The Covenant Part 77

'A man could do much good there, Detleef.'

'No! No!' He dismissed the invitation absolutely and would say no more about it, so dutifully she gathered her papers, smiled at Maria, and left.

Three days later Mr. Frykenius summoned him to Venloo. The two Broederbonders had grown so close since the deplorable death of their mutual friend, Piet Krause, that they attacked any subject without formalities: 'Detleef, they want you take the position with the Commission on Racial Affairs.'

'I can't leave the farm.'

'But you can. The Troxels can manage, and you and Maria can divide your time between Pretoria and Cape Town.'

'Really, I can hardly . . .'

'So many times have you and I discussed what to do with the Bantu and the Coloureds. Here's a chance to put our principles into operation.'

'I don't want to leave Vrymeer . . .'

'Detleef, you and I have only a limited number of years remaining. Let's spend them on things important.' When Van Doorn hesitated, the butcher said, 'Remember when you told me about your vision for this country? The sun striking the gla.s.s of jellies. Each on its own level, clean and separated? Now you have an opportunity to achieve that dream.'

'I shall have to speak with Maria.'

'Detleef, on crucial matters, leave the women to themselves.'

'But how did you hear about this job? Surely it was my sister Johanna who told you.'

'I never speak with women. This came as an order from Pretoria.'

Detleef smiled and thought: But who told Pretoria to send the order? It had to have been Johanna, and he remembered the debt he owed her: She broke the rations in half, then added to one portion and gave it to me. She kept me alive. She helped form my beliefs.

'So the problem we have is of our own making,' Frykenius was explaining. 'In order to get the little jobs in government, we insisted that every employee must be bilingual. It worked. We got all of them because the English wouldn't bother to learn Afrikaans. But now the big jobs are opening up and we d.a.m.ned Afrikaners have too few bright people who can speak English well. We'll get them when our universities get going. But right now we must depend on people like you.'

When Detleef remained silent, the butcher said, 'I have written this letter for you, accepting the a.s.signment. Sign it.' And he pushed forward the doc.u.ment that would ultimately make Detleef van Doorn one of the most influential men in the nation.

Because there had been fierce antagonisms among cities when the Union government was established in 1910, each insisting that it be the capital, Detleef's new position required him to maintain three homes: the permanent farm at Vrymeer, a six-month home in Cape Town, and a year-round pair of rooms in a Pretoria hotel. Fortunately, he had the funds for such extravagance.

The reasons for this proliferation were complex. The contest for the capital had been solved rather neatly: Pretoria housed all executive operations; Cape Town hosted the Parliament; and Bloemfontein had the Appellate Court. Financial and business interests, although not forming a recognized branch of government, more or less ran the country from Johannesburg, which left poor Natal with nothing except a semi-tropical climate and breathtaking views of the Indian Ocean.

As a consequence, the South African government resembled the Indian, which during hot months moved entirely from steaming Delhi to cool Simla in the Himalayas. During the half year that Parliament was in session most of the executive branch boarded trains and went down to Cape Town, and during the other half, parliamentary offices moved up to Pretoria.

The Commission on Racial Affairs was in those years a trivial Cape Town operation dealing mostly with housing; it was chaired by an elected member of Parliament and staffed by officeholders of little distinction. There was a secretary, an Englishman who had held the position for twenty routine years, and a pettifogging a.s.sistant of equal service whose resignation because of failing eyesight had created the opening which Detleef was filling. His salary was 900 a year, scarcely enough to live on if one had to move back and forth between the cities.

In 1946 the commission had so little work to do that Detleef slipped into place with no notice of his appointment appearing in any newspaper, but in early 1947 an event occurred which projected him into permanent attention; after that, whatever his commission did attracted notice.

