South African Stories

South African Stories - One: The Population Registration Act

2006-06-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

This story is called "The Population Registration Act," which was enacted in 1950 and was the cornerstone of apartheid, classifying the different racial groups, thus making the Group Areas, Immorality and Mixed Marriages Acts possible.

There were three basic racial classifications under the law: Black, White and Coloured (Mixed). Asian (that is, South Asians from the former "British India") was later added as a separate classification as they were seen as having "no historical right to the country".

An Office for Race Classification was set up to overview the classification process. Classification into groups was carried out using criteria such as outer appearance, general acceptance and social standing. For example, it defined a "white person" as one who "in appearance is obviously a white person who is generally not accepted as a Coloured person; or is generally accepted as a white person and is not in appearance obviously a white person." Due to the fact that some aspects of the profile were of a social nature, reclassifications were not uncommon, and a board was established to conduct that process. The Population Registration Act was repealed in 1991.

Buried amid the advertisements in the "Sunday Times" in August of 1961 was a small article "Alles Sal Reg Kom [Everything will come right]- Family Divided by Race Optimistic." It went on to say:

Thoreauna McCoy, the mother of Derek McCoy, said yesterday, "Alles sal reg kom. It was all a terrible mistake. But Derek will be all right now."

Derek is the 14 year old boy who was refused admission to the High School of the small Karoo town of Meerkatspruit. He spent 14 years thinking he was white. His parents say they are not playwhites but could not explain why Derek is black.

"He was a throwback", said his father, Dennis McCoy, adding "He was never a happy kid. Always sulky. This is the best thing that could have happened."

For 14 years Derek was simply accepted in the Karoo Junior School as having a "touch of the tar brush", something not unusual in the Karoo. But when he applied for high school, school officials determined his race classification to be Cape Colored. He ran away after his 25 year old cousin, Alek Bosman, broke his nose last week after hearing the news that Derek failed to get into High School. The police found him in King William's Town and returned him to his family. Derek said he had been trying to travel to his Aunt Lenina in Durban. Derek's mother said she has since sent her son to live with her sister in Durban.

"He wanted to be with his Aunt Lenina," said Mrs McCoy.

"Yes," said Mr McCoy, "Lenina's a throwback just like Derek. It runs in my wife's family."

Like Derek, Lenina had also been exiled from her family 30 years previously for being too black to "pass for white." At first he was uncomfortable in his new surroundings but, as he got used to Lenina, he began to question her daily about his family history. This was a tricky feat owing to her unpredictable mood swings.

He never hesitated to encourage Lenina if she showed the slightest sign of an attack of nostalgia. Sometimes he would even wheedle her against his better judgement. If Lenina were in an unpredictable state of mind, Derek stood as much chance of being slapped across the side of the head as he did of being invited to join her for a cup of tea.

One Sunday afternoon, while Derek was helping his aunt wash up after dinner, Lenina said: "You wouldn't believe that there was a time when your father was an easy-going man."

Derek saw his chance and asked: "Where did my mother and father meet?"

Lenina straightened up and put her wet hands on her hips absent-mindedly. She wore a doek [scarf] wrapped around her hair, and a cigaret barely adhered to her lower lip. She squinted in the smoke and coughed irritably before answering: "Here in Durban, on holiday, after the War."

"Which war?" asked Derek.

"Why, the Second World War," she shouted in his ear, inadvertently as she bent over to smack the cat with a dish towel. "What do you think? That I'm as old as Methusela?"

Then she stopped talking because she was suddenly pre-occupied, or, as she would put it, "trying to fathom something." Sometimes Derek had to prompt Lenina several times before a gush of nostalgia broke through her usual dam of brusqueness, and even then she would speak with little or no awareness of her nephew. She often left half of her thoughts unspoken, except silently to the ghosts within her imagination. She was not by any means uncommunicative, but it was easier for her to visualize her recollections in her mind's eye than to put them into words.

After they had finished the dishes Lenina made a cup of tea and joined Derek who was sitting with his feet inside the still warm oven because it was a chilly July afternoon. She had a faraway look on her face, but little twinges of inner laughter or sorrow twitched around the corners of her eyes and mouth, and Derek began to hope that this was a sign that his aunt would soon begin to talk. She did.

"At that time," she mused more to herself than Derek, "I still lived on the farm - get down Poochie," she added, all in one breath, to the dog who squatted beside her scratching her leg for attention, "with my dad and mom. Your mother was a nurse at Jo'burg General Hospital. She lived with our older sister, Satya, and her traffic-cop husband in Jo'burg in, oh, nineteen hundred and oxcart. After a while we found that we actually had to like her husband because he turned out to be a real refined Afrikaner, not a skaap - voetsek Poochie," she added, again without pausing, to the dog which she slapped with the dishrag that she kept permanently draped over her left shoulder. The dog yelped and bolted under the table.

Derek, fearing that his aunt was about to mix up her reminiscences, as usual, into a non-chronological jumble which would make sense only to herself, asked: "Before what? One minute you're talking about your parents, then about Auntie Satya's silly husband ..."

"Well, I'm trying to tell you what you asked. It's you who ask all these bladdy silly questions. How am I supposed to know what I'm thinking till I see what I say? Between you and the bladdy dog my mind is spinning, and all I get is insults about my family."

Lenina exhaled a stream of cigaret smoke so acrid with belligerence that Derek coughed and the dog sneezed, hitting its snout on a leg of the table.

Fearing an unprovoked attack he remained silent till the gleam of battle in Lenina's ferocious black eyes slowly died while she lit another cigaret. But she had to vent her feelings on someone so when the cat jumped onto her lap she knocked it senseless to the floor.

Seeing the results of her handiwork (the cat stared at her dazed and indignant) she quickly cooled down and said: "I don't mean to be cruel but it's the absolute limit when I can't even smoke a fag in peace first with the bladdy dog and now with you."

Derek kept silent, thinking it best to presume that she was addressing the cat.

Then she continued: "Besides you know how catfur gets stuck in my throat and makes me cough. So when your mother saved enough money she decided to take our mother and father, who was very sickly, and treat them to a holiday here in Durban because they were so poor and my mother was worked to the bone by the depression and the Drought, and the War didn't help the farm either. I was feeling like death warmed-up too, but they couldn't take me because, well, because there was this really cheap hotel for whites and I was too black. It wasn't a very posh hotel, and nobody knew them in Natal, so they thought they may as well stay there eventhough it was a white hotel. That was the Ocean View Hotel in those days but it's been pulled down now. Your father and his first wife and his mother, grandma Gypsy, owned it. Well, to cut a long story short - your mother and your father fell in love."

"So my mother broke up my father's first marriage then?" Derek ventured to ask bravely, his embarrasment mixed with the thrill that his mother had once been a femme fatale.

"Of course not," Lenina puffed, more shocked than indignant, "SHE already had another man."

Derek understood SHE to mean his father's first wife. He waited for Lenina to continue.

Eventually she said: "I tell you SHE gave your father a run for his money SHE did, what with fooling around while he was away during the War. He got back to find HER in bed with a Scotsman, who had been billeted at the hotel after being in a Japanese
POW camp for years, with only one leg and no balls, as your father, not I, would say. When your father tried to divorce HER for adultery the Scotsman got medical evidence that he couldn't do it, but SHE got a divorce I tell you, the crafty cow, by pretending that SHE didn't know Gypsy was Colored before SHE married your father, and that your father had married her under false pretenses. Well Thoreauna was caught between a mad dog and a pigsty, as they say in the classics, and couldn't just watch your father go to the dogs over a bladdy silly bitch like that vain spoiled white cow, who didn't even know the difference between right and wrong, let alone her arse from her elbow, eventhough SHE drove your father to drink. No, it's grandma Gypsy I blame for everything. That woman has ruined your father's chances in life in more ways than one. I mean do you know how Gypsy loved all that stuff, the secrets and the scheming and the sneaky sex? It's Gypsy I blame for encouraging HER who needed a mother's firm guiding hand not whispering in the dark like a couple of schoolgirls. But your father was sick of it all by then, though he could see no wrong in his mother of course. It was the poor bladdy Scotsman who got blamed, eventhough his second and third legs were blown to kingdom come. Thank goodness your mother came along to straighten out your father's life. So my parents came back to the farm and Thoreauna went back to Jo'burg to nurse at the General. Because of the scandal of the divorce your father sold the hotel. He's always been too impulsive, the bladdy stupid poephol (asshole,) but it's Gypsy I blame for everything," Lenina concluded empathically.

Lenina got up to pour another cup of tea and when she returned to put her feet in the oven she needed no more prompting.

She lit another cigaret and began: "Your father bought a small house in Jo'burg for him and Thoreauna. I don't need to tell you that Gypsy went to live with your father and mother. It was Gypsy who made Thoreauna into a martyr and insisted they all live in Orange Grove and pass for white, which my parents never agreed with, you know, not even for those two weeks in Durban on holiday when they were so embarrassed that they never even went to the beach. I suppose your mom got used to it in Jo'burg, but never meant to do it all the time. You know, eventhough I couldn't fit into my family because of my blackness, your mother an I have always been close. We tell each other everything. Thoreauna did not like being deceitful. She was sure they'd get caught sooner or later.

"You know how your chickens come home to roost, which they did because, when you were born that was the end of it and your father never forgave your mom, eventhough it was just as much on his side of the family as ours, only WE didn't try to play white the way Gypsy had done for so many years that she'd forgotten what could happen if you weren't careful. Besides your father and Thoreauna had known right from the start about each other. It was like telepathy the way they could just tell without even asking. But he was stubborn and decided to try for white just because Gypsy pushed him into it. It nearly broke his heart when you were born black. Well they had to move because the neighbours were beginning to talk so they packed up lock stock and barrel and moved to that one-horse dorp in the Karoo, although by that time I was beginning to see things the way Gypsy saw them, especially, as far as I'm concerned, anything goes when it comes to surviving in this sick society where poor white trash thinks it's better than us. It seems a shame when there is so much white rubbish in this world who don't deserve to be white."

Lenina sighed and continued: "When I first moved to Durban I hated it, what with hundreds of those lower class black Indians walking on fire and drinking black chicken's blood and as crooked as hyenas. They would sell their own grandmothers. One Indian woman even chopped off her child's legs so they could go begging in town. Well I can't say for sure, but that was the rumor anyway. But after a while it sort of grew on me. Ooo really it isn't so bad after all. See how this cat's fur affects me, I'm allergic to its fluff. It makes me itch all over just to think of it."

She drifted off as she became absorbed in scratching her scalp while her cigaret dangled forgotten from her lower lip. The cat curled up unnoticed on her lap. Suddenly Lenina jumped up. The cat clung to her skirt by it's claws. She slapped it back and forth with her dishcloth till it decided to retract it's claws, drop to the floor an bolt out the kitchen door.

"Bladdy stupid cat. Germs!" she hissed.

"Germs?" asked Derek.

"Yes, germs, are you deaf or something? I said germs," she said, adding: "Now get your feet out of the oven. I've got to get on with my work, not that anyone ever offers to help. No, all I do all day long is scrub and cook and not a word of thanks from you or my snot-nosed monsters of children or your drunken selfish uncle who just lies on his bed all day listening to rubbish on the radio, eating garlic till it stinks right out his pores. And all you want is food. Just plain cupboard love. None of you care what happens to me. I could drop dead over the stove and you wouldn't even notice till you smelled burning and thought it was supper."

Because of his sensitivity, Derek had reservations about confiding in his aunt. He was afraid of becoming vulnerable to her relentless domination of anyone she sensed was weaker or more scrupulous. But he needed her confidence and he exploited her penchant for strolls down memory lane, because he felt that only she held the key to his security. He would deliberately wheedle recollections from her while they sat in the kitchen after Sunday roast (with their feet in the stillwarm oven in winter or in basins of cold water in the heat of December) drinking endless cups of tea while his uncle slept off his surfeits of porkfat and brandy.

One sleepy Sunday afternoon Derek asked his aunt about his grandmother, Gypsy, whose past was wrapped in myth and mystery.

"The fact is I don't know all the dates and stuff," began Lenina, "but as far's I know Gypsy was born in Port Elizabeth around 1888. Her great grand-father landed in the Eastern Cape in 1820 when it was only a beach surrounded by thieving Xhosa tribes and the Boers who thought they'd gotten a rotten deal. But I don't know history and Gypsy's never been forward with the filthy facts of her family, but supposedly she never knew her great-grandfather, Tom Taylor, who was from somewhere in England. The way Gypsy tells it anyone'd think it was Buckingham Palace. Still he was lucky or strong enough to survive the trip, though there was not much reason for him to stay in England. The only choice he had was between starvation there or a chance to own a piece of land here; to grow his own food in sunny South Africa. His wife had kicked the bucket during the crossing, and, still being only twenty, he took a Xhosa woman for a wife. I suppose one excuse's as good as another, and together they cleared the plot of land he had been allotted and grew mealies (corn) I think and succeeded in producing one son. Then the Xhosa woman died while giving birth to a daughter, but no one except your grandmother knows the whole truth and all I know is what Gypsy's brother, Googie, told me before he died, because she's ashamed of her past. Why, I don't know. You can't make a pig's ear out of silk stockings as my mother used to say."

