Roots of Outrage. John Davis Gordon

New York and loss of face for Africa had to be avoided. On the eighth day Moise Tshombe unilaterally requested Belgium to send troops. On the ninth day Belgium paratroopers dropped out of the sky and fierce fighting began. On the tenth day Patrice Lumumba, infuriated by this challenge to his sovereignty, asked the United States to send its army to help him. Russia loudly objected, and President Eisenhower backed down for fear of aggravating the Cold War. On the eleventh day the Congo collapsed and Moise Tshombe proclaimed the unilateral independence of his province of Katanga.

      Thus the independence of the Congo began. The chaos was to last many years. The Western world looked on in horror. And when those in the corridors of international power looked at what was happening in the Congo and in the rest of the continent – in Kenya, where the Mau Mau had raged, in Ghana and Nigeria with their riots and tribal war, in Rhodesia, where their policy of equal rights for all civilized men was under attack, mission stations burnt down, dip tanks burned, cattle maimed – there were many who wondered whether the Afrikaners might not have the right idea: maybe apartheid was not such a bad thing.

      Mahoney begged his editor to send him to the Congo to cover the crisis, but the idea was turned down. He took unpaid leave and went up to witness the drama, to interview the wild-eyed Belgian refugees. He filled a long article, but his editor could not publish it.

      ‘Great stuff, Luke, but what Drum wants is the blood, sweat and tears of apartheid.’

      The blood that his editor particularly wanted was that which flowed from the hearts broken by apartheid – from domestic tragedies arising from the Group Areas Act which forced members of the same family to split up under the Population Registration Act, from marriages and relationships broken up under the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, from indignities caused by the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act – but the most dramatic blood of all was that flowing from prosecutions under the Immorality Act. That was always news: scandal and heartbreak, broken lives, broken careers, and sheer shame. Most cases were prosecutions of white men screwing black prostitutes, or knocking off their housemaids when Madam wasn’t looking; but sometimes there was a case where a girl was only slightly coloured, and she was in love with a white man. That was big news. And that is how Luke Mahoney met the beautiful Patti Gandhi again.

      Patti Gandhi had made news several times since she had left Umtata: as the Indian schoolgirl who walked into the Durban whites-only library; the Indian girl who climbed onto a whites-only bus and manacled herself to a stanchion; the angelic Indian girl who walked into the Dutch Reformed church and prayed until the police were called to take her away for disturbing the peace; the impertinent Indian girl who took herself to a whites-only beach and swam until the constables had to plunge in to drag her out; the girl who had become such a problem to her father that he had finally sent her to England to finish her schooling; the beautiful Indian girl who, when she returned, had the audacity to enter the Miss South Africa contest knowing she would be barred and cause a hullabaloo. And now here in the dock of the magistrates’ court, Johannesburg, looking absolutely beautiful (so said Drum, the Star, the Rand Daily Mail, the Sowetan et al), was the notorious Patti Gandhi, aged nineteen, long-legged and with a bust and face to break your heart, the great-niece of Mahatma Gandhi, charged with contravening the Immorality Act in that upon or about the 20th day of May, 1961, and at or near the city of Johannesburg, she did, being an Indian as defined by the Population Registration Act, wrongfully and unlawfully have carnal knowledge of Peter Howardson, a person defined by the aforesaid Population Registration Act as White.

      All the crime reporters were in court that day. Patti Gandhi was alone in the dock because her co-accused, Mr Howardson, had broken bail and fled the country. Miss Gandhi did not have an attorney to represent her. She listened to the prosecution evidence with a little smile. When the arresting police officer, Sergeant van Rensburg, finished his evidence-in-chief, she stood up to cross-examine.

      ‘Sergeant, how long have you been on the Vice Squad?’

      ‘Five years.’

      ‘My word! We assume, therefore, that you are very experienced in vice? So will you please define for us the word “vice”.’

      ‘Objection, Your Worship,’ the public prosecutor said.

      ‘Miss Gandhi,’ the magistrate said, ‘we are not concerned with the witness’s ability to define abstract nouns – it’s not relevant whether the police call it the Vice Squad or the Virtue Squad – we are only concerned with his evidence that on the night of 20th May you contravened the Immorality Act.’

      ‘But it concerns his attitude to his job, Your Worship,’ Patti Gandhi said politely. ‘If that attitude is hostile, if it is persecutory, it reflects upon his overall credibility as to what he saw. If, for example, we were in Germany now, in 1939, and Sergeant van Rensburg were a Nazi, it would reflect on the reliability of his evidence that he saw a Jew breaking the law –’

      ‘Miss Gandhi,’ the magistrate said, ‘is it part of your defence that you are a white person?’

      ‘No, Your Worship, Heaven forbid! I am an Indian person. The real thing. My great grandfather came all the way from Bombay to these blighted shores as a coolie cane-cutter. My great-uncle was Mahatma Gandhi himself – that trouble-maker.’

      ‘Then stop talking about Nazis. Confine your questions to the evidence pertaining to the Immorality Act.’

      She turned to the witness. ‘Sergeant, in your five years experience in vice – which means, by the way, things that are wicked, immoral, unjust, such as dealing in drugs, prostitution, illegal gambling, protection rackets and the like – have you done many prosecutions under the Immorality Act?’

      ‘Yes, many,’ the sergeant said grimly.

      ‘Indeed, is the Immorality Act the bulk of your job?’ She added kindly: ‘“Bulk” means the greatest part of your job.’

      ‘Yes, Your Worship,’ the sergeant said to the magistrate.

      ‘So when you broke into my friend’s apartment –’ she indicated the empty seat beside her – ‘you were using your experienced eye to look for evidence of immorality?’ The witness hesitated, and she snapped: ‘Yes or no?’

      ‘What’s the purpose of the question, please?’ the public prosecutor asked.

      ‘The purpose is to establish whether or not the witness was eagerly looking for evidence of immorality,’ Patti Gandhi said.

      ‘Very well,’ the magistrate said wearily.

      Patti turned back to the sergeant. ‘You were looking for evidence of immorality, weren’t you?’

      ‘Correct, Your Worship,’ Sergeant van Rensburg said.

      ‘And in fact you were very confident of finding such evidence – otherwise you would not have taken the risk of damaging my absent co-accused’s door.’

      The sergeant said: ‘Yes, I was confident, Your Worship.’

      Patti Gandhi cried: ‘So confident that you were prejudiced!’

      The sergeant said uncomfortably: ‘No, I was not prejudiced.’

      ‘No? You weren’t convinced you were right? Then why did you smash a citizen’s door down?’

      The sergeant said gruffly: ‘Yes, I was convinced.’

      ‘Aha! You were convinced you’d find evidence of immorality within. And therefore, Sergeant, your expert, five-year-experienced eye was prejudiced by your conviction that you would find steamy evidence of immorality.’

      ‘I was not prejudiced …’

      Patti started to argue but the magistrate said, ‘You’ve made your point, Miss Gandhi, now please proceed to your next question.’

      Patti Gandhi said sweetly: ‘So, therefore, Sergeant, it is very appropriate – very relevant – to ask you what your definition of immorality is. To define to us exactly what you were looking for.’