by Arushi Raina
I went to the back of the clinic, trying to find the source of the smoke. The crazy woman was still holding on to me.
I rounded the corner and hot flecks of oil and dirt hit my face and arms. I screamed. The woman next to me said nothing.
A fire at the back door was spreading fast. And a tall boy in a tattered shirt, maybe fifteen, was leaning down, drawing a wide circle around the clinic with a can of petrol.
“Please. Not the clinic.”
“This is a government building. We must burn it down,” he said, like he had been told to repeat this.
“It isn’t,” I said. He ignored me. “Just over there is a shebeen. Look, it’s the one with the red sign. Lots of beer, break into that.”
He looked up at me, eyes glazed.
My throat tightened with the grit from the smoke.
“Please, not this clinic,” I said, touching his shoulders, touching the dangerous, petrol-soaked boy.
He got up, shrugging me off. “If you are lying about the shebeen—” he dragged a finger across his neck.
I nodded. He whistled to the others, and they headed off to the tsotsi’s shebeen.
Behind me, a handful of school children cheered.
A student with long beaded braids in red and yellow was suddenly at my shoulder. “We need water,” she said.
Up ahead, thick black smoke was rising from other buildings.
Zanele
“The police aren’t here. Come,” Winston said.
We turned out onto the street.
What Winston didn’t say was that most of the streets were blocked by cars, students and tsotsi—and the students from Naledi, Jabavu and Morris Isaacson were leaning down into the windows of the cars and questioning the drivers before letting them pass. At the end of the street, students and tsotsi were breaking into the government building for Bantu affairs. Looting had spread to nearby shop fronts, grocery stores.
We walked onto Lembede Street. It was strangely quiet. Quiet because there were bullet holes in the shop fronts. One of the children picked up an exercise book from a school bag that lay spilled on the street.
A bicycle lay in the middle of the road, the wheel frame turned at an unnatural angle. Next to it, a lady’s red hat, a wig and blood. Here and there, school blazers and small shoes. There was a smell too.
“They are probably in the hospital,” Winston said, “or waiting to be buried.”
I said nothing.
Winston pulled me by my shirt. “Keep walking. Fast.”
The path leading up to the church was trammelled. Inside, hundreds of children were pressed against the ugly brick walls. Some children were being held by others, their bodies slack, like dolls. They looked up at us as we came in, but I avoided their eyes.
Some people were bringing water from the back of the church—I took some, washed dirt off my children and their cuts. Winston refused to take his bloody arm from under his shirt.
“There are too many of us in here,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The police will come here.”
“It’s a church.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Where’s your friend Tina?” I asked.
“Where’s Vusi?”
The high walls of the church encircled us. Here was the painting that Billy had liked so much: black Madonna with baby Jesus, with machetes hidden in the background. In one hand, baby Jesus held the cross. His other hand made a victory sign.
“You know there aren’t that many policemen in Soweto. But one of them can kill fifty of us easy. Pick us off like flies,” Winston said after a while.
“They’ve come. They’ve killed us. What more can they do?”
“More will come. This is not finished.”
“You’re saying we should hit them first?”
I looked around at the hall, then back at Winston. We were weak. We were scattered. We were children. “I’ve hit a policeman before,” I said. “It doesn’t change anything. More will just keep coming.”
He said nothing for a bit. Then, “You and Vusi were the ones who kept telling me that everything we do counts for something.”
Meena
When I did find Thabo, it was by accident. And it was not near the shebeen but on the grass of a park closer to Zanele’s school. I recognized the fedora. It was a steel-grey silver one.
Thabo was the only Black Beret who got away with wearing a fedora.
I was looking for a bus to go back home. The mad old lady was still following me. I told her to go home, but she didn’t seem to understand anything I said.
He was lying face down, his face sunk in what had been a flower bed. I turned him over. Someone had carved a line across his leg, up to his thigh. I leaned away and vomited. Past the bush, I saw abandoned placards, lost shoes and beanies. The old lady stepped in between me and the tsotsi, her eyes silently accusing.
Only when I thought to check did I realize that the tsotsi still had a faint pulse.
The old lady pointed, past Zanele’s school. “We go there, now.”
Then there was a young boy behind us, crawling out of the bush, eyes fearful, a fresh jagged line across his cheek. His eyes on Thabo. “Is Thabo going to live?” he asked.
Slowly the boy, the old lady and I carried Thabo through the streets to a purple shack. There was a crowd outside, men with their hands in their overall pockets, looking at the sky. When they saw us, they became quiet and stared at the tsotsi.
The old lady’s shack looked like it had once been cared for. We put the tsotsi on the only table in the room. His legs dangled off onto the floor. By now the old lady was covered in blood. As soon as she put him down, she stared, waiting for me to do something.
A thin boy came in, wearing what looked like a tattered blue bathrobe. He looked at the old lady, the tsotsi and me. His face looked bleached, strangely old.
“You can’t keep Thabo here,” he said in a cold flat voice.
