As quick and as loud as this, and with as much terror, came the torchlights. Stabbing in the dark, they found the two of them in bed, his mother on her elbows. A thin wail of terror spilt out of his lips but she gripped him by his arm, and in a strong voice said, ‘No, no! David!’ so he swallowed and kept quiet.

All hell had broken loose in the streets. The warning sound of the lamp-posts had either stopped or been swamped by the uproar. Voices were calling, crying, cursing; the big vans the police had come in were roaring up and down the street, their motors revving between the harsh grinding of gears and clatter and slam of the steel doors as load after load of sleepy-eyed, frightened people, caught without a pass, or just caught, were herded inside. And in the world off the street, in the intricate web of alleys and backyards that stretched back for acres on either side there in the darkness could be heard the noise of scuffling and blows as pursuer met pursued, and even more subtle, the sound of desperate and surreptitious movement as a few unfound, almost free, scuttled or crawled or clambered away into the night.

Those in his room he never saw clearly. During the few minutes they were there he caught brief glimpses of enormous khaki-coated shadows behind the torches. The one voice he heard seemed even bigger and utterly without mercy. All it said was, ‘Pas kaffir’. When his mother started to speak they stretched out their hands and got her out of bed and then dragged her to the door. They were stronger than her struggles and put their boots down on her protests, and even her plea for a dress or a blanket or something warm, so that when she felt the cold air about her and saw the dark hole in the van waiting there was time only to call back, ‘Don’t cry, David!’…and then she was pushed inside and the door slammed and was bolted behind her, and he was alone.

They went as soon as the vans were full. When these rolled forward the inmates crowded to the small, slatted windows on the side, hanging onto the bars and shouting back instructions to those left behind, but no one was any the wiser because all that could be heard was a desperate, urgent, hurried jumble of words: ‘…the police station…two pounds ten shillings…like last…law courts…Don’t cry, David…bring food…bring my pass…bring money…For gawd’s sake bring money man…’

And then they were gone. For a few moments longer voices still call loudly, doors slam, babies cry, footsteps run away in the dark, coming as a last echo to the pandemonium of a few minutes earlier. But these are separate sounds, and soon trail away and then there is silence.

What follows is something like a befuddled awakening, the stirring and moaning of the survivors after a short but brutal engagement to begin a numb reckoning of losses. The destruction and looted emptinesses through which they moved were not to be measured in outward things. A door hanging loose on its hinges, a broken chair, an overturned bucket of water; these were not obvious in a world made up of odd bits and pieces that never quite matched anyway.