South African Stories - Four: The Suppression of Communism Act

The Suppression of Communism Act was enacted in 1950. The Communist Party of South Africa was the first Communist Party to be formed in the world in 1918 after the Russian CP had formed in 1917. This law banned the Communist Party. All communists were banned from participating in any political organisations and they could be restricted to a particular area. This was the first of the apartheid laws that began to affect whites. It has since been repealed.

After the Rivonia treason trial of 1964 and 1965, which led to the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela among others, many anti-apartheid activists left South Africa on "exit permits". Those who had British passports went "home" to England, where they were lionized by London's liberals.

The Reverend Ellsworth Pertwee, a saintly, spry, white-haired elf, had spent ten years in South Africa helping and encouraging the anti-apartheid movement. He went back to England just before the Rivonia trial, when the heat was turned up on white communists and liberals. Because of his continuing devotion to the cause in England, the Reverend Pertwee was soon turned into a Bishop, and as such began to preside over a number of human rights organizations, one of which ministered to the many needs of the young black activists exiled in England. The Bishop's services were mostly rendered in the form of providing scholarships and grants for his charges' continuing education. In recognition for his devotion to the cause he was invited to sit on a special committee of the African National Congress.

In the wake of the Soweto schoolchildren's riots of 1976 yet another wave of exiles left South Africa. Among these was Satyesh Kumar, an Indian man from Durban.

He was twenty-three years old and had just started his first job as a junior lecturer in economics when he was implicated in a group trial of dissidents and communists for the publication and distribution of "seditious materials." His parents were wealthy Gujerati merchants and could afford the best lawyer money could buy. The case against Satyesh was weak and he was found not guilty. However, his reputation was ruined and he lost his job. Because he was so earnest and responsible a young man he was wounded by his loss of face.

Satyesh's case was much publicized and, when Bishop Pertwee in England heard that Satyesh had lost his job, he sent him an offer to help finance his further education at the London School of Economics. The Kumars were quite pleased to give their son an allowance for living expenses in London, as he had become an embarassment to them. Satyesh left for London early in 1977.

During the few months spent in preparation for going to England, Satyesh renewed a childhood friendship with a Zulu man, Mkhulu Hlakanipho. Mkhulu's mother had been a servant of the Kumars for nearly thirty years. Mkhulu and Satyesh had been born in the same year and had played in the backyard of the Kumar's home in Durban for many years until Satyesh's education had overtaken Mkhulu's and the Indian had become bored with, and ashamed of, his friendship with the Zulu.

Mkhulu had been working in the kitchen of the same hospital for seven years, since he was sixteen. When his mother told him about Satyesh's trial Mkhulu went at once to visit his old friend in his time of loneliness, but Satyesh was at first cold and aloof. Mkhulu continued to visit Satyesh, and, when the Indian discovered that everyone, including his parents, shunned him, he eventually warmed towards his old friend. When it came time for Satyesh to leave for England Mkhulu announced that he too was going. He had saved enough money over the past seven years and he was determined to accompany his friend.

Mkhulu was one of the more annoying sources of embarassment to Satyesh's family, not only because the Zulu was so obviously poor and uneducated, but because of his mother's status as a servant in the Kumars' mansion in Reservoir Hills. Yet there was no denying the young Zulu's devotion to their son. The Kumars increased Satyesh's allowance slightly to take into account his companion's basic needs. They drove the two young men out to Durban's Louis Botha Airport, from where they would catch a plane to Johannesburg, and then London.

The Bishop was at first taken aback by the appearance of Mkhulu at Satyesh's side in London, but he soon warmed to the Zulu and promised to try to secure a scholarship for him. Pertwee also arranged for the two young friends to live in a small flat in Belsize Park. The rent was subsidized by the Bishop's special committee. Mkhulu and Satyesh settled down, and Satyesh began classes at the LSE. Mkhulu was invited to help around the Bishop's office until a scholarship could be secured for him.

