Free The Colour of Gold by Oliver T Spedding

white
driver’s head. The man sat motionless, his eyes wide with fear. The
man in the back seat raised his hands in the air to show that he
wasn’t armed. The fourth black robber, Ernest, rushed to the window
where the woman passenger was sitting and pointed his automatic at
her. She sat transfixed, unable to look away from the lethal
instrument inches from her head.
    In the meantime
Shadow slipped into the gap between the two cars and blasted the
lock of the bank car to smithereens with a single shot from his 9mm
automatic. The lid of the boot sprang open and he grabbed the small
steel box containing the cash.
    “Okay!” Shadow
shouted. “Let’s go!”
    As Moses, Peter
and Ernest raced to the waiting BMW ahead of them they each fired a
shot at the tyres of the Toyota. There were three dull explosions
and the front of the car sagged sideways. The two men opened the
back doors of the getaway car. As Shadow drew level with the woman
in the stricken car he thought he saw her pulling a small pistol
from the purse on her lap. He shot her in the head through the
window. As he reached the BMW Peter grabbed the cash box from him,
threw it into the back of the car and climbed in. Shadow climbed
into the front passenger seat while Ernest and Moses also climbed
into the back seat. Chris stepped on the accelerator and the
powerful car leaped forward. Again luck favoured the four men.
There were no approaching cars and Chris powered the BMW into the
road leading to the black township. Within seconds the car was lost
in the maize of uneven roads that twisted and turned between the
mass of closely packed houses and shacks.
    The robbery had
taken less than two minutes.
    ***
    On his first
day in Hillbrow Isaiah stopped and spoke to as many people as he
could, enquiring about accommodation and employment. Before long he
had found a place in a room on the top of a fourteen-storey block
of apartments which he shared with five other black men. Each
inhabitant had a small area to sleep in and the use of the old
kitchen table and the communal hotplate. Cold water came from a
single tap next to the toilet outside the room. Each man had his
own utensils and wires had been strung just above head-height on
which the inhabitants could hang their clothes. A single electric
light hung from the smoke-stained ceiling. The man in charge of
collecting the rentals warned Isaiah to be extremely careful with
any valuables as theft was rife.
    With his
accommodation resolved Isaiah began to search for work. The only
work available revolved around manual labour such as loading and
offloading crates of vegetable, liquor and groceries but the
problem was that workers needed to be available immediately but
could also not be seen to be loitering in the hope of obtaining
work as this indicated to the police that these men were unemployed
and thus not allowed to be in Hillbrow. A system of notification
between the shop owners and those seeking work soon developed and
Isaiah quickly learnt where work could be found even though there
was great competition and very little reward. The only thing that
kept Isaiah from giving up was the possibility that his enthusiasm
and willingness to work would be noticed by the shop owners and
eventually lead to a more permanent job.
    Isaiah worked
hard and in the first week made even more than he would have earned
on the mine. He planned to send back as much money as he could to
his mother which he assumed would satisfy her that he was working
at the mine. He knew that she would be very worried if she knew
that he was illegally in Johannesburg and at risk of being arrested
and jailed. To add to his income Isaiah was not averse to stealing
some of the items that he loaded and off-loaded from the myriad
trucks that provided work for him and his fellow “illegals”. He was
very careful not to steal from the same employer twice though, and
several times he saw other workers caught stealing because they
stole too often and were trapped