by Alan Paton
– Will you go to the police?
– I’ll have to think it over. I’d say not. Since I went into politics — unpopular politics, Jeff — I have no confidence in the police. I imagine them saying to each other, Here’s this fellow Mansfield who wants to give votes to blacks, and who wants to do away with the Immorality Act, and now he comes running to us when people muck up his car. And does he think we are going to work night and day to find out who did it? So you see, Jeff, I wouldn’t have any confidence. I’m ashamed to say that. I feel almost like a criminal too, because they see me as a traitor to white South Africa. They can’t get me under any law, but if anyone ruins my car they’ll never find out who did it.
– I’m sorry, Mr. Mansfield.
– Jeff, you’ll let me know the final verdict.
– Yes, I will. If you have to buy a new engine, perhaps you ought to buy a new car instead. It must have a bonnet that can open only from the inside, and we’ll have to put a padlock on the oil filler cap. You’ll also have to have a petrol tank cap that can be opened only with a key. I don’t know why they didn’t try that on you, it’s even quicker. Put some sugar in the tank, and you’ll have the same trouble, only not so quick or so deadly. Goodbye, Mr. Mansfield, I’ll let you know.
Mansfield went to his study and sat there doing nothing. He could find the five hundred pounds, the one thousand if he had to, but the discovery of his vulnerability was a shock to him. Was there something special about a car, or did this desolate feeling follow the loss of any possession? Perhaps a car was special. Archie Berrigan of Johannesburg, stout member of the white Congress, defending lawyer in a dozen ‘political’ cases that no other lawyer would touch, had been undeterred by abusive letters, threats of death, even by shots fired through the windows of the sitting-room. But when his enemies poured paint remover over the hood and bonnet of his new Pontiac, he and his wife gave up and went to live in Australia.
– Robert, what are you doing?
– Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Naomi Mansfield went to her husband quickly, and lifted up his head so that she could look at his face.
– Robert, don’t frighten me. What’s wrong with you?
– The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!
– Is it the car?
– Yes, it’s the car. The engine’s gone. Someone put grinding-paste in the sump. So the whole car ground to pieces.
– Have you been to the police?
– Of course, of course. Have you any suspicions who might have done it, sir? No, sergeant. When did it happen, sir? I don’t know, sergeant, some time in the last two weeks. Where did it happen, sir? I don’t know, sergeant. Thank you, sir, your information is invaluable, and will greatly assist us in our resolute search to find the villains. No, I have not been to the police, and I do not intend going. I don’t like going to them anyway, but even if I did, I wouldn’t see any point in it. Now listen, Naomi, I don’t want the children to know about this. I must confess to you, dear, that I feel almost ashamed of it.
. . . Why did I leave the Communist Party? I have already told you, Max, that I could not endure the hostility of the true believers. I had begun to realise that the State was not going to wither away. The stories about Stalin’s liquidation of millions of peasants who resisted collectivisation troubled me deeply. The true believers realised that I was beginning to have doubts, and if I had not resigned they would have forced me out.
You ask why I did not finally identify with the white Congress? It would have been like returning to the Communist Party. All the members of the Congress are not communists, but their real inheritance is from the C.P. They regard the sanctity of home and family, the rule of law, the freedom of the press, the speaking of the truth, as bourgeois values that liberals have exalted to the rank of absolutes, whereas the only true absolute is the party. I don’t want to pontificate, but my work is a search for the truth. The case of Lysenko, who was prepared to adapt his theories of heredity to suit the party, shocked me deeply. If the white Congress ever came to power it would not hesitate to abrogate the rule of law, and to make the press an instrument of the party.
Most of the members of the Liberal Party have no conception of the toughness and relentlessness of the white Congress. The two bodies are temperamentally, politically, and philosophically incompatible. A girl like Laura de Kock is brave, she has a passion for justice, but she is gentle of nature. A girl like Eve Briscoe is also brave, she also has a passion for justice, but if she came to power she would have me shot because I deserted the C.P. A dear simpleton like Peter Ross actually belongs to both the Liberal Party and the white Congress. He has an ecumenical and holistic credo, and believes that somehow the two will become one. Eve would have him shot too.
A rare creature is Helen Joseph. She is a member of the Congress but she has said herself that she was not promising material for the ranks of communism. Yet she was more at home in the Congress than she would ever have been in the Liberal Party. She was certainly not relentless but she had a quality of militancy that is more evident in communists than in liberals. The Black Sash kept their distance from her, and in any event she disapproved of their decision to keep the Black Sash white and their declaration that it was a white women’s fight, just as the Torch Commando had fought for coloured rights but would not admit coloured members. How does one explain these riddles of human nature? But the most difficult of all are the riddles of white South African nature.
