Then abruptly the sky was filled with a terrible rushing sound and every black face was turned upwards. A flight of Sabre jet fighter aircraft of 'the South Aicon airforce flashed overhead, only a hundred feet above the heads of the crowd. They had never seen modern jet fighters in such low-level flight and the sight and the sound of the mighty engines was unnerving. The crowds began to break up, and their leaders lost heart. The demonstrations were over almost before they had begun.
Robert Sobukwe himself marched to Orlando police station in great Soweto. It was five miles from his house in Mofolo, and although small groups of men joined him along the way, they were less than a hundred strong when they reached the police station and offered themselves for arrest under the pass laws.
In most other centres there were no marches, and no arrests. At Hercules police station in Pretoria six men arrived passless and demanded to be arrested. A jocular police officer obligingly took their names and then sent them home.
In most of the Transvaal it was undramatic and anti-climactic but then there was Sharpeville.
Raleigh Tabaka had not slept all night, he had not even lain down to rest but had been on his feet exhorting and encouraging and organizing.
Now at six o'clock in the morning he was at the bus depot. The gates were still locked, and in the yard the long ungainly vehicles stood in silent rows while a group of three anxious-looking supervisors waited inside the gates for the drivers to arrive. The buses should have commenced their first run at 4.30 a.m. and by now there was no possibility that they could honour their schedules.
From the direction of the township a single figure jogged down the deserted road and behind the depot gate the bus company supervisors brightened and moved forward to open the gate for him.
The man hurrying towards them wore the brown peaked driver's cap, with the brass insignia of the bus company on the headband.
Ha, Raleigh said grimly. 'We have missed one of them,' and he signalled his men to intercept the black-leg driver.
The driver saw the young men ahead of him and he stopped abruptly.
Raleigh sauntered up to him smiling and asked, 'Where are you going, my uncleT The man did not reply but glanced around him nervously.
'You were not going to drive your bus, were you?" Raleigh insisted.
'You have heard the words of PAC of which all men have taken heed have you not?" 'I have children to feed,' the man muttered sullenly. 'And I have worked twenty-five years without missing a day." Raleigh shook his head sorrowfully. 'You are a fool, old man. !
forgive you for that - you cannot be blamed for the worm in your skull that has devoured your brains. But you are also a traitor to your people. For this I cannot forgive you." And he nodded to his young men. They seized the driver and dragged him into the bushes beside the road.
The driver fought back, but they were young and strong and many in number and he went down screaming under the blows and after a while, when he was quiet, they left him lying in the dusty dry grass.
Raleigh felt no pity or remorse as he walked away. The man was a traitor, and he should count himself fortunate if he survived his punishment to tell his children of his treachery.
At the bus terminus Raleigh's pickets assured him that only a few commuters had attempted to defy the boycott, but they had scurried away as soon as they had seen the waiting pickets.
'Besides,' one of them told Raleigh, 'not a single bus has arrived." 'You have all begun this day well. Now let us move on to greet the sun of our freedom as it dawns." They gathered in the other pickets as they marched, and Amelia was waiting with her children and the other school staff at the corner of the school yard. She saw Raleigh and ran laughing to join him.
The children giggled and shrieked with excitement, delighted with this unexpected release from the drudgery of the schoolroom, and they skipped behind Raleigh and his young pickets as they went on.
From each cottage they passed the people swarmed out and when they saw the laughing children, they were infected by the gaiety and excitement. Amongst them by now there were grey heads, and young mothers with their infants strapped to their backs, older women in aprons leading a child on each hand, and men in the overalls of the steel company or the more formal attire of clerks and messengers and shop assistants, and the black petty civil servants who assisted in the administration of the apartheid laws. Soon the road behind Raleigh and his comrades was a river of humanity.
As they approached the open common ground they saw that there was already a huge concourse of people gathered there, and from every road leading on to the common more came swarming each minute.
'Five thousand?" Raleigh asked Amelia, and she squeezed his hand and danced with excitement.
'More,' she said. 'There must be more, ten thousand - even fifteen thousand. Oh, Raleigh, I am so proud and happy. Look at our people - isn't it a fine sight to see them all here?" She turned and looked up at him adoringly. 'And I am so proud of you, Raleigh. Without you these poor people would never realize their misery, would never have the will to do anything to change their lot, but look at them now." As Raleigh moved forward the people recognized him and made way for him, and they shouted his name and called him 'brother' and 'comrade'.
At the end of the open common was a pile of old bricks and builders' rubble and Raleigh made his way towards it, and when he reached it he climbed up on top of it and raised his arms for silence.
'My people, I bring you the word of Robert Sobukwe who is the father of PAC, and he charges you thus - Remember, Moses Gama!
Remember all the pain and hardships of your empty lives! Remember the poverty and the oppression!" A roar went up from them and they raised their clenched fists or gave the thumbs-up sign and they shouted 'Amandla' and 'Gama'. It was some time before Raleigh could speak again, but he told them, 'We are going to burn our passes." He brandished his own booklet as he went on. 'We are going to make fires and burn the dompas. Then we are going to march as one people to the police station and ask them to arrest us. Then Robert Sobukwe will come to speak for us--' this was a momentary inspiration of Raleigh's, and he went on happily, 'then the police will see that we are men, and they will fear us. Never again will they force us to show the dompas, and we will be free men as our ancestors were free men before the white man came to this land." He almost believed it as he said it. It all seemed so logical and simple.
So they lit the fires, dozens of them across the common, starting them with dry grass and crumpled sheets of newspaper, and then they clustered around them and threw their pass books into the flames. The women began swaying their hips and shuffling their feet, and the men danced with them and the children scampered around between their legs and they all sang the freedom songs.
It was past eight o'clock before the marshals could get them moving, and then the mass of humanity began to uncoil like a huge serpent and crawl away towards the police station.
Michael Courtney had watched the Evaton demonstration fizzle out ignominiously, and from a public telephone booth he phoned the Van Der Bijl Park police station to learn that after a police batoncharge on the marchers, all was now quiet there also. When he tried to telephone the Sharpeville police he could not get through, although he wasted almost ten shillings in the coin slot and spent forty frustrating minutes in the telephone booth. In the end he gave up in disgust and went back to the small Morris station wagon which Nana had given him for his last birthday present.