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‘Then so is all sexual intercourse unless the parties are married! Okay – if that is the will of God, I challenge this government to make all sexual intercourse outside wedlock a crime! I defy them! Come on! Make a total laughing stock of yourselves!’
The Speaker pounded his gavel. ‘I warn you, Mr Mahoney, that personal insults will not be tolerated.’
‘“Personal insults”?’ George Mahoney echoed, astonished. ‘But these laws are personal insults, Mr Speaker, and just as insulting, just as humiliating, just as unchristian, just as stupidly cruel, are the laws governing public places! Petty apartheid. The Separate Amenities Act is the most conspicuous form of insult, made in public for all the world to see! The petty apartheid, designed by petty minds and strictly enforced by petty policemen, the notices that insist on separate amenities like public lavatories, benches, playgrounds, beaches, railway coaches, entrances to public buildings, separate libraries, cinemas, bars, hotels, eating establishments, buses – even separate elevators, for God’s sake, Mr Speaker!’
‘The Honourable Member for Transkei will kindly not blaspheme!’
‘If that is blasphemy, I repent. But the legislation is a tremendous blasphemy itself. How unchristian it is to say to our fellow citizens: You are not good enough to sit next to me on a train or bus or a barstool or in a restaurant or to swim in the same surf or read in the same library –
‘They have their own amenities, a government backbencher shouted, ‘separate but equal!’
‘“Equal”?’ George echoed. ‘Then whites are much more equal than non-whites in this mad-hatter country of ours, Mr Speaker! Because any fool with one eye can tell you that not only are all the non-white amenities inferior to the whites’, but there are much fewer of them! Yet’ there are many more non-whites than whites! This is equal? The honourable member should look up the word “equal” in the dictionary, if he has one. He could look up the word “Christian” at the same time and really have a confusing day.’
He shook his head. ‘Why, Mr Speaker, does this government insist on insulting the majority of the populace in this manner? Why does this government insist on courting hatred? On courting rebellion? On courting its own destruction?’ He looked around, his bushy eyebrows raised. ‘Is it because the government is so stupid that it believes that political chaos will ensue if a non-white sits next to me on a bus, or barstool, or enjoys the same surf, or buys his ice-cream at the same kiosk, or his postage stamp at the same post office window? Is it credible that this government is so stupid, when you bear in mind that there are certain things that even this government has failed to segregate – roads for example. Sidewalks. Pedestrian crossings. Traffic lights. Shop windows. Shops – it is still legal for a black lady to walk into Woolworths, stand beside me and buy the same socks I do – though she better not try subversive stuff like that if she buys a postage stamp, no sir!’
He nodded theatrically, and dropped his voice to a growl. ‘Yes, of course it is credible, and this government probably hopes to segregate the sidewalks, roads, and Woolworths too when their Clever Chaps Department can dream up the tricky legislation.’ He beamed sadly at the prime minister; then replaced his scowl and thundered: ‘But that stupidity is only half of the appalling unchristian reason! The other half is even more awful, and it will be the downfall of this whole country. And that reason is racial prejudice, Mr Speaker!’ He glowered around. ‘Indeed racial hatred. Belief in racial superiority! It is the government’s belief that they are the master race and that it is wrong for a non-white person to sit beside them in a bus, or swim in the same surf! It is a belief in Baaskap, in Bosshood – I am the boss, and you inferior mortals are not as human as I, not worthy to be near me except as my servant, my garden boy, my child’s nursemaid, my farm labourer, the man who shovels rocks on the mines!’ He jabbed his finger again. ‘That is the rotten basis of this petty apartheid – apart from the towering political and economic injustices of grand apartheid – and that rotten base will rot the whole country, for our racial prejudice is breeding racial hatred in return – the Afrikaner has sown the seeds of his own destruction!’
