The pelting rain was accompanied by a gusting wind that drove the rain horizontally across the streets and tore branches from the trees and flung them into the roadway.
In the midst of this chaos, the young man in the grey bakkie gripped the steering wheel tighter in his white-knuckled grip and ploughed relentlessly along the Old Johannesburg Road through the screen of water in front of him, his mind trapped in the swirl of a different storm. His nerves were raw and the slashing rain on the windscreen combined with the squeaking wipers and the thundering wash against the chassis of the bakkie to compound a dull, numbing headache.
The incident started, like so many before it, with an unimportant misunderstanding, to which was added in rapid succession a sudden burst of adrenaline, copious quantities of testosterone and a touch of madness. The driver of the bakkie was lost in his own thoughts, alone, his mind in turmoil, his eyes flicking left and right in time with the windscreen wipers but unseeing. The young men in the minibus were in high spirits, on their way to a karate competition, dressed in their light-grey tunics, proud of the coloured belts which proclaimed their rankings, and sporting the white headbands that had become the fashion amongst karateka since Ralph Macchio wore one in The Karate Kid. They were singing merrily, clapping their hands and swaying in time with the music on the radio, township jazz, rap, whatever came up. The young man and the driver of the minibus peered into the rain but did not see each other until the last moment.
The bakkie had heaved around the gentle left-hand curve and straightened out as the intersection came dimly into view. Then it picked up speed as the road dipped. The tall eucalyptus trees on the top of the bank surrendered seeds and leaves and even small branches to the wind. Loads of debris washed downhill and discharged a thin brown layer across the road surface towards the intersection. The minibus entered the Old Johannesburg Road from Saxby Road just as the bakkie was about to cross in front of it. A flash of lightning froze the moment in a surreal black-and-white negative, of a young white man clinging to the steering wheel of the bakkie and the young black men in the minibus, caught in the middle of a beat, their hands apart, alarm and surprise on every face.
The two drivers barely managed to avoid a collision, more through luck than driving skill, as the bakkie squeezed past the right-hand side of the minibus. Inside the two vehicles the outside world suddenly became real again, and the two drivers waved their fists at each other, angry when they should have been grateful for their narrow escape.
Then the chase started.
First the minibus came right up to the rear bumper of the bakkie, hardly a car’s length behind it, and flashed its lights. The driver of the bakkie responded by pumping his brakes. He grimaced when the minibus swerved left and right to avoid running into his rear bumper. The minibus countered the move by accelerating to overtake, but the driver of the bakkie milked the last bit of power from his jaded engine to pick up speed and simultaneously veered to the right. This manoeuvre forced the minibus so far over to the wrong side of the road that its wheels left the tarmac surface momentarily. The driver had to fight hard to control its drift onto the muddy verge, and applying brakes merely exacerbated the swaying and swerving of the minibus. The vehicle careened dangerously close to the point of capsizing, and the young men inside were flung about like puppets without the comfort or restraint of seatbelts. At last the minibus found its way back onto the tarmac and to the left side of the road, but even there the grip of its worn tyres was tenuous. The rain kept pouring down.
Soon the minibus caught up with the bakkie again where the road divided into severed lanes for north- and south-bound traffic across the Hennops River. The river was already swollen to its banks. The bakkie and the minibus jostled for position as they came alongside each other in the left-hand curve approaching the narrow century-old bridge. The bridge, designed for the gentler days of horse and carriage, was barely the width of two cars but the two young men managed to cross the river side by side, with centimetres to spare between their vehicles and the steel railings of the bridge on either side. On the bridge the two vehicles met fleetingly before they separated again. The minibus struck the right-hand verge a second time. The bakkie left the tarmac on the opposite side and spluttered on at low speed in high gear until its driver, who had slid across the front seat almost into the passenger seat, recovered sufficiently to pull it back into a lower gear.
This close shave, instead of bringing the two drivers to their senses, spurred them on to greater effort. Nothing learned, the minibus set off in pursuit of the bakkie again. Malice joined inexperience as the game turned deadlier.
The duel continued until they reached the outskirts of Pretoria. Eight kilometres after their initial encounter they entered the sweep around the Voortrekker Monument into Jan Smuts Road. The road widened into two lanes, and now they had more space to execute their swoops and passes, punctuated by threatening gestures, swerving this way and that, with feints and counterfeints and flashing lights. As they passed the De Groen Magazine on the hill to their left, the Danville and Pretoria West exit came up. Oblivious of the rain shrouding the Voortrekker Monument on the right, the driver of the minibus pretended to be staying on Jan Smuts but then, at the last moment, steered sharply to the left across the zebra crossing into the glide-off. The bakkie, however, stuck to the minibus as if they were held together by an elastic band. They swept downhill at speed in a left-handed curve around Magazine Hill, neither on his intended route.
Halfway around the hill the minibus braked and escaped into a minor road to the left. It took them uphill, but neither driver knew where it was to lead them. It came as a surprise that the road ended at the walled and gated compound of the military signal station. The driver of the minibus made a desperate, sharp turn but found his way blocked by the bakkie. Then he found a rough dirt track running downhill away from the signal station and into the trees. The minibus bounced on along the uneven track. The bakkie kept up the chase.
