Time Bomb. Johan Marais
their missiles from behind the shelter of houses or other structures.
Subsequently, we were issued with long plastic whips and, abandoning the block formation, we would charge in among the rioters, beating them apart. This method was effective but savage. Where the tip of the whip struck, the flesh was torn. After a while the whips were withdrawn for humanitarian reasons.
When I had been on patrol service for a few months, I reported for one of my frequent night shifts. It was winter, and Van der Merwe, a guy of more or less my own age, was the driver that evening. It could get very quiet in the early hours, so we had a portable FM radio with us to listen to music. The patrol vehicle was a large, clumsy old Dodge bakkie.
That evening I was having trouble tuning the radio. As usual, Van, a bit of a windbag, was driving hell for leather to nowhere in particular, taking every corner at breakneck speed. The next moment the door flew open and I was flung out. After rolling for some distance, I began to slide. Even before I had come to a stop, Van was already beside me, asking: “Are you okay, are you okay?”
Well, of course I wasn’t okay. My ego was wounded, my uniform in tatters, I was covered with bruises and grazes, and, to rub salt into my wounds, the radio had landed next to my head and was blaring: “Another one bites the dust”.
In the barracks I experienced action of a different kind. The head chef at the mess had a very pretty daughter. All the men watched her as she returned from school, their eyes popping. I began to call on her at home – she was eighteen and in matric, she’d assured me, and she certainly looked the part. Little did I know that the girl was only in standard seven and very much a minor.
The next thing I knew I was leaping over the hedge with her mother hot on my heels, wielding a meat cleaver. To avoid prosecution, I was promptly dispatched to Ovamboland in what was then South West Africa for three months’ border duty.
I arrived at Oshakati without any prior border training and was put in charge of recovering broken-down vehicles and those damaged by landmines. The police garage was next to the mortuary, and the bodies of soldiers who had died in police or army operations came in daily. We began to keep score. I soon got used to the idea that a human life had very little value.
My transport in Oshakati: a landmine-resistant towtruck.
At the end of three months, I returned to Springs. My little fling with the chef’s daughter had blown over and I resumed my work.
I was assigned to outside duty and began to do foot patrols. On two occasions I was seriously assaulted while I was on patrol. The first incident took place when I tried to arrest a black man for drinking in public. While I was going about it, a group of men pulled me into a café and set about kicking and punching me. My nose was broken and, while I was lying on the floor, my firearm was taken from me. Four unknown coloured men came to my aid and after a while we managed to gain the upper hand. I arrested the suspect, but it had been a frightening experience.
The second incident took place near the Springs railway station, when I tried to arrest a man for illegal gambling. Again I was set upon by a group of bystanders and was forced to seek shelter inside a furniture store. It developed into a small riot when people began throwing stones at the shop windows. I was frantic and called for back-up by phone (those were the days before two-way radios). My colleagues arrived in the nick of time.
During my patrol stint, I witnessed a vehicle accident in Vlakfontein Road, between Springs and Dunnotar, that haunts me to this day. I had never been called out to the scene of an accident before, although it wasn’t the first time I had witnessed one. My regional sergeant dropped me off at the scene and ordered me to take measurements and open a docket.
A twenty-seater bus and a sedan car had collided head-on. Both the driver of the car and his passenger were dead and still trapped in the vehicle. The passengers in the bus were members of a church band on their way back from performing somewhere. The driver’s legs had been crushed and he was trapped. The poor man was in excruciating pain and kept fainting. For almost an hour we listened to his intermittent screams. Later the fire brigade managed to free him after a local doctor had administered a sedative.
I visited him in hospital to take down his statement. His legs had been saved but they were badly mutilated. That was my road accident baptism of fire. Recently, a friend who had served with me in the Riot Unit died in a head-on collision in that very same bend. I often travel along that road, and I can still recall that driver’s screams.
Barely a week after this accident we were summoned to the Springs railway station. A man had been crushed between two railway trucks. On our arrival, we saw that the links coupling the trucks had pierced his back and stomach. He was alive, but when the fire brigade uncoupled the trucks to free him, he died instantly.
[1] Fictitious name
3
FARM LIFE
My earliest memories are of living with my family on a plot in Brakpan on the East Rand where my dad dabbled in mixed farming. Among the animals we kept was a flock of geese. I was always wary of them and fled as soon as they came near me because there was an aggressive gander that seemed to have it in for me. I must have been about three when the creature grabbed me by my willie one day. For some reason I wasn’t wearing pants, and the gander saw his chance and came for me.
I screamed and ran, with the gander in tow, straight into an open drain. My mom, who had been watching the entire spectacle, gingerly fished me out and hosed me down.
Why am I telling this story? It seems that episodes from my childhood always come to mind when I try to determine where things went wrong for me. I don’t, for instance, remember a single occasion when my dad held me close, put me on his lap, kissed me or even just ran his hand through my hair. He showed no interest in my school work, and never attended any of my sporting events – not even when I began to excel at cross-country and marathon running. He was never there to encourage me. I was merely another mouth to feed and another pair of hands to help him work on the plot. It was my mom who comforted me and showed me affection.
Shortly after my run-in with the gander, my dad was forced to sell the plot and we moved in with my grandpa, a dairy farmer at Witpoortjie near Brakpan. My grandpa was strict but fair. He was also a stalwart of the Afrikaner nationalist movement, the Ossewa Brandwag.
Near my grandpa’s farm was a row of shops owned by Indians. At school we had heard that the way to annoy an Indian was to say: “Mohammed ate pork”. We didn’t even know at the time that different religions existed, neither did we have any idea who Mohammed was. On a dare, one of my elder brothers entered one of the shops but came charging out almost immediately. Hot on his heels was an Indian man, wielding a long bush knife. We were scared silly and ran for our lives.
The Indian shopkeeper knew my grandpa and came to complain. We were all given a hiding and a lesson in Indian religion. To crown it all, we had to apologise to all the shopkeepers.
In the evenings after supper the table would be cleared and my mom would bring out the family Bible. My dad would read a passage and we would sing a familiar hymn. Then we children had to answer questions about the night’s reading. If you couldn’t say who had been in the lion’s den with Daniel, you had your ears pulled. Before you got into bed, you had to kneel and say your prayers. And heaven forbid if mom or dad heard you swear or take the Lord’s name in vain.
And then there was grandma who had a harmonium and would sit down at any time of the day, playing hymns and singing along in High Dutch. We thought it sounded like a pack of wild dogs on heat! Of course on Sunday mornings we all had to go to church, followed by Sunday school and yet another church service in the evening. It was very hard for an energetic young boy.
My three brothers and I were indeed restless – at times downright naughty. On my grandpa’s farm there was a disused stone quarry where we used to swim in summer. Bordering the hole was a stand of poplars; it was the ideal place for throwing kleilat