In that year Jan Christian s.m.u.ts, as filled with honors as a man could bePrime Minister of South Africa, Field Marshal of the British Empire, Chancellor-elect of Cambridge University, sponsor of the United Nations and co-drafter of the n.o.ble preamble to its charterdecided that to cap his career and at the same time increase his chances for reelection, he would invite the King and Queen of England to visit their dominion; and he had the happy idea of asking them to bring along their two charming daughters. All four accepted, and when they landed at Cape Town there was an outpouring of loyalty to the royal family by all but a determined group of Afrikaners who were working a.s.siduously to take South Africa out of the empire.

Detleef became involved in the royal tour when his prize bull, a gigantic beast called Oom Paul, won the blue ribbon at the Rand Agricultural Show. This meant that Vrymeer could charge sharply increased fees for Oom Paul's services, and Detleef was delighted.

But then he found that to receive his blue ribbon, he must accept it from the hands of King George VI, who would be attending the Rand show, and this infuriated him. As Maria said bitterly, 'My father was executed by soldiers of the king. Your father was shot by his soldiers. How could you accept a prize from his bloodstained hands?'

'It was soldiers of King George V,' Detleef corrected, but this was unfortunate, because Maria said, 'The English killed most of your family at Chrissiesmeer.'

The word inflamed him: 'Chrissiesmeer! Do you know how they spell it on their maps? Chrissie Meer. They're even stealing our names from us.'

'Detleef, you cannot accept a prize from that man.'

Painfully aware of the money he was sacrificing, Detleef stormed down to the cattle pens and told his manager, Troxel, 'Take Oom Paul home.'

'But the blue ribbon!'

'I will accept no prize from the hands of a bloodstained king.'

A newsman heard the fracas and recognized Detleef as a former rugby great. Sensing a great story, he shouted for his cameraman, who was photographing sheep. When the man ran over, he quickly grasped the situation and dragooned Detleef into posing beside his champion. At that moment Oom Paul, irritated by the commotion, a.s.sumed a sneer almost as contemptuous as Detleef's. The scene was frozen on film: an honest Afrikaner and his bull defying the empire.

As the 1948 election neared, the stately English homes in Johannesburg suburbs glowed with color portraits of the royal family standing with Jan s.m.u.ts, while the Afrikaner homes displayed the shot of Detleef standing with Oom Paul. When the agricultural attache from the American emba.s.sy visited eastern Transvaal to check crops, he listened for two days to the scathing accusations lodged against s.m.u.ts, then broke into laughter. 'You people feel about him the way my father in Iowa feels about Roosevelt. s.m.u.ts won the war for you, and now you want to kick him out. Roosevelt won the war for us, and men like my father wanted to hang him.'

The voting took place on 26 May 1948, and that evening the Van Doorns invited to their Vrymeer home their sister Johanna, Mr. Frykenius and their dominee, Reverend Brongersma. As a cool autumn night descended over the lakes, the five people sensed that this could be a day of majestic change. The king and queen were going to be banished. Slim Jannie s.m.u.ts' party would be tossed out. The days of smug Englishmen like the Saltwoods were numbered. And those wavering Afrikaner families, like the Van Doorns of Trianon, half Dutch, half English, would be forced to make up their minds and nail their colors aloft for others to see.

Frykenius spoke: 'I see a tremendous nationalism a.s.suming power in this country tonight. s.m.u.ts? Forget him. The king? He'll be gone in ten years. The English language? Now it falls to second place. Tonight we take revenge for Slagter's Nek and the concentration camps. I pray we have the energy to capitalize on the victory we're about to win.'

When the first returns came in they were from strongly English areas, and s.m.u.ts' tenure as prime minister seemed to be secure, but as the night wore on, startling upsets were reported, with men who had been in internment camps during the war because of their pro-Hitler stance winning astounding victories. When it became clear that Daniel Malan's National party was winning, Detleef began to cheer, and said to his sister, 'I wish Piet Krause were here to see this night. All he dreamed of we're getting, and without one rifle shot.'

Toward two in the morning, when neighbors dropped by to share sandwiches and coffee, the really glorious news reached them: 'Jan Christian s.m.u.ts has lost even his own seat at Standerton. The field marshal leaves the field of battle.'

