Michael Ridpath - See No Evil

I had to talk my way through the cordon; they didn’t seem to understand that a white woman, and an American at that, could be a friend of one of the victims. I pleaded, and in the end a sergeant gave in with a shrug that suggested that if I was that crazy I deserved what was coming to me.

Passing through that cordon was like passing into another country, a country run by blacks for blacks. A marshal directed me to where I should sit in the sports stadium. There must have been 40,000 people there. The whole place was a riot of warmth and color and passion. I’ve never experienced an atmosphere like it. There were banners everywhere in the bright colors of the trade unions, the black and yellow of the UDF, and the black, green and gold of the ANC. I even glimpsed, briefly, the red flag and hammer and sickle of the Communist Party. The speakers sat on a raised platform, beside which were rows of seats for relatives. I could make out the plump figure of Doris, but there was no way she could see me. My idea of joining her to express my sympathy was clearly unrealistic.

Lying in the field in front of the speakers were four coffins, three in dark brown wood and one smaller white one. One of them was Thando. Another must have been a small child.

I asked the woman next to me if she knew what had happened. She said that they had been killed by the police.

“Didn’t it happen in the middle of the night?”

“That’s when they do these things,” she said. “Then no one sees. They don’t have to go through the bother of arrests and lawyers and courts, they just kill them,” and she put two fingers to her temple like a gun.

“But why them?”

“The policemen, they never liked Joshua. They think he is a troublemaker. The people say he knew he was going to die some time. But he was a brave comrade.”

“And Thando? Was he a troublemaker too?”

“No,” said the woman thoughtfully. “But he was also a brave comrade. And Joshua’s little brother, he never done anyone any harm.”

I thought of Thando, the shy trusting boy with his mother’s generosity of spirit. Neels and I offered to pay for his education at high school and on to university, but he didn’t want to go. He wanted to earn money, he said, good money in a car factory. I’m sure he wasn’t a troublemaker. I’m not convinced he was a “brave comrade” either. I guess he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wondered what impression the hero’s burial would make on Doris: whether it gave her comfort to have so many people joining her in her grief, or whether she would be happier alone with her son at the graveside. I didn’t know. The whole idea of losing Todd like that is too awful to contemplate.

And what about the child in the little white coffin? Just how much a threat to anyone could he be?

The funeral took hours, but I didn’t care. Very little time was spent on the actual funeral service, but there were speeches, shouting of slogans, preaching, the toyi-toyi dancing of the young men, and singing, beautiful singing. The whole crowd sang “Hambe kahle Umkhonto”, the song praising the Umkhonto we Sizwe guerrillas, the song that strikes fear into white South Africans’ hearts. At that moment, it lifted mine.

Then a group of young men raised the coffins on to their shoulders and carried them out of the stadium. I followed. Although there were very few white faces in the crowd, just some press men and photographers, I felt part of it, swept along by the heady mixture of grief, pride, passion and joy, opposing emotions that combined to create a kind of mass elation.

My seat was close to the front of the crowd as it left the stadium. I could see the men carrying the coffins, and in front of them a couple of small boys swooping back and forth on their bicycles. The police watched. They weren’t like riot police in other countries, dressed for protection. They had no shields or body armor, not even helmets. But they did have guns and batons and dogs. I stared into their faces: they looked like members of a street gang spoiling for a fight. I caught the eyes of a couple of them, who glanced away as if embarrassed to see a white woman.

Cameras flashed. Not from press photographers, but from the police lines. One of them was pointing straight at me. The photographer saw me staring at him, and gave me the thumbs up.

I wanted to get out of there. The chants of the crowd were becoming more aggressive. Hippos shunted about, taking up better positions. I could see the boys on the crest of the hill ahead pedaling in circles in front of the police lines, wobbling unsteadily as they raised their arms in the black-power salute.

Suddenly a dog, a German shepherd, tore out of the police lines and launched itself into the air at one of the boys, bowling him off his bike. I didn’t see what the dog did to the boy once he was on the ground, but after a second of stunned silence, the crowd howled.

There was movement everywhere, shouts, screams, barks and then shots. Some in the crowd surged forward, some, myself included, scrambled back toward the stadium. More shots, and then the whole lot of us, thousands of people, were running, scattering. A young man with long dreadlocks saw my fear, and grabbed me by the arm. He dragged and pulled me through the crowd and up a side street. We ducked to left and right through the shacks of the township until we emerged on an open road behind the line of Hippos.

I slumped to the ground and gasped my thanks, gulping air into my lungs. The man didn’t seem tired at all. He smiled quickly and left me.

I’m writing this on the plane back to Cape Town. Neels will be worried about the photographs. He will say I shouldn’t have gone. He’ll remind me of my promise not to make trouble. But now Neels is closing the Mail down, who cares about me being seen at a black funeral? I sure as hell don’t.

August 1

Well, I’m feeling kind of mellow and I rather like it.

I was beginning to wonder about Zan’s social life. She disappears into Cape Town quite regularly to do God knows what, and she’s been to Jo’burg, but there’s no mention of a boyfriend, or indeed any other kind of friend. Then today she called me from Cape Town to ask if she could bring two people over to stay the night.

They arrived this afternoon. The man is called Bjorn, and he’s some kind of Scandinavian. He is over six feet tall, with a dark beard and calm blue eyes. Quite cute, really. And then there was his girlfriend Miranda who is almost as tall, with an Afro hairstyle and gorgeous golden-brown skin. They look like a pair of hippies straight out of the seventies, and make Zan look positively Establishment by comparison. After a minimum of small talk with me, they disappeared to Zan’s room.

I was out working in the garden. The window was open, and I could hear music, I think it was Dollar Brand, and then I smelled that familiar smell of my college days. Grass. Marijuana. Dagga, they call it here. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t too happy about having someone smoking dope in my house, but I didn’t want to come across as the heavy authority figure with Zan, especially in front of the first friends she has brought back to Hondehoek. I know Neels will be absolutely furious if he finds out and so I decided I really had to stop them, or Zan might think she could smoke dope any time she liked.

I went indoors, steeled myself outside her room, knocked and walked in. The sweet smell hit me. Zan and Miranda were sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, and Bjorn was lying back against the bed, holding a long joint, while Dollar Brand played his heart out on the piano.

Zan looked up at me guiltily. I paused, grasping for the right words that would be firm but not too dictatorial.

Then Bjorn spoke. “Hey, Martha,” he said quietly, and held the joint up to me. I looked at him as though he was crazy. He smiled a small smile, shrugged but didn’t retract the joint. There was something amazingly calm, almost wise about him.