The Covenant

by James A. Michener

  ‘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 noble 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 embarrasses 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 embarrass 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 the woman doing fighting a snake with no clothes on?’

  She won her battle. The matter was resolved rather neatly—by converting ‘Virtue Triumphant’ into a man, who fought the same enemies naked but behind a shield that protected the sensibilities.

  While his wife was defending the moral purity of the nation, Detleef was laboring yet again to save its political purity, and this time, with the help of some very able parliamentarians, he came up with a totally new stratagem, which he explained to the leadership in this way: ‘No more struggling with minor problems. We take this thing head-on. We need a two-thirds majority in the Senate and can’t get it. Simple. Create forty-one new senators guaranteed to vote our way. And if you’re still afraid that the Supreme Court might overturn the vote these new men give us … Simple—add six more judges pledged to vote for us.’

  It was, as he assured them, a simple solution, a steamroller so monstrous that any possible opposition would be crushed, and the government proceeded. It might have gone into effect without undue publicity except that a group of Afrikaner women with a social conscience united with a similar body of English women to activate a political-action committee called the Black Sash, as heroic a group as the world at that time knew. Against the full flood of national opinion, these women opposed every unlawful and restrictive measure of their government, never hysterically, never aimlessly. They protected people who could find no other protection and kept a relentless spotlight on the irresponsible acts of their government.

  Their president was a forceful woman, Laura Saltwood of New Sarum, the Johannesburg resident of this important industrial family. Born in Salisbury, near the cathedral, she had met Colonel Frank Saltwood’s son Noel under memorable circumstances. As a resident of Salisbury she knew the local Saltwoods, of course, and did not like them; Sir Evelyn, a staunch conservative, made such an ass of himself in Parliament that she and her brother Wexton vowed they would run a liberal candidate against him when they were old enough. Her brother went to Cambridge University, a site she loved; whenever an opportunity presented, she went up to visit with him and his brilliant associates, and while on such a visit in 1931 she met a quiet young man from Oxford to whom she was much attracted. ‘It’s so nice to be with you, when the others talk so much and say so little,’ she told him, and he blushed. He was Noel Saltwood, of the South African branch, and after a leisurely courtship in two of England’s most enchanting towns, Cambridge and Oxford, they were married.

  She had the good luck to reach Johannesburg while Maud Turner Saltwood was still alive, and from that stalwart woman, who had done so much to make South Africa habitable, she acquired the custom of direct speech and timely intervention. Like her mother-in-law, whom she revered, she was afraid of nothing: literally, she hunted lions with the same verve that she tracked down the latest restrictive laws of Detleef van Doorn. He despised her for the opposition she continually mounted against his best projects, and as for her Black Sash, he believed it should be outlawed and its members thrown into jail. He would look into this possibility after he settled with the Coloureds.

  For the present he fenced with Mrs. Saltwood, who had accurately identified him as a major force behind the previous legislation and the current effort to strip the Coloureds of their vote. She spoke at meetings, gave interviews, appeared on radio whenever possible, and maintained a constant scrutiny. She was such an effective opponent, that at one strategy session held in Detleef’s Pretoria home, Johanna wanted to know why a woman like that should be allowed free speech. That was a relevant question, for which Detleef had a quick answer: ‘Because this country is not a dictatorship. Your husband, Johanna, had dangerous ideas, about Hitler and all that, but men like Brongersma and me drew back. We did not want Hitler then, and we don’t want him now.’

  Johanna began to cry, thinking that her dead husband’s martyrdom was being denigrated, but Detleef consoled her: ‘We’re aiming at the same goals, really, but by legal means. We will perform no un-Christian act, but in the end we’ll have a regulated society. Almost exactly what Piet and I talked about years ago.’

  In 1956 Detleef van Doorn engineered one more assault on the Coloureds, and this time, with a vastly enlarged Senate and a Supreme Court more than doubled, the law was passed by Parliament and certified by the Court, but Detleef’s sense of triumph, to which he was entitled, was diminished by the severe illness of his sister. He was with her when she heard the joyous news that Coloureds were to be thrown off the common roll, first step in their total disfranchisement: ‘It is our duty, Detleef, to make decisions. We must see that they are just, but we must also see that they are enforced strictly so that we retain control. I wish our father and mother could have seen this day.’ She passed into a mumbling period, then called for Maria: ‘Detleef lacks will power. When the time comes, he won’t want to fight to take South Africa out of the Commonwealth. Pressure him, Maria. We must be free.’ And she died, never for a moment perceiving that the Coloureds and blacks might also want to be free.