When the new academic term started at the LSE in the following September, Satyesh surprised Mkhulu by announcing that he would not be going back to school. When he informed Pertwee, the Bishop was chagrinned, understandably, and told Satyesh that he would have to vacate the flat in Belsize Park as soon as possible. The Kumars withdrew their son's allowance as soon as they heard of his decision, because - they wrote to him - they had no intention of financing a squandered life. Satyesh was on his own. He rented a cheap bedsitter off the Finchley Road and got a job washing dishes in a restaurant.

Bishop Pertwee quickly suggested that Mkhulu continue to live in the flat.

"I've got nothing against you," he told the Zulu.

Mkhulu discussed his predicament with Satyesh. They decided that a bedsitter was too small for two grown men, and that Mkhulu's chances of a scholarship would be ruined if he left the Bishop, so he remained at the flat and continued working for the Bishop. But he was attached to Satyesh and spent many a night curled up under a blanket on the floor of the bedsitter because they had talked so late into the night that Mkhulu had missed the last bus down the Finchley Road.

Mkhulu's job at the Bishop's office at first entailed menial chores in the mailing room for eight to ten hours a day. After work Mkhulu always went for a greasy dinner of spaghetti and meatballs at the cheap Italian restaurant where Satyesh worked, but there never seemed to be enough time for the friends to talk as Satyesh was stuck in the kitchen washing dishes most of the time.

During the first month after Satyesh had moved out on his own, Mkhulu came to the bedsitter at least three times a week. He would meet the Indian at the restaurant and wait for him to get off. Then the two friends would go back to Satyesh's bedsitter and talk late into the night.

Mkhulu tactfully avoided one subject, the actual cause of Satyesh's change of plans, eventhough he was curious and concerned. Satyesh never referred to it. Mkhulu knew that Satyesh had developed a dislike of the Bishop, and that it was somehow connected. But they did not talk about it.

Mkhulu told Satyesh about his new flatmate: "He's Xhosa, and a member of the ANC. He is trying to get me to join. I probably will. I just wish he wasn't so dirty. You would not believe his filthy habits. It is not easy to share the flat with him."

Then he told his friend about the new work the Bishop had given him, and about the problems that the Bishop was having in getting him a scholarship.

When the Bishop began to invite the Zulu to "help" at his home in the evenings after a days work in the office, Mkhulu's visits to the Italian restaurant gradually grew less frequent. He ceased to visit the bedsitter altogether. One Sunday afternoon Mkhulu failed to arrive at the restaurant as he had promised. The two friends had planned a trip to Hampstead Heath.

Satyesh worked his way up in the restaurant. After a year he became assistant manager, and, when the owner retired and sold the business, the new owner kept Satyesh on as manager. He could now afford a better home, so he took a small flat in Golder's Green. He sent a note to Mkhulu at the Belsize Park flat so that his friend would have his new address, but he got no reply. Mkhulu did not come to the restaurant anymore either, and Satyesh did not see his old friend for nearly five years.

In 1983 Mkhulu walked into the restaurant. Satyesh was wary at first because the Zulu had meanwhile become famous. He was known throughout Europe, South Africa and the United States as an outspoken anti-apartheid activist.

"See, at last I got my scholarship," Mkhulu told his friend. "The Bishop thought it best that I study theology. So you are now addressing a fully fledged minister of the Church. Have I got plans now. I'm going back to Kwazulu to work for the Church. I hope to prostrate myself at the feet of the King, Zwelithini and tell him that I am ready to serve my people."

"Are you sure," asked Satyesh, "that that is what the Bishop has in mind for you? The ANC will not like that."

"The Bishop has been like a father to me," Mkhulu asserted. "More than a father. He has shown me the glorious future of South Africa. He has made it clear to me that it is up to me; that a new world can be brought about by ordinary people, the proletariat. The simple teachings of Jesus to love one another is the basis of all socialism. Why cannot people see that it is all so simple? All this arguing about politics, and the anger, hatred and violence, has nothing to do with liberation. And the Xhosas and Zulus will learn to love one another. The ANC and Inkatha will join forces."

