When I saw a tweet on Twitter about the road closures in Sandton today, and subsequent tweets explaining what the reasons were, I made sure that I packed my camera in my car with my trusty 70-200mm lens!  Thankfully, I had no meetings at the time of the parade, and 2 of my colleagues had their cameras ready too… and off we walked.

And I’m so glad I made the effort.  I got awesome photos, and got to chat to a few of the cops as well!

The parade was organised as a “show of force” to show that the police and army are ready for the Soccer World Cup that is due to be hosted in South Africa next month. It was also organised in celebration of the 3rd anniversary of Crimeline… which I’m guessing is why it all ended close to Primedia’s offices.

It was a very noisy few hours… with vuvuzelas blowing, music blaring and sirens and helicopters and people cheering… but the best part was seeing the pride.

Standing on Fredman Drive with the throngs of people and police watching the procession, I tweeted a photo of one of the vehicles and a policeman was watching me.  I told him what I was doing… and he said “It’s good, the world must know… we are ready”.  It was so so awesome to hear the pride in his voice and the look in his eyes.

And then I had to go back to work

I’ve also put more photos in a set on Flickr, if you want to see more