  In the sad wake of his sister’s death Detleef worked diligently on the next chain of laws which would bind the nation together. Only whites could attend the great universities. Bantu education was severely revised, taking it away from religious organizations and missionaries and placing it under the control of politicians: ‘Blacks must not be troubled with subjects which they have not the brain power to comprehend, or trained for jobs which will never exist for them. They should be taught only those skills needed to enable them to support the dominant society. Instruction should be in Afrikaans, since that is to be the language of the nation of which they will form a helpful part.’

  He then directed his attention to living areas, for it angered him to see attractive spots in the big cities still occupied by Bantu. In sweeping regulations, which he drafted but which appeared over the signature of others, he authorized the evacuation of such areas and gave special attention to one particular eyesore in Johannesburg—Sophiatown—where he called in the bulldozers to
start leveling the place; the black occupants were sent out into locations he had set up in the countryside. These blacks, all of whom worked for white families and establishments in Johannesburg, joined the masses of workers herded together southwest of the City of Gold. Highspeed railway lines soon carried nearly half a million black servants into the city at dawn, out to the countryside at dusk.

  In 1957 Detleef played no part in two major decisions, but he supported the men who made them: ‘God Save the Queen’ was dropped as the national anthem, to be replaced by ‘Die Stem van Suid-Afrika,’ a fine, stirring song; and the Union Jack no longer flew as a national flag. Maria was especially gratified by these changes, for they proved to her and others that the country was at last becoming the Afrikaner republic it should always have been: ‘The bad years since 1795, when the English first intruded, are almost over. I was just a little ashamed of myself for cheering when Jan Christian Smuts died, but I was glad to see him go. He betrayed the Afrikaner, and it was only just that he should have died rejected by his own people.’

  And then the euphoria of the Van Doorns was shattered by an act they could not comprehend. Their son Marius, an excellent rugby player at Stellenbosch, with every promise of graduating to Springbok status, was selected to be a Rhodes scholar and offered a sumptuous grant of money to study at Oxford.

  ‘It’s reassuring to know he was eligible,’ Detleef told his friends in Parliament. ‘He’s one of the best.’

  ‘Will he accept?’

  ‘Certainly not. There’s talk of his being selected for the next tour of New Zealand.’

  ‘A Springbok?’ the men asked excitedly.

  One man who followed sports avidly broke in: ‘Detleef’s too modest. I’ve heard rumors that they might choose Marius to captain the side.’

  ‘Well,’ the father said deprecatingly, ‘he’d be a little young for that. Those New Zealanders …’ And the rest of that day was spent reminiscing about the 1921 tour and the way Detleef had handled, or not handled, Tom Heeney, the Hard Rock from Down Under.

  Maria was pleased that her son should have received such recognition from the Rhodes committee, but like her husband, she said she would be offended if he showed any signs of accepting: ‘We don’t need a son of ours going to Oxford … like some Saltwood with divided loyalty … living here and calling Salisbury home.’

  Both the Van Doorns wrote to Marius that night, congratulating him on the honor, but telling him also that they had heard whispers of his becoming a Springbok, perhaps even the captain, but before their letters could be delivered, he appeared in Cape Town to inform them that he had accepted the scholarship and would be leaving soon for England.

  Detleef was so shocked he could hardly speak: ‘You’re not … passing up a Springbok blazer … for a Rhodes scholarship?’ When Marius nodded, Detleef cried, ‘But, son! A scholarship comes every day. To be a rugger Springbok, that comes once in a lifetime.’

  Marius was firm. He was twenty-one, taller than his father, and without the bull neck. He played not as a rugged forward in the scrum but as a fleet, elusive back. His intellectual brilliance, inherited mostly from his maternal grandfather, Christoffel Steyn, shone in his face, and he could not mask his delight at going to Oxford and competing with the best.

  ‘But, Marius,’ his father pleaded. ‘You can learn things out of books anywhere, but if you have a real chance to captain a Springbok side—that would be immortality.’

  ‘There’s more to life than rugby,’ the young man said.

  ‘What?’ Detleef demanded. ‘I’ve done many things in my life. Seen the camps. Had the prize bull at the Rand Agricultural. Fought with De Groot and Christoffel. And watched the triumph of my people. But nothing comes close to stepping on a rugby field in New Zealand wearing the Springbok jersey. For God’s sake, Marius, don’t throw away that opportunity for something Cecil Rhodes devised as a trick to seduce our Afrikaner lads.’

  ‘I can still play rugby. I’ll play for Oxford.’

  ‘You’ll what?’ Detleef looked at his wife in blank stupor.

  ‘Did you say you’d play for Oxford?’ Maria asked.

  ‘Yes, if I can make the team.’

  ‘A man who could be a Springbok … playing for Oxford?’ Detleef choked a bit, then said, ‘You realize that the way things fall, you could one day be playing against South Africa?’

  ‘It’s only a game.’