Mutters and groans from the government benches. George Mahoney cried: ‘Oh yes, Mr Speaker – we’ve already had the massive Defiance Campaign in 1952 when hundreds of thousands embarked on Gandhian civil disobedience to throw the administration into confusion – for months we had thousands of protesters defying apartheid and curfews and pass-laws so as to invite arrest – over eight thousand people were convicted and thirty-two people lost their lives in confrontations with police, including six whites, including a nun, Sister Aiden –’
‘And who killed her?’ demanded a backbencher. ‘The very same blacks she was trying to help – brutally murdered her, cut out her liver for medicine. Savagery killed her, not apartheid –’
‘That type of savagery,’ George Mahoney cried, ‘is what apartheid will provoke, again and again – confrontation and mob violence!’ He glared around the chamber. ‘What a tragedy! And what a waste. Of energy and money! The vast body of law that this mad science has built has required tremendously hard work by the police, by the courts, by the legislator, who should have his well-paid mind on beneficial projects, not destructive ones. It’s all a profligate waste of money which could be spent on black betterment schemes, making them better citizens – instead of making them our enemies! And not only is it a stupid waste, not only is it dangerous, it brings the whole nation into international disrepute!’ He paused, glowering at the government benches, then ended: ‘For these compelling reasons, Mr Speaker, I move a vote of no confidence in this government.’
Luke Mahoney wanted to burst into applause.
2 (#ulink_fa84b819-913e-51e2-acf0-cd71aca18d8d)
Out there in the tribal lands there had been troubles for years arising out of the Bantu Authorities Act, which resulted in indirect Pretoria rule through subservient chiefs; but in the black urban areas resistance to apartheid had waned after the failure of the Defiance Campaign. And so the ANC and Indian Congress issued a ‘Call to a Congress of the People’ to be convened on 26 June 1955, at Kliptown, near Johannesburg. Volunteers across the land canvassed opinions and collected grievances at furtive meetings, and on the appointed day three thousand delegates of all races from scores of organizations converged on the football stadium at dusty, wintry, joyless Kliptown.
Amongst them was a beautiful young Indian schoolgirl, called Patti Gandhi, who had journeyed up from the faraway Transkei by bus on her own initiative to listen to her heroes, in particular to hear a young man called Nelson Mandela who hailed from the same part of the land as she.
In the centre of the football pitch on a platform with microphones stood the convenors; about them the sea of delegates. The proposed Freedom Charter was read out, each clause followed by a rousing speech from the platform. That night Patti Gandhi read it aloud to herself, over and over, until she knew it by heart.
WE THE PEOPLE OF SOUTH AFRICA DECLARE FOR OUR COUNTRY AND THE WORLD TO KNOW:
That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people;
That our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality and that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood …
That only a democratic state can secure all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief.
And therefore we, the people of South Africa, black and white together – equals, countrymen and brothers – adopt this Freedom Charter:
THE PEOPLE SHALL GOVERN!
Every man and woman shall have the right to vote …
ALL NATIONAL GROUPS SHALL HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS!
… all apartheid laws and practices shall be set aside.
THE PEOPLE SHALL SHARE IN THE COUNTRY’S WEALTH!
… the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people.
All other industry and trade shall be controlled …
THE LAND SHALL BE SHARED AMONG THOSE WHO WORK IT!
… and all the land re-divided … to banish famine and land-hunger … All shall have the right to occupy land wherever they choose …
ALL SHALL BE EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW …
No one shall be imprisoned, deported or restricted without a fair trial …
ALL SHALL ENJOY EQUAL HUMAN RIGHTS!
… all shall be free to travel from countryside to town … and from South Africa abroad; pass laws, permits and all other laws … shall be abolished.
THERE SHALL BE WORK AND SECURITY! THE DOORS OF LEARNING … SHALL BE OPENED! THERE SHALL BE HOUSES, SECURITY AND COMFORT! THERE SHALL BE PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP …
Let all who love their people and their country now say, as we say here:
THOSE FREEDOMS WE WILL FIGHT FOR, SIDE BY SIDE, THROUGHOUT OUR LIVES, UNTIL WE HAVE WON OUR LIBERTY!
The Freedom Charter was adopted by popular acclaim, though a group called the Africanists rejected it because of its multi-racialism: they wanted Africa for the Africans, and they broke away from the ANC to form the Pan Africanist Congress. The next day the people reconvened. That day the South African police struck, with a crack of thunder.
Suddenly the stadium was surrounded, and into the mass went the police. They photographed every individual, and they seized thousands of documents, looking for evidence of treason. Hundreds were arrested. Thus began the infamous Treason Trial.
