The Covenant (164 page)

Since Nxumalo’s contract had only five more weeks to run, he tolerated the new man’s insults, and when the compound manager
said, at the termination of his eighteen months, “I hope you’ll sign on again,” he was noncommittal, but he was satisfied that he wanted no more of the Golden Reef. What he would do, he didn’t know.

Old Bloke, who delivered lawyers’ letters at the Cheston Building in Johannesburg, was only fifty-four years old, but his life had been so demanding that he looked older than he was. His name was Bloke Ngqika, and in his early years he had worked at heavy labor in industry, where he had acquired numerous skills that could have been utilized in several advanced positions, but since he was a black he was prohibited from taking any of them.

After an accident in a tool-making foundry, which left him with a shuffle, he was extremely lucky to land a job delivering important papers by hand. It paid little, and the hours it took to commute to work and back home were intolerable, but he dared not quit because of a peculiar law which was severely enforced: it was possible for a black to qualify for a legal pass to remain in Johannesburg and permission to occupy a house in Soweto, but to do so he had to work for one employer only for a period of ten years. If he quit or was fired, he lost the endorsement in his pass book, lost his house and his right to remain in Johannesburg. He was like a medieval serf, bound perpetually not to the land, as the serf had been, but to a specific job. This meant, obviously, that his employer could pay him scant wages, and he was powerless to protest, for if he were fired, he would lose not only his job but his entire pattern of living. As his employer often reminded him, “Bloke, it isn’t only wages I’m paying you. It’s your house, your pass, the permission for your wife to be here too. Mind your step.”

He did not mind his step one blustery August day when he stepped off a curb in Commissioner Street into the path of a truck, not immediately in the path, for the driver might have avoided him had he been attentive. As it was, the truck hit him hard, and the last words he heard before he fainted were the familiar ones: “Bloody stupid Kaffir.”

He did not have to die. He could have been saved, except that the first ambulance on the scene was marked
WHITES ONLY
, and of course
it could not help. It did radio for a
NON-WHITE;
however, Old Bloke lay on the sidewalk for nearly half an hour before the proper ambulance arrived, and on arrival at the non-white casualty ward of Jo’burg hospital he was certified dead.

The anguish that showed on his face just before he fainted was not caused, as some thought, by extreme pain; nor was it resentfulness at the muttered cursing of the truckdriver, for he got that all the time. It was his instant realization of what his death might mean to Miriam, his wife of more than thirty years. In a flash he saw her patient acceptance of the hardships thrown her way, the years of separation, the hard work of rearing children alone. Whole decades had passed with only brief visits from her husband; she could not join him, apartheid laws forbade that. So she had lived a meager life in one part of South Africa, he in another, and when Bloke at last gained the right that enabled her to live with him, she was so grateful that she advised him to accept any injustice regarding hours and wages: “We got each other at last. You do the work, we say nothin’.”

On the third day after the funeral, Miriam was summoned to the office of Pieter Grobbelaar, director of the subdivision in Soweto where the Ngqika home was located. He informed her that since she was no longer married to a workingman with a legal right to remain in Soweto, she had become what the law called “a superfluous appendage,” and as such, lost all right to remain in Johannesburg. He used the language well and outlined the steps of her expulsion.

“You can stay here to collect your things, but then you must leave for Soetgrond.”

“I’ve never been there. I don’t even know where it is.”

“But you’re a Xhosa. Your papers say that.”

“But I was born in Bloemfontein. I never been in Xhosa country.”

“The law says that you are now a temporary sojourner …”

At least ten times that first day Mr. Grobbelaar used the phrase “the law says.” On every point raised by Mrs. Ngqika the law had anticipated her. Did she want to hold on to a house which she and her husband had occupied for ten years and had improved significantly? Mr. Grobbelaar could cite a law which said that the widow of a man lost all her rights when her husband died. Did she want to stay for six months in order to find some alternative place to stay? Mr. Grobbelaar could quote a law which said that he could order her to clear out within seventy-two hours. Did she want permission to take
with her the new kitchen sink which Bloke had given her last Christmas? Mr. Grobbelaar had a law which said anything attached to the walls of government-owned property had to be left behind.

