Ah But Your Land Is Beautiful

by Alan Paton

  – There may be some of you, said Molteno, who think it is a matter of no importance if Die Burger brands us a dangerous party, and says that the main speech last night bordered on treason. We in the Cape do not take that view. We may not agree with the politics of the paper, but it is regarded as a responsible newspaper, and we quite frankly do not like being branded as dangerous and treasonous. As I have said before, such speeches may go down well in Johannesburg and Durban, but they are not acceptable in Cape Town. Last night I got the impression, and I was not the only one to get it, that the speech was directed largely at the coloured members of the audience. Their applause was certainly vociferous. We all acknowledge that the coloured people have grievances, but certainly we in the Cape do not want to exploit coloured anger, or black anger, or any other kind of anger. For three hundred years the coloured people have lived in peace with their white neighbours, and while we want to protest with them against the laws that govern them, we do not like this continual emphasis on the iniquities of white people. I was aware last evening of an undertone of anger in the applause, and I didn’t like it. I am making these remarks now because we shall soon be passing on to the business of electing a new national chairman. We must not elect any person who will frighten away the more conservative members of the party. We must in fact elect someone who has the confidence of both the conservatives and the evangelicals. I shall make my nomination in due course. For one thing I am very grateful, that we did not make the gross political error of announcing that we would work to have South Africa thrown out of world sport.

  Molteno has the power of subduing the evangelicals of the party. The trouble is that it would be a heavy blow if he left it. The party is so young, so small, so weak, that its more responsible members would go to great lengths to avoid a break between the evangelicals and the conservatives. The evangelicals give it its fire, but the conservatives give it its respectability. If Molteno were to leave it, the Ballingers would go too, and who could imagine a Liberal Party without Margaret Ballinger?

  Even Parker has had to calm down. He wanted to blast Molteno for attaching such importance to Die Burger’s use of the word treason. If the party was going to run for cover every time it was accused of treason, it would spend all its time running. Parker is one of those who is prepared to face Molteno’s departure. He is in fact of the opinion that the party will never get anywhere so long as Molteno is in it. But he has been persuaded to keep his opinions to himself.

  The party decided to let John Parker pursue his programme of rallying world opinion against the colour bar in sport, but not to adopt a policy of world exclusion. It elected as its new chairman Philip Drummond of Pietermaritzburg, proposed by Molteno, respected by both conservatives and evangelicals, with private means, a proficiency in Zulu, and an ironic way of speaking that concealed qualities of quite another order.

  So Molteno declared a truce with the party.

  Mr. Robert Mansfield

  Member of the Liberal Party

  I have read about your speech in Cape Town. So you are against the Immorality Act. That’s nothing to wonder about, because every time you poke your black dolly girls, you must be afraid of getting caught. What do they say? Caught in the act, ha! ha! I can see it, you and your dolly girl pawing at each other like two animals, breathing, panting, stinking of sex and sweat.

  I bet you wake up at night and can imagine it all. How can you imagine such filth? You call yourself a Christian. How can you imagine such things? And that fuzzy hair, above and below.

  Has your wife found any hair on the pillow yet? Or has she got her own black lover? You would both stoop to anything, I am sure.

  Do you still talk about your Christianity? And how you have these black friends because you are a Christian. Ha! ha! I bet you don’t tell about the black dollies. So pure you are, aren’t you? you dirty white shit, you disgrace to the white race. What made you sink so low?

  Proud White Christian Woman

  Mr. Robert Mansfield 20 November 1954

  Natal Regional Office

  The Liberal Party

  On 6 November we wrote to you giving you fourteen days to resign the chairmanship of the Natal region of the Liberal Party. You were required to announce your resignation in one Durban and one Pietermaritzburg newspaper. This you have not done and we therefore conclude that you have not resigned. We shall therefore carry out our decision that you should be eliminated.

  Your elimination will be carried out at a time and in a manner to be now decided. That this will be deemed to be a criminal act, we are well aware, but the alternative is the continued existence of what we regard to be an anti-Christian and anti-White South African organisation. For us there is no choice in the matter.

  We sign ourselves

  The Preservation of White South Africa League

  – And this editorial really upset you?

  – Philip, it did. It was the first time my name had ever been in an editorial. Of course in my cricketing days 1 was often in the paper and the references were usually complimentary. But to be accused of making a speech bordering on treason, that had never happened to me before. I felt ill, Philip. As the Americans say, I was sick to my stomach.

  – We’ll have to get used to it, Robert. Parker is quite right. What we are doing is going to be called treason, and if we are frightened by it, we might as well give up now. It’s not nice, I know. I don’t like it either. But what else must we do? Shut our mouths for the rest of our lives? Must we let them do what they like to Emmanuel and his landowners, and shut up about it?

