The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Philip got up and walked away to hide his emotion, and of course Laura knew why he had done so. ‘One must do something to keep occupied,’ she said gaily. ‘One can’t read Solzhenitsyn week after week.’

  ‘Good God! What are these?’

  ‘Bullet holes,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘At night sometimes they shoot at me.’

  He wiped his forehead and sat down. ‘What I’d really like,’ he said, trying to sound casual, ‘is another cup of tea … from that one,’ and he pointed to one of the highly polished pots.

  ‘That can be arranged,’ she said, and with an elegant sweep of her hands she emptied the tea from the filled pot into the waiting one, then graciously poured Philip a cup. ‘But I shall have my cup from this pot,’ and once more she transferred the tea.

  The policeman took notes.

  ‘What’s going to happen, Mrs. Saltwood?’

  ‘Laura. We’re cousins, you know.’

  ‘How do you see things?’

  ‘For me, a continuation of this until I die. For the country I see some hope. And do you know why? Because every decent and sensible man and woman in this nation knows that changes will have to be made. The Afrikaners who pass these horrible laws are not stupid people. They know this is a last gasp. Our blacks are among the most brilliant in Africa. They know time and pressure are on their side. There is enormous wisdom in this land, and one prays it will be granted the necessary time to manifest itself.’

  ‘Will it? Moçambique, Zimbabwe, Vwarda, Zambia, Namibia pressing in from all directions?’

  ‘The machine gun will guarantee reasonable time, I think. When you return to America assure your people that Afrikaners will use their machine guns if forced to do so. This is not Rhodesia, where retreat became epidemic. This is South Africa, where the gun rules.’

  ‘That sounds rather hopeless.’

  ‘Not at all!’ She suggested that they utilize the final two teapots, pouring the cooling tea rapidly from one to the other, to the total bewilderment of the policeman. ‘What I mean is, the machine guns will be used to buy time, probably through the remainder of this century. But with every moment gained, more wisdom is gained, too. And the day will come when the bright lads from Stellenbosch and Potchefstroom will lead the way in conciliation.’

  ‘Can they do so soon enough?’

  ‘The other great asset we have is the stability of our Zulu and Xhosa. They’re the most patient, wonderful people on this earth. They make me humble, they have behaved so well for so long. Beside them I’m an uncivilized boor, and I think they can wait, intelligently, till the sick white man sorts things out.’

  ‘Sick?’

  Laura Saltwood pointed to herself, to the watching policeman, to the closed-in yard, to the bombed front of her house. ‘Would any society invent banning if it wasn’t sick?’

  This seemed to be the period for Philip’s intensive course in African realities, for when he returned to his hotel an urgent telegram was awaiting him from his superiors in Pretoria: FAVORABLE UPHEAVAL VWARDA. PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TEMPORARY DUTY KATOMBE TO PROTECT OUR INTERESTS. ANTICIPATE TWO MONTHS ABSENCE VRYMEER. INSTRUCTIONS AWAIT YOU THERE. PETERSEN. He caught a plane which took him to Zambia, where a smaller one belonging to the Vwardan government was waiting. Two other Anglo-Saxons who had once worked in that republic were aboard, and they informed him of the revolutionary decision President M’Bele had made last Friday: ‘He informed London, Geneva and the United Nations that this country was plunging into chaos—industrial, financial—and he was inviting back at full pay plus bonuses some five hundred foreign technicians, mostly English, who had been in charge of technical details at one time or other during the past decade. I’m to head the distribution of flour.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You see, I was run out of the country three years ago. Pretty much like you, Saltwood, if I understand your case. My Vwardan understudy accused me of racism because I yelled at him one day. And why did I yell? Because he was supposed to watch the granary levels throughout the country, and he had allowed those in districts occupied by tribes other than his own to dwindle to zero. I really chewed him out and was expelled.’

  ‘What happened when you left?’

  ‘He became chief of grain procurement, and damned if he didn’t continue to let his rival tribes starve.’

