The Covenant Part 75

'No, except that Reverend Brongersma seemed to be preaching to you more than anyone else.'

'You noticed it?' When she nodded, he said, 'Did you not see it on the past Sundays?' and she said that she had. 'Why didn't you speak?' he asked, and she said, 'I thought that perhaps you had done something wrong and would tell me at such time as you deemed best.' In some anger he asked her what she thought he had done wrong, and she laughed.

'Detleef, I only said perhaps. perhaps. You're not the kind of man who does wrong things. And if you have done something, it couldn't be very big.' You're not the kind of man who does wrong things. And if you have done something, it couldn't be very big.'

'There you go. What have I done?'

'Detleef, I only said if.' if.'

But he was troubled, and every time his brother-in-law visited the farm and asked probing questions, Detleef became even more irritated, especially since the dominee continued preaching at him.

He was about to confront his two tormentors when Piet said abruptly one day, 'Detleef. Can you come to a special meeting tonight?' Hoping that the mystery would be revealed, he said quickly, 'Yes,' and that evening he was taken to a house he had never taken much notice of before, where the owner, a man named Frykenius, sat waiting, with Reverend Brongersma standing by a table.

'Sit down, Detleef,' Frykenius said. 'We want to ask you some questions.'

'What have I done?'

'Nothing, except being a good citizen. We want to find out how good.'

'I've done nothing wrong!' Detleef protested, and this was ignored.

'Tell me,' Frykenius said. 'In the rebellion against the war in Europe, would you have fought on, even though your father was killed?'

'I would have fought the English forever.'

'Do you speak Afrikaans in your home?'

'Nothing else.'

'Do you insist that your children speak it?'

'I allow them to speak no English.'

On and on came the questions, covering all aspects of what might be called his political, emotional and patriotic life. At the end his three interrogators asked him to step out in the yard, and while he looked at the glorious stars of the Southern Cross, they whispered among themselves.

After about fifteen minutes Piet Krause came out and said with obvious pleasure, 'Detleef, please come in!'

When he entered the room, both Frykenius and Brongersma rose to greet him: 'Detleef. You are one of us.' When he asked what this signified, Frykenius said, 'Sit down, Brother.' And when he was in his chair the three men, speaking alternately, informed him that a powerful and secret band of brothers, a Broederbond, had been quietly operating for the past five years, accomplis.h.i.+ng much good. After the most careful investigation of his credentials by men in Pretoria, he was being offered a chance to join.

'Are you members?' he asked.

Frykenius said, 'I helped start it.' This seemed strange to Detleef, for he could recall no instance in which this quiet man had ever played a major role in anything; he knew that he attended church, but was not even an elder. He had heard that he had ridden with the Venloo Commando but had accomplished nothing of note. He ran the butcher shop in town, but obviously never made much money. And he never spoke in public. But it was clear that he was now in command.

'Reverend Brongersma has belonged almost from the first,' Frykenius said, 'and Piet here, one of our best, has been with us for three years.'

'What would I be supposed to do?'

'Advance the Afrikaner,' Frykenius said.

'I already try to do that. But how?'

Piet was eager to explain, but was interrupted by Frykenius: 'I already know the answers to these two questions, but we must have sworn statements. "Have you ever been divorced?" No. That's good. "Is your wife English?" No again. You're eligible.'

'Morally, we're very strict,' Piet said.

Satisfied that Detleef had committed no serious breaches, the three men placed before him a program of simple integrity: 'Whatever you do, from this moment till you die, must work toward making the Afrikaner supreme in this country. In politics you must elect men who will carry us away from English domination.'

'That I would like,' Detleef said.

'In education you must insist that every teacher become an agent for the supremacy of Afrikaans. They must teach our national history in the patterns we provide.'

'In the armed forces,' Krause said excitedly, 'we must remove every English officer. In government we've got to clean out the English officeholders.'

'But it's in the spiritual realm,' Brongersma said, 'that we must do our hardest work. Cultural societies. Work groups. Festivals. Patriotic gatherings. If there is to be a speaker, it must be one of us.'

