The man looked at his watch and placed his mobile on the desk. “You’re now officially hostages, that’s what it’s about. Sixteen niggers and a white nigger lover. Shut that row up,” he shouted at the crying children, brandishing his rifle. They clung to each other, weeping quietly. The adults were afraid to turn and comfort them, the women also trying to stifle their sobbing.
Hostages? What do they expect to get in return for a group of black, penniless families? Karen’s mind was whirling, trying to fathom the reason for the attack. “I don’t think you’re going to get much of a ransom for us,” she said.
“You hear that, Jan?” The youngest of the group laughed. “She thinks we want money. Stupid bitch.”
“Don’t use names! I told you not to use names. Fucking arsehole. Shut the fuck up!”
“Shit! I fucked up there. It won’t happen again.” The man sat back on his chair, suitably chastised.
“So what is it you’re after, Jan? If it’s not money, what is it?” Karen was now convinced that they were not about to be killed, at least not yet. These men wanted them alive so they could barter them for something.
The man looked past her with his unsettling squint. “You’ll find out soon enough. The police already know, that’s why they got here so quick. We sent a message at eleven o’clock. It took them just ten minutes, so we’ve got their attention all right.”
His mobile vibrated on the desk. After the third ring he picked it up. “Who’s this?”
He listened for a while then said. “There are sixteen niggers and a white woman from Joburg. None of them are hurt. You’ve got until four o‘clock to agree to our demands. If you don’t, we’ll start killing them one by one. Starting with the children,” he finished menacingly. He hadn’t mentioned the three dead blacks lying in the corridor. He closed the phone and sat back on the desk, looking pleased with himself.
“What did they say?” The same man asked, he must have been in his early twenties. He seems nervous, Karen thought. That’s why he’s talking so much.
“It was the police chief from Sandton. He said they’re examining our demands. They’ll get back within the hour.”
Karen shivered. That doesn’t sound good, she thought. It’s usually the precursor of an assault where the gunmen and most of the hostages get slaughtered. She sat silent, looking the men over. Four of them were typical middle aged Afrikaans; two were bald, two had moustaches, one had a beard and they all carried comfortable paunches behind their belts. They looked as if they spent a lot of time watching television and drinking beer. The leader, Jan, carried himself with some panache, despite his affliction, whilst the sixth, the youngest was short, skinny and uncomfortable, nervously moving about the room and sniffing.
Trying to ignore the sound of the crying children and parents, she attempted to assess the situation pragmatically. Over the years she had covered a lot of stories about the white pro-apartheid movements. Three of the leaders of the Boeremag, Mike du Toit, Herman van Rooyen and Rudi Gouws, were amongst twenty-six men arrested in 2002 for the Soweto bombings and for plotting to assassinate Nelson Mandela and overthrow the National African Congress. They had been in prison in Pretoria since then and likely to remain there for the rest of their days.
But she didn’t think these men were part of that organisation. More likely some crazy splinter group that was trying to turn the clock back against all the odds and world opinion. Karen wasn’t optimistic about the chances of a happy ending to this nightmare unless there was some way she could intervene and affect the outcome. She forced herself to think laterally, outside the box. Coetzee’s in Joburg today. He can be here in thirty minutes. I need a pretext to get him here.
“Can I ask a question?”
“Depends what it is.” The man called Jan lit up a cigarette.
“Are you hoping to swap us for someone?”
“Smart! She’s smart.” It was the younger man again.
“Will you shut your fucking mouth up! What did I tell you?”
Karen waited a moment until the men quietened down. “Are you trying to get du Toit and the others released?”
Jan took a drag on his cigarette. “Why would that be of interest to you? You’re a hostage now, we’re the ones negotiating and we’re the ones with the guns.”
“I told you. I’m a well-known journalist. My paper is the second biggest in the country and I’m on TV regularly. I know a lot of people and I can reach them easier than you can.” She paused to let her words sink in. “Maybe I can help you get what you want and get what I want at the same time.”
“Which is?”
“It should be fairly obvious. I want to get out of this alive. I don’t really care about the blacks, but I care about my own life.”
There was a long, pregnant pause, the men looking at each other, at Jan and at her. The black families huddled even closer together, whimpering miserably. This white woman had just announced their death sentence.
Finally, Jan said, “We’re not the Boeremag. They’re a bunch of incompetent arseholes and they’re all going to snuff it in jail. Their plans were completely insane. Fucking idiots, they deserved to get caught.” He dropped his cigarette and ground it out on the floor with his silver-buckled boot. “We,” he waved his hand around the group, “are members of the Wit Heerskappy Vegters, The White Supremacy Fighters.” He stared expectantly at her with his good eye. Was this woman whom she claimed to be, a well-known journalist who would know about his organisation?
“So it’s Julian Sumerschmidt that you want to get out?”
The men looked around at each other, impressed by her knowledge and by the extent of their reputation.