“Why? She brought us here.”
“Can’t you see the tsotsi stabbed him? They’ll come back here looking for him.”
“Okay,” I said. “But I need something to wrap his wounds.”
Zanele
The altar gleamed clean and white behind all the children. We sat with our knees against our chests.
Then a tear gas canister crashed through the ceiling. Then shards of glass. Then the smell of burning.
My eyes stung—I tore a strip of cloth off my shirt and pressed it onto my eyelids. Hands passed me plastic buckets of water to toss onto the canister.
The smell settled, then slowly faded. A cheer went up, bouncing off the high walls.
I took the cloth off my face. That’s when I realized I couldn’t see. I didn’t see the policemen enter the church—only heard the disconnected shots against the walls, the altar.
Our bodies trapped each other in place. There were a few screams and then shots, then silence. I didn’t scream. The bullets would have found me.
“Nobody move,” a policeman shouted.
The air in the church was cold and sweaty. People ran past and over my feet.
Then I felt someone take my hand and lead me outside, dragging me along as we ran, rocks sharp under my thin-soled shoes, more shots. We ran and ran, and all I had was the hand that pulled me along.
I began to see the blurred outlines of things. The tear gas was wearing off. Winston was next to me. No children. I took my hand out of his.
Winston said, “They cannot come here and shoot us like sheep.”
“They just did.” I put my hands on my knees and waited to get my breath back.
“They’ll send the Special Branch now—they’re trained to kill. These ones were just playing around.”
“Yes.”
I stood up—the sky was thic
k and grey. Behind me, a path was cut in the grass from the church. Made by the students who had managed to get away.
“We can try stop them,” he said. “I know the route they’ll take.”
“What other choice do we have?”
Meena
The boy in the bathrobe told me there was a phone up the street in a clothing shop. That’s about as far as his help went, even with Thabo lying there bleeding.
I found the store mostly empty except for a couple of children rummaging through shirts and drinking beer from bottles with broken off tops. They looked up, not interested to know who I was or why I was there. I walked past them and dialled Jack’s number, and waited for the call to connect.
“Hello, Craven residence?”
A woman picked up.
“Order for Jack Craven, for two hundred Chappies.”
His mother’s voice was clipped and thin. “I’m sorry, I think you’ve—”
“Ma’am. I am sure. I have the receipt here.”
“Darling, there’s this strange—”
I imagined a room, large oak cabinets and tall ceilings. I suddenly felt nauseous again.
“Hello?” Jack said, his voice strangely immediate. “Meena? I thought it was you, going on about Chappies. Is everything all right?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I took a breath and sighed into the phone.
“What’s going on?” His voice had lost its friendliness now, even though he didn’t, couldn’t possibly know that Zanele was somewhere out there, amidst the shots, the burning buildings. And I was with the tsotsi. I felt weighed down by all the things I couldn’t explain.
“It’s bad. I need you to come with your car,” I said, and told him where we were.
Zanele
The Special Riot Police unit came in seventeen vans. The people behind us pushed us forward. Hundreds of us pouring onto the road, children in primary school, high school students, also tsotsis. Some carried the covers of dustbins as shields.
The outlines of the vans became clearer. They slowed as they came closer, then stopped—our bodies pressed against the sides of the vans. Hands slapped against their fenders.
Winston and I pushed past little children and some students from Orlando West. I pressed my face against the back window. In the back seat were three long rifles, with eyepieces attached to the top.
In the front were two men in khaki uniforms. The one closest to us was bearded and looked like he was in his forties. He was saying something to his partner.
I tried the handle of his door. The man turned to look at me—his irises were thin and rimmed with grey. No fear in them. And then there were hands next to me and behind me, trying to get to the door. Then stones against the glass. Then our hands were on him, pulling him out.
He tried to throw us off, but there were many of us on him. We pushed him to the ground, and he sank down between the school shoes and bare feet. His cap had fallen off, a small balding spot exposed. That was the last I saw of the Special Branch policeman—the police emblem on his breast smeared with blood, his large powerful body flailing against us, our black arms pounding his flesh.
And then our cheers.
Soon police came, shouting, pushing past.
Then the scent of petroleum rose and hung between us. Students had come, carrying cans of petroleum.
Then I was pushed back.
I saw a black hand rise high in the air, holding a roll of burning newspaper like a torch. Everyone pushed forward when they saw the flame.
Later, the newspapers would say he was a celebrated commander who had served in Angola, one of their best. The flame rose and dipped down. And we shouted.
Sixteen
Jack
I should have listened to the radio that day. Or switched on the television. Maybe I would have caught on then, half an hour before I did.
After Meena’s phone call, I looked at my watch. It was two in the afternoon. I picked up my father’s newspaper off the breakfast table, but there was nothing in the paper, not yet.
I put down the newspaper, walked outside and started the car. The roads were quiet.
When I was halfway to Soweto, the traffic started slowing. Up ahead, the line of cars had broken, and students choked the street and the gaps between the scattered cars.