'Thank G.o.d!' Maria Steyn van Doorn cried, and she knelt. Johanna joined her, and the two women prayed in thankfulness that they had seen the fall of this man who, they believed, had hurt them so grievously.

When they rose, Frykenius turned to Brongersma and asked, 'Dominee, would you lead us in prayer? This is a night to be remembered.' And the tall man, who would shortly leave Venloo to occupy the pulpit in the leading Pretoria church, asked his four listeners to pray with him: 'Almagtige G.o.d, ons dank U. From 1795 when the Dutch first lost their colony at the Cape, through vicissitudes untold, we have fought to establish a just society in this land. In those troubled years You extended a covenant to us, and we have been faithful. Tonight You bring us great victory, and our only prayer is that we may prove worthy of it. Help us to build here a nation in Your image.'

Fervently the others cried 'Amen,' and that very afternoon Detleef and Maria headed for Cape Town, where with a new majority in Parliament they would begin their arduous work of reorganizing the nation.

The first thing Detleef did was to make life so miserable for his superior, the senior secretary to the Commission on Racial Affairs, that the only sensible thing that Englishman could do was to resign. For several weeks he tried to avoid this drastic step, trusting that the new member of Parliament who was taking over the chairmans.h.i.+p would protect him, but this man was a tough-minded farmer from the Orange Free State, and instead of defending the aggrieved secretary, he treated him even more contemptuously than Detleef had, and in disgust the man quit. He left government altogether, beginning the hemorrhage that would drain every department until the civil service at all levels became almost totally Afrikaner-minded and -managed.

With Detleef in position, the commission was ready to tackle the vast problems of whipping the various elements of society into shape, and it fell to Van Doorn to draft the preliminary directives, then construct the proposed laws that would convert them into a permanent discipline. He worked endlessly for this goal, at first a faceless bureaucrat, but as his accomplishments became known, a nationally acclaimed hero in the movement to protect the race.

Like puritans in all countries, he started with s.e.x. He saw that in a decent society white men should marry only white women, Coloureds marry Coloureds, and so on down to the Bantu, who would marry among themselves. Whenever he thought of these matters, or discussed them with his wife, who heartily approved of what he was trying to do, he started at what he visualized as the top with Afrikaners, working his way down to the Bantu, who represented the vast majority at the bottom. Afrikaners were ent.i.tled to top position because they respected G.o.d and were faithful to the directives of John Calvin; Coloureds stood higher than Indians for two reasons: they had some white blood and they usually believed in Jesus Christ, and even those who didn't, accepted Muhammad, who was higher than the Hindu G.o.ds; and Bantu were at the bottom because they were black and heathen. Of course, a large proportion of them were Christian, hundreds of thousands being enrolled in their own Dutch Reformed churches, but this was a complication which he ignored.

His first proposal was simple: no white person, regardless of his or her situation, could marry a non-white. If he attempted to do so, he would be thrown in jail, and if he actually entered into such a marriage, it would be invalid.

This presented little difficulty in the Afrikaner provinces of Transvaal and the Orange Free State, but in Cape Town, where more than half the population was Coloured, it created havoc, and there was great outcry. But that very year in Durban, blacks and Indians engaged in wild communal rioting in which nearly one hundred and fifty people were slain, and Detleef could tell his people, 'See, races should be kept apart.' To those in his confidence he often spoke of his vision: the gla.s.s with the perfect separation of jellies.

In 1950 he carried this marriage ordinance to its next logical improvement: he pulled out an old immorality act of 1927, which had struggled ineffectively to deal with the matter, and gave it new teeth, so that s.e.xual relations between persons of unequal color were criminalized; any man embracing a woman of different color would be jailed. His wife and sister approved of this law and said it would perform miracles in purifying life in the Union.

