Invictus - Carlin [23]
On Tuesday afternoon, police reinforcements arrived from Kimberley, the nearest city, 180 miles away. At the head of them was a certain Captain van Dyk, who proposed peace talks. That evening Justice and other local leaders met with him in the township. No resolution was reached, but they agreed to meet again the next morning, this time with the whole community present, at the dusty local soccer field. The idea, to which Captain van Dyk assented, was that the residents of Paballelo should air the grievances that had occasioned all the trouble in the first place. If the police captain were able to provide some sort of satisfaction, some sense that the matters raised would be addressed at a political level, then tempers might cool and they would avoid the violent confrontation that loomed. Justice and his fellow leaders were encouraged by Van Dyk’s reasonable manner. He was a different breed from the uncouth variety of policeman they had grown accustomed to in Upington.
The next morning, November 13, thousands turned up at the soccer field. Again, the choreography followed a familiar pattern, replicating the sequence of events at thousands of other such protest meetings nationwide. Observed by a phalanx of riot police in gray-blue uniforms and a column of clunky yellow armored vehicles with huge wheels called Casspirs, an orderly crowd of black people gathered at the center of the football field. The proceedings began, as always, with the official anthem of black liberation, “Nkosi Sikelele iAfrika.” The words, in Mandela’s language, Xhosa, meant :
God Bless Africa
May her glory rise high
Hear our pleas
God bless us
Us your children
Come Spirit
Come Holy Spirit
God we ask you to protect our nation
Intervene and end all conflicts
Protect us
Protect our nation
Let it be so
Forever and ever
It was generous, mournful, defiant, and had the iterative power of an ocean wave. To black South Africans and those who sympathized with their cause, it was a call to courage. To the apartheid authorities, and in particular to the young white policemen whom the anthem had in its immediate sights, it was a menacing expression of the vast black sea that might rise and engulf them.
After “Nkosi Sikelele” came a Christian prayer. While the thousands addressed themselves to their God, heads bowed, and before anyone had even begun to broach the political matters at hand, a local police officer, Captain Botha, wrested command away from Captain van Dyk. Botha was from Upington.
To Van Dyk’s dismay, Botha lifted a bullhorn to his lips and announced, in a cry familiar to all veterans of black protest in South Africa, that the crowd had “ten minutes to disperse.” The only thing that was unusual about the warning was that it should have come quite so early on, before the prayers had even finished. Captain van Dyk might well have reached the same point himself, but he would have observed the religious decencies a little more, and might have at least gone through the motions of seeking a negotiated outcome.
Captain Botha didn’t wait for the full ten minutes to tick by. Before two minutes had passed he ordered his troops to open fire with tear gas and rubber bullets, to let loose their snarling dogs. Some of the younger blacks hurled stones, but most of the crowd ran off, the screams of the women drowned out by the fearsome revving of the pursuing Casspirs. Most routes had been blocked off by policemen carrying guns, stroking truncheons, or cracking sjamboks, thick leather whips, on the stony ground. Seeing a gap, Justice led a group of about 150 people—men and women, young and old—down Pilane Street, leaving the white policemen behind them.
Suddenly, from one of the small gray-brick houses on the street, shots rang out. A child fell, seriously wounded. Then a man charged out of a house with a gun above his head. Straight into the anger, the fear, the chaos ran the man who had fired the shots. His name was Lucas Sethwala. He was that peculiarity in apartheid South Africa, a black policeman; he and other