Lenina lit another cigaret from the stub of the previous one and said as she exhaled: "Googie told me how Tom Taylor's and the Xhosa woman's son, Alfred, farmed the land, grew vegetables and married a woman, who not even Googie knew about, except they had five kids one of whom was Gypsy's and Googie's mother, Beatrice, who was seduced by a travelling salesman from Port Elizabeth where she followed him only to find that he was already married and she was pregnant. So to feed herself and the child born shortly after, she sold her favors to sailors and bore many children each of which had a different father and which was sent to a nun-run orphanage in Kingwilliamstown as soon as it was weaned. One of the babies was Googie, who admitted this to me, and the other was Gypsy who didn't."

Lenina had not looked at Derek once and seemed almost oblivious to his presence. She seemed to be talking to herself: "I could never find out what really happened because the only one besides Googie who I ever met was Lolly, who you should remember from when, oh, you must have been seven and you all came her to Durban to live with her for a while, supposedly because she was a poor helpless old lady who had just had her left leg amputated from sugar, but really it was because Gypsy and your poephol of a father thought she'd kick the bucket soon and leave them her house and a big fat bank account as she had only one child, a drunk epileptic derelict, totally unfit to be the heir to anyone other than a baboon, as your father would say, not I.

"So they waited for Lolly to die, which she didn't because for some reason she took a fancy to you. You seemed to cheer her up, which Gypsy said was due to spite as she was thrilled that someone else's son was as big a handicap as her own. But I don't remember Lolly being a witch like Gypsy. Probably it was because you, unlike her son, are as black as she was. Anyway she didn't die and you had such fun with her. Don't you remember how you used to sneak up on the old girlie and see how many times you could spot her stump flashing from under her lacy nightgown whenever she sat straining on her commode? Funny how she didn't mind. Then, when Gypsy decided that Lolly was going to live forever, you all moved back to the Karoo and sure enough she upped and died a week later and left you everything for when you turn twenty-one. That put Gypsy's nose out of joint. But I'll never forget how we laughed when we asked you why you wanted to look at Lolly's stump all the time and you said it was because you wanted to see if she was black all the way through. One thing you can say about Lolly, is her house was lovely, with the smells of polished wooden floors and snow white lace curtains smelling of lavender and the windows whose panes were so bright that the sun sparkled in them, though her servants hated her being such a slave-driver."

Lenina suddenly looked at Derek and said: "Still she gave you a leg up in life. When you're 21 you'll be a rich man. Gypsy's so vague about her past it was only through Googie that I found out about her mother's station in life but just get her started on her own accomplishments and you'll never hear the end. Like when she escaped from the orphanage at the age of sixteen and entered a beauty and talent contest for white girls only and won, and out comes the old brown snapshot of herself dressed in cheap jewellery and looking just like a real gypsy, but prettier I must admit, and happy because it got her a job in a night club singing and playing the piano. She had plenty of admirers, and then in 1907 along came Eugene Murphy, who was a charming and witty Irishman of about thirty who swept Gypsy off her feet and took her to Grahamstown, where she forgot that she was an orphan with mixed-blood and married him. In 1908 she gave birth to your father. By now Gypsy was passing completely as white and she got ambitious and took to nagging Eugene to move north to Jo'burg and your grandfather soon drank himself into oblivion with the money he made gambling with miners, and in 1914, just as the first South African soldiers were going to the Great War, he died, drunk in a gutter, alone, but Gypsy wasn't upset because she had meanwhile become the mistress of a rich Jew, and the only thing standing between them was your father's foreskin, so your poor father was circumcised at the age of eight in order to show him she was serious about becoming a Jew."

"What is circumcised?" asked Derek.

Lenina answered: "They cut off the long skin on the end of your pielietjie. Now don't interrupt me anymore. Of course Gypsy never talks about this and pretends that she only had two husbands, but your father hasn't forgotten how she divorced the Jew to marry Andrew McCoy. Now, of course, she likes to say she was a widow when Andrew came along. You know, there she was a penniless widow sniffling into her hanky smothered in cheap perfume when along came Andrew McCoy and saved her from a fate worse than death, which was true in a way because she'd only married the Jew for money, but she did seem to love Andrew, and he loved her, eventhough she wasn't much of a catch by then, having gotten rather fat, and your father was what they would nowadays call a juvenile delinquent.

"Gypsy had somehow picked up one rather mysterious daughter, Rose, who was very brown and inconvenient and who was never fully explained to us, but I've guessed that she was the daughter of the Jew, who divorced Gypsy when he realised she had a touch of the tarbrush, but Gypsy said that she had adopted the child out of the goodness of her heart, which I've never noticed. She doesn't seem to even have a heart, just lies, schemes and dark deceit, like her bloomers, smelling of lavender water to cover the stink of her piss which turns peacock blue because she takes pills to get rid of water in her legs and she seldom makes it to the toilet in time, as your mother's told me. But, if she and your father get drunk at the same time and in the same way, they laugh themselves silly joking about how Gypsy had to play the piano in a brothel to keep the wolves from the door before Saint Andrew McCoy turned up. But when she's sober she will deny this, and your father goes along with her lies because she has a lot more things hanging over her son than versa visa."

Lenina lit another cigaret and continued: "Anyway, McCoy was a strong hardworking dependable young man newly arrived from Scotland, and he must have been terribly lonely, almost a boy, ten years younger than Gypsy, but huge, built like an ox. He married the damsel in distress, the self-renewing virgin, and packed your father off to reform school, and adopted the inconvenient daughter, much to Gypsy's relief, but he died in a mining tragedy just before the depression leaving her a house and widow's benefits and money in the bank. So at last Gypsy was respectable, far from her Cape Colored past and financially independent. As soon as possible she lost little Rose.

"No-one would imagine that your father was once no better than a tsotsi, because when he got out of the reformatory he teamed up with a Lebanese gang and later ended up in jail with them for breaking and entering. Luckily that German immigrant took a fancy to him and trained him to be a wrestler and, while his weight was at first an advantage, his laziness soon turned it to flab and he got too fat to move fast enough in the wrestling ring, so he had to give it up and try easier ways of making a living. He became a bouncer in a naughty nightclub, then a bookie in a bucket-shop he and his friend, Ralf, ran. Then he became a conman. Remember when he and Ralf sold broken glass to that Belgian tourist who thought they were diamonds? It wouldn't have worked if the Belgian wasn't leaving South Africa in a big hurry.

"Then he married HER the 'beautiful blonde bombshell', the white bitch who cheated on him during the war. At first he decided to forgive her but then your mom turned up and put a stick in his spokes. Well he upset her applecart too, or something did, because she would never have gotten involved with him if it hadn't been so humid in Durban. You know, Durban was very romantic after the War and Thoreauna had never seen the ocean before. It made her drunk in a way, and she wasn't thinking straight. She had never really listened before to Christmas beetles and the bullfrogs singing so loud, and the camaraderie of the soldiers returned from war, and they were all so hungry for women. You can't blame the poor sods.

"Well they all flirted with Thoreauna and she began to feel important at last, and your father noticed that she was pretty, which, believe it or not, she was in those days. And she noticed how lonely and sad he was, and the next thing she knew she was in love with a married man. He told her it was all over between him and HER, and he was suing HER for divorce. Well, you know the rest. Maybe you don't understand it, but you've got to see that your mom also had her own miseries. She was trying to forget the suicide of her fiance in Jo'burg, who was a white male-nurse who wanted to be an actor. The rumor was that he killed himself because he was queer. But Thoreauna could never get it out of her mind that he took an overdose because he discovered that she was really a Colored. So she was relieved when she found out that SHE was suing your father on the grounds that he had decieved her about his blackness.

"But I'm not ashamed of my background. If only you had known my father. Of course your father's real father died before it was possible for you to have been born, but you were already born when my dad died, though you were too young know what's what. He was a saint, my father, Theophilus Gustavus Bosman. He was born in Malmesbury, in the Cape, in 1883. His family was not really regarded as Colored because the rest of the family was white and owned land and they could trace their ancestors back two hundred years to the Huguenots, but somewhere along the line one of them married a Malay or a Hottentot, who knows, no one talks about it. At first this was not a problem. Only later they married into a Dutch Reformed family and the white Jouberts got separated from the black Bosmans, or, as they called us, 'the Bushman side of the family', because my great-great aunt Miepie married a half Bushman-half Dutch slave. Well, she was the darkest daughter and supposedly retarded or dumb, but how can you believe that my wonderful refined father, Theophilus Bosman, came from that but grew up to be a school teacher, as was my own mother, Fanny, who was the whitest daughter of the slightly brown Beauchamp family, who supposedly were descended from an aristocratic English remittance man and a black woman from Mozambique.

"The match between my father and mother was not approved of at first by the Beauchamps as they had high hopes of marrying all their daughters off to white men because they were educated. But apparently they relented when they found out that my father had left the Dutch Reformed Church and had not gone to help the Afrikaner Republics fight the British during the Boer War, and had become a Christian Scientist and a pacifist, which wasn't as good as being Anglican, but was better than being a Calvinist in their eyes. So they got married in 1910, when the Union of South Africa was formed from the two British colonies and the two Boer Republics, which was a good omen for my father.

"His parents also had reservations about the match because the Beauchamps were not Afrikaans. So the two sets of in-laws didn't speak to each other for two years until my older sister was born, and called Satya because of Gandhi, and then the new Grandmas seemed to get over their language problem while they dripped and drooled over the new baby, who was by all accounts gorgeous even then. Well, of course they would all think so. She was the first blond baby in a hundred years. Of course her blue eyes didn't last and soon turned dark brown like everyone else's, but still all went well until 1915 when the Great War began to infect even the Cape and my father decided to take his small family and his two spinster sisters, Sarie and Sissie, who I think were devoted less to Mary Baker Eddy than they were to my father, and go and live on a small farm in the Karoo, where they could live away from a society which my father felt was so sinful and sick he didn't want his kids in it.

"In 1915 a second child was born, your mother, who they named Thoreauna, after the American writer. In 1918 I was born. Because I was so dark the grandparents on both sides said I was a sign from God that my parents were arrogant and immoral. But that wasn't the end of it, because the final straw was when my father and his little family all became vegetarians. Well, the Bosmans and the Beauchamps now washed their hands of their children and my father was at last free to live life without interference and the next ten years, according to him, were heaven. I was named Lenina, after the Russian Bolshevik. Later my dad regretted that, but at that time he thought that Lenin was a saint. So he floated around his little farm reading Gandhi's pamphlets and Thoreau and Tolstoy and eating vegetables and talking to his pigs and cows.

"Then the Great Drought began in 1926 and by 1930, when I was a hefty boeremeisie, I began to hear about the Depression, which I remember like yesterday. I can see Sissie and Sarie sitting like a pair of old black crows near the warm iron stove in the bare winter kitchen day in and day out, and us kids always seemed hungry, and the farm was turning to desert, but my father didn't notice and just carried on twinkling behind his old steel-rimmed glasses. My mother grew red in the face with rage and her hair turned white with frustration and her old hands and her heart became calloused with hard work, said my dad, but she struggled to scrape enough food for one day at a time from the farmyard and field, while daddy roamed his land reading Eugene Marais' 'Soul of the White Ant' and trying to imitate that writer by sitting every afternoon on a crag at the top of a hill of boulders so he could watch a tribe of baboons, who my mother accused of taking from his own kith and kin the love that was rightfully ours. But my father had faith and my mother didn't, and he saw God in Nature and he believed in mind over matter, so you can't blame him for loving animals more than people who are so selfish and materialistic.

"Anyway she drove him out of the house with her nagging, and Satya couldn't stand it anymore so she left and went to Jo'burg where she met her white traffic cop husband and got married in 1934. In 1939 Thoreauna left because the war was coming and they needed nurses, and went to live with Satya, and my father's heart was broken, but not as badly as when Satya suddenly died of a brain tumor during the war and left four beautiful kids with no mother. So Thoreauna raised them for a few years till their father remarried, and by that time they were old enough to cope with a stepmother, except she was a raw Afrikaner from Onderdiebobbejaansepoephol (a joke meaning under the baboons asshole) and couldn't even cook. Then I went to work as a cleaner at the General where your mom also worked and where she met and became engaged to the white male nurse who wanted to be an actor, and was so gentle and played the piano with his slim white hands, just like that Tchai-scotch-ky, but only better. But he was over sensitive and couldn't survive in this hard world so he killed himself a month before they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.

"When the War was over I packed my bags and went back to the farm where I found my parents in an even worse state than me. Even Sarie and Sissie had left and gone to live in a cheap hotel near District Six in Cape Town. My poor father looked like he was a hundred next birthday, and my mother was becoming senile so I told Thoreauna. She took what money she had saved during the war and brought them to Durban for a holiday, and, well I've already told you the rest."