It was held in the cavernous Johannesburg Drill Hall, remodelled to provide a massive dock to hold 156 accused, sitting in tiers. One of them was the young Xhosa lawyer called Nelson Mandela. The trial was to last for five years, the longest trial in history.
In those days the wind of change was starting to blow in Africa. In Kenya the Mau Mau rebellion was raging; in Ghana the Great Redeemer, Kwame Nkrumah, was demanding independence from Britain, proclaiming himself leader of the Pan African movement; in Nigeria and Tanganyika independence was being loudly demanded; in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland a policy of ‘Partnership’ was being attempted but black politicians were demanding immediate majority rule. The Cold War was raging and Russia was providing arms and training, inspiration and indoctrination to the black nationalists. The Western colonial powers, exsanguinated by two world wars, alarmed by the Cold War, had lost their will to govern, appeasement was becoming the order of the day, and the white settlers were afraid, and angry. But in South Africa the government said it had the answer to this Swart Gevaar, this Black Peril: they were building a model state which would keep the races apart, each to develop in its own way, enforced by kragdadigheid, strength-to-do, and South Africa would be the bastion against communism.
In those days the Mahoneys lived in a big old Victorian house near the centre of Umtata, capital of the Transkei. The garden occupied half a suburban block and Mrs Mahoney hired black convicts, called Tame Bandits, from the prison to keep it neat. George Mahoney had his law office in Main Street, which was wide enough to turn a wagon drawn by sixteen oxen, and there were hitching posts for horses. There were always many Xhosa in their red blankets in Main Street, smoking their long pipes, looking in the Victorian shop windows. The big old Victorian courthouse was set in large lawns, where crowds of Xhosa would sit, waiting for court to begin. On the benches outside George Mahoney’s office there were always dozens of Xhosa, waiting to consult the white lawyer who always won cases.
‘But there’s no money in being a small-town attorney, son,’ George told Luke. ‘None of my clients has much money. You’re going to be an advocate, son, in the big city, get amongst the big stuff.’
‘But he doesn’t want to be a lawyer,’ Mrs Mahoney said, ‘he’s talking about being a journalist.’
‘That’s this week. Next week it’ll be law again. I tell you, this son of ours is going to be a bloody good lawyer.’
‘But I don’t think it’s right for a boy of fourteen to be spending his afternoons and holidays in a stuffy law office.’
‘If I was a farmer my boy of fourteen would be ploughing the land. If I was a shopkeeper he would be helping behind the counter. There is no finer training for a law student than to sit in my office and watch how it’s done. Life in the raw! Crime, divorce, debt-collecting, he’ll have seen it all by the time he leaves school. The boy’s a natural.’
‘Well, I’m sorry but I really don’t think it’s right to spend so much time in court, hearing all those sordid details –’
‘The world is sordid and the best place to learn about it is the courtroom – the forum of human drama, learning to sift the wheat from the chaff, strong points from weak points –’
Beyond the courthouse was the Bhungha, an imposing white building which used to be the Native Representative Council until apartheid put an end to that; and opposite was the school for whites. Umtata had a population of only three thousand whites, but the school taught almost one thousand because most of the pupil’s were the children of the traders who lived way out in the rolling hills that stretched from the Kei River in the west to the Umzimvubu in the east, from the Indian Ocean in the south to the Drakensberg in the north, a territory almost the size of Scotland, of which George Mahoney was the parliamentary representative. On the other side of town, down near the winding Umtata River with its weeping willows, was the poorer part of town, where most of the Afrikaners lived, mostly artisans and railway workers, with chickens and maybe a cow in the backyard. Beyond them, on the very edge of town, lived the Coloureds, the half-castes, and this is also where Patti Gandhi lived.
Legally speaking, the Gandhi family should not have lived in a Coloured area, but in an Asian area, but as there were no other Indians in town the mentors of the Group Areas Act had not yet got around to zoning a separate residential area for them. Mr Gandhi was not allowed to trade in Main Street, which was a white area, but his store two streets back, where he had his small clothing factory, was also tolerated. It was in a grey area which the scientists in Pretoria would have to clean up one day, but until then the police did not know what to do with them.
For the same reason Patti Gandhi’s attendance at the white convent, St Mary’s College, had to be tolerated although she wasn’t even a Christian: the Coloured school was quite inadequate, and of course the government high school, which Luke Mahoney attended, was out of the question. It was George Mahoney who persuaded the police commandant to turn a blind eye, ‘until such time as this bloody government builds an Asian school just for her!’
