It is 15:50 on a Friday.  The Silverton trip is the first trip of my night shift and I have just departed from Church Square. The trip takes us straight out East on Church Street, then Pretoria Street and ending with a short circular route within Silverton residential area.

 The bus is now facing West while I complete my waybill for the return trip.  Someone in the bus exclaims – and then I also see.  A thick column of dust with large pieces of debris pushes upward.  We don’t know what it is or where it is happening, but we suspect that it is an explosion some place in town. 

 With a feeling of foreboding we continue travelling West, towards the column of smoke that has darkened to almost black.  When we enter the city at the beginning of Church Street we pick up some passengers who have heard that a bomb exploded on Church Square.  The bus is quiet. 

 Closer to Church Square we hear sirens and see ambulances and police vehicles moving.  The evening turn out to be chaotic, since buses cannot move from or to the Western suburbs on Church Street and makeshift bus stops are organised on the adjoining streets.  These would remain in place for a few weeks.

 I take out my next trip, Brooklyn 8, and the story starts unfolding from people who have heard this and that.  It is only over the next few days that the facts become clearer.  

 The car bomb was set by Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress. The bombing killed 19 and wounded more than 200. The target was the South African Air Force (SAAF) headquarters, but as the bomb went off at the height of rush hour, civilians were included in the deaths and injuries.

 For weeks we are subdued and depressed.  Police and others mill around the whole day.  The road to the West remains blocked off.  We have heard that Umkhonto will go for soft targets now, like school children.  The buses are investigated each day for possible suspicious objects. In the mornings I take out a school trip with a bus load of primary school children.  As the smell of shampoo and Marmite mix with that of books and leather, I feel my heart physically shrink at the thought of what would happen to them should our bus explode into a thousand pieces.

 The evenings, which usually gave me  long reading times between trips, are now spent inside the women’s rest rooms, where we talk and try to digest what was happening.  For the first time since I have started this weird bus driver career spell, I feel lonely and sorry for myself as I drive the dark streets, unlock my VW to go home and open the door of my dark flat, at 00:30 each morning.

Other recollections

http://authspot.com/short-stories/recollections-of-a-woman-bus-driver-vagrants-on-church-square-in-the-80s-in-pretoria/

http://authspot.com/short-stories/recollections-of-a-woman-bus-driver-foksie-and-the-cemetery/

http://hubpages.com/hub/Recollections-of-a-woman-bus-driver-An-ordinary-day