The Covenant Part 78

While his wife was defending the moral purity of the nation, Detleef was laboring yet again to save its political purity, and this time, with the help of some very able parliamentarians, he came up with a totally new stratagem, which he explained to the leadership in this way: 'No more struggling with minor problems. We take this thing head-on. We need a two-thirds majority in the Senate and can't get it. Simple. Create forty-one new senators guaranteed to vote our way. And if you're still afraid that the Supreme Court might overturn the vote these new men give us . . . Simpleadd six more judges pledged to vote for us.'

It was, as he a.s.sured them, a simple solution, a steamroller so monstrous that any possible opposition would be crushed, and the government proceeded. It might have gone into effect without undue publicity except that a group of Afrikaner women with a social conscience united with a similar body of English women to activate a political-action committee called the Black Sash, as heroic a group as the world at that time knew. Against the full flood of national opinion, these women opposed every unlawful and restrictive measure of their government, never hysterically, never aimlessly.

They protected people who could find no other protection and kept a relentless spotlight on the irresponsible acts of their government.

Their president was a forceful woman, Laura Saltwood of New Sarum, the Johannesburg residence of this important industrial family. Born in Salisbury, near the cathedral, she had met Colonel Frank Saltwood's son Noel under memorable circ.u.mstances. As a resident of Salisbury she knew the local Saltwoods, of course, and did not like them; Sir Evelyn, a staunch conservative, made such an a.s.s of himself in Parliament that she and her brother Wexton vowed they would run a liberal candidate against him when they were old enough. Her brother went to Cambridge University, a site she loved; whenever an opportunity presented, she went up to visit with him and his brilliant a.s.sociates, and while on such a visit in 1931 she met a quiet young man from Oxford to whom she was much attracted. 'It's so nice to be with you, when the others talk so much and say so little,' she told him, and he blushed. He was Noel Saltwood, of the South African branch, and after a leisurely courtship in two of England's most enchanting towns, Cambridge and Oxford, they were married.

She had the good luck to reach Johannesburg while Maud Turner Saltwood was still alive, and from that stalwart woman, who had done so much to make South Africa habitable, she acquired the custom of direct speech and timely intervention. Like her mother-in-law, whom she revered, she was afraid of nothing: literally, she hunted lions with the same verve that she tracked down the latest restrictive laws of Detleef van Doorn. He despised her for the opposition she continually mounted against his best projects, and as for her Black Sash, he believed it should be outlawed and its members thrown into jail. He would look into this possibility after he settled with the Coloureds.

For the present he fenced with Mrs. Saltwood, who had accurately identified him as a major force behind the previous legislation and the current effort to strip the Coloureds of their vote. She spoke at meetings, gave interviews, appeared on radio whenever possible, and maintained a constant scrutiny. She was such an effective opponent, that at one strategy session held in Detleef's Pretoria home, Johanna wanted to know why a woman like that should be allowed free speech. That was a relevant question, for which Detleef had a quick answer: 'Because this country is not a dictatorship. Your husband, Johanna, had dangerous ideas, about Hitler and all that, but men like Brongersma and me drew back. We did not want Hitler then, and we don't want him now.'

Johanna began to cry, thinking that her dead husband's martyrdom was being denigrated, but Detleef consoled her: 'We're aiming at the same goals, really, but by legal means. We will perform no un-Christian act, but in the end we'll have a regulated society. Almost exactly what Piet and I talked about years ago.'

In 1956 Detleef van Doorn engineered one more a.s.sault on the Coloureds, and this time, with a vastly enlarged Senate and a Supreme Court more than doubled, the law was pa.s.sed by Parliament and certified by the Court, but Detleef's sense of triumph, to which he was ent.i.tled, was diminished by the severe illness of his sister. He was with her when she heard the joyous news that Coloureds were to be thrown off the common roll, first step in their total disfranchis.e.m.e.nt: 'It is our duty, Detleef, to make decisions. We must see that they are just, but we must also see that they are enforced strictly so that we retain control. I wish our father and mother could have seen this day.' She pa.s.sed into a mumbling period, then called for Maria: 'Detleef lacks will power. When the time comes, he won't want to fight to take South Africa out of the Commonwealth. Pressure him, Maria. We must be free.' And she died, never for a moment perceiving that Coloureds and blacks might also want to be free.