At present our delegates are at Tongaat discussing the proposed Congress of the People with the members of all the congresses. Why the white Congress agrees to meet with us, I cannot quite fathom, even with my communist past. No doubt Lutuli and Z. K. Matthews wanted us to be there. However, I guarantee that our delegates will come back with the feeling that they have been manipulated. I’ll go further and say that the Liberal Party will never go to the Congress of the People at all. That will be a great pity, and it won’t do us any good, but that is what the white Congress wants, for us to agree to attend this great gathering of the people, and then for us to chicken out.
I am afraid of our ecumenical members. They will find a ‘formula’ to embody all the points of agreement and to leave out all the points of disagreement, and it is the points of disagreement that are the most fundamental. They are in fact the way that liberals look at the world.
I joined the C.P. so that I could help to build Utopia. Now I don’t believe in Utopia any more. I didn’t join the Liberal Party because I thought it would achieve Utopia. I joined it because I had a lump in my throat.
The Congress of the People has come and gone, and it was a cheerful affair. Huddleston said it was like a bank holiday on Hampstead Heath, thousands of people milling about, laughing, joking, giving salutes, buying tea and scones and cold drinks and pies, listening to brave speeches, applauding the resounding clauses of the Freedom Charter that gave every conceivable freedom and happiness to mortal man, who is born of a woman and has but a short time to live, and is full of trouble.
Well, not quite like Hampstead Heath or a bank holiday. This is Kliptown, Johannesburg, and the police are here in their hundreds. Still, if you fight for freedom you must learn to live with the police. There is a kind of truce between police and people, an armed truce for the police, an unarmed truce for the people. You can see the revolver holsters of the police, but you cannot see the guns that would be brought out if there were trouble. However, there is no trouble. You are searched when you come in and you are searched when you go out. You do not look at the police, and they do not look at you. It is an impersonal affair, and you shout and talk to your friends while they are searching you. Everyone is shouting and laughing, as though they had come to a bank holiday fair, and not to a gathering where the freedom and happiness of men and women were to be set out in moving words.
A new heaven and a new earth, that’s what it is. And the police are here in force to maintain the other new heaven and the o
ther new earth of Dr. Hendrik and the National Party, the new heaven and earth of separate and peaceful coexistence. It looks peaceful enough here, in this gathering that has come to frame the charter of another kind of coexistence, earnestness and resolution mixed with the shouting and the laughing. But neither the shouting nor the laughter is directed at the police, it is meant for your friends. Huddleston is laughing too, enjoying himself like a boy, but of course he knows that his every movement is closely watched. And he knows that his Archbishop, the formidable Geoffrey Clayton of Cape Town, does not approve of his being here, and he knows too that his own order, the Community of the Resurrection, are more and more troubled by his doings.
Huddleston receives the title of Isitwalandwe, the Courageous Warrior, amidst deafening applause. So does Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, the national president of the South African Indian Congress. There is special applause for Chief Lutuli, who also receives the title, but he cannot be here, because he is banned to the magisterial district of Stanger for two years. He could not have come in any case because he has suffered a stroke.
This is 25 June, and it is winter in Johannesburg. The air is cold and crisp, but the sun is warm and pleasant. You would hardly know that you were attending a gathering of people who are fighting to be free, to be free of every law that prevents them from enjoying life and liberty, and pursuing happiness. But when you hear the Freedom Charter you will know.
The Security Police are confiscating every dangerous document. One of them will be used at a famous trial that is still to come. It reads: ‘Comrades. Tea 3d. Tea and Sandwich 6d.’
* * *
Adopted at the Congress of the People at Kliptown, Johannesburg, on 25 and 26 June 1955.
We, the People of South Africa, declare for all 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;
that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities;
that only a democratic state, based on the will of the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, sex, or belief.
And therefore we, the people of South Africa, black and white together — equals, countrymen, and brothers — adopt this Freedom Charter. And we pledge ourselves to strive together sparing neither strength nor courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won.
All apartheid laws and practices shall be set aside.
The national wealth of our country, the heritage of all South Africans, shall be restored to the people;
The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole;
All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of the people;
All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.
No one shall be imprisoned, deported or restricted without a fair trial; no one shall be condemned by the order of any government official.
The law shall guarantee to all their right to speak, to organise, to meet together, to publish, to preach, to worship, and to educate their children;
The privacy of the home from police raids shall be protected by law;
All shall be free to travel without restriction from countryside to town, from province to province, and from South Africa abroad;
Pass laws, permits and all other laws restricting these freedoms shall be abolished.
Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children.
Let all who love their people and their country now say, as we say here:
These freedoms we will fight for, side by side, throughout our lives, until we have won our liberty.
* * *
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea.
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold the Tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them and be their God.
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.
– Well, Robert, it is good of you to come to see me.
– They wouldn’t let me come before, Chief. I tried many times. How are you, Chief?
– I’m much better, but I’m sluggish. This is not a time to be sluggish. We Puritans don’t like it when we’re not working. What made it worse for me was that while we were holding the Congress of the People, I was so helpless. Why weren’t you there, Robert?
