Rage (73 page)

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Authors: Wilbur Smith

BOOK: Rage
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It came crashing over, and though Lothar jumped back, one of the metal posts hit him a glancing blow and he was
knocked to his knees. The crowd was no longer contained, and the ranks behind pushed those in front so they came bursting into the yard, trampling over Lothar as he struggled to get to his feet.
From one side a brick came sailing out of the crowd in a high parabola. It struck the windscreen of one of the parked trucks, and shattered it in a shower of diamond-bright chips.
The women were screaming, and falling under the feet of those who were borne forward by the pressure from behind, and men were fighting to get back behind the wire as others thrust them forward, uttering that murderous war cry ‘
Jee!
' that brought on the madness.
Lothar was sprawled under the rushing tide, struggling to regain his feet, while a hail of stones and bricks came over the wire. Lothar rolled to his feet, and only because he was a superb athlete he kept his balance as the rush of frenzied bodies carried him backwards.
There was a loud and jarring sound close behind him that Lothar did not at first recognize. It sounded as though a steel rod had been drawn rapidly across a sheet of corrugated iron. Then he heard the other terrible sounds, the multiple impact of bullets into living flesh, like ripe melons bursting open from blows with a heavy club, and he shouted, ‘No! Oh good Christ, no!' But the Sten guns rushed and tore the air with a sound like sheets of silk being ripped through, drowning out his despairing protest, and he wanted to shout again, ‘Cease fire!' but his throat had closed and he was suffocating with horror and terror.
He made another strenuous effort to give the order, and his throat strained to enunciate the words, but no sound came and his hands moved without his conscious volition, lifting the Sten gun from his side, jerking back the cocking handle to feed a round into the breech. In front of him the crowd was breaking and turning, the pressure of human
bodies against him was relieved, so he could mount the sub-machine-gun to waist height.
He tried to stop himself, but it was all a nightmare over which he had no control, the weapon in his hands shuddered and buzzed like a chain saw. In a few fleeting seconds the magazine of thirty rounds was empty, but Lothar had traversed the Sten gun like a reaper swinging a scythe, and now the bloody harvest lay before him in the dust twitching and kicking and moaning.
Only then did he realize fully what he had done, and his voice returned.
‘Cease fire!' he screamed and struck out at the men around him to reinforce the order. ‘Cease fire! Stop it! Stop it!'
Some of the younger recruits were reloading to fire again, and he ran amongst them striking out with the empty Sten to prevent them. A man on the roof of one of the troop carriers lifted his weapon and fired another burst and Lothar leapt onto the cab and knocked up the barrel so that the last spray of bullets went high into the dusty air.
From his vantage point on the cab of the truck, Lothar looked out over the sagging fence across the open ground where the dead and the wounded lay, and his spirit quailed.
‘Oh, God forgive me. What have we done?' he choked. ‘Oh, what have we done?'
I
n the middle of the morning Michael Courtney took a chance, for there seemed to be a lull in the activity around the police station. It was, of course, difficult to make out exactly what was happening. He could see only the backs of the rear ranks of the crowd, and over their heads the top of the wire fence and the iron roof of the station. However, the situation seemed for the moment to
be quiet and apart from a little desultory singing the crowd was passive and patient.
He jumped into the Morris and drove back down the avenue to the primary school. The buildings were deserted, and without any qualms he tried the door which was marked ‘Headmaster' and it was unlocked. There was a telephone on the cheap deal desk. He got through to the
Mail
offices on the first try, and Leon Herbstein was in his office.
‘I've got a story,' Michael said, and read out his copy. When he finished he told Leon, ‘If I were you, I'd send a staff photographer down here. There is a good chance of some dramatic pictures.'
‘Give me the directions how to find you.' Leon acquiesced immediately, and Michael drove back to the police station just as another convoy of police reinforcements pushed through the crowd and entered the station gates.
The morning wore on and Michael ran out of cigarettes, a minor tragedy. He was also hot and thirsty and wondered what it was like standing in that mob out there, hour after hour.
He could sense the mood of the crowd changing. They were no longer cheerful and expectant. There was a sense of frustration, of having been cheated and duped, for Sobukwe had not arrived, nor had the white police made the promised announcement to abolish the
dompas
.
The singing started again, but in a harsh and aggressive tone. There were scuffles and disturbances in the crowd, and over their heads Michael saw the armed police take up positions on the cabs of the trucks parked beyond the wire.
The staff photographer from the
Mail
arrived, a young black journalist who was able to enter the township without a permit. He parked his small brown Humber beside the Morris and Michael cadged a cigarette from him and then quickly briefed him on what was happening, and sent him
forward to mingle with the back rows of the crowd and get to work.
A little after noon, some of the youths broke away from the crowd and began to search the verges of the road and the nearest gardens for missiles. They pulled up the bricks that bordered the flower-beds and broke chunks off the concrete paving slabs, then hurried back to join the crowd, carrying those crude weapons. This was an ominous development, and Michael climbed up on the bonnet of his beloved Morris, careless of the paintwork which he usually cherished and polished every morning.
