‘Gordon was so shy and quiet, and Robert seemed to bring him out. Gordon used to hide his feelings, he was a one-word man, though not with Robert, who also made him laugh. Gordon had a shy, captivating smile, quite mischievous really, and when he laughed it was quite explosive. They were very close. In our family we discussed a lot of things, but not politics. I never showed my hurt to anyone, except my older brother Trevor.
‘I think Gordon took the same view – and the person he could show his hurt to was Robert. Gordon was extremely mild mannered. But if you wanted to make him mad, you only had to say something bad about Robert and he would get really angry. They had a very profound friendship.’
The Bechet College of Education which they attended was the only teacher training college for Coloureds in Natal. In its 50-year history it had never had permanent premises and the college was housed temporarily in a former white girls’ high school, which had abandoned the building for more suitable accommodation. For a while the site had been used as a storehouse by the Durban Corporation and then turned over to Bechet in 1979. The building was a faded, worn out colonial dream.
Bechet College (its motto was ‘Through Toil to Victory’) was immediately opposite the Greyville Racecourse, home of the exclusive Durban Turf Club with its plush modern covered stand and circular lush green racetrack, which adjoined the Royal Durban Golf Course. The race course was the venue for South Africa’s most socially competitive and fashion-conscious horse racing event of the year, the Durban July. Many of the surrounding streets mimicked a polished, thoroughbred pedigree: Ascot, Epsom, Newmarket and Derby. On the other side of the race course were the luxuriant Botanical Gardens, on the ridge beyond that snuggled the red roofs and trim gardens of the white suburbs of Musgrave and Essenwood, and in the distance loomed the grey obelisk-like tower of the University of Natal.
The college was a frayed, two-storeyed, turn-of-the-century colonial building, with a red-tiled roof and shabby, creamy white façade; along the entire front of the rundown building, under a red tin overhang propped up by slender wooden columns, was a long, gloomily shaded veranda. The college was screened from the road by a row of densely leaved wild fig trees and the worn entrance gate was flanked by drooping palms with dying, flaccid fronds. Inside, the shadowy corridors and sombre classrooms were permeated with an unmistakable aura of transience and decay. The college was dilapidated and overcrowded with few facilities – no sports ground, no laboratories, a cramped library and paint peeling off the walls in the stark classrooms.
There had always been dissatisfaction among students about the conditions, and when Robert and Gordon arrived it was simmering again. Bechet was exceptionally overcrowded, with between three and four hundred students at a time. There was considerable anger that, by contrast, the two white teacher training colleges in Natal were dramatically below their enrolment quotas; at the Edgewood Teacher Training College, with superb facilities and sports grounds, there was only one third of the possible intake, while the Afrikaans Durbanse Onderwyskollege was under threat of closure due to the lack of students.
Teachers at the college remember Robert well, but Gordon was so shy and self-effacing that few can even recall what he looked like. In contrast to the casual, colourful ‘African’ style Robert had adopted, Gordon’s dress sense was as neutral as possible: neatly pressed beige slacks and freshly ironed white shirts. He never did anything to draw attention to himself.
The college deputy said, ‘Gordon was very quiet and unnoticeable. On a couple of mornings I gave him a lift in and you just couldn’t draw him out at all. Robert was much more forceful. He was outspoken, like his father. I remember he came to me once and said, “You teachers are frightened – go and tell the department what our conditions are like.”’
Other teachers remember Gordon as ‘pleasant, nice, gentle, shy’, but recall nothing else apart from the fact that he wore glasses. They used to ask each other, ‘Which one is Gordon Webster?’ One teacher said, ‘Gordon was the absolute opposite of Robert, who would never sit back and accept what you told him. Gordon wouldn’t speak unless spoken to, and then he would be as brief as possible. You never expected him to air any views.’ Another said, ‘Gordon was particularly reticent, he just didn’t participate. He used to sit in the corner, silent. Robert, on the other hand, was quite outspoken and opinionated. One felt one had to be tactful, or he might be irritated. He was quite volatile, not the ordinary, run-of-the-mill student. He was articulate and had a big mouth, always challenging. In class, he seemed to have quite strong views about everything – speech training, poetry … I remember he always used to say, “Isn’t that a contradiction?” He was bright, and obviously thought a lot. Robert was original.’
Gordon proved to be hopeless at maths and Robert spent a lot of time helping him as maths was one of his strong subjects. Gordon was also sensitive about his rural accent, for which he still got teased. When asked where he was from, Gordon would say, ‘Pietermaritzburg.’ Robert remembers how angry Gordon got when another student said in front of a group, ‘Come off it, man, you’re from the bundu – you’re a plaasjapie.’
They spent a great deal of time together, and Robert found Gordon a thoughtful, calming influence. ‘At college they used to tease me a lot about fighting gangsters and he talked me out of getting angry with them,’ says Robert. ‘Gordon was always someone who was moderate, though he was not scared of anything. He was a very gentle person. I was not at all calm and he had a steadying influence on me. He gave me a sense of direction.’
Once when Robert had fallen out with his father over working after college, Gordon had actually taken Robert home and pressed him into apologising to Derrick and making up.
‘Gordon was quite formal, and sometimes it would seem like he was pulling your leg,’ says Robert. ‘He would always say, “Hello, how are you?” and “Really?” in that heavy rural accent. The moment you spoke to him, you liked him. He was impressive. We became friends quickly. We’re like brothers, really.’
Gordon is more emphatic. ‘Brothers?’ he says. ‘More like twins!’
They shared the same taste in music, both of them having a passion for reggae; particular favourites were Toots and the Maytals, Jimmy Cliff, and above all Bob Marley. His redemptionist lyrics gave them pride and confidence in black culture. But most of all it was politics that they discussed.
After the brutal repression of the township uprisings there had been several years of relative calm. Suddenly in 1983 that changed dramatically with a powerful upsurge of black organisation and resistance. The catalyst was the whites-only referendum pushed through by the Prime Minister, PW Botha, making him an executive president.
Botha was implementing a doctrine known as Total Strategy, formulated by the department of Defence, which observed, ‘We are today involved in a war, whether we wish to accept it or not.’
Part of the strategy was to try and drive a wedge between Coloureds and Indians, on the one hand, and Africans on the other. In the 1983 referendum, whites voted for the establishment of a separate House of Representatives for Coloureds and a House of Delegates for Indians; Coloureds and Indians, while still denied the vote in general elections, were being allowed to vote for these bodies which had puny legislative powers and could be easily overridden by a white veto. This device was greeted with derision by the majority of Coloureds and Indians. Blacks, as ever, were excluded. Resistance to this divide-and-rule strategy revitalised black organisations and trade unions, leading to the formation of the United Democratic Front, an alliance of over a thousand organisations representing over two million people.
That year the number of acts of sabotage rose noticeably. One ANC action stunned the white population, for it brought this intermittent guerrilla war right into the heart of their capital with a huge explosion in the centre of Pretoria, close to the South African Air