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was disappointed I was not going with him, but he was going to go anyway.’

      The day Gordon left South Africa, he and Robert went into Durban to see a film, Purple Hearts, about Vietnam. ‘It was like a last drink, only Gordon doesn’t drink,’ said Robert. ‘He joked, “You mustn’t sell me out!” Then he said, “I know you won’t.” That element of trust was there between us right from the beginning. It didn’t need to be discussed.’

      They parted in Grey Street.

      With Gordon gone, Robert felt more confused. He missed his friend’s clear sense of direction and his quiet advice. Although troubled by the yearning to take some dramatic action, and strongly tempted by his friend’s example of going into exile, Robert was still contemplating a more conventional future in South Africa. He and Claudette planned to get married a year after he finished college. They discussed having children, and Robert told her that he wanted to move away from the city. He proposed applying for a post in a rural area, and they dreamed about a happy family life with Robert teaching in a country village school.

      He continued working after college, both at Derrick’s workshop and at the take-away. It was so dangerous working nights at the take-away now that the McBride family had applied for a firearm licence. They nicknamed their 9mm Beretta Parabellum ‘Betsy’.

      At the beginning of the following year Derrick went into hospital with diabetes, which meant that Robert had to take even more responsibility. One evening he closed up the take-away at eight p.m. and was walking home because the car had broken down; he was carrying all the day’s till takings and he also had the Beretta. In Craton Road a group of five men appeared out of the shadows, blocking his path. One of them asked Robert for a cigarette and he explained that he didn’t smoke. ‘Okay,’ said the gangster, ‘if you haven’t got the cigarettes, just give us the money – and don’t tell us you haven’t got the money, because we know you’ve just come from the shop.’

      Robert turned and ran, but he hadn’t got far before another group appeared in front to cut him off. He was cornered, and as they moved in, Robert saw they were armed with pangas. He took out the Beretta and fired a couple of warning shots in the air. The leader of the group laughed. ‘Those are just blanks,’ he said. Desperately Robert made a break for it, and sprinted towards a grassy bank; if he could make it to the top he would be clear away. But he was wearing rubber-soled sneakers and the grass was damp. Close to the top, he slipped and tumbled back; rolling over, he saw one of the gang members was right above him with his knife raised. Robert reached inside his jacket and fired: the gangster fell dead.

      The others fled and Robert went straight to the police station. An inquiry found that he had acted in self-defence and the matter was taken no further. But Robert was upset and appalled; he was stunned that life just went on the next day as if nothing at all had happened; and nobody seemed to be asking why the victim had become a petty gangster in the first place or what circumstances had led to Robert pulling the trigger. He concluded that this death was the effect of a cause: the philosophy which trapped both him and the gangsters in cages like Wentworth.

      It was Doris who saw how the incident haunted him. She remembers Robert waking night after night, shouting. The gangster had been shot clean through the head and he had recurrent nightmares about the huge, gaping hole.

      Robert began spending more time with his friend Jimmy, a slim, nervous intellectual who lived nearby. They talked rather wildly and unrealistically about what actions they might undertake against apartheid, but mostly they listened to reggae music and Jimmy showed Robert his poetry. He also introduced him to more black music and writers like Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. Jimmy gave him a book, Soledad Brothers: The Prison Letters of George Jackson. It had a tremendous impact on Robert. Later he told the sociologist Fatima Meer: ‘It had an overpowering effect on me. I identified strongly with George Jackson and was moved in a way which I can’t explain, by his younger brother Jonathan, who rescued his brother George and two other comrades from the courthouse where they were being tried. Jonathan was shot dead. His action was so powerful – he gave his life for his brothers. George had been unjustly imprisoned and he was brutalised, and his brother was right to rescue him. George was later killed while attempting to escape from prison. They had taken military-style action and the world respected them for it. They had showed audacity and contempt. I believed that the whites would respect us when we, too, showed audacity and contempt.’

      Jimmy says, ‘The more we read, the more we burned.’ Afterwards, when the enormity of what they were contemplating hit him, Jimmy had a nervous breakdown. He would sit up night after night, with a bottle of tranquillisers at his side, watching the dark road that led up to his house, waiting for the Special Branch to come and pick him up. They never came, but his hands still shake.

      Robert used to get angry at what he felt was the empty posturing of some prominent anti-apartheid leaders; he and Jimmy agreed there was too much talking, too little action. One day on a spur of the moment decision they decided to leave the country. They planned to go to Lesotho, but on arriving at Durban station they discovered there were no trains, so they changed their minds and caught one instead for Johannesburg, thinking to leave from there for Botswana. In Johannesburg, however, an Afrikaans ticket collector informed them there were no more trains that night for Botswana either. Thwarted, Jimmy and Robert retreated to Durban.

      Throughout 1985 violence erupted in the townships as blacks vented their anger against apartheid. On March 21st, the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre, police in armoured vehicles fired into a funeral procession of unarmed Africans at Langa township near Uitenhage, killing 20 people. The uprising spread and soon two or three people were dying every day. In July the government declared a State of Emergency in 36 districts.

      At Bechet College the demands were mild by comparison; the students were still pressing for better premises. As a member of the Students’ Representative Council, Robert was one of the leaders. He was part of the delegation that presented their views to the acting principal, and he was prominent in organising meetings and protest action. The students began to boycott lectures and threatened that if there was no positive action they would boycott the exams at the end of the year.

      Armed guards were sent into the college. The students called a meeting of parents to explain their position, and the parents voted overwhelmingly to support them. Afterwards Derrick McBride told a reporter from the Sunday Tribune: ‘People in that situation are going to be prey to other organisations of a military nature. It’s like taking away their pens and giving them AK-47s.’

      Robert helped draft a petition regarding the conditions at Bechet College which was presented to the new Coloured House of Representatives. The response was swift. The Students’ Representative Council was declared illegal by Parliament, the students were suspended from their classes and Robert, as one of the leaders, was banned from taking his third year exams.

      He was stunned. His conclusion was simple. ‘There is just no hope for a so-called Coloured person to really progress independent of the constraints of the authorities. It’s designed this way to keep a person just at a certain level where they want you.

      ‘Well, since we were suspended and banned after dealing with the issue at Bechet in a peaceful, legal manner, I decided that it can’t work. You can’t progress within the system.’

      He decided that he wasn’t going to wait to join any organisation or underground movement; he was simply going to hit back. Robert had no coherent plan; his was simply an enraged and reckless impulse. With a group of friends he broke into Fairvale High School one night and attempted to burn it down. It was a botched operation, but even so they did considerable damage. Next, through a gangster, he and a friend acquired three illegal weapons, including a small lady’s handgun.

      They vaguely intended to attack people associated with the system, but they didn’t really know what they were going to do, except that it was going to be something startling.

      Then Gordon called.

      It was November 1985 and he had been gone fifteen months. On his return, Gordon contacted two people immediately: first Robert, then Anne.

      There was a message for Robert one evening to contact Gordon Webster

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