Holding Up the Sky (20 page)

The police came closer and closer, seeming to crawl like turtles towards us, slowly but steadily.
‘Hlala pansi. Hlala pansi'
, the marshals cooed, mantra-like. They were almost upon us now and I had long since stopped breathing. About thirty metres away, they opened fire. The marshals could not hold us then. We all fed in different directions, some up the street, some down, some into the
donga
, anywhere to get out of the line of fire. In an effort to hide myself I had been sitting tucked in behind a group of young men. When they turned and ran, I sat frozen for a moment and a few of the them fell onto me, the weight of their bodies pushing me into the barbed wire fence behind us, digging the metal barbs into my back. I scrambled up, feeling no pain as yet, and pushed with the rest, trying to break through the fence. I remember the flesh on my legs tearing through my jeans as I pulled myself through. While I was still bent over trying desperately to free my shirt from the fence, Bonani, one of the young men from the Skhosanas', grabbed me and said, ‘Take this'. From under his shirt he handed me a gun: ‘If they catch me with it, I'm dead'. Without thinking, I shoved it down the front of my jeans and ran towards the house, bent double to stay out of the way of the bullets. I ran down through the bush, reaching the house from behind. There was screaming coming from around the front. I ran through the house, hiding the gun in my room before running out through the front door. There on the driveway was Mama Skhosana's youngest child, ten-year-old Bonginkosi, covered in blood. He too had snuck out of the house to see what was happening. When the police opened fire up the street, he stood frozen to the spot. As they sped down the road firing into the crowd, he was hit in the chest. Now he lay in his mother's arms amidst the screaming. What I didn't know as I ran over was that the police had used birdshot, not bullets. The blood on Bonginkosi's chest was from the multiple flesh wounds where the birdshot had cut into his body. He was lucky. Baba Skhosana lifted his son into his arms and carried him back into the house where Nonsi and I tended to him.

After cleaning myself up and tending to my own wounds, allowing the shock of the shooting to subside a little, I went to find Bonani and Jabulani, the Skhosanas' eldest son. When I confronted them about the gun they admitted they had had it with them since yesterday. I knew that Baba Skhosana would be furious if he found out it was in the house. I was also angry that Bonani had put me in this situation and told him so. His reasoning was that as a white person, I would have been treated differently if found with the gun but given where I was when I had it, I doubted that. I told them where the gun was hidden and said that if it wasn't gone by supper time, I would tell Baba Skhosana what had happened. The gun was gone within the hour.

After we had prepared supper for the household and the young men on watch, the phone rang. Up until this point, I had completely forgotten we had one as, for cost-saving reasons, it was set up to allow only incoming calls. It was the BBC. The situation was getting the attention of the international media, with many foreign journalists starting to arrive to cover the story. The BBC were looking for someone to interview in the township and, somehow hearing that I was there, they wanted to speak to me. I was concerned about the security police tracking the media, and given I was trying to keep out of sight, I wasn't keen to do it. They assured me they would use a false first name only. They also argued that giving people an understanding that this was not simply ‘black on black violence' would help move public opinion. Looking back, I realise they were just keen for a hot story and were unlikely to have thought through the consequences for me. On my part, I was under such stress that my ability to make sound judgments was fading. I agreed.

The journalist phoned back a few minutes later for a live interview from London. They asked me what I had seen and I told them the events of the day, implicating the police in the violence. They asked me how people were feeling. ‘Scared', I said, ‘too scared to sleep, too scared to eat.' They asked me how many people had been killed but I did not know. They asked me why I was still there and I told them we were trapped. After a few more questions, they thanked me and were gone. They got their story and I had something else to worry about. Fear of the consequences of that interview stayed with me for a long time.

After the interview, I was agitated and needed to get outside. We had heard the rumours about Edendale hospital not treating people from the ANC affiliated areas, so instead of just taking food around to the defence groups, I decided to talk to them about basic first aid. That night, the Skhosanas' eldest son Jabulani and I went from group to group all over the area, talking to people. We heard what was happening in other areas. Imbali was suffering, as were other areas to the west of us, areas where we had run many leadership and dialogue programs. There was word of bodies floating in the nearby Umsunduzi River. Families on the escarpment were also suffering and feeing down into Edendale. I heard another rumour that made me regret the interview even more. The police had been told that there was a white man in the township gun running for the ANC and they were searching for him. In reality, they were searching for me.

Thursday, 29 March
. At dawn, we returned to the house, news of the police search finally driving me indoors. We had heard more shooting all through the night, whistles being blown across the valley calling for reinforcements as the warriors attacked. I went and lay down for a while in an effort to get some sleep, exhaustion finally taking over from fear, forcing me to close my eyes. I woke intermittently as gunshots continued to crack through the air all morning.

Just as I was drifting back to sleep, somewhere around lunchtime, I heard a sound that had me out of bed and back on my feet in an instant. Whistles were blowing on the corner just above the house. We all ran to the windows and saw our defence group retreating down the street. As they reached our driveway, I saw bullets bouncing off the ground at their feet, flinging dirt up into the air. When I went to the front door, there was Baba Skhosana, pressed up against the wall just outside. I watched him as he shot quick glances up the street in an effort to discern how many warriors were bearing down on us. By this time, the houses above us were abandoned, some of our neighbours having taken refuge with us, some further down the street. I watched him as he stood there with a brick in his hand, the only weapon he had to defend us all.

In that moment, I saw him in a different light, not as the master of the house wanting things just so, but as a man who was terribly afraid but was still standing between us and our attackers, ready to die to defend us all. So I went and stood behind him and together we watched the
impi
drive our defenders further down the street.

