Ah But Your Land Is Beautiful

by Alan Paton

  This is the task which confronts the State, to prove that this is true, to prove that these 156 people, or most of them, knew that they could achieve the common society only by revolution, and that therefore, when they continued to demand a common society, they accepted the necessity of revolution.

  My dearest aunt, I must admit that these ideas trouble me. As I said, I do not pretend to be a philosopher. I do not really like living with ideas, I much prefer facts. I am writing to you in the strictest confidence, and in the confidence also that what I write to you is for you, and you alone, as indeed I would once have written to my mother. There are times when the problems of our country seem insoluble. I felt this strongly on the day that Mrs. Helen Joseph and her ten thousand women came to the Union Buildings. On that day I happened to be at the Union Buildings on the Minister’s business. These women had no power whatsoever, they had no guns, they had no votes, they had no members of Parliament, nothing. Yet they had a strange kind of other power. They marched in that solid column from the Louis Botha statue up to the very amphitheatre. There they sat down and were addressed by one of their number, a Mrs. Ngoyi, I believe. Well, I have never heard a woman speak like that, although I could not understand everything. I have heard Mrs. Smuts and Mrs. Malan, and Mrs. Leila Reitz when she was in Parliament, and Mrs. Ballinger too of course, but not one of them could speak with her fire. There she was, standing up in the amphitheatre of the Union Buildings, and you would have thought that the buildings belonged to her. She told the crowd that the Prime Minister had refused to meet their deputation, and they gave what sounded like a shout of jubilation. They called out their slogan, Mayibuye Afrika! which means something like ‘Give us back Africa’. Why the Prime Minister’s refusal should make people jubilant is beyond my understanding, but worse than that, it gives me this feeling of unease. Then this Mrs. Ngoyi said that Mrs. Joseph and others would now present the petitions, and again they shouted Mayibuye! Eventually they had to leave the petitions on the floor of the P.M.’s office, and you may be sure that by evening they would be in the incinerator, yet when the women returned to the amphitheatre they were greeted by triumphant shouts as though they had achieved something great. Then all the women sang the Bantu anthem, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, which I must admit is very beautiful. And to crown it all, they shouted, Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! As you know, this means ‘Praise the Lord!’ but what they were praising the Lord for, it would be hard to know.

  Then they all dispersed in a very peaceable fashion, obviously pleased with the day’s work. Yet what had they done? Whatever it was, they were pleased with it.

  I observed my fellow public servants while they watched the demonstration. Some of them were openly contemptuous, some thought the whole thing was very funny. I didn’t see anyone looking angry, but it is in fact characteristic of public servants that, if the Prime Minister and the Head of the Police allow a demonstration to proceed, then it is not their place to get angry about it. There were some who watched it all without smiles or contempt, quite soberly in fact, as though they wondered how real it was, and what kind of strength lay behind it all. I found myself remembering Roy Campbell’s ‘Zulu Girl’, where the girl is feeding her child by the pool.

  Yet in that drowsy stream his flesh imbibes

  An old unquenched unsmotherable heat —

  The curbed ferocity of beaten tribes,

  The sullen dignity of their defeat.

  We learned it at school, and the words came back to me while we were watching the demonstration. There was dignity all right, but it wasn’t sullen. In fact it was determined and confident. One had the feeling that it would show itself again, that in fact it would go on showing itself, until, well — yes, well — until it triumphed. That’s a gloomy thought, isn’t it? You see my feeling of euphoria has gone. Dr. Fischer is back in the Minister’s good books, perhaps because the university has announced that he will receive an honorary doctorate of Laws at the next graduation, for services to the cause of justice, or words like that.

  I shall feel neither happy nor safe, my dear aunt, until Dr. Hendrik is the head of the Government. I expect him to lead us, and especially Afrikanerdom, into a new world.

  PART FOUR

  * * *

  Death of a Traitor

  – Hugh.

