced and being a soccer field. I learnt later that many protestors thought of rugby as the game of the oppressor and soccer as being part of the liberation struggle.
I was still some distance away from Currie’s Fountain when I saw a small gathering around the entrance. Almost immediately the throng started to grow. People were streaming through the gates and into the road. I knew immediately what it was. The schools rebellion had been one of the few topics of conversation at home, giving my father the opportunity of explaining to us what our attitudes should be. It had also often provided the subject matter for some of our principal’s weekly addresses. ‘These young people are ruining their lives,’ Mister Matthews had told us many times.
I allowed my bike to roll to a stop. With one foot on the pavement and the other resting on a pedal, I watched the crowd swelling through the gate and starting down the hill towards the city centre. It was the direction I had intended to take. As they emerged from the grounds, the marchers at the front of the procession looked serious and determined, some of them shouting slogans.
Two men who looked far past school-going age were carrying a red flag big enough to wrap my mother’s kitchen table in. Each carried a pole that supported one side of the flag so that it would be on display even without a wind. The hammer and sickle adorned one corner. They moved away from me, the flag billowing above the crowd like the sail of a vessel, seeming to give impetus to their passage. Carrying it could not have been easy. A few others carried signs. As far as I could see, most of the marchers were wearing school uniforms. Probably all Zulus, I thought bitterly, like the ones who burnt Oupa’s pews in the Zululand university c
hapel.
From what I had been told and from what the newspapers had said, it seemed possible that I might be in danger if I got too close. I waited until the last of the protestors had left the grounds, forming the back of what was a fairly untidy procession. Those towards the back were walking in small groups, talking among themselves. None of them looked interested in the political matters they were involved in. A few of the boys were dribbling a tennis ball, passing it between them as they walked.
For the next few hundred metres there would be no way around them, so I sat on my bike and watched them go. Mansfield Road, a backstreet that runs more or less parallel to the road the march had taken, gave me an opportunity to get past. To reach it, I had to go back up St Thomas for half a block, then into a side street. I pedalled hard to make ground fast enough to get round the march. That was not my only motive though. I had never seen a political march before and, if the police were going to break them up, I wanted to see it happen. The surf at North Beach was great, but it would always be there. I imagined that this could be my last chance to see a political march. I doubted the police would allow many more to take place.
Everything was going well until I swung into Mansfield Road. Coming hard through the corner, my tyres slipping slightly on the tarred surface, I had to swerve to avoid a police armoured personnel carrier. Police in riot gear, bulletproof tunics over their uniforms, were climbing up one side and entering through the roof. Further along the road there were more armoured vehicles and other policemen on foot. One of them in uniform shouted at me. ‘You boy, get away from here.’
I was past him before he could do anything about it. Two more armoured vehicles were parked at the side of the road. I could see that there were men in all of them. I had passed both when, to my surprise, I was in Old Dutch Road, half a block from the march, which was now to my left and behind me. The big red flag had filled out in a breeze that had come up from the sea.
In Old Dutch Road the traffic had come to a halt. Traffic policemen were holding back the cars.
Then, for the first time, I saw the line of police and two more armoured cars blocking the way to Old Fort Road. With the route to town cut off by the line of police and others in the side streets, the authorities had the march bottled up.
Ahead of the marchers was what I should have seen as the safety of the police line. Except that now the police looked more threatening than I could ever have imagined, certainly more threatening than the marchers. To my left an old wire gate that did not look capable of being locked allowed entrance to the parking area of tired-looking business premises. I pushed it open and wheeled my bike through. Between two buildings I found a narrow alley in which to leave my bike. What was about to happen in the street outside was too exciting to ignore.
From the entrance to the alley, I had a clear view of the march and the police contingent waiting to meet them at the intersection where they would enter Old Fort Road. The police were using the wide barrels that meant they would be shooting either rubber bullets or tear gas canisters. Neither were pleasant from the target’s point of view, but they were a lot better than live rounds.
On the other hand, I had heard that a blow against the temple or over the heart with a rubber bullet could kill. By then I realised that the boys at school, even the senior boys, were an unreliable source of information. But maybe this time they were right. Wally Strauss, whose father was a policeman, had told a group of us that the police aimed for the heads of troublemakers.
The marchers were moving more slowly now. They must have seen the police almost as soon as they left the sports fields. There was some shouting from the crowd, but I could not make out the words. The front row of marchers seemed to be trying to bring the column to a halt, but was being edged forward by pressure from behind. When they eventually did come to a halt, they were no more than thirty metres from the police line. If you were going to take a rubber bullet in the chest or head, it was better not to do it at point-blank range. They were still close enough for a broken rib or even a cracked skull. Most likely, some of the marchers already had experienced that sort of thing. This afternoon, tear gas was not going to be a problem. The breeze would dissipate it before it did any real damage.