Now, Karen was very afraid. Sumerschmidt had been imprisoned the previous year for leading a frenzied attack on another school in Soweto. He and his followers had set the building on fire, causing the deaths of more than a dozen teachers and children. His extremist right-wing militia group had pledged to eradicate schools and education from the reach of the black population of the country. The man was a monster. If these apparently moderate group members were anything like him, no one would escape alive.
“You know your business.” Jan nodded his agreement. “How come you’re writing about educating niggers? Are you for it or one of the thousands who agree with our anti-education agenda?”
“My personal politics aren’t important here. I want to save my life, that’s my only agenda.”
“What can you do for us that we can’t do ourselves?”
“You need a bigger platform to get your message across than a crappy little school in Alexandra. This is just a little local upset, it won’t get an inch of newspaper space or any of the TV exposure that you need for such a campaign. You have to be seen by those thousands of supporters that you’re talking about. I can arrange that for you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I think I could arrange a TV interview. You could state your case and ask your supporters to help you in demanding Sumerschmidt’s release against the liberation of me and the others here.”
Now she had their attention. The other men looked at her with admiration. They would be on television, celebrities. This could be the start of a massive nationwide surge in support for their ideals. They were hooked.
“How’d you organise that?” Jan was clumsily trying to grasp the implications of the idea. The rewards were clear, it could be a personal triumph for him, for Julian, for their whole campaign against these filthy niggers, but he was trying to weigh up the risks. Was this really possible? Could she get what she said? Was it a realistic idea?
“The Sun has a permanent link into the South African Broadcasting Corporation. This would be a perfect piece for SABC2. You could make your statement in English and Afrikaans to get the maximum impact. It would probably be rebroadcast all over the world, on prime time television. I can even help you write the script if you want.”
“How do we do it?” Jan was becoming more and more seduced by the idea. He could s
ee himself on the screen, telling the world the truth about their group, about the need to cleanse the nation of the corrupt black government and to put a white man back in his proper position as President. A return to white supremacy with the blacks back in the chains they had weasled their way out of through the machinations of that lying bastard, Mandela. And Julian Sumerschmidt sitting in the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town.
“We can do it with a mobile phone. Mine has a video app on it. It’s a cinch. We can post it on Youtube and Facebook. It’s a great idea.” The skinny young man was walking excitedly around the desk.
Karen gave him a disdainful look. “That’s not such a great idea. Have you seen the crazy stuff that gets posted on social media? That’s the kind of amateur thing the Boeremag would do. You’ll be taken for just another band of maniacs like them. I thought you wanted to be taken seriously?” She spoke convincingly, desperately trying to persuade Jan to do it her way, otherwise there would be no escape.
“Shut up both of you!” Jan shouted. “I’m in charge here.” Standing right in front of her, he said. “I know your plan, lady.”
Karen’s heart sank. She looked at him anxiously, trying to ignore his peculiar stare.
“You want to do this just to get a story on TV, don’t you? You want to use us to get an exclusive. Just to get your face on TV.”
She breathed a silent sigh of relief. “You’re dead right. If we do this properly we’ll both become big names. Now I have two agendas; to save my life and to become even more well-known. Is that a problem for you? You get your agenda at the same time, even better than you planned. In any case, what have you got to lose? You’ve still got the guns and the hostages.” She faced him down, putting on a show of strength that she didn’t feel. “And there’s another thing we have to consider,” she added, hoping it wouldn’t backfire on her.
“What’s that?”
“Why did you kill the three blacks? You’re going to have to address that. Your supporters might approve but there’s an awful lot of people who won’t.”
“It was just an accident. This kid, Rich, he just lost his rag and blasted them when they came round the corner.”
“I thought we were being attacked. I just saw people running at us. I was protecting our group is all.”
Jan lit up another cigarette. “We came in the back way expecting to find people like your group trying to escape. The whole plan was to take hostages, so you were our lucky charm, walking into our arms like that. And a white woman to up the stakes. That’s a bonus. I don’t give a shit about the dead niggers, but it was a mistake, I know it.”
“Well, you’ve got to find a convincing explanation for that so it doesn’t get in the way of your petition for Julian.”
“I need to think about this.” His eye twitched several times and he turned away to call the other men around him, all of them furiously offering their opinions in hushed tones.
After a couple of minutes, he sent them back to their seats and their guard posts. “So, what’s your plan? Remember, any tricks and this place goes up in flames and you’re all dead meat.”
“You’ll have to let me speak to the police chief who called you. I’ll probably know him or one of his bosses. I told you, I know lots of people.”
“Then what happens?”
“One of my friends is a cameraman at SABC2. If he’s in Joburg I can get the police to ask for him and a sound technician to come immediately.”
“Nobody except the cameraman. No assistants, no security, no other equipment, nothing. One guy with only a camera, that’s all. And we frisk him before we let him in.”
“Whatever you say. If he’ll do it, I’m OK with that.”
“I want you to write down what you’re going to say and you’d better stick to that, word for word. Any tricks and you know what’ll happen.”