Although he was over a hundred and fifty yards from the station gate, he now had a better view over the heads of the crowd, and he watched the growing agitation and restlessness until the police on the vehicle cabs, the only ones he could see, raised and began loading and cocking their weapons. They were obviously responding to an order and Michael felt a peculiar little chill of anxiety.
Suddenly there was a violent disturbance in the densest part of the crowd directly in front of the main gates. The mass of people surged and heaved and there was an uproar of protesting shouts and cries. Those in the rear of the crowd, closest to where Michael stood, pushed forward to see what was going on, and suddenly there was a metallic rending sound.
Michael saw the tops of the gates begin to move, toppling and bending under the strain, and as they went over there was a scattered volley of thrown rocks and bricks, and then, like the waters of a broken dam, the crowd rushed forward.
. Michael had never heard the sound of sub-machine-gun fire before. So he did not recognize it, but he had heard a bullet striking flesh during that childhood safari on which his father had taken the brothers.
The sound was unmistakable, a meaty thumping, almost like a housewife beating a dusty carpet. However, he
couldn't believe it, not until he saw the policemen on the cabs of the vehicles. Even in his horror he noticed how the weapons they held jumped and spurted tiny petals of fire an instant before the sound reached him.
The crowd broke and ran at the first buzzing bursts of fire. They spread out like ripples across a pond, streaming back past where Michael stood, and incredibly some of them were laughing, as though they had not realized what was happening, as though it were all some silly game.
In front of the broken gates the bodies were strewn most thickly, nearly all of them face down and with their heads pointing outwards, in the direction they were running as they were struck down, but there were others further out and the guns were still clamouring and people were still falling right beside where Michael stood, and the area around the police station was clear, so that through the dust he could see the figures of the uniformed police beyond the sagging wire. Some of them were reloading and others were still firing.
Michael heard the flitting sound of bullets passing close beside his head, but he was too mesmerized and shocked to duck or even to flinch.
Twenty paces away a young couple ran back past him. He recognized them as the pair who had headed the procession earlier, the tall good-looking lad and the pretty moon-faced girl. They were still holding hands, the boy dragging the girl along with him, but as they passed Michael the girl broke free and doubled back to where a child was standing bewildered and lost amongst the carnage.
As the girl stooped to pick up the child, the bullets hit her. She was thrown back abruptly as though she had reached the end of an invisible leash, but she stayed on her feet for a few seconds longer, and Michael saw the bullets come out through her back at the level of her lowest ribs. For a brief moment they raised little tented peaks in the
cloth of her blouse, and then erupted in pink smoky puffs of blood and tissue.
The girl pirouetted and began to sag. As she turned, Michael saw the two entry wounds in her chest, dark studs on the white cloth, and she collapsed on to her knees.
Her companion ran back to try and support her, but she slipped through his hands and fell forward on her face. The boy dropped down beside her and lifted her in his arms, and Michael saw his expression. He had never before seen such desolation and human suffering in another being.
R
aleigh held Amelia in his arms. Her head drooped against his shoulder like that of a sleepy child and he could feel her blood soaking into his clothing. It was hot as spilled coffee and it smelled sickly sweet in the heat.
Raleigh groped in his pocket and found his handkerchief. Gently he wiped the dust from her cheeks and from the corners of her mouth, for she had fallen with her face against the earth.
He was crooning to her softly, ‘Wake up, my little moon. Let me hear your sweet voice—'
Her eyes were open and he turned her head slightly to look into them. ‘It is me, Amelia, it is Raleigh – don't you see me?' But even as he stared into her widely distended pupils a milky sheen spread over them, dulling out their dark beauty.
He hugged her harder, pressing her unresisting head against his chest and he began to rock her, humming softly to her as though she were an infant, and he looked out across the field.
The bodies were strewn about like overripe fruit fallen from the bough. Some of them were moving, an arm
straightened or a hand unclenched, an old man began to crawl past where Raleigh knelt, dragging a shattered leg behind him.
Then the police officers were coming out through the sagging gates. They wandered about the field in a dazed uncertain manner, still carrying their empty weapons dangling from limp hands, stopping to kneel briefly beside one of the bodies, and then standing again and walking on.
One of them approached. As he came closer Raleigh recognized the blond captain who had seized him at the gate. He had lost his cap and the top button was missing from his tunic. His crew-cut hair was darkened with sweat, and droplets of sweat stood on his waxen pale forehead. He stopped a few paces off and looked at Raleigh. Although his hair was blond, his eyebrows were dark and thick and his eyes were yellow as those of a leopard. Raleigh knew then how he had earned his nickname. Those pale eyes were underscored with smudges of fatigue and horror, dark as old bruises, and his lips were dry and cracked.
They stared at each other – the black man kneeling in the dust with the dead woman in his arms and the uniformed white man with the empty Sten gun in his hands.
‘I didn't mean it to happen—' said Lothar De La Rey and his voice croaked, ‘I'm sorry.'
Raleigh did not answer, gave no sign of having heard or understood and Lothar turned away and walked back, picking his way amongst the dead and the maimed, back into the laager of wire mesh.
