Roots of Outrage. John Davis Gordon

on the ruins?’

      ‘I’m a socialist, darling. Not a Marxist. And so are you, in your secret racist heart.’

      ‘Me a socialist?’

      ‘Of a sort. I couldn’t love you if you weren’t just. You also think there’s got to be a redistribution of wealth in this country. A redistribution of land, for a start. Housing – why should the vast majority of urban blacks live in hovels while the whites live in nice suburbs? The state must provide decent housing. The mines, and big industry – why should the blacks, who create the wealth, receive miserable wages while the fat white shareholders get the big profits? Obviously, the commanding heights of commerce must be nationalized, like the coal and steel industry in Britain.’ She spread her hands. ‘That hardly makes me a communist, any more than Harold Wilson … ’ She sat up straight. ‘And now can we please stop talking about bloody politics? Weekends are supposed to be for us …’

      But you couldn’t avoid politics in South Africa because you lived with it. And with those bombs. And with the government’s new laws to deal with it all. That year the Defence Act was beefed up to give the army wider powers to suppress internal disorder, the period of military training was extended and a police reserve was created. Police powers of interrogation, control of suspects and witnesses were drastically increased: now they were empowered to detain a suspect in solitary confinement, without access to a lawyer and without a criminal charge being laid, for successive periods of twelve days. The state already had the power to ban and banish people and organizations, but now new legislation gave them the power to condemn people to house-arrest without a trial. The Prisons Act forbade the press from reporting on conditions in jails, and new legislation empowered the state to hold suspects incommunicado, which made it impossible for a prisoner to prove he had suffered third-degree treatment. Magistrates holding inquests were frequently hearing how suspects were ‘having accidents’, slipping on soap in the showers, falling down staircases, ‘committing suicide’ by throwing themselves out of high windows, hanging themselves, being ‘shot in self-defence’ when attacking their interrogators, ‘shot escaping custody’: the new laws made it impossible to refute this new tendency of suspects to injure and kill themselves. The editor of Drum gave Mahoney the task of reporting on all such inquests. ‘Build up a case file against the bastards.’

      ‘God,’ Mahoney said to Patti, ‘it’s getting like Orwell’s 1984.’

      ‘Do you still,’ Patti said, ‘consider that Mandela shouldn’t plant bombs?’

      Oh Jesus, he didn’t know anymore. He would like to see the government blown to smithereens too.

      ‘God help Mandela when his luck runs out …’

      It was not long before Nelson Mandela’s luck did run out.

      He was disguised as a chauffeur, driving a shiny Jaguar through the rolling green countryside of Natal. It was a tertiary road, only used by country folk, a needle-in-a-haystack road, which made it impossible that the police were so lucky to just pick the right one. Their ambush was massive. Mandela drove straight into it: within moments his car was surrounded by firearms.

      It was an agent of the American CIA, a professional going about America’s covert business, who had heard on the underground grapevine of Mandela’s movements, asked President John F. Kennedy for the green light, then tipped off the South African police. Within hours the whole world knew of the triumph of the forces of law and order.

      As Mahoney had said, bombs lose international sympathy.

15

      The Spear of the Nation was broken. The bombs spluttered out. ‘Which,’ as Mahoney wrote in an article for the Globe, who sometimes published his work, ‘is not surprising in view of the massive armoury of draconian legislation the state has assembled to suppress dissent. It can lock you up, without a trial, even before you have dissented. But what is surprising is the case of the State versus Nelson Mandela. The police know that he was the commander of MK, directly and indirectly responsible for the recent spate of bombings, liable therefore to the death penalty: but he was only charged with incitement and leaving the country without a passport. With the laws of human rights and habeas corpus in tatters, with suspects regularly “committing suicide” by leaping from windows, it is surprising that Mandela wasn’t also a victim of Newton’s law of gravity; or that evidence of his bombing was not “discovered” – a fingerprint here, a bit of explosive there, an eyewitness or two – which would have ensured he succumbed to gravity on the hangman’s trapdoor. But, no: three years’ imprisonment is all Mandela has received – a mere slap on the wrist.

      ‘But as the ANC evidently rule out the possibility of a Castro-style guerrilla war because the buffer states are in unfriendly colonial hands, and as their urban guerrilla war has flapped to a standstill, they are reduced to a couple of offices in the “sanctuary state” of newly independent Tanzania and London. Doubtless they’ll get a trickle of refugees from South Africa who have the guts to cross hostile territory to reach them, but what are they going to do with them? Train them in Russia, then send them back as urban guerrillas? Big deal: more cannon-fodder for the draconian security legislator.

      ‘So, what other realistic weapon do the ANC have left? The only answer is: labour. The labour that creates South Africa’s wealth, the black muscle that works the mines, industry, toils on the farms. Surely, if they withhold that labour, in the form of strikes, they will not only bring the economy to a standstill, they will also destroy the basis of the Lekker Lewe, the Good Life upon which this unhappy land was built. Strikes will pull apartheid down – right?

      ‘Wrong. Why? Two reasons.

      ‘One: strikes require organization. Leaders, shop stewards, discipline, instructions, leaflets. Sorry, folks, but the aforesaid legislation, backed up by a system of well-paid informers, will stop that at first base: twelve days’ detention without trial, and twelve days and twelve days for as long as it takes, plus house arrest, banning, and banishment will nip that in the bud.

      ‘Two: the workers want their work. If you’re black, you’re poor. And if you’re fired, there’re ten guys to take your place, and they don’t only come from South Africa, they hail from Mozambique, Rhodesia and Malawi. South Africa has to patrol its borders to keep illegal black immigrants out, because lousy though the wages are they’re many times better than back home.

      ‘So my educated guess is we can forget about the ANC for the time being. The Afrikaner has finally won his long battle that began with the Kaffir Wars and the Great Trek. He’s got his beloved republic and Lekker Lewe at last: land, security, and labour, all sewn up. The ANC, blustering a thousand miles away is, in the words of Mao Tse-tung, “the mere buzzing of flies”.’

      ‘It’s good writing,’ Patti said grimly, ‘“wise beyond your years”, as your editor says. But I wish to Christ you’d stop being so disparaging about the ANC.’

      ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot of time for the ANC, I simply mean that they’re a lame duck now. Or for a long time. Until they get their act together.’

      She glared. ‘“Lame duck”? Far from it, pal! Let me assure you that this duck –’ she tapped her breast – ‘is not lame!’

      Oh Jesus. ‘What does that mean?’

      She closed her eyes. ‘Nothing,’ she sighed.

      ‘Patti? Are you up to something?’

      ‘No … I’m just devastated by Mandela’s arrest, that’s all. While he was around there was hope – something was happening. Now?’ She sighed bitterly. ‘I’m angry because what you say in your article is probably true … Freedom: that’s all I want. For everybody. Freedom to live how I want, where I can afford, to love who I like.’

      They were lying beside the little pool at the cottage. ‘I know the feeling.’