'You saw the fighting in Johannesburg,' Frykenius said. 'Jan Christian s.m.u.ts using Afrikaner soldiers to fight Afrikaner workmen. That must never again be allowed.'

'Can we drive Slim Jannie from office?' Detleef asked.

'We must,' Frykenius said. 'Are you with us?'

When Detleef nodded, as enthusiastically as if he were going to war with General de Groot or to a rugby game against New Zealand, Frykenius in his dry, unemotional voice administered the oath of the Broederbond, and Detleef swore to uphold its secrecy, advance its purposes, and live each moment of his life so as to achieve the dominance of the Afrikaner. That night he rode home with a greater sense of mission than he had ever before experienced. The other war that General de Groot had so often referred to was under way and he had enlisted for life.

In the weeks that followed, Detleef developed an enormous respect for his brother-in-law. He was no longer the somewhat flighty schoolteacher or the man who had quit the Vrymeer farm after discarding responsibility; instead, Piet Krause showed himself as a fine strategist. Frykenius was a staunch administrator and Brongersma a source of the spiritual strength which such a movement needed, but Krause was downright brilliant: 'Let us look honestly at the condition of the two groups. The English are educated; we aren't. The English control the money; we don't. The English are in command of the armed forces; we hold no high appointments. The English know how to manage; we don't. And above all, the English are supported by an entire empire; we stand alone.'

When Frykenius protested that the Afrikaners had strengths, too, Krause brushed him aside, and Detleef noticed that whereas Frykenius issued operational commands, which Piet obeyed, in the field of ideas Piet accepted guidance from no one. 'Yes, we have strengths,' he agreed impatiently, 'but not the ones you think.'

And he outlined a program of daring character: 'We can't take control of business away from the English. They're too clever to allow that. And we can't dictate in politics yet. But I can see two areas which employ a lot of people where we can dominate. Trains and schools. From now on, every trainman who is hired must be an Afrikaner. Every schoolteacher, too.' He explained that if the Broederbond could control the railway union, it would have a solid base from which to operate; and if it controlled the teachers, it could monitor what the young were being taught: 'Out of a hundred boys leaving school, ninety would be potential Broederbond members.'

'No, our members.h.i.+p must always be restricted,' Frykenius said, and when Detleef was taken to meet with cells in other areas, he found that this was true. Of a hundred members, thirty were schoolteachers, thirty were predikants, and the other forty were mostly farmers of solid position in their communities. There were, of course, no members who were bankers, lawyers or elected officials, for few Afrikaners had yet attained such positions.

After three years of the most exciting partic.i.p.ation, Detleef saw with satisfaction that every teacher appointed in a vast area had been an Afrikaner, and eleven of the best had been permitted to join the Broederbond. Of a hundred new employees of the railway system, all had been Afrikaners. There had been musical exhibitions arranged by the Bond, art displays, barbecues, lecture series and sports events. Whenever an Afrikaner in rural South Africa stepped out of his house, he fell unwittingly under the influence of the Broederbond, but it was the new proposal offered by Piet Krause to a plenary session in Pretoria that moved the Bond onto an even more effective level: 'We have won the railways and have triumphed in the battle of the schoolroom, but in business and politics we have accomplished nothing. I cannot yet see how we can gain any victories in politics, but I do see clearly how we can gain effective control of business. We Afrikaners are not yet smart enough to run the insurance companies and the big banks. That will require time and education. Let the English continue to control the businesses which appear on the stock market. What we'll do is control the stock market. And how do we do that? We become the officials who make the rules, who supervise the operations, who stay in the background as watchdogs.'

He launched an ingenious program aimed at filling every available administrative position with Afrikaners: 'Of course, the Englishmen will continue to occupy the flashy front offices. We'll take the unseen jobs, none of them attractive or well paid. And once we have Afrikaners inserted in the system, we'll promote them quietly, until they attain positions of real power.