  Detleef rose to his full choleric height: ‘It is not a game. It’s how we instilled patriotism in this nation. I would rather be captain of a Springbok team in New Zealand than prime minister.’

  No argument could dissuade Marius, and when, three years later, he informed his parents by cable that he was going to marry an English girl, they wept for two days.

  The marriage of Marius van Doorn, Oriel athlete and scholar, to Clare Howard was solemnized on 20 March 1960 at the home of her parents in a village northwest of Oxford. His parents were not present, for although they had been invited, they refused to set foot on English soil, and this accounted for the fact that they were at home in Pretoria the next day when South Africa was torn nearly apart by a fusillade of police bullets at Sharpeville, a black township near the Vaal River.

  For the past year black indignation had swelled against the laws that placed increasingly severe restrictions on black freedoms: Albert Luthuli, soon to win the Nobel Peace Prize, had been confined to his home district for five years; African women marching in demonstrations had been baton-charged; in the Transkei and Zululand, uprisings had left dozens dead and injured.

  At Sharpeville the blacks decided to try peaceful protest: they would turn in their passbooks and offer themselves for arrest, holding it to be an insult to carry such identification in their own country; some ten thousand converged on the police station. Without a warning shot to turn them back, the front line of police opened fire on the crowd. Sixty-seven were left dead and more than one hundred and eighty men, women and children were wounded.

  ‘It was inevitable,’ Detleef said when he heard the news. ‘We do what is right for the country and they refuse to cooperate.’ When he heard that blacks were massing in various other cities, he told Maria that any uprising must be stamped on without mercy. He was not a vicious man, but he did believe in order, and when Parliament, after due deliberation, decided that the country should be organized a certain way, it was everyone’s duty to conform: ‘You cannot have Bantu deciding whether they will obey the laws or not obey them. The laws have been passed. They must be obeyed.’ It was his opinion that white agitators, especially women like Laura Saltwood, were responsible for these disturbances, and he began pondering ways whereby people like her could be restrained.

  Detleef was sixty-five and considering retirement, but the chain of dramatic events in 1960 convinced him that his lasting achievements still lay ahead. Not long after Sharpeville a maniac, overwrought by the anxieties thrust upon him by recent changes in national life, fired a revolver point-blank into Prime Minister Verwoerd’s head. Miraculously, that brilliant political leader survived, and this, said the Van Doorns, proved that God wanted him preserved for noble tasks. In October, Verwoerd accomplished one of them: he engineered a plebiscite which authorized the government to break all relations with the English crown and declare itself a republic.

  With enormous vigor Detleef and his wife had worked at erasing all vestiges of what they termed ‘a century of English domination.’ Earlier, a series of modest changes had been made—no more knighthoods like Sir Richard Saltwood’s; Jan van Riebeeck’s face on coinage instead of king or queen; lieutenant changed to veldkornet—but now Detleef moved among his colleagues pressuring them for the most important change of all.

  ‘We must eliminate the last remnant of past degradations,’ he preached. ‘We must leave the British Commonwealth of Nations, for it’s only an English stratagem to keep us subservient.’

  Many who heard him say this were aghast that he should carry his obsession so far: ‘When we voted to br
eak ties with the monarchy, we certainly did not intend to leave the Commonwealth.’ To such objections he had a rigid answer: ‘When you start on an honorable course, pursue it to the end. Our end is complete freedom.’ And when he came home at night to discuss these matters with his wife, she supported him: ‘They shot my father. They killed my people in the camp. We must end every association.’

  In March 1961, when the Van Doorns were at Vrymeer, the glorious news arrived. An assistant at Pretoria telephoned: ‘Sir! Sir! We’re free at last. Verwoerd has taken us out of the Commonwealth!’

  Detleef was cautious, so before he shared the triumph with Maria he made two calls to confirm the news, and when he was satisfied that his country was at last free, he did not run exultantly to his wife or start a celebration. Instead, he left the house and walked gravely to the largest lake, where blesbok were grazing, and he looked across to where the hartebeest hut of General de Groot had stood in the bad years following the end of war, and he could hear the old warrior predicting: ‘You are the generation that will win this country back. You will win the war that your father and I lost.’

  Raising his fist, as he had done years ago when celebrating a rugby victory, he shouted, ‘Old man! We’ve won! We’ve won!’

  Detleef was retired now, with no office in either Cape Town or Pretoria to report to, and he might have rested, for the laws he had sponsored had specified proper behavior for all residents of the republic, but sloth was alien to his puritanical nature, and he began to fret over another mammoth task which he felt needed to be done: ‘I could die happy, Maria, knowing that we have our great file in Pretoria showing everyone’s proper racial classification. The green identity cards are good, too. But what we really need is an identification document covering a person’s entire life—everything he does. He’d carry it with him at all times, so that the authorities could see exactly who he was and what he’s done.’