There was something odd about the way the police were moving: eight or 10 of them edging backward up the dingy canyon of Plein Street as if in retreat from the mass of striking security guards. They were carrying shotguns, and the bright discs of rubber bullets showed in their bandoliers, but they looked frightened, they looked like they were being herded.
Then came the red banner of the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu), a wall of song, and a strangely casual, self-organising process of destruction. First someone twisted a windscreen wiper off a battered Mazda 323 — he seemed to have the technique down to a nicety — and waved it about like a conductor’s baton. None of the marchers reacted visibly to this minor triumph.
A few seconds later another man, a little older and thicker around the middle, flicked his wrist, and sent the head of his knobkerrie crashing into the windscreen. He didn’t bother to look back at the damage. Next a steel pole crashed through a side window, and a rock sent glass cascading over the baby seat. There was no apparent coordination between the vandals, each simply noted the acquisition of the target, and took the damage one step further.
Every now and again someone would reach into the car and search for valuables. Apparently there weren’t any.
A little further down the road a temporary no-stopping sign bounced off the windscreen of a scruffy pink Honda. Starburst marks bloomed on the windows of takeaway joints and furniture shops as the crowd rolled by.
No one intervened as the minor looting began, or as rocks and the odd raw potato soared over the fence into Parliament, or up to the second-floor balconies of the press gallery offices where journalists were watching.
The arrival of the marchers at the equestrian statue of Louis Botha that still commands the entrance to Parliament briefly calmed matters, and it wasn’t long before the familiar cadences of Tony Ehrenreich, the Congress of South African Trade Union’s (Cosatu) Western Cape secretary, were rolling out across the crowd.
He spent a little time on the importance of discipline, suggesting that people who had come to steal from cafÃ