by Wilbur Smith
He could not look at his father as he said it, but stared ahead through the windscreen, until he heard a soft choking sound beside him and with alarm turned quickly. Lothar was weeping, tears slid down his withered old cheeks.
‘I’m sorry, Pa.’ Manfred pulled the Chevrolet off the road and switched off the engine. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’ He pulled the white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to his father.
Lothar wiped his face slowly, but his hand was steady, and his wandering mind seemed to have been concentrated by the shock.
‘How long have you known that she was your real mother?’ he asked, and his voice was firm and sure. Manfred’s soul quailed, he had hoped to hear his father deny it.
‘She came to see me when first I stood for parliament. She blackmailed me, for her other son’s sake. I had him in my power. She threatened to expose the fact that I was her bastard son and destroy my candidacy if I acted against her other son. She dared me to ask you if it was not true, but I could not bring myself to do it.’
‘It’s true,’ Lothar nodded. ‘I’m sorry, my son. I lied to you only to protect you.’
‘I know.’ Manfred reached across and took the bony hand as the old man went on.
‘When I found her in the desert, she was so young and helpless – and beautiful. I was young and lonely – it was just the two of us, and her infant, alone together in the desert. We fell in love.’
‘You don’t have to explain,’ Manfred told him, but Lothar seemed not to hear him.
‘One night two wild Bushmen came into our camp. I thought they were marauders, come to steal our horses and oxen. I followed them, and caught up with them at dawn. I shot them down before I was within range of their poison arrows. It was the way we dealt with those dangerous little yellow animals in those days.’
‘Yes, Pa, I know.’ Manfred had read the history of his people’s conflict with and extermination of the Bushmen tribes.
‘I did not know it then, but she had lived with these same two little Bushmen before I found her. They had helped her survive the desert and tended her when she gave birth to her first child. She had come to love them, she even called them “old grandfather” and “old grandmother”.’ He shook his head wonderingly, still unable to comprehend this relationship of a white woman with savages. ‘I did not know it, and I shot them without realizing what they meant to her. Her love for me changed to bitter hatred. I know now that her love could not have been very deep, perhaps it was only loneliness and gratitude and not love at all. After that she hated me, and the hatred extended to my child that she was carrying in her womb. To you, Manie. She made me take you away the moment you were born. She hated us both so deeply that she wanted never to set eyes on you. I cared for you after that.’
‘You were my father and my mother.’ Manfred bowed his head, ashamed and angry that he had forced the old man to relive those tragically cruel events. ‘What you have told me explains so much that I could never understand.’
‘Ja.’ Lothar wiped fresh tears away with the white handkerchief. ‘She hated me, but you see I still loved her. No matter how cruelly she treated me, I was obsessed with her. That was the reason why I committed the folly of the robbery. It was a madness and it cost me this arm.’ He held up the empty sleeve. ‘And my freedom. She is a hard woman. A woman without mercy. She will not hesitate to destroy anything or anybody who stands in her way. She is your mother, but be careful of her, Manie. Her hatred is a terrible thing.’ The old man reached across and seized his son’s arm, shaking it in his agitation. ‘You must have nothing to do with her, Manie. She will destroy you as she has destroyed me. Promise me you will never have anything to do with her or her family.’
‘I’m sorry, Pa,’ Manfred shook his head. ‘I am already tied to her through her son,’ he hesitated to give voice to the next words, ‘to my brother, to my half-brother, Shasa Courtney. It seems, Papa, that our bloodlines and our destinies are so closely tangled together that we can never be free of each other.’
‘Oh, my son, my son,’ Lothar De La Rey lamented. ‘Be careful — please be careful.’
Manfred reached for the ignition key to start the engine, but paused before he touched it.
‘Tell me, Pa. How do you feel for this woman now – for my mother?’
Lothar was silent for a moment before he answered. ‘I hate her almost as much as I still love her.’