They came toward me in a thick connected mass. Their uniforms and their skin pressing against the metal surfaces of the car. They rapped their knuckles against the car windows, again and again.
I wound my window down—they could kill me if they wanted to anyway.
The boy at the window closest to me put his face inside. He was wearing the dark blue and black of Zanele’s school.
The boy took my face in his hand and turned it so I had to look at him directly. “Mlungu,” he said. “What are you doing here?” The sweat on his hand was cold.
I didn’t answer. My mind was wandering up and down the crowded road, the dust, the smoke, the torn flaps of shirts.
“Where is Zanele?” I said in a quiet voice.
The boy leaned in farther. “What did you say? Speak up.” His voice rose, sharpened. His fingers were strong, the tips of them sinking into my throat.
“Please,” I said, choking. Slowly, the boy let go of my throat.
“Give us black power, mlungu,” he said, and he held his fist up, the thumb in front. “I want to see your fist held high or we will take you out of your car.”
I held my fist up. And slowly the bodies parted. It was easy.
I stopped outside the shack with the purple-painted front that Meena had described. Then I went inside. There was a bloody figure on a rickety low table. The face was turned away. It wasn’t Zanele.
“Where is she?” I said.
Meena was adding a layer of torn fabric onto the gangster’s leg. Another boy came in, wearing an unwashed coat.
“Who?” he said.
In the corner of the room was an old lady with the hair on one side of her head sticking up. The front of her dress was spattered with blood. The old lady opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“Zanele?” I said to the boy.
He didn’t answer.
“I called to see if you could pick up Thabo,” Meena said. “These people don’t want him here.”
I stared at the dust in her hair, and on the silly, oversized hand-me-down uniform she was wearing. “You called me because Zanele needed help.”
“I said I didn’t know,” Meena said. “I didn’t even mention her name. Zanele is probably somewhere out there. If you let Thabo die, she will be angry.”
“You lied just to save your gangster,” I said in a slow deliberate voice, to make sense of things. “We need to find Zanele.”
“He is not my gangster,” she said. Then, “What do you want me to do? Go running out on the street yelling her name?”
“When did you last hear from her?”
“Yesterday. Seemed excited, told me something was going to happen today. So I came here. Didn’t know it was this.”
I turned back to the car.
“We need your help,” Meena said.
“I don’t think you understand. I don’t give a damn about your gangster.”
That’s when we heard the police helicopters coming. They rose from behind a set of buildings and hovered above us. People came out of their shacks next door, and stared.
“She probably didn’t know this was going to happen,” Meena replied. The front of her uniform was bloody.
Meena opened the back door of the car and, with the help of the old woman and the boy, put the gangster inside. His face was less bloodied than the rest of his body, and the expression on it was slack and childlike.
I started the engine. The boy and the old lady watched us from in front of their shack.
“Let’s go to the clinic fir
st. We need to fetch some supplies. Come, I’ll show you the way. The only thing is, where do we hide him?”
“Hide him?”
“Yes,” she said, impatient. “I’m sure you know a place.”
My father’s warehouse had high ceilings and was much larger than his failed business needed. Walls of unopened blue-labelled bottles rose in the dim light, and the place smelled of dust. My father had fired the supervisor and left the warehouse empty till he could “pin down” his orders. We set him down in a space next to the back wall. Meena unwrapped the cloth over his wounds and set out the medical supplies. I cleared boxes of beer and stacked them in higher piles to create a barrier between the body and the door on the far right.
Meena looked up from cutting a bandage. “You’re going to try and go back there to find her, aren’t you?”
I didn’t reply.
“I am going to make sure Thabo doesn’t die,” Meena said. “So pick me up around eight.”
I didn’t bother telling her about how the gangster had gone for me and my car.
I didn’t find Zanele. The roads into the township were blocked by the kids or the police, and amandla didn’t cut it anymore. Later in the afternoon, a policeman leaned heavily against the ledge of my window. His breath smelled of beer.
“Go back, my friend, go back.”
“My sister is in there, sir. With the Christian Homes Charity. She came this morning to give out blankets. I need to find her.”
“That’s unfortunate, sir. Our force is doing our best to secure the area.”
“I’m not asking your opinion on the situation. I’m asking you to let me in.”
The man shrugged, slapped my car as if to bid it on its way.
I tried again and again, wide circles around the township, but there was no way in, and it got darker. I’ll hear from her. That’s what I told myself as I drove back to the beer warehouse.
Three days later, I read in the Rand Daily that the first boy to die was not Hector Pieterson, a skinny fifteen-year-old, but someone called Hastings Ndlovu.
I read all the newspapers, pieced together a chronology of events. M.C. Botha’s education policy, about teaching all subjects in Afrikaans, hadn’t gone down well with the students. Hadn’t gone down well for some time. The pamphlets. Those empty schools. From everywhere in Soweto, they organized a mass protest. They were supposed to meet in Orlando Stadium.