by Alan Paton
May God have mercy on your soul.
The council and the senate of the university have met together. Their problem is very difficult. Has the university the power to take away a degree that it has given? And if it does take it away, then would that do more harm to the university than to do nothing at all? The difficulty is that there is a magnificent board of honour that confronts you as you come into the entrance hall of the university. This board commemorates the names of all those who have received honorary degrees, and the name of Jan Woltemade Fischer has already been added. The council and senate were unanimous that it would be unthinkable for the name to stay there. It was finally decided to consult eminent counsel, to determine whether the university had the right to revoke the award of an honorary degree.
The big Kerk in Plein Street has had no problems. The portrait of Dr. Jan Woltemade Fischer has been quietly removed from the church refectory, and has been privately burned at the back of the building.
The Ohrigstad Town Council met privately to consider the renaming of Jan Fischer Street. It was decided unanimously that it should be renamed. It was also decided unanimously that it should not be renamed Jan Smuts Street. After discussion it was decided unanimously to rename it Hospital Street.
According to the Pretoria Times, the Mayor was not available for comment, having been called out of town on private business. The Town Clerk said it was not the practice of the Council to talk to the English press. When asked for a personal opinion he said that it was also not his practice to talk to the English press. What had happened was a painful matter and had caused the people of the town great distress, but to the English press it was only a titbit to titillate their readers’ palates. He would welcome any move on the part of the Prime Minister to curb the English press, which would do well to emulate the example of the Afrikaans press, and to show restraint when dealing with delicate matters. He considered that the Pretoria Times was a thorn in the side of the nation.
The City Council has decided that in future Louis Botha Park will be opened at sunrise and closed at sunset. A motion to limit entrance to the park to whites only, was defeated by one vote.
. . . The shock of Dr. Fischer’s death, coming as it did on the same day as his arrest, has been tremendous. My Minister sent for me and spoke to me briefly.
‘Van Onselen, listen to me carefully. The name of the man is never to be mentioned in my hearing. Anyone who mentions it in my hearing can expect no further advance in the Department of Justice. Now I can hardly issue instructions to that effect. I am therefore instructing you to go to the head of every sub-department, and to any person who has others under him, to instruct them to instruct all those under them that the name of the man is never to be mentioned in my hearing. Is that clear to you?’
‘It shall be done, Minister, and immediately.’
‘Further, Van Onselen, no telegram or letter or minute that concerns the man must be referred to me, no matter how important it seems to be. I authorise you to deal with all such matters without any reference to me. I said all such matters, Van Onselen. Is that clear to you?’
‘Yes, Minister.’
‘And there is one thing more I wish to say to you, Van Onselen. I want you to know that in this terrible time, the like of which I hope never to experience again, you have been a tower of strength to me.’
‘Thank you, Minister.’
The Minister gave a shadow of a smile.
‘I am leaving in a few minutes for the airport. I am going to Heunisstad to open the new police station. Therefore for the first time. Van Onselen, you will be the head of the Department of Justice.’
There was not much to say to that, so I bowed modestly, wished the Minister a good journey, and went to carry out the instructions he had given me. And when that was done I went to the house in Hofman Street.
– Gabriel!
– Mevrou.
– Ah, I knew you would come. I was sure you would come.
– Mevrou, there are arrangements to be made.
– And you have come to help me?
–Yes, mevrou.
– That is my fortune, Gabriel, for I cannot make them any more. My courage is failing. Dominee Vos will not bury my son, and he will not allow any minister from the big Kerk to bury him. What shall I do?
– Do you know the Reverend Andrew McAllister, mevrou? Or do you know of him? He is the minister of the Presbyterian Church here in Sunnyside?
– I have heard of him.
– I shall go to see him now. If he is able to do it, he will.
– Gabriel, I have not been to the undertakers. I am afraid to go there. I am afraid they will say no. And I am afraid to go to the cemetery too.
– Mevrou, I shall see them all.
– She looked at him with such trust that he felt his heart was breaking, and he hurried away from her.
. . . The funeral service was held in the smallest chapel at the undertakers. I had thought that Mrs. Fischer and I would be the only persons there, but there were three young men there also. I knew by some kind of instinct who they were. They were the three Berg brothers, the boys who had been sent to school and university by my Minister, and had repaid his generosity by joining the Liberal Party. They had all gone to the same university as Jan Woltemade Fischer.
We could not have had a better man than the Reverend Andrew McAllister. He took the service in English, but gave a little address in Afrikaans. He told Mrs. Fischer that the hearts of many Christians had gone out to her in these last days. He said that God would give her courage to face the times that lay ahead. He referred to her son as ‘our brother now departed’. He closed by asking that God’s blessing would rest on her all her days. He said to her:
‘Though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you need fear no evil. For God is with you, and His rod and staff will comfort you.’
I must say it was very moving.
– Who are you three young men?
– Mevrou, I am Jan Berg. And these are my brothers, Frederik and Izak.
– The sons of Cornelius Berg?
– Yes, mevrou.
– So you are my junior cousins. Is that why you came?