The use of this word Union Union irritated Detleef, and he wondered how soon the Afrikaner majority would officially break ties with England. When he asked his superiors about the timetable for freedom, they told him gruffly, 'One thing at a time. Get along with your own tasks.' He was diverted temporarily when at the United Nations, Madame Pandit of India launched a bitter attack on South Africa's racial policies, particularly the treatment of Indians. He was enraged that a woman should presume to speak so, and that a Hindu should so make a fool of herself by criticizing a Christian country. At his suggestion, he was given time off to draft a reply to Madame Pandit, but it was so discourteous to an amba.s.sador of another Commonwealth nation that it was not dispatched, but for many weeks he continued to mutter to his Afrikaner friends, 'Imagine. A woman and a Hindu daring to say those things. She should be muzzled.' irritated Detleef, and he wondered how soon the Afrikaner majority would officially break ties with England. When he asked his superiors about the timetable for freedom, they told him gruffly, 'One thing at a time. Get along with your own tasks.' He was diverted temporarily when at the United Nations, Madame Pandit of India launched a bitter attack on South Africa's racial policies, particularly the treatment of Indians. He was enraged that a woman should presume to speak so, and that a Hindu should so make a fool of herself by criticizing a Christian country. At his suggestion, he was given time off to draft a reply to Madame Pandit, but it was so discourteous to an amba.s.sador of another Commonwealth nation that it was not dispatched, but for many weeks he continued to mutter to his Afrikaner friends, 'Imagine. A woman and a Hindu daring to say those things. She should be muzzled.'

When his superiors ordered him to forget India and get back to work, he produced for them four smas.h.i.+ng proposed bills, all of which became law. As one newspaper said of this herculean output: 'Rarely in the history of the world has one nation opened its floodgates to such a torrent of legislation.' When he and Maria surveyed what they had accomplished, they could take pride in the fact that they had achieved through quiet application of their talents what their fathers had failed to attain through battle. 'Think of what we've made happen in such a short time!' Detleef said after a six-month stint in Cape Town, and like a professor he ticked off the changes.

One, he had begun to codify customs and rules forbidding contact between whites and non-whites in any public amenity. Toilets, restaurants, trolley cars, taxis, elevators, post-office windows where stamps were sold, station platforms and even park benches had to be clearly designated with large signs as to who could patronize them, and across the nation whites only whites only proliferated. Maria was particularly gratified by the post-office restriction: 'I would hate to stand in line behind some big Bantu, waiting for my stamps.' proliferated. Maria was particularly gratified by the post-office restriction: 'I would hate to stand in line behind some big Bantu, waiting for my stamps.'

Two, he had helped his cohorts in Parliament pa.s.s a Group Areas Act that would enable the government to divide the entire nation, and especially every city, into segments allocated to specific groups. Thus, the central urban areas would be cleared of any Indians or Bantu so that whites alone could live there. Huge areas now occupied by Coloureds in Cape Town would be reserved for whites only; the Coloureds would be removed to new housing tracts on the windy Cape Flats. The Bantu would be confined to vast locations outside the limits of white cities and towns, and would be allowed to stay even there only so long as they provided meaningful labor for white interests. 'With these reasonable actions,' said Van Doorn, 'the racial cleanliness which is the mark of any good society will be both defined and enforced.'

Three, he aided in drafting harsh, good laws for the supression of Communism, making them so sweeping that almost any activity the Afrikaner majority did not approve could be punished by extremely long prison terms, often without due process of law. 'This is needed,' he a.s.sured any who questioned him, and when certain liberals, often Englishmen, pointed out that for every Communist thrown into jail without trial, sixteen non-Communists who wanted better schools or labor unions would be so penalized, he answered with a remark he had only recently heard: 'You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.'

Fourhis major achievementhe conceived the law which came closest to his heart, and in the formative stages, long before it had pa.s.sed, Maria and Johanna had applauded the far-sightedness of his planning. 'What we propose,' he explained to the parliamentary members who would push the bill through, 'is that every human being residing in this country shall be listed in our recordsavailable always to police and governmentas to his or her specific racial ident.i.ty.'