In the sad wake of his sister's death Detleef worked diligently on the next chain of laws which would bind the nation together. Only whites could attend the great universities. Bantu education was severely revised, taking it away from religious organizations and missionaries and placing it under the control of politicians: 'Blacks must not be troubled with subjects which they have not the brain power to comprehend, or trained for jobs which will never exist for them. They should be taught only those skills needed to enable them to support the dominant society. Instruction should be in Afrikaans, since that is to be the language of the nation of which they will form a helpful part.'

He then directed his attention to living areas, for it angered him to see attractive spots in the big cities still occupied by Bantu. In sweeping regulations, which he drafted but which appeared over the signature of others, he authorized the evacuation of such areas and gave special attention to one particular eyesore in Johannesburg-Sophiatownwhere he called in the bulldozers to start leveling the place; the black occupants were sent out into locations he had set up in the countryside. These blacks, all of whom worked for white families and establishments in Johannesburg, joined the ma.s.ses of workers herded together southwest of the City of Gold. Highspeed railway lines soon carried nearly half a million black servants into the city at dawn, out to the countryside at dusk.

In 1957 Detleef played no part in two major decisions, but he supported the men who made them: 'G.o.d Save the Queen' was dropped as the national anthem, to be replaced by 'Die Stem van Suid-Afrika,' a fine, stirring song; and the Union Jack no longer flew as a national flag. Maria was especially gratified by these changes, for they proved to her and others that the country was at last becoming the Afrikaner republic it should always have been: 'The bad years since 1795, when the English first intruded, are almost over. I was just a little ashamed of myself for cheering when Jan Christian s.m.u.ts died, but I was glad to see him go. He betrayed the Afrikaner, and it was only just that he should have died rejected by his own people.'

And then the euphoria of the Van Doorns was shattered by an act they could not comprehend. Their son Marius, an excellent rugby player at Stellenbosch, with every promise of graduating to Springbok status, was selected to be a Rhodes scholar and offered a sumptuous grant of money to study at Oxford.

'It's rea.s.suring to know he was eligible,' Detleef told his friends in Parliament. 'He's one of the best.'

'Will he accept?'

'Certainly not. There's talk of his being selected for the next tour of New Zealand.'

'A Springbok?' the men asked excitedly.

One man who followed sports avidly broke in: 'Detleef's too modest. I've heard rumors that they might choose Marius to captain the side.'

'Well,' the father said deprecatingly, 'he'd be a little young for that. Those New Zealanders . . .' And the rest of that day was spent reminiscing about the 1921 tour and the way Detleef had handled, or not handled, Tom Heeney, the Hard Rock from Down Under.

Maria was pleased that her son should have received such recognition from the Rhodes committee, but like her husband, she said she would be offended if he showed any signs of accepting: 'We don't need a son of ours going to Oxford ... like some Saltwood with divided loyalty . . . living here and calling Salisbury home.'

Both the Van Doorns wrote to Marius that night, congratulating him on the honor, but telling him also that they had heard whispers of his becoming a Springbok, perhaps even the captain, but before their letters could be delivered, he appeared in Cape Town to inform them that he had accepted the scholarship and would be leaving soon for England.

Detleef was so shocked he could hardly speak: 'You're not. . . pa.s.sing up a Springbok blazer ... for a Rhodes scholarship?' When Marius nodded, Detleef cried, 'But, son! A scholarship comes every day. To be a rugger Springbok, that comes once in a lifetime.'

Marius was firm. He was twenty-one, taller than his father, and without the bull neck. He played not as a rugged forward in the scrum but as a fleet, elusive back. His intellectual brilliance, inherited mostly from his maternal grandfather, Christoffel Steyn, shone in his face, and he could not mask his delight at going to Oxford and competing with the best.

