The Covenant (152 page)

“It can be,” Reverend Brongersma predicted to an English newspaper, “a great outpouring of the Afrikaner spirit. It can at once both
unite and ignite.” To a reporter he said, “It will rejuvenate Afrikaner politics as nothing else could do. I expect wonders from this trek.” In private he added that if sufficient spirit were generated, the Afrikaners might at last succeed in taking South Africa out of its present Union status, making it republican. To any Afrikaner who asked, he said, “That is the goal we seek,” and if they asked further whether this would mean an exodus or expulsion from the British Empire, he replied, “Not necessarily. England might like us better as completely equal partners.”

There was, however, one question which he never answered frankly. One night Piet Krause, flushed with his success in launching the wagons, asked, “Dominee, this time will we join Germany when war comes?” Brongersma did not like to discuss this ticklish situation, for he saw much in contemporary Germany which bothered him. In 1914, like many intelligent Afrikaners, he had felt strongly that his country’s future lay with Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany; the latter had good leadership, power, intellectual force and a strong Lutheran tradition. In retrospect he still believed that it would have been better for the world had Imperial Germany won and imposed her version of peace on troubled areas, but he certainly did not believe that about Adolf Hitler’s Germany. He saw too much that disturbed, for if in his great series of lectures at Stellenbosch he had educated the young leaders of his nation, he had also educated himself. He believed every word he spoke in those four carefully reasoned discourses, and believed it even more now. South Africa was a Christian country. It endeavored to combine the best of the Old Testament and the New. It believed in justice for all peoples, and if it insisted upon the separation of races, that was only because God had done the same, and he believed that his country managed its separation with firmness and justice. He did not like what Hitler was doing and felt that he would have to oppose an intrusion of his concepts into South Africa.

“Will we join Germany this time, Dominee?” Piet repeated.

“I pray the whole world can avoid war,” he replied.

In early 1938 Detleef astounded the committee supervising the trek by announcing that he had found on his farm the only surviving ox wagon that had been used by one of the important leaders of the 1838 period, and when it was dragged forth, the wagon he had slept
in during the weeks following the end of the Boer War, carpenters said that whereas it was obviously in ruins, it could easily be restored, and they set about doing so. For weeks various newspapers printed photographs showing the progress of rehabilitation, and when the rubric
TC–43
was uncovered, correspondents in Grahamstown were able to state what it signified, and recalled the generosity of the English settlers of that period toward a man they trusted. Because of where the wagon had originated, it was proposed that it start its journey to Pretoria from Grahamstown, but Detleef would not permit this; he wanted his wagon to have no contact with Englishmen, so it started from Graaff-Reinet.

The journey north, in those winter days of August 1938, began on a high emotional pitch, with the central square of Graaff-Reinet looking much as it had during the historic Nachtmaals: tents pitched, women in sunbonnets, children playing, men in beards and suspenders. As the wagon moved slowly forward, a tremendous visual remembrance of heroic days, people came from fifty miles to see it pass, its sixteen sturdy oxen walking slowly, as their ancestors had done a century ago.

The
Tjaart van Doorn
did not go to Bloemfontein, for another wagon was starting from there, but it did move east through the historic sites: Thaba Nchu, Vegkop, the site on the Vaal where the De Groot family was assassinated, then east through the concentrationcamp towns of Standerton and Chrissie Meer. In early December it headed west to Carolina, where the members of Christoffel Steyn’s family paid it honor, and then on to Venloo, where descendants of the commando of Paulus de Groot formed an honor guard. When it reached Waterval-Boven, from which Oom Paul Kruger had left for his exile, the emotional strain was intense, and thousands prayed along the roadside as it passed. This was a wagon in which women and men of stature had risked their lives and fortunes in the building of a nation, and to see it move so slowly, with such strain and with so cramped a space for survival, brought tears.