'What I mean,' an English member fumbled, 'if this cla.s.sification is to follow a man all his life, oughtn't we to be fairly careful'

Detleef did not let him finish: 'Sir, the utmost care will be taken. White people of the finest reputation will do the cla.s.sifying, and of course we can expect a few mistakes. You know that and I know it. But when they're pointed out, and any man can challenge his cla.s.sification, a committee of three responsible white persons will meet with that complainant, look at his skin color, study his background, even take testimony from his close friends and neighbors, and recla.s.sify him upward, if the facts warrant.'

'And if the facts are unclear?'

'Then it will be better if the cla.s.sification stands.'

'And what if a man you cla.s.sify as white wants to be cla.s.sified as Coloured?'

'Downward?' Detleef asked. The question was so preposterous that he could think of no answer, but what he did reply was interesting: 'I can see the day when a man cla.s.sified tenuously as Coloured will have lived such an exemplary life and so clearly have acquired civilized habits that his community will a.s.sent to allowing him to change his cla.s.sification upward to white. Everyone can aspire to upward movement, especially if his skin is on the light side.'

Because Detleef exulted over these new laws, it must not be a.s.sumed that he had much to do with their actual pa.s.sage through Parliament. He never forgot that he was only a bureaucrat working out of a small Cape Town office, and many members of Parliament, especially those of the opposition parties, almost forgot that he existed, for he never appeared on the floor. But through persistent pressure and the fact that he kept his job while the members often lost theirs, he gradually acquired a leverage quite out of proportion to his position.

Even so, when the bells of Venloo marked the beginning of a new year, he knew that despite his victories, he had failed to deal with the worrisome nettle that would torment his nation into the next century, and on New Year's Day 1951 he posed the dilemma to Maria and Johanna: 'What are we going to do about the Coloureds?'

The question was most perplexing. The Bantu were clearly black, with historic areas to which presumably they belonged: the Transkei of the Xhosa, Zululand, the lands of the Tswana and the Sotho. It wasn't really as neat and tidy as that, for there were millions of Bantu living loosely throughout the nation, but it was a definable problem that could be solved.

Since the Indians kept to their crowded ghettos, mainly in Natal, they, too, could be handled logically. 'Give them a shop, restrict them, and don't allow them too many liberties' was Detleef's prescription.

But the Colouredswhat to do about them? They were not of any one clear racewhite-black-Malay-Indian-Hottentotnor of any one religion, for many were Muslim. They had no specific terrain, for they lived everywhere. And they were certainly not primitives, for most of them had the intellectual and technical capacities of whites. But they were in a sense unidentified, unspecified, and as such they could be ignored.

They were needed. In every industry, jobs went unfilled because Coloureds were not allowed to take them. In every aspect of growth there was inhibition because Coloureds were forbidden to a.s.sociate equally with whites. Constantly they were restricted to lower levels of achievement when obviously they had the capacity to do much better. In these years a marvelous opportunity was lost.

All nations make mistakes, terrible miscalculations which once adopted can rarely be amended. In England it was social categories that inhibited normal development in many areas, creating animosities that festered. In India it was rigid stratification of caste, descending even to untouchability. In j.a.pan it was the persecution of the Eta and the denigrating of the Okinawan. And in America it was the blundering incapacity to deal with blacks. In South Africa the fearful miscalculation occurred in the 1920-1960 quadridecade when the white ruling cla.s.ses could have reached out and embraced the Coloureds, welcoming them into a respected partners.h.i.+p.

Only by following the logic of Detleef and his two women on New Year's Day 1951 can one approximate an answer to this enigma of a nation's casting aside a major treasure. Detleef opened the conversation: 'It occurs to me that we are far from solving the big problem.'

'The Bantu?' Johanna asked. She was seventy-one now, no longer employed in Johannesburg, but nevertheless a major factor in Afrikaner women's circles. 'We know very well what to do with the Bantu. Treat them justly but keep them in their place.'

'I mean the Coloureds.'

'That is a problem,' Maria agreed, and she set the tone for the discussion: 'They are the children of sin, and G.o.d must despise them.'