  – Yes, Mrs. M. K.

  – I don’t want to pry into your private affairs, but this particular affair is ours too. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

  – Yes.

  – Well, what is the relationship between you and Prem? Are you in love with each other?

  – We are, Mrs. M. K., and we are not. What I mean is, I love Prem and she loves me. But if we’d wanted to get married, we’d have had to go to some other country, and what is more, we’d have had to stay there. We thought it over very seriously. Then decided we ought to stay here, and that meant we couldn’t be in love.

  – So you just decided not to be in love?

  – Yes.

  – Well, it’s extraordinary. It seems almost supernatural. But then I sometimes think my daughter is supernatural.

  – There’s another side to it, Mrs. M. K. Supposing we went to England, would we do anything? Wouldn’t we always be thinking that we had gone there for our own private reasons?

  – You and Prem are far too serious for your ages. I was never so serious. But I was one of a large family, and you can’t be so serious in a large family. Prem is an only child, and she has grown up very serious. You mustn’t think I worry about you and Prem. I brought her up to know what is right, and I trust her to lead her own life. That’s why we never interfered with her when she took part in the Defiance Campaign. Her father used to get up in the night and walk about the house, but he didn’t try to stop her. Tell me, do your parents know?

  – If my father knew, Mrs. M. K., I just don’t know what he would do. He was ashamed to walk around in Pietermaritzburg when I went off to join Patrick Duncan. But if he had heard that I was in love with an Indian girl, I just don’t know what would have happened.

  – Hugh, you’re a Christian, aren’t you? I mean you take it seriously?

  – That’s a hard question, Mrs. M. K., but, yes, I do.

  – And you might become a priest?

  – Yes.

  – Then what about Prem’s religion?

  – It’s difficult, Mrs. M. K. . . .

  – You mean it’s difficult to tell me that if you could have married, she would have become a Christian. Well, it wouldn’t shock me. I don’t think her father would have liked it, and of course some Hindu parents would be horrified. Some Indians would have thought Prem was a traitor, and they would have said, Look what the Christians have done to us, look at the Group Areas Act. You know, if Prem had a saint, it was Francis of Assisi, not Mahavira or one of our other saints. You know the great Mr. Ahmed Bhoola, he is the director of FOSA, that’s the Friends of the Sick Association, he has given his life to the service of the sick and thinks he is a kind of Mahatma. He’s an educated man but he had never heard of Francis of Assisi till Prem mentioned his name. He said to her, ‘Prem, let me give you some good Hindu advice: if you ever become a Christian, you must keep your eyes on Christ so that you will not get a chance to look at Christians.’ Well, what are you going to do? Are you going to stop seeing each other? If you go on seeing each other, you will be preventing Prem from ever getting married and she will be preventing you.

  – Mrs. M. K., I shall never marry anyone but Prem.

  – How do you know that?

  – I just know it.

  – And Prem?

  – You must ask her, Mrs. M. K.

  – I suppose she just knows it too.

  – That is what she says.

  – Well, it’s supernatural. And if it’s not supernatural, it’s unnatural. It’s not the way young people should be. And I can tell you, Hugh, lots of older people couldn’t be that way either. And when do you think they will let you marry? When your party c
omes to power, I suppose, and that means never. Or are you going to convert the Afrikaners? If you converted them ten a day for the next ten years, you wouldn’t be any nearer to marrying Prem. It’s no use looking so gloomy, Hugh. You and Prem have made up your minds and I don’t think you’ll change them. The Afrikaners think the Group Areas Act is sacred, but the Mixed Marriages Act is as holy as God. You know the Padayachee boy. He went to study in Canada and married a Canadian girl, and when he brought her home to meet his parents, they had to sleep in separate rooms. And I’m telling you, the parents were terrified when they even touched each other. Mrs. Padayachee couldn’t sleep at nights because she was afraid the police would burst in at any moment, and go through the bedrooms feeling the sheets and looking for Canadian hairs on young Padayachee’s pillow. That’s the kind of madness it is.

