Читать книгу Time Bomb - Johan Marais - Страница 6

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A CHILD IN A GROWN-UP WORLD

How did I get to this point? I had lost all sense of humanity and could no longer endure my own life. Where did this falling apart begin? If I had to think about it, it probably already started in childhood.

After all, I was hardly more than a child when I joined the police force at the age of sixteen. My brother Len[1] had left school that year and decided to give the police a go. I fell in step with him and, having completed standard nine, I left school as well.

Late in 1975 I joined the police force, working as a student constable at the Springs police station. The next year I was part of the January intake at the Police College in Pretoria. There I completed my police training, as well as my matric, studying legal subjects such as Criminal Law, Statute Law, Criminology and International Law.

During the first three months we were not allowed to walk anywhere. We had to move at the double, except when we were returning from the mess. We got no leave during this time either. At the end of three months, we were given our first weekend pass. After that, the pace slowed slightly and the training became more bearable. The discipline remained strict, however, and we jumped to attention at just about everything that moved.

We were made thoroughly aware of the Swart Gevaar (black threat). We were young and susceptible, and it was impressed upon us daily that black people were potential terrorists who stood for evil and the Antichrist. We were brainwashed about political issues and saw the average black person as the enemy.

My first acquaintance with violence in the black townships was during the 1976 riots in Soweto. As student constables, we were temporarily deployed at Tembisa on the East Rand to help control the riots and defend key positions.

Dozens of corpses were brought in every day, but especially over weekends, and laid out in the police garage because the government morgues were filled to overflowing. They had been shot, stabbed or had their heads bashed in, and some were badly mutilated. Whether the deaths were related to the riots or merely the result of crime, I couldn’t say. A black person’s life seemed worth very little, and the newspapers did not report on these deaths or publish the names of the dead.

I was seventeen when I completed my training, and early in 1977 I was posted to Springs police station as a constable. Because I was not yet eighteen, I was not permitted to carry a firearm, so I served as a court orderly. I found it interesting and soon became familiar with the procedures of a criminal court. After a few months, I was put in charge of the holding cells, and I came into daily contact with hardened criminals waiting to appear before the court.

In those years, corporal punishment was still administered for minor crimes by youthful offenders. The person in charge of the cells was supposed to have the rank of warrant-officer, and it was his job to mete out corporal punishment. Because there was no one else available, the task fell on me. Strictly speaking it was inadmissible, of course, but I ended up carrying out the court’s sentence.

The offender was strapped to a bench, and a cane was selected from a bunch soaking in water in a milk can. The offender’s behind was covered with a cloth, after which the whipping commenced, usually continuing until he wet himself, or worse. The sentence made provision for anything from six to ten strokes, but that number was hardly ever reached. By the third stroke, the offender would often shit himself. With each stroke, the person administering the punishment would aim for the same spot on the cloth, until the flesh was torn. The offender would scream, but he was strapped down, of course, and could not move.

It was a powerful feeling, having been assigned by the court to assault another person.

During that time, I became acquainted with strong liquor. “Police coffee” was the name the senior members used for brandy and Coke, and you were not one of the in-crowd if you didn’t join in the drinking and fighting in the local hotels on weekends.

After I turned eighteen, I was transferred from the court and assigned to investigate dockets at the Enquiries branch. I lived in the single quarters at Springs, paying for my board and lodging from my meagre policeman’s salary.

One day in the mess I struck up a conversation with the guy responsible for the finances of the mess. He explained the system regarding prisoners’ meals to me. The cost of every meal supplied to a prisoner could be claimed back from the state, resulting in a slight discount in the monthly fees of those who ate at the mess. This meant that the more prisoners we could lock up in the local cells, the bigger our discount. At the time, blacks had to carry the hated pass books, and it was easy to take a truck, raid the nearest farm and lock up all the workers without pass books. I was quite shocked to see policemen throwing legal pass books away so that the evening’s quota of prisoners could be reached and a suitable number of meals claimed.

As a young policeman recently out of college, I found it hard to find my feet. Senior members shouted at me. I was nothing. At tea time I had to wait until everyone had helped themselves and, if there was tea left, I had to ask permission before being allowed to have any.