‘It is strange that we can love and hate at the same time.’ Manfred shook his head slightly with wonder. ‘I hate her for what she has done to you. I hate her for all the things she stands for, and yet her blood calls to mine. At the end, when all else is put aside, Centaine Courtney is my mother and Shasa Courtney is my brother. Love or hatred — which will prevail, Papa?’
‘I wish I could tell you, my son,’ Lothar whispered miserably. ‘I can only repeat what I have already told you. Be careful of them, Manie. Mother and son, they are dangerous adversaries.’
For almost twenty years Marcus Archer had owned the old farmhouse at Rivonia. He had purchased the five-acre small-holding before the area became fashionable. Now the fairways and greens of the Johannesburg Country Club, the most exclusive private club on the Witwatersand, backed right up against Marcus’ boundary. The trustees of the Country Club had offered him fifteen times his original purchase price, over £100,000, but Marcus steadfastly refused to sell.
On all the other large plots that comprised the Rivonia Estate, the prosperous new owners – entrepreneurs and stockbrokers and successful doctors – had built large pretentious homes, most of them in the low sprawling ranch-house style which was the rage, or with pink clay tile roofs, imaginative copies of Mexican haciendas or Mediterranean villas, and they had surrounded the main buildings with paddocks and stables, with tennis courts and swimming-pools and wide lawns that the winter highveld frosts burned the colour of cured tobacco leaves.
Marcus Archer had re-thatched the roof of the old farmhouse, whitewashed the walls, and planted frangipani and bougainvillaea and other flowering shrubs and let the grounds grow wild and unkempt, so that even from its own boundary fence the house was completely screened.
Although the area was now very much a bastion of the wealthy white elite, the Country Club employed a large staff of waiters and kitchen helpers and groundsmen and golf caddies, so black faces were not remarkable, as they might have been on the streets of some of the other wealthy white suburbs. Marcus’ friends and political allies could come and go without arousing unwelcome interest. So Puck’s Hill, as Marcus had recently renamed his farmhouse, gradually became the rallying ground for some of the most active of the African Nationalist movements, the leaders of black consciousness and their white compatriots, the remnants of the defunct Communist Party.
It was only natural, therefore, that Puck’s Hill was chosen as the headquarters for the final planning and coordination of the black disobedience campaign that was about to begin. However, it was not a unified group that came together under Marcus Archer’s roof, for although their stated final objective was the same, their separate visions of the future differed widely.
Firstly, there was the old guard of the African National Congress headed by Dr Xuma. They were the conservatives, committed to plodding negotiation with white civil servants within the unyielding established system.
‘You people have been doing that since 1912 when the ANC was formed,’ Nelson Mandela glared at him. ‘It is time to move on to confrontation, to force our will upon the Boers.’
Nelson Mandela was a young lawyer, practising on the Witwatersrand in partnership with another activist named Oliver Tambo. Together they were making a strong challenge for the leadership of the Young Turks in the Congress hierarchy.
‘It is time for us to move on to direct action.’ Nelson Mandela leaned forward in his chair and looked down the long kitchen table. The kitchen was the largest room in Puck’s Hill, and all their meetings were held in it. ‘We have drawn up a programme of boycott and strike and
civil disobedience.’ Mandela was speaking in English, and Moses Gama sitting near the end of the table watched him impassively, but all the time his mind was racing ahead of the speaker, assessing and evaluating. He as much as any of them present was aware of the undertones in the room. There was not a single black man present who did not cherish, somewhere in his soul, the dream of one day leading all the others, of one day being hailed as the paramount chief of all southern Africa.
Yet the fact that Mandela spoke in English pointed up the single most poignant fact that they had to face: they were all different. Mandela was a Tembu, Xuma was a Zulu, Moses Gama himself was an Ovambo, and there were half a dozen other tribes represented in the room.
