that Ken was dead. He raced towards the local hospital we had been taken to. Kevin hardly ever wore body armour, none of us did, and Joao flatly refused to. But at the entrance to the township, before reaching the hospital, Kevin dragged his bullet-proof vest over his head. All at once, he felt fear.
The boys were no longer untouchable, and, before the bloodstains faded from the concrete beside the wall, another of us would be dead.
2
‘AH, A PONDO - HE DESERVED TO DIE’
Death has killed the happiest
Death has killed the happiest
Death has killed the great one that I trusted.
Traditional Acholi funeral song
17 August 1990
On a sunny spring afternoon in 1990, at the age of 27, I am making the 25-minute drive to Soweto, where politically-motivated fighting has broken out, and feel the as yet gentle tightening of my throat and the thrill of tension that runs from my belly and along my arms as I tighten my grip on the steering wheel. The sensation makes me slightly nauseous; it is like waking from a nightmare whose details are obscure but for the lingering emotions. It’s an indistinct fear: I am abstractly scared that I might be killed, scared of what I might see in the civil conflict that has exploded in the black residential ghettos, but I do not really understand the fear. I also have no idea that this is the start of a new life for me.
I had woken - as always - in a leafy, well-kept suburb of white South Africa, washed in a white-tiled bathroom and shaved with hot water. My house was cleaned by a black woman, and at the petrol station it was a black man who pumped my fuel and washed my windscreen,
hoping for a few cents tip. It had been this way all my life, despite my intellectual opposition to apartheid and my peripheral involvement in the politics of the Struggle. While growing up, my life had, in most ways, been typical of an English-speaking white South African boy.
There had been a very popular advertising jingle in the 70s that was virtually the theme song of my high-school days: ‘We love braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet/They go together in the good old RSA: braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet!’ This ditty perfectly captured the confidence of South Africa’s whites, snug in the paradise that they had created for themselves, despite the international sanctions campaign designed to isolate our country and force our minority government to recant its apartheid ways. White South Africans had retreated into a defensive laager, spending huge amounts on the trappings of self-sufficiency and enjoying extravagant material rewards for being a compliant electorate.
I cannot say that the jingle ever offended me while I was growing up. I loved playing rugby and the thrill of its controlled aggression. I also took the sunny skies and my privileged life for granted when I lay on the steaming tiles around the public swimming-pool next to our home in suburban Johannesburg - I had no thoughts of black teenagers in overcrowded slums with no access to swimming-pools. And there was always plenty of grilled meat left over after the customary weekend braaivleis, or barbecue.
My mother’s parents were Catholic Croats who had emigrated from Yugoslavia in the 20s, and my father had come out to South Africa in the 50s. I was brought up in an all-white, English-speaking community and attended English medium schools. Our only contact with blacks was as service people - domestic workers, ‘garden boys’ and ‘rubbish boys’. I never used the word ‘kaffir’ - the Moslem term for ‘nonbeliever’ that, with centuries of mangled interpretation, had become South Africa’s most emotive racial insult. I never dreamed of going kaffir-bashing on Friday nights - a practice where gangs of drunken white kids looked for lone blacks to beat up. I knew there was a sickness in our society, but then, I did not realize the extent of it. I took the
pleasures of apartheid for granted. Like most of my contemporaries, I
The boys were no longer untouchable, and, before the bloodstains faded from the concrete beside the wall, another of us would be dead.
2
‘AH, A PONDO - HE DESERVED TO DIE’
Death has killed the happiest
Death has killed the happiest
Death has killed the great one that I trusted.
Traditional Acholi funeral song
17 August 1990
On a sunny spring afternoon in 1990, at the age of 27, I am making the 25-minute drive to Soweto, where politically-motivated fighting has broken out, and feel the as yet gentle tightening of my throat and the thrill of tension that runs from my belly and along my arms as I tighten my grip on the steering wheel. The sensation makes me slightly nauseous; it is like waking from a nightmare whose details are obscure but for the lingering emotions. It’s an indistinct fear: I am abstractly scared that I might be killed, scared of what I might see in the civil conflict that has exploded in the black residential ghettos, but I do not really understand the fear. I also have no idea that this is the start of a new life for me.
I had woken - as always - in a leafy, well-kept suburb of white South Africa, washed in a white-tiled bathroom and shaved with hot water. My house was cleaned by a black woman, and at the petrol station it was a black man who pumped my fuel and washed my windscreen,
hoping for a few cents tip. It had been this way all my life, despite my intellectual opposition to apartheid and my peripheral involvement in the politics of the Struggle. While growing up, my life had, in most ways, been typical of an English-speaking white South African boy.
There had been a very popular advertising jingle in the 70s that was virtually the theme song of my high-school days: ‘We love braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet/They go together in the good old RSA: braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet!’ This ditty perfectly captured the confidence of South Africa’s whites, snug in the paradise that they had created for themselves, despite the international sanctions campaign designed to isolate our country and force our minority government to recant its apartheid ways. White South Africans had retreated into a defensive laager, spending huge amounts on the trappings of self-sufficiency and enjoying extravagant material rewards for being a compliant electorate.
I cannot say that the jingle ever offended me while I was growing up. I loved playing rugby and the thrill of its controlled aggression. I also took the sunny skies and my privileged life for granted when I lay on the steaming tiles around the public swimming-pool next to our home in suburban Johannesburg - I had no thoughts of black teenagers in overcrowded slums with no access to swimming-pools. And there was always plenty of grilled meat left over after the customary weekend braaivleis, or barbecue.
My mother’s parents were Catholic Croats who had emigrated from Yugoslavia in the 20s, and my father had come out to South Africa in the 50s. I was brought up in an all-white, English-speaking community and attended English medium schools. Our only contact with blacks was as service people - domestic workers, ‘garden boys’ and ‘rubbish boys’. I never used the word ‘kaffir’ - the Moslem term for ‘nonbeliever’ that, with centuries of mangled interpretation, had become South Africa’s most emotive racial insult. I never dreamed of going kaffir-bashing on Friday nights - a practice where gangs of drunken white kids looked for lone blacks to beat up. I knew there was a sickness in our society, but then, I did not realize the extent of it. I took the
pleasures of apartheid for granted. Like most of my contemporaries, I
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