One night when his aunt and uncle were already asleep, Derek crept into the kitchen and took down from the top of the dresser the old biscuit tin in which his aunt kept her departed father's writings. He felt that he needed something solid to tie him to the past. He opened the tin on the kitchen table and stifled a sneeze as dust puffed up from the yellowed brittle pages of Gandhi's pamphlets. Derek's heart stood still as the frail pages crumbled in his hands. At the bottom of the tin was an old brown notebook which he opened and began to read:

May 1931. African mythology is simpler than Greek or Norse, but no less wonderful. The origin of Death is told in an ancient Hottentot tale of the Moon and the Hare. Once upon a time the Moon called upon the Hottentot God, which is also known as the Praying Mantis, and told him to go to the people with this message: "As I, the Moon, die, and in dying live, so shall you also die, and in dying live."

So the insect set out with this message, but before he could reach the people, the Hare intercepted him. Now there are plenty of tales of the great trickster, the Hare, among all Bantu from southern Zaire to southern Cape and the Hottentots absorbed Bantu culture when the Tswana and the Xhosa migrated south. All these tales tell of how deceitful and mischievous is the Hare.

So the Hare asked the Insect: "What's the hurry? Where are you going?"

The insect answered: "The Moon has sent me to tell the people that as she dies, and in dying lives, so shall they also die, and in dying live."

Then the Hare said: "You're such a slow and clumsy runner. Let me take the message to the people."

And with that he ran off and coming to the people told them: "The Moon has sent me to tell you that as she dies, and in dying perishes utterly, so shall you also die, and in dying utterly perish."

Then the Hare went to the Moon and told her what he had said.

The Moon became angry and shouted: "How dare you tell the people something that I have not said?"

With that she took up a stick and hit him on the nose, and since that time the Hare has had a split lip.

This farm turns to dust. All my cows are dying but I cannot give up.

Derek turned the pages. Some were so stained that he could not decipher them no matter that his grandfather's writing was as simple and legible as printing. He read:

July 1932. I now think of this as my Depression Diary. In more ways than one. I cannot let my family down. I can never show them how this drought has destroyed all my hopes of a Garden of Eden in Africa. Oh, God are we cursed? Is this white blood that runs in my veins poisoning me? While the whole world falls to pieces about my ears I turn to history and ancient myths.

Among the Zulus there is a legend that Chaka once prophesied that white men would invade his country, flying from the sky like birds and building houses out of mud like swallows. A popular Zulu folk-song consisting of only one line, chanted over and over in varieties of melody and harmony, says: "This country is ruled by the birds."

A Xhosa song tells of the arrival, in 1820, of the first British settlers to the eastern Cape. Some of them came to an area near which some Afrikaner trekboers (pioneer farmers) were already farming. They called it New Bedford after their hometown in England. The Afrikaners, feeling that they were being encroached upon, went to the chief, Ngquika, and asked for his help in driving out the English. Ngquika refused, saying (so goes the song): "I do not sit by the fire before I've caught the drift of the wind. I do not wish to concern myself with quarrels that do not involve my people. There is no help for you, I regret. There is no help for you."

No, this country was born out of trouble and horror and the whites have ruined the lives of their black brothers here. The Xhosas especially were ruined by the whites. In May 1856, when they were being squeezed off their land by the British 1820 settlers, a young Xhosa girl, Nongqause, was sitting gazing into a pond one day when the Ancestors spoke to her thus: "Go back to your people and tell them to burn all their mealies and kill all their cattle, then the Russians will come out of the sky and drive the British into the sea." She did and her people obeyed the voices of the Ancestors. The Russians didn't come, and most of the Xhosa died of starvation. How could a young uneducated girl know about Russians? Who put her up to this? There is more to this than meets the eye. Truly mankind is full of sin. But I must not let my mind dwell on evil. I will be more cheerful in the future even when Fanny fights with me and drives me away to my baboons.

Derek sat at the kitchen table turning page after yellow page, moving ever further with his grandfather into the past. He read:

Is it 1934? When the Drought first started I was still so full of faith. Little Lenina runs around in the farmyard playing in the dust which swirls up from the dry-baked yard and makes her cough and cry. The car which I bought in 1927 is rusting and falling slowly to pieces under the willow tree which sinks its roots beside the well with its creaky handpump and the windmill moves in the wind but brings up very little water. And the pigsty. How I loved the pigs. As parched as the farmyard is it seems like an oasis compared with the surrounding veld, a checkerboard of longdead bone-white grass and black patches charred by fires started in the merciless summer's sun. The springbok, blesbok and eland have long since wandered away in search of water or died for lack of it. Only my small tenacious band of baboons ekes out a living on the krans cliff) which towers against the setting sun, and white tickbirds stalking locusts stiltwalk the black burnt veld.

One night, at the height of the Drought, while the whole family sat somberly around the kitchen table listening to me reading Mary Baker Eddy, the Hotnot woman came rushing in to say that a Bushman had been caught stealing one of the chickens. There had been rumors that a strange man had been seen living in the Bobbejaanskrans caves, eating lizards and snakes. Well I told the Hotnot woman to keep the Bushman in the yard till we had finished our nightly prayers and put the children safely to bed. Then I went to see what all the fuss was about. As I opened the door the light from the kitchen spilled across the African blackness and I saw that the farm kafirs had the Bushman pinned to the ground and were kicking him. I told them to take the Bushman to the ploughshed for the night.

As the two men led their captive away they began to punch him in the ribs and kick his shins. I called on them to desist and to give the Bushman fresh straw and two blankets and to be sure that no harm came to him until the police were sent for on the morrow. As he turned towards the kitchen door the Hotnot woman ran out into the yard and began to spit at him and shout "thief" at the retreating figure. I chided her and ordered her to take the Bushman some biltong (jerky,) bread and tea with a little sugar and milk. Then I went inside but I could not sleep or forget about the little Bushman. As I later told Fanny, while I knelt beside my bed that night praying for rain, I felt a moist breeze on my cheek and something made me think it was the breath of the starving Bushman. In the morning the Bushman was found dead beneath one scrawny blanket with a plate of putu lying untouched beside his thin, small corpse. So I fetched my Bible and told the farmworkers to bring the body to Bobbejaanskrans. There we buried him in the little cave, which I had once chosen for my own grave. And I read: "Want so lief het God die wereld gehad, dat hy sy enigegebore Seun gegee het, sodat elkeen wat in hom glo, nie verlore mag gaan nie, maar die ewige lewe kan he."

[For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.]

That day clouds began building up on the horizon and at sunset they burst over the farm. Everyone except my stern old Fanny danced in the rain. It only lasted a few hours, but that was enough to make us rejoice. We never mentioned the Bushman again.

Derek had not noticed that the sun had risen. When his aunt entered the kitchen he jumped in fright. She looked at the books, but said nothing. Derek felt happy. He knew he had found his true family.

Lenina made tea and lit a cigaret before she said: "So you've discovered your grandfather's books. Keep them. They're yours. No one in your family will appreciate them. This is your home now. Soon you'll be 21 and a rich man. You don't need your playwhite family. I know I don't. There's nothing wrong with being Coloured. We are the only true South Africans. One day this country will be ours."

Copyrighted 2005, Patrick Joubert Conlon, Aantrek Publications

South African Stories - Two: The Group Areas Act

2006-06-19T14:46:00.000-07:00

The first story is entitled "The Group Areas Act." The Group Areas Act of 1950 designated specific living areas for the different ethnic groups in South Africa. The law was repealed in 1990.

Isingisi Beach was a small town on the Indian Ocean coast of South Africa in that part of Natal then known as Zululand. It was said, not always in jest, that Isingisi was the "last bastion of the British Empire," and the Isingisites, as they called themselves, thought of themselves as Englishmen. Whenever they went to England to visit their relatives, they would say that they were "going home." They did not think of themselves as Africans as the Afrikaaners did.

One family, the Van der Merwes, were the only Afrikaners ever to live at Isingisi Beach.

Margaret van der Merwe was from an English-speaking family, the Roys, who lived at Isingisi Railway Station, a mile from Isingisi Beach. While the Beach was for the pure-white middle classes, the Station was for the slightly off-white working classes, some Colored artisans and a few Indian merchants. Margaret's family was looked down upon by the Isingisites as "poor white trash." It was sometimes said that the Roys "had a touch of the tar-brush".

They were an unambitious clan. The men were content to work at the local carpet factory which employed mostly Indians and Coloreds. For several generations none had ventured any further afield to find better work, and the women were not avaricious. Their greatest pleasure was to spend the weekend at the Beach. The men fished in the surf, or chiselled mussels from the rocks and the women refreshed them from bottomless baskets of food and beer. Only Margaret felt any discontentment with her lot. She longed to live at the "Beach", not at the "Station".

In the heady days after the Second World War she met a handsome Afrikaner who was stationed at the government Roads Department encampment halfway between the Beach and the Station, a collection of prefabricated huts known to the Isingisites as the "Roads Camp". It's inhabitants were poor Afrikaners.

One of Margaret's brothers had met this young Boer while fishing at the Isingisi River Mouth one weekend. He then introduced Adolphus van der Merwe to his sister the following Christmas Eve at the Isingisi Island Hotel's usual dance party. Adolphus proved to be an energetic dancer, and Margaret, feeling the effects of cheap "champagne", found herself enjoying the warmth and firmness of Adolphus' sweaty muscles, and his ruddy excited face. When she momentarily sobered up she realized that she had had no intention of leading on this unprepossessing Boer. She muttered something about the sweltering summer's night and ran out onto the verandah to cool off. As she watched the moon rise out of the Indian Ocean and travel slowly along the silver path which it had laid out for itself along the sea, Adolphus came up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. They gazed at the moonlight on the waves and the river, which disappeared westwards past the island and into some mangrove swamps where frogs croaked and whistled in chorus. Warm breezes bore spray from the surf at the river's mouth and smelled of seaweed. Margaret licked the salt from her lips.

She had never felt less romantic in her life, yet she could not resist the unasked for intimacy of the simple Afrikaner when he suddenly put his arms about her waist, surrounding her with his foreign smell and shape. His silence, because he could not speak English fluently, seemed so adult and reserved compared with her boisterous brothers.

Margaret Roy married Adolphus van der Merwe six months later when it became obvious that she was pregnant. Her family, because they were so generally tolerant and easy-going, did not object strongly, and what little disapproval they did express was ignored by Margaret in her usual willful way.

Later she regretted her marriage when it dawned on her that the only job her husband had any intention of doing was the one he already had with the Roads Department, mostly because of his lack of English. This meant that she had to live in one of the mobile homes in the Roads Camp, which though halfway to her desired destiny, was still not the Beach.

She began to nag her husband to improve himself, and did so continuously over the next ten years, but her ambitions seemed to be finally thwarted in 1955 when Mr van der Merwe was not quite fatally squashed by a steamroller.

At first Margaret thought that she had been condemned to a life of hopeless poverty, but soon her willpower came to the rescue. She somehow succeeded in renting a small garage at the Beach which she then converted into a drycleaning depot. On Tuesdays she collected the Isingisites dirty clothes and sent them to Durban where they were cleaned. They were then returned each Friday to their grateful owners. Soon she expanded her business to include a florist shop.

She also took a lease on the "Round House" on Dick King Road. This house, while charming, was not to the taste of most of the Isingisites. It was too impractical; an awkward octagon with many unusable corners, but it was the only house on the Beach which was within Margaret's means to rent. At last she had succeeded in attaining her lifelong dream of living at the Beach, a definite step up from her lowly beginnings at the Station. Though her husband was now incapable of working, and spent most of his time fishing, Margaret was not unhappy and was respected by most of the Isingisites.

Isingisi Beach, in the Fifties, boasted an odd mixture of houses. There were a few "beach cottages", raised on stilts to foil the termites, and many large, very private, rather utilitarian buildings almost invisible behind huge hedges and full-foliaged trees. There was also a handful of more imposing homes like the "Spanish Villa" and the "Tudor Mansion".

Though the real beauty of Isingisi Beach came from an abundance of tropical vegetation, most Isingisites strove to recreate the ideal English garden. Everyone had a few rose bushes struggling under the scorching sun, and most had beds of snapdragons, pansies and petunias. Those who did their own gardening soon learnt to plant plenty of native succulents and hardy perennials from Australia or Central America. But nothing remained tamed for too long. Africa soon re-asserted her uncontrollable self. The tough silverleaf, Natal plum and Hottentot fig soon re-appeared in the sandy soil which was so well suited to their primitive needs. They grew so relentlessy that they were most often left to riot where they may, and snakes such as the deadly green or black mambas, and puffadders lurked in the untidy undergrowth.

At dusk and dawn bands of monkeys stole the bananas which grew in most back yards. By noon flocks of yellow weaver birds chattered amid the tree tops silhouetted against a sky too bright and white with sunlight to look at for long. The humid nights were filled with the pungent smells of red soil exhaling the day's heat, and insects swarmed towards all exposed lights.

The Isingisites sat on their verandahs in the dark, watching the lightning burst and dart across the dark horizon. They listened more to the sound of the ice clinking in their glasses of gin than they did to their conversation. They talked of the terrible mess the Boers were making of the country, with their silly new "apartheid" policies. Meanwhile their Zulu maids prepared roast beef and potatoes for dinner and overheard snatches of dialogue which drifted slowly through the open kitchen window on the viscous midsummer night's air.

"In the old days we never talked of the native problem. Well, maybe we whispered about the Color Bar, just among ourselves I mean, but we didn't rub the kafirs' noses in it, did we? Since these bloody Boers have let the cat out of the bag with their talk of "apartheid", who knows what will happen next?"