'Then do you see what will happen? The insurance company will still be owned by Englishmen. But our people will pa.s.s the little rules by which they operate. And in time we will control everythingnot own it, control it.'

He preached that an essential factor in such a strategy was the proliferation of minor administrative jobs: 'Where one man is needed, let us appoint three. If an old office falters, let us establish two new ones, staffed always with our people. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Whether they're needed or not, create more jobs because they must pay for them. And always in the legislation creating them insert the phrase "The occupant must be bilingual." With Afrikaans we will strangle them to death.'

As a consequence of this policy, South Africa would become one of the most overly administered governments on earth, and gradually, because of the bilingual requirement, this plethora of officeholders became predominantly Afrikaner. Piet Krause had shown far-seeing wisdom: the English insurance company did continue to make money, but it operated under rules promulgated by Afrikaner functionaries, who drafted these rules in accordance with the wishes of the unseen Broederbond.

While cells of the Broederbond in all parts of South Africa were convening secretly to determine the future character of their nation, awakening young black men were meeting, also in secret, to decide what patterns should be followed when they attained the leaders.h.i.+p to which they felt ent.i.tled.

Micah Nxumalo was not a great man, but he had always a.s.sociated with great men, and that was almost as good. Paulus de Groot, Christoffel Steyn, the various Boer generals during the warhe had worked with them all. Usually they had not been aware of him, but in his quiet way he had been intensely aware of them, and had learned from them lessons which would have amazed them had they known the depth of his perception.

He was bewildered by white men. They lived surrounded by blacks, but made no effort to understand them or to profit from the a.s.sociation. The whites were outnumbered in many areas forty-to-one, but they continued living as if they alone possessed the landscape and always would. He watched them making decisions which had to be against their own best interests, and doing so only to maintain control over the larger number of blacks who surrounded them.

For example, Micah was astounded that the two white tribes, Boer and English, should have fought each other so viciously for so long, when at any time each could have achieved everything that came out of the peace treaty and at one-fiftieth of the cost. For him the insanity of their behavior was epitomized by the Battle of Spion Kop, in which he had played a major role. 'I tell you, Moses,' he said to his son, 'one side marched up to the top of the hill, then the other side marched up, then one side marched down, then the other side marched down. Then, long after midnight, General de Groot and I walked up, and we captured it. And three days later it didn't make a bit of difference who held it, but hundreds of white men lay dead and wounded.'

He saw also that it made very little difference, really, which side won: 'We fought for the Boers, Moses. They were good people and we could trust them, men like Jakob from this farm, and the old general. But when it was over, we got no thanks. They made laws against us just the same. And don't you ever believe that the Kaffirs who fought on the English side came off any better. Because the English abandoned them as soon as peace came. "We will never desert you," they promised in 1899 when they needed black help, but at the peace treaty they forgot about our rights. And now they're just as eager as the Afrikaners to hold us down.'

Micah, who could not read or write, could formulate such sophisticated a.n.a.lyses because he had for many years been quietly a.s.sociating with that remarkable group of black leaders who moved through the countryside talking about actual living conditions, legislation and civic rights. These few men were well educated, some in England, one or two in the black colleges of America, and some of them had even visited the Parliament in London with pet.i.tions drawing attention to the worsening conditions in South Africa. 'It would be improper for England to interfere with the internal relations of a dominion,' they were always told, and helplessly they watched the deterioration.

These men, who would be the leaders of their race in coming years, first brought Nxumalo's attention to the problem of the poor white Afrikaner, the numerous people like the Troxels, who had been driven off their inherited farms by drought and rinderpest and who had taken refuge in Johannesburg. 'I a.s.sure you,' Sol Plaatje said at one meeting, 'in their hovels they live worse than the blacks do in Sophiatown. Every law that holds us down, holds them down too. In a sensible world the Troxels would combine with us to improve everyone's condition, but they stay off to themselves, the poorest of the poor, and we stay off to ourselves, the dispossessed.'

