Documentary : A White Reporter Crosses the Line in S. Africa : ‘What are you doing here? Where’s your gun?’ black sentries demand at a roadblock in violence-torn Sebokeng township.

In the hazy light of dawn, I took a left turn at the sign that read “Sebokeng” and entered one of South Africa’s most volatile black townships.

The streets were full of Africans bundled against the cold and heading for work on foot, huge buses and small taxi vans straining with their commuter loads and the rocks and boulders of crude roadblocks thrown up by the young African National Congress “comrades” to keep the police out.

I was heading for the house of a black family and, after several visits, I knew the way. Knowing your way around South Africa’s black townships is one thing, though. Knowing your way around the “new South Africa” is another. I was about to learn the difference.

Deep in the township, as I tried to navigate a small opening in the rocks, I saw taxi vans pulling off the road. I assumed they were collecting passengers, so I cruised on by. What I didn’t see, until it was too late, was the gaggle of black youths, aged about 15 to 20, who were stopping the vehicles.

Suddenly, I was surrounded by 15 of them, pounding on my car, yelling and holding rocks in their hands. I rolled down the window.

“Get out of the car!” several yelled, and they dragged me by both arms into the cold air.

“Why didn’t you stop!” said one I took to be the leader. He held a stiff whip I recognized as a sjambok (SHAM-bock), the same weapon once used by white police to raise welts on their black prey.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I didn’t know I had to. . . .”

“We could shoot you, you know,” the angry youth said, his breath crystallizing around the opening in his full-face knit mask.

“What are you doing here?” demanded several of the youths. “Where’s your gun?”

“I don’t have a gun,” I said.

“Where’s your gun?” they demanded again.

Several of them climbed into my car, searching my briefcase and the nooks and crannies for a weapon. They rooted through tea bags, pens, a camera and a tape recorder. They looked quizzically at the small black device that opens the automatic gate at my home, 30 miles away in Johannesburg.

“What’s this?” they demanded, not pausing for an answer. They pressed the red button and watched the green light flicker on and off, then tossed it back into the car.

“You think we’re going to steal your car?” the leader said. “Don’t worry, we aren’t going to take it.”

I had known this was a risky journey for a white reporter.

A day before, the police had found the body of a man not far away. He had been executed by “necklace,” the method favored by militant township youths. An old tire had been placed around his neck and shoulders, a container of gasoline had been poured on his head and he had been set alight.

It was only a few years ago that white reporters did their jobs in the townships with little fear of attack from the residents. The biggest risk in those days was being arrested by the police or, worse, getting caught in a fusillade of police bullets or tear gas aimed at the anti-apartheid activists we were interviewing.

But times have changed.

In the days after the massacre of more than 40 blacks in nearby Boipatong, self-styled ANC “comrades” torched a dozen cars traveling the Golden Highway, which borders Sebokeng. And blacks suspected of sympathizing with the Inkatha Freedom Party, whom the ANC blames for the Boipatong attack, were “tried” and executed in the scrubby vacant lots that dot this township.

The seething anger of black South Africa had been clearly evident at the funeral in Boipatong. From a podium full of pastors in colorful, flowing robes came a barrage of invective and hate-talk I had rarely witnessed in more than four years in South Africa.

In the hours that followed, many of us journalists were threatened with rifles. A few were attacked with rocks and sticks. The ANC had condemned the attacks, but the word hadn’t filtered down.

So horrific were the stories of violence that several photographers I had asked to accompany me declined. One suggested that I go through the ANC offices to arrange an interview, thereby ensuring an escort into the volatile Vaal Triangle township.

But I didn’t want to interview someone handpicked by the ANC. My goal was to talk to an ordinary family frightened by the rising violence in the township, a family afraid to sleep at night.

The family was more worried about me, though. Some people in the township didn’t like whites, they said, and they briefly considered ways of disguising me.

It is true that whites, aside from police and soldiers, are rare sights in most black townships. Human rights workers, pastors and journalists do visit, though even they tend to steer clear of dangerous townships such as Sebokeng.

But now here I was, caught in a township where law and order long ago broke down, where angry young “comrades,” like my interrogators, had formed “defense committees” to protect themselves and snare their enemies.

Those defense committees, often armed with guns, have learned a lesson from the white riot police, who used to set up roadblocks in the townships to search for weapons and anti-apartheid activists in hiding.

The comrades do more than protect the township. They enforce the boycotts and strikes called by the ANC and its union allies, whipping commuters who dare to try to go to work and burning taxis that cruise the townships.

Only a few days before, a general strike and consumer boycott had been called to protest the Boipatong massacre and the continued existence of the Kwamadala migrant worker hostel, an Inkatha stronghold from which the Boipatong attackers came.

The strike was over, but the boycott continued. And the enforcers were out.

As three pairs of hands searched me, I extracted my billfold. Flipping past the press card issued by the government to foreign correspondents, I found the press card issued by ANC headquarters and produced it.

“Ah, ANC,” the leader said, appearing to relax for the first time. “Where are you going? We will take you there.”

And four comrades, each smoking cigarettes, piled into the car.

“What’s the roadblock for?” I asked, taking the wheel.

“Inkatha was in the location (township) last night,” one said.

“What did they do?” I asked.

“They were here.”

When we arrived at my source’s house, he knew the drill.

“Viva, comrades, viva, “ he said. “Viva, ANC, Viva. “ Long life, ANC, long life.

The comrades chimed in. “Viva, ANC, viva!”

They told him they were suspicious because they had heard that whites were helping Inkatha. Witnesses to massacres in Sebokeng have described white men among their attackers. Assured that I was there for an interview, they waited in my car as we talked.

Later, as I approached the roadblock and my welcome exit from the township, the comrades rolled down my windows and began singing the haunting songs of the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of the Nation.

The comrades manning the roadblock grinned and danced in place. The man with the sjambok, nodded at me as we passed.

After the youngsters got out of my car, one leaned back in.

“We are hungry, comrade,” he said. “Can you give us something to eat?”