Nevertheless I had an opportunity to get my own back. One day the station commander at Springs sent me to fetch a new sneeze machine from the Driver Training Centre in Benoni. The machine was mounted on the back of a Land Rover, and I was to undergo a quick course in operating it.

The machine was a new design and was meant to be used for crowd control in case of rioting. It was a reasonably simple appliance that was operated from the cab of the vehicle. On the back of the vehicle a square, box-like structure was mounted; on top of the box was what looked like a large megaphone, which could rotate three hundred and sixty degrees. When the contraption was switched on, a white powdery substance was sprayed from the mouth of the funnel and diffused by means of a fan. This substance was the sneezing powder, which affected the eyes, noses and armpits of bystanders – in fact, any moist spot on the body. It made the victim sneeze and caused an irritating, burning sensation. Strangely, neither this powder nor tear gas had any effect on horses and dogs, which was why these animals could safely be used during riots.

On my way back with the machine, the devil whispered in my ear. I stopped and carefully filled a plastic bag with powder from the machine. Two weeks later I stood on the top storey of the police station and scattered a cupful of the powder onto the quadrangle where everyone was having tea. Complete chaos ensued. The doors of the administrative offices all led onto the quad where I had sprinkled the powder. For three days no one could work or even enter their offices. If an attempt was made to dust the powder off the shelves and surfaces, a renewed bout of sneezing would erupt.

The station commander vowed to lock up the guilty party personally. For a long time I was the chief suspect, but no one had caught me in the act. It was my revenge on the senior members who kept us juniors away from the teapot.

Later, other members got hold of the powder too, and when a fight broke out in a hotel, they would put some in the air-conditioning vents. Within seconds the fight would be over and the hotel closed. The places where vagrants were known to sleep and hang out were also dusted with powder, and that would be the end of the vagrancy.

Discipline in the police force was strict, though certain people doubtlessly took it too far. Still, if I had to choose between then and now, I would choose those years of discipline again.

The barracks themselves were a place of extremes. The senior members thought nothing of firing a few rounds in the passages with their government-issued firearms when they returned drunk after a night out. Women were regularly smuggled in, and group sex, known as “pulling a train”, was par for the course. While one guy was having sex with a girl, others lined up in threes or fours, waiting their turn.

The women involved were often young girls who had been reported missing. It wasn’t difficult to find them at the usual hotels and seedy joints. When a policeman told the runaway that he was going to lock her up, the poor girl just about jumped out of her clothes. He would take her to the barracks and keep her there for a few days, feeding her from the mess and using her for sex. This took place with the girl’s consent, for these girls were mostly past caring. Being in the barracks was preferable to being sent back home. A few days before an officer was due to inspect the barracks, the girl would be sent on her way. As rookies, we were expected to turn a blind eye and lock our doors.

During this time, I befriended a gay man who lived near my parents. He was good company and didn’t flaunt his sexual orientation. I made it clear right from the start that I was not gay myself and he accepted it.

We became good friends and I introduced him to some of my colleagues. Immediately I became aware of a stigma surrounding me. My friends were conservative and it was a question of “my way or the highway”. I took no notice of them, and my gay friend and I remained good buddies until he eventually moved to another town.

During that time there were two strapping student constables in my platoon who always had money when the rest of us had long been broke. Later I learned from one of them where they’d get their money. On Saturday evenings they would hang out at the art gallery in Schoeman Street, Pretoria – a familiar meeting place for gay men. The two policemen would pretend to be gay, hook up with an interested party and accompany him home. Once they arrived there, they would assault and rob him. So much for police protection.

Once I had turned eighteen, I was also allowed to wear my official side arm and after getting my driver’s license, I could drive around in the patrol vehicles. It was every young cop’s dream, for only then did I begin to feel that I was doing proper police work.

At the time there were minor episodes of unrest in the aftermath of the 1976 riots. The preferred plan of action was to line up about thirty policemen in block formation and intimidate the troublemakers with military precision. During our training at the Police College we had practised this rigorously, but in real life the method didn’t work very well. In the first place, there were never thirty policemen available at the same time to line up in formation. Secondly, the places where the rioting occurred didn’t exactly lend themselves to the application of our method. Stone-throwers normally take cover and launch 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