Then Satyesh said: "I am also planning to return to South Africa, but not to start a revolution; just to take over my father's business, the clothing factory. He has become very ill, almost blind - diabetes. I wonder if you and I will still be on the same side? After all, everyone was surprised to see an Indian and a Zulu become friends in the first place. Well, I hope I don't go back and settle down with a nice shy sweet Gujerati wife and make lots of babies and buckets of money, only then to have you come and take it ... 'liberate' it, when the Bishop and the ANC redistribute the wealth."

"Over my dead body!" Mkhulu swore. "Do I detect a note of bitterness in your voice when mentioning the Bishop?"

Satyesh: "No, not bitterness, just ... how shall I say it? Wariness? Suspicion? Skepticism? Surely you are not suprised. You knew that I was very disappointed with the Bishop soon after arriving in London. He didn't seem to be quite the same altruistic hero of Rivonia that was whispered in school. Well, I was after all only a raw and hot-headed youth and had not realized what my duty was. It has taken me five years in London to find my place in this world. One day I will confess to you how low I sank in the pursuit of pleasures and distractions. I don't want to talk about it now. I'm having a reaction to my former hedonism. Anyway as you can see I have turned into a reactionary, a bourgeois counter-revolutionary, but then I was never quite as radical as was once thought by my family, by you and, not least, myself."

"Yes, I know. I mean I understand," said Mkhulu. "You've got a lot to lose. In fact the Bishop has warned me against having anything to do with you. I have sneaked away for a couple of hours, and won't be telling him about this meeting. He thinks you will corrupt me. Oh, by the way, you don't have to tell me about your sordid sex-life. The Bishop never failed to fill me in with all the details everyday. I know all about every drug you took, every prostitute ... You were his favorite example of what he called a 'backslider'. You don't seem surprised that he knows all about you."

Satyesh: "No, almost from the first moment that I met him when we arrived in London, I smelled a rat. Sorry, I don't mean to offend you. What I mean is that he exuded the odor of those who wield power secretly. Remember, my family has been in that line of business for a while. Or perhaps you never knew of their political connections in Durban. You know I didn't leave the Bishop because I was shocked by his corruption, a corruption so subtle as to be indiscernible beneath his saintly pink and white exterior. No, I left the Bishop, to be precise, not because of his imperfections but because of my own shortcomings. After my trial in Durban I was never quite the same again. The stuffing got knocked out of me when I saw how my mother suffered. My heart was not in the struggle anymore. But it took some time for me to realize that. Not that long. Have you any idea how soon after we arrived in London that I realized that I had no sympathy for the communists? And the Bishop's radical friends disgusted me. No, I left the Bishop because I realized I was not a revolutionary after all. Yet I will never stop working for a harmonious multiracial South Africa, where my children can rise to whatever heights they choose without having obstacles placed in their way by either apartheid or socialism. Unfortunately the debate about South Africa has been so degraded here in England, and in America, that it is assumed that if one is not a communist then one is automatically a racist."

"Quite a speech!" Mkhulu exclaimed. "Not that I didn't elicit it from you in some mysterious way. Perhaps I wanted to hear those thoughts put into words by some voice other than my own. I can certainly see now why the Bishop warned me against you. I didn't quite understand his advice until now. You're very persuasive. If I stayed any longer I might leave the Bishop too. Not likely, though I sometimes wonder if I am 'politically correct', as my feminist comrades say, or am I simply an opportuninst, if you catch my drift. I must go. The Bishop will be waiting anxiously for me to return. Did I tell you that he was addressing the demonstrators in Trafalgar Square, in front of South Africa House, tomorrow? I will be introducing him. I have written a special speech for the occassion, entitled 'Babylon In Bophuthatswana.'"

"Well, I see that you've made the most of the Bishop's patronage," Satyesh said. "You're so witty and educated. Certainly not the tsotsi [ganster] I once knew back in Durban."

"That I never was," Mkhulu stated icily.

Satyesh immediately regretted his tactlessness and said, "Please forgive me. I meant it to be a little South African joke; something to laugh ..."