– That is one reason. But we also came to pay you our respects.
He saw her lip trembling, that these three young men should come to pay their respects to the mother of a man who had offended against the Immorality Act and had then taken his own life, and whose funeral service had been taken by a stranger from another church.
The three young men had another reason too, but they did not tell her that. They had come to make their protest against the Immorality Act of 1927, amended in 1950.
He went back with Mrs. Fischer to the house in Hofman Street, and she asked him to have a cup of coffee with her.
– I want you to see the library, Gabriel.
The library astonished him. It must have been one of the best private libraries in the whole country. There was no doubt the man was very learned.
– What am I to do with them, Gabriel? I am sure the university would not take them.
– There is more than one university. I shall see what can be done.
On the way back to the sitting-room, she opened a door and said to him,
– This was his room, Gabriel.
He could see that she meant him to go in, so he did so. It was a quite ordinary room. There was a Bible on the table by the bed, and a photograph of herself on the dressing-table. He picked it up and looked at the tender and innocent face.
– Did you know all about this, mevrou?
– Yes, I knew. I knew that one day it would destroy him. But I could not speak to him. He was an arrogant man, Gabriel, like his father before him. One could not speak to them. You must understand, Gabriel. I loved them both, but they were arrogant men. My son was two men, and one was clever and good, and considerate of his mother. But the other was a doomed man. He never looked at a white woman, Gabriel. Do you understand these things?
&
nbsp; – I do not say I understand them, but I know that is the way we are made.
– You are humble. You are not made that way.
– You know the English saying, mevrou? There but for the grace of God, go I. I say that also.
– Are you arrogant, Gabriel?
– I do not believe so. Mevrou, I think you should go away for a time. You should get away from Pretoria. I have an aunt in Natal. She lives on a farm under the Drakensberg. She is a woman of your own kind, and if you allow me, I shall write to her, and ask her to write to you and invite you to stay with her.
– Yes, I would do that, when things are settled here, Gabriel.
– Of course. I shall help you to settle them.
. . . Something has changed in my life, my dear aunt. You know, don’t you, that since my mother died I have become the perfect public servant? Strange that her death should change me into a dry old stick and that Fischer’s death should change me back again. At least I think that is what it is going to do. I remember writing to you to tell you that I was ashamed of the way I felt about him. It was jealousy, I suppose, and resentment that he got the job that should have been mine. And now it has gone. My dear aunt, I want you to invite Mrs. Fischer to the farm. You will like her. Her courage puts me to shame.
So I have been a tower of strength to the Minister. I was a bit surprised because I have done nothing out of the ordinary. But he would not be pleased to know that I have become an archangel as well, and to a woman whom he treated so cruelly. I have to face the possibility that his displeasure could rob me again of my promotion. And somehow I don’t seem to care. Do you remember Shakespeare’s ‘Full fathom five’? Well, I seem to be suffering a sea-change, into something rich and strange. It is an extraordinary thing to be happening at my age.
PART FIVE
* * *
The Holy Church of Zion
Three shots were fired last night into Robert Mansfield’s house in Ridge Road, Durban. The first bullet went harmlessly into the wall. The second went into the face of Rembrandt’s ‘Man in Armour’. The third went into the face of Prem Bodasingh. She lies, close to death, in the special ward at St. Bartholomew’s. Dr. Monty, down from Johannesburg during an adjournment of the Treason Trial, visits her night and day. The Archbishop has been to pray at her bedside. Prayers are being said in temples, mosques, churches, and synagogues. This coming Sunday there will be a special service of intercession at Chief Lutuli’s church in Groutville, and he is going to preach a sermon on steadfastness.
Miss Dorothea Mainwaring, sister of the Chairman of the Natal Provincial Executive, head of the reference section of the Durban City Public Library, has won the support of the Chief Librarian, who has recommended to the City Council, that a plaque be placed in the reference section commemorating the fact that Miss Prem Bodasingh sat there during the Defiance Campaign of 1952. But the City Council has turned down the recommendation. Members of the Council are hostile to defiance campaigners, and to the commemoration of criminal acts. One might as well face the truth that most of them are hostile to Indians also. In the end a very practical view prevailed. How could you put a plaque to a young woman in a room which she is not allowed by law to enter? Her feelings must also be considered, for if she is against the colour bar, would she want a plaque in a colour bar library? This argument was put forward most persuasively by Councillor Barrington, who has a reputation for unreachable urbanity.
Mr. and Mrs. Bodasingh are silent and withdrawn. For twenty-four years this girl has been the apple of their eyes. She has frightened them more than once, with that will of steel. Her father has always been helpless to turn her from her course; her mother has always been confident that, if her daughter has chosen a course, it must be right. They have both poured out their love upon her.
Mr. Jay Perumal comes to see them, but they do not make their jokes. Mr. Perumal does not make jokes about his wife who is a saint, and Mr. Bodasingh does not make jokes about his wife who is not. Mrs. Bodasingh’s tongue has lost its edge. They will not joke again until they know whether Prem will live or die. And at the backs of their minds is always the fearful thought that, even if she lives, she will be disfigured for life.