‘She should be sent to school in Natal, where all the Indians are,’ Colonel Visser said uncomfortably.
‘For God’s sake, Colonel, you can’t tear a family apart! The girl’s in her formative years, the Gandhis are a very law-abiding family and it’s a great expense to send your child away to school!’
‘Old Gandhi’s got more money than you and me put together, sir, and I don’t know how law-abiding he is – look at that swank house he’s built illegally in the Coloured area.’
‘The man’s got to live somewhere and as the government hasn’t yet told him where that is, he’s perfectly entitled to build a decent house on the land he’s owned for decades. And that, you can take it from me,’ he said with more conviction than was warranted, ‘is the law.’ He appealed: ‘If the servants of God are prepared to help her, so should you.’
‘Okay,’ the colonel sighed, ‘I saw nothing. But –’ he held up a warning finger – ‘no sport, hey. No swimming, no hockey, no socializing, none of that nonsense. And one complaint and she’s on the bus to Natal.’
‘On my head be it!’ George Mahoney beamed. ‘She’ll cause no trouble. She’s exceptionally intelligent …’
And she was exceptionally good-looking. As a little girl she was angelic, as a nymph of twelve she was beautiful, as a fifteen-year-old she was gorgeous. She was tall and smooth of movement, with long black shiny hair that reached to her waist, long golden legs under her demure gym-skirt, a face to make one stare, big almond eyes and a smile, when she gave it, to melt the heart. And she caused plenty of trouble in the loins of the boys of Umtata High School. But they seldom saw her: her father drove her to and from school so she would be seen as little as possible in her convent uniform lest a complaint be raised. If the boys wanted to see her they had to go to the Gandhi Store, where she worked after school: but how many excuses could a lad find for buying in a ‘kaffir store’? She often worked in her father’s garment factory, but what excuse could a schoolboy find for visiting that? And when she was seen that beautiful smile was seldom given: she was an aloof, haughty girl.
‘She hasn’t got much to smile about, has she?’ Luke’s sister Jill said. ‘No friends.’
‘Aren’t your friends at the convent nice to her?’ Mrs Mahoney asked.
‘I mean after school.’
‘Well, she should be grateful she’s getting a decent education – and these people prefer their own company anyway.’
‘But there are no other Indians for her to be friends with. Can I invite her home one day to have a swim?’
Ooh, yes please, Luke prayed. Patti Gandhi in a swimsuit …
‘Definitely not. I’m not having Indians in our pool!’
Only one Indian … Mahoney prayed.
‘Mother, she’s perfectly clean, you know!’ Jill cried.
‘The subject,’ Mrs Mahoney said, ‘is closed.’
‘Well,’ Jill sulked, ‘can I at least invite her to my birthday party?’
Mrs Mahoney sighed. ‘No darling – she’ll be like a fish out of water. Who’ll dance with her?’
Me – me – me … Mahoney prayed.
‘I’m all for giving the girl a good education, but socializing with her is something entirely different. And what good will it do her? She can’t keep the friendships up afterwards – it’s even unkind to her …’
Jill turned in appeal to her father: ‘Daddy?’
George Mahoney sighed. ‘I think your mother’s right, my dear – if for different reasons. I promised Colonel Visser there’d be no socializing. I’ve got no objection to the girl coming to your party – and, by the way it’s not illegal – not yet – but that is socializing, and it’ll get back to your friends’ parents, and somebody may kick up a fuss, and it’ll get to the police and, well, I’ll have broken the bargain, won’t I, and Patti Gandhi could well be told to leave the convent. It could cause trouble, without her being in any way to blame …’
But Patti Gandhi was to blame for the trouble. It happened in Luke’s second-last year at high school. That was the year the government translocated the people of Sophiatown, the black spot in white residential Johannesburg, to Soweto, the sprawling black township on the outskirts of the golden city. The year of the heartbreak of Sophiatown, the destruction of a whole teeming city within a city, a whole way of life, to replace it with a white middle-class suburb to be called Triomf, meaning Triumph. For months the government had been warning the people of Sophiatown that the day was approaching when vehicles would come to move them; it was the day the lorries and bulldozers arrived that Patti Gandhi, fifteen years old, walked into the public library in Umtata, took a book off the shelf and sat down to read.