  – Philip, you don’t have to argue with me. I’m telling you this because I thought you should know the kind of man you asked to be Natal chairman. I don’t like being frightened by an editorial. But when Molteno spoke to me about it he was actually trembling. It wasn’t either anger or fear. It was as though he was appalled at the enormity of it, that our party should be named dangerous by so great an authority as Die Burger. If an intelligent man like Molteno reacts like that, what about all the intelligent people outside the party? I’ll admit to you that the reaction of some of the members of the Newcastle Anglican Guild to my sports experiments really shook me. I can tell you that it has been a revelation to me that my first real experience of what you might call neighbourly love was to be in a political party, and not in my own church. It has been a revelation to me to find that people I had always thought of as my friends have grown decidedly cool towards me.

  – There’s also a funny side to it. My Uncle William is chairman of the Royal Club, but he also regards himself as my guardian, and he’s fond of me. He just cannot understand how his nephew has got so worked up about the colour bar. He says to me, Philip my boy, we’ve had a colour bar for generations and no one in our family ever got worked up about it. He has an inordinate respect for old Judge Culpepper, and the judge said to him, The trouble is, Drummond, your nephew doesn’t understand tradition, that’s bad enough, but he doesn’t understand evolutionary change either, and that’s extraordinary for someone who’s been to St. Michael’s and Cambridge, had all the advantages in the world, and now he wants to throw them all away, after all that you and his father did for him. It’s colour bar, colour bar, colour bar, sinful and all that, but what about ingratitude? The judge quoted Shakespeare to my uncle, Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude. It was a bit wasted, because the only thing my uncle knows about Shakespeare is his name. You know all the blue blood of Pietermaritzburg belongs to the Club, and my uncle is almost embarrassed to go there. But the great Henry Mainwaring is even more embarrassed, and he has threatened to disinherit Hugh if he doesn’t resign from the party. Now about the anonymous letters. The woman is obviously sick, and you needn’t worry about her. But the other two are disturbing. The man sounds as if he could be dangerous. Have you shown them to Naomi?

  – Most certainly.

  – How does she react?

  – As you might expect. But I can see that they wor
ry her. And then the Security Police. You know my aunts and uncles are very respectable, and they didn’t like the police attending my cousin’s funeral. When I say they attended it I mean they parked a little way off, and got out of the car and leaned against it, watching. You know how they are taught to look at people with that merciless stare that frightens the wits out of the more timid ones. Some people just can’t stand being stared at. My relatives didn’t like it a bit, and whether I was right or wrong, I felt that they thought my attendance at the funeral had introduced an unpleasant note into what was their private ceremony. I tell you frankly, I didn’t like it.

  – No one likes it, Robert. It’s meant to be an intrusion into privacy. It’s meant to show you that you can’t have anything private once you oppose the Government. They taped Kathie Vermeulen making love to someone she shouldn’t have been making love to, and they played it to her, and she left on the next plane.

  – Philip, you force me to tell you that I am timid by nature. Because I was good at cricket, no one guessed it. If you’ve played for South Africa, it’s not difficult to run a school. But I thought you ought to know. After all, when you asked me to be the Natal chairman, you didn’t know me at all.

  – You mustn’t think you’re unique. Now that Emmanuel has become the organiser of NALA, they follow him everywhere. They visit his wife in his absence and urge her to get him to give it all up and go back to being messenger of the court. One of them declares he is Emmanuel’s dear friend, and Lydia Nene told me she had seen tears in his eyes as he pleaded with her to save her dear husband and his dear friend from following his dangerous course. He in fact hinted to her, and there was no one else there to hear him but herself, that it might be physically dangerous to Emmanuel. She asked him to say straight out what he meant. Did he mean that Emmanuel might be killed? And who would kill him? Would it be the police themselves? Oh no, he didn’t mean that, he didn’t mean that at all. But there were enemies who had a great hatred for NALA, and indeed who had a great hatred for any black man who stood up for himself and his rights, and others who had a great hatred for any black man who joined white people in politics. These enemies could kill such a man, run him down when he was walking on the road, or hire black thieves to break into his house and to shoot him if he resisted. Emmanuel doesn’t like this any more than you do. Lydia doesn’t like it either, but she reacts to it in the same way as Naomi. You must not think, Robert, that you are unique in your feelings. We all get fits of timidity.

  – One last thing, Philip. In Durban we have a romance on our hands and I’m timid about that too.

  – You mean Prem and Hugh?

  – Yes. Shall I speak to Hugh or shall I not?

  – I would say not. It’s not your job to get your members to obey the laws of the country, especially one that the party has roundly condemned. But I don’t suppose you have that in mind. You’re afraid they might get hurt.

  – Yes, I am.

  – That’s understandable, but I would leave them alone. They are two of the sanest youngsters in the country. It’s their problem, and they must solve it for themselves. Are you worried about the party too? Well, you shouldn’t be. You may be sure that they’ll think about that too.

  The most famous of all the blackspots is to come to an end on 10 February 1955. Its name is Sophiatown, called after Sophia the loved wife of Mr. Tobiansky, who bought the site at the beginning of the century, and laid out a white township, naming some of its streets after his children, Edith, Gerty, Bertha, Toby and Sol. It was only four and a half miles from the centre of the city of Johannesburg, and its plots would have sold like hot cakes if the City Council had not decided to establish a sewage farm next door. Mr. Tobiansky then decided to sell his plots to African, coloured and Asian people, which the law allowed him to do. In 1955 more than sixty thousand people were living there.

