Safety in numbers on the day Mandela was sentenced

Friday, June 12, 1964 was the day Nelson Mandela and his co-accused were to be sentenced in the Palace of Justice on the north side of Church Square in Pretoria’s city centre.

The police were under orders to keep black “agitators”, black “troublemakers”, in fact probably just all blacks, away from the city in case they had the effrontery to try and get close to the Palace of Justice to hear the verdict.

They also had orders to keep foreign television news crews away. At the time I was Southern African news editor for the Johannesburg-based United Press International. On the day I was accompanied by my colleague, Ernie Christie, who headed up UPI Newsfilm television, to both cover the story and do commentary into camera.

We left Johannesburg early in the morning but were turned back by a police roadblock on what was then the main road to Pretoria, just about where the South African mint is situated in Midrand today. We tried going via Hartebeespoort Dam but hit another roadblock round about where Lanseria Airport would eventually be built.

We were now running out of time. With my mother’s family having come from Premier Mine east of Pretoria, I knew that neck of the woods quite well, so we headed towards Delmas and then cut through Rayton to Premier Mine (now known as Cullinan) and then sneaked our way through Pretoria’s suburb of Colbyn and managed to park our car near Pretoria Central Railway Station. We walked towards Church Square with Christie’s camera equipment in cheap suitcases, telling the police who stopped us that we were tourists from Durban who were on our way to our hotel and then to Loftus Versveld rugby stadium to watch Currie Cup rugby the next day.

Our mission was to augment the news coverage of UPI bureau chief Neil Smith who was in the courtroom, with TV coverage and commentary from outside the Palace of Justice. All the way in, Christie was fretting about shooting newsfilm on a deserted Church Square that might not reflect the historic drama that was taking place in the courtroom.

He needn’t have worried because about 2,000 people — all black — had gathered on Church Square and simply stood their ground when police shouted, threatened and cajoled them into moving.

It was a bizarre sight, seeing for perhaps the first time in history so many black faces and nary a white one on Church Square. Many carried placards in support of their leaders who were awaiting their fate. All sombre and silent. Apprehension and despair evident in every face.

Christie set up his TV camera on Church Square to give him the best view of the crowds and the façade of the Palace of Justice that housed the Supreme Court.

The crowd was still sparse and scattered around the whole of the square, and as I started to do my first commentary into camera we heard warning hisses from those people near us. I turned to see a policeman and his dog coming towards us with some considerable determination and intent.

About a dozen or so metres from us, he let the dog off its leash and it came at us snarling, its hackles up and teeth bared. It knocked over Christie’s camera and tripod and managed to give me a nip on the leg just before Christie took a swipe at it with a fairly heavy 16mm Bell & Howell “Filmo” camera he used for fill-in shots.

The dog took off and the policeman, now mad as a snake, chased after it while swearing at us and saying that he would come back and get us.

We starting picking up our equipment and getting ready to run like hell from what we believed would be the arrival of half the South African Police Force intent on getting even with us for daring to hit one of their prized Alsatians with a camera. Then the most remarkable thing happened.

The crowd that was spread sparsely over Church Square suddenly came together around us in a protective laager of humanity. They asked us to please carry on telling our story and not to worry about the police because none of them was about to move an inch. Never in my life have I felt so safe.

27 years later I had the privilege of meeting Nelson Mandela. I told him the story, proudly showing off the scar on my leg where the dog bit me. When I told him how those crowds of people gathered round to protect us, he just smiled. Clearly that sort of gesture from his people was nothing new to him.