The Covenant (173 page)

“I thought you said it was your Bantustan.”

“We don’t want it. It was never our idea.”

“You’re to be evacuated?”

“Yes, as if a plague had struck our land. As if locusts had eaten our little fields and we had to move on.”

When Saltwood argued that Nxumalo must be telling only part of the story, the professor agreed, heartily: “I am indeed. And the reason I came to see you is that I wondered if you would like to see the other part.”

“I certainly would.” Philip Saltwood operated on the principle that governed many young scientists these days as they worked about the world: whether they were American or Russian, Chinese or Australian, they wanted to know what was happening in the lands which employed them at the moment, and often they moved far from their basic tasks, investigating possibilities that at the moment seemed remote but which, at some future date, might become all-important.

With Nxumalo as guide, Philip drove west to Johannesburg, where they toured inconspicuously up and down the handsome main streets of that thriving American-style city. Since it was four in the afternoon, the business areas were jammed with people, and half of them black. They were laborers, and messengers, clerks and minor officials, shoppers and dawdlers, and they could all have been in Detroit or Houston. “Look at them,” Nxumalo said with some pride. “They keep the wheels of this city spinning.”

At quarter to five he directed Philip to the area around the central railway station, and in the ensuing hour Saltwood saw something that was so shocking as to be unbelievable: from all parts of central Johannesburg streams of black men and women converged, more than half a million of them crowding to leave the city before sunset,
after which it would be unlawful to be there. Like swarms of grasshoppers leaving a ruined field, the workers of Johannesburg hastened to that endless belt of steel that ran perpetually out of the city at sunset and back in at sunrise. It was a movement of people of such magnitude that he knew nothing with which to compare it.

At the end of the hour he thought: When I look at those streams of black people I see all the occupations of a major city. You have street sweepers and young men with briefcases. Sheep butchers and young women who work as doctor’s assistants. There are draymen and junior executives. And they are all being expelled.

“Are you game to see where they’re going?” Nxumalo asked, as if he could read Philip’s mind.

“It’s forbidden, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s against the law for whites, but it can be done.”

It was the kind of challenge a peripatetic geologist often faced: Strangers are not allowed in that temple, it’s sacred to Shiva. Or, You’re not permitted in that corner of Afghanistan, too close to the Russian border.

But always the daring ones went, and now Philip Saltwood was on his way to a clandestine visit to Soweto, a nonexistent city of at least one and a half million black people. South Western Townships was its official title, the first two letters of each word having been taken to form the acronym.

As they drove the twelve miles to it, with trains rushing past in orderly procession, each laden with workers, some clinging to the doors, Nxumalo said, “It’s the same problem as the little one we saw at Venloo. The Afrikaners honestly believe that no black people live in their all-white cities. They believe that we work there briefly during daylight hours, then vanish. Soweto up ahead does not exist officially. The million and a half people who live there, fifty percent of them illegally, are not really there. They’re supposed to sleep there temporarily while they work in the city, but if they lose their jobs, they’re obligated to move back to their Bantustans, which most of them have never seen.”

When Philip started to respond to this macabre fairy tale of the city twice as large as Boston that did not exist, Nxumalo grinned and jabbed him in the arm. “I’ll wager you didn’t notice the most important fact about that exodus at the railway station.”

“As a matter of fact, I did. I saw that the crush contained all kinds of workers, from street sweepers to college professors.”

Nxumalo laughed. “You failed your examination. The significant fact was that almost everyone carried a package of some kind. You see, because Soweto doesn’t exist, and because it’s seen as only temporary, ephemeral … Well, what’s logical? It has no stores. No real ones, that is. They’re not allowed, because they don’t fit into the white man’s plan. Everything except a few minor commodities must be purchased from white-owned stores in Johannesburg. Soweto is not a city. It’s a dormitory.”

Saltwood’s first impression was arbitrary and in a sense preposterous: “Christ! Look at all those churches. I never heard of one of them before.” At frequent spots in areas that contained nothing but row upon row of uniformly dismal blockhouses, a flagstaff would display a torn ensign indicating that this building was the Church of Zion, or the Church of the Holy Will, or the Xangu Church, or simply the home of a holy man who had direct contact with God.