On December 13 the
Tjaart van Doorn
slowly approached the vast field at the foot of the mound on which the future monument was to stand, and when Detleef and Maria, in their 1838 costumes, saw the throng that awaited them, they stopped the wagon and bowed their heads. What had started as a topic of conversation had expanded to a mighty outpouring of the Voortrekker spirit. Two days before the event, more than eighty thousand Afrikaners camped at the site, and
that night Detleef led his wagon into a simulated laager with six others. The oxen were turned loose to graze, as in the old days, and children brought thorn bushes to weave among the wheels to keep away the Zulu. When the moon rose late, and the silhouettes of the wagons stood against the dark horizon, men wakened their families to witness the sight, and improvised choirs chanted the Psalms in Afrikaans.

On December 17 Piet Krause rode among the wagons already in position, assuring the men that all was in order; the two major wagons from Pretoria and Cape Town would arrive next morning. By now the crowd approached a hundred thousand—families camping on the slopes, as in the old days—and friendships that had languished for years were renewed with pledges to maintain them.

On this day rumors began to circulate: “The mayor of Benoni will not be allowed to participate. He’s Jewish. They’ve told the general not to appear. He’s English. Best news of all, Jan Christian Smuts will not be coming. They want nothing of him in this celebration. He’s more English than he is Afrikaner. No speeches in English will be allowed tomorrow.” Piet Krause, the originator of most of these rumors, had personally decreed that what would be the major monument in South Africa must be a purely Afrikaner affair.

On December 18 some two hundred thousand people gathered on the hill south of Pretoria to consecrate the spot on which their monument would rise. If, despite everything they had heard, General Smuts and other Afrikaner supporters of the government did appear, the occasion would become an affair of state, and “God Save the King” would have to be played, but Piet Krause openly avowed that if the band played one note of that anthem, he and a gang of toughs would smash every instrument. Aware of the bitterness of the issue, Smuts prudently stayed away, and to the joy of the Afrikaners only “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika” (The Call of South Africa) was played, and many swore that it would soon be the official anthem of the Afrikaner republic when the new nation came into being.

The orations in Afrikaans, one delivered by Reverend Brongersma, were dignified but charged with heavy implications. Hardly any words of historic evocation could be spoken without producing cheers from the massed throng, and when symbol-words like Slagter’s Nek, Black Circuit and Christoffel Steyn were uttered, the crowd cheered automatically. When heroes were recalled—Pretorius, Retief, De Groot—the crowd yelled till it was hoarse, and as the day waned
and the leaders realized how far beyond their expectations their success had been, it began to penetrate to all involved that something more than a celebration had occurred here this day. “This is the opening gun of our campaign to break away from England altogether,” Piet Krause cried in an ecstasy of patriotism.

He became so mesmerized by that assembly of two hundred thousand Afrikaners that it was not long before he began to have visions of a vast national uprising, and to discover how this could be orchestrated, he slipped down to Cape Town, boarded a ship for England and quietly crossed to Germany, where he quickly made contact with Nazi leaders.

He was overwhelmed by what he saw. At a tremendous rally in the stadium used by the 1936 Olympics he realized how amateurish the Voortrekker thing had really been. “We had all those people in one place,” he told his Nazi guide, “and did nothing with them. They went away with the same thoughts they had when they came. Next time it must be different.”

He was so intelligent, and appeared to be so highly placed in South African politics, that the men about to launch a total war in Europe were captivated by the possibilities he offered: “Could you arrange an uprising against the English government—if war happened to come to Europe?”

“Look at what we did in 1914, without help or guidance from you,” he reminded them. When they admitted that they were ignorant of that affair, he told them of the courageous effort made by men like Paulus de Groot and Jakob van Doorn, who devoted their lives to the struggle for freedom. “Van Doorn was my father-in-law. De Groot you’ve heard of, naturally.” They hadn’t, so he dropped that subject.

“But what can you do this time?” they asked.

“I give you my solemn promise that Jan Christian Smuts will not dare call for mobilization. No one would report.”