‘It would be a hundred times easier if we blacks were all one people,’ Moses thought, and then despite himself he glanced uneasily at the Zulus, sitting together as a group across the table. They were the majority, not only in this room, but in the country as a whole. What if they somehow formed an alliance with the whites? It was a disquieting thought, but he put it firmly aside. The Zulus were the proudest, most independent of the warrior tribes. Before the white man came, they had conquered all their neighbouring peoples and held them subjugated. The Zulu King Chaka had called them his dogs. Because of their multitudes and their warrior tradition, it was almost certain that the first black President of South Africa would be a Zulu, or someone with very close ties to the Zulu nation. Ties of marriage — not for the first time Moses thought about that possibility with narrowed eyes; it was time he married anyway. He was almost forty-five years of age. A Zulu maiden of royal blood? He stored the idea for future consideration, and concentrated once again on what Nelson Mandela was saying.
The man had charisma and a presence, and he was articulate and persuasive, a rival — a very dangerous rival. Moses recognized that fact as he had often before. They were all rivals. However, the Youth League of the ANC was Nelson Mandela’s power base, the hotheads, young men burning for action, and even now Mandela was proposing caution, tempering his call for action with reservations.
‘There must be no gratuitous violence,’ he was saying. ‘No damage to private property, no danger to human life—’ and although Moses Gama nodded wisely, he wondered how much appeal that would have with the rank and file of the Youth League. Would they not prefer the offer of a bloody and glorious victory? That was something else to be considered.
‘We must show our people the way, we must demonstrate that we are all one in this enterprise,’ Mandela was saying now, and Moses Gama smiled inwardly. The total membership of the ANC was seven thousand, while his secret union of mineworkers numbered almost ten times that figure. It would be as well to remind Mandela and the rest of them of his overwhelming support amongst the best paid and most strategically placed of all the black population. Moses turned slightly and looked at the man who sat beside him, and felt an untoward pang of affection. Hendrick Tabaka had been beside him like this for twenty years.
Swart Hendrick was a big man, as tall as Moses but wider across the shoulder, and heavier around the middle, with thick-muscled limbs. His head was round and bald as a cannonball and laced with scars from ancient fights and battles. His front teeth were missing, and Moses remembered how the white man who had done that to him had died.
He was Moses’ half-brother, son of the same father, a chief of the Ovambo, but of a different mother. He was the one man in all the world whom Moses trusted, a trust not lightly given but earned over all of those twenty years. He was the only black man in this room who was not a rival, but was instead both comrade and loyal servant. Swart Hendrick nodded at him unsmilingly and Moses realized that Nelson Mandela had finished speaking and that they were all watching him, waiting for him to reply. He rose slowly to his feet, aware of the impression he was making, and he could see the respect in their expressions. Even his enemies in the room could not entirely conceal the awe which he inspired.
‘Comrades,’ he began. ‘My brothers. I have listened to what my good brother Nelson Mandela has said and I agree with every word of it. There are just a few points which I feel I must add—’ and he spoke for nearly an hour.
Firstly he proposed to them a detailed plan to call a series of wildcat strikes in the mines where the labour force was controlled by his unions.
‘The strikes will be in sympathy with the defiance campaign, but we will not call a general strike which would give the Boers an excuse for heavy-handed action. We will bring out only a few mines at any one time, and then only for a limited period, before going back to work, just enough to thoroughly disrupt gold production and to exasperate management. We will nip at their heels like a terrier harassing a lion, ready to spring away the instant he turns. But it will be a warning. It will let them realize our strength, and what would happen if we called a general strike.’
He saw how they were impressed with his planning, and when he asked for a vote to confirm his proposal, he was given unanimous approval. It was another small victory, another addition to his prestige and influence within the group.
‘In addition to the strike action, I would like to propose a boycott of all white-owned business on the Witwatersrand for the duration of the defiance campaign. The people will be allowed to buy their necessities of life from shops owned and run by black businessmen only.’
