by Alan Paton
If meddlesome people keep their hands off us, we shall in a just way such as behoves a Christian nation work out solutions in the finest detail and carry them out. We shall provide all our races with happiness and prosperity.
–The Right Honourable the Prime Minister Dr. H. F. Hendrik.
So we are going into a golden age, led by our new Prime Minister, Dr. Hendrik. In this golden age it will be the role of the masses to dig the gold, and the role of the rulers to spend it. No one will be prevented from participating in the activities of the golden age, except of course that black people must realise that ‘there is no place for the native in European society above the level of certain forms of labour’.
Dr. Hendrik holds the belief that by the year 1976, or some other equally miraculous year, the ‘black tide’ will turn, and will start streaming back to the ‘homelands’, which by that time will have an irresistible lure for those who left them for the very reason that they were poverty-stricken. The people cannot live on these fantasies. They demand a just share of the resources of the country they helped to build.
New Guard reminds its readers of those heroic words of the Freedom Charter: ‘The national wealth of our country, the heritage of all South Africans, shall be restored to the people.’
These words do not refer to the wealth of the destitute ‘homelands’. They refer to the gold of Johannesburg and Welkom, to the coal of Witbank and Newcastle, to the platinum and the copper and the chrome and the other mineral riches of our one undivided country; to the vineyards of the Cape and the maize of the Triangle, and the sugar of Natal; to the ports of Cape Town and Port Elizabeth and East London and Durban, not one of which could operate for an hour without the muscle of those people who are not considered good enough to sit in the Parliament that controls everything and everybody.
Dr. Hendrik is deceiving himself, his party, and his people. He hopes to deceive the masses as well, but he will not succeed. He hopes above all to deceive the ‘meddlesome people who won’t keep their hands off us’, but he won’t succeed there either.
New Guard refuses absolutely to join in the chorus of greeting to the new Prime Minister, raucous from the Nationalists, cautious from the spineless white opposition and the black lackey press.
Freedom is not yet.
— New Guard, 29 August 1958.
DECLARED UNDESIRABLE
The following list of publications declared undesirable is published in the Government Gazette of 5 September 1958. New Guard, 29 August, 1958 — New Guard Press, Cape Town
Pret in die Pastorie — Chrissie van Schoor — Voorloperpers, Cape Town
Across the River and into the Trees — Ernest Hemingway — Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York
Healthy Sexuality — J. D. Kissinger, M.D., Ph.D. — Phoenix Press, New York
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Mansfield and their son and daughter left Durban by the s.s. Kalgoorlie this morning on their way to Perth, Australia. Mr. Mansfield is to take up a post at the Latrobe High School. The Mansfields were seen off by a small company of friends, including Mr. Philip Drummond, national chairman of the Liberal Party, Mr. Emmanuel Nene, Natal organiser of the party, Miss Prem Bodasingh, who has recently returned from New York, and Mr. Hugh Mainwaring, the newly appointed Natal chairman of the party.
Mr. Mansfield said he had no comment to make on the reasons for his departure. The family wished to leave as quietly as possible.
A voice from the grave, eh? I’ll explain, Robert. The Doctor told me I ought to write my last letters, as I soon won’t be able to hold my pen because of the drugs. Well, I’m writing to you because you’re really my only friend. That’s a shock to you, eh? My sisters and I haven’t written for years, and I’m not going to write just because I am dying.
I hope you’ll be able to read it, because my hand is shaking. That’s if you can take time off from throwing boomerangs at the kangaroos, ha! ha! I write ha! ha! but I don’t laugh any more. Don’t think I’m crying. I’m preparing for my journey. I’m being prepared by Father Don, who is the hospital chaplain. He’s a holy man, and he’s making me a bit holy too.
I know that you pray, Robert, and I want you to pray for me till I die. When I die, the doctor will let you know. He knows somebody who knows your address. He’s a Jew, but I don’t seem to worry any more about the nations.
Do you know I have repented of my sins? I’d write them down for you, but I haven’t enough paper, ha! ha!
I must soon put my pen down. It’s a Parker 69, and the doctor is going to send it to you when I die. I told him he wasn’t to say who sent it. He promised, but I could see he thought I was crazy.