“The police?”

“They’ll fight for Germany.” Recklessly he promised everything, implying that he spoke for all segments of the population. If he did not convince them of his interpretations of South African politics, he did persuade them to invest a modest amount in a potential subversion of that government. They granted the funds on the sensible basis of disrupting the English power at all points, provided the cost proved not too high; they never expected the southern tip of Africa
to become a German enclave, but they could reasonably hope for enough disruption to impede the war effort.

With these assurances, Piet Krause, who spoke miserable German, went to Nuremberg for one of the frenzied rallies of mid-1939, when the leadership knew that war was inevitable, though the people did not. The stadium was filled with ecstatic young men who would shortly die in Greece and Italy and Russia and the North Atlantic and in the skies above England. He heard eleven preliminary speeches, pounding into him the need to exterminate Jews and cleanse the bloodstream. He appreciated the enormous appeal of the word Volk and decided to increase its use in South Africa. But when the lesser orators were finished, Herr Goebbels appeared, and after him, Adolf Hitler, the man who would save the world.

Piet Krause stood enthralled as Hitler unfolded his plan for regeneration, and each word he said applied to conditions in South Africa, so far as Piet was concerned. He was hypnotized by Hitler’s force, his clear logic; and when the wild cheering died, he still stood there, trying to determine how best he could assist this man in bringing the same kind of order and enthusiasm to South Africa.

That night, in his Nuremberg room, he drafted the blood oath which he would administer to all who later joined him in his enterprise:

When he reached home in midsummer, 1939, his wife could see that he had undergone some thunderclap experience, for he was not the man she had known before. When he confided the responsibilities that had been placed upon him, she knew that she must assume responsibility for the family, since he would be preoccupied with a score of duties. He started with the police, talking quietly against the local custom of conscripting the whole force into the armed services:
“Don’t let them make you go to war. If Jan Christian Smuts wants you to fight his battles in England, don’t permit it. This time England must lose, and when that happens, you and men like you will be in command.”

He was also active with young Afrikaners: “Do not allow the government to force you into uniform. And for the love of God, don’t volunteer. When the Germans recapture South-West Africa, there’ll be a place for you in a real army.”

He asked certain trusted clergymen to preach against participation in this impending war, and he did effective work among the unions. He talked with schoolteachers, advising them what to say to their pupils, and when war did come, in September of that year, Smuts found himself unable to order conscription, or to move policemen bodily into the armed forces, or to argue young men into volunteering. In fact, when Smuts sought to take his country into the conflict on the side of England, he was strongly opposed by those who insisted that it remain neutral. At the final moment South Africa joined the Allies by a vote of only 80–67.

“He is taking us onto the wrong side,” the principal members of the Broederbond cried in dismay, and some of the future leaders of the nation went into detention camps rather than fight against Germany. Piet Krause, escaping police attention, swung into violent action, organizing disruptive squads, which secretly attacked military installations, power lines and even military training camps. Men loyal to the Allies, especially young Afrikaners seen as traitors to the Volk, were assaulted and some were killed.

The government was in pitiful shape to fight a war. It dared not call for nationwide conscription, and those soldiers and policemen who volunteered to serve outside the country were required to wear orange swatches, which distinguished them from others who announced that they would not fight abroad; this presumably divided the men into heroes and cowards. But there was a disadvantage in such a system; Piet Krause’s young hoodlums who were against the war could easily spot the men with swatches who were willing to fight for the Allies, and it became fashionable to beat such soldiers up, killing them on occasion.

Piet and his wife did whatever they could to exacerbate such situations, and in the heady days of Nazi victories on all fronts, they received a cryptic message from Berlin: “Meet Wyk Slotemaker Mafeking.” He was a minor South African actor who had appeared
in several German films, absorbing propaganda as he worked, and when Piet encountered him at a ramshackle hotel he whispered, “I have weapons, fifteen thousand American dollars, and plans to assassinate Smuts.”