  Sophiatown is a wild, exciting, tumultuous place. Apart from Tobiansky’s plan, it has grown up without design. Plots have been split up again and again, resulting in a kaleidoscopic conglomeration of shops, houses, lodging-rooms, brothels, shebeens, churches. A child might grow up good in Sophiatown but never innocent. It was of this vital, raw, violent, ugly place, that Father Trevor Huddleston of the Community of the Resurrection wrote when he had to leave it, using the words of Walter de la Mare, Look thy last on all things lovely, every hour. Sophiatown had become to him the home of all things lovely. It was the place where old men and women came into the great church of Christ the King on their hands and knees. The humility and faith of it smote him in the inward parts. It was the place where small black children ran out from the houses to hold the hand of the father. It was the place where he and Sister Dorothy Maud could walk safe at any hour of the day or night.

  – Father.

  – Yes.

  – I have killed a man.

  – When?

  – Now now. In Sithole’s yard.

  – You were gambling.

  – Yes.

  – You promised me.

  – I promised you, Father, but I broke it.

  – What happened?

  – This man played a card that was not in his hand. I said, That card was not in your hand. So he pulled out his knife.

  – And you pulled out yours?

  – Yes, Father.

  – Which you promised not to carry.

  – I repent, Father.

  – Go on.

  – He would have killed me, but I struck first. In a minute he was dead.

  – And everyone saw it?

  – Yes, Father.

  – Let us pray, Michael, then we shall go to the police.

  – Let us pray then.

  Of all the places in the world, Huddleston will never find one like this again. He has given his heart to it. The beauty of Switzerland, of Italy, of the moors of his own West Country, cannot compete for his love with the beauty of Sophiatown. He is known to all, his lean and handsome face, his dark hair greying, his expressive hands, and a kind of purity and vitality that shines out of his eyes.

  This purity and vitality is more marked than ever in this year 1955. He has the appearance of one who is burning to serve the world. This burning quality does not show in any fierceness in the eyes, or hollowness in the cheeks, or fever in the skin. The ruddiness of his cheeks is that of spiritual health, not of fanaticism. He is a dog of the Lord, not fierce but faithful. And now he burns to save Sophiatown. He is seen everywhere. He is seen with leading members of the African Congress, and the Security Police watch every move that he makes, listen to every speech and to every telephone call, read every letter that is written to him. He is pitting himself against the might and power and glory of the State.

  On 9 February the Minister of Justice banned all public meetings in the magisterial districts of Johannesburg and Roodepoort for twenty days. The Minister said the position was serious, not because of the resistance from the people to be moved, but because of the agitators. He was sorry to say that there were certain clergymen amongst the agitators, among them Father Huddleston. What right had an Englishman who could speak no language but his own, who had been in the country for a mere eleven years, what right had he to say that the laws were unjust?

  At dawn on 10 February a whole fleet of army lorries arrived in Sophiatown. A couple of thousand armed police, white and black, were there in case of trouble. The Commissioner of Police patrolled up and down in a radio van, in hourly communication with the Minister in Cape Town. Wherever Huddleston went he was surrounded by black people. His progress was a series of banned meetings, and no sooner had he obeyed the order to move on from one than he was in the middle of another. At this very moment his name was going round the world.

  Not everyone who condemns the destruction of Sophiatown approves of Huddleston’s actions. Not even all the members of his own Community of the Resurrection approve. Some of them think that his actions make all their works more vulnerable, and that the authorities will make the Community suffer for his defi
ance. Some think he courts publicity in a way not fitting for a monk. The Community has already lost all its schools, but there were many other projects that could be harmed. No white priest could enter a black township without a permit from the Government, and if it was decided to withdraw permits, all mission work would come to an end.

  Two powerful Ministers, Dr. Hendrik of Bantu Affairs, and the Minister of Justice, have said in Parliament that Father Huddleston was encouraging the use of violence in the Sophiatown campaign. Huddleston has challenged them to say so outside Parliament, when he could sue them, but they have not done so. He is prepared for this kind of attack, but it has hurt him that none of his ecclesiastical superiors have come to his defence. He takes very seriously those words of the prophet:

  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

  That was what Huddleston really believed, that he had been sent to heal the broken-hearted. But his Archbishop, the Most Reverend Geoffrey Clayton, even if he believed it, didn’t think that Huddleston was doing it in a sensible way. Clayton was also known as a champion of the oppressed, but he was deliberate and judicial, whereas Huddleston burned with zeal. Clayton wrote to the Father Superior of the Community, saying that he did not wish to be Visitor to the order so long as Huddleston was the South African Provincial.

  It was in fact impossible to be lukewarm about Huddleston. You either approved of him or you didn’t. In Sophiatown, although he was white, he was the best known, the best loved, of all its people.

  – Father, I am too old to be moved.

  – I know you are too old, mother, but if you do not go they will lift you up in their arms and put you into the truck.

  – Father, I do not want to go.

  – I do not want you to go either. But tomorrow maybe they will come with the big machine and smash your house to pieces. Then what will you do?