  The other man had previously been in charge of Jeep and Land Rover procurement and had established a spare-parts replacement system based upon knowing calculations of what happened to vehicles in a primitive country. After drawing up a table of shrewd estimates, he proposed a law which would forbid the importation of any more Jeeps or Land Rovers until stockpiles of spare parts had been accumulated and stored in nine scattered warehouses, from which they would be efficiently distributed to broken-down vehicles that would otherwise stand useless.

  ‘But a nephew of the president had the monopoly for importing Jeeps, and he demanded that he be allowed to bring in as many as he wanted, and to hell with spare parts. So what have they been doing? Cannibalizing perfectly good Jeeps to get a generator here or a differential there. The rest of the Jeep stands rusting, but the president’s nephew doesn’t give a damn.’

  When their plane landed at Katombe they were hustled to a bright new hotel built with Swedish capital, where more than four hundred technical experts were herded together to hear an address by President M’Bele. He spoke with such eminent good sense that even men like Saltwood, who had legitimate grudges against him because of his earlier treatment, applauded, for it was quite obvious that he and they now had identical interests; they were men of Africa:

  ‘Gentlemen, from the bottom of my heart I am most pleased to see you here. You are men of great experience in running aspects of our society. You are all men who performed well in the past and whom I can trust to perform equally well in the future. If I suspected for one moment that I could not rely upon you, I would not have called on you for help.

  ‘We do need your help. The productive wheels of this nation are grinding to a halt. And why? Not because we haven’t the brains to keep them going. And not because we are lazy or indifferent. The reason is simple. It takes time and long apprenticeship before anyone can master the skills necessary to keep a complex machine functioning. Our people, good-hearted though they may be, lack that long know-how, as the Americans term it. You men have it, and therefore we need you.

  ‘Take bread. The citizens of many of our towns are close to rebellion because they have no bread. We have the money for it. Bread appears in our budget. And we have the grain. What do you suppose is holding us back? No one remembered to order yeast. No one purchased replacements for baking tins that wore out. And the damned flour is stored in the wrong places. How many bakers and grain experts are there in this room? Gentlemen, get working before nightfall.

  ‘One vastly important thing which I know you will understand and remember as you go about your resumed duties. Vwarda has not changed its attitude toward racial equality one percent. We are not inviting you back because you are superior whites. We are asking you to help us because you are well trained in fields where we are not. We will not tolerate any racial-supremacy nonsense, and if you abuse our people, you will have to go. We are a black nation and proud to be so.

  ‘But I promise you this. Our judges, our committees and my staff will not listen to wild charges of race discrimination. I know the injustices that occurred with some of you in the past, and they will not be repeated. It is more important that we get our bakeries functioning again than that my son-in-law drive a Mercedes from one plant to the other.’

  Saltwood was shipped back to the mines he had once supervised, and when he reached them he was pleased to see that no chaos had resulted from his absence. Dynamite was being handled properly, with safeguards observed, and the lifts that shot workers down and up the deep shafts at incredible speeds were in order. Where the trouble lay was in planning, the subtle shifting of work forces and the movement of ores to logical locations. At t
he end of a week he reported to President M’Bele:

  The mines, when I reached them, were ninety-five percent effective in their basic techniques. Your workmen were performing their jobs skillfully and responsibly, and Cornish miners could have done no better. There were, as you know, grave errors in scheduling. We require eight or nine men of broad grasp and firm decision. These are hard to come by in Vwarda, or America.

  He found one young fellow who showed signs of catching on; he had acquired skills by working in the gold mines of Johannesburg. He asked the young man if he had any acquaintances who had shared that experience, and four were brought forward. Two had learned nothing in South Africa, but the other two were clever like the first, and around this cadre he began to build his staff. Fortunately, he found one older man who had had three years at the London School of Economics, and just as factories in South Bend, Indiana, profited by having young men from such provocative schools, so the mines in Vwarda began to function better when he assumed partial control.