Coetzee never told Karen exactly what happened behind the scenes. When she recommended Marius Coetzee as her preferred cameraman, it took a while for the local police and the Sun to put two and two together. The police refused to back an intervention by an operative who was married to one of the hostages, but when he was apprised of the situation Coetzee fought tooth and nail to be permitted to save his wife. In the end his arguments and reputation won the day. But this would be a one man mission with no support. If it failed, the police would storm the school and God only knew what mayhem would ensue.
“Search him, head to toe.” It was two hours later and Coetzee was standing at the classroom door, holding a JVC TV camera over his shoulder. He was wearing sunglasses, a tight-fitting shirt and jeans and sneakers and his unruly curly hair was slicked down with lotion. Not his chosen attire, but carefully advised by Karen’s boss at the paper. She had also given him some quick instructions about the equipment but he didn’t need much. He had to be able to do just one thing.
Jan had ordered the adult hostages to move the corpses along the corridor, so they couldn’t be seen from the classroom. The members of his group wouldn’t touch the black bodies, but they threw some water over the floor to make the blood stains less visible. Now everybody was back in position and he was rehearsing his speech in his head, hoping to be able to brush off that minor incident without jeopardising his TV performance. Karen had made several suggestions and he had taken notes.
Coetzee let Rich search him thoroughly and check his camera over then he sauntered into the classroom, as he imagined a media personality would do. He laid the camera on the desk, ignored the black families, and smiled at his wife. “How you doing?”
“I’m OK.” She said casually and pointed at the boss man. “This is Jan. He’s with the Wit Heerskappy Vegters. We’re going to film him making an appeal for Julian Sumerschmidt.”
Coetzee shrugged. “Whatever. Have you got a speech ready?” Jan nodded. “How long?”
“Five minutes or so.”
“Where do you want to set up?”
“I think I should be standing in front of my guys and the hostages. In charge. What do you think, Karen?”
“Sounds good. Maximum effect, minimum explanations.”
Coetzee stood behind the desk with his back to the wall while the others took their places. Karen was prominent in front of the hostages, and the militants stood to Jan’s other side, toting their guns and trying to look tough. Jan was holding his crib sheet and his pistol was in its holster.
He hoisted the camera off the desk and pointed it towards Jan. It was a JVC HDV professional model, the microphone sitting on top of the lens. When he saw they were ready, he counted down from five, as he’d been told, then pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. “Sorry,” he said. “Bad battery contact. It happens a lot. One second.”
He opened up the battery compartment at the back of the JVC and removed something, then laid the camera on the desk again.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Jan reached for his pistol.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you.” Coetzee was holding a small object in his hand, about the size of a golf ball. He pulled a metal loop from it and held the ball firmly in his left hand. “This is a Dutch V40 fragmentation grenade and I just took the pin out,” he announced calmly. “As long as I keep hold of the security grip nothing happens. If I let go, we all get blown to tiny pieces.”
There was a long moment’s pause while everyone registered what he had said then the hostages started wailing, crying and hugging each other again. If this was man was a rescuer, he was more lethal than the terrorists.
Jan raised his pistol. “If you do that you’ll kill yourself and all the hostages and this white woman!”
“What do you care?” Asked Coetzee. “You’ll all be dead as well. Do you really want to get blown apart for the sake of Julian Sumerschmidt?”
Jan looked round at Karen, a crazed expression on his face, his eye flickering madly. “You fucking bitch! You’ve set us up. Who is this guy?”
Karen ran to the desk and stood beside Coetzee. “He’s my husband and he’s a Special F
orces Officer.”
After the terrorists were led away by the police Karen sat with the remaining hostages, talking, praying and comforting them. Now they realised that her deceptive act had been to save them they cried even more than before, but now, tears of joy and relief. Coetzee had left with the police to do his debriefing so she had time to get to know them. She spent a long time talking to Abigail Wantusi, whose parents were killed in the first shooting. The ten year old was inexplicably calm, seeming not to have registered their deaths, not fully understanding that she had survived the tragedy only to become an orphan.
Finally Karen left them and went out to her car. She knew there would be no counselling for them, no compensation, no apologies from anyone, nothing to assuage their trauma. They would just have to get back on with their mean existence and be thankful they had survived, sometimes wishing they had not. She drove back to the Sun’s offices in Johannesburg slowly, in a pensive mood, trying to put the incident into perspective, looking for a rational explanation for an otherwise meaningless attack which had taken three innocent lives, wondering if it would change anything. But deep inside she knew it wouldn’t make any difference.
At the Sun, it seemed that every member of the staff wanted to greet and embrace her, voicing congratulations for her mental fortitude and the quick thinking that had resulted in the rescue of sixteen innocent blacks. In tomorrow’s headlines she would become a celebrity, but even as she sat at her desk writing the article that would project her into the limelight, she was wondering if she really wanted to continue in this job. Trying to change things that couldn’t be changed, trying to make sense of a state of affairs which could never be justified, trying to understand a status quo which could cause such chaos and human misery in such a brief moment of time.
Karen wrote her article then went home to prepare dinner for Marius. They both deserved to enjoy a quiet evening after today’s events.
DELMAS
MPUMALANGA, SOUTH AFRICA, 2010
The African Diamond Trilogy Box Set Page 89