"The air is so close I can't breath properly."

"Why, only the other day I was saying to Cecil that these damn Boers will give away the whole game. Of course they take everything so seriously, religiously. All the wrong things, mind you, like their painfully naive brand of republicanism which certainly can't cope with the delicate ins and outs of big business and overseas investors."

"When will that storm break? Not that I'm looking forward much to a cloudburst and a plague of flying ants soon afterwards, and the cooling effect of the rain lasts barely a half an hour."

Pieter was the only child of the Van der Merwes; the product of his parents' brief, pre-nuptial co-operation. He was ten years old when they moved from the Roads Camp to the Beach. For the next five years all that he ever needed for happiness was contained within the ten square miles of earth called Isingisi Beach. He fished, with rod or net, in the tidepools which were scattered around Hlephuka Rocks (The sunbathing types seldom strayed far from the sandy beach which gave the seaside village its name). These rocks were underwater jungles, alive with fishy beasts. He would squat over them for hours, his bare feet clinging intuitively to the slippery rocks, his blonde hair standing up in the sea-breeze, his blue eyes almost swimming among the rainbow of brightly colored anemones and sea-urchins. The seaweeds were the tree trunks and vines of a watery forest. Pieter's prey was the abundance of nervous crayfish, shy octopi, comical hermit-crabs and dappled dogfish.

If the wind were blowing fiercely off the ocean, tossing clouds of foam onto the rocks and blowing sand across the beach, Pieter would take cover in one of the numerous caves which tunneled into Hlephuka Rocks. One of these caves was so small that it automatically excluded prying adults. It was also so difficult to reach - through a downward twisting tunnel - that those who were tiny enough to negotiate it were usually too afraid to do so. Pieter felt invulnerable here and spent many an afternoon hiding from storms either of nature's or of his mother's making. He knew that no other humans entered the cave because his old tin box full of chocolates, cheese and crackers had not yet been tampered with or removed. However, plenty of beasts frequented the cave, some leaving droppings or tracks, others nibbling any goodies Pieter may have left deliberately unprotected outside of his tin box.

When high tides covered the rock pools and flooded the entrance to his cave Pieter would jump on his bicycle and head for the sugar-cane plantations or remote lagoons south of Isingisi. He would search for frogs or snakes to add to his growing collection, or simply sit in the sun eating a stalk of sugar-cane and listening to the chant of the Zulus as they harvested the crop.

Try as he might to escape the civilized world, Pieter's mother was determined to tame him. He was sent to the local English school. His teacher, Miss Beals, whose nickname was "Eels", at first took a disliking to him and hit him with a ruler on a boil on the inside of his elbow. It burst and he ran home. Margaret went over to Eels' house and lectured her while holding tightly onto to the startled teacher's collar.

Thereafter Eels took kindly to Pieter and even offered to teach him to play the piano at her home, free! Pieter entered an even more blissful phase of life. Pieter and Eels became friends, confided in each other. Eels was a member of the Black Sash anti-apartheid organization, and would trek off to Durban every Saturday morning to shake a collection can on Smith Street, or march with placards in front of the Post Office in protest of the Afrikaner government's latest forced removals under the Group Areas Act. While she never lectured Pieter about politics, he found himself beginning to think of his parents as ignorant and prejudiced.

Pieter was fifteen when his secluded idyll came to an end. His mother had decided to send him to a boys-only English high school in Durban, thirteen miles away. Now he had to wake up an hour earlier each morning in order to catch two buses to school, and by the time he got home in the late afternoon, it was too late to fish, swim or ride his bike. He most definitely was not comfortable in the straightjacket of Anglican conformity which was his new school, with its plump white boys and their endless obsessions with cricket and girls' tits. Though Margaret knew that it seemed cruel to send her son to this school, she also knew that she was giving him an opportunity for which he would later be grateful. Pieter understood this and, as much as he hated it, he stuck it out. But, here in this crowd of boys, he began to feel lonelier than he'd ever felt before. Margaret advised him to toughen himself up.

Lying awake each morning, waiting for his father to call him, Pieter would try to stifle the horror he felt at having to go to school. He would cover his head with his sweat-sticky sheet and pray for time to pass quickly so that it would soon be summer and the Christmas holidays. On weekday mornings the screaming chatter of the Indian mynah birds outside his window seemed irritating instead of amusing. Pieter would cover his ears and moan with self-pity.

If it had been a Saturday morning, he would have jumped out of bed and flung open his window. Then, sitting on the sill in his pyjamas he would have laughed at the at the battle between the mynahs and the monkeys in the mango tree. The monkeys wanted the ripe fruit, but the mynahs regarded the tree as their territory. They were fearless and always eventually succeeded in driving the monkeys away with their shrieks and deadly accurate dive-bomb attacks. When the battle was over Pieter would dash down to the beach for a quick swim before breakfast. On Saturday afternoons he usually went to Miss Beals' house, and at night there would be the film at the Town Hall.

One Monday morning Pieter lay sweltering beneath his sheets, waiting for his father to call him. He dozed off and began to dream shallowly of ripe papayas.

Then the anxiety-ridden voice of his father shattered his dreams and he awoke to the smell of coffee, bacon, hot buttered toast and sliced papaya which his father had prepared for him. Pieter dressed quickly and went to the kitchen. He glared at his father who was slumped at the table, fat, shirtless and glistening with sweat, with a cigaret dangling from his lower lip. Adolphus exhaled a cloud of acrid smoke.

Pushing the ashtray towards his father priggishly, he said: "Do you have to smoke while I'm eating? You know it makes me nauseous."

Adolphus was humiliated and hurriedly stubbed out his cigaret and removed the ashtray from the table. He seemed suddenly frail and forlorn to his son. Pieter wished that he could bring himself to soften his attitude towards his father.

"Alles sal reg kom," ("Everything will come right.") said Adolphus van der Merwe, lighting up another cigaret unconsciously, "soon you'll be able to lie in bed for as long as you like or..."

"I know..." Pieter interrupted, "...or go fishing or swimming or..."

"You'll be okay," Adolphus continued, oblivious to his son's reproachful mood. "You'll see. Everything will be fine when this year of school is over."

"You say the same thing every morning," his son said, adding spitefully, "mere platitudes."

Pieter knew that his father would not understand this word, which he had only recently acquired himself from Miss Beals. Pieter's cruelty to his father was fuelled by his shame at having an unkempt, uncouth, common, unsophisticated father. "Skaap" was another word that Pieter had recently learnt at his English school. He had known, of course, that it was the Afrikaans word for sheep, but his schoolmates referred to Afrikaners as "skaaps". Adolphus was simply a "skaap" to his son's peers.

Pieter's parents seldom spoke about politics, but at school he began to discover that the world was filled with terrible problems. One of the greatest problems, according to his English schoolmates, was the stupid and stubborn Afrikaner.

Whilst Miss Beals did not use such inflammatory language, she, nevertheless, agreed with her fellow Britons. As 1960 progressed Pieter began to think they were right.

Robert Sobukwe, the president of the Pan Africanist Congress, called for a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience to protest the Pass Laws. Pieter read in the newspapers about Sharpeville, where a crowd of African women had gathered to burn their ID cards. When the police ordered them to disperse the crowd threw stones at them. The police opened fire and killed sixty-nine of them. The British government condemned Prime Minister Verwoerd for his heavy-handed dealing with the protesters.

Soon afterwards, when Verwoerd was shot in the head, the members of the Isingisi Country Club celebrated that night with a braaivleis (BBQ) and beer-bash, only to discover the next morning that the architect of "Seperate Development" had survived the attempted assassination.

Miss Beals told Pieter: "The Country Club clique is as stupid, in its own way, as the Afrikaner government. Verwoerd will now be seen as blessed and protected. He will return with more political strength than before, and the Afrikaners will push ahead with their plans for total apartheid."

To Pieter, the whole year seemed to consist of one crisis after another. Towards the end of the year a mob of Zulus raged through the Indian areas of Cato Manor, burning and looting shops and houses, allegedly in retaliation for an incident in which a Zulu child had been short-changed by an Indian merchant. The horde then ran up the hill from Cato Manor towards one of the wealthiest suburbs in Durban, where Pieter's school was situated. When the Zulus began pouring through the schoolyard the pupils were told to crouch beneath their desks. Pieter cowered under his desk for what seemed like most of the afternoon, listening to the sounds of thousands of thudding feet and bloodcurdling war-cries. He thought he heard, "Bulala!" He knew that meant "Kill!" in Zulu. A stone smashed through one of the windows and rolled towards the feet of the teacher, who stood in front of the blackboard, beating his palm with his cane, a look of fury on his red face.

School was closed for a week while the rioting was quelled, and when Pieter returned there were Saracen armored cars in the rugby field. Their guns were aimed at Cato Manor in the distant valley below.

Soon it was December, time for the long summer holiday, and Christmas. For six long weeks Pieter swam and fished and visited Miss Beals. He soon forgot all about the riots and the problems which beset his country.

When he returned to school in January 1961, Pieter saw that the Saracens had been removed. The lawn on which they had stood had turned yellow and grubs wiggled in the sunlight. Pieter hoped that this year would be happier, but it was not.

Verwoerd stormed out of the British Commonwealth. A referendum was held to institute an independent Republic of South Africa. There was talk of the Province of Natal seceding from the rest of South Africa and remaining loyal to the Queen. Some of the staunchest secessionists lived in Isingisi, which was an enclave of the English opposition, the United Party. Miss Beals, a member of the Progressive Party, did not usually see eye-to-eye with her fellow Isingisites, but in this, she agreed with them. Despite all the threats, Natal did not secede, and, as the majority of white South Africans had voted for the formation of a republic, the Isingisites adapted grudgingly.

Soon afterwards Verwoerd gave the nearly one million Indian immigrants the South African citizenship which had been witheld from them by the British for one hundred years. None of the Isingisites guessed what this move portended, though a few muttered that Verwoerd had made a secret deal with the wealthiest Indians in Durban, and wondered what the trade-off would be.

As the year dragged on Pieter found himself becoming increasingly worried and depressed by his classmates talk of politics. He understood that they did not hate him personally. They simply hated the Boers because their parents had told them to. Though Miss Beals professed not to hate the Boers, Pieter sensed her condescending attitude towards them, and not even her intellectual analysis could comfort him. He found the antidote to his worldly troubles in the Bible that his mother had given him for Christmas. Though Margaret did not go to any church, she read the Bible religiously. Pieter began to read it with his mother, and found a shield to protect himself against the problems he forsaw looming in the adult world beyond school.

It was because of Pieter's growing reputation as a religious fanatic that his most controversial classmate, Steven McIntyre, sought out his company. Steven collected eccentric friends. He was very confident in manner, owing to his parent's great wealth, and spoke pedantically and at great length about politics; about such things as "Ninety Day Detention", "House Arrest" and "Banning". Steven was a member of a Gandhian pacifist student group whose leader was an Indian medical student, Sonny Naidoo.

Many rumors about Steven circulated at school. It was said of him, because of his association with Naidoo, that he was a communist. One day after school, Steven took Pieter to visit Naidoo.

Naidoo greeted Pieter by saying: "Steven tells me that you're very religious."

"I suppose so," Pieter answered. When he looked into the Indian's eyes, he was at first intimidated and he thought that he saw such a deep seriousness that he wanted, impulsively, to confess his innermost secrets to Naidoo. Pieter felt that maybe Naidoo would understand everything; all the complications; his very difficult position as an Afrikaner who disagreed with apartheid.

But, when he looked more closely into Naidoo's eyes, he saw an expression which could also have been polite condescension masking bored indifference. Then the Indian's eyes seemed to change again and he seemed to be looking at Pieter with eager curiosity.

Pieter realized that he would not be able to read Naidoo's face easily. He remembered that his father had warned him never to trust an Indian. ("Their hearts are still in India," contended Mr van der Merwe. "They are only in South Africa to make money, and, at the first sign of trouble, they'll bugger off back there or go to England.")

Pieter was torn between a temptation to let down his guard, and a wariness of the mild amusement which seemed to twinkle in Naidoo's eyes.

"Have you read the writings of Mahatma Gandhi Ji? You do know, don't you, that Gandhi lived in South Africa for twenty-one years before returning to India to liberate it from the British?" Naidoo asked in such a cold clinical manner that Pieter was taken aback.

"Yes," Pieter answered, and added, wanting to be sincere and frank with Naidoo, "if you mean about non-violent passive resistance, then I agree with everything he said and..."

Then Pieter caught a glimpse of Steven's face. It was frozen strangely in a mirthless grin. Pieter found that his words stuck in his throat. He could no longer speak in so candid and artless a voice, and muttered something inaudible. He wondered if he was being paranoid or if Steven and Naidoo were conspiring to make him look like a fool; all the while laughing silently at the Afrikaner simpleton.

Naidoo looked from one white boy to the other and seemed to size up the situation immediately. He turned to Pieter and said: "Steven also tells me that you are a minor poet of sorts."

Steven guffawed with a burst of released tension and sputtered: "Now isn't that a bit patronizing? A MINOR poet is little enough. But a poet OF SORTS is quite contemptuous, isn't it?"