"Yes, I know you meant no insult," Mkhulu said. "I should apologize for being so touchy, so prickly. My feminist comrades have trained me to be on the defensive. I'll come to see you again soon."

Satyesh gave Mkhulu his Golder's Green adress, and they parted with promises to keep in touch. But there was an unmistakable coolness between them; a slight chilly draught of distrust.

One month later Mkhulu turned up at Satyesh's flat in Golders Green. It was after midnight and the Zulu was obviously distressed. Satyesh gave him a cup of hot sugary tea.

"See, I haven't forgotten that you like two tablespoons of sugar in your tea. Yuck! How can you still drink such syrup?" Satyesh asked teasingly.

Mkhulu only smiled weakly and huddled closer to the gas fire. It was winter and he was wet through with the sleet which was drenching London.

Since Mkhulu was in no mood to talk, Satyesh spread some blankets and pillows on the sofa for his old friend and retired to his bedroom.

When he awoke the next morning and went into the living room, Satyesh was suprised to see that the blankets had not been used. There was no sign of Mkhulu.

Another month went by. Satyesh received a note from Mkhulu which read in part: "I must see you but not at the restaurant or your flat. They know about both and will have me followed, so please come to this address as soon as possible."

The address was in King's Cross. Satyesh went there as soon as he had locked up the restaurant for the night. On the way he wondered what had happened to his friend. Had Mkhulu fallen foul of either the South African or British security police?

Though the room in the cheap hotel in King's Cross was a slum, Mkhulu seemed to be cheerful. He was also in a talkative excited state and blurted out that he had begun to doubt the "sincerity of the Bishop's intentions."

"What do you mean?" asked Satyesh.

"I can't go into the details now," Mkhulu answered. "I'm in real danger. Don't smile. I must leave at once. I must go back to Durban as soon as possible. I need help. I've hinted to you before that I was spied on ... by my flatmate, who has since tried to ... I'll explain later, once we're out of this God-forsaken country. It all began to happen after that bladdy speech that I gave at Trafalgar Square."

Satyesh knew that Mkhulu had seldom harbored imaginary fears in the past. The quality which Satyesh had always appreciated most in Mkhulu was his wry and realistic outlook on life, so he did not doubt his friend's expectations of danger. He restrained himself from asking Mkhulu to be more plainspoken.

They took a taxi to Victoria Station, where Mkhulu caught a train to Dover, and from there, a ferry to Dunkirk.

"Just wait for me in Dunkirk," Satyesh told his friend. "Get a room in the cheapest, most obscure hotel you can find. Let me know which hotel you're in. I'll be there within a day or two. I need to tie up some loose ends before I leave. Send me a postcard. Sign it 'Faith', and try to disquise your handwriting."

Satyesh laughed and added, "And stop worrying. I've got a hunch that everything's going right for both of us for the first time since we left Durban. I might have put off going back until my father was dead if this hadn't happened. It's perfect."

He watched the train pull out but dared not wave to Mkhulu. He left the station and went to the restaurant where he phoned his boss, gave two day's notice and worked late into the night to leave his business in order. That night he slept more soundly than he had in five years.

In the morning, Satyesh bought two tickets for a flight from Paris to Johannesburg for a date two days hence, and spent the rest of the day training his assistant manager to take over the business temporarily.

The following day Satyesh received a postcard from "Faith" in Dunkirk. It contained the address of a hotel. He found his heart beating with happiness. He looked forward to the trip home. It amazed him how easily he could let go of all that he had built up over the past five years.

When Satyesh arrived at the hotel in Dunkirk his eyes were shining, not only from the cold wind off the English Channel. He was more extroverted than Mkhulu had ever seen him before.

"The trip from Victoria was 'bracing' as the bloody English would say it," Satyesh announced in a comical hoity-toity voice. "Have you any idea how glad I am to be going home? I don't mean that I'm happy to leave London. No, I learnt a lot there ... but my reminiscences can wait. I tell you something I won't miss ..."

Mkhulu: "You don't have to tell me. I know. The winters."