The first interview had miserable results. When she left Mr. Grobbelaar with his pile of papers, Mrs. Ngqika wept for two hours, then sent a young boy into Johannesburg to find her son, who had a “location in the sky,” that is, quarters atop the apartment block in which he worked as cleaner. When this young fellow heard that his mother was being dispossessed and shipped off to a country location which she had never seen, he hurried out to Soweto.

“Mom, they can’t send you to a place like Soetgrond. That’s just a bunch of shacks in the veld.”

“Super says I got to go.”

“To hell with Super. I won’t let you go.”

“He told me to come back to his office next week. You talk with him?”

And there was the difficulty. Her son’s right to stay in Johannesburg, where he had not been born, depended upon his remaining invisible to the law. Were he to complain to Super, his papers would be inspected, the police would be summoned, and he, too, would be banished to Soetgrond. He was powerless to help his mother.

“Mom, there ain’t nothing I can do,” and he was off to his location in the sky. If he could somehow hang on for ten years, he might earn a pass permitting him to remain in the area.

On the second visit Mr. Grobbelaar was as patient and as understanding as he had been on the first. He listened quietly to each of Mrs. Ngqika’s frantic requests, then leafed through his gray canvas notebook till he found the relevant law and quoted it. He never raised his voice, and spoke not in Afrikaans, which she might not understand, but in English. He merely leafed through his papers and produced the law. When she got home she felt weak, and now she had only three weeks before she must quit this place into which she had poured so much of herself.

She was not being evicted because Bloke had been careless with his money; he had even gone to Super to ask if he could buy their little home, but the law book was explicit: “No non-white may own land in Soweto.” And since Johannesburg non-whites were forbidden to live anywhere but Soweto, home ownership was impossible. As Mr. Grobbelaar explained: “Bloke, you are allowed to remain here
only so long as you do meaningful work to help the whites. And your wife is welcome only so long as your pass remains valid.”

That evening a group of black ladies met in Miriam Ngqika’s kitchen to console her and to bid her farewell, and there was an awesomeness about the gathering, for each of these women knew that when their husbands died, they, too, would be exiled to some distant black spot which they had never seen and with which they had no affiliation whatever except by dictate of the new laws.

There was, however, in the group a schoolteacher who said, “The Black Sash ladies have been asking us to find a case which they could fight. I think this is it.”

“I don’t want to fight,” Miriam said quietly.

“But we got to fight,” the teacher said, and she warned the black women that it could become ugly and that reputations could be injured. “Is there any scandal in your family?” the teacher asked, and the women stayed late at night, reviewing Miriam Ngqika’s history, and it was blameless.

Early next morning the schoolteacher reported to the Black Sash society, and it happened that Mrs. Laura Saltwood was in attendance at a meeting of the national board, and when she heard the facts in the Ngqika case she exclaimed, “Just what we’ve been waiting for!”

The committee agreed that Bloke Ngqika’s fine record would be an asset in protesting this eviction, and the respectable manner in which he and his wife had lived would also help. Miriam Ngqika had an admirable reputation in the township, and it was assumed that Superintendent Grobbelaar would not be able to testify adversely against her.

He didn’t. He listened carefully as Mrs. Saltwood made her plea, then in good English explained that the law … Here he turned the leaves to the applicable law: “Mrs. Ngqika was always well behaved …” He sounded like an elementary-school teacher reporting on some infant; in fact, he was saying that he approved of the conduct of a woman fifteen years older than himself: “She was neat, didn’t drink, and I had no occasion to reprimand her.”

“Then why can’t she stay?”

“Because all the Bantu are temporary sojourners, in a sense. She has become a superfluous appendage and must go.”

For an hour Superintendent Grobbelaar patiently glossed the
laws, patiently explained that when a non-white family ceased to be useful to the white community, it must get out.

“But she’s never been to Soetgrond,” Mrs. Saltwood protested.

“That may be so, but the law says that we must begin to get those non-useful people back to their own homelands.”

“Johannesburg is now her homeland.”

“Not any more.”

Mrs. Saltwood became almost offensive in her pressure for a humane concession, but Grobbelaar never lost his temper. When Mrs. Saltwood cried in moral outrage, “Can’t you see, Mr. Grobbelaar, that this is a great human tragedy?” he replied gently and with no bitterness, “Mrs. Saltwood, every decision I have to make, week after week, involves what to the people concerned seems a great human tragedy. But we’re trying to get our society sorted out.”

