Apartheid was a system of total race separation, and the TOTAL domination by whites, especially Afrikaners, over all other races. Each race lived in it's own allocated area, and no mixing of any kind was ever allowed. Special permission had to be obtained from a magistrate even to attend a wedding or funeral in the area of another race, or, especially for blacks, to go to any area in which they were not registered. In apartheid South Africa this was a rare thing to be allowed, or even considered.
Each race was classified to the n-th degree; there were even "degrees of whiteness" and "degrees of blackness". Every black South African HAD to carry a "pass book", in which ALL details of the person where noted. Failure to carry this book AT ALL TIMES meant instant imprisonment. Blacks were only "temporary" city dwellers, and their pass books stated which city, and even which suburb in the city, they were allowed to work in.
Thanks to the efforts of my parents, I had been brought up differently. I was an activist in our liberation struggle from a young age.
An idle conversation with friends at work reminded me of something that happened in my own life. As I write this, I weep as I recall the utter humiliation purposely inflicted by this evil and abhorrent system.
Lebang, Poki, and I were reminiscing about the hated "pass laws" during tea break at iThemba the other week, and we laughed as we recalled how people would recognise the sound made by the dreaded police vans (pickups?), called Kwela Kwela’s:
these large vans had an engine sound that everyone recognised, and this sound was the signal to run and hide anywhere they could. People also gave a series of coded whistles with a specific meaning ... the Kwela Kwela's were around. It actually became a game of cat-and-mouse, and avoiding or escaping from a pursuing policeman was almost a guarantee of a free beer on Friday payday evening as the chase and the escape was described to friends in the shebeens (illegal liquor houses) in the townships. This is one of my stories from my experiences with the pass laws.
It was winter-ish 1980 about-ish; Sihle (say See-shleh) and I were having an evening of company and fun at a favourite shebeen of mine in Soweto, Lee's Place.
The quart bottles of beer were delicious, and conversation and music competed for what little air there was inside the shebeen. The whistles began in the distance, and were picked up, getting closer - the Kwela Kwela’s were coming. Everybody in the shebeen reacted immediately: the owner and her family grabbed the stock ran away with it to a safe hiding place; customers began jumping the back walls; Sihle and I raced to the bike. We had no time to put on our helmets: as the engine fired and burst into life we saw the lights of the first police cars in the smoky haze above the houses; Sihle jumped onto the passenger seat grabbing my waist even before he was properly seated; he knew how to do these things. I opened the throttle wide and the Yamaha blasted off. A police car spotted us about two blocks further up, and the chase was on. I was illegally in Soweto (not my area) at about 2 a.m. and, horror of horrors: I had a BLACK guy as my passenger! But there was more at stake than just this.
I was riding a Yamaha two-stroke, the RD400 twin, a very agile and very fast machine.
Sihle was a natural on a bike and I loved having him as a passenger; he glued himself to my back, following my every movement as I desperately twisted and turned at high speed through the rutted streets of Soweto. We had to get to the Soweto Highway, or to the other main access road, the Potchefstroom Main Road, where I could open up and escape them; I chose Potch Main Road coz I knew that way better, and began heading there; we had a bit less than two miles to cover.
The police had the advantage in the narrow Soweto streets, they had four wheels, and their car could corner much better than the "Yummie" on the rutted and sandy Soweto roads; my only advantage was the phenomenal acceleration of the Yamaha along the straights, but there was no way that I could take the corners fast, we would have crashed.
This was race we could not afford to lose: Sihle was a cadre in Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress. (Umkhonto weSizwe = The Spear of the Nation) and had crossed from Botswana into South Africa on a mission. The security police had been tipped off that he was in the country, and were looking for him. He would have been a real prize for the uniformed police who were chasing us. When handed over to the security police, he would have been tortured, probably would have died, in order to get the information he carried, and I, already known to those swine, could well have suffered the same fate. We were at war with the apartheid government.
The police must have realised that I was heading for the Potchefstroom Main Road, and radioed for help.
We heard them shooting, but we were gradually inching away from them, gaining a lead of about 200 yards, maybe a bit more. In those days, police could shoot without question. As we eventually swung toward the final exit to Potch Main Road, near Baragwanath Hospital entrance, with about 150 yards to go, we saw a white police car blocking the narrow road ahead. The police were out of the car, and they had guns.
But, I had worked at Bara Hospital for several years, and I knew this area very well - and the police had positioned their car in exactly the right spot for us to escape them: they were wedged in across the road right in the exit to Potch Main Road, and it would take a bit of maneuvering for them to get out. Positioned as they were, they would also block any pursuit by the car behind us.
There was a Shell Garage (Gas station) on the corner on our right near this exit (We drive on the LEFT side of the road here) which had a rear service road for the workshops; a well-used pedestrian footpath led through the bushes from this service road, exiting on the pavement (sidewalk) alongside Potch Main Road; I had myself used this footpath as a shortcut. I often used to fill up at this garage on the Yummie, and the guys there knew me and the Yummie, and they knew the sound of the big two-stroke; in the cold winter's night air, they must have heard us long before got near the garage; there were no big bikes in Soweto those days, so they must have known it was me; also, they were used to me coming along that route at night.
Taking the corner into the exit road, I dropped the Yamaha sideways, kicking down in the gears, the rear wheel spinning as it swung backwards into the direction we had been travelling. Rubber smoked, sand and grit spat, the tire bit into the tarmac and we reared up briefly, bouncing down again as Sihle and I automatically leaned forward to counteract the wheelie. Engine banshee-screaming as only a big two stroke can at full throttle, the bike took off up the ramp onto the forecourt of the garage, becoming momentarily airborne; our helmetless state, the police blockade, the shots from the pursuing car, must have made the attendants realise that this was no ordinary chase. And they laughed great African laughs and cheered and waved at us as we shot past them to the service road: they stood in a line between us and the blockading police! All of us, from the smallest child to the oldest grannies, were involved in this war.
We got to Potch Main Road, and I opened up and went at maximum revs through all the gears until sixth gear. We had made it, and we were shouting and laughing into the wind. I took side roads through the suburbs until we made it back to my place in Hillbrow. Parking the bike, we danced around and hugged each other, and then went of to a rooftop shebeen to celebrate. We got home about 6.30 a.m. and slept the sweet sleep of victors ... even if we were rather tipsy victors!
1 comment:
Enjoyed reading this immensely
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