Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

"I don't want a bloody debate," Jack yelled.

"You'll be in a debate when we get to Duduza."

"Then it'll keep until we get there."

Why should anyone help Jack Curwen? Why should anyone in Duduza lift a finger for Jack Curwen? He didn't give a damn for any of their slogans. His only commitment was to his father.

"You know that racism is endemic among Whites?"

"Not my business, Jan."

Warm air blowing past Jan's helmet, dust skimming from the tinted screen of Jack's visor.

"Take the courts. Take the difference between what they do for A.N.C. fighters, and what they do for the right wing scum of the Kappiecommando or the Afrikaner Weerstand Beweging, that's A.W.B., pigs. Are you listening, Jack?"

"Jan, shut up, for Christ's sake."

Jack heard Jan laugh out loud, like he was high.

"Jack, listen… If a Black throws a petrol bomb it's terrorism, if it's the White backlash then it's arson. A Black explosion is treason, a White explosion is a damage to property charge. A Black arms cache is plotting to overthrow the state, but if he's White he's done for possession of unlicensed weapons… Isn't that racism?"

"I'm not listening to you, Jan."

"You better make the right noises when we get to Duduza, if you don't want a necklace."

Jack wondered what the hell the kid was shouting of. He didn't ask. Right now he thought the kid was a pain. He thought that if he hadn't needed the kid he would happily have jumped, walked away from him… But he had involved Jan van Niekerk, and he had involved Ros van Niekerk. He was leading the crippled boy and the office worker girl towards the walls and the guns of Pretoria Central.

"I'm sorry, Jan. You have to forgive me."

Jan turned his head. Jack saw the wide grin behind the visor screen, and the moped swerved and they nearly went off the road.

"Nothing to forgive. You're giving me the best damned time of my life. You're kicking the Boers in their nuts, and that's nothing to forgive… "

The shouting died.

Over Jan's shoulder Jack saw the dark line of the edge of the township. Red and black brick walls behind a fence of rusting cattle wire. Low smudges of dull colour, nothing for the sun to brighten.

Jan had told Jack, before they had started out, that Duduza was the only place where they had the smallest chance of raising his munitions. He was too junior in the Movement to be able to contact senior men at short notice.

Part of the protective cover screen, in place to maintain the command chain's security, meant that a junior, a Jan van Niekerk, only responded to anonymous orders in his dead letter drop. Jan had said there was a Black he had once met, at a meeting in Kwa Thema township, a lively happy faced young man with a soft chocolate au lait complexion who had said his name and said where he lived, and been too relaxed and too confident to stay with the ritual of numbered code indentifications. Jan had said that the young Black's name was Henry Kenge.

They saw the block on the road into the township.

Four hundred metres ahead of them. Two Casspirs and a yellow police van.

Jan had been very definite, that he hadn't any way of promising that he would find Henry Kenge. Couldn't say whether he was one of the thousand detainees, whether he had fled the country, whether he was dead. Jan had said that trying to trace the man was the only chance he knew of getting weapons by that evening. He had told Jack that it would be many days until he was contacted through the dead letter drop. The Movement would wait with extreme caution to see whether the death of Jacob Thiroko had compromised that part of the Johannesburg structure that had known of the incursion towards Warmbaths. Jan had said that every person who had known of the incursion would be isolated for their own safety, for the safety of those who dealt with them. And they would all sit very tight for a while anyway until it was discovered how Thiroko was betrayed. Jan said he would have to be under suspicion himself, having known of the rendezvous.

The moped slowed. Not for Jack to give advice. For the boy to make his own mind. Jack's frustration that he was a stranger, without experience, unable to contribute.

The jerk off the tarmac. Jan revved all the power he could drag from the engine. They surged and bumped away across the dirt, away from the road and the police block.

Jack clung to Jan's waist.

The boy shouted, "Carry yourself well, and for God's sake don't look scared. Scared is guilt to these people.

If you see me move, follow me. If we have to get out it'll happen fast. The mood changes, like bloody light-ning… and this is a hell of a scary place we're going into."

Jack punched the boy in the ribs.

Away to the right there was the bellow of a loudspeaker from the police block. Jack couldn't hear the words. He thought they were beyond rifle range as they slipped the cordon.

There were holes in the fence. Jan searched for one that was wide enough for the Suzuki and jolted through it.

Jan cut the engine.

A terrible quiet around them, and then a dog barking. No people. Jan pushed his moped. Jack was close behind him.

They went forward down a wide street of beaten dirt.

Jack thought that Soweto was chic in comparison. He saw overturned and burned cars. He saw a fire-gutted house. He saw the dog, tied by string to a doorpost, angry and straining to get at them.

"Straight roads make it easier for the police and military to dominate. They haven't electricity here, the water's off street taps, but they've good straight roads for the Casspirs."

Jack hissed, as if frightened of his own voice, "Where the hell is everybody?"

"A funeral's the only thing that gets everyone out. They've had enough funerals here in the last eighteen months. It's a tough place, it's hot. There's not a Black policeman can live here any more, and the Black quisling councillors are gone.

Shit… "

Jan pointed. It was a small thing and without having it pointed to him Jack wouldn't have noticed. Jan was pointing to a galvanised bucket, filled with water, in front of a house.

Jack thought of it as a house but it was more of a brick and tin shack. He saw the bucket. When he looked up the street he saw there were buckets filled with water in front of each house, each shack, in the wide street.

"Means bad trouble. The water is for the kids to wash the gas out of their faces. If there's going to be trouble everybody leaves water on the street."

"If you don't put the water out?" Jack asked.

"Then they would be thought of as collaborators and they get the necklace. Hands tied behind their backs, a tyre hung on their shoulders, that's the necklace. They set light to the tyre."

"Bloody nice revolution you've started."

"It's hard for these people to touch the police, they haven't a cat in hell's chance of hurting the state. What are they left with, just the chance to hurt the Black servants of the state."

"So what do we do? Scratch our backsides, then what?"

"We just have to wait."

It was a huge funeral.

The gathering was illegal. Under the amendment regulations following the state of emergency it was prohibited that mourners should march in formation to open air funeral services. It would have required a battalion of infantry to have prevented the column reaching the grave that had been prepared for the body of a thirteen-year-old girl, knocked over ten days before by a speeding Casspir.

Sometimes the regulations were enforced, sometimes not. Enforcement depended on the will of the senior police officer for the area, and the size of the forces available to him.

On this Sunday the military were not present. The police seemed to have stayed back and watched from a distance as the migrant ant mass of men and women and children took the small white wood coffin to the cemetery.