“At what human cost!”

“The cost may seem excessive to you, now. But when we have everyone in his place, you’ll see that this is going to be a splendid country.”

With a wave of her arm she asked, “Are you going to evict a million people here in Soweto?”

Superintendent Grobbelaar smiled. “You English always exaggerate. It’s five hundred and fifty thousand.”

“You don’t count the illegals?”

“They will be dealt with.”

“You’re going to evict them all?”

“Certainly not. Those who are essential to the operation of our businesses and industries will be allowed to remain. The rest? Yes, we’ll evict them all. They’ll have their own cities in their homelands.”

“How many black servants does Mrs. Grobbelaar have?”

“Two, if that’s relevant.”

“You’ll allow those two to stay?”

“Of course. They’re essential.”

“Mr. Grobbelaar, can’t you see that if you evict the blacks, Johannesburg will collapse?”

“We’ll keep the ones we need.”

“But not the wives? Nor the children?”

“We want to avoid the clutter. They’ll stay behind in the homelands.”

“Is there no appeal I can make in this matter?”

“Mrs. Ngqika is what the law calls a temporary sojourner, and she must go.”

He would make no concession. Never raising his voice or showing any irritation, he rebuffed every suggestion this difficult woman made, but when she was gone his face went livid and he roared at his assistant, “I want three men to look into every aspect of that Ngqika woman’s record. I’m going to teach that pair a lesson.” And forthwith he phoned a friend in the Security Branch: “I suggest you take a close look at this Laura Saltwood. She consorts with Kaffirs.”

In the case of Mrs. Saltwood, secret police in various cities turned up only the facts that had appeared in newspapers. For some years she had been a thorn, defending non-whites against the just application of the new laws, but she had always acted in the open, so that no reasonable charge could be made against her.

“We’ll keep close watch on her,” the Security Branch assured the Johannesburg police. “One of these days she’ll trip.”

In the Ngqika case something was found; a black living in Soweto informed the police that Miriam had a son occupying a location in the sky, but when they went to the address given they found that living there was an official of the government, whose wife protested that Miriam’s son was the best and strongest cleaner she had ever employed and his continuance in the job was essential, so he was allowed to stay in Johannesburg, for the time being.

On a night in the third week, the last that Miriam Ngqika would spend in the house she had possessed for more than ten years but which she had not been allowed to own, the black women met in prayer and consolation. Afrikaners believed and tried to indoctrinate foreigners with the thesis that blacks of South Africa could never coalesce because they were tribal, with one group hating the other, but on this sad night Miriam’s kitchen housed Xhosa, Zulu, Pondo, Sotho, Tswana and Shona. True, they were sometimes suspicious of one another, the way a respectable Episcopalian worries about a hard-shell Baptist, or the way a Catholic looks askance at a Jew, and sometimes that mistrust flared into faction fights, but that they were engaged in mortal combat was preposterous. These women shared a common destiny, and they knew it.

But as the night wore on, a remarkable event occurred. The schoolteacher who had enlisted the futile aid of the Black Sash crept through the streets leading a white woman, whose presence in Soweto
was illegal and whose willingness to come at night was downright revolutionary. “This is Mrs. Saltwood,” the teacher said. “You’ve heard of her.”

The women had, especially the Shona woman who had been paid by Superintendent Grobbelaar to attend this meeting; she would report this criminal act, and the dossier on Mrs. Saltwood would note that at last this dangerous English woman had stepped across the boundary line from open defiance to criminal conspiracy.

What did the conspiracy consist of? Mrs. Saltwood told the black women, “There are women all over the world who are fighting to stop such injustices. We’ve lost this battle, and Mrs. Ngqika will have to go this time, but …” Suddenly her stalwart manner vanished and she came close to tears, but she controlled herself, thinking: Tonight they need no white woman’s tears. In a low voice she said, “Miriam, we shall pray for you. In our hearts you will always have a home, even if they take this one …” Now she was almost crying, but she bit her lip and sat silent, the black women taking no notice of her emotional reactions.