'Noon on Thursday. We will have to act fast." 'Did you take out the option in the name of Courtney Mining?" Shasa asked.
No. In my own name, but of course, I did it for you and the company." 'You thought this out alone,' Shasa said carefully. 'You researched it yourself, dug up the original approval, negotiated the option with the owners, paid for it with two thousand of your own hard-earned cash. You did all the work and took all the risks and now you want to hand it over to someone else. That isn't very bright, is it? 'I don't want to hand it over to just anybody - to you, Dad.
Everything I do is for you, you know that." 'Well, that changes as of now,' said Shasa briskly. 'I will personally lend you the two hundred thousand purchase price and we will fly up to Johannesburg first thing tomorrow to clinch the deal. Once you own the land, Courtney Mining will begin negotiating with you the terms of a joint venture to develop it." The negotiations started tough, and then as Garry got his first taste of blood, they grew tougher.
'My God, I've sired a monster,' Shasa complained, to hide his pride in his offspring's bargaining technique. 'Come on, son, leave something in it for us." To mollify his father a little Garry announced a change in the name of the property. In future it would be known as Shasaville.
When they at last signed the final agreement, Shasa opened a bottle of champagne and said, 'Congratulations, my boy." That approbation was worth more to Garry than all the townships and every grain of gold on the Witwatersrand.
Lothar De La Rey was one of the youngest police captains on the force, and this was not entirely on account of his father's position and influence. From the time he had been awarded the sword of honour at police college, he had distinguished himself in every field that was considered important by the higher command. He had studied for and passed all his promotion examinations with distinction. A great emphasis was placed on athletic endeavour and rugby football was the major sport in the police curriculum. It was now almost certain that Lothar would be chosen as an international during the forthcoming tour by the New Zealand All Blacks. He was well liked both by his senior officers and his peers, and his service record was embellished by an unbroken string of excellent ratings. Added to this he had shown an unusual aptitude for police work. Neither the plodding monotony of investigation nor the routine of patrol wearied him, and in those sudden eruptions of dangerous and violent action, Lothar had displayed resourcefulness and courage.
He had four citations on his service record, all of them for successful confrontation with dangerous criminals. He was also the holder of the police medal for gallantry, which he had been awarded after he had shot and killed two notorious drug dealers during a foot-chase through the black township at night, and a single-handed shoot-out from which he had emerged unscathed.
Added to all this was the assessment by his superiors that while himself amenable to discipline, he had the qualities of command and leadership highly developed. Both these were very much Afrikaner characteristics. During the North African campaign against Rommel, General Montgomery, when told that there was a shortage of officer material, had replied, 'Nonsense, we've got thousands of South Africans. Each of them is a natural leader - from childhood they are accustomed to giving orders to the natives." Lothar had been stationed at the Sharpeville police station since graduating from police college and had come to know the area intimately. Gradually he had built up his own network of informers, the basis of all good police work, and through these prostitutes and shebeen owners and petty criminals, he was able to anticipate much of the serious crime and to identify the organizers and perpetrators even before the offence was committed.
The higher command of the police force was well aware that the young police captain with illustrious family connections was in a large measure responsible for the fact that the police in the Sharpeville location had over the past few years built up a reputation of being one of the most vigorous and active units in the heavily populated industrial triangle that lies between Johannesburg, Pretoria and Vereeniging.
In comparison to greater Soweto, Alexandra or even Drake's Farm, Sharpeville was a small black township. It housed a mere forty thousand or so of all ages, and yet the police raids for illicit liquor and pass offenders were almost daily routine, and the lists of arrests and convictions by which the efficiency of any station is judged were out of all proportion to its size. Much of this industry and dedication to duty was quite correctly attributed to the energy of the young second-in-command.
Sharpeville is an adjunct to the town of Vereeniging where in 1902
the British Commander Lord Kitchener and the leaders of the Boer commandos negotiated the peace treaty which brought to an end the long-drawn-out and tragic South African war. Vereeniging is situated on the Vaal river fifty miles south of Johannesburg and its reasons for existing are the coal and iron deposits which are exploited by Iscor, the giant state-owned Iron and Steel Corporation.
At the turn of the century the black workers in the steel industry were originally housed in the Top Location, but as conditions there became totally inadequate and outmoded, a new location was set aside for them in the early 1940s and named after John Sharpe, the mayor for the time being of the town of Vereeniging. As the new dwellings in Sharpeville became available, the population was moved down from Top Location, and although the rents were as high as œ2 7s 6d per month, the translocations were effected gradually and peaceably.
Sharpeville was, in fact, a model township, and though the cottages were the usual box shape, they were all serviced with water-borne sewerage and electricity, and there were all the other amenities including a cinema, shopping areas and sports facilities, together with their very own police station.
In the midst of one of the most comprehensive pieces of social engineering of the twentieth century - which was the policy of apartheid in practice - Sharpeville was a remarkable area of calm.
All around, hundreds of thousands of people were being moved and regimented and reclassified in accordance with those monumental slabs of legislation, the Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act. All around the fledgeling leaders of black consciousness and liberation were preaching and exhorting and organizing, but Sharpeville seemed untouched by it all. The white city fathers of Vereeniging pointed out with quite justifiable satisfaction that the communist agitators had been given short shrift in the Sharpeville location and that their black people were law-abiding and peaceful.
The figures for serious crime were amongst the lowest in the industrialized ction of the Transvaal, and offenders were taken care of with commendable expedition. Even the rent-defaulters were evicted from the location in summary fashion, and the local police force was always cooperative and conscientious.
When the law was extended to make it obligatory for black women to carry passes, as well as their menfolk, and when throughout most of the country this innovation was strenuously resisted, the ladies of Sharpeville presented themselves at the police station in such numbers and in such cooperative spirit that most of them had to be turned away with the injunction to 'come back later'.
In early March of 1960 Lothar De La Rey drove his official LandRover through this stable and law-abiding community, following the wide road across the open space in front of the police station. The cluster of police buildings, in the same austere and utilitarian design as the others in the location, were surrounded by a wire mesh fence about eight feet high, but the main gates were standing open and unguarded.
Lothar drove through and parked the Land-Rover below the flagpole on which the orange, blue and white national flag floated on a breeze that carried the faint chemical stink of the blast furnaces at the ISCOR plant. In the charge office he was immediately the centre of attention as his men came to congratulate him on the kick that had won the Currie Cup.