What perplexed these leaders was the contradictory policy of the white government: 'They spend enormous sums to bring in white settlers from Russia and Germany and Poland, when they have right on their doorsteps better labor and cheaper, which they refuse to use.' John Dube, in one of these meetings, offered the statement which Nxumalo would always remember: 'The worst thing a nation can do to itself is to cultivate and maintain a supply of cheap labor. When salaries are kept down, money stops circulating, taxes bring in diminished funds, and everybody loses. The white man thinks he's hurting us when he keeps our wages low. Actually, he's hurting himself.'

At one meeting a young Swazi who had studied in London said, 'In our worst industries, the white man earns sixteen times as much as the black man doing the same kind of work. Now, I don't mean the same work. As you know, certain jobs have been denned by law as too complicated or pivotal for a black man to master. Such jobs must be held by whites only. What I mean is that whites and blacks work together, the whites doing the so-called critical work, which a schoolboy could learn in fifteen minutes, the blacks doing the manual labor, which the white could do more efficiently because he's usually better fed and stronger. Taking all industries, the white worker gets nine times the wage of a black, and they propose to build a sensible society on that basis!'

Nxumalo understood such reasoning; he would never have elucidated such thoughts himself, but when others did he approved. However, on one point he was as obtuse as the white man: when he contemplated the long future of South Africa he could not visualize any logical place for the Coloureds. The white man had stated in a hundred different laws and regulations that the Coloureds were not white; the blacks knew intuitively they could never be black. Almost never was the problem discussed; once Plaatje said after returning from London, 'The white men, if they had any sense, would embrace the Coloureds instead of importing white immigrants at great expense.'

'Should we embrace them?' Nxumalo asked.

Plaatje thought a long time, then said, 'I think not. They want to do what they call "moving up to whitehood" and would never be satisfied with doing what they would call "falling back to Kaffir status." Why distract our attention by bothering with them, when we can argue directly with the whites?'

It was from such discussions that Micah Nxumalo acquired his obsession: 'One day our boy Moses will attend the college at Fort Hare.' To that end he terminated his own practical education; no longer would he waste his few rand by attending the secret meetings in Johannesburg. That money would be saved for the boy. He went to the Van Doorns, asking them to help toward the fees Moses would have to pay, but Detleef growled, 'He needs no further schooling, he has a job here,' and the meager funds that Micah could acc.u.mulate were inadequate for so bold a venture, and the dream of sending a black lad from Vrymeer to college vanished.

But not the dream of learning: 'What you must do, Moses, is read the books that educated men read. You must a.s.sociate with men who have traveled to America and Europe, and you must listen to what they say. Most of all, son, you must get off this farm. You were not meant to be a peasant.'

Using some of the money he had saved, he returned to his friends in Johannesburg and asked them for books that would start his gifted son on the right track. They gave him one book by Marcus Garvey, the American black; two books by Plaatje on the South African condition; one by George Bernard Shaw; and a splendid volume on the golden age of the Dutch Republic. As he was about to depart, the young Swazi who had recited the figures on comparative wages at the earlier meeting, had an afterthought: 'What might do him the most goodthis novel about Java.'

'What is Java?'

'It used to control South Africa.'

'Why should he read about that?'

'Because you never know, Mr. Nxumalo, what will ignite a boy's mind.' And he handed over a Dutch novel, Max Havelaar, Max Havelaar, by a man who had been a civil servant in Java in the 1800s; he wrote under the name of Multatuli, Latin for Many Sorrows, and although he spoke only of conditions in Java, everything he said applied to South Africa. by a man who had been a civil servant in Java in the 1800s; he wrote under the name of Multatuli, Latin for Many Sorrows, and although he spoke only of conditions in Java, everything he said applied to South Africa.