Hendrick Tabaka owned over fifty large general dealer stores in the black townships along the gold reef, and Moses Gama was his sleeping partner. He saw the others at the table baulk at the suggestion, and Mandela objected.
‘It will cause undue hardship amongst our people,’ he said. ‘Many of them live in areas where they can trade only with white stores.’
‘Then they must travel to areas where there are black-owned businesses, and it will do our people no harm to learn that the struggle demands sacrifices from all of us,’ Moses answered him quietly.
‘A boycott such as you propose would be impossible to enforce,’ Mandela insisted, and this time Hendrick Tabaka replied to the objection.
‘We will use the Buffaloes to make sure the people obey,’ he growled, and now the more conservative members of the Council looked positively unhappy.
The Buffaloes were the union enforcers. Hendrick Tabaka was their commander and they had a reputation for swift, ruthless action. They were too close to being a private political army for the peace of mind of some of the other men in the room, and Moses Gama frowned slightly. It had been a mistake for Hendrick to mention his Buffaloes at all. Moses hid his chagrin when the vote to declare a boycott of white dealers on the Witwatersrand and enforce it strictly was defeated. It was a victory for Mandela and his moderates. So far the score was even, but Moses was not finished yet.
‘There is one other matter I would like to bring up before we adjourn. I would like to consider what lies beyond the defiance campaign. What action do we take if the campaign is crushed by ruthless white police action, and followed by an onslaught on the black leaders and the promulgation of even more draconian laws of domination?’ he asked. ‘Will our response always be mild and subservient, will we always take off our caps and mutter, “Yes, my white baas! No, my white baas!”?’
He paused, and studied the others, seeing the disquiet he had expected in the faces of old Xuma and the conservatives, but he had not spoken for them. At the far end of the table there were two young men, still in their early twenties. They were observers from the executive of the Youth League of the ANC and Moses knew them both to be militants longing for fierce action. What he was about to say now was for them, and he knew they would take his words back to the other young warriors. It could begin the erosion of Nelson Mandela’s support amongst the youth, and the transference of that support to a leader who was prepared to give them the blood and fire for which they hungered.
‘I propose the formation of a military wing of the ANC,’ Moses said, ‘a fighting force of trained men, ready to die for the struggle. Let us call this army Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation. Let us forg
e the spear secretly. Let us hone its edge to razor sharpness, keeping it hidden, but always ready to strike.’ He used that deep thrilling tone of his, and he saw the two young men at the end of the table stir eagerly and their faces begin to glow with expectation. ‘Let us choose our brightest and fiercest young men, and from them form the impis as our forefathers did.’ He paused, and his expression became scornful. ‘There are old men amongst us, and they are wise. I respect their grey hairs and their experience. But remember, comrades, the future belongs to the young. There is a time for fine words, and we have heard them spoken at our councils – often, too often. There is a time also for action, bold action and that is the world of the young.’
When at last Moses Gama sat down again he saw that he had moved them all deeply, each in his separate way. Old Xuma was shaking his grey pate, and his lips quivered. He knew his day had passed. Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo watched him impassively, but he saw the fury in their hearts beamed through their eyes. The battle lines had been drawn, and they had recognized their enemy. Yet, most important of all, he saw the expressions on the faces of the two Youth Leaguers. It was the look of men who had found a new star to follow.
‘Since when have you conceived such a burning interest in archaeological anthropology?’ Shasa Courtney asked as he shook out the pages of the Cape Times, and turned from the financial section to the sports pages at the rear.
‘It was one of my majors,’ Tara pointed out reasonably. ‘May I pour you another cup of coffee?’
‘Thank you, my dear.’ He sipped the coffee before he spoke again. ‘How long do you intend being away?’
‘Professor Dart will be giving a series of four lectures on successive evenings, covering all the excavations from his original discovery of the Taung skull right up to the present time. He has been able to correlate the whole mass of material with one of these new electronic computers.’
