The shebeen, an alternative pub and bar, in the black township of Clintonville in Elizabethtown was teeming with night life as usual. There were men drinking sorghum beer around pool tables, men playing cards with guns and knives on the table and swindlers huddling around dice games. Clamor of laughters rivaled with conversations from tables and loud music from the jukebox.
The majority of the patrons were young men affiliated with the numerous gangs from the township while the rest belonged to the 37s, a gang composed only of ex-cons. They were the ones running the show and pulling the strings.
The conversations in the shebeen stopped abruptly when a white man appeared at the door leaving only the music from the jukebox to be heard. Heads turned and vicious grins of anticipation could be seen in most faces.
– “Aw, baas. Are you lost?” said a huge black man standing by the door. Thukile was an ex-boxer member of the 37s who did ten years in C Max, a maximum security prison in Pretoria for robbery and murder. Thukile had never have any problems while inside because everybody knew that he could knocked down a buffalo with one punch.
Clark glanced around the room.
– “Ho, baas. I’m talking to you. Who tells you you can come in here? Can’t you see you’re of the wrong color?”
The men in the room burst into laughters.
Clark walked past the man to the table where Dengana and Ndothusile were holding courts. A circle was forming around Clark with Thukile at his left, ready to attack.
Dengana looked at Clark with contempt. “Do you wanna die motherfucker? Get the fuck out of here while you can.”
Clark fixed his eyes into Dengana’s who stared back at him insolently but for only a moment. Dengana lurched backwards toppling over his chair, his hands over his closed eyes, screaming in terror. He knew his eyes were closed but what he did not understand was why he kept seeing the dead white woman lying in a pool of blood. “What the fuck? Make it go away! What the fuck happened to my eyes?” Dengana was now standing up, turning his head in all directions, walking around like a blind man, shouting, “What the fuck! It’s in my eyes! I can’t see anything else! The damn picture is stick to my eyes!” Dengana stumbled over a chair, fell to the ground but kept poking at his eyes.
Ndothusile pulled out a knife but was caught by Clark’s stare. Two seconds later, the man appeared to have caught Degana’s illness. Screaming in terror with all his might, he ran into chairs, tables and walls like a mad man. The men around him looked with horror as Ndothusile kept hitting his eyes with his own fists.
– “What did you do to them motherfuck!” Thukile cried out before punching Clark on the chin with all his might accompanied by a rumble from the crowd and a frightening sound of cracking bones that resonated throughout the room.
Clark’s head moved slightly sideway from the impact. The crowd was stunned that the white man didn’t go down but it was Thukile’s reaction that left them speechless.
Thukile was still extending his arm in the air and stood still as if seen in a photo. They could see the sweat perspiring from his forehead, a slight shake from his extended arm and a change in his color. Thukile became paler and paler.
Then, as if the pain had subsided down to a level of human awareness, Thukile let out a piercing howl so loud, that everyone else but Clark stepped back in terror. Thukile was now kneeling on the ground, holding his extended arm attached to a formless fist with his other hand. His fingers dangling from lack of bones support.
Later that night, a third man was admitted at Wits Hospital in Elizabethtown with the same strange symptoms. Nurses battled with Walter Sisulu to stop the man from scratching his own bloody eyes out.