From the police line, an officer was speaking through a loud-hailer. He was a stout man in early middle age. His ginger moustache caught the sunlight for a moment. ‘This is an illegal gathering,’ he was shouting, as if he did not trust the loud-hailer to perform its function. ‘Disperse immediately. I am not going to order you again.’ He did, though, three or four times, each time assuring the crowd of marchers that this time he was not going to repeat the order.
It is possible that the police had also not understood all the shouts of defiance, but now there came one that they did understand. ‘You haven’t got the guts to shoot,’ a voice from the crowd goaded them. To me, what was singular about the voice was that the accent could have belonged in Greenwood Park. It certainly did not originate in Zululand.
For the first time, I looked at individuals in the crowd. Till that moment they had been a troubled mass of dark-skinned humanity without personal characteristics. Now I could see that perhaps half the marchers were in school uniforms, pupils of township schools. The rest were in ordinary clothes and looked to be of such an age that they may have left school five or ten years before. Green tunics, of which there were many, began to stand out in the crowd. They looked very much like the one I had seen hanging over the chair in Ruthie’s room. Until that moment, I had not considered the possibility that she could be among the marchers.
The line of policemen, perhaps twenty of them, were holding their rifles at the ready. They would probably be firing tear gas, I told myself. It did no real damage. It was used so that protestors could see who was in charge. Not that I cared what happened to the protesters. They were, after all, the same sort of people who had burnt Oupa’s pews. But it was possible that Ruthie was among them. She had never said anything about joining protest marches or about politics at all, but perhaps she was here. She could have been forced. My father had often said that the radicals and troublemakers forced the others.
While my eyes were searching among the green tunics for Ruthie, I saw a flash of shoulder-length black hair. It was only an instant, then the crowd had closed and the owner of the hair may never have existed. Police rifles had been raised and the crowd heaved and moved, rather like a caterpillar taking a step backward, the marchers instinctively putting a little more distance between themselves and whatever was going to emerge from the barrels of those rifles.
Three or four green tunics were on the edge of the crowd closest to me, but none of them was Ruthie. I may have seen twenty or more such tunics in the crowd. No doubt there were more, but the others had all been swallowed by the reversing caterpillar that still had its face towards the police.
The first volley of rubber bullets was fired within three seconds of each other. One of the policemen had tired of waiting and his action had given permission to all the others to fire. The crowd turned and ran, its members bumping and pushing each other, the front rows impeded by those behind. More rubber bullets were fired, this time in still less orderly fashion, the policemen apparently firing at will.
A handful of the marchers fell, squirming on the warm tarmac. The crowd was in full flight, but the firing continued. At that moment a small pick-up truck, the driver of which had somehow found himself inside the police cordon and had thought to escape the chaos, reversed far enough in the street to take a rubber bullet on the driver’s door. The contact sounded like the blow of a sledgehammer and the dent in the door looked like it too. The rubber bullet bounced off the truck, bobbed unevenly down the gutter and came to a stop not far from the wire gate. I had a glimpse of the face of the driver of the truck. Whatever colour it had once contained was gone now. His ashen complexion conveyed my idea of the face of a man facing certain death. More quickly than it had entered the street, the truck shot back into the protection of w
hatever place it had left moments before.
At another time I might have found the driver’s situation funny, but I was still searching for Ruthie among the three bodies on the ground and the demonstrators fleeing in the direction of Currie’s Fountain. One of the bodies on the ground was that of a girl. She wore a green tunic like Ruthie’s and had long dark hair. She half rose, then rolled onto her back, holding her right side, but I could see that she was not Ruthie.
The shooting stopped in stages. It seemed that first one policeman allowed his rifle barrel to drop, then another, and perhaps two or three, until finally no one was firing. Perhaps the order to stop had taken time to reach all of them. Or perhaps they had just tired of shooting at fleeing targets. None of the police pursued the crowd.
Some of the marchers had left shoes behind. They were scattered everywhere, school shoes, sneakers and flip-flops – mostly flip-flops. Seeing them spread across the road, it seemed that half the crowd had lost their shoes, or at least one shoe. The problems that the missing shoes might cause at school the next day ran aimlessly through my mind. I could hardly imagine what Mister Matthews would say to anyone from our school who came to school without one shoe and explained that he had lost the other that way.
I slipped through the gate and collected the rubber bullet that had hit the truck. I was on my way back when a young policeman, nothing more than a constable, shouted, ‘You! What are you doing?’
I gestured towards the building. ‘My father’s inside,’ I said.
‘Get inside and stay there,’ he shouted.
I retreated to my alley and crouched in the shadow, hoping not to be noticed. I need not have bothered. The young constable had moved on to other matters. Examining the rubber bullet, my fingers pressed hard against it to test for any degree of give. There was none. It was at least as hard as a cricket ball or baseball and a lot heavier than either. The bullet was as long as my hand, from fingertip to halfway down the palm and thicker than the exhaust pipe of a car. It was no wonder that the marchers who had been hit had gone down. I had imagined rubber bullets to be soft and spongy, a device to warn people, not to injure them. This one was nothing like that. It fitted tightly, but I managed to get it into a pocket in my pants.
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