Father Don says I wrote wrong things to you. Well, I’m sorry. I send best wishes to you, digger, and your wife and family. And to that Indian girl when you write to her.
I sign myself,
Humble Christian Woman
PS. Look, I’m going to put my pen down now. I’m going to put it down slowly, because I’ll never pick it up again.
Last PS. I told you I’d never be touched by the black nation, but now they are talking of black nurses. It would serve me right, ha! ha!
. . . Well, my dearest wish has come true, and Dr. Hendrik is our Prime Minister. I shall myself go into the future with greater confidence. He says we are entering a golden age, and I believe it.
My Minister withdrew his candidature as soon as it became clear that the caucus wanted Dr. Hendrik. I don’t think he had set his heart on it. He looks as cheerful as he has always looked. I do admire him. I admire him all the more after watching him handle the deputation from Soetrivier who came on behalf of the four young men who threw a black man off a bridge. The deputation asked the Minister for a suspension of the sentence of one year’s imprisonment passed on each of the young men. They also asked the Minister to remove the magistrate to some other district.
My Minister told the deputation that he had studied the records of the case, and he saw no reason to interfere with the sentence. He appointed magistrates to administer justice, and in no circumstances would he alter their sentences or instruct them in their duties. Only a higher court could do that. He understood that the four young men were appealing against their sentences, and it was for the higher court and not for him to alter the sentences if it so decided.
The Minister then stood up, to his full height of six foot six inches.
‘Gentlemen, this is the Palace of Justice, and only justice will come out from it. The magistrate said that these four young men were a disgrace to white South Africa, and I share his opinion. Young men must not be encouraged to think that because they are Afrikaners, they can throw black men off bridges. In regard to the possible transfer of the magistrate, that is no business of yours. It is a private matter that I shall discuss with him personally, so that I can ascertain his own wishes in the matter. Gentlemen, good day.’
The members of the deputation left the Minister’s office in subdued fashion. Their faces showed a diversity of emotions, anger, resentment, humiliation. I forgot myself so far that I said, ‘That was well done, Minister,’ to which he gave a slight nod. A sudden thought went through my mind, and I wondered if it went through his also. I thought, how many votes will the party lose in Soetrivier?
More odd still, I suddenly remembered the lines of Clough:
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright!
Not very appropriate, I agree, but I wasn’t thinking of Soetrivier at all. I was thinking of our new Prime Minister and of the golden age that lies before our country.
Black man, we are going to shut you off
We are going to set you apart, now and forever.
We mean nothing evil towards you.
A fresh new wind shall blow through your territory.
Under your hands freed from our commandment
You shall build what s
hall astonish you.
The ravished land shall take on virginity
The rocks and shales of the desolate country
Shall acquire the fertility of the fruitful earth.
Chance-gotten children shall return to the womb
To re-emerge with sanctions and lead pattern lives
Of due obedience to authority and age.
Morality shall be recovered, the grave
And fearless bearing, the strange innocence
Of the tribal eyes, and all the sorrows
Of these hundred years shall pass away.
This is our reparation, our repayment
Of the incomputable debt.
We mean nothing evil towards you.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This novel is set in South Africa in the years 1952 to 1958. It contains both real and fictitious characters. Of the real characters most are no longer alive. Some are actors in the novel, and these are Chief Albert Lutuli, Dr. Monty Naicker, Mr. Patrick Duncan, Advocate Molteno, and Archbishop Clayton. I have written no evil of them, because I had a high regard for them all. Other real characters appear, but they can hardly be described as actors.
Two real characters are still alive, and they are Mrs. Helen Joseph and Archbishop Huddleston. They have both given me permission to introduce them, which is very trusting of them, they not having seen the script.
All the other characters are fictional. Some will be identified by those who lived so intensely in the years 1952–58, but I have not given them their real names, because I have not confined myself to the historical facts of their lives.
Of the events, some actually happened and some were invented.
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Epub ISBN: 9781446475218
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Published by Vintage 2002
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Copyright © Alan Paton 1981
First published in Great Britain in 1981 by
Jonathan Cape
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ISBN 9780099437277