– Chief, the national committee decided that the party would not be there.
– They made a mistake. They didn’t want to be there because the white Congress was going to be there. They think the white Congress plays the tune and we all have to dance. Is that a compliment to me? Or to the African Congress?
– No, it isn’t.
– You ought to know, Robert, we also have members who don’t like the white Congress. They say there’s only one thing worse than being ruled by Pretoria and that’s being ruled by Moscow. We also have black Nationalists who dislike the whole Congress alliance. They don’t want to have anything to do with whites or Indians. You liberals are too afraid of the white Congress. If a communist or a member of the white Congress wants to work with me for an end to apartheid and for work and food for everybody, I’ll work with him. Look, Robert, when my house is burning down, and we are all running to the fire, I don’t say to the man next to me, Tell me first, where did you get your bucket, where did you draw your water?
– Chief, some of our members take fright at all this talk of nationalisation of mines and banks and factories. They are afraid not only of the end of private property, but of the very incentive to work. They are afraid of a dead level of mediocrity, with millions of powerless workers ruled by powerful party bosses, and they see the hand of the white Congress in it.
– Robert, black people don’t feel the same about mines and banks and factories as you do. They’ve never had any. All they had to do was to work in them, and to live in mean houses while the bosses lived in mansions. Just take the sugar country where I live. We work on the plantations for next to nothing, and do they think we can’t see the houses where the sugar barons live? I don’t want to see the end of private property but I want to see the end of private property that has been built on the labour of people who have no private property. Why is the gold industry so rich? It’s not because gold is so rich, but because the people who dig it are so poor.
– Chief, it’s not just the loss of private property. What we fear most of all is that you can’t nationalise everything without destroying all freedom, the freedom to speak and teach and protest as you have been doing. We are afraid of some of your colleagues. They put fine words in the Freedom Charter, but do you believe that if they come to power, no one would be imprisoned or restricted without charge or trial? We don’t believe it.
The Chief wiped his brow and his face, down which the sweat was pouring as it always did when he was putting his heart and soul into something, which he did often. Then he gave his tremendous laugh.
– Robert, you know the Freedom Charter well, although you weren’t there to help us make it. And don’t you know I mustn’t get excited? Look at me now. The sister won’t let you come again.
– Sorry, Chief, but you make me excited too. If I think freedom is in danger, I must defend it, even to you.
– Well, let’s change the subj
ect. I still think it’s a pity you didn’t come to Kliptown. You could’ve saved us from putting in all the Marxist doctrines. You know Patrick Duncan came to see me?
– Yes, I knew.
– We invited him to Kliptown but he said he wasn’t well enough. That was an even greater pity. If a white man goes into Germiston location on crutches, then we make a hero of him. Then when he doesn’t go to Kliptown we don’t know what to make of him. It seemed like a snub to the African Congress, and especially to Z. K. Matthews whose idea it was. Patrick gave his reasons for not going, besides his illness I mean. It was like listening to you, except that his anti-communism is much worse than yours. Don’t let him make you into an anti-communist party.
– We know the danger, Chief.
– Robert, I can’t let you go away looking so gloomy. I must tell you . . .
– I’m not gloomy, I’m sober. It makes me sober talking to you. But I must go on talking to you for the sake of us all.
– Of course. Listen to me. I’ve a story to cheer you up. A couple of nights ago I dreamt I was elected the Prime Minister of South Africa. And I sent for you, Robert, to ask you to be my Minister of Education.
Mansfield felt his heart suddenly warm to this big man, whose big voice could electrify a gathering as no other voice in the country could, the voice that had been silenced by the Minister of Justice at the very time when the Minister should have listened.
– Well, Robert, nothing to say?
– Lots to say, but at the moment I don’t seem able to say it. I can’t speak, Chief, because you’ve touched me.
– So I ought to touch you. God help us when we can’t touch each other any more, because then, Robert, we’re going to kill each other. All right, sister, I’m sending him off. Come again, Robert.
. . . You see, the Congress of the People passed off quietly. Your fears were unjustified. Not a stone was thrown, not a shot was fired. The police behaved impeccably as you would expect our police to behave, firm and controlled. Huddleston was there of course, having taken a day off from his religious duties. It surprises me that he performs any duties. He and his picture are always in the English papers, I mean our English papers, but he also gets a lot of space in the papers of England. He is always smiling. He simply has no conception of the danger of the forces he is playing with. If they came to power, that would be the end of him and his church, indeed the end of all churches, the end of freedom of worship. These enemies of ours pick on anything they can find wrong in our country, but they do not say that there is complete freedom of worship, and the Government does not interfere in any way with the churches, or the synagogues and the mosques and the temples. Our President Kruger was held in great respect by the Jews of the Transvaal. You will remember the story of how he was invited to open the synagogue in Pretoria. He made a little speech and then he declared the synagogue open ‘in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen’. But they didn’t hold it against him.