  Ultimate control remained in the hands of President M’Bele’s son-in-law, who had been mainly responsible for Saltwood’s firing in 1978. He was a much-changed man; having taken his mines almost to the point of bankruptcy, he now knew that he was not free to make decisions on narrow, tribal lines. He was scared, for he enjoyed his Mercedes and welcomed any guidance that would enable him to keep it. This time he listened when Philip outlined the need for a world view: ‘You must know what Japan is doing with her metallurgy, and what Russia is up to. You’ve got to watch the markets, and you don’t need a computer to do it. Your aim must be constant flow. Keep all parts in balance.’

  At the end of his two months he was able to recommend a Belgian engineer with wide experience in Katanga Province over in Zaire: ‘He’s a knowing man. Works well with black nations. And he’s better informed on your problems than I am.’ When President M’Bele implored Philip to stay on till the Belgian was properly indoctrinated, he saw the sense of this and agreed to extend his stay, but only for three weeks.

  When these passed, and he was confident that the Belgian was qualified, he sought permission to fly back to Johannesburg, but when the plane landed he was prevented from going directly to his job at Venloo by three BOSS officers. ‘You must come with us,’ they said, and he was whisked off to a small room at the airport.

  ‘This in no way endangers you, Mr. Saltwood. We know why you were called to Vwarda and how competently you did your job there. We must interrogate you about an important trial and would prefer that no one talk with you.’

  ‘Whose trial?’

  ‘Daniel Nxumalo. High treason.’

  The Terrorism Act of 1967, based on careful preliminary work supervised by Detleef van Doorn the year he died, was both wonderfully vague and terrifyingly specific. It was vague because it forbade any act or attempted act which in any way embarrassed the state. Almost any behavior which protested apartheid could be so construed, and the bases of proof were also extremely vague. What was specific? The minimum penalty the court could impose: five years, most likely on Robben Island. The maximum: death.

  Twelve kinds of behavior fell under the ban, and of these the government conceded that nine did not apply in Nxumalo’s case. He had not interfered with the police; he intimidated no one; he did not cripple production; he did not lead any insurrection; he did not advocate cooperation with any foreign government; he had caused no bodily injury; nor had he brought financial loss to the state, or endangered its essential services, or obstructed its land, sea or air traffic. On those counts he was patently innocent and the indictment ignored them.

  But on three other counts most threatening to the security of the state he was presumably guilty: first, he had agitated blacks by asking disturbing questions, so was accused of promoting disorder; second, by reminding blacks of past grievances, he had encouraged hostility between races; third, in various ways he had embarrassed the government. And for these offenses he must be tried, and if found guilty, sent to prison or hanged.

  Philip learned that the trial would be conducted in Pretoria by a crusty old judge, Herman Broodryk, who had a record of handling such cases covering more than two decades. Prior to his appointment to the bench in 1958, he had been a brilliant advocate who gained favorable attention in the 1940s by defending Afrikaner radicals charged with attempting to sabotage Jan Christian Smuts’ efforts to take the country into the war on the side of England. He was a personal friend of all the recent prime ministers, and Philip thought it disturbing that a man with such credentials should sit in this case; but an Amalgamated Mines lawyer told him, ‘The South African higher judiciary is above reproach. We can be proud of two liberties—judges like Broodryk and our free press.’

  And then Philip made an even more startling discovery: ‘Is it true that Justice Broodryk will hear the case alone … without a jury?’ And again his lawyer friend defended the system: ‘One of the best things we’ve done, abolish the jury system. What chance would Nxumalo have against a jury of twelve white men and women? I leave to your imagination what would happen in the circuit court at Venloo, for instance, if a black appeared on a charge of molesting a white farmer’s daughter. With an all-white jury!’

  Daniel Nxumalo was to be defended by Mr. Simon Kaplan, a Johannesburg advocate well experienced in fighting the battles of blacks who had offended the mores of apartheid. The accusations of terroristic activity would be presented by Mr. Martin Scheepers, a specialist in the Terrorism Act; nineteen times he had prosecuted such cases, winning fourteen and sending a total of eighty-seven men and women to prison. In three recent cases involving armed insurgency, he had won the death sentence.