The five scholarly books Micah brought back to Vrymeer were helpful, but Max Havelaar Max Havelaar sharpened the mind of Moses Nxumalo. He was in his twenties when he read it, bewildered by the flood of ideas that had been coming at him from his own observations, the canny wisdom of his father and the lessons from the serious books; the novel tied these scattered concepts together in a way that was almost magical. It was poorly written, really, forcing upon the reader more instruction about plantation life in Java than he needed, but in the end it left a residue of emotion and moral commitment that would otherwise have been un.o.btainable. After an absence of two hundred years, the power of Java had returned to South Africa. sharpened the mind of Moses Nxumalo. He was in his twenties when he read it, bewildered by the flood of ideas that had been coming at him from his own observations, the canny wisdom of his father and the lessons from the serious books; the novel tied these scattered concepts together in a way that was almost magical. It was poorly written, really, forcing upon the reader more instruction about plantation life in Java than he needed, but in the end it left a residue of emotion and moral commitment that would otherwise have been un.o.btainable. After an absence of two hundred years, the power of Java had returned to South Africa.

When he finished the six books, Moses told his father, 'I want to try it in Johannesburg.'

'You should,' his father said. 'And I suppose you know that the chances are good that you'll be dead before the end of the year.'

'I've heard.' In Max Havelaar Max Havelaar a young Javanese much like Moses had gone to his Johannesburg and died with a belly full of bullets. As in the past, Java was instructing South Africa. a young Javanese much like Moses had gone to his Johannesburg and died with a belly full of bullets. As in the past, Java was instructing South Africa.

So in the mid 1930s Moses Nxumalo of Vrymeer went quietly away from the farm and into the city, a journey of ninety-nine miles in physical distance, an incalculable distance spiritually.

He sought out his cousin, Jefferson Magubane, somewhat older than he was, and found him living in Sophiatown, and on the first night he was there, police came hammering on the rickety door, demanding to see all doc.u.ments. By a miracle of timing, Jefferson managed to slip Moses into an alley leading to the communal privy, and there he hid while the others presented their papers for inspection. Although his sheltered life at Vrymeer had not prepared him for this indignity, his experiences with Max Havelaar had, and he thought how strange it was that he, whose ancestors had lived on this land for a thousand years, should be restricted by incomers as to where and how he could travel.

Next morning Jefferson, who had not been distressed by the police visit, for that was a common occurrence, said brightly, 'Moses, I think we can get you the proper pa.s.ses.' And he took his cousin some miles out toward the country to a large suburban house called New Sarum. There, deferentially, he went to the back door and informed the black maid who tended it that he had brought her a first-cla.s.s houseboy. With nudges and winks he instructed Moses in making proper responses, with the result that a black man was summoned, who led the applicant through the kitchen to a kind of office where a white husband and wife waited. They introduced themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Noel Saltwood, whereupon Mrs. Saltwood, a tall, fine-looking English woman, asked him a series of questions, using English, Afrikaans and Zulu interchangeably.

'Can you read and write?' she asked. When he nodded, she asked him where he lived; he panicked, not knowing what to say, but she perceived this and said quickly, 'I know you have no papers. Jefferson told us. We'll arrange for your pa.s.sbook.' She spoke as if she were a conspirator.

'I'm from Vrymeer.'

'I don't know that. Is it a small place?'

'It's near Venloo.'

'Ah, yes. The Venloo Commando. Who doesn't know about that!' She looked at her husband approvingly, and Moses wondered if he should volunteer further information, but his quandary was solved by Laura Salt-wood. 'Did you know, perchance . . . No, you'd have been too young. But a very brave man came from Venloo. General de Groot.'

'My father rode with him. I used to live with him.'

Both the Saltwoods gasped, and they spent the next fifteen minutes asking about his father's experiences on commando, after which Mrs. Saltwood said, 'Noel, we really must put someone to the job of compiling the record of the black commandos. On both sides. Their stories must be incredible, and they'll be lost if we don't do something.'

Then she became strictly business: 'We'll get you your papers, Moses, but you must work here faithfully, because if you don't, back you'll go to the farm. Is that understood?'

'Yes, Baas.'

'We don't use baas here. I'm ma'am, he's mister.'

His pleasure at the prospect of both a job and the papers to prove it was diminished that night when he sat with Jefferson in the cramped room the Magubanes called home and heard the sound of running feet, then screams, then ugly grunts and more screams.