  – I’m sorry I brought all this trouble on you, Mrs. M. K.

  – You needn’t be sorry. Just suppose that Prem had fallen in love with one of these young men whose lives are ruled by hate. I won’t stop praying for happiness for you both.

  . . . My Minister is very angry about the Treason Trial Defence Fund, and rightly so. No sooner has he taken the grave step of arresting 156 people for high treason than all the liberals and do-gooders in the country rush to their defence. The Minister is determined to root out the communists once and for all, but meantime the liberals, whom the communists would kill tomorrow, rush round collecting money to defend them. To me it is incomprehensible, but to the Minister it is infuriating. He regards the setting up of a defence fund as treasonable in itself. He would have liked to ban the fund and some of its sponsors on the very day after its launching, and he had the support of Dr. Fischer, but the Prime Minister was against it. However, he has given instructions to the Security Police to watch closely the comings and goings of anyone connected with the fund.

  And what a bunch they are! Bishop Reeves of Johannesburg of course, but one would expect it of him. The Reverend J. B. Webb, the great Methodist teacher of morality to us poor Afrikaners. It was a shock, however, when the Most Reverend Geoffrey Clayton, the Anglican Archbishop, accepted the presidency of the fund in Cape Town. You may remember that he opposed the Bantu Education Act, but we did not expect him to go as far as this. One must add another big churchman to the list, and that is the notorious Canon Collins of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, who is one of the most poisonous Afrikaner-haters in the world. He raises tremendous amounts of money to defend political prisoners and wastes the precious time of our higher courts.

  And then of course the members of the Liberal Party, Robert Mansfield the Springbok cricketer, Mrs. Carmichael, the wife of our leading surgeon in Pretoria (she is one of the Black Sash women who come to the Union Buildings to picket the Ministers), Donald Molteno, who ought to know a good deal better, Philip Drummond of the Natal aristocracy. In fact they are all what they call in England upper middle-class, and they do the impossible, and the ridiculous too; they hobnob with black labourers and have them to tea. It is now not the proper thing to give them tea in special cups, but to use the same for all. The famous Springbok cricketer has just condemned the South African Railways for using separate crockery and cutlery, and he is not an Englishman, he was born and bred in Natal, though I suppose that is much the same thing. The Liberal Party is edging towards the left. It started off with a suffrage for all who had passed Standard Six, but now advocates a universal adult suffrage. Our reports say that it is people like Patrick Duncan, the new national organiser of the party, who are pushing it to the left, and this is quite incomprehensible because he is violently anti-communist, just as extreme as some of our own people who find, as the English say, a Red under every bed. We know that he and Molteno have an antipathy for each other, and that sooner or later one of them will push the other out. We are watching the party very closely. It seemed to be coming to its senses when it refused to attend the Congress of the People, but now it has thrown all its gains away by being so active in the treason fund. Its members use the stupid parrot cry that a man is innocent until he’s proved guilty.

  I must tell you that I am coming round to Dr. Hendrik’s point of view about mixed worship. When I look at people like the Bishop of Johannesburg, the Archbishop of Cape Town, the Reverend J. B. Webb, and Father Huddleston, I think it is desirable to keep them away from our Bantu people. Our Bantu have a great respect for law and authority, but when they hear people like Bishop Reeves and Huddleston condemning the Government and the separation laws, they are bound to lose it. Neither Reeves nor Huddleston can speak a word of Afrikaans, but they think they can teach Afrikaners to run their country. When you think they have been here only a few years, and that we have been here for three centuries, their actions cannot be regarded as anything less than impudent.

