A LOVE STORY FOR THE AGES
FIRST MEETING
The scene: The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Posters are displayed everywhere on campus; pamphlets are handed out; students and teachers are gathering.
Friday, 15 February 1962
Protest march against 90-day detention. Students to assemble at the Planetarium at 12 noon. All marshals to wear academic gowns.
DAWN: I am a freshette, 16 years old, enrolled for fine arts with majors in English and history of art. Full of energy and fire to be involved in student politics, and the dream of making our world a better place.
I arrive at 11am, determined to march near the front to show my solidarity with the political dissidents. Many Wits academics, our teachers, have been imprisoned without trial for 90 days because they wrote or spoke out against apartheid.
I take courage seeing the marshals flanking us and looking stern in their black academic gowns.
DES: As we leave the campus, groups of workers line the route and cheer us on, but soon move back as a convoy of buses arrives, spewing out what seem to us like squads of large, hostile young men in shorts, and robust young women at their elbows, yelling invective slogans:
“Away with Wits Liberals! Red Danger! Black Danger! Run, Communist Rubbish! We’re going to teach you something today!”
They form up like rugby line-outs and backlines, and start a menacing advance on our frozen group. They are joined by equally vocal reinforcements from the old post office over the road – white civil servants on lunch, lobbing eggs at our halted phalanx.
But who are these