  In England, in America and in most Western nations a judge could spend a lifetime on the bench without ever sentencing a man to death; year after year in South Africa some eighty people went to the gallows, more than in the rest of the Western world put together. When Saltwood asked about this, the Amalgamated lawyer said, ‘Most of them are black. Murderers, rapists. We are forced to do this to maintain order. There’s four million of us, twenty million of them.’

  The courtroom was packed when Judge Broodryk took his seat. He was a large man, with heavy, bushy eyebrows, pendulous cheeks and a fearsome manner, but as the trial proceeded Philip would find him patient, attentive and considerate. When a judge had no jury to contend with, he had to be judicial, uncovering facts and judging character, for on him alone would rest the decision of innocence or guilt, death or life. In his years of mining experience Philip had attended trials in several African countries, and in none had he found a wiser judge.

  Broodryk extended every courtesy to Nxumalo, listening with obvious attention whenever he spoke. In his opening address Advocate Scheepers spread before the court the essentials of his case against Daniel:

  ‘The state will prove that it was this man who conceived the idea of having the blacks of this nation gather in large numbers to observe the anniversary of what he called Soweto ’76. What was this but a device to engender bad relations between the races? The evidence will show that in a manner calculated to be provocative and conducive to disorder he organized such a gathering in Bloemfontein and harangued it. And why, pray, did Mr. Nxumalo choose to hold this meeting in Bloemfontein? Because he knew it to be the most loyal of our cities, where what he had to say would create the most inflammatory reaction.

  ‘It is on another charge that he will be found most guilty. His every act is carefully premeditated to bring embarrassment upon our government. He appeals to the basest emotions of our cruelest critics in London and New York. He makes crude appeals to agencies like the World Council of Churches, and we will show that his acts and intentions are such as to bring discredit upon us, arguing as he does that our laws are unjust and our system of apartheid unfair. He is an evil man whose activities must be halted.’

  Thus was set the tone for the clash between Nxumalo and Scheepers, a bitter division between two able men that flared on the first morning of the trial
when Nxumalo began his careful campaign to place the grievances of his people on the record:

  DEFENDANT NXUMALO: Only in recent years have our people begun to discover themselves, to seek an identity different from the one the white man says we must wear. We are in the position the Afrikaner was before he crawled out from under English domination, and we respect his struggle for his volksidentiteit. But from this reasoning I conclude that if the Afrikaner is free to celebrate his victory over Dingane at Blood River, we blacks ought to be free to recall the powerful events that shook Soweto in June 1976.

  STATE ADVOCATE SCHEEPERS: What events did you have in mind?

  NXUMALO: The deaths of our children who protested apartheid.

  SCHEEPERS: Mr. Nxumalo, those schoolchildren rioted in the streets, burned down buildings, killed innocent civilians, and challenged just authority. You see that as equivalent to a battle fought between two armies?

  NXUMALO: I agree that the circumstances are not the same—well, not entirely—but the end result, my people were left with anger and sorrow.

  SCHEEPERS: And you wanted to use that anger to generate disorder?

  DEFENSE COUNSEL KAPLAN: I must object to the way my learned friend phrases that.

  SCHEEPERS: That anger and sorrow were at the basis of your wanting to celebrate Soweto ’76 as a remembrance day?

  NXUMALO: I believe we owe a great deal to those children. They showed us that change in this country must come from within. That we must make a stand against a system we abhor.

  SCHEEPERS: You presume to speak for all blacks?

  NXUMALO: Someone must. We have been silent for too long.

  SCHEEPERS: In celebrating our great victory over Dingane, we Afrikaner people observe a solemn Day of the Covenant in which we pray for peace, not disorder; for unity, not chaos. Were those your aims in sponsoring Soweto ’76?

  NXUMALO: We also want peace and unity for all. And prayers for the children who fell at Soweto, victims of the unjust system which deprives them of a right to citizenship in the land of their birth.