‘Excuse me,’ the librarian, nice Mrs van Jaarsveld, whispered, ‘but this library is for whites only.’
Ten minutes later Mrs van Jaarsveld felt obliged to fulfil her threat to call the police. An hour later Patti Gandhi was released by a fed-up Colonel Visser into the custody of her father with a stern warning not to try any funny business like that again. By nightfall it was the talk of the town.
‘Oh, hell!’ George Mahoney groaned.
The next day was Saturday, when the boarders at the girls’ hostel and the boys’ hostel were allowed into town. The big topic of conversation was what that Indian girl, Patti Gandhi, had done. At mid-morning she walked into the Rex Café, where the boarders were all tucking into their ice-creams and milk-shakes and, midst the ensuing sudden silence, sat down at an empty table, held out her money and asked the Coloured waitress for a Coca-Cola. The waitress called the owner. The owner called the police. ‘What,’ the Afrikaner constable demanded, ‘are you doing here, hey?’
‘I am endeavouring,’ Patti Gandhi said, ‘to quench my thirst.’
‘Well, jus’ you ender- whatchacallit along with me, hey …’
This time Colonel Visser was really angry. ‘Is this how you treat my kindness?’ He telephoned her father to come. ‘This is her last warning! Next time it’s straight into Juvenile Court! I hope you give her a bladdy good hiding, hey!’
‘I will, sir, thank you, sir,’ Mr Gandhi said.
He did not give her the hiding ‘which you deserve’ – ‘Don’t you realize we have no rights to even be here under the Group Areas Act?’
‘That’s exactly what I realize. And nor do the people of Sophiatown have any rights!’
‘Sophiatown!’ the old man shouted. ‘I’m sick of hearing about Sophiatown! Just thank your lucky stars you’re not in Sophiatown but in Umtata where people are kind to us!’
‘Kind?’ She rolled her flashing eyes. ‘God help us when they get unkind!’
‘Here we can survive, because of nice people like Mr Mahoney and Colonel Visser whose hand you bite –’
‘“Bite!” Reading a book is a bite? Asking for a Coca-Cola!’ She bared her teeth. ‘Just wait till I do bite …’
‘Don’t you threaten me!’ Mr Gandhi wanted to slap her face but checked himself. ‘Don’t you threaten our existence! We’ve survived and that is an achievement! Your grandfather came here as a coolie to cut cane for a rupee a day, and now look at us! Look at this house! Look at our factories!’
‘And look at my great-uncle! He ended up liberating India from the British!’
‘And I suppose you want to liberate South Africa with your library books and Coca-Colas!’
‘Yes!’ Patti hollered. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’
Quivering with rage, her father sent her to bed for the rest of the day. But as soon as he had gone back to the factory she climbed out of the window, and cycled to her father’s store. She unlocked the back door and went to the hardware counter. With bolt-cutters she sliced off two metres of chain. She selected two stout padlocks and a pair of pliers. Then she rode across town to the municipal swimming pool.
Saturday was a big day at the municipal pool. In the afternoons most of the girls from the high school and convent came to meet their boyfriends. The fenced lawns around the pool were choked with young bodies when Patti Gandhi arrived. She parked her bicycle with the others, then set off to approach the area from the back.
She crept up the storm-water culvert that led up the side of the big fence, then into the shrubbery beyond. She crept up to the hedge that lined the mesh-wire fence. With the pliers she cut a hole.
Nobody noticed Patti Gandhi wriggling through, nobody noticed her until she strolled across the lawn, her lovely young body golden, her breasts bulging and her hips slowly swinging, her soft thighs stroking each other, her long black hair down to her waist, her seldom-seen smile all over her beautiful face: then every head was turning. Patti Gandhi sauntered across the lawn, carrying a little hold-all, her towel trailing languidly, making for the high-diving board. She climbed up it, two hundred pairs of astonished eyes upon her. She had reached the top and sauntered out to the end of the board when the pool manager, Frikkie van Schalkwyk, came bustling out of his office.
‘Hey!’ he shouted furiously. ‘Hey! Get out of here, man!’
