He went back to the Land-Rover and drove slowly through the streets. Time and again he glimpsed small groups of dark figures, but when he turned the spotlight upon them, they melted away into the night. Everywhere he went he heard the warning whistles out there in the darkness, and his nerves tightened and tingled. When he met his own tbot-patrolling constables, they also were nervous and ill-at-ease.
When the dawn turned the eastern sky pale yellow and dimmed out the street lamps, he drove back through the streets. At this time in the morning they should have been filled with hurrying commuters, but now they were empty and silent.
Lothar reached the bus terminus, and it too was almost deserted.
Only a few young men in small groups lounged at the railings. There were no buses, and the pickets stared at the police Land-Rover openly and insolently as Lothar drove slowly past.
As he skirted the boundary fence, passing close to the main gates, he exclaimed suddenly and braked the Land-Rover. From one of the telephone poles the cables trailed limply to the earth. Lothar left the vehicle and went to examine the damage. He lifted the loose end of the dangling copper wire, and saw immediately that it had been cut cleanly. He let it drop and walked slowly back to the LandRover.
Before he climbed into the driver's seat, he glanced at his wristwatch. It was ten minutes past five o'clock. Officially he would be off duty at six, but he would not leave his post today. He knew his duty. He knew it would be a long and dangerous day and he steeled himself to meet it.
That Monday morning, 21 March 1960, a thousand miles away in the Cape townships of Longa and Nyanga the crowds began assembling. It was raining. That cold drizzling Cape north-wester blew from the sea, dampening the ardour of the majority, but by 6
a.m. there was a crowd of almost ten thousand gathered outside the Longa bachelor quarters, ready to begin the march on the police station.
The police anticipated them. During the weekend they had been heavily reinforced and all officers and senior warrant officers issue with sten guns. Now a Saracen armoured car in drab green battl paint entered the head of the wide road in which the crowd ha assembled, and a police officer addressed them over the Ioudspeake system. He told them that all public meetings had been banned an, that a march on the police station would be treated as an attack.
The black leaders came forward and negotiated with the police and at last agreed to disperse the crowd, but warned that nobod, would go to work that day and there would be another mass meetini at 6 p.m. that evening. When the evening meeting began to assemble the police arrived in Saracen armoured cars, and ordered the crowt to disperse. When they stood their ground, the police baton-chargec them. The crowd retaliated by stoning the police and in a mass rushec forward to attack them. The police commander gave the commanc to fire and the sten guns buzzed in automatic fire and the crowd fled leaving two of their number dead upon the field.
From then on weeks of rioting and stoning and marches racked the Cape peninsula, culminating in a massed march of tens of thousands of blacks. This time they reached the police headquarters at Caledon Square, but dispersed quietly after their leaders had been promised an interview with the minister of justice. When the leaders arrived for this interview, they were arrested on orders of Manfred De La Rey, the minister of police, and because police reserves had by this time been stretched almost to breaking point, soldiers and sailors of the defence force were rushed in to supplement the local police units and within three days the black townships were cordoned off securely.
In the Cape the struggle was over.
In Van Der Bijl Park ten miles from Vereeniging and in Evaton, both notorious centres of radical and violent black political resistance, the crowds began to gather at first light on Monday 21 March.
By nine o'clock the marchers, thousands strong, set out in procession for their local police stations. However, they did not get very far. Here, as in the Cape, the police had been reinforced and the Saracen armoured cars met them on the road and the loud-bailers boomed out the orders to disperse. The orderly columns of marchers bogged down in the quicksands of uncertainty and ineffectual leadership and the police vehicles moved down on them ponderously, forcing them back, and finally broke up their formations with baton charges.
Then abruptly the sky was filled with a terrible rushing sound and every black face was turned upwards. A flight of Sabre jet fighter aircraft of 'the South Aicon airforce flashed overhead, only a hundred feet above the heads of the crowd. They had never seen modern jet fighters in such low-level flight and the sight and the sound of the mighty engines was unnerving. The crowds began to break up, and their leaders lost heart. The demonstrations were over almost before they had begun.
Robert Sobukwe himself marched to Orlando police station in great Soweto. It was five miles from his house in Mofolo, and although small groups of men joined him along the way, they were less than a hundred strong when they reached the police station and offered themselves for arrest under the pass laws.
In most other centres there were no marches, and no arrests. At Hercules police station in Pretoria six men arrived passless and demanded to be arrested. A jocular police officer obligingly took their names and then sent them home.
In most of the Transvaal it was undramatic and anti-climactic but then there was Sharpeville.
Raleigh Tabaka had not slept all night, he had not even lain down to rest but had been on his feet exhorting and encouraging and organizing.
Now at six o'clock in the morning he was at the bus depot. The gates were still locked, and in the yard the long ungainly vehicles stood in silent rows while a group of three anxious-looking supervisors waited inside the gates for the drivers to arrive. The buses should have commenced their first run at 4.30 a.m. and by now there was no possibility that they could honour their schedules.
From the direction of the township a single figure jogged down the deserted road and behind the depot gate the bus company supervisors brightened and moved forward to open the gate for him.
The man hurrying towards them wore the brown peaked driver's cap, with the brass insignia of the bus company on the headband.
Ha, Raleigh said grimly. 'We have missed one of them,' and he signalled his men to intercept the black-leg driver.
The driver saw the young men ahead of him and he stopped abruptly.
Raleigh sauntered up to him smiling and asked, 'Where are you going, my uncleT The man did not reply but glanced around him nervously.
'You were not going to drive your bus, were you?" Raleigh insisted.
'You have heard the words of PAC of which all men have taken heed have you not?" 'I have children to feed,' the man muttered sullenly. 'And I have worked twenty-five years without missing a day." Raleigh shook his head sorrowfully. 'You are a fool, old man. !
forgive you for that - you cannot be blamed for the worm in your skull that has devoured your brains. But you are also a traitor to your people. For this I cannot forgive you." And he nodded to his young men. They seized the driver and dragged him into the bushes beside the road.
The driver fought back, but they were young and strong and many in number and he went down screaming under the blows and after a while, when he was quiet, they left him lying in the dusty dry grass.
Raleigh felt no pity or remorse as he walked away. The man was a traitor, and he should count himself fortunate if he survived his punishment to tell his children of his treachery.
At the bus terminus Raleigh's pickets assured him that only a few commuters had attempted to defy the boycott, but they had scurried away as soon as they had seen the waiting pickets.
'Besides,' one of them told Raleigh, 'not a single bus has arrived." 'You have all begun this day well. Now let us move on to greet the sun of our freedom as it dawns." They gathered in the other pickets as they marched, and Amelia was waiting with her children and the other school staff at the corner of the school yard. She saw Raleigh and ran laughing to join him.