'But, Marius,' his father pleaded. 'You can learn things out of books anywhere, but if you have a real chance to captain a Springbok sidethat would be immortality.'

'There's more to life than rugby,' the young man said.

'What?' Detleef demanded. 'I've done many things in my life. Seen the camps. Had the prize bull at the Rand Agricultural. Fought with De Groot and Christoffel. And watched the triumph of my people. But nothing comes close to stepping on a rugby field in New Zealand wearing the Springbok jersey. For G.o.d's sake, Marius, don't throw away that opportunity for something Cecil Rhodes devised as a trick to seduce our Afrikaner lads.'

'I can still play rugby. I'll play for Oxford.'

'You'll what?' Detleef looked at his wife in blank stupor.

'Did you say you'd play for Oxford?' Maria asked.

'Yes, if I can make the team.'

'A man who could be a Springbok . . . playing for Oxford?' Detleef choked a bit, then said, 'You realize that the way things fall, you could one day be playing against South Africa?'

'It's only a game.'

Detleef rose to his full choleric height: 'It is not a game. It's how we instilled patriotism in this nation. I would rather be captain of a Springbok team in New Zealand than prime minister.'

No argument could dissuade Marius, and when, three years later, he informed his parents by cable that he was going to marry an English girl, they wept for two days.

The marriage of Marius van Doorn, Oriel athlete and scholar, to Clare Howard was solemnized on 20 March i960 at the home of her parents in a village northwest of Oxford. His parents were not present, for although they had been invited, they refused to set foot on English soil, and this accounted for the fact that they were at home in Pretoria the next day when South Africa was torn nearly apart by a fusillade of police bullets at Sharpeville, a black township near the Vaal River.

For the past year black indignation had swelled against the laws that placed increasingly severe restrictions on black freedoms: Albert Luthuli, soon to win the n.o.bel Peace Prize, had been confined to his home district for five years; African women marching in demonstrations had been baton-charged; in the Transkei and Zululand, uprisings had left dozens dead and injured.

At Sharpeville the blacks decided to try peaceful protest: they would turn in their pa.s.sbooks and offer themselves for arrest, holding it to be an insult to carry such identification in their own country; some ten thousand converged on the police station. Without a warning shot to turn them back, the front line of police opened fire on the crowd. Sixty-seven were left dead and more than one hundred and eighty men, women and children were wounded.

'It was inevitable,' Detleef said when he heard the news. 'We do what is right for the country and they refuse to cooperate.' When he heard that blacks were ma.s.sing in various other cities, he told Maria that any uprising must be stamped on without mercy. He was not a vicious man, but he did believe in order, and when Parliament, after due deliberation, decided that the country should be organized a certain way, it was everyone's duty to conform: 'You cannot have Bantu deciding whether they will obey the laws or not obey them. The laws have been pa.s.sed. They must be obeyed.' It was his opinion that white agitators, especially women like Laura Saltwood, were responsible for these disturbances, and he began pondering ways whereby people like her could be restrained.

Detleef was sixty-five and considering retirement, but the chain of dramatic events in 1960 convinced him that his lasting achievements still lay ahead. Not long after Sharpeville a maniac, overwrought by the anxieties thrust upon him by recent changes in national life, fired a revolver point-blank into Prime Minister Verwoerd's head. Miraculously, that brilliant political leader survived, and this, said the Van Doorns, proved that G.o.d wanted him preserved for n.o.ble tasks. In October, Verwoerd accomplished one of them: he engineered a plebiscite which authorized the government to break all relations with the English crown and declare itself a republic.

With enormous vigor Detleef and his wife had worked at erasing all vestiges of what they termed 'a century of English domination.' Earlier, a series of modest changes had been madeno more knighthoods like Sir Richard Saltwood's; Jan van Riebeeck's face on coinage instead of king or queen; lieutenant lieutenant changed to changed to veldkornet veldkornetbut now Detleef moved among his colleagues pressuring them for the most important change of all.