Satyesh: "As damp and cold as a dead fish in a freezer. See I'll babble on if you don't stop me."

Mkhulu: "Seems like your trip from England wasn't very exhausting."

Satyesh: "Yes, you're right. I'm mentally geared up for a long journey. One more night in this mildewy hotel, then off to Paris and our flight to Jo'burg."

Mkhulu was pleased by this news. It rained all day and night in Dunkirk, so the two old friends remained in the hotel and swapped tales.

Mkhulu: "I remember so clearly that first night when you moved out of the Bishop's flat into that horrible little bedsitter which smelled of cooking gas and cabbages. We sat in front of the gas-fire, wrapped in the only two blankets in the joint, wondering if the neighbors were really boiling baby shit or did we just imagine that. You were prepared to put up with anything to get away from the Bishop."

Satyesh: "Well, it wasn't as bad as that 'joint' in King's Cross I found you in when you left His Holiness. But you seemed ready to sleep with snakes rather than spend another night under the same roof as your mysterious flatmate."

"Anything to get away!" Mkhulu exclaimed. "Now I feel I can breathe a bit more easily, and can tell you something you may not believe: I am convinced that my Xhosa flatmate tried to kill me."

"What are you talking about?" Satyesh asked, not fully trusting his ears.

"The night after I gave my little speech, 'Babylon in Bophuthatswana'," Mkhulu continued, "the flatmate started acting very peculiar. But I was already geared up for something strange because of the way the Bishop behaved after the demonstration in front of South Africa House. That night we got together at his home for one of those post-mortems, analyzing the impact of the demonstration. Usually the Bishop just nagged everyone about allowing 'unplanned occurrences to take control of event', but that night he focussed all of his attention on me, picking all sorts of holes in my speech, reminding me that I should always clear my speeches with him. He ended by saying: 'We don't wish to appear to be divided on the fundamental issues, do we?' Everyone was silently staring at me. The Bishop put his arms around my shoulders, and smiling at his other guests, said: 'I'm so proud of Mr Hlakanipho. He's been one of my best investments, though we do seem to have a little disagreement over the role of the Church in party politics, and one or two minor differences of opinion about the evolution of Christianity into the movement for liberation it is today. But we'll iron these things out over time.'"

Mkhulu looked at Satyesh, trying to see if his friend understood something which had puzzled him. Then he continued, "I was already confused by the time I got home, only to find the flatmate even more agitated than usual, muttering to himself. The next day I was sick. At first I thought it was a germ I had caught, but when it didn't go away for weeks, I began to suspect that my flatmate was poisoning me. That's when I first came to see you at Golder's Green, but of course I couldn't tell you anything. You wouldn't have believed me."

"Nonsense," Satyesh said. "How could you think that when I've known you all these years?"

"Well you hadn't seen much of me in five years," Mkhulu answered, "and I had been so exposed to double-talk, propaganda and plain lies that I sometimes wondered myself if I could still recognize the truth. The only thing that finally conviced me was when I woke up one night from a nightmare that I had been shot, that my blood was draining out of me and I couldn't breathe. No wonder, seeing that my flatmate was pushing a pillow down onto my face. I tried to scream. We struggled. He ran out before I could recover and turn on the light. I was never sure it was actually the flatmate, other than his horrible body odor - he never washed - and the fact that he was not in the flat by the time I caught my breath and went to look for him. Well, I packed my bags and got out of there right away ... you know the rest."

"Not really," said Satyesh, "but I gather that's when you turned up in that slum in King's Cross."

"Yes," Mkhulu answered. "You know, it was the Bishop who taught me to be a Christian, in the sense that he made me feel that it wasn't good enough just to go to church and keep my nose clean, but to work for the Church, become a minister to my people. But somewhere along the line there was a misunderstanding. The Bishop did not want me to think for myself. He wanted every little article, letter and speech cleared with him first. I told him it cramped my style, because I really do believe that the Lord puts words into the mouths of those who sing His praises, that I didn't have to worry too much about what to say, that God would provide inspiration. That was just the beginning of it. Later it became clear to me that the Bishop's idea of Christianity was very different from mine.