  The Archbishop also cannot speak a word of Afrikaans. He was educated at Rugby and Cambridge and, however famous these may be in England, they cannot possibly provide an education which would fit a person to make lofty pronouncements on South African affairs. He holds the erroneous idea that if you are a Christian you can pass moral judgements anywhere and everywhere in the world. He has no conception of the meaning of Christian–Nationalism, a philosophy which helps one to set one’s Christianity firmly in the context where one was born and where one lives. Die Kerkbode put it well. It wrote: ‘Educated in England, unacquainted with the history, language and ideals of our nation, and totally lacking in feeling for the circumstances of our country, these men give themselves the right to say precisely who and what we are. How can they criticise us without even knowing us?’ Die Transvaler put it even better: ‘As long as liberalistic bishops and canons, professors, students and politicians can freely attend church and hold meetings and socials together with non-whites, apartheid will be infringed in its marrow. It is high time for this to end.’

  Now Dr. Hendrik is absolutely determined to stop the abuses of mixed worship. He has submitted a Native Laws Amendment Bill to Parliament, and one of the clauses, 29(c), provides that no church in a white area will be able to admit Africans to worship without the permission of the Minister of Native Affairs, given with the concurrence of the local authority. This will apply not only to worship but to any meeting held on church premises. It will apply also to schools, hospitals, and clubs in all areas zoned for white occupation under the Group Areas Act.

  There is a block of flats next to mine, and one at least of the flats is occupied by liberalists, probably members of the Liberal Party, or perhaps even leftists belonging to the white Congress. They have black guests, and almost certainly break the law by supplying them with liquor. There would be much less resentment in the neighbourhood if the parties were quiet, but they are not. The worst noise is when the party breaks up, and they congregate on the pavement, laughing and shouting and slapping each other on the back, and calling one another Fred and Lucy and Thembi and Lancelot. The white men kiss the black women quite brazenly, and vice versa. You can understand how a white citizen of our city reacts to this provocation, because that is what it is. And no one reacts to it more strongly than Dr. Hendrik. It is lucky for him that he does not have to live in flatland.

  It is of course a tricky thing to control visitors to private dwellings, and these dwellings are not affected by the clause, but you may be sure that Dr. Hendrik will not rest until some control is achieved. He has already taken steps in flatland to control ‘locations in the sky’, which is what we call the concrete roofs of the flats where the servants are quartered, and where the noise and the immorality are unbelievable. That is why there is a move to have our cities ‘white by night’, as they say in English. You can imagine how intolerable it is for a dweller in one of these very tall flat buildings to have to look down on to the roof of a lower block of flats.

  So you will see why I have decided, after much struggle, my dear aunt, to back Dr. Hendrik’s move to stop mixed worship. This is another of those cases where neither alternative is perfect, and one has to choose the one that
seems less imperfect.

  PS. I must learn not to use the term ‘political prisoner’. I used it the other day to the Minister, and it made him very angry, which I can assure you is not pleasant. He says such people may be political persons, but they are being charged with criminal offences. Treason is not a political offence, it is a criminal offence of the gravest kind.

  Mr. Robert Mansfield

  Natal Chairman

  Liberal Party

  So you don’t like separate cups and saucers on the railways, eh? You want us all to drink from the same cups, eh? The day that happens I want to be dead.

  I suppose you all use the same cups at the International Club, don’t you? It’s to be expected from you. Anyone who can suck — ugh, you disgust me with your thoughts.

  I suppose you’ve been wondering who I can be. I can guess your filthy thoughts. Wouldn’t you like my phone number? I suppose you think it’d be a change from the black dollies and their — ugh, I wouldn’t be touched by a shit like you.

  How is your reading-room at the club, ha! ha! Have they caught any more Portugooses in the act of reading with the lights off, ha! ha!

  I’m watching your career of corrupting our kids. You’ll hear again.

  I sign myself

  Proud White Christian Woman

  His Grace The Archbishop

  Bishopscourt

  Cape Town

  Your Grace

  My mother brought up her children to have great respect for bishops and of course greatest of all for an archbishop. So don’t think it is easy for me to write to you.