township duty was an eyeopener we where sent to MAMELODI basically we had to control the masses asit where look for ANC activists ,make sure the kids are not burning down schools,being white and coming from a modest background and going to an area like that ,opened my eyes and alot of other guys eyes as well,apartheid and the meaning of it really hit home ,the homes where small ,clustered together alot of them where made out of corrigated iron,a really **** place to live ,i asked the guy ,can you blame them for throwing stones at us look how they are living,alot of my platoon mates had no answer to that ,every single day we where pelted with stones and other objects,we where not allowed to use our weapons ,we could,nt chase the perpetrators either cos we had so much kit and i swear a few of those guys we used to chase would qualify for the olympics
i remeber one instance my sarge and i where chasing these guy who was handing out ANC leaflets he jumped over a 6 foot wall into a group of houses ,we had alot of kit and our rifles and we followed suit ,well we climbed over this wall ,jumped down and hit the floor with a thud .What faced us 2, AMERCIAN PITBULLS and they looked hungry,it must have taken us about five seconds to climb over this wall,and about one second back again ,on the other side of this wall i started giggling ,then laughing ,hells bells sarge did,nt know you could move so fast ,neither did i he replied,but i suppose when you have 2 pitbulls as motivation anything is possible
There was this guy our platoon who,s father worked for corobrik,they where suppliers of bricks to the building trade.Anyway he managed to organise a few hundred half bricks for ammo purpose ,well one fine morning thru the same street at the same time the bricks came ,we where in samil 20,s at the time ,we each had about 10 half bricks of our own ,we returned fire ,you should have seen their faces ,we where actually laughing at them for about 4 mins we threw each other with stones, bricks tins of baked beans and even some energy bars ,after that we where never thrown again,it was like an undeclared truce