Needless to say that I doubted my own ideas before doubting his version of religion, what with him being a Bishop. But no matter how I read the scripturesI could not see that he was justified in saying that the Church was part of the great socialist struggle for justice, that dialectical materialism, or any kind of materialism, was the logical evolution of Christ's teachings. We had friendly arguments, but I stopped arguing when he announced that it was right and good for the ANC to use violence. I couldn't argue with him because I knew he was wrong. You know I never hated white people enough to want to kill them. But the last straw was when it became obvious to me that the ANC in London was controlled by white communists. Everytime the Bishop had a 'special' meeting at
his house there was a representative from the ANC, and it was always a white man, not always the same white man. The Bishop's 'parties' were different. There were often up to a dozen ANC officials, many black South Africans - including my flatmate - but again the presence of white ANC officals, mostly South Africans, and a few Englishmen, of all the cheek, claiming to be members of the ANC. So I asked the Bishop one day what the point was of having a revolution if it simply meant replacing white capitalists with white communists? He gave me a long lecture, a warning, not to fall into the 'anti-communist trap' or I would find myself isolated and distrusted. That was one of the few true things he said."

The following morning Mkhulu and Satyesh caught an early train to Paris where they boarded a plane bound for Johannesburg. During the flight home Mkhulu gave Satyesh a copy of his speech, "Babylon in Bophuthatswana", which had so offended the Bishop.

"I intend to give that speech," Mkhulu said, "as soon as possible after we arrive, before the Bishop has a chance to spread any lies about me to those South Africans who know and respect me. I know there are people ready to hear that God helps those who help themselves, that we should not look to the English or Americans for help. I did not know until I went to England that liberal Englishmen, like the Bishop and his anti-apartheid friends, hate, yes hate, the Boers, even more than any black South African hates them."

When Mkhulu dozed off Satyesh read the speech: "Yesterday I received a postcard from my brother, who lives in Kwa Mashu near Durban. He is beginning to make a little money. He sells insurance to middle-class Zulus. Anyway he decided that he needed to spend a little of his hard-earned cash, so he went to Sun City in Bophuthatswana for a dirty weekend. Well, he won some money in the casino and purchased the services of a lilywhite German prostitute for the night. But enough of that. The postcard depicts the casino and resort in Sun City. The brown concrete and glass buildings are similar to the blocks of government housing the English build for their proletariat class, slabs that look like a scene from '1984'. But Sun City is set amidst warm golden brown hills, like living beasts sleeping in the sun. There are only a few flat-topped thorn trees on the dry hills, but at their feet lies an oasis of greenery, lakes, fountains and swimming pools, as incongruous as an iceburg in the Sahara. I contemplated the picture for a while, trying to imagine what it would be like inside. Does the foyer of the theater have walls covered in mosaics or murals of giraffes, zebras, aloes and kafirboom? Do the men and women stroll around the cool concrete caverns sipping white wine and talking about how much a BMW costs nowadays? Do the beautifully groomed black waiters waltz obsequiously beneath
the chandeliers to the tune of tinkling glasses and and electronically synthesized version of 'Moon River'?

"What about the people in the surrounding hills? Does some old woman, not far from this tawdry temple of mammon, squat before a dying fire, beneath a night so empty and huge that it seems but an extension of her own mind, entranced as it is with no more than the spell of unworldly peace which the stars cast over the earth? I know she has worries, but does this old woman have the abstract neuroses and imaginary anxieties of the city-dwellers, the agony of too much noise and not enough privacy, the hurt and anger generated by unapologetic rudeness? Perhaps she has the very real problem of not knowing where her next meal is coming from. Does she breathe deeply of the sweet air which still smells of sunshine, dry grass and red soil, while she prays for tomorrow's food? She may have just eaten her last meal, a handful of mielie-meal cooked in an iron pot. Perhaps the putu at the bottom is burnt too hard to eat, so she scrapes it into the fire and inhales the syrupy smoke while scrubbing out the pot with cold ashes and gravel. She leans back on her heels to avoid a sudden gust of more acrid smoke. Are the tears that smart her eyes all from the pungent smoke, or are some of them from the sadness which rises from her heart because she loves food and wonders if she will ever eat again?

