Three busloads of ”black cricket fans” who arrived at the Wanderers to watch the first Test against the EngÂlish rebels turned out to be unemployed men who had boarded the buses after they had been promised ”piece jobs ”. And a few kilometres from the staÂdium, a huge police operation which included the use of teargas and batons was used to pen some 3 000 would-be demonstrators in Alexandra township.
The Weekly Mail spoke to a large number of the men as they filed off the buses and were ushered towards the stadium, tickets in hand, by the organiser of the trip, Timothy Radebe. All of those questioned told similar stories. ”I don’t know why we have ·come to this place,” said one. ”They told me was coming here for a piece job,” said another. ”always wait in the same place for a job,” said a man in his mid-forties who said he had been out of work for nearly two years. ”Today, they came along with this bus and said we should go along as they had some work for us.”
Radebe, who said the trip had been sponsored by Freedom in Sport (FIS), said all the men were there be cause they were ”moderates. They are all supporters of Freedom in Sport.” He denied that people had been lured to the ground with promises of work. Those saying this were ”people who had come here with the wrong ideologies”, he said. At first the men sat in a group on the eastern side of the ground. Later Radebe tried to get them to spread out in smaller groups around the mostly empty stadium- perhaps because the sight of all the ”black cricket lovÂers” bunched in one stand might create the wrong impression. When rain and bad light stopped play around lunchtime, the men lined up for paper cups of Coke and lunch packs, which they were given on handing over pink and blue tickets is sued to them on the busses.
FIS founder member Elmarie Cilliers, said Radebe had approached the organisation earlier this week and asked for help in getting ”ordinary peace-loving cricket fans” to see the Test that spectators were able to watch the cricket ”peacefully” owed much to a large-scale operation by the SAP. With an application to demonstrate outside the ground refused, police used roadblocks, teargas and batons to prevent demonstrators from leaving Alexandra and going to the Wanderers.
For much of the day, police and demonstrators played a tense, often dangerous game of cat-and-mouse around the township as protesters tried to board taxis and buses to take them to the stadium. Most of them were stopped, many by force. A handful of taxis made it through to the stadium, but were swiftly forced off the road by traffic police and then ordered to move on. One group who gathered further away from the stadium and unfurled flags of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party were dispersed with batons and teargas.
Police representative, Major General Roy During, said police had stopped 10 mini-buses in Alexandra during the morning. He said a group of 2 000 demonstrators, ”mainly scholars” had refused to negotiate with police and ”were dispersed with a small amount of teargas”. – John Perlman
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