“After the beer hall,” Nxumalo explained, “it’s the best racket in Soweto. Maybe four thousand different churches preaching God-knows-what.” But now they were opposite a huge wire-enclosed shed, devoid of any charm whatever, where hundreds of workingmen sat at long bare tables guzzling weak Kaffir beer. That word was officially outlawed now, and if a white man called a black a Kaffir he could be charged with common assault, but the name for the beer persisted. It was a pernicious drink, strong enough to be expensive, weak enough to prevent a man from becoming dangerously drunk.

“The beer hall is the greatest anti-revolutionary instrument in Africa,” Nxumalo said, but even as he spoke, a force of much different character swept past, a gang of tsotsis running to some rendezvous that could involve theft, or rape, or one of the thousand murders each year, fifty percent unsolved because the victims were black.

Out of the vast miasma of this forsaken city, this purgatory that was not hell, for the houses were livable, nor heaven, for there was no ease or hope, Nxumalo led Saltwood to the small dark house that was the focus of this visit. Inside the curtained kitchen sat nine men in a kind of ring, into whose center Philip was thrust: “This is my friend, Philip Saltwood, the American geologist who is highly respected by his workmen at Swartstroom. He is completing his education.” The men acknowledged him briefly, then turned to Nxumalo and started to press him with questions.

“What do you hear from Jonathan?” one asked, and Philip had no way of guessing who Jonathan might be.

“Nothing.”

“Any news at all from Moçambique?”

“From this side we know that the frontier patrols are penetrating into Moçambique every week. They must be doing damage.”

“Is your brother still alive?”

“I hear nothing from Jonathan.”

Philip judged that Nxumalo hedged on his reply, perhaps because he did not want to say anything incriminating in the presence of a white witness.

They discussed the situation on each of the other frontiers, where apparently they had men from Soweto in position among the rebels, and in no segment of the extensive border did their people seem to be accomplishing much. But when Philip analyzed what actually had been said, he realized that verbally at least these men were not plotters against the government; they were simply discussing events along the frontier, exactly as the white people at Vrymeer followed these affairs, but from a much different point of interest.

The talk was broad in scope and free in manner. These men were teachers, a clergyman, businessmen of sorts, and they were concerned about the directions their nation was taking. They were deeply worried about the forthcoming American presidential election and wondered whether Andrew Young would regain his position of power in a new administration. They were particularly interested in one aspect of American life. “What accounts for your ambivalence?” a teacher asked. “Your big newspapers are against apartheid, so is President Carter, so is Andy Young, but ninety-eight percent of the Americans who visit our country approve of it. Almost every American who comes here goes home convinced that Afrikaners are doing the right thing.”

“It’s simple,” Philip said. “What Americans come here? It’s far away, you know, and very expensive. Businessmen come on company accounts. Rich travelers. Engineers. And they’re all wealthy and conservative. They like what they see. They approve of apartheid, really, and would like to see it introduced in America.”

“You’re an engineer. You’re not a conservative.”

“On many things I am. I’m sure as hell no liberal.”

“But on apartheid?”

“I’m against it because I don’t think it works.”

“Do you find the world turning conservative? Canada? England? Maybe America?”

“I do.”

Late in the evening they got down to cases, and now Nxumalo moved to the fore: “I’ve been pondering what we might do to inspirit our people. To send a signal to the men in Moçambique that we’re still with them. And it seems to me that the most effective single thing, under present conditions, is to organize a day of remembrance for our dead children who were gunned down in Soweto in 1976.”

“That has merit.”

“I would propose that on June 16 this year we have a national day of mourning. No disturbances, just some kind of visual remembrance.”

“Would that antagonize government?” a short man asked.

“Anything we do antagonizes government.”

“I mean, to the point of retaliation?”