The rest of the visit was dominated by Steven's superficial chatter. He seemed determined to prevent anything real or sincere from passing between Pieter and Naidoo. All of them were aware of this, and a heavy atmosphere of deceit began to permeate the room despite Steven's small-talk and silly jokes. Naidoo sat silently observing the two boys. His eyes were half shut. Steven giggled neurotically.

That night, in the secrecy and solitude of his own safe bed, Pieter decided that he needed to see Naidoo alone. He felt that he could tell the Indian everything, well, more than he'd ever told anyone else before; that nothing could shock Naidoo. Pieter hoped that he could explain to him a certain mystery: why did all the white adults seem to be avoiding something; to be reluctant to talk? Even Miss Beals shied away from discussing communism, and Pieter was more than curious. He thirsted after understanding. Pieter fell asleep with the thought that perhaps Naidoo was much misunderstood, even more of a pariah than himself.

The next day at school he said to Steven, in as nonchalant a way as he could muster, "People say that Naidoo is a communist. Is he?"

"Well, they're ignoramuses, I mean ignorami," Steven answered. "Most people don't even know what Marxism is, and anyway, most white South Africans regard any contact between the different races as communism, don't they?"

So 1961 passed, and Pieter's vision of the world began to blur ever more out of focus. He began to wonder if communism might be the natural outcome of Christianity, yet he could not understand the Marxists' atheism. He realized that apartheid was wrong, yet he sympathized with the whites' fears of loosing everything. They would, after all, be outnumbered five to one by the blacks in the power game. Miss Beals continued to inspire him. She fought not only the Afrikaner government but British complacency. She accused the British of being apathetic and complicit in apartheid. He came to see that she was despised by her fellow British Isingisites.

Out of insecurity and an awareness of his naivity, Pieter continued his friendship with Miss Beals and Steven. He did not have such definite answers as either of them but wanted desperately to be sure. During 1962 Pieter was drawn more and more into politics. He attended meetings with Steven. Eventually Pieter was invited to a very special meeting of the Gandhian group where Naidoo was slated to give a revolutionary speech.

Pieter sat quietly through the speeches preceding Naidoo's. At first he could not understand them. There seemed to be a schism developing. Some of the speakers denounced others. Slowly it dawned on Pieter that there was disagreement about the use of violence in the fight against apartheid. Some members felt that the use of violence went directly against the teachings of Gandhi, while others felt that the time for mere passive resistance had run out. Pieter longed for Naidoo to rise and speak out against this heresy of violence, and unite the members into the idealistic peaceful group they had once been. At last Naidoo rose. The noise in the crowd subsided and everyone listened carefully.

He held up his hands and intoned: "Comrades, some of us will never realize what's at stake in South Africa. Unfortunately that goes for many of my fellow Indians who are worried about loosing their thriving businesses by which they exploit their African brothers. This campaign is only the beginning. It's not just about apartheid. It's about justice and equality, and a fair distribution of the power and wealth. Yes, it's about turning the tables on the Afrikaner government, but it's also about the worldwide struggle to liberate the workers from the clutches of the capitalist oppressors. We can't think simply in terms of South Africa. We need to become engaged in the international struggle for social justice. I tell you this struggle is not for the so-called liberals. Liberalism is the way the capitalists destroy our revolution. We don't want liberalism. The Afrikaners are busy killing our brothers and sisters. Liberalism tells them to suffer in silence. Liberals are useful idiots as our great inspirer, Lenin, said. How long must we bleed before we strike back in righteous anger? We must all stand united now. The day is not far off when our African brothers will rise up in the townships and demand power to the people. Long live the peoples' struggle! Long live Poquo! Power to the people! Amandhala!"

Throughout Naidoo's speech there had been rumblings in the audience. A handful of Indians had left. When the remaining Indians heard the words "Poquo" (an African terrorist group) and "amandhla" (the Zulu word for "power") they became uncomfortable. Most Indians were not ready to embrace brotherhood with Africans. In fact many Indians despised the Africans as being uncivilized.

It was announced that Naidoo would take questions.

An elderly Indian man rose and asked: "How can you say long live Poquo when you know that, if you unleash violence among the Africans, your own people, the Indians, will be the first to die?"

Pieter waited breathlessly for Naidoo's answer, but he ignored the man and pointed to another raised hand. It was Steven's.

"Should our small group ally itself outright with the aims and means of Poquo?"

The man who had been ignored by Naidoo now began to shout, "No, never! They are a bunch of murderers..."

Naidoo pointed to the man and nodded to a group of Coloured youths standing at the back of the hall. They marched to the front, seized the old Indian man and dragged him out. The rest of the audience, mostly Africans and Coloreds with a smattering of younger Indians, rose and applauded Naidoo.

After this gathering, Naidoo drove Steven and Pieter to the home of a professor from Natal University. The large house was near the University high in the hills above the city, and had a view of Durban. Steven became absorbed in a conversation with the professor and his wife. Naidoo led Pieter out onto the verandah. Pieter looked in wonder at the lights of Durban stretching for miles east to the Indian Ocean. He could make out the outlines of the huge bay which made the city the largest port in Africa. None of the other guests came out onto the verandah because it had just finished raining, and the humid night was filled with millions of flying ants beating themselves to death against lighted window-panes or squirming underfoot. Suddenly Naidoo put his arm around Pieter's shoulders. Pieter froze and began to shiver.

The Indian asked, very quietly, "Would you show me your poetry one day?"

Pieter was in turmoil. Part of him was flattered. Only Miss Beals had ever asked to see his poetry before, and she had not been very enthusiastic because they were written mostly in Afrikaans. Not even his parents had ever read his poems. Yet, he could not forget what he had heard that night at the meeting, and he found himself, as if by instinct, lying.

"I've destroyed all my poems," he said, rigid with effort. "They were too controversial..."

"What on earth do you mean?" Naidoo asked with genuine surprise.

"They were too... religious..." Pieter stuttered.

"Well, I am sorry I didn't get to see them," said Naidoo, with what seemed to Pieter to be sincere disappointment.

Pieter began to feel guilty; to regret his deceitfulness, and was relieved when Steven joined them on the verandah.

"How can you stand all these creepy-crawlies?" Steven said as he sidled up to them. "Just look at all the squashed bugs. Oh, but I see what has kept you out here. The lights of the city are magnificent."

Pieter could not sleep that night. He became withdrawn and worried, and refused Steven's invitations to any further meetings.

One day, when Pieter returned from school, his mother shouted to him: "Come and look at this picture in the newspaper."

The picture was of Naidoo and a number of his followers from the Gandhian group. Steven's face peered over Naidoo's shoulder, blurred but unmistakable. Margaret had met Steven several times in the course of his friendship with her son.

"Isn't that Steven?" she asked. She didn't wait for the unnecessary answer but continued: "I see that he's got himself mixed up with some Indian communist. I hope you aren't involved in politics. See, they have put the Indian in for Ninety Days Detention. If you aren't careful you'll end up in trouble too. I'm not working myself to death putting you through school just so you can end up in prison or worse. Life is hard enough without making it complicated too."

When Naidoo was released three months later he was given a scholarship to Oxford, and left South Africa without a passport, never to return.

In January 1963 Pieter began his final year at high school. Politics took second place to the importance of study for matriculation. Steven was subdued, deflated by the fate of Sonny Naidoo. Pieter realized that his mother was keeping a closer watch on him. He studied seriously because he was not indifferent to her concerns, and the months passed by quietly.

Then, "like a bolt out of the blue", as Margaret had expressed it, the government proclaimed Isingisi Beach an Indian Group Area.

Just before this took place, Prime Minister Verwoerd had held a referendum to withdraw South Africa from the British Commonwealth and to create a republic. The referendum had passed quite easily but the voters of Isingisi Beach (being so attached to Britain) had voted against it. Verwoerd decided to destroy this last bastian of Britishness. Verwoerd had also just given South African citizenship to the Indians (eventhough many had been there for a century already) in an effort to get them on his side against the Africans. This was his bribe to the wealthy Indian businessmen of Durban.

Uptil now the Group Areas Act had only been used to remove blacks and Coloreds from certain chhoice areas which were then given to whites. This was the first and only time that whites were displaced by the Group Areas Act.

Little Churchills and local Emily Pankhursts suddenly popped out of the ranks of Isingisites and marched in front of the Town Hall to protest the action of the government, to denounce the injustice of the Group Areas Act and to accuse the Afrikaners of doing this only because they wished to break up a stronghold of political opposition. Pieter was surprised that Miss Beals did not join in these protests. She explained to him that she could not associate herself with these particular protesters because they had refused to support her in her protests against government oppression in the past. She was the first to sell her house to an Indian.

Then the Cholmondeleys announced that they had been planning to return to England for quite some time and they sold their house. When "Ye Olde English Tea House" was sold and closed, rumors flew that it would soon become a halal butchery, and the trickle became a flood. No one could resist the fabulous sums offered by the Indians for their old beach cottages, and soon the Van der Merwes were the last white family left at Isingisi Beach.

Adolphus' health deteriorated. The garage which housed Margaret's business was sold to a Mr Singh, who decided to take possession immediately. He employed Margaret to run the shop temporarily, until his son got married, at which time the new daughter-in-law would be expected to take over. The Van der Merwes had just enough money for food and rent, but could not afford electricity.

Pieter withdrew into a shell of shame at school, when, owing to his parent's poverty, he had to have patches stitched into the elbows of his worn-out blazer. He longed for the end of the year, but as the final exams approached he felt that he hadn't enough time to prepare. Then at last the exams were over, school was finished and Christmas was around the corner.

Just before Christmas Pieter received the results of his exams. He had passed "with flying colors", as Margaret boasted. That night Adolphus offered Pieter a cigaret and a brandy and cola. Pieter surprised himself by accepting, and together they sat smoking and drinking in the dark on the verandah, swatting mosquitos. They laughed and talked for the first time in perhaps ten years.

On the day after Christmas, news came that Adolphus' mother, while visiting her daughter in Johannesburg, had fallen and broken both hips. ("Drunk, no doubt," said Margaret, who had a low opinion of her mother-in-law.) She was not expected to live much longer, so Adolphus decided to go to Johannesburg to see his mother before she died. Against his wife's advice, he left two days later.

New Year's Day dawned hot and oppressive. Pieter awoke feeling sluggish and confused. His mother was also in a strange mood. They had been invited that day to visit her family, the Roys, at Isingisi Station, and set out reluctantly. Something besides the humidity made the atmosphere heavy. All through the visit Pieter and his mother exchanged impatient glances, till at last they could leave without putting a damper on the party.

As soon as they arrived home, their new neighbor, Mrs Kumar, told them that Auntie Marie had phoned from Johannesburg only minutes after they had left that morning, as well as several more times since. Mrs Kumar said that Marie had said it was urgent.

Just at that moment Steven arrived. Pieter had invited his friend for dinner while his father was away because Adolphus could not tolerate Steven, and called him a commie to his face. Pieter offered to begin cooking dinner while Margaret phoned Marie.

Then he said: "It's about my father. I think he's dead."

Mrs Kumar nodded gloomily and mumbled: "Maybe that is so. Your auntie sounded very upset."

Pieter looked at his mother. She turned away but not before he had seen in her eyes that she too knew as surely as did he. Margaret went with Mrs Kumar to use her phone and Pieter started cooking.

The phone call to Marie confirmed that Adolphus had indeed died during the night, of a stroke. Pieter felt numb. His mother seemed almost untouched. As they could not afford to transport the corpse back to Isingisi, Margaret had to fly to Johannesburg the next day to arrange the burial there. Pieter was not sure whether she had begged, borrowed or stolen the money for the fare, but she had only enough for herself. Pieter had to stay behind. Steven drove them out to the airport.

After they had seen the plane off, Steven offered Pieter a drink in the bar. Pieter had never been in a bar before. In fact he hesitated.

"Aren't we under-age?" he asked Steven, who assured him that they weren't.

Pieter entered the bar with his doubts still intact. Steven brought him a glass of cane-spirits and cola. The fiery liquor fumes went to Pieter's head suddenly, and he began to weep, quite unashamedly, though hardened barflies and sophisticated travellers turned to look at him.

"Why are you crying?" Steven asked.

"It's not because my father died," Pieter answered emphatically. "It's because my mother has never flown in a plane before, and I know she is frightened."

Having once embarked on the unpredictable sea of truth, Pieter felt free; free of the vanity which would have prevented him from crying in public; free of the fear which would have made him lie to Steven reflexively, in defense. He wiped away his tears and took a large gulp of cane-spirits. Then he smiled innocently at Steven. Did he imagine it or did Steven really look more serious than usual, almost sad? Pieter looked around and saw the same downtrodden expression on the barflies' and travellers' faces. Could it be, he asked himself, that he had just never before noticed how sad adults were? They all had pain and fear lurking behind their seemingly bold eyes.

When Steven leaned towards Pieter sympathetically, Pieter quickly said: "You know, you don't have to pity me. I've never felt better in my life. I feel as if I have just understood something for the first time. Death isn't that awful. Something deep inside me knows that my father is fine wherever he may be. I'm not even going to try to put it into words. All I know is that there is nothing to fear. As my mother would say, 'God's in his heaven and all's well on earth.' I know you think I'm drunk and that I'll feel differently when I sober up. Maybe I will but that doesn't make what I'm experiencing now less valid than feeling sorry for myself. No, this feeling of knowing the answer to all the questions, or rather of not having any questions, this is the truth. Misery is not the truth. You look sadder, well not sadder, perhaps more worried than me."