'We must eliminate the last remnant of past degradations,' he preached. 'We must leave the British Commonwealth of Nations, for it's only an English stratagem to keep us subservient.'

Many who heard him say this were aghast that he should carry his obsession so far: 'When we voted to break ties with the monarchy, we certainly did not intend to leave the Commonwealth.' To such objections he had a rigid answer: 'When you start on an honorable course, pursue it to the end. Our end is complete freedom.' And when he came home at night to discuss these matters with his wife, she supported him: 'They shot my father. They killed my people in the camp. We must end every a.s.sociation.'

In March 1961, when the Van Doorns were at Vrymeer, the glorious news arrived. An a.s.sistant at Pretoria telephoned: 'Sir! Sir! We're free at last. Verwoerd has taken us out of the Commonwealth!'

Detleef was cautious, so before he shared the triumph with Maria he made two calls to confirm the news, and when he was satisfied that his country was at last free, he did not run exultantly to his wife or start a celebration. Instead, he left the house and walked gravely to the largest lake, where blesbok were grazing, and he looked across to where the hartebeest hut of General de Groot had stood in the bad years following the end of war, and he could hear the old warrior predicting: 'You are the generation that will win this country back. You will win the war that your father and I lost.'

Raising his fist, as he had done years ago when celebrating a rugby victory, he shouted, 'Old man! We've won! We've won!'

Detleef was retired now, with no office in either Cape Town or Pretoria to report to, and he might have rested, for the laws he had sponsored had specified proper behavior for all residents of the republic, but sloth was alien to his puritanical nature, and he began to fret over another mammoth task which he felt needed to be done: 'I could die happy, Maria, knowing that we have our great file in Pretoria showing everyone's proper racial cla.s.sification. The green ident.i.ty cards are good, too. But what we really need is an identification doc.u.ment covering a person's entire lifeeverything he does. He'd carry it with him at all times, so that the authorities could see exactly who he was and what he's done.'

The small booklet he devised, 4 3/4 x 3 1/2 1/2 inches, was a masterpiece of sound planning. It contained forty-eight pageswhich summarized a life and provided in one convenient place all kinds of helpful data. Long coded numbers indicated racial derivation, status and domicile. s.p.a.ce was provided for a series of photographs covering different ages and styles. Four pages were given to marriage records, with the printed a.s.surance that if the holder was embarra.s.sed by a proliferation of divorces, she or he could apply for a new booklet and start fresh. Included was a complete record of immunizations, allergies, blood group and any other medical information that might prove helpful to an ambulance attendant or a hospital nurse. It was also a driver's license, reserving pages 18 through 21 for police endors.e.m.e.nts as to arrests; it was also a license to carry firearms, with four full pages to record weapons. Pages 26 through 46 were marked 'For official use,' without any clue as to purpose, but available for insertion of whatever information the authorities might in the future wish to include. The last two pages contained a voting record, and a pocket at the rear was to hold a list of all real estate owned. inches, was a masterpiece of sound planning. It contained forty-eight pageswhich summarized a life and provided in one convenient place all kinds of helpful data. Long coded numbers indicated racial derivation, status and domicile. s.p.a.ce was provided for a series of photographs covering different ages and styles. Four pages were given to marriage records, with the printed a.s.surance that if the holder was embarra.s.sed by a proliferation of divorces, she or he could apply for a new booklet and start fresh. Included was a complete record of immunizations, allergies, blood group and any other medical information that might prove helpful to an ambulance attendant or a hospital nurse. It was also a driver's license, reserving pages 18 through 21 for police endors.e.m.e.nts as to arrests; it was also a license to carry firearms, with four full pages to record weapons. Pages 26 through 46 were marked 'For official use,' without any clue as to purpose, but available for insertion of whatever information the authorities might in the future wish to include. The last two pages contained a voting record, and a pocket at the rear was to hold a list of all real estate owned.