The two vehicles splashed and bumped and ground their way down the narrow winding track until their way was suddenly obstructed by a concrete reservoir. They steered towards the left to get around it but the track ended abruptly. There was no turning around and they had to stop. For a moment no one moved. The rain continued to drum on the roofs of the minibus and the bakkie. The driver of the bakkie stared at the side of the minibus through a muddy window and the rain. The young men in the minibus looked anxiously at the bakkie. They could vaguely make out a pale face behind the steering wheel. No one moved, yet someone had to do something sensible to break the deadlock.
At first they sat there in the rain, staring at each other. Then the sliding door of the minibus opened suddenly with a clang as its locking mechanism disengaged. The sliding door grated across on its rail and slammed against the lock with another clang of metal on metal. As if they were acting on command, all but the driver swarmed out of the left-hand side of the minibus facing the bakkie. The driver came storming around the front. They were barefoot, wearing their loose-fitting light-grey karate trousers and jackets and white headbands. As one they moved towards the bakkie only a few strides away and dimly visible in the rain and fading light. Then, like a succession of thunder claps, a burst of gunshots stopped them in their tracks and felled them one by one.
The shooting stopped as abruptly as it had started. Each of the thirteen rounds in the pistol’s magazine had found its target. The seven bodies lay in the mud, in disarray, the disciplined postures and formations of their sport awry, the grace of their youth lost forever as they lay where they had fallen, awkwardly, in random poses, some jerking in their death throes. Their blood poured from their punctured lungs and hearts and mingled with the rain in rivulets running down the hill towards the reservoir.
The gun fell from the young man’s hand. It slowly sank deeper into the muddy slush. After a while he started working feverishly at the bodies, arranging them until they were exactly to his liking, on their backs and in line next to each other, w
ith their hands folded solemnly across their chests. When he had finished he looked at what he had done and sank to his knees and howled into the rain. His throat raw with abrasion, he stood up, and remained fixed to the spot with his face turned into the wind, no longer conscious of the bodies at his feet, his subconscious mind already engaged in the process of erasing what it would not allow him to remember.
Later, when the wind had abated somewhat, he took a tentative step forward. He stepped away from the bodies with unseeing eyes; then walked faster and faster until he broke into a run. He ran and ran, always downhill, frequently slipping and falling in the mud, until his lungs were burning and he’d run out of energy. He fell to his knees and sat there heaving in the grass. His head sank lower and lower until it touched the ground, then he clasped his hands around his knees and rolled over on his side. He lay there while the storm continued to batter Pretoria. Darkness settled over the veld.
When he found his feet again he was somewhere among the trees below the reservoir. He started walking away from the hill and crossed a number of roads until he was in the dark open space of the approaches to the Voortrekker Monument. He leaned against a tree as his stomach retched, but there was nothing to void; he hadn’t eaten anything all day.
At the reservoir muddy water ran down the track and found its way around the bodies lying there, piling twigs, leaves and earth against them. Soon the members of the Diepsloot Karate Club would be no more than debris left in the wake of a storm, their blood washing down into the waterways that would spill it into the ocean.
Less than a kilometre from the reservoir, on the city’s side of Magazine Hill, the overhead security lights warmed up quickly, bathing Maximum Security Prison in an eerie light refracted in the waves of rain that swept across the city. Inside the various sections of the prison, warders and prisoners alike were oblivious of the rain as they were all locked in for the night, isolated from the world by bars of tungsten-hardened steel and thick walls of reinforced concrete, locked into a common fate for the night. The prisoners were confined to their brightly lit cells while the warders did their rounds, restricted to the passages and walkways. Every door was locked, its keys kept off the premises for security reasons.
On the south side of the cell blocks only the gallows building was in darkness. It was shut down for the year to be given a good service before being put to use again in the new year. But none of the prisoners inside knew that there was to be a brief respite from the weekly hangings. For them the nightmare would return night after night until the call came for them. It was a time to study their Bibles, to reread old letters and to write new ones, to think and to regret, to fear. And eventually to fall into fitful sleep punctuated by uncontrollable sobbing and desperate pleas. Hardened men cried unashamedly, unaware even that they were doing so, as the past and the future came together to haunt them in the harsh light they could not escape, even in their dreams.
So they waited and prayed.
Someone’s pleading, Lord
Kumbaya
Court C, Durban
5
Judge Steyn was baiting me deliberately and was beginning to irritate me. We both knew what he was doing. We had been friends for a long time and played tennis at his house or mine every week. Owing to our personal friendship, I had to be even more deferential than I would have been with any other judge. So I had to bite my tongue throughout.
‘Why should we provide a forum for the wandering litigants of the world?’ he demanded.
I was upset with him but dared not show it. Not even original, you asshole, was the thought that went through my mind, but my mouth spoke the soothing language of advocacy. ‘If it pleases M’Lord, there is a perfectly good reason.’
