South African Stories - Three: The Immorality Act

The second story is entitled,"The Immorality Act." This story could not happen again in South Africa because, in 1985, the section of the Immorality Act which prohibited sexual relations between black and white was repealed.

Pieter van der Merwe and his mother Margaret went to live in a flat on Warwick Avenue in Durban after Isingisi Beach had been declared an Indian Group Area and all the whites had to leave. Warwick Avenue, one of the cheapest areas in Durban, was historically a mixed race area. Pieter and his mother joked with each other about the irony of their situation in leaving Isingisi because it had become Indian, only to find themselves living among Indian neighbors again.

Pieter got a job at the local pharmacy which catered mainly to the Zulus who caught the busses in the ranks directly opposite. He soon discovered that his customers were much worse off than he was, and he began to listen to their tales of woe. The more he became involved, the more exhausted he was when he eventually dragged himself home to the flat above Sony's jewelry store a few blocks away.

One Friday night just as the pharmacy was about to close (it stayed open till nine because it was payday) a Coloured drugdealer, who usually lurked in the nearest passage, stumbled in and collapsed on the floor. There were bloody footprints leading from the door to where he lay in a quickly spreading pool of his own gore. Pieter ran to fetch antiseptic and bandages, but the owner of the store, Mr Anderson, forbade him to touch the man. He explained to Pieter that it was illegal to give medical assistance to anyone who had been injured in the commission of a crime before the police were informed.

"But he's bleeding to death," Pieter said.

"Law is law," said Mr Anderson. "The best thing to do is to phone for an ambulance and let them deal with it. But first I must phone the police."

"No police, baas, please no cops," groaned the wounded man.

"Okay," said Anderson, "then get out of here."

"Yes, baas, yes," whined the man as he tried to drag himself out of the shop, leaving a smear of blood on the floor. He died before he reached the door. Mr Anderson phoned the police. Pieter waited till they had come and gone with their endless obvious questions before he could mop the floor. It was nearly midnight when he finally got home.

For a week or two Pieter was numb. He felt as if he had been wounded and wondered if he could survive in a world which seemed to reveal ever more horrible aspects of itself to him as he approached adulthood. But that day did dawn when he no longer thought about the dead drug dealer. Pieter was not fully disillusioned. He still thought of man as a fallen angel. There were happier incidents at the pharmacy. He was fast learning Zulu, and could now communicate with the customers.

For several months now Pieter had been giving milk powder to a Zulu woman whom he had befriended. Unbeknownst to anyone he had always paid for it from his own pocket. Unlike many of the other Zulu mothers who shopped at the pharmacy, the one to whom he gave the milk powder, Ophelia aManzi, had never pleaded poverty, asked for credit or begged for charity.

He had gradually learnt of her condition and had grown fond of her, till one day he had silently slipped a packet of powdered milk into the parcel of other goods which she had purchased. She did not notice till she was at home. The next week she brought it back. Pieter explained that it had not been a mistake; that he had intended for her to have it free. He gave her another. She accepted tearfully. Not only was she still rearing an infant, but her oldest daughter, who was just fifteen, was now pregnant though she was not yet married. Pieter's little act of charity made him happy. He felt that he was contributing towards the lessening of the world's misery.

One Saturday morning Ophelia brought her pregnant daughter into the pharmacy to meet Pieter. While they stood talking, the daughter's water broke. As Pieter did not really comprehend what was happening, Ophelia had to explain to him that her daughter was about to drop a baby. He phoned for an ambulance which unfortunately did not arrive quickly. When the younger woman began to bleed in the store, Mr Anderson asked her and the mother to wait for the ambulance on the sidewalk.

As it was a cold rainy day Pieter went out to them several times with cups of hot tea. Large unidentifiable red lumps began to run out from between the daughters thighs. The rain washed them into the gutter where they dripped sluggishly down a drain. Eventually the ambulance arrived, but it was too late. Ophelia's daughter had miscarried a fullterm baby and lost so much blood that she died there on the sidewalk. He noticed that Ophelia seemed quite calm and collected, almost (though he was not sure) as if she was quite relieved by her daughter's death. He found, to his suprise, that he was also unaffected by the tragedy, and he wondered if he were becoming hard like Mr Anderson.

After work he caught a bus to the beach, as he had that Saturday afternoon off. He paddled barefoot in the waves for a while and then decided to walk home. It would take several hours but he needed to be alone, to think. He had never really explored the city of Durban before.