"Sun City. The postcard seems to show a temple, probably a theater, hotel or casino, which looks a little like a warehouse topped with some futuristic neon totem-pole. Another building looks like those pictures of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in children's illustrated bibles. Dotted around two blue pools are fifty-foot tall palm trees, probably imported fully grown from some faraway tropical beach, perhaps Mauritius or Maputo. Near the pools and palms are private 'chalets' - wonderful cool white concoctions. The picture on the postcard must have been taken when Sun City was still very new because the lawn is still slightly threadbear, and shows its origins shamelessly in the patches of raw red African earth. In the foreground of the picture is a large body of brown water on which young white women water-ski. This temple of the gods of luck and lucre seems to have been miraculously conjured from the heat ripples shimmering on the rock-strewn kopjes, an instant American Dream dropped almost casually into Africa's primeval world. These are not the rolling hills of Europe. They are bare but not barren for they are still home to a few wild beasts.

"To these plastic pleasure palaces come the new bourgeoisie; the real estate agent from Jo'burg, and his wife with the bleach-blonde hairdo piled three feet high like the wife of an American Astronaut. They come to win a million, to see a Hollywood star, to try out a prostitute of another color. The new middle-class all over the world have a shared culture. Whether they are from Birmingham or Bophuthatswana they love movies, TV, fast cars and rock'n'roll. These are the new multiracial privileged nouveaux riches of the English-American Empire; privileged to work like beasts of burden eight hours a day, six days a week, fifty weeks a year, so that they can spend the remaining two weeks squandering their hard-earned money on pieces of colored plastic shuffled endlessly on green tables under neon chandeliers.

"They come to spend sleepless nights in stuffy square boxes with unopenable windows and machines to condintion the recycled cigaret smoke and stale sweat, while outside the pure clean air of Africa swirls around under a starry sky. They drink gallons of liquor to forget how horrible the other fifty weeks are.

"Soon the world will all look like Sun City. Mud walls will make way for pre-stressed concrete. Factories will fill the valleys and the streams will simply be sewers to bear toxic wastes away to a poisoned ocean. The people who live in the concrete houses will work in the concrete factories to make steel and plastic toys which they then must buy. But they will have plenty of toys. I cannot tell whether people will be worse off under the new Empire of multinational corporations, sleepwalking through an American Dream; or enslaved to the unrealizable dreams of communistic economic justice. Both are Caesars. Caesar cannot be trusted. Nowadays there are many Caesars - every national government, every huge corporation. We are caught between the two. South Africa has been tugged between the English capitalists and the Afrikaner nationalists for over one hundred years. People are statistics to the powerful. I have heard that European and American capitalists loaned money to Lenin to further his revolution. Materialists, whether capitalist or communist, are not to be trusted. Will the African swap his ancestral demons for 'dark, satanic mills' and factories and mines? What about his soul? Does it profit him to gain an artifical world like Sun City and loose his soul?"

Satyesh stopped reading when Mkhulu woke with a start and said, with an anxious voice, "How long have I been asleep?"

"Not long," Satyesh answered. "Don't worry. There's still plenty of time. Catch up on your sleep. You look as if you need it."

"Yes, I do," Mkhulu said. "I haven't gotten much sleep in the past few weeks, what with my nightmares. Even now what woke me was a bad dream. It was so real. There we were just stepping off the plane in Jo'burg and I had the same feeling I had the night my comrade flatmate tried to eliminate me. I felt as if my blood was draining out and I couldn't breathe. I know you'll jump to conclusions and say "Oh, there he goes again, being superstitious just like the ignorant superstitious African he really is.' but I have a feeling, an omen ...

"There he goes being superstitious," said Satyesh teasingly.

"You said it, not I."

"But seriously ..." Mkhulu tried to explain.