He interrupted me again before I could tell him that there was a Court of Appeal decision in my favour. I really wanted to wipe the smirk off his face by telling him that the phrase ‘wandering litigants of the world’ had been used before in a judgment and that the underlying line of thought had been dismissed as being contrary to the law. I also wanted to remind him that a large number of lawyers – myself not the least of them – depended for their livelihood on the legal work these same wandering litigants brought to our jurisdiction each year, even that we might need fewer judges too if it wasn’t for the maritime cases the courts had to hear.
‘Why should the taxpayer provide the courts, the staff and the judges to hear disputes between foreigners who can litigate to their heart’s content in the courts of their own countries?’
He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I am not disposed to grant this application,’ he said.
I stood motionless and kept quiet for a while, a trick I had learnt from one of my mentors years ago. I kept my eyes on the robed figure on the bench.
We were in the Motion Court in Durban, a stone’s throw from the busiest port in the southern hemisphere, where the ship I was trying to arrest for an American client was moored. The wood panelling of the court was still in good shape even though the paint on the ceiling and walls was stained and mottled in places. I looked up at the acoustic wires overhead, then down at the floor. The parquet floor tiles were lifting in parts and made movement about the court a tricky affair. Apartheid South Africa was beginning to look shabby, its support systems breaking down one by one.
I waited until I was sure I had his full attention before I spoke. ‘Well, M’Lord,’ I began, ‘it is in the taxpayer’s interests that the Court should grant this application. Apart from the fact that the papers before the Court make out a sound case for the relief sought,’ I added somewhat tartly.
He changed his line of resistance, saying as he folded his arms, ‘I have a discretion in the matter, don’t I?’ It was a statement and not a question. ‘And I can take the taxpayer’s interests into account when exercising that discretion, can’t I?’
He was wrong. I had anticipated trouble from the moment his registrar had informed me that he would hear the matter in open court. I had to send for my robes in a hurry and now stood sweating in them. The usual procedure for urgent applications was to be heard in chambers and I would not have had to dress up for that.
‘Hello, Johann.’
‘Good afternoon, Judge.’
‘So what have you got for me?’
‘I have an urgent security arrest in a shipping matter, Judge. The ship is due to sail tomorrow morning.’
‘Do I need to read the papers?’
‘No, Judge, I don’t think so. The case is rather ordinary and the order is in the usual form.’
‘Yes, thank you. You can tell my registrar to make a note on the file that I have granted an order as prayed.’
‘Thanks, Judge.’
‘Say, Johann, what do you think of Edberg’s chances to win at Wimbledon this year?’
Or so it would normally go. Not this time, though. We wrestled with the matter and we wrestled with each other, this way and that, with point and counterpoint, going round and round, the Judge wielding the power and me wielding the facts and the law. Eventually he relented as we both had known he would do.
‘All right then,’ he said suddenly. ‘What order do you want?’
I directed him to the order I wanted. His black eyebrows obscured his eyes as he scribbled on a piece of paper. Then he tapped with his pen on the edge of the bench in front of him and his registrar stood up and turned to face him. He handed her a folded slip of paper.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I grant an order as set out in the draft order attached to the notice of motion.’ Then he stood up and left the courtroom without waiting for the usher to escort him off the bench. His hasty retreat relieved me of the duty to bow deeply and kiss his behind with the customary ‘As M’Lord pleases.’ He was gone before I could say anything. The registrar came over to me as I was collecting my papers and handed me the slip the Judge had given her. I opened it: We have to finish the tennis early tonight as I have to take my wife to the Symphony Concert at 7:30. Don’t be late.
I
arrived at my reception desk with my brief under my arm and my advocate’s bag containing my robes slung over my shoulder. I was still hot under the collar. In the streets outside people were already making their way home after the day’s work or shopping. Traffic was picking up on the main road outside my chambers.
My secretary was on the telephone when I walked in and when she saw me shake my head she told the caller that she would make sure his call was returned as soon as I walked in the door. Then she made a note of yet another call to return and impaled it on the message spike. I put my bag on her desk and leafed through the afternoon’s messages. They could all wait.
Five minutes later I was sitting in my chair with my feet up on the desk. I had a harbour view, a calming influence even on the worst of days. The port worked day and night and I watched the cranes at the container terminal as they expertly placed one container after another precisely in the right spot on the waiting ships. Spider-like straddle carriers scurried around with containers in their bellies. My secretary came in with a cup of black coffee.
‘Thanks, Cora,’ I muttered. I slid the security arrest brief over to her side of the desk. ‘Would you do a fee note and send it out tomorrow morning, please?’
She looked down at me and smiled. ‘There is someone who says she has to see you.’
I hadn’t noticed anyone in reception when I came in. ‘But I am off to play tennis,’ I said.
‘It is Roshnee Kissoon Singh and she wants to brief you in a criminal case.’
‘I don’t do crime, Cora. You know that.’
My secretary held firm. ‘I think you can tell her that yourself, Johann. May I bring her in?’
I walked to the door with her. ‘No, it’s all right, I’ll meet her in the front.’
Shepherds and Butchers Page 5