Every white citizen, under Detleef's plan, was obliged to carry this doc.u.ment at all times. 'Now we will know who everyone is,' he said, 'and we can have an orderly state.'

He was congratulating himself one afternoon when Reverend Brongersma, white-haired and failing, stopped by to pa.s.s the time of day. He no longer preached, but he did try to follow the activities of the Broederbond; along with the church, that fellowship had been the high point of his life: 'I often think back to the vigorous days, Detleef. You and Frykenius, me and Piet Krause. That was a lively foursome. We accomplished so much.'

Then he said, almost abruptly, 'Call Maria. I want to see the girl whose life I saved.' And when stout, squat Maria came into the room, he rose and kissed her. 'I rode all the way to Stellenbosch to tell this young fellow he had to marry you, and this fine Christian home resulted. I wish I could have visited Marius before he married that English girl. Now he can never join the Broederbond . . . never play a major role in our society.'

That was regrettable. He talked of Piet, too, then said something which disturbed Detleef profoundly: 'Piet was a radical on the left, and he destroyed himself. You were a radical on the right, and you've destroyed many of our freedoms.'

'What do you mean?'

'Detleef has worked only for good,' Maria said defensively.

'I'm sure he has,' the old man said, 'but I fear he got things out of balance. The fellowship of Christ is meant to bring freedom, not restraint.'

'But society has to be disciplined,' Detleef protested. 'You know that.'

'I do. But if we read the Old Testament too grimly, we miss the love-making, the adventure, the wild triumphs, the dancing and the sound of flutes.' He shook his head. 'I was to blame, too. I sought a new world so forcefully I forgot the goodness in all worlds. Do you know my favorite verse in all the Bible, now that I approach death? "Word wakker, word wakker, Debora: Word wakker, word wakker, hef 'n lied aan." Deborah, sing us a song! Deborah, sing us a song! You have killed the singing, Detleef.' You have killed the singing, Detleef.'

When he left, Maria said, 'Poor old man, his mind's wandering.'

A few moments later men rushed into the house, shouting, 'The prime minister's been a.s.sa.s.sinated!'

The Van Doorns, trembling, rushed to the radio. Detleef tuned it so nervously that he could not locate a station, so Maria took over and found the awful verification: 'Today as he was attending his duties in the House of Parliament, our prime minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, was stabbed to death by an a.s.sa.s.sin who approached him in the guise of a uniformed pageboy. Three knife wounds entered the throat and chest and he died before he could reach the hospital.'

In darkness the Van Doorns sat silent, contemplating the nemesis that seemed at times to hang over their nation: a splendid patriot a.s.sa.s.sinated in the halls of government; foreigners making accusatory speeches at the United Nations; blacks obstinately refusing to accept their a.s.signed positions; and Marius married to an English girl.

In the days that followed, Detleef's tightly organized world seemed to fall apart, because the very laws which he had structured to defend the state had been used to destroy its elected leader. 'It seems as if G.o.d Himself willed this tragedy,' Detleef wailed, and in mounting fury he shared the evidence with his wife.

'Who killed him? A man who should never have been allowed entrance into the country. A n.o.body from Mozambique.'

'How did he sneak in?' Maria demanded, voicing the anger of two and a half million Afrikaners.

'You won't believe it, but four people I trained myselfimmigration officials who were supposed to check all entering aliens. The man had a criminal record. It was in his papers and no one saw it.'

'But how could such a man get a job as messenger, right in the heart of Parliament?'

Detleef shuddered. 'His papers specifically stated that he was half-white, half-black. Everyone in Mozambique knew it. Our emba.s.sy knew it. But what happens? He walks in here bold as bra.s.s, and my office gives him an ident.i.ty card stating that he was white. After that, everything was easy.'

'But why did he want to kill our prime minister?'

Van Doorn lowered his head and covered his eyes. He did not want to answer this ugly question, but in a weak voice he confided: 'He said he became bitter over the fact that as a man with a white card, he was forbidden to have s.e.xual relations with a Coloured girl he liked.'