'They are mongrels,' Johanna said, 'and I wish we could cleanse the nation of them as we did the Chinese. Remember that day, Detleef, when you saw the last Chinese go down the cog railway to Waterval-Onder. That was a wonderful day in our history.' Longingly she thought of this, then said briskly, 'In Cape Town the other day I walked about District Six. That could be made into one of the finest sections of Cape Town, but it's crowded with Coloureds. They must all be moved out.'

'To where, Johanna? Where?'

That line of discussion ended, but the three puritans were not finished with Maria's opening statement. 'They really are children of sin,' Detleef agreed. 'They're a rebuke to G.o.d-fearing Christians, a reminder of our fathers' transgressions.'

'Not our fathers,' Maria protested. 'It was sailors from the s.h.i.+ps that stopped here.'

Detleef and his sister nodded. The existence of the Coloureds was an affront to them, and it was a blessing, the gathering felt, that the original Dutch and Huguenot settlers had not been involved. 'It was the sailors,' Detleef repeated, and as he thought of this blot on the nation he resolved to do something about it. Accordingly, when he returned to Cape Town and the session of Parliament, he labored far into the night, week after week, trying to devise some cauterization of this ugly moral wound.

When the year was well spent he discovered one area in which he could introduce reform, but it was so controversial that it would occupy major attention for five years. In 1910, when England had engineered Union between its colonies, two clauses in the enabling legislation were entrenched that is, they were judged so vital that they could be altered only by a vote of two-thirds of the two Houses of Parliament sitting together. Section 137 protected English and Dutch (later Afrikaans) as languages of equal legal merit; Section 35 a.s.sured the Coloureds that they would always have the right to vote in Cape Province.

Although no Coloured men could stand for Parliamentthat would be repugnantthey did vote on a common roll with the whites, casting their ballots for the white candidate who would best represent their interests. In 1948 more than fifty thousand had voted, almost all for Jan s.m.u.ts' party, and in seven crucial const.i.tuencies their vote defeated the Nationalists. They were a growing power, and the vote must be taken from them.

'They pollute the political process,' Detleef warned again and again. 'This is a white man's country, and to allow those d.a.m.ned Coloureds to vote dilutes our purity.' He located parliamentarians to bring onto the floor the bills he masterminded, but trouble ensued. 'It's that miserable Section 35,' he growled to his women. 'I'm afraid we can't muster a two-thirds vote.' He was right. When his men carried to the floor their bill stripping Coloureds of their voting rights, it failed to win the majority required, and it seemed as if the attempt was dead, at least for the 1951 session.

But Detleef was resourceful, and spurred by a suggestion thrown out by his sister, he convinced his supporters in Parliament to try a daring gambit: 'Because of changes in the laws governing the British Empire, Section 35 is no longer operative. We can pa.s.s our bill with only a simple majority.'

With excitement and joy his men did just that, and the Coloureds were disenfranchised. But the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, sitting in Bloemfontein away from the pressures of the Cape, declared the new law unconst.i.tutional, and 1951 ended with Coloureds still allowed to vote, a most offensive situation.

Detleef would not surrender, and his next move was downright ingenious. He did not dislike Coloureds personally; he knew some of excellent reputation and wished them well. But he was galled that these offspring of sin should have equal rights with white people, and now he came up with a master plan: 'Maria, I think I have it! We will supersede the Appellate Court!'

'I shouldn't think that would be possible. It's in the const.i.tution.'

'We'll leave it there. What we'll do is establish Parliament itself as the "High Court of the Nation." If the two Houses, sitting together, approve a law which they themselves have pa.s.sedand it seems to me they always would, having just pa.s.sed itthen it becomes law and the Appellate Court can say nothing in the matter.'

It was clean and simple. It pa.s.sed Parliament quickly and the High Court, composed entirely of Nationalist members, reversed the decision of the nation's highest court of justice. With blazing speed the Coloureds were thrown off the common rolls, and with almost equal speed the Appellate Court annulled the whole process, p.r.o.nouncing it a mockery. So 1952 ended in another defeat.