"But seriously," Satyesh interrupted, "have you got any more of this speech? It doesn't seem quite finished, all wrapped up. Though it's good. A bit illogical, but impassioned and sincere. Definitely not politician's hogwash, but these are more like notes than a fullblown speech ..."

"Yes, they really are just notes," Mkhulu agreed. "That's because I want to remember only some of the items I mention, but I wish to be moved by the spirit when I am actually addressing an audience. The notes are just my way of getting started. I can't write down all of my speech because it is different each time. I don't know what I'll end up saying to my fellow South Africans. Perhaps I won't get a chance to say anything, especially if the Bishop has already spread the word that I am no longer politically correct. I wonder if word's gotten round that I am coming home, and if anyone will be at the airport to meet us."

"Well we did make a rather secret departure from London," Satyesh observed, "but it is quite possible that someone has found out ..."

"Perhaps ..." said Mkhulu, sounding melancholy.

"What's the problem?" asked Satyesh.

"Oh, I won't bore you with my premonitions," Mkhulu answered. "All I know for sure is that no one will really like what I have to say. The English won't like me criticising big business. The ANC won't like me criticising materialism and socialism. And the Boers won't like me criticising nationalism. Perhaps Inkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi will like what I have to say."

"I don't know about that," Satyesh said. "He's just another politician. It might not suit him either for you to tell the people that they cannot serve two masters. You may not please too many people."

"Yes, no one will like hearing that getting rid of apartheid will not
immediately transform the world and make everyone happy," Mkhulu said sadly. "That was one of the first things I learned in England. Oh, among the Bishop's crowd I was always MISTER Hlakanipho, the South African dissident. But when it came to ordinary everyday things, dealing with the ordinary everyday things, dealing with the ordinary everyday little people of England, it was another story. I was very lonely. The English are not as open and honest as South Africans. They are all so clever, reserved and two-faced. I never felt like I had made contact with them. Not deep down where it really counts. Why, in South Africa, at least I know where I stand. And there is no getting away from the fact that the blacks and whites in South Africa are accustomed to each other, more comfortable around people of a different color. I missed the warmth of South Africans of all colors. The cold that I felt in England all the time wasn't only because of the lack of sunshine. It was because the people don't really like each other, let alone me. The ordinary folk, like shop girls and taxi drivers, made no bones about the fact that they didn't like or trust blacks. So much for a multiracial society. No, when I get back I am going to talk about love and mercy, not politics and power. As that reggae song says: 'There will never be peace on earth till God is seated at the conference table!' The Bishop wants to bring heaven on earth with social justice. Does he not know that heaven will be on earth only when Jesus returns?"

"No," answered Satyesh, "the Bishop believes in science, logic and socialism. He doesn't trust people who have subjective, revelatory religious faith. He is such a tool of his church, and the liberal establishment of England, that he cannot conceive of anyone not being a tool."

"And he hates and loathes me," said Mkhulu suddenly with a despondent tone.

"Hates you?" Satyesh asked. "Surely not. How can such a cold fish feel any passion?"

"Oh, he does," Mkhulu answered. "Enough, to try to have me killed by my flatmate."

"Perhaps your mysterious flatmate was a psycho acting under orders from his own inner demons," Satyesh suggested.

"The only demon ordering him around was the illustrious Bishop," Mkhulu stated Emphatically, "and I shall have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life, waiting for the Bishop's jealous shadow to fall on me.

The two old friends continued talking in this way as the plane approached Johannesburg. It was almost like old times. Their intimacy was a product of their desire to seek the truth. When their imminent landing was announced Mkhulu became agitated. Satyesh watched his friend closely. As soon as the Zulu stepped off the plane his face relaxed. He inhaled deeply the clean dry air of the Transvaal, then walked jauntily towards the airport building.

Inside the cavernous building a young black man approached them, pulled out a gun and fired a shot. Mkhulu fell at Satyesh's feet. With his last breath he said, "That's my flatmate..."

Copyrighted 2005, Patrick Joubert Conlon, Aantrek Publications