A Dry White Season

note found with the body was submitted to the court. It read: John Vorster Square, 25 February. Dear captain, You can carry on interrogating my dead body, perhaps you will get what you want from it. I prefer to die rather than to betray my friends. Amandla! Your friend, Gordon Ngubene.

r Jansen found that death had been caused by the application of force to the neck, consistent with hanging.

lso moderate congestion and waterlogging of the lungs.

GORDON NGUBENE (54) an unskilled labourer from Orlando West, Soweto, unemployed at the time of his arrest, was detained on 18 January this year in terms of Article 6 of the Terrorism Act and held at John Vorster Square.

Emily’s eldest son, Robert, had disappeared during the night. It was more than a week, in fact, before she heard from him again in a letter from Botswana.

police cordon tried to cut off the majority of the guests. Some youths in the crowd started throwing stones and a police van was hit. Suddenly it was madness. Sirens. Tear gas. Volleys of gunshots. Squadrons of police moving in with batons. Dogs. It went on and on.

I’m only as free as the white bosses allow me to be.

My life belonged to my white baas. It was he who organised my job for me, and who told me where I could stay, and what I must do and what I mustn’t, the lot. That man nearly broke every bone in my body that night. But that wasn’t what troubled me. It was this other thing. Knowing I would never be a man in my own right.

bok in his hand. Beat the shit out of us even before we could put our clothes on. I got out on all fours, as bloody naked as the day I was born.”

“That time they picked up my brother,” Stanley suddenly said, “I decided I’d go straight. Didn’t want to end up like him. So I became a garden boy in Booysens. Not bad people, and I had my own room in the yard. For a long time it went just fine. Then I picked up a girl friend; she was a nanny a block or so away. Her name was Noni, they called her Annie. Nice girl. I started spending the nights with her. But one night there was a knock on the door. Her master. Burst in on us, sjam