After strolling down the Golden Mile, Durban's luxury hotel-lined beachfront, he turned west on Smith street, one of the two main downtown thoroughfares. He walked past the elaborate City Hall and the ugly Cenotaph, down the sunless canyons of office blocks and department stores. He was distracted from his deliberate course by the smell of fresh coffee, Viennese pasteries, and newly baked hot-buttered scones being enjoyed by elegant white ladies in hats and gloves in the cosy tearooms and cafes which lined the cool arcades between the towering buildings.

He had no money for such treats so continued west till he arrived at the Grey Street intersection, where he turned north and walked past the old redbrick Catholic cathedral, past the mosque whose domes and minarets stood above a labyrinth of shops full of exotic wares, into Durban's Little India. Elderly tenements teetered above the stores. Beyond the dark passages he glimpsed sunny courtyards, where women in brightly-colored, gorgeous saris were hanging laundry while squealing children darted through the shafts of sunlight and between the billowing sheets. The air was filled with the enticing smells of Indian spices from a thousand kitchens.

He pulled himself away from this vision of domestic peace and continued north past the "muti" (voodoo) shops, where ancient Zulus sat in the darkness and dust, selling dried snakes, the shrivelled heads and hands of monkeys, secret herbs, spells and potions. He walked past the banyas (Gujerati merchants) who stood outside their stores shouting the day's bargains, until he came to the Indian Market. Here he browsed through the oriental knick-knacks and gew-gaws, lulled into drowsiness by the heat and the thick smoke of burning incense, and the aromas of garam masala, ginger and garlic. He realised he was hungry and was tempted to buy some spicey samoosas, but took his mind off his hollow stomach by gazing at the shop windows filled with saris of silk gauze and the gold and silver embroidery.

An insinuatingly soft voice, so silent he wondered if he had only imagined it, suddenly sidled up to him and whispered in his ear temptations of dirty pictures, child prostitutes and dagga (cannabis.) Then suddenly the disembodied voice dissappeared, probably realizing that Pieter was not interested.

He made his way out of the maze of alleys, seething with sweating shoppers and found himself standing on a dusty footbridge, which led over the railway lines to the Squatters' Market, where Indian garden farmers were hawking flowers, fruit, vegetables, eggs and live chickens. Beside the market, and running parallel to Warwick Avenue, was the bus terminal. Ranks of belching jalopies swallowed and disgorged crowds of Zulus from the outlying farms and townships.

To and from the buses sailed flocks of tough, brown women, bearing babies strapped to their backs with blankets knotted over bulbous breasts, and baskets of squawking chickens and brown paper parcels balanced on their motionlessly poised "crowned" heads. These "crowns", made of clay and decorated with intricate beadwork, are over a foot high and concave on top, the better to balance parcels. They somewhat resemble the headdress of Nefertiti, and often confer as much dignity on a barefoot matron as bejewelled tiaras do upon European princesses, even when topped by an awkward parcel with an unwieldly center of gravity - perhaps a basket full of live chickens.

Solitary silent black men stalked through the crowds in their old, but clean, grey suits. They carried knopkerries (clubs) for protection, and small cardboard suitcases filled with their workaday clothes, Lifebuoy soap and meals of bread and lard. The atmosphere was filled with dust, shrieks, the repetitive rhythms of African music blaring from tinny radios. Somewhere someone strummed two chords endlessly on a tuneless guitar. The duty air was filled with petrol fumes and the strong rotting onion smell of sweating shoppers and workers.

The occupants of the flats above the shops on Warwick Avenue were mostly Indian, but there were a few Coloureds and poor whites. The dank alleys running between the buildings were the ratholes of pickpockets and drug dealers. But above the violence and the misery of the streets, the occupants of the flats led, for the most part, respectable hardworking lives, and succeeded against many odds in raising polite, educable kids.

Pieter began to think that he was able at last to handle the adult world. He felt that nothing could now shock him, but something else happened to shake his new and still shaky self-confidence.

Once again it was late on a Friday night. Mr Anderson had just locked the shop for the night, and he and Pieter were standing on the sidewalk talking. The bus ranks were crowded with workers wearied by spending their hard-earned money, and Warwick Avenue was filled with the rush-hour stream of cars. Pieter coughed in the exhaust fumes wheezing from the old buses, filled to bursting with people and parcels.