Nxumalo sat silent. This was a penetrating question, for the tactic of committees like this had to be protest up to the edge of the precipice at which Afrikaner guns began to fire, as they had at Sharpeville, in Soweto and at a score of other sites. Judiciously he said, “If the white man can make a national holiday of Blood River, where he slaughtered thousands of us Zulu, we can remember Soweto ’76. I say let’s go ahead.”

It was agreed, and when Saltwood left the meeting and slipped out of Soweto, he was aware that his new friend Daniel Nxumalo had entered upon dangerous ground, but he had no idea that by this simple gesture of irritating the government the young educator would place himself in mortal jeopardy.

When Philip returned to Vrymeer he found his life much altered, for the Troxel boys were back from border duty and were out of uniform. One sight of them warned Saltwood that he was in trouble, for they were a handsome pair, with the fine looks and open smiles of the true Afrikaner. Frikkie was twenty-five, about six feet three, slim, easy in his movements and with a rather serious mien. When Mr. van Doorn introduced him he said, “Frik’s a rugby halfback and one of the best.”

Jopie was different. Well under six feet, he was built like a Roman wall, one massive building block set down upon another. He was broad, in all respects. He had a wide face and very wide mouth from which massive square teeth showed. His shoulders and hips were
enormous, for although he was much shorter than Frikkie, he was also much heavier, but what startled Philip was the fact that Jopie had no neck. As with many of the historic rugby forwards, Fanie Louw and Frik du Preez among them, Jopie Troxel’s head was set square upon his shoulders, giving his body a battering-ram quality which he used to powerful effect, but in no way was he a gross or insensitive person, and he had in the middle of his chin a deep dimple which quivered when he laughed. His humor was robust, and it was obvious that Sannie van Doorn appreciated it.

Her father had introduced Frikkie; she took charge of Jopie: “This is my dear friend, who wears his hair forward, like Julius Caesar, and that isn’t the only thing forward about him.” With a massive right hand Jopie grabbed Philip’s and said, “Did Jimmy Carter and Andy Young send you over here to tell us how to run our country?”

Philip stiffened. “I came to find diamonds.”

“Finding any?”

“No. You damned people keep everything hidden.”

“We’d better,” Jopie said, “or you and the English would steal it.”

“How was the border?” Marius asked, aware that these three young men were behaving like bulls caught up in the heat of spring. He suspected that daughter Sannie was about to experience a difficult spell.

Frikkie dropped into a chair and accepted the beer that Sannie brought. “It’s rotten work. You patrol fifteen days in the bush and see maybe one terrorist. Ta-ta-ta-ta. He’s gone, but you know there’s a dozen back there somewhere.”

“But we’re holding our own?”

“Definitely. There’s this Kaffir from here, this Jonathan Nxumalo. He issues a threat now and then on Radio Maputo, as you know. Going to storm Johannesburg. But he’s damned sure to stay clear of our patrols.”

“You mean there was real fighting?” Sannie asked.

“Whenever the black bastards gave us a chance,” Jopie said.

“How long were you at the border?” Philip asked, and Jopie looked at his cousin to check whether this was privileged information.

“Six months. It’s our obligation.”

“We certainly missed you on the team,” Marius said, hoping to change the conversation, but Philip asked, “How long can this go on? I mean, with so many young men taken out of productive work?”

“You ask two questions which only an American would ask,” Frikkie said sharply. “How long? As if everything had to be completed in a hurry. We can guard our borders for the next hundred years. And is it productive? No, it isn’t, in the sense of making things at a factory. But what could possibly be more productive than protecting one’s country?”

“That subject is closed,” Marius said. “Now tell me, how soon can you men get back into shape for the big matches facing us?”

“On the border,” Jopie said, “you’re always in shape. I could play Saturday.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Me, too,” Frikkie said, and when Philip looked at the young commandos he knew that they were telling the truth.

The game was against a team from Bloemfontein, and when the Troxels ran onto the field the crowd cheered wildly, for newspapers had hinted at their exploits at the frontier. They displayed the poetic abandon for which they had been famous, but they lost, rather badly, as a matter of fact, 23–9. They did have a great time and in the drinking bouts after the game they smashed a few windows.