In a sullen rage Detleef stormed about the kitchen in which his early lessons had been learned. He could hear the voice of old General de Groot, who had never stopped fighting. He listened to Piet Krause, who had such a clear vision of the future. And from the corner came the powerful voice of his sister Johanna, who had been the backbone of the family and of the nation. He was embittered by the sardonic trick whereby his own laws had been used against him, but he could find nothing wrong with those laws.

'What we must do,' he told his wife, 'is pa.s.s stricter laws. And then enforce them better.'

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The complex fabric of old custom and new law woven by Detleef van Doorn and his peers came to be known as complex fabric of old custom and new law woven by Detleef van Doorn and his peers came to be known as apartheid, apartheid, a cla.s.sic example of the misfortune Afrikaners had in naming things. The word meant a cla.s.sic example of the misfortune Afrikaners had in naming things. The word meant apartness, apartness, and did not appear in older dictionaries of the language; it was invented, and reflected their belief that G.o.d willed the races be kept separate, each progressing properly at its own speed within its own confines. and did not appear in older dictionaries of the language; it was invented, and reflected their belief that G.o.d willed the races be kept separate, each progressing properly at its own speed within its own confines.

The word should have been p.r.o.nounced apart-hate, apart-hate, appropriately ominous, but by foreigners it was usually appropriately ominous, but by foreigners it was usually apart-hite, apart-hite, which is merely ugly. Either p.r.o.nunciation was unfortunate, for it connoted offensive intentions which its authors did not contemplate. which is merely ugly. Either p.r.o.nunciation was unfortunate, for it connoted offensive intentions which its authors did not contemplate.

As the years progressed, so did the names used to describe apartheid: guardianship, separate development, separate freedoms, separate amenities, indigenous development, multinational development, self-determination, plural democracy. guardianship, separate development, separate freedoms, separate amenities, indigenous development, multinational development, self-determination, plural democracy. No matter how diligently they tried, the architects of these laws were unable to erase the first, correct name they had given their grand design. No matter how diligently they tried, the architects of these laws were unable to erase the first, correct name they had given their grand design.

No one could study the instrumental role played by Van Doorn in drafting these laws without being impressed by the planner's oft-repeated a.s.sertion: 'I acted from the best and most honest motives, and without personal rancor, in accordance with His will.'

He certainly wished no harm to the Coloureds, Asians and blacks whose lives he circ.u.mscribed; he often said, 'Some of my best friends are the Bantu who work on my farm,' and although it was true that he had always refused to alter the conditions under which they worked, he did constantly examine his Christian conscience when deciding what was right and wrong for them. Often he paid them higher wages than they might have got elsewhere. He insisted that he did not regard them as inherently inferior human beings, only different; he did not want to dominate them, only act as their well-intentioned guardian.

But even honest intentions sometimes create problems which the promulgator of a law could not have foreseen; apartheid became so pervasive that it dominated the lives of ordinary people from birth to death to resurrection.

AT BIRTH.

The Afrikaner was never afraid to fly against the winds of history, and usually with success. Other nations had learned to utilize, and sometimes condone, the mixture of their races, with enviable results. No more beautiful people exist in the world than the languorous, able Chinese-Polynesians of the South Seas. The black-white mixture in Brazil produces offspring of extraordinary quality, while the j.a.panese-white children of Hawaii are exceptional in both talent and appearance. The Indian-Spanish mix in Mexico is a good one, and so is the Indian-black in Trinidad.

The Afrikaner saw the hand of G.o.d in the creation of his small nation, and was determined to isolate it from admixtures that would dilute its purity. Indeed, it was difficult to find a more h.o.m.ogeneous, handsome and dedicated body of people than those Afrikaners nurtured on the veld and in the valleys of the continent's southern tip. Of course, the pure Dutch strain had been infused with contributions from the gifted Huguenots who filtered in, never many in number, and with heavier contributions from the Germans, who at times actually outnumbered the Dutch. But these were peoples of roughly the same physical and mental inheritance. Additions from the English were inescapable; they came to form a large part of the white community. And it would have been impossible for the Afrikaner not to draw, too, from the Hottentot, the black and the Coloured. In pioneer days he acknowledged this, but his descendants were determined to prevent any further penetration of their white laager.