For a few moments the river of traffic stopped flowing and dozens of brave old ladies dashed out across the road towards the buses. A little Zulu girl and her mother stood waiting on the sidewalk near Pieter and Anderson. The mother bore on her "crown" a woven-grass basket, full of pumpkins and live chickens. She tugged at the arm of her little girl and clucked in Zulu, "Come, Albertina! Come, let's cross while the traffic has stopped."

Then she had to let go of her child's arm to balance the basket while she ran across the street. The little girl hesitated. Her mother, safe now on the other side, called anxiously to her daughter to follow her. The child ran halfway across the street, then lost courage, stopped in her tracks and began to wail for her mother. Her mother, not seeing the little red sports-car sneaking between the buses, called to her child to hurry. The child began to run just as the little car, accelerating because the road ahead seemed clear, shot out from behind a bus. The squeal of brakes sounded only after the child had been hit and was already somersaulting over the car to land behind it.

Mr Anderson shook his head in a melancholy way and said: "They've got no traffic sense, these raw country kafirs. The driver could have been killed if the kid had gone through the windshield. When will they ever learn? Probably never. Well, not in my lifetime I suppose."

That night Pieter became sick. His mother called the doctor, who diagnosed the illness as an unknown viral infection. For several weeks Pieter was too sick to go to work; when he returned, he was withdrawn and serious. Mr Anderson guessed what the trouble was and gave Pieter a small raise to cheer him up.

Eventually Pieter recovered, but Margaret, realizing that her son had had more than his fair share of death, took him for a vacation to the Umbumbula River Mouth in Zululand. For a week Pieter relived his childhood in Isingisi. He fished and swam. He and his mother made a fire on the beach every night and together sat in silence under the stars. It was here that Pieter discovered that he could recollect the past whenever he wished. He was no longer a child.

Pieter's friend, Steven McIntyre, continued his involvement in dissident politics, and soon came under the scrutiny of the Bureau of State Security, whose officers took to parking their not unobtrusive cars outside of his parents' elegant home on the Berea. Their phone was also tapped. As Steven's father got drunker, and his mother more neurotic, Steven became even more rebellious. He began to date young Indian women whom he met at private meetings in the homes of his white liberal friends, most of whom later left for England on exit permits. Steven took his new lady friends to the drive-in cinemas wrapped in blankets under the back seat of his car, and threw wild parties at his parents' beach cottage near Umhlanga Rocks. His family was one of the wealthiest in Durban and he could have had whatever he wanted. He chose rebellion.

One night Steven brought two of his Indian lady friends to Pieter's home. Chandra and Suraiya Patel who were cousins studying to become teachers, and were from a respectable Gujerati banya (merchant caste) family. Pieter realized that Steven had brought them to his home because they had not been persuaded to accompany him to the drive-in or one of his all-weekend parties. The young ladies were very reserved.

As there was an awkward chilliness between his mother and Chandra and Suraiya, and because the night was so hot and humid, Pieter entertained his guests on the balcony. The heavy, syruppy vapors of Indian food issued from the open windows of the surrounding flats. They swatted mosquitos and watched sheet lightning play among the clouds in the east.

The sweat trickling down Pieter's face made him feel naked, transparent. Steven had brought a bottle of cane-spirits (rum.) Pieter gulped it thirstily. The combination of liquor and heat filled Pieter with romantic longings. He stared at the two girls. He felt that he could understand Steven's fascination with Indian women. Chandra and Suraiya both had open, innocent faces, deep black eyes fringed with long dark eyelashes, and shy, yet sensuous, lips. The coyness with which they held their delicate hands in their laps was so beautiful compared with Margaret's rough, uncouth ways. Something inside Pieter seemed to melt with desire.

Then Steven said: "I tell you, this time next year I'll be in London. I've made up my mind. There at least you can do whatever you like without some nosey policeman breathing down your neck."

"That's nonsense," said Chandra, who was flushed with the few sips of cane-spirits she had drunk to prove that she was modern and daring. "You know the English have problems too. It's not paradise as some white liberals seem to think."

"My word, how a little bit of liquor can sometimes go straight to a girl's head," Steven said sarcastically, and added, "I suppose Dutch courage works for Indians too." Then he shrieked with laughter at his own joke.

"Well, I'll come to England with you, Steven," Suraiya said quietly. She had only had one sip of cane-spirits and immediately regretted speaking. She glanced at Chandra, seeking approval in her cousin's eyes.