Steven stammered: "To tell you the truth, I am not happy. I've been lying to you, to my mother, the whole world. I've been living a lie, and I can't go on any longer."

"What lies have you told me?" Pieter asked. "Anyway, no matter what, it's not important. I've told you just as many lies. Life's too short for regrets."

"But it is important," Steven said, "when lies drag you down, or catch up with you when you least expect them to. You won't believe some of the lies I've told."

"I probably will," Pieter said. "But nothing you can tell me will shock me. None of it seems important in the face of this feeling of God's mercy, or natures's perfection, or whatever it is that I feel."

"Not even that I am a communist?" Steven asked.

"No, I already knew that," Pieter answered. "It used to shock me. I must admit that. Up till this very day. It made me very uncomfortable, but that is because I feared what others would think of me. Right now all those worries seem silly. My only concern right now is that if I try to explain to you what I am feeling, if I put it into words, I might loose it. Yes, I would like to share this feeling of happiness with everyone. Communism just seems so stupid to me right now. Making sure that everyone shares equally, usually with the help of a loaded gun; forcing everyone to share their worldly goods equally. Worldly goods aren't the antidote to misery. Happiness is, and that can't be coerced, or given or even taken away, because true happiness isn't dependent on anything. It's free, it happens regardless of how much misery you have, or what tragedies happen to you. It is a blessing form God."

"Well," said Steven, "It's been a long time since I heard such a resounding apology for the opium of the masses."

"Did you know," Pieter asked, "that I used to be ashamed to bring you home when my father was there? I just knew that he would make a fool of himself in front of you. Since knowing you, I became steadily more ashamed of being Afrikaans. I can't blame you for making me hate my father though. My mother is responsible for that. I'm just glad that I had a chance to have a good laugh with him before he died."

"I knew you were ashamed of your father," said Steven, "well, of being Afrikaans, I mean, but it doesn't bother me and never will."

"Amen!" said Pieter, "I mean, it doesn't bother me anymore either, and it never will again. Nothing will. It just all seems so silly right now. Afrikaans, English, black, white ... what does it matter now? We've all got broken hearts, and it seems that the only cure for that complaint is this strange happiness which comes out of the blue, when you're least expecting it, by the grace of God. There's nothing I can do about being happy or sad. It's up to God..."

"Well, you are in a very religious mood today," said Steven, "but you'll have to excuse me for a moment while I go to the toilet."

Pieter sat alone observing his fellow drinkers drowning their sorrows. Perhaps, he thought, Naidoo was right and I am a religous fanatic after all.

When Margaret returned from Johannesburg, she got a job as a cashier at OK Bazaars department store in Durban. Pieter swam and fished that summer as if he had never done so before. He was excited and felt that a new life was about to begin. Then his mother found a flat in Durban and she and Pieter left Isingisi Beach forever.

Copyrighted 2005, Patrick Joubert Conlon, Aantrek Publications

South African Stories - Three: The Immorality Act

2006-06-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

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

South African Stories - Four: The Suppression of Communism Act

2006-06-17T15:08:00.000-07:00

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

South African Stories - Five: The Mixed Marriages Act

2006-06-16T17:00:00.000-07:00

The Mixed Marriages Act of 1950 prohibited marriage between
black and white. The law was repealed in 1990.

Paul Pretorius Le Roux was forty-five years old. His slight baldness made his forehead seem high, and the remaining hair, which just touched his shirt collar, was thick and curly, and tinged with grey. This gave him a scholarly appearance.

He shifted uncomfortably on the hard, straight-backed chair in which he had been sitting throughout the night. First a rooster crowed in the dark and then, slowly, chinks of light appeared around the edges of the curtains. He yawned.

Sitting crosslegged on a bed opposite Paul was an Indian man in saffron robes. This man smiled and said: "Do you have any more questions?"

"No," Paul answered, "but I'm not sure whether it's because I'm exhausted or enlightened."

"Then we'll stop," said the Hindu, ringing a small bell.

The door opened letting in more light and an Indian woman dressed in a plain white sari. She was about thirty, wore her black hair in a long braid and was barefoot. Her rather severe face lit up when she approached the Hindu.

"Can I smell your delicious cooking, Lataben?" the Hindu asked.

"Yes, Mahatmaji," the woman answered. "Shall I bring you a tray of food?"

"No, thank you," said the Mahatma. "If you will save me a bowl of dahl and a chapati, I will eat later. Now I need to sit for a while and meditate alone. But make sure Paul is fed well. He has had a long tiring night."

"Which was wonderful!" said Paul, squirming with an unusual humility. "More than that! I can't say how thankful I am for your teachings," he added as he realized that his newfound happiness was very like a feeling he had before called "gratitude", but had seldom felt.

Lata held the door open for Paul. He took a few steps forward and backward awkwardly, instinctively wanting her to pass first. She motioned with her hand curtly for him to exit. He did and then turned to wait for her and noticed that she had prostrated herself on the floor and was kissing the Mahatma's feet. The Mahatma tapped her head and she rose quickly. She saw Paul and her light brown skin darkened with a blush.

Hurrying out, she closed the door firmly but quietly behind her and said to Paul: "I have put a few things out for you to eat, on the verandah. Come."

He followed her and stepped onto the verandah. As it was still soon after dawn, the sun was only a few degrees above the horizon and it cast a carpet of crimson light across the Indian Ocean right up to the beach which was only a few feet from the house. Two frangipani trees, covered with sweet-smelling flowers, grew beside the verandah. Their perfume filled the air. Paul stood staring at the sunrise as if he'd never seen one before. He inhaled deeply, kicked off his shoes and began to run towards the sea. He shivered as his toes sank into the cold dry sand.

Lata called impatiently. "Your food will get cold, and I cooked for you personally since four o'clock this morning." Her voice was sharp, almost imperious, unlike the usual shy singsong of Indian women.

"Well, it seems that your humble ways are saved for the Mahatma only," said Paul, returning towards Lata.

"Yes," she answered simply. "Please sit and eat." Paul sat and Lata stood beside him uncovering one warming-dish after another of steaming aromatic Indian food. He ate as if he were tasting food for the first time. He felt new. Everything was strange and miraculous. Everything except Lata. He knew her as familiarly as himself. He wondered at that, because it was obvious that she did not like him. They had only recently met through her brother, Radesh "Tiny" Bhoola, whom Paul had known for many years.

"I have never tasted anything so delicious in my life," he said to her, "actually, everything - the sun, the sea, the flowers - everything seems so delicious. It's like the Garden of Eden, and I am Adam."

"Well," said Lata, "I am not Eve."

But when he looked at her she would not lower her eyes as Indian women were wont to do. He became aware that they were both breathing deeply, slowly. Neither moved. He felt he could almost hear her heart beat. He wanted to enfold her. But they stared at one another. There was nothing left to say. Something so basic had been communicated that all words that followed would seem like small talk. He lowered his eyes, feeling somehow shy.

Just at that moment a car pulled up beside the verandah and Tiny jumped out, yelling: "Paul, Paul, did you get it?"

"If you mean did the Mahatma teach me ..." Paul began.

"Yes," said Tiny, who, unusually for an Indian, was over six feet tall. Paul nodded.

Lata slipped her arm through her brother's and led him to the table. She was radiant with smiles for Tiny and, with little pattings and cooings she seated him and dished up some food. When Tiny pushed the plate aside and told her that he had had breakfast at their parent's house in Chaka's Kraal, her face fell.

Tiny began to question Paul relentlessly about the past few days which he had spent with the Mahatma in this remote beach cottage on the south coast of Zululand. Lata melted away unnoticed by either man.

When she re-emerged a short time later she was carrying a small suitcase. She said in her most imperious tones: "It is time to go. Mahatmaji's servant is awake and ready to take care of him. Our parents are expecting us at Chaka's Kraal for lunch, Tiny. There is no time to waste, and I don't want you driving like a cowboy. Besides, didn't you promise to take Mr Le Roux to see Phoenix Farm? We don't want him to think that we just invented mahatmas yesterday, do we? Come, Tiny. Did you know, Mr Le Roux, that Mahatma Ghandi lived in South Africa for twenty one years, many of them at Phoenix Farm, not far from my home really, where he developed the ideas which would later bring about the liberation of India?"

Tiny said: "How can you speak to Paul so disrespectfully, Lata? And we won't have time to visit Phoenix today."

They all climbed into the large grey Mercedes and Tiny drove speedily towards Chaka's Kraal.

Tiny continued: "Paul is a highly educated man, Lata, as well as a true liberal. He and I fought the Naidoo-Sondeza treason trial together in Durban in 1968, before it was fashionable for white lawyers to engage in black battles. And he has just had darshan."

"What's that?" inquired Paul.

"The vision of God," answered Tiny.

"Perhaps Mr Le Roux does not agree," interjected Lata.

"You see," said Tiny, "there you are using that same cold disrespectful tone of voice."

Paul turned so that he could see Lata in the back seat and said: "You know, we are not enemies. I had not met you till five days ago and I've only seen you at mealtimes since then. I realize that you gave up your time to run things while the Mahatma was with me. I am ... not ungrateful." He became bashful. "I don't even know what to call you. Lata? Or would you prefer 'Ms Bhoola'?"

He turned his neck further so he could see directly into her eyes. The indifference he saw there chilled him and he turned back to the front, saying: "Anyway, thank you for all your beautiful food and your kindness of the past days, Ms Bhoola."

Then he slipped down more comfortably in the soft black leather seat, determined that Lata's coldness towards him would not spoil the lovely inner warmth and satisfaction which had enveloped him ever since he had understood what the Mahatma had been so patiently explaining to him. Paul luxuriated in the comfort of the seat, the smooth ride, the car's ability to flow over ruts in the rough road and the sensation that it slid, or poured, itself around corners. He promised himself that his first major purchase when he got back to Pretoria would be a good car. He had driven nothing but jalopies since he had begun his wanderings soon after loosing the treason case in 1968.

Paul was the oldest son of one of the wealthiest of the Afrikaner families. He could have had his own law practice, or he could have entered politics at the highest level. Instead he had become a public defender, taking political cases no one else would touch and had been branded a notorious radical. He had turned down the opportunity to marry a beautiful and intelligent woman, the only child of a cabinet minister. He had embarrassed his parents and shown contempt for all that they held dear.

"Well," he said to himself, "I am different now; more mellow, more tolerant, older. It is time for forgiveness on both sides. I'll fly back to Pretoria first thing tomorrow."

Paul was busy thinking about visiting his parents in Pretoria when Tiny steered the car into the driveway of his parents' home, a huge white futuristic house with large expanses of windows and many terraces and balconies. Vines of bougainvillea and clematis climbing around the pillars and cantilevers gave the building the appearance of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Tiny parked in the carport beneath the building. Lata jumped out and disappeared through a small inconspicuous door. Tiny ushered his friend towards a more imposing carved wooden door. They ascended the stairs and were greeted at the top by Tiny's mother and father.

They exuded pure politeness towards Paul. Mrs Bhoola, who spoke no English, only Gujerati, clucked around him and cajoled him towards a long table spread with dozens of colorful dishes of food. She piled a plate full and bade him to sit and eat. Lunch was served buffet-style as there were about twenty other guests present. It was Sunday, the Bhoolas' day for entertaining relatives and business acquaintances.

Paul sat and ate, again as if he had never eaten before, and he made another promise to himself: that he would have Indian food every day from now on. He was wondering how he would go about accomplishing this when a group of guests approached him.

He stood up to greet them and became absorbed in conversation. He sensed his fellow guests' reserve, but their actual words demonstrated that they knew all about him, no doubt from Tiny. Though none of them had read it, they all knew that he had written a controversial book about the Suppression of Communism Act. They knew about his radical past, his travels around the world, his wealth, his powerful family and most importantly to them, it seemed to Paul, that he had met the Mahatma. No one talked politics, in fact it was studiously avoided whenever anything remotely polemical arose. Paul knew that that was the way of many rich banyas [merchant caste.] The Bhoolas and their relatives and friends seemed not so cautious about political discussions as indifferent to them. Paul remembered that Tiny had told him that his family was more religious than political.

Lata came down the broad curving staircase, greeted her family, kissing all the woman and children, and walked out into a walled garden which seemed like an extension of the livingroom because glass doors slid back completely to reveal it. It was laid out formally with flowering hedges and ornamental shrubs. Lata took a mango from a table full of fruits and drinks, crossed the courtyard and headed for a fountain which stood in the center of the garden. Two peacocks flew ponderously away at her approach. She had changed into a more elaborate white sari with gold embroidery which fluttered in the breeze. Paul found himself longing to go to her.

As soon as he could he excused himself from the gaggle of guests and walked out into the garden. He approached Lata cautiously. She reminded him of the peace he had experienced sitting in the darkened room with the Mahatma.

