By Sipho Singiswa

I was 16 years old in 1977 when the Green Apache came into my life.

It was an Austin Apache that belonged to Dirk Hartmann’s granny. Dirk was a white comrade who lived in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. He had met Pro Jack, my co-accused, through activist circles, and that is how we got our hands on the car.

I called it the Green Apache because American films, music and cowboy-and-Indian stories had entered Black township life. We picked up names from that world and used them on cars, places, friends and things around us. At that time I had already built my own shack in the backyard of my parents’ township home because I wanted privacy, and I called that shack Chicago.

Having access to a car meant we could cross from one township to another. It meant we could distribute pamphlets at night and disappear before the Security Branch understood where we had been.

By then Pro Jack, Joe Mphantshwa and I had already been detained and tortured because we were student leaders in the struggle and were accused of burning down a school. We were out on bail pending appeal and under banning orders, which meant we could not be seen congregating with anyone beyond proven family members. Pro must have decided the risk was too great that night, so Biza, Ponkie and Mungs came to convince me instead.

They found me chilling in Chicago.

They begged me to drive them for the pamphlet distribution. They knew I could handle a car. My father had bought a second-hand 280E Mercedes, which he fixed up and cherished. On some nights I would wheel it out of the carport and go joyriding with my friends around Gugulethu. Sometimes we went to other townships. On more daring nights, we drove into town, where a car full of Black boys after dark could become a police matter in seconds.

But it was the return home that was always the more dicey part. We would stop some yards away from the house and move the Mercedes back silently into the carport, speaking in whispers in case my father woke up and found us. That was how I became revered by my friends for my driving skills. I knew the streets, the corners, the shortcuts and the small ways of making a car disappear into the township.

That first night, the Green Apache carried Biza, Ponkie, Mungs and me through Gugulethu with pamphlets calling for a consumer boycott. Biza’s father, Mountain Qumbela, was already in detention. Later, I would end up with Tata Mountain on Robben Island.

We moved from place to place, dropping the pamphlets quickly. You had to know where the police might appear and where informers might be watching. There was danger, and there was also the hyper-nervous excitement boys of our age sought out on some level. We were young and reckless in some ways, yet we were never playing. The consumer boycott formed an important part of the struggle. Those pamphlets carried instruction, defiance and organisation.

After we finished, they dropped me at home and said they were returning the car.

The next morning, to my consternation, they came back to my house in the Green Apache. I was furious, yet I still gave in when they suggested that we drive to Langa. Stupid, really, because we were outside of prison, but the state already had us in its system. We lived in that narrow space between temporary release and the next arrest.

At some point we saw Oupa walking in the street as we drove through Langa. He was the state witness in my case.

Something snapped in me.

I cannot say now whether it was rage, betrayal, the knowledge that he had crossed over, or all of it at once. When somebody becomes a state witness, it does something to the mind of a young person already living under surveillance. The state uses police vans, courtrooms and torture rooms, and it also uses people. It enters friendships. It turns the familiar into danger.

I stepped hard on the accelerator and drove directly towards him at high speed. He had already started running when he saw me in the car. Luckily for both of us, he ducked out of the line of my attack. To this day I feel that if I had had a gun, I may have shot him.

After that we returned home. The guys said they were taking the Green Apache back to Dirk, at least that was what I understood. The car had become too visible. It needed to leave the township.

I had felt the Security Branch on my body. I knew what those men could do when they got hold of you, complaining about missing their TV programme, Rich Man, Poor Man, while they moered us and threatened our lives. I felt deep relief back in the safety of Chicago, listening to Motown.

Later that evening, Biza, Ponkie and Mungs arrived in the Green Apache.

I could not believe it. They had brought it back to my house. It was parked outside. They said it had to be returned now, properly. They begged me to drive it back. I argued with them. I told them this was madness. Yet every minute it stood outside my home deepened the danger. Eventually I agreed because I wanted it gone.

As I started driving, I saw the Security Branch car parked in a dark corner near the house. We knew those cars. Big Chevrolets. Men sitting in the dark nursing their hatred of Black skin.

I drove to the corner and did a sharp right.

That is where the chase began.

I stepped on the accelerator. The plan was simple. I would create enough distance by taking the side roads I knew so well, stop outside my aunt’s gate, and we would all jump out and run inside. My foot was flat on the pedal and we careened around corners at high speed.

I knew we had no chance on the long main road, so I went into the short streets. I relied on cornering. I knew where to go, where to cut through, where their big car would struggle to follow. The guys started panicking. They thought we were going to crash. They feared the police would shoot at us. My concern was escape. I could not stop.

I slammed on the breaks outside my aunt’s house, jumped out and ran to the door. When I looked back, I could not believe what I saw. The others were frozen in the car. Nobody moved. I was the only one who had jumped out.

That made it obvious that I had been driving.

Then the Security police arrived. I resisted arrest. One of them was Officer Dlulani, a well-known bully and bootlicker of the apartheid state. There was another white officer whose name I cannot remember. He put a gun against my stomach and told me that if I did not stop resisting, he would shoot me.

I dared him to shoot.

That was something more complicated than bravery. When you have already been detained and tortured, part of you fears the gun and part of you refuses to give them the satisfaction of seeing that fear.

My aunt was screaming and begging me to go with them before I got shot. Somewhere in that chaos one of the children ran to tell my parents what was happening. Eventually they arrested me and took me to the police station.

When my father arrived at Gugulethu station, he was already shouting and waving a stick at me. He lunged at me and gave me the hiding of my life.

At the time I was angry with him. I felt betrayed. I could not understand how he could beat me in front of them. I had already been chased, caught, threatened with a gun and dragged into the police station. Then my own father arrived and beat me as if I were just a naughty boy.

Only later did I understand what he had done.

My father was creating a story for them. He was making me look like a child who had misbehaved rather than a political detainee. He used the authority they recognised in him as a father and as a police officer to pull me out of the category that could get me detained again. He beat me in front of them so they would release me.

And they did.

That was the strange psychology of survival under apartheid. A father could beat his son to save him. A son could feel betrayed and only understand years later that the betrayal had been protection. The police station became a place where my father had to perform discipline in order to interrupt state violence.

A few months later Pro, Joe and I were arrested for the third time and would spend the next seven years in the apartheid prison system.

Sipho Singiswa is a political analyst and filmmaker. He is currently dictating his life story for his wife of 28 years, Gillian Schutte, to write both his memoirs and his sharp political analysis into books. He is currently having Chemo and Steroid treatment for stage 4 Lympho Cancer.