"Yes," said Chandra, "I can see the two of you starving to death in some cesspit of socalled free-love. Don't believe the newspapers. It's not all rosey, even with their beatnik bohemian nonsense and other childish rubbish. I bet it's the same as here: a hell of maya for those who are full of desires, and heaven for those who practice detachment. At least that is the way I have been taught to see life, and I believe most of what's in the Bhagavad Gita. How can you escape your karma by moving away? Perhaps the ego grows stronger the more it struggles to escape its destiny, and then where are you?

"Well, I don't believe in all that Hindu superstition, Chandra," said Steven, "and I'm sure London is marvellous, Suraiya. We could rent a lovely Georgian house in Hampstead or Highgate, near Karl Marx's tomb, and turn it into a haven for artists and dissidents."

"I'd sure like that," said Suraiya.

"I'm sure you would," said Chandra. "In fact I'm sure you wouldn't mind living in the Black Hole of Calcutta as long as Steven was there."

"No, I'm serious, Chandra," Steven said. "How can I carry on living here?"

"How can any of us live here?" Chandra said. "How can we carry on living anywhere? The world is a pit full of vipers guarding useless jewels. We strive to obtain the jewels oblivious to the vipers' poisonous fangs, like madmen."

"Chandra!" exclaimed Suraiya. "How can you talk like that? To be so ungrateful for the blessings of human birth, into your family with all its wealth and position and piety. Careful, or you will create bad karma for yourself."

"Oh, rubbish, Suraiya," said Steven. "What primitive superstitious notions. I had thought better of both of you, with your education."

"But she is right, Steven," said Chandra. "I was being foolish. It is true that the worst hell on earth is ingratitude. My mother maintains that if you aren't grateful for your current predicament, worse may happen to you yet."

"Well, not much worse can happen to me than has happened already," Steven retorted. "Besides, who cares? Let's live for today."

"You can live for today," said Pieter, "because you are rich."

"My poor Van der Merwe," said Steven; "poor little Afrikaner boy..."

Then, perceiving that the ladies had instantly heard the malice in his voice, Steven stopped short and began to laugh artificially in an attempt to dispel their looks of disapproval. They all avoided looking at Pieter.

Pieter sat with bowed head. His liquor-induced bubble of joy had burst, and he felt shamefully aware of the disrespect with which Afrikaners were regarded by his English-speaking friends. Most of the people he had met through Steven, European or Indian liberals, were wealthy and educated enough to be considerate of the young Afrikaner's feelings, and avoided insulting him to his face, but, when offguard, talking among themselves, and especially when drunk, Pieter had often to sit in silent discomfort through "dumb Afrikaner jokes" until someone sobered up sufficiently to notice his embarrassment.

"But I must tell you this one joke," Steven persisted.

"I wish you wouldn't," said Chandra. "It's probably obscene and demeaning, and you are terribly drunk, Steven."

"No I'm not," said Steven sulkily.

"Yes, you are," insisted Chandra, "and it's time for us to go home. It's getting late."

"Would you come with me, Pieter, while I drive them home? Steven asked. "We can protect them from the tsotsis (African thugs.)"

Chandra sat in front with Steven, "to keep a sober eye on him," she said. Suraiya sat in the back with Pieter, as coyly distanced from him as physically possible.

"Please don't nag me," Steven said to Chandra, when she tut-tutted because a rear wheel passed over the edge of the curb as he turned into Grey Street. "I'm perfectly sober and quite happy, thank you."

"You mean that you're perfectly drunk," said Chandra, "and need me to tell you where you're heading."

They all laughed, then froze with fear as a police van darted out of a side street and pulled in front of them, cutting off their progress. Within seconds they seemed to be surrounded by policemen. Pieter viewed the melee calmly, as if it were a confusing dream. Radios crackled. The four friends were thrown into the back of the van. The doors snapped shut, and they sat there in darkness and silence. Then the van sped away. As there were no windows they could not see where they were going, but they were too stunned to ask either of the two policemen who guarded them, and too afraid and ashamed to speak to each other.

When the police van stopped and they were hauled out, Pieter saw that they were at the Somtseu Road police station. As they were brought into the building, a Zulu constable and an Afrikaner sergeant behond the desk stopped talking and looked up at them. The Zulu lowered his eyes and withdrew into dour indifference. The sergeant began to grin sadistically.

