I began to think about our life in Soweto in those days. At midnight every Tuesday and Friday the white policemen would knock rudely on our kitchen and sitting-dining room doors. Without search warrants, they would rummage through our house for so-called illegal immigrants from the homelands and any other illegal stuff such as home-made ntakunyisa beer. After opening the doors, they would count us in their attempt to control the African birth rate, or influx from rural areas, or whatever the reason was.
One day my uncle, who had recently arrived from the rural areas to look for a job in the big city of gold, got a seventy-two hour order from the police. That meant that he had to leave Johannesburg and go back to the country if he did not find a job within three days. No one was allowed to hang around in town without written permission from his or her employer in those days.
It had been about three weeks since he got the order on his urban permit document. He should have already left the city and returned to the homelands. My uncle had been surviving the police raids by hiding under a big steel bath which we would turn over with him underneath it when we heard the terrifying knock of the police at the door.
The police caught my uncle one cold Saturday night. We were still listening to a radio broadcast when they knocked. Everybody was excited by the news that Prime Minister B J Vorster had resigned as the Prime Minister of the country and P W Botha had taken over as the new Prime Minister. I was the only one who was listening with blithe indifference, as I was still politically naive. The police had been clever because they had changed their timetable and come to our house on a Saturday. But we still identified the knock at the door as theirs because it was very loud as usual, and was followed by the words, “Polisie, maak oop,” spoken in a gruff voice.
In two ticks my uncle had run to the kitchen to take his usual shelter. Unfortunately for him the steel bath was full of soaking clothes. There was no way he could throw the clothes out because the water would spill all over the place and make the police suspicious. Sweating, my uncle just stood there in nervous anticipation of his fate.
Suddenly the voice at the door became unfriendly. “What are you natives still doing there? Do you think we have the whole night for you? We will break this scrap door now!”
We all froze with horror inside the house. We were aware that the police were capable of doing what they said – they had broken two of our doors the year before because we had not responded in time. The first time they came was around midnight when we were all asleep. My father was still getting dressed when they said he was wasting their time and broke down the door. The second occasion we delayed them, as we were still hiding my uncle under the steel bath. Because of this our small bedroom, where three of my brothers and my uncle slept, had no door as we had used it to replace the sitting-dining room door. A sheet had been hung across the doorway as a substitute for the broken door.
I heard my mother pleading with the policemen in the dark. “Please don’t break, I’m coming now,” she said, struggling to unlock the door, which was already being pushed hard from outside. As she opened it, it whipped open and banged against her forehead. Stolidly she stepped aside for the four uniformed white policemen and their two black colleagues to enter.
“What were you doing inside, woman? Still making babies? You natives! Next time we will break the door and beat you up for delaying us,” shouted one of the tall officers as if my mother was deaf.
The officer flashed an electric torch into my mother’s eyes and dazzled her.
“Let me see your permit.”
Without a word she quickly went to her bedroom and returned with a written page. The officer used his torch to complement the dim light from the single candle in the corner. In an effort to aid the police officers, my mother went inside her bedroom again to get a lamp, which was made out of a small Royal Baking Powder tin.
By the time she returned we were all in the sitting-dining room waiting to be counted like animals in the kraal. I was still drowsy, because even though my brothers were listening to the radio I had been slumbering.
Two police officers started counting us and the other four ferreted around in every corner of the house.
“You are supposed to be ten in this house. Which baboon does not belong here?” asked one of the police officers angrily.
We were all afraid to point a finger at my uncle. My parents looked down. My brothers and I looked at my uncle. He was very scared. But I heard his quivering voice.
“Me, baas.”
“Where are your papers?” asked another police officer.
Before my uncle could respond, the police officer’s fat hand was on the scruff of his neck. I was hoping that they wouldn’t beat him up; Brixton police were notorious for their violence.
There had even been rumours in the township of the appearance of a feared whites-only police squad. We kids were made to believe that they had more than two thirds of their faces covered by a bushy beard and moustache, and because of this you couldn’t see their mouths when they were silent. According to the rumours, in order to speak the Brixton whites-only squad would hold their bushy moustaches up with their left hands and pull down their beards with their right to enable them to open their mouths. It was also believed that they would walk around with small brooms to help them sweep their bushy wrist thatches out of the way when they wanted to check the time on their watches.
I stood in the middle of the room stupidly, examining each police officer in an attempt to verify this rumour. Meanwhile my uncle was handing his expired papers to them.
“You suppose to have been gone to the country by now. You go with us today, boy.”
“Please, sir, don’t –” pleaded my mother.
“Shut the fuck up! You kaffir bitch!”
Silence fell. We watched in horror as my uncle hobbled helplessly out into the street with the police. They all disappeared inside the police van and I only saw him again ten years later.
Six
The sweet kwaito music blaring from a white Citi Golf passing along De Korte Street helped to bring me back from my reminiscence. I looked at the time. It was ten minutes to six. The gliding amber of the sun was sloping down to usher in the evening.
I searched the pockets of my jeans and took out the packet of Peter Stuyvesant that I had just bought at the supermarket and unsealed it. I lit a cigarette and inhaled the stress-relieving smoke.
When I had finished I threw the butt into the road and took out my Walkman. I pressed the play button and began to listen to Bayete. The name of the song was “Mbombela”. I lifted my bottle of beer; it was almost half-empty.
When I raised my eyes from the beer bottle, the police car had already stopped in front of me. I hadn’t heard them arrive because of the fat beats coming from my Walkman. I pulled the earphones off and let them dangle around my neck.
At first I thought that they wanted some smokes, but then I realised that the police officers had caught me with an open beer. In two ticks both front car doors were flung open and I shrank like a child caught masturbating by its single mother as they moved hastily to accost me.
“Evening, sir.”
“Evening.”
“How are you, sir?”
“I’m all right.”
“Enjoying yourself, hey?”
“Yep.”
“Do you realise that what you’re doing is against the law?”
“Excuse me? You mean relaxing under this tree?”
“No. I’m talking about public drinking.”
“I’m not drinking anything.”
“The