Benham and White were present at this marketplace affair, a confused crowded occasion, in which a little leaven of active men stirred through a large uncertain multitude of decently dressed onlookers.  The whole big square was astir, a swaying crowd of men.  A ramshackle platform improvised upon a trolley struggled through the swarming straw hats to a street corner, and there was some speaking.  At first it seemed as though military men were using this platform, and then it was manifestly in possession of an excited knot of labour leaders with red rosettes.  The military men had said their say and got down.  They came close by Benham, pushing their way across the square.  “We’ve warned them,” said one.  A red flag, like some misunderstood remark at a tea-party, was fitfully visible and incomprehensible behind the platform.  Somebody was either pitched or fell off the platform.  One could hear nothing from the speakers except a minute bleating. . . .

Then there were shouts that the police were charging.  A number of mounted men trotted into the square.  The crowd began a series of short rushes that opened lanes for the passage of the mounted police as they rode to and fro.  These men trotted through the crowd, scattering knots of people.  They carried pick-handles, but they did not seem to be hitting with them.  It became clear that they aimed at the capture of the trolley.  There was only a feeble struggle for the trolley; it was captured and hauled through the scattered spectators in the square to the protection of a small impassive body of regular cavalry at the opposite corner.  Then quite a number of people seemed to be getting excited and fighting.  They appeared to be vaguely fighting the foot-police, and the police seemed to be vaguely pushing through them and dispersing them.  The roof of a little one-story shop became prominent as a centre of vigorous stone-throwing.

It was no sort of battle.  Merely the normal inconsecutiveness of human affairs had become exaggerated and pugnacious.  A meeting was being prevented, and the police engaged in the operation were being pelted or obstructed.  Mostly people were just looking on.

“It amounts to nothing,” said Benham.  “Even if they held a meeting, what could happen?  Why does the Government try to stop it?”

The drifting and charging and a little booing went on for some time.  Every now and then some one clambered to a point of vantage, began a speech and was pulled down by policemen.  And at last across the confusion came an idea, like a wind across a pond.

The strikers were to go to the Power Station.

That had the effect of a distinct move in the game.  The Power Station was the centre of Johannesburg’s light and energy.  There if anywhere it would be possible to express one’s disapproval of the administration, one’s desire to embarrass and confute it.  One could stop all sorts of things from the Power Station.  At any rate it was a repartee to the suppression of the meeting.  Everybody seemed gladdened by a definite project.