"Well, well, what have you brought me tonight?" the sergeant said to the policemen who had arrested the four. "Drunk driving? You all stink of cane-spirits. Drugs? Certainly illegal and subversive politics. This one here," he indicated Steven, "looks like a commie to me. But I think we'll book them for suspicion of having contravened the Immorality Act."

"We're innocent," said Chandra. "We've done nothing wrong."

"That," said the sergeant, "is for me to decide, and right now you all look extremely guilty to me. Out and out criminals I would say." He turned to Suraiya and said: "Well, girlie, have you done any indecencies? It seems to me that you all had the opportunity."

Then he sat down on the corner of the desk and stared at the four frightened youngsters for what seemed like an eternity before he spoke again.

"Well, are you going to confess, or do we have to interrogate you?" he asked. "You are in serious trouble. You can be charged with CONSPIRING to commit a crime."

The four friends' names were taken. When the sergeant expressed surprise that a Van der Merwe (like himself it transpired) should be mixed up in such a mess, Steven giggled.

The sergeant leapt at him, red in the face with fury, and began to shout: "You filthy communist! I know all about you and your kind! Rich little English mommies' boys with nothing better to do than go around and kiss the poephols of the poor downtrodden blacks! Well, to me they are still savages and will be for another thousand years. Everyone knows that they go mad when they smell blood. Isn't that right?"

The sergeant looked at the Zulu policeman, who nodded, frowning. Pieter shivered. He would not like to choose between the two cops when it came time to plead for mercy.

"How can anyone take you seriously?" Steven said wearily. The liquor was wearing off, and his head was aching. "You are an uneducated buffoon."

Fear sprang into Chandra's and Suraiya's eyes. Steven seemed to realize, dimly through his fog, that he had made a mistake.

The sergeant towered over Steven and began to jab him sharply in the chest with his forefinger. Pieter was nauseated by this display of uncouth violent intimacy and turned away as the sergeant began to speak.

"You," he said to Steven, jabbing viciously all the time, "with your fancy ideas and filthy sex habits are nothing but a spoilt brat and a frightened miserable sissy! 'N verkakte neusgate kafirboetie!" (A filthy nigger-lover.)

Steven, visibly sweating, drew himself up and said loudly: "Before we go any further may I call my lawyer or my family?"

"No," replied the sergeant, "you may only call your lawyer once you have been booked. And I haven't got around to that yet."

Steven backed down, almost with a look of relief on his pale glistening face. The sergeant continued: "Now I want you to keep your toffee-nosed English mouth shut while I question these other suspects. Your turn will come.

He switched his attention to Chandra and Suraiya and said, "So, girlies, what did this nice rich white man here pay you for your, uh, entertainment? Or did you do it for love?"

"I'll thank you kindly not to be so coarse," said Chandra. Her sweet modest voice briefly cast a spell of sanity in the chilly grey room.

"Oh, will you really, madam?" said the sergeant, dispelling it.

Pieter stood silently hoping that he would not be noticed. The sergeant blustered around with more sarcasm and innuendos. Steven mopped the cold sweat from his forehead. Suraiya began to sniffle. Chandra lowered her eyes, but still held her back stiff and unbowed.

Then it seemed that the sergeant had run out of steam. He sat on the edge of the desk, and his eyes clouded over with thought. Pieter suddenly knew that the time was ripe to re-introduce an atmosphere of gentleness. Perhaps the sergeant knew that he was wrong and just needed a chance to save face. Pieter decided to try to break the tension.

"Please, sir," he said, reluctant to draw attention to himself, "this has all been a terrible mistake. We were just taking the ladies home after a small party at my house. We had to take them home. They couldn't walk through the area between Warwick Avenue and Grey Street. You know how bad it is, full of shebeens, (illegal saloons) drug dealers and tsotsis. So we set out to drive them home, nothing else."

Everyone looked up at this piece of truth, slowly, as if waking from a dream. The sergeant wiped his hand over his face as if to remove an inhuman mask. Pieter wondered if it was a gesture to signal that he was prepared to relax a little.

"There are two gaping holes in your story," the sergeant eventually said; "one: there are no shebeens in Durban - we see to that; two: you haven't told us what took place at your party."

"It was just a party for a few friends. We drank some cane-spirits and talked a lot of nonsense," Pieter answered honestly.