Then the battle was at our gate. Our attackers were screaming. Bullets were skipping off the driveway just in front of our feet. A few of our defenders were crouched by the gate, trying to avoid the path of the bullets. One of these young men saw us there and turned to run towards us. As he did so, he was cut down. Without thinking, I tried to run out to him but Baba Skhosana grabbed my arm. Above the noise of the guns and the screaming from the young man's friends he kept shouting, ‘He's dead, he's dead'. ‘No, let me go', I pleaded as I struggled with him. I saw that the young man had been hit in the right shoulder and was lying still a few metres away, but I could not believe he was dead. Soon, though, I saw there was no way to get to him without getting shot myself. Baba Skhosana let go of me and picked up the brick he had dropped, his head turned again towards the bushes above the gate. We both knew the attackers were right there and in a few moments they would see us. As the impact of this sank in I was jolted from my thoughts by the sounds of other whistles, this time coming up the hill. Our defences had regrouped and were now fighting their way back up the road to protect us.

I had no idea how many Inkatha warriors there were on the road above us: I had seen hundreds the day before. As the whistles got closer, I realised that our men must now outnumber them, for they seemed to be pulling back. Soon a group of young men flooded into the yard, Jabulani and Bonani among them. The rest continued to push up the hill. Baba Skhosana and I rushed forward to look for any signs of life in the young man who lay in a heap on the driveway. But we were too late. I sat in the dirt next to his body and wept, all the fear and disbelief of the last few days pouring out of me now. Jabulani was beside me, trying to convince me to come back inside, but I couldn't move. I was completely undone. After a while, he and Bonani dragged me to my feet, saying we weren't safe and the
impi
could be back any minute. They took me inside and then disappeared back up the street, Baba Skhosana shouting after them to be careful.

Up until that moment, I had thought myself a pacifist. But I knew that if I had had a gun to hand, I would have used it against those men. I suspected Baba Skhosana would have done the same and so I took him aside and told him about the gun that Jabulani and Bonani had hidden. After a long silence, he told me that he would keep it in the house in case Inkatha returned.

The report to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said: ‘Again further skirmishes occurred in Caluza, Simero and Ashdown. Police were active, searching and disarming youths going to defend their borders'.

Had the police disarmed our defences, I have no doubt we would have been killed that day.

The report went on to say:

After the danger of the attack on our street had passed, the young men returned and removed the body. There were rumours that the morgue at Edendale hospital was full with the bodies of the dead. I stayed inside, not able to face keeping watch. For the most part, I sat on the lounge, lost in my thoughts, as the afternoon drained away. Shortly after dark, Robbie walked through the front door. He had come with the Sizwe kombi and had apparently been trying to get through ever since he had escaped Imbali the morning before. The concern on his face brought fresh tears to my sore eyes. He'd come to get me out. I sat and listened to those words, but knew that I could not leave while the family stayed. Baba Skhosana was afraid that his home would be burnt like all the others if left unprotected, so he was determined to stay. I knew that after the events of the day, he was questioning his decision. After a short argument, Robbie agreed to help me get the children out.

I gathered together the younger Skhosana children and those others who had taken refuge with us. I then went to the neighbours and counted up how many more needed to be moved. We realised it would take two trips. I was certain Monica would help to house one load of children and thought of ETHOS for the second load. I knew it was still dangerous for me to be seen, so I put on dark clothes and the balaclava and blackened my face with shoe polish. Robbie and I put all the children from the Skhosanas' into the kombi, in just the clothes they wore, and drove as quickly as we could along Edendale Road to town. We could hear gunfire as we went but none sounded close by. We sped past Huletts Aluminium in the industrial area that lay between the township and the city, but saw no one; unbeknown to us, the army convoy had just left.

When we pulled up outside Monica's house I let Robbie go in first and talk to her, thinking my appearance might give her heart failure. I was sitting at the driver's wheel, my balaclava pulled up into a cap, my face blackened, with a carload of terrified black children in the middle of a white suburb, when a police van pulled up behind me. My heart was in my mouth and I thought I could taste blood. The van's engine was still running and its headlights were shining into my rear-view mirror when its driver's door opened. The officer emerged and walked slowly over to my window, shining a torch into the kombi onto the terrified faces of the children inside. To my surprise, he simply asked me if I was alright. I told him that I was fine, just waiting for a friend inside. He nodded at me, returned to his van and drove off. To this day, I don't know what he saw when he looked in at me, why he didn't question me or detain me–but I felt that for a second time that day, I had pulled back from the edge.

Monica agreed to take the children and find places for them to stay for a few days, so we left them with her and drove back to the township for a second load. We went house to house up and down our street and collected another kombi full of neighbourhood children, happy to be getting away from the fighting but afraid of leaving their parents behind. We told each parent that their children would be safe at the university until all this was over and then drove back into town, finally pulling up in the driveway of ETHOS. I jumped out of the kombi and ran up the front stairs of the grand old house. Teboho answered the door. He was one of the people selected to receive a scholarship and was now part of ETHOS as a student, rather than as an organiser with Moss. I hadn't seen him since Mandela's rally in Durban over a month before. Teboho seemed peculiarly unsurprised to see me standing there in all my battle finery. I briefed him on the situation and he was sure they could find enough mattresses to house the children there. A few calls were made and within forty minutes, the garage resembled a large bunkhouse. Now that the children were settled, Robbie dropped me off in Caluza before driving back to Phezulu to spend the night. We agreed that if he could get through again in the morning, he would fetch me for a meeting at the town hall where the church and community organisations were planning to discuss what needed to be done.