Elections in 1953 gave the government more Afrikaner seats in Parliament, so once more Detleef shepherded his bill toward a two-thirds majority, and once more he failed. At this point the average man would have quit, but Detleef was so offended by those who resisted his attempts to simplify matters that he barged ahead with still new devices. As he told Johanna and Maria after this third disappointment: 'The d.a.m.ned Coloureds don't seem to realize that we're doing this for their own good. It's our job as white men to study the nation and determine what's best for all, and then to pa.s.s the necessary laws.'

'They don't really need the vote,' Maria agreed. 'They can't possibly be interested in the things that concern us. They should fall back into place and be quiet.'

Johanna, feeling her life slipping away, was more bitter: 'Detleef, you must eliminate them from national life. Clear them out of the cities. Keep them off the work force. They're an affront to the nation, and if you don't keep trying to get rid of them, I'll be ashamed of you.'

'You speak as if you wanted us to s.h.i.+p them out, the way we did the Chinese.'

'I'd like that.'

'But don't you see, Johanna, there's no place to s.h.i.+p them. They have no homeland. They're the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds of the world, and we're stuck with them.'

'Well, think of something!'

'I will. I promise you I will, but I must have time to plan.'

National attention was diverted from the Coloured question by 'Virtue Triumphant,' a rather florid statue that was placed in front of the government buildings in Pretoria. It had been carved by a promising young Afrikaner much influenced by Michelangelo and sculptors of the Quattrocento; it showed a woman of rather heroic proportions fending off lions, pythons and a politician who looked remarkably like Hoggenheimer. As with the work of many great sculptors, the woman was nude.

Many Afrikaner housewives, especially those from the Transvaal country districts, questioned the propriety of such a statue, and Johanna van Doorn, now seventy-four, came rus.h.i.+ng down to the Cape, where Parliament was in session, to share her outrage with Detleef: 'It's immoral! There's no place in the Bible that condones naked women. St. Paul is emphatic that they must remain covered.'

'I think that refers to wearing hats in church,' Detleef said.

'If he could see this statue, he'd include it, believe me.'

She got nowhere with Detleef, but her feeling was so intense that Maria said, 'When we return to Pretoria, I must see this thing.'

'You won't like it,' Johanna predicted, and later, when the two women went to inspect the offending sculpture, Maria was even more incensed than her sister-in-law, and when she reached her rooms she penned a sharp letter to an Afrikaans newspaper: All Afrikaner womankind is insulted by having such a statue in such a place. It is offensive to the spirit of the Bible and treats with contempt the n.o.ble traditions of our people. Women in Afrikaner statues should wear long dresses, like the ones shown in the Vrouemonument in Bloemfontein. For them to appear naked embarra.s.ses not only all Afrikaner women, but also most of the men. The damage it does to children is incalculable. On behalf of all Afrikaner women, I demand that either the statue be taken down or that Virtue wear a dress.

Of course, the English-language press, always eager to embarra.s.s its Afrikaner opposition, had a frolic with Mrs. van Doorn's proposals, and cartoons appeared showing Virtue wearing a Mother Hubbard, or a chain of fig leaves, or bending over to protect herself. One especially scurrilous cartoon depicted Oom Paul Kruger as this excellent statue, completely nude except for his top hat and one rather large oak leaf.

Foreign newspapers, ever on the alert for a story that would symbolize the curious happenings in South Africa, quoted Mrs. van Doorn's strictures about art, and when, under pressure, she gave an interview about the statue, editors had a joyous time: 'Ninety percent of Afrikaner women feel the way I do about that horrid statue. A few spineless art critics who defend it say that Michelangelo carved such statues for the prominent plazas in Italy. All I can say is that Michelangelo may be all right for Italians, who have a very low standard of morality, but he has no place in South Africa. Besides, what was this woman doing fighting a snake with no clothes on?'

She won her battle. The matter was resolved rather neatlyby converting 'Virtue Triumphant' into a man, who fought the same enemies naked but behind a s.h.i.+eld that protected the sensibilities.