"But you know that multiracial parties are forbidden and you are not allowed to mix with other races," said the sergeant, not wishing to concede too easily.

Pieter waited patiently. He'd seen this side of life before, in the strange violent rituals of the streetlife outside the pharmacy where he worked. He looked at the Zulu cop, who quickly averted his eyes, determined to ramain aloof and unmoved. He had also seen it all before.

Then Steven endangered the growing detente by saying, with barely disguised contempt for the sergeant: "It was not a political party. It was a social party. There is a distinction, you know."

"So you drank liquor, smoked dagga (cannabis) and fucked some black girls, heh?" said the sergeant, his anger resurfacing.

"We did not," Chandra protested, but her indignation was limp.

"We are not criminals!" Steven blurted out.

"We haven't done anything wrong," said Suraiya.

"It all has a very simple explanation, sir," said Pieter politely.

"Well, explain it to me then," said the sergeant, and Pieter knew then that his prayers for peace had been answered.

"I don't see that we have to explain anything," said Steven.

"Take no notice of him, sir," said Pieter. "He is drunk."

"Yes," said the sergeant, "so drunk he's forgot the laws of the land. Well, at least it seems to me that most of you know that you have got yourselves into hot water. You will be watched from now on. Very carefully. Thanks to your friend her, young Van der Merwe, I will let you all go this time."

Then the sergeant turned to Steven and continued: "But if I catch you, my young English communist friend, ever breaking the law, I will break your neck. And, as for you girlies, I hope I never see you here again. It seems to me that you are educated and come from rich Indian families. Go home to your own kind and stay with them. That is where you belong. Not with white men. They only want one thing from black girls, and I'm sure your parents wouldn't like that, would they? Now go home, all of you. Not all at once. The girls can go first, and mind you go straight home. Later I will let the boys go. We don't want them catching up to you and giving you a
quick fuck in an alleyway, do we?"

"But sir," said Pieter, "the reason we took them home in the first place is because of all the shebeens and tsotsis..."

"Shebeens and tsotsis?" said the sergeant with an evil grin. "What on earth are you talking about? I told you there are none in Durban. You are letting your imagination run away with you."

So Pieter and Steven were kept waiting, after the girls left, until dawn. Pieter tried not to think of what might be happening to them on their long walk down Umgeni Road towards Grey Street, past the dark alleyway shebeens where drug dealers and robbers lurked in wait for their customers and victims.

The sergeant left Steven to be guarded by the Zulu cop and took Pieter into an office where he proceeded to lecture him in Afrikaans: "Now you be careful that this English kafir-boetie doesn't lead you astray with his communist ideas. Afrikaners should not mix with the English anymore than with the Indians or kafirs. The English have been brainwashed by the British government and the English newspapers into thinking that it's all right to encourage the kafirs. But it's not. They will drag us down. For them equality means dog-eat-dog in a godless pit full of dead ancestors, demons and witchcraft. Maybe there are plenty of good God-fearing, Christian kafirs, but no matter how good and sincere they still, in the end, have no control over their passions, and will go into a frenzy if they see blood or death, because they are so riddled with fears and godless superstitions. All they need is a funeral and some mad communist whipping up their emotions and they will turn on us and kill our children in their beds. This is not some silly little political game like in England where the struggle is between capitalism and socialism. This is a matter of our very survival. It is a struggle between civilization and barbarism, Christianity and heathenism. The communists only want to use the masses to get power for themselves. They would like to start a revolution right here in South Africa, and then we'll have some fat bloated white communist running the country. Don't you see that they would love the blacks to rise up? The kafirs are so wet behind the ears when it comes to politics that they will believe anybody, so long as the communists promise to solve their problems for them. Blacks have so little self-respect that they think other people will save them. And the English would also like to see the Afrikaners out of power. They could more easily pull the wool over the eyes of a black government, and South Africa would still be a British colony. We are surrounded by enemies. Don't betray your fellow Afrikaners. British liberals are almost as bad as communists, if not worse, because they are what Lenin - ah, you look surprised, but I must know about these things if I am to do my job properly - Lenin warned the Bolsheviks against what he called left-wing communists. He knew that they were treacherous to everyone. British and American liberals are left-wing communists. The Queen would love socialism in South Africa. It would keep her cousins who own all the gold and diamond mines rich and stop the kafirs from revolting, like it has in England. They don't like a real democracy like our South African Republic. And the Kafirs don't undertand it either. To them allowing dissent is a sign of weakness. All they know is kings, chiefs, warlords and dictators. You still have a lot to learn. What does your father do for a living?"