Lata watched Paul calmly as he sat down on the edge of the fountain beside her but said nothing. He thought, "There is nothing to say." They sat quietly side by side watching the peacocks scratch about in a bed of pansies. Occasionally he stole sideways glances at Lata. She was not pretty. Her mouth was too big, her cheekbones too prominent, and she was no longer young, yet Paul found himself entranced by her in spite of her apparent dislike of him.

"You put me in an awkward position, Mr Le Roux," she finally said.

"I do realize that," he answered. "I'm not totally thick-skulled. Perhaps I won't make sense but I'll try. When I see you I feel as if my mother has just baked a chocolate cake especially for me. It's not my birthday. It's just an ordinary quiet day. Maybe it is one of those days when she has let me stay away from school, and just the two of us are at home. It's a special treat just for me in a way in which no one else can comprehend. No one else is even aware of it. If I were in the habit of speaking in religious terms, I would say it was like a gift from God, unasked for, perhaps even slightly disturbing, definitely suprising ... I don't want to even put it into words. I wish you could just read my mind." He lowered his voice to a whisper and continued: "It's not about sex, well not particularly ..."

Lata looked at Paul sideways through narrowed eyes. A wry smile played around the corners of her full-lipped mouth. Paul felt as if he could look at her all day. Her strange, bold, open face was beginning to look beautiful to him. Her black eyes seemed to betray her every thought. All was clear between them. Nothing could be hidden.

He was thinking: "I will ask her to marry me," when she inexplicably said: "Please be careful before you say that."

He said: "If I don't say it, then we coulod go round in circles for ever."

"You are right but enough, here comes Deviben, and her brats."

A fat woman, dressed in a loud purple, green and gold sari, came out into the garden, followed by a litter of children, all tumbling and shouting together, "Goodbye!"

The guests were beginning to go home. Lata rose and went indoors to say her farewells to aunts and uncles. Paul waved from the fountain very casually. He knew that he could be offending some of the more old-fashioned Gujerati aunties with his lack of formality, but he also knew that it would not be the last time he would do so.

Paul knew little about Lata. He had until today never met Tiny's family though he had known the man for nearly twenty years. Tiny had told him a few things; never very much, probably because he had assumed that his Afrikaner friend was not interested in the fortunes of his rather stuffy Gujerati family.

Paul remembered that, during the famous trial in Durban, Tiny had been depressed one day and had confided to his friend that his youngest sister, Lata, had disgraced the family by leaving her husband and returning home after only a few months. Lata was one of the first banya women in South Africa to be divorced; to refuse to remain with a husband in a marriage which had been arranged. Tiny had also confided to Paul that he had questioned his father's wisdom in marrying off Lata at sixteen, only to be told that his own mother had been fifteen when she had married his father.

Paul sat on the fountain thinking about Lata. By the time the last of the guests had left it was beginning to get cool and cloudy. He went inside. Lata and her mother were nowhere to be seen. Tiny and his father were sitting on a sofa talking. Paul joined them.

"We were just talking business," Tiny explained.

"Tiny tells me," Mr Bhoola said, "that you have written a book. Is it selling well?"

"Considering that it is non-fiction," Paul answered, "yes, it is doing quite well. It seems that people are reading more into it than I wrote."

"He is being modest," Tiny said to his father.

"Are you planning another book?" Mr Bhoola asked.

"I am doing research for a book about the French Huguenots, my ancestors," Paul answered. He hoped that Mr Bhoola would not question him further on this subject as he was only just beginning it and was not yet sure of his knowledge. When Tiny and his father remained silent Paul asked them about the possibility of buying a small sugar farm in the area. They both lept eagerly at so businesslike a topic.

They sat talking until dusk when a Zulu servant entered the room and closed the doors leading to the garden and drew the curtains. Tiny turned on the television and the three men began to watch the news. The picture on the screen was of an African township, probably Soweto. The image wavered as the camera was jolted by a crowd. It steadied again and advanced through the crowd to where a young woman was being held captive by a group of teenagers. In the background a crowd had gathered. It all happened very quickly. A car tire was placed around the girl's neck. Gasoline was poured into the hollow rim. A youth threw a burning match. The tire exploded in flame. The crowd jumped back. Then, as the woman fell to the ground screaming, the mob closed in again and began to stone her. The young woman's arms and legs were now also ablaze. She thrashed around. The stones and bricks bounced off her rubbery body. Then she lay still while the tire belched thick black smoke and the teenagers danced like demons around her corpse, singing and chanting triumphantly.

Paul watched with disbelief. Then the tragedy sank in. They had just watched a "necklacing." It was the childrens' mad ecstacy that made him realize just what it was that he was watching. Their pride of accomplishment was all out of proportion to the worthless act that they had just committed. They behaved as if they had just succeeded in finding the solution to all the problems in the world when all they had done was barbecue one of their fellow teenagers. Their stupidity was so sad that Paul found himself weeping quietly.

Then Tiny said: "It's the fault of that idiotic woman, Winnie Mandela. She encouraged these kids to do this when she told them to liberate the country with the matches and tires."

Mr Bhoola sat in stony silence, stoical. His brown skin has turned ashen.

The next morning Tiny drove Paul to the local railway station, from where he travelled to Durban. He had decided to go to Pretoria by train as the trip was longer than a plane-flight and he would have time to compose himself before seeing his parents. They were expecting him and would be at Pretoria station to meet him.

The reunion was predictably strained. Paul, though surprised at how much his parents had aged, could not help feeling that he was taking care of two shrivelled grey children as he intervened in their silly arguments, listened to his father's childish jokes and tried to avoid looking directly at his mother because of the terrible mixture of years of heartbreak and little fleeting moments of happiness which he saw in her eyes.

The car was driven by a chauffeur so Paul sat between his mother and father on the backseat of the limousine as it glided through Pretoria. The jacaranda trees were in full bloom. Pools of lilac flowers lay around the foot of the trees looking like reflections of the blossoming branches above. His parents' home was surround by high walls. A guard opened the gate. Paul experienced the old familiar sensation of oppression as the gate slammed shut behind them. He noticed that he was still susceptible to that atmosphere of fear and restraint which had driven him from the house. The very walls of his old room seemed soaked in worry and pain. He showered, changed and hurried out to the garden where he was immediately attended by a servant. Paul ordered a double scotch and sat staring at the cloudless Transvaal sky, trying to recapture that light spacious mental clarity he had possessed not so long ago.

Soon his mother joined him. She prattled on in Afrikaans about the relatives, their latest offspring, surgical operations, promotions and purchases. He listened patiently. The effects of the scotch evaporated under the glare of his mother's miserable eyes. He was torn between a desire to take her in his arms and tell her not to be so frightened, and a longing to tell her that she lived in a nightmare. He thought, "Why does she always have to try to infect me with her anxious attachment to worldly trivia?"

Mrs Le Roux said: "Marie-Yvette Marais ... remember her? She used to be Marie-Yvette Bezuidenhout. You should, seeing that you nearly married her. Lovely girl. Beautiful. Intelligent. Very religious, just like you ..."

"No, not just like me, mother," Paul said in a long-suffering voice. "I haven't set foot in a church for twenty years."

"Well, you're religious in your own way, just like my father," she continued, undaunted. "Anyway, as I was saying, Marie-Yvette has just had her fourth child. She says its her last because she must be ... what, nearly forty? Her husband is very high up in the government. They are coming for dinner tonight."

She noticed that Paul had stopped listening. She reached into her large sewing bag and took out a Bible. Holding it towards Paul she said: "Take this. Even when you think you know all the answers, there are always questions you haven't asked, and, if the Word of God is not beneath your dignity, perhaps you will read this."

Paul was relieved when his father came out to join them, though their was another trite argument between his parents when Paul succeeded in persuading his father to have a drink. Mrs Le Roux became so annoyed that she stormed off in a huff.

Mr Le Roux called out after her: "I hope you don't sulk tonight."

Then he turned to his son and asked: "Did your mother tell you that Ben Marais, and his wife, Marie-Yvette, are coming to dinner tonight? I believe Marais is bringing along someone else. I haven't told your mother yet. She pretends to hate politics so much. When I told Marais that you would be here, he was very enthusiastic, very eager to meet you. It seems that your brand of fiery radicalism will soon be in fashion. Ben's job is to talk to formerly imprisoned political dissidents. In fact the other person who is coming with Marais is just about to be 'officially' released. You will be discreet, won't you? If anything goes wrong we may have to postpone or cancel the release. But Marais foresees no trouble with Mbuka. That's the man coming tonight."

"Steve Mbuka?" Paul asked.

Mr Le Roux nodded and said: "I don't suppose you knew him once."

"No," answered Paul. "But I know of him. He was convicted of killing a policeman. Why are you letting him go?"

"Well, it seems that further evidence has come to light," said Mr Le Roux. "It is possible that the police concocted some of the 'facts' in the case. He's a very talkative man. Not given to violence. Oh, he talks about war. Just talks. Talks a lot. Just the man we need."

"It stinks," said Paul.

"I thought you would have jumped at the chance to bring a former radical into government circles," said his father. "Marais is hoping to convince you to join him in his work, which, as you will find out, is to facilitate the ... which is to rehabilitate former dissidents ... or, as Marais would put it, 'expanding democracy.' I hope you will give him a chance to explain his vision. You've got to co-operate with someone eventually. You can't disagree with everybody forever."

"I know. I was a slow learner," said Paul. "But you will find me very changed. Don't expect anything. I've lost a lot of my appetite for politics. That's why I said your whole little scheme with Mbuka stinks. It reeks of hypocrisy. Have you become as two-faced as the English, whom you hated?"

"Give it a chance," urged Mr Le Roux. "Don't be so damned self-righteous. Certainly, politics stinks. It's the stink of power. If you don't dirty your hands a little now you may find the stock that your grandfather left you being nationalized in the next ten years, and you'll be sweeping Mr Mbuka's floors for food."

"Well, you have definitely changed," said Paul. "Why, the last time I saw you, you were ready to fight to the last drop of blood rather than hand over a jot or tittle of power to the blacks."

"I've grown older, more tolerant," said Mr Le Roux.

"So have I," said Paul.

Mr Le Roux raised a silent smiling toast to his son and drained his glass. Then he rose and excused himself. He had to coax his wife out of her sulk before dinner. Paul went upstairs to his bedroom and lay down on his bed. He thought about Lata. Just the memory of her soothed him more than the scotch had done.

He picked up the bible that his mother had given him. Then he put it aside, with the promise to himself that he would one day read it. He was still upset by what he had seen on the television the night before. His feeling of lightness, the inner warmth, the wholeness and understanding he had possessed for a short while after leaving the Mahatma had evaporated. His heart was heavy again with the burden of living; his mind confused and unconcentrated. The usual stiffness in his left shoulder, a chronic muscular spasm of tension, spread its pain up his neck. He had not noticed that it was gone until it had returned.

Paul decided to meditate. He did not feel very confident about doing it, but he knew it could do him no harm. He got up and locked his door. He felt embarrassed to meditate in his parent's house. It seemed so silly compared with the serious matters which were so often in the air. His father seemed to be in the advance guard of South African politics. Paul fell asleep while trying to meditate.

He was awoken by a maid with coffee, telling him that he only had half an hour to dress for dinner, and that the distinguished guests were already here, waiting for him. Paul felt refreshed, but, as he dressed, he found the tension in his shoulder returning, and it was with a heavy heart and mind that he descended to dinner.

He was introduced to Ben Marais and his wife, Marie-Yvette, who suprised him with her bleached shoulder-length hair of a style that he associated with Hollywood more than Pretoria. When Marais, in turn, introduced Mbuka, he did so in English, and then proceeded to talk in English all night, as did his wife. Paul supposed that it was because no one spoke Xhosa, Mbuka's language, and because Marais did not want to appear to be a chauvinistic Boer by speaking Afrikaans. Mrs Le Roux, who seldom deigned to speak English, sulked all night. Steve Mbuka spoke little during the meal. He glanced nervously at the black servants, answered briefly if spoken to and kept a wary eye on everyone through his thick spectacles. He refused wine and drank only water. Paul began to think that his father had been misinformed about the man. "He's not a talker. He's a silent worrier," Paul thought.

After dinner Marais and Marie-Yvette joked insincerely about following old-fashioned customs, and, in that way, achieved the removal of the two women from the room. Paul imagined that they must have discussed every seemingly innocent move ahead of time. As Marais must have hoped, with the women absent, Mbuka relaxed somewhat, accepted a brandy and a cigaret, and began to realize that the floor was all his. These three Boers were waiting attentively for him to speak.

"I know what you're up to and it won't work," said Mbuka.

Marais smiled blankly, pretending not to understand. Mr Le Roux topped up everyone's brandy.

Paul leaned forward and said: "It will work, whether you co-operate or not. Marais and his neo-liberal Afrikaner friends will make it work. I've lost my stomach for politics lately. I never thought I would find myself disagreeing with your aims, Marais. But I've seen so much of your brand of democracy in England, you know, the kind of social-engineering politics where it's a terrific public relations job but the world isn't particularly better off because of it. In fact the stink of deceit only adds to our already polluted atmosphere."

"Your mother tells me you've become religious," said Marais with an oily grin, glancing obsequiously at Mbuka.

"Yes, she does seem to have drawn that conclusion without any confirmation on my part," said Paul.

