Open Writing

“I’m taking Lolly”, she said determinedly, “who’re you going to take?”

“My special yellow basket,” Poppy said. “Not taking any of my dolls, then I can put my stones in the basket, an’ then when I get home, I’ll wash them and make ‘em shiny bright. Then I’ll put ‘em in a nice clean, shiny bottle, ‘n when I’m lonely I cin play with em ‘n they’ll make me happy.’’

The children climbed the mountain where the men were working, looking for shiny stones and now and again picking flowers which they put into the basket. There was plenty of activity on the mountain today; lots of men with picks and shovels, and in the distance a white overseer idly picking his teeth leant against a tree in the shade, while the men dug and shovelled in the blazing sun.

But the children in their soft white cotton sun bonnets seemed oblivious of the heat, the dust, the flies and the noise, and chattered happily as they played. Now and again they picked up pieces of quartz veined with rusty orange, and greeny white dolerite with a crusty finish.

They had been out about an hour, and the men around them were working fast now. New gangs arrived, dragging lengths of dynamiting cord, some of the deeper holes dug earlier that morning were being stuffed and the soil replaced. The little girls wandered happily around, oblivious to the activity around them, picking up stones, plucking the pretty pink aloes on the hillside and placing the blooms in the yellow basket.

By now, the white overseer was on the ground, his back supported against the tree, hat tilted over his eyes. Loud snores broke the silence, and flies buzzed around his unkempt, sweaty body. The work gang were experienced. They had blasted their way through several areas of the rocky ridge constructing the roads leading northwards, away from the original mining camp. The overseer felt no need to watch them closely. They knew what they were doing. .

This was 1936, and the city was growing bigger, stretching tentacles east, west and north. New suburbs were being surveyed, water and electricity mains being laid into suburbs yet unnamed, carved from the original farms owned by the Boer settlers who had moved to this bleak highveld in the 1850s. Bezuidenhout Valley on the east, situated on the farm Doornfontein was now a collection of small working class suburbs with one or two sections of larger stands for the better off.

And the trams followed this rash of suburbia, providing the vital transport for the workers who flooded in and out of the city every day. Malvern’s Jules Street was said to be the longest straight street in South Africa; Queen Street and Kitchener Avenue ran through Kensington, while Tudhope and Twist Streets, and Edith Cavell - named after the First World War heroine - would take the transport service to the north, and on all of these streets, ran the trams. But the high east/west ridge above the city was too steep for them. The only solution was to blast and cut away the rocky outcrop until the height had been sufficiently reduced for the trams to climb the gradient.

And now, the work-gang was busy blasting it’s way through Nugget Street, another direct north-south opening through the ridge to the suburb of Berea and further down the slope, Houghton and Killarney.

Oblivious of the activity around them, the two small girls played on, looking for stones and picking the aloes, happy and content. Suddenly, a siren blared and quickly, the workers made their way out of the area. Unknowing and oblivious, the children played on, until, running between the explosives placed at 6ft intervals, racing the smouldering spark travelling along the dynamite cord, a young black man dashed forward and swept them up – one under each arm – and dashed to safety.

And not a moment too soon. Within seconds, a huge blast shook the area, rocks and dust rained down and pebbles rattled down the hillside. What remained was a huge gash in the earth where the children had been playing, some crumpled flowers and the remains of the yellow basket.

Johannesburg was marching north!