Boredom Leads to Great Things 42
their passports. “The police can’t arrest everyone!” They
were wrong. Outside of the police station in Sharpville, the
police opened fire. 69 people were killed. The South African
government declared a state of emergency, and arrested
more than 18 000 people.
Marjorie Madikoto grew up in South Africa at the same
time as Elon, and she was exposed to the discrimination.
“We rode different buses if we went to town,” she said.
“You need to go to the bathroom; you went to a different
bathroom. There was a park for white people, a park
for black people. The park for black people didn’t have
anything else, not even benches or anything. Then when
they made them [the parks for black people], white people
complained because they wanted to be everywhere. We
could only buy [groceries] from a window and only white
people could enter the store.”^187
Not only black people were discriminated. The Indian
Mahatma Gandhi was 24 when he arrived to South Africa.
Gandhi bought a first-class ticket to travel by train to
Pretoria. While on the train, a white European entered
his compartment and began complaining that non-whites
were not allowed in first-class compartments. But Gandhi
refused to change compartment, so they pushed him out
of the train. He had to spend the night at the train station.
“It was winter, the cold was extremely bitter,” Gandhi said.
“My over-coat was in my luggage, but I did not dare to ask
for it lest I should be insulted again, so I sat and shivered.”^251
Pretoria became apartheid’s model city. Before the
1950s, there were roughly equal numbers of whites and