"It must be your newfound soulfulness and humility," Mr Le Roux put in.

Paul's head ached with the effort to follow all the little hidden motives and thrusts. Why would his father make a joke at his son's expense? Mbuka fidgeted, lit another cigaret and announced: "I've been in prison for fifteen years and you sit here and talk nonsense and expect me to be amused."

Paul still did not see an opening for real communication. Marais' hypocrisy and Mr Le Roux's politeness prevented any real discussion between Paul and Mbuka. Paul guessed that Mbuka would flourish in a more emotional atmosphere, but he was determined not to manipulate the direction this meeting would take, for in doing so he would play right into the hands of Marais. He began to suspect that Marais had foreseen it all; had hoped that Paul and Mbuka would engage in passionate dialogue, while Marais and Le Roux senior would ply the two former radicals with expensive brandy and nod their heads patronizingly.

Paul decided to sit back and watch as Marais, the two-faced diplomat, struggled to build a bridge of hypocrisy over the chasm of racial prejudice, which both he and Mbuka possessed in good measure. The night was a failure. At midnight, probably as previously arranged, Marie-Yvette returned and more staged conversation followed, which resulted in the departure of the three guests. Paul followed them to the front door and noticed that the house was surrounded by plainclothes policemen. He went to bed, promising himself that he would phone Lata in the morning.

The next morning Paul was cornered by his mother after breakfast, just as he was about to phone Lata. Mrs Le Roux instructed her maid to bring coffee to the table beside the swimming pool, and, putting her arm through Paul's, led her son there.

"I must talk to you," she whispered in Afrikaans. "Marie-Yvette has thrown herself away on that scoundrel. She could have been your ... but no regrets. I know what your father and that snake, Marais, were up to last night. I told your father that you're not interested in politics anymore, that you have come to your senses, have let God back into your life and seen that love, not hate and anger, is the answer ..."

"Where do you get these ideas from?" asked Paul. "I haven't talked to you about anything since I've come back, let alone poltics and religion."

"Oh, I know that you have despised me ever since you were fourteen ... no don't deny it," said Mrs Le Roux, forestalling her son's demurral. "I know you have, ever since you discovered sex. It's natural. That is the way God has ordained it. A mother's heart must be broken so that her son may take a wife. Except you haven't taken a wife yet ..."

"Don't change the subject, mother," Paul said. "We were talking about how you have assumed that I have become religious. I'm not denying it. It's just that I'm curious as to how you jumped to that conclusion before I'd even said anything to you."

"You speak to me every day, son," said Mrs le Roux, "in my dreams, in my thoughts, and God also tells me all about you. I know that you have wandered far off the path, especially when you were in America, and even now you waver, although I know - I saw it in your eyes the moment you stepped off the train - that you have had the path shown to you. I know you have seen God, or have been touched by Him in some way. I know that you now know how to obey your Creator. So why do you hesitate to do so?"

"Yes, you are right, as usual," Paul conceded. "I am not surprised. I have often told my friends that the reason that I cannot live with my mother is because I cannot keep any secrets from her. But you are wrong to say that I have despised you since I was fourteen. I have feared you, I have rebelled against you but I have never despised you."

"Feared me, your own mother, who would give her life for you?" said Mrs Le Roux, red in the face with the battle which raged within her between the competing forces of pain (she did not want her own son to fear her) and pleasure (out of habit she thrilled to know that she had instilled fear.) Like Paul she had always claimed to despise hypocrisy, yet it had become such a familiar atmosphere to her that she found she needed at least a little deceitfulness in the air in order to breathe comfortably.

"I have not so much feared you," said Paul, "as I have feared your intrusions into my inner life. You think you can read my mind. Well, I can read yours. For instance, I know that you are itching to know whether or not I have a woman in my life."

"That's only natural," Mrs Le Roux said. "It doesn't take much psychic ability to guess that. Yes, I do want to know. You are forty-five years old. Soon it will be too late. You will die a lonely man without children to love you and care for you in your old age."

"We've had this conversation a hundred times," Paul said.

"And you say that you do not despise me," said Mrs Le Roux. "Then, seeing that you are so touchy and can't give me a straight answer on that subject, perhaps you will tell me if you read the Bible which I gave you."

"You know that I've read the Bible many times before," said Paul, resorting to a very old tactic of his; one that he'd first used in his teens; deliberately, but slightly, misunderstanding his mother. He quickly realized his mistake. It had been his mother's invasion of his thoughts, and his concommitant use of evasive tactics, that had led to this point, where they were divided by a gulf of misunderstandings, mistrust and presumptions about each other. Paul sighed and poured some more coffee.

His mother said: "There is a way out, and I know that you know it. I can tell. There is a look in your eyes which says that you know; which tells me that you have prayed, begged, and received an answer. Is it that you are still so much of a rebel that you find it hard to obey God's will?"

"You are right about a lot," Paul conceded, "but not about everything. I will read the Bible again. Not now. It seems too cluttered with war and anguish when the answer is so clear. Yes, I do know something. I know how to meditate. What I don't know is how to maintain my faith."

"That is why I gave you the Bible," Mrs Le Roux said, "but I also know how stubborn you are, and how rebellious. Have you looked at it yet?"

"Yes," answered Paul, "it is interesting. The trouble is that it doesn't provide the answer to one very important question: how do I keep the faith? Two days ago I felt on top of the world. I found myself laughing out aloud when I was on my own. All of a sudden everything was as clear as daylight. I knew what the purpose of life was. I knew who I was. I knew what this world was for. I was happy. Then, the night before I flew back to Pretoria, I watched the news on TV, you know, the necklacing in Soweto."

"No, I don't know," said Mrs Le Roux emphatically. "I never concern myself with the horrors of life. It helps no one. Your father tried to tell me about it. It's too disgusting. I hope you will not enter politics. The only power is the power of prayer. One cannot help the blacks to become more civilized through politics. They need to understand the teachings of Jesus Christ. Then they will know that God helps those who help themselves. Those blacks who are Christians do not go around burning each other to death."

"Maybe you are right, mother," said Paul. "I certainly wish that I could ignore the world's problems and think only of God, but that is something that I have not been able to do yet."

"Well then, that is why you're unhappy," declared Mrs Le Roux. "The day you learn to ignore the world's problems, as you say, that day you will be happy."

"But you aren't happy," Paul said.

"I soon will be," said his mother. "I feel it in my bones. You have been my only real worry for the past forty years, well thirty, since your teens, when you rebelled. I think those days are over and soon you will settle down and accept the destiny that God has written for you. I don't think you will go away again. Maybe because you have found a woman ..."

"Yes," said Paul, "I have found a woman, as you put it, but I'm afraid that will not make you happy either. In fact I was about to phone her when you caught me. " Paul's mother's face lit up. She smiled for the first time since her son's return, and said: "I knew it."

"What you don't know yet, and nor do I," said Paul, "is if she will have me. I've only known her for a week ..."

"A week!" exclaimed Mrs Le Roux. "Why couldn't you have picked someone we knew, in our circle? Is it a Durban girl?"

"Sort of," answered Paul. "She's from a small town north of Durban, but I'm not telling you another thing until I have phoned her and made sure that she wants me."

Mrs Le Roux said: "She must have given you some indication ..."

"I'm not sure," said Paul.

"Oh, I'm not sure that I like any of it," whined Mrs Le Roux. "It just sounds so impossible and impulsive."

I don't want to talk about it so don't ask me anymore ... enough said. I can promise you that the woman I hope to marry is not another Marie-Yvette Bezuidenhout. "

"I don't care if you marry a Zulu girl," said Mrs Le Roux, "as long as she loves you. I'm just so happy that you are even considering the idea of sharing yourself with someone else. It is not natural to be alone. I hope you are coming with your father and me to dinner with Marie-Yvette and Ben tonight. There will be many other important people there. You don't have to rely on that snake, Marais, for a job, and he won't have that terrorist in his own house of course. Marie-Yvette is a marvellous hostess. It will be a grand evening."

After lunch Paul telephoned Lata. A servant answered and could only say that Lata was not at home. He meditated and found that the tension in his shoulder disappeared. That evening he went with his parents. The dinner was very grand and the guests were all distinguished. Several government officials mentioned to Paul that they had heard of his proposed job with Ben Marais, congratulated him and gave him advice. Paul said very little. He did not say that he hadn't accepted the job, let alone been offered it formally. He found himself smiling a lot, making small talk and even flirting with Marie-Yvette. He wondered if it was because the wine was so good and flowed so freely (he had had four glasses of an old Cape cabernet), or if it was because he felt unusually relaxed.

Ben Marais cornered Paul after dinner and asked him if he had made up his mind yet.

"If you mean about this ephemeral job," Paul answered, "which my father mentioned, which you haven't offered me yet, and which has already elicited congratulations. Yes, I am interested, if it is what it appears to be. At least I am interested now because I'm feeling happy and healthy. Who knows how I'll feel tomorrow. The other night, with Mbuka there, I could have vomited with disgust. I don't know how closely I can work with you. You are a bit too smooth for my taste."

"That's my boy," said Marais, slapping Paul on the back. "We need all the honesty and frankness we can muster for this job. Initially you will not be doing much. Mbuka is a test case. By hook or by crook get him involved in talks, committees, the whole parliamentary game. You will be judged on your success or failure with this task. If you succeed you will officially have a job. Right now it is not for public consumption. We are taking a chance with both you and Mbuka. You will however be renumerated, not that you need it. If you can tame Mbuka then you can reel in the ultimate big fish, Mandela. " Marias laughed phonily.

Paul detected some envy, but averted his eyes so that Marais would not see what he was thinking.

"Can't say yes or no yet. I need to make a phone call tomorrow. My future hangs on it. I will let you know afterwards. Of course, I have a feeling that if it turns out right for me, then you won't much like it." Paul said.

"Now, don't jump to conclusions," said Marais. "Your mother did mention something to Marie-Yvette about a Durban girl. We'll keep our fingers crossed."

When the night drew to a close and the Le Rouxs were leaving, Marie-Yvette whispered to Paul, "Good luck, Paul. Your mother tells me that you are in love and just waiting to name the date. Don't suppose it's anyone we know? No, I didn't think so."

When Paul got home he went immediately to the privacy of his room. Later when his parents were out of the way he went downstairs into his father's study and dialed Lata's telephone number eventhough it was past two in the morning. Lata answered.

"I'm amazed really," Paul said. "I was afraid that one of your parents or a servant would wake up and answer the phone."

"It's so hot I couldn't sleep," said Lata. "I was just sitting out in the garden when the phone rang."

"Lata," said Paul, "please marry me."

"Don't be ridiculous," she answered. "Now that you have returned to the bosom of your family where will I fit in? Besides, how do get around the Mixed Marriages Act? Where do we marry? Who performs the ceremony? Where do we live?"

"The Mixed Marriages Act," said Paul, "will soon be repealed. It's in the air. You would realize that the Afrikaner politicians are adapting if you could see the changes in my family. But even if we became pariahs I would want to do it. We could ask Mahatmaji to marry us. And I don't want you to fit into my family. I don't even fit in. I'm an oddball. I don't even know if I can say 'I love you' ... yes, I can. I do. Do you?"

"Yes," answered Lata, "I feel as if I have loved you since the begining of time."

"You sure didn't show it before," Paul said teasingly.

"I was scared," said Lata. "I couldn't understand it."

"I've got a plan," said Paul. "I couldn't live here in Pretoria. The society is to incestuous, too closed for my tastes, and also too addicted to political games. I've been offered a job, but it's not the kind of job I could do here. In fact it would be better to do it away from the politicians. I would only do it part-time. Well, it is not really a job, more like a small investment in the future. My real interest is in a farm which Tiny mentioned to me. Near Chaka's Kraal - a sugar cane plantation. I am writing to Tiny tomorrow to see if he can still get it for me. You and I could live there with no interference from anyone. And make lots of babies."

"I'll speak to Mahatmaji, "Lata whispered.

They both knew at once that they had a lot to talk about. Paul suggested talking after getting married. Lata hesitated, but only briefly, because she knew that Paul was right.

When Lata told her parents they were not surprised. They had always suspected that Lata would do something out of the ordinary. Paul set about buying the sugar cane farm. They married two weeks later on the verandah of the beach cottage, at sunrise, overlooking the Indian Ocean.

The homestead on the farm was an old brick building with an ornamental iron verandah almost entirely covered with bougainvillea, honeysuckle and canary creeper. Four rooms had french windows opening onto the verandah: the living room, the dining room, the main bedroom and Paul's office/study. He tended to do his bookkeeping, farm administration and other "work" at his large mahogany desk. He did his "writing" at a small table on the verandah, except during the worst weather.

Paul felt that he had paid his dues by writing one book about political dissent and now he wrote for his own education. As he was sitting at the small table on the verandah one afternoon three months later, Lata brought out a tray of tea and sandwiches, and, instead of leaving him alone as usual, sat down beside him and asked if she could read what he had written so far.

By the time Lata had finished reading Paul's notes, the sun was setting. She said: "So are you engraving your story on stone like Gilgamesh for posterity?"

He laughed and answered: "You know I am."

Copyrighted 2005, Patrick Joubert Conlon, Aantrek Publications