The blood on Raleigh's clothing began to cool, and when he touched Amelia's cheek again he felt the warmth going out of it also. Gently he closed her eyelids, and then he unbuttoned the front of her blouse. There was very little bleeding from the two entry wounds. They were just below her pointed virgin breasts, small dark mouths in her smooth amber-coloured skin, set only inches apart. Raleigh ran two
fingers of his right hand into those bloody mouths, and there was residual warmth in her torn flesh.
‘With my fingers in your dead body,' he whispered. ‘With the fingers of my right hand in your wounds, I swear an oath, my love. You will be avenged. I swear it on our love, upon my life and upon your death. You will be avenged.'
I
n the days of anxiety and turmoil following the massacre of Sharpeville, Verwoerd and his Minister of Police acted with resolution and strength.
A state of emergency was declared in almost half of South Africa's magisterial districts. Both the PAC and ANC were banned and those of their supporters suspected of incitement and intimidation were arrested and detained under the emergency regulations. Some estimates put the figure of detainees as high as eighteen thousand.
In early April at the meeting of the full cabinet to discuss the emergency, Shasa Courtney risked his political future by rising to address a plea to Dr Verwoerd for the abolition of the pass book system. He had prepared his speech with care, and the genuine concern he felt for the importance of the subject made him even more than usually eloquent. As he spoke he became gradually aware that he was winning the support of some of the other senior members of the cabinet.
‘In a single stroke we will be removing the main cause of black dissatisfaction, and depriving the revolutionary agitators of their most valuable weapon,' he pointed out.
Three other senior ministers followed Shasa, each voicing their support for the abolition of the
dompas
, but from the top of the long table Verwoerd glowered at them, becoming every minute more angry until at last he jumped to his feet.
‘The idea is completely out of the question. The reference books are there for an essential purpose: to control the influx of blacks into the urban areas.'
Within a few minutes he had brutally bludgeoned the proposal to death, and made it clear that to try to resurrect it would be political suicide for any member of the cabinet, no matter how senior.
Within days Dr Hendrik Verwoerd was himself on the brink of the chasm. He visited Johannesburg to open the Rand Easter Show. He made a reassuring speech to the huge audience that filled the arena of the country's largest agricultural and industrial show, and as he sat down, to thunderous applause, a white man of insignificant appearance made his way between the tiers of seats and in full view of everybody drew a pistol and holding it to Dr Verwoerd's head fired two shots.
With blood pouring down his face Verwoerd collapsed, and security guards overpowered his assailant. Both bullets, fired at point-blank range, had penetrated the Prime Minister's skull, and yet his most remarkable tenacity and will to survive, combined with the expert medical attention he received, saved him.
In little more than a month he had left hospital and had once more taken up his duties as the head of state. The assassination attempt seemed to have been without motive or reason, and the assailant was judged insane and placed in an asylum. By the time Dr Verwoerd had fully recovered from the attempt on his life calm had been restored to the country as a whole, and Manfred De La Rey's police were in total control once more.
Naturally the reaction of the international community towards the slaughter and the subsequent measures to regain control was heavily critical. America led the rest in her condemnations, and within months had instituted an embargo on the sale of arms to South Africa. More
damaging than the reaction of foreign governments was the crash on the Johannesburg stock exchange, the collapse of property values and the attempted flight of capital out of the country. Strict exchange-control regulations were swiftly imposed to forestall this.
Manfred De La Rey had come out of it all with his power and position greatly enhanced. He had acted the way his people expected him to, with strength and forthright determination. There was no doubt at all now that he was one of the senior members of the cabinet and in the direct line of succession to Hendrik Verwoerd. He had smashed the Pan-Africanist Congress and the ANC. Their leaders were in total disarray and all of them were in hiding or had fled the country.
With the safety of the state secured, Dr Verwoerd could at last turn his full attention to the momentous business of realizing the golden dream of Afrikanerdom – the Republic.
The referendum was held in October 1960, and so great were the feelings, for and against, engendered by the prospect of breaking with the British crown that there was a ninety per cent poll. Cunningly, Verwoerd had decreed that a simple majority, and not the usual two-thirds majority, would suffice, and on the day he got his majority: 850,000 to 775,000. The Afrikaner response was an hysteria of joy, of speeches and wild rejoicing.
In March the following year Verwoerd and his entourage went to London to attend the conference of the Commonwealth prime ministers. He came out of the meeting to tell the world, ‘In the light of opinions expressed by other member governments of the Commonwealth regarding South Africa's race policies, and in the light of future plans regarding the race policies of the South African Government, I told the other prime ministers that I was withdrawing my country's application for continued membership of the Commonwealth after attaining the status of a republic.'
From Pretoria Manfred De La Rey cabled Verwoerd, ‘You have preserved the dignity and pride of your country, and the nation owes you eternal gratitude.'
Verwoerd returned home to the adulation and hero worship of his people. In the heady euphoria, very few, even amongst the English-speaking opposition, realized just how many doors Verwoerd had locked and barred behind him and just how cold and bleak the winds that Macmillan had predicted would blow across the southern tip of Africa in the coming years.

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