goalposts, was the object of their attention: a corpse on its back, burning. The flames had burnt most of the clothes off the body and were now through to the skin. I hurled my food away and began to photograph. After a minute or so, I turned to see what my colleague was doing. He was still eating his burger. I was shocked and thought him a callous pig; it was much later that I realized the extent to which his machismo was a defence against feeling too much.
In June of 1992, it was another dead body that drew me to Soweto’s Meadowlands Zone One suburb. But it was through covering the death of what was, at first, just another anonymous tragedy that I came to know a family that would symbolize ordinary black people’s struggle for liberation. I first met Sandy ‘Tarzan’ Rapoo, his wife, Maki, and his father, Boytjie, on the night of Johannes Rapoo’s death. They were in pyjamas in their kitchen when I cautiously entered their house on Bakwena Street. Tarzan was a powerfully built man with a shaven head and an eight-inch scar running up the side of his face and skull. That night, his dark eyes were unblinking and frightening. In the yellow light of the single bulb, I saw the family as hard, uncompromising and angry people. Tarzan’s nephew, Johannes, had been killed by police earlier that day, an unprovoked and pointless death that was symptomatic of the time.
Johannes and some neighbourhood friends had been pushing a wheelbarrow containing a car-engine when they were confronted by the police. They ran away. The police opened fire from inside their armoured vehicle. Johannes died on the way to hospital. The police claimed he was stealing the engine. Later, it was discovered that the engine was not stolen at all. Nobody knew why Johannes ran from the police, other than an all-too-common fear of arbitrary arrest or abuse.
I did not yet know the bitter memories that news of a death in that kitchen evoked. Nor did I yet know the easy laughter and generosity
that lay behind those masks of anger. As I returned to cover the funeral of Johannes and other incidents of violence in their conflict-wracked area, I would slowly develop a friendship with the Rapoo family.
Most relationships that I had with black people were either with those my own age that I could relate to, or with people that I met in a very limited, specific way - who could put me in a frame in their minds, and me them, so that any extraordinary behaviour could be ignored or accommodated. I met a lot of people as a journalist, most of them black, and got to know many beyond the usual superficial requirements of the work - but there was always a gulf that was difficult to cross. The cultural differences between a white boy from the suburbs and someone brought up in a township were massive. We shared no common linguistic shorthand - we even spoke different dialects of English. Key or code words they took for granted had to be spelled out to me. If they told me something, I was not sure that I understood the full context of it; and vice versa. But the Rapoos were patient of my ignorance, and with a lot of laughing and teasing they helped me to learn about what was important in their lives. Despite the success of apartheid’s social engineering, we were to become close friends.
More than a year after Johannes’s death, I was visiting his family. It was a quiet afternoon, people were out enjoying the sunshine, chatting with neighbours, children laughing and shrieking as they skipped rope and played tag with a plastic ball. A bearded black man wearing a blue cotton workman’s jacket appeared at the end of the street. He had a quick, uneven gait and his right arm swung stiffly as he moved. He made his way unnoticed into the middle of the street. The first loud bang sent people scurrying off the street. I pressed myself against a garden wall and looked up-I watched the man calmly fire a large revolver into the street where parents screamed for their children in the
In June of 1992, it was another dead body that drew me to Soweto’s Meadowlands Zone One suburb. But it was through covering the death of what was, at first, just another anonymous tragedy that I came to know a family that would symbolize ordinary black people’s struggle for liberation. I first met Sandy ‘Tarzan’ Rapoo, his wife, Maki, and his father, Boytjie, on the night of Johannes Rapoo’s death. They were in pyjamas in their kitchen when I cautiously entered their house on Bakwena Street. Tarzan was a powerfully built man with a shaven head and an eight-inch scar running up the side of his face and skull. That night, his dark eyes were unblinking and frightening. In the yellow light of the single bulb, I saw the family as hard, uncompromising and angry people. Tarzan’s nephew, Johannes, had been killed by police earlier that day, an unprovoked and pointless death that was symptomatic of the time.
Johannes and some neighbourhood friends had been pushing a wheelbarrow containing a car-engine when they were confronted by the police. They ran away. The police opened fire from inside their armoured vehicle. Johannes died on the way to hospital. The police claimed he was stealing the engine. Later, it was discovered that the engine was not stolen at all. Nobody knew why Johannes ran from the police, other than an all-too-common fear of arbitrary arrest or abuse.
I did not yet know the bitter memories that news of a death in that kitchen evoked. Nor did I yet know the easy laughter and generosity
that lay behind those masks of anger. As I returned to cover the funeral of Johannes and other incidents of violence in their conflict-wracked area, I would slowly develop a friendship with the Rapoo family.
Most relationships that I had with black people were either with those my own age that I could relate to, or with people that I met in a very limited, specific way - who could put me in a frame in their minds, and me them, so that any extraordinary behaviour could be ignored or accommodated. I met a lot of people as a journalist, most of them black, and got to know many beyond the usual superficial requirements of the work - but there was always a gulf that was difficult to cross. The cultural differences between a white boy from the suburbs and someone brought up in a township were massive. We shared no common linguistic shorthand - we even spoke different dialects of English. Key or code words they took for granted had to be spelled out to me. If they told me something, I was not sure that I understood the full context of it; and vice versa. But the Rapoos were patient of my ignorance, and with a lot of laughing and teasing they helped me to learn about what was important in their lives. Despite the success of apartheid’s social engineering, we were to become close friends.
More than a year after Johannes’s death, I was visiting his family. It was a quiet afternoon, people were out enjoying the sunshine, chatting with neighbours, children laughing and shrieking as they skipped rope and played tag with a plastic ball. A bearded black man wearing a blue cotton workman’s jacket appeared at the end of the street. He had a quick, uneven gait and his right arm swung stiffly as he moved. He made his way unnoticed into the middle of the street. The first loud bang sent people scurrying off the street. I pressed myself against a garden wall and looked up-I watched the man calmly fire a large revolver into the street where parents screamed for their children in the
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