Robert Mansfield is looking very old, and Naomi Mansfield’s face is full of care. Mansfield feels that he is responsible for it all. He feels this even after the Bodasinghs have told him that he is not. The son and daughter have gone back to school, but they have gone silent too.
And the Liberal Party has also gone a bit silent. Philip Drummond has made a public statement, but what can he say? That the party will go on? That the members will not swerve from their course of opposition to the policies of racial separation? He is a wise man and he does not say anything of the kind. This is not a time for boasting. He expresses the sympathy of the party for Prem and her parents, and says that the party will try to be faithful to the principles for which she has paid so high a price.
. . . I can tell you in confidence, my dear aunt, and I really mean in confidence, that my Minister is not at all pleased with the progress of the Treason Trial. 156 people were arrested on 5 December 1956, and the preparatory trial lasted twelve months, and came to an end in January of this year. The Minister has been told that in no circumstances whatsoever could the charge of treason succeed in the overwhelming majority of cases. It would appear that the police acted in haste, that the evidence against the accused was not only ill-prepared but in many cases was valueless, that their reportage of speeches made in English was at times so ridiculous that the presiding magistrate was not able to prevent the accused from breaking into laughter. On one occasion the magistrate summarily fined one of the accused for contempt of court, and a great number of his fellow accused left their prescribed seats and surged forward towards the Bench. The police were powerless to control them, and it was Lutuli who mounted a chair and ordered them all to return to their seats, which, I may say, they did immediately. The irony did not pass unnoticed that one of the most notable of those accused of treason should come to the aid of the court in preserving law and order.
My Minister is truly unhappy. Advised by the police and supported by the Cabinet, he had given a tremendous display of governmental power, which was intended to cow all subversive elements. He had also been given the assurance of our leading experts on communism and subversion, that the utterances of many of the accused could mean one thing and one only, that they planned the violent overthrow of the State. Now the grave doubt has arisen as to how conspiracy can be proved of 156 people, most of whom knew hardly any of the others.
The question arises as to whether the Freedom Charter is in fact a communist document. It bears a close resemblance in many respects to the United Nations Charter, a document which was not adopted by the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. I wrote to you some time ago — my, my, it must be two and a half years ago — that Dr. Andrew Munnik of the University of Cape Town, Dr. Willem van Amstel of the University of Pretoria, and Dr. Koot Wollheim of the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk, were unanimous that the Freedom Charter, although it pretended to be a kind of liberal human rights document, had the unmistakable signs of a Marxist-Leninist source. Now the Minister’s big lawyers are telling him that the philosophical and theological evidence just cannot stand up in a court of law, and they are telling him — in the most tactful and indirect way they can find — that he made a grave error in paying too much attention to these clever scholars, that in fact they influenced him to do what he wanted to do. Dr. Hans Geyer, who says what he wants to whom he wants, said to the Minister. ‘Tom, you shouldn’t trust these extreme anti-communist advisers. Anti-communism is an irrationality and law is the highest rational pursuit of man.’ You may be sure that the Minister didn’t like it at all, for he is fiercely anti-communist himself.
There is another thing that I know is troubling the Minister. The defence lawyers quite outshine the State lawyers. The best lawyers never go to work for the State. They either make fortunes at the Bar, or if the
y put status above money, they become judges. Many of the defence lawyers are Jews, and one has to admit that the Jews have more than their reasonable share of brains. I told you that some of our police don’t understand English very well; indeed some of them don’t understand high Afrikaans very well either, and they are absolutely terrified of lawyers. They can bluff a lot of people in the police stations, even some of their own officers, but if they try to bluff these lawyers they make fools of themselves. You can imagine what they feel when a judge stops the cross-examination and says, ‘Sergeant, you are not answering the question, either because you don’t want to answer it or because you don’t know what it means. Mr. Maskelson, I must ask you to put your questions in a simpler manner.’
Well, the preparatory examination came to an end, and it put the Minister in what the English call a quandary. Did he want the magistrate to commit the whole 156 for trial, or did he want the magistrate to discharge at least half of them? If the magistrate were to commit the whole 156, then it would show how right the Government had been in arresting them, and then what would it look like when after another year the judge in the Supreme Court ordered the discharge of half of them because the judge would in fact be saying to the country that the police had wrongfully arrested them, and what kind of police action is this when they wrongfully arrest eighty people, especially on a charge of treason? Geyer said to the Minister, ‘Tom, you’re going to be made a fool of sooner or later, and I advise you to choose sooner rather than later. Send for this magistrate very privately and secretly, and say to him, Kêrel, let eighty of them go. Of course if you were in Russia, you could send for him openly, and say to him, Babushka, or whatever they say, let eighty of them go or you will end up in Siberia.’ Geyer is totally irreverent, and he will argue that an independent judiciary and strong Nationalism are totally incompatible, because you are expecting a Nationalist judge to put his personal integrity above the nation itself, and he says that really good Nationalists make really terrible judges. Well, in the end the magistrate committed all 156 for trial, and some people are predicting that the whole trial will end up as a farce.