"My father is dead," Pieter answered.

"That explains everything," said the sergeant. "I am sorry to hear that, but you look like a clever lad. Mind who you mix with, and get an education. Join the army or the police. They will take care of you."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," said Pieter.

The following day Steven telephoned Pieter at work to tell him that Chandra and Suraiya had indeed been chased by tsotsis and had barely escaped. He also said that he suspected that his name had been reported and had triggered off an investigation because he was being followed everywhere by plainclothes policemen. He became morose and cursed his white skin.

The next Saturday afternoon, as Pieter sat drinking tea with his mother in the kitchen, Steven arrived in a very irritable mood. Margaret nodded in agreement when Steven began to berate the Afrikaners for "political ineptitude and cultural clumsiness." Because his mother, being English herself, did not contradict Steven, Pieter began to feel out of place, a stranger in his own home. He felt righteous indignation for the first time in his life.

"Why don't you tell Steven the story about little Woolworth," Pieter said.

"What on earth for?" said Margaret. "It's disgusting!"

"Because Steven seems to think that only the Afrikaners are barbarians, while the blacks are noble savages - only he doesn't like the word 'savages' - and the sainted Englishman is going to lead the blacks out of the wilderness - the white man's burden and all that jazz. No, tell him about little Woolworth. Do you remember our servant girl, Steven? You must remember. You don't? Why Siphonia was my mother's servant for twenty years. You must have noticed her sometimes. Well, she had a son, Woolworth"

Steven, who had not failed to notice the rising note of sarcasm in his friend's voice, said supercilliously: "I sometimes think it must be quite impossible for you Afrikaners ever to accept that blacks are humans too."

"I beg your pardon," interrupted Margaret, "but leave me out of this. I'm definitely not Afrikaans, thank you very much."

"Before we left Isingisi Beach," Pieter pressed on relentlessly, "and moved to Durban, Siphonia sent her son, Woolworth, home to the family farm in Phongola because her mother was alone and too old to fetch water. Siphonia took Woolworth to the train at Isingisi Station and told the conductor where to put him off. His granny would be waiting for him, but little Woolworth never arrived."

Pieter saw that his friend had become interested despite his indignation.

Steven said: "What are you talking about? Yes, I remember Siphonia."

"They found his body some time later," Pieter answered, "he had been kidnapped by some witchdoctor who cut out his heart to use for muthi."

Steven leapt up and shouted: "Well, that's it. They say that you can never change an Afrikaner's way of thinking. Well, I don't think I'll even bother to try anymore. I have wasted years on you. You are still a racist, and worse you are reverting to type. I don't want to have anything more to do with you and your kind."

He stormed out of the house and Pieter never saw him again.

Pieter continued working for Mr Anderson in the pharmacy and his life was uneventful, until one day Margaret drew his attention to an article in the paper. Steven's mother had commited suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. Apparently she had been driven crazy with fear and anxiety by the everclosing circle which the security police were drawing around her son. Five days after Steven had been detained incommunicado under the Ninety Days' Detention laws, she killed herself. Steven was expelled from South Africa when his detention ended and had gone to England on an exit-permit.

Pieter began to think about his future. His father's early death had left him to fend for himself. There was no chance to advance with Mr Anderson.

On a sleepy Sunday afternoon a few months later, Pieter sat on the balcony with his mother talking.

"We need never have left Isingisi Beach," he said, "if we'd known that we could have lived among Indians so comfortablly, and if we could have gotten around the Group Areas Act. I'd have been quite happy living among the Indians."

"Well, we do live among the Indians," said Margaret, "whether we like it or not."

"I've made up my mind about my future," Pieter said.

Steven's fate, the night at the police station and the sergeant's lecture had all sobered Pieter, cleared the confusion in his mind about the terrible tragedies which he had lived through. He had led such a sheltered life in Isingisi. Nothing had prepared him for the world at large. The sergeant had made many things clear, the most important of which was that life was a struggle for survival, not a dilletante's leisurely game, as Steven seemed to think.

When he told his mother that he had made up his mind to join the police, she hugged and kissed him, but wept a few tears too because, while it was a secure career, it was less than she had hoped for.

Copyrighted 2005, Patrick Joubert Conlon, Aantrek Publications