When he rose to intercede in whatever was happening, his aunt Mpela raised her hand and stopped him. 'It's the tsotsis,' she said, and before she could lower her hand, there came the long terrible scream of a woman, then the echo of runners retreating.

In the morning the police came, tardily, indifferently: 'Another Three Star killing.' They ordered a cart to haul the corpse away, and after they had departed and Moses had inspected the blood, he asked what a Three Star killing was.

'The tsotsis carry knives made in England. Three stars on the handle.'

'How do I avoid them?' Moses asked.

'Play the coward. They run in gangs, and if you see them coming, get out. Do anythinghide, run, stand behind a womanbut get out of their way.'

'Don't the police . . .'

'The police say, "The tsotsis do our work for us." You see, Moses, they kill only Bantu.'

'Does this happen often?'

'All the time,' Jefferson said.

So whenever Moses detected these youthful murderers, pimps, scavengers, thieves, dagga-peddlers and bullies in the area, he quietly disappeared. He was eager to keep himself safe because of the consuming interest he had in the things that Jefferson was doing: the political meetings, the long discussions with knowledgeable men and women. He was enchanted to find that one black woman, a handsome person older than he, had actually been to America and won a college degree; she was Gloria Mbeke, a bold and forceful speaker, and although he was too shy to approach her directly, he did frequent her discussions, listening attentively as she outlined her principles: 'The one thing we can be certain of is that if we endeavor to confront our oppressors with any kind of force, they will not hesitate to mow us down with their machine guns. That realization must be the foundation of our policy.

'When Enoch Mgijima encouraged his Israelites, following their own interpretation of the Bible, to claim land at Bulhoek, the police warned him once to move them off. They warned him twice, then they opened fire on people who carried not even sticks. One hundred and sixty-three dead, one hundred and twenty-nine wounded for life.

'When a remnant of Hottentots in the deserts of South-West Africa a few years ago wanted to continue hunting while the government wanted them to work on farms at almost no pay, what did the government do? They placed a huge tax on dogs, and when the Hottentots refused to pay, they sent in airplanes that bombed them as they ran across the veld. One hundred and fifteen killed, three hundred wounded for life.

'Our policy must be the policy of Mahatma Gandhi, who originated it when he lived among us. Pa.s.sive resistance, legal pressure, and the constant education of our young people.'

At another meeting he heard Miss Mbeke say something which influenced him deeply. She returned to the slaughter of the Israelites at Bulhoek: 'There are two lessons to be learned from this. The white police will never hesitate to shoot us down if they don't like what we're doing. But also, we blacks get ourselves into trouble when we listen to messianic leaders. Remember how Nongqause led thousands of Xhosa to commit suicide in 1857? You agree now that that was insane. But how did Enoch Mgijima get his hypnotic hold on his Israelites? When Halley's Comet pa.s.sed overhead in 1910, leaving a long trail of star dust, he said it was a message from G.o.d to him.

'Do not believe outside messages. Many of the gold miners who were shot down during the strike in Johannesburg had been listening to leaders just like Nongqause and Mgijima, except that their revelations came from Moscow. Communism will not save us in South Africa. The silly teachings of Marcus Garvey in America will not save us. We will save ourselves.'

Thirty minutes after hearing this constructive speech, as he and Jefferson were drifting home through the alleys of Sophiatown, discussing Miss Mbeke's theses, they were suddenly attacked by a gang of sixteen tsotsis wielding Three Star knives. 'Give us your money!' the tsotsis screamed as if demented, and quickly Jefferson did so, but Moses hesitated, and in that flash of a second, the knives came at him. It was a miracle that he was not killed, for even after he had fallen, horribly cut, the inflamed young men kicked at him viciously, and would surely have finished him off had not Jefferson yelled at the top of his voice, 'Police! Over here!' There were no police, but the tsotsis dared not take the risk.

Many had heard the fracas, but none would help. Behind closed doors they thought: In the morning they'll come and clean it up. It's not our affair.