The station commander came out of the charge office, and as he went down the steps Lothar fell in a pace behind him. Together they crossed the yard and halted in front of the gate.
'This is an illegal gathering,' the commander addressed the young man who had called out to them. 'You must disperse immediately.' He was speaking in Afrikaans.
'It is much worse than that, officer,' the young man smiled at him happily. He was replying in English, a calculated provocation.
'You see, none of us are carrying our pass books. We have burned them.' 'What is your name, you?' the commander demanded in Afrikaans.
'My name is Raleigh Tabaka and I am the branch secretary of the Pan Africanist Congress, and I demand that you arrest me and all these others,' Raleigh told him in fluent English. 'Open the gates, policeman, and take us into your prison cells.' 'I am going to give you five minutes to disperse,' the commander told him menacingly.
'Orwhat?' Raleigh Tabaka asked. 'What will you do if we do not obey you?' and behind him the crowd began to chant. 'Arrest us! We have burned the dompas. Arrest us!' There was an interruption and a burst of ironic cheers and hooted laughter from the rear of the crowd, and Lothar jumped up on the bonnet of the nearest police Land- Rover to see over their heads.
A small convoy of three troop carriers filled with uniformed constables had driven out of the side road and was now slowly forcing its way through the crowd. The densely packed ranks gave way only reluctantly before the tall covered trucks, but Lothar felt a rush of relief.
He jumped down from the Land-Rover and ordered a squad of his men to the gates. As the convoy came on the people beat upon the steel sides of the trucks with their bare fists and jeered and hooted and gave the ANC salute. A fine mist of dust rose around the trucks and the thousands of milling shuffling feet of the crowd.
Lothar's men forced the gates open against the pressure of black bodies and as the trucks drove through, they swung them shut, and hurriedly locked them again as the crowd surged forward against them.
Lothar left the commander to haggle and bluster with the leaders of the crowd and he went to deploy the reinforcements along the perimeter of the yard. The new men were all armed and Lothar posted the older more steady-looking of them on top of trucks from where they had a sweeping field of fire over all four sides of the fence.
'Stay calm,' he kept repeating. 'Everything is under control. Just obey your orders.' He hurried back to the gateway as soon as he had placed the reinforcements, and the commander was still arguing with the black leaders through the wire.
'We will not leave here until either you arrest us, or the pass laws are abolished.' 'Don't be stupid, man,' the commander snapped. 'You know neither of those things is possible.' 'Then we will stay,' Raleigh Tabaka told him and the crowd behind him chanted: 'Arrest us! Arrest us! Now!' 'I have placed the new men in position,' Lothar reported in a low voice. 'We have nearly two hundred now.' 'God grant it will be enough if they turn nasty,' the commander muttered and glanced uneasily along the lille of uniformed men. It seemed puny and insignificant against the mass that confronted them through the wire.
'I have argued with you long enough.' He t/urned back to the men behind the gate. 'You must take these people away now. That is a police order.' 'We stay,' Raleigh Tabaka told him pleasantly.
As the morning wore on, so the heat increased and Lothar could feel the tension and the fear in his men rising with the heat and the thirst the dust and the chanting. Every few minutes a disturbance in the ci owd made it eddy and push like a whirlpool in the flow of a river, and each time the fence shook and swayed and the white men fingered their guns and fidgeted in the baking sun. Twice more during the morning reinforcements arrived and the crowd let them through until there were almost three hundred armed police in the compound.
But instead of dispersing, the crowd continued to grow as every last person who had hidden away in the township cottages, expecting trouble, finally succumbed to curiosity and crept out to join the multitude.
After each new arrival of trucks there was another round of argument and futile orders to disperse, and in the heat and the impatience of waiting, the mood of the crowd gradually changed. There were no more smiles and the singing had a different tone to it as they began to hum the fierce fighting songs. Rumours flashed through the throng - Robert Sobukwe was coming to speak to them, -›erwoerd had ordered the passes to be abolished and Moses Gama to be released from jail, and they cheered and sang and then growled and surged back and forth as each rumour was denied.
The sun made its noon, blazing down upon them, and the smell of the crowd was the musky African odour, alien and yet dreadfully familiar.
The white men who had stood to arms all that morning were reaching the point of nervous exhaustion and each time the crowd surged against the frail wire fence they made little jumpy movements and one or two of them without orders loaded their sten guns and lifted them into the high port position. Lothar noticed this and went down the line, ordering them to unload and uncock their weapons.
'We have to do something soon, sir,' he told his commander. 'We can't go on like this - someone or something is going to snap.' It was in the air, strong as the odour of hot African bodies, and Lothar felt it in himself. He had not slept that night, and he was haggard and he felt brittle and jagged as a blade of obsidian.
'What do you suggest, De La Rey?' the commander barked irritably, justas edgy and tense. 'We must do something, you say. da, I agree - but w_ 'We should take the ringleaders out of the mob.' Lothar pointed at Raleigh Tabaka who was still at the gate. It was almost five hours since he had taken up his station there. 'That black swine there is holding them together. If we pick him and the other ringleaders out, the rest of them will soon lose interest.' 'What is the time?' the commander asked, and although it seemed irrelevant, Lothar glanced at his watch. 'Almost one o'clock.' 'There must be more reinforcements on the way,' the commander said. 'We will wait another fifteen minutes and then we will do as you suggest.' 'Look there,' Lothar snapped and pointed to the left.
Some of the younger men in the crowd had armed themselves with stones and bricks, and from the rear other missiles, chunks of paving slab and rocks, were being passed over the heads of the crowd to those in the front ranks.
'Ja, we have to break this UlS now,' the commander agreed, 'or else there will be serious trouble.' Lothar turned and called a curt order to the constables nearest him.
'You men, load your weapons and move up to the gate with me.' He saw that some of the other men further down the line had taken his words as a general order to load, and there was the snicker of metal on metal as the magazines were clamped on to the sten guns and the cocking handles jerked back. Lothar debated with himself for a moment whether he should countermand, but time was vital.