His jealous guarding of blood purity did exact a social cost, for the Coloured peoples that had arisen, here as elsewhere in the world, had to be savagely excluded from national life. Not only were they forbidden to intermingle with whites socially; they were also cut off economically, professionally, creatively, until the loss to the nation was incalculable. How much poorer the United States would have been without the contributions of persons whose light skins would cause them to be cla.s.sified as Coloured in South Africa: Frederick Dougla.s.s, Ralph Bunche, Martin Luther King, O. J. Simpson, Harry Belafonte, Lena Home, Diahann Carroll, Senator Brooke and Congressman Powell. Or how the world's creative pool would have been diminished without the work of Coloureds such as the poet Pushkin, the painter p.i.s.saro, and the flamboyant storyteller Dumas.

South Africa silenced in the cradle all such potential contributions from its Malay-Hottentot-black-Afrikaner-English-Coloureds, and its loss was never greater than when it rejected young Heather Botha, twenty-three years old and of such a mixture. She was exotic, like a palm tree bending beside a lagoon, or a tawny pearl held in a Balinese hand. She combined the most attractive features of all the wanderers who had figured in her background: the fiery-tempered Malay slave woman who had fought her Compagnie master for nine years, then slept with his son for eleven; the Dutch sea captain who had fought storms in too many seas to give a d.a.m.n about what Compagnie officials said regarding fraternization with girls of mixed breed; the Hottentot herdsman who had protected with a gun the forty-seven cattle he owned, plus the fifty-seven stolen from Compagnie herds; the black warrior who had defended himself against both Zulu and white man; the fair-faced English officer, India-bound, whispering love to a young Coloured maiden beside a brook on the slopes of Table Mountain. Heather was the child of l.u.s.ty forebears, and all of them would have been proud of her, for as she said on various occasions, echoing her Dutch sea-captain ancestor, 'I don't give a d.a.m.n.'

At the university in 1953 she had openly dated white men, despite warnings from the faculty that she might fall into danger and from the police that such action was criminal. It would have been difficult for her to refuse the numerous invitations she received from white students, for she was a spectacular young woman and one of the liveliest on campus. She had a rowdy laugh, a provocative manner of walking, and a smile which showed white teeth against a golden complexion.

But she was condemned. At birth she had been cla.s.sified Coloured, which meant that for the remainder of her life this would be her outstanding characteristic, outweighing her intelligence, her beauty and her capacity to contribute to society. Where she lived, the quality of her early education, what job she could hold, whom she could fall in love with, and the role she could play in South African life were all sharply proscribed. Everyone in the nation would know Heather's limits, everyone, that is, except Heather.

At twenty the police arrested the young student for 'inciting white men to have interracial carnal intercourse or to commit an act of indecency,' and rarely was a miscegenation charge more correctshe certainly was tempting, to white men or those of any other coloror more fallacious, for it was not she who did the tempting; it was the men. On that charge she was given three months in prison, suspended on condition that the tempting cease. She was warned that if she was again brought before a magistrate on a charge of immorality, she would suffer the consequences.

'I don't give a d.a.m.n,' she told her fellow students after the trial, and continued to behave with an insolence that was charming to those who knew her, insulting to those who merely watched. She went where she wished in Cape Town, ate wherever her crowd stopped for food, and when late October came around she frequented the beaches reserved for whites, where her striking figure, her sun-tanned skin and her lively manner gained attention, if not always approval. Twice white sunbathers warned her that in using beaches legally reserved for their group, she was breaking the law. She tossed her head and smiled at them.

At Christmas vacation, which marked the height of the summer season, Heather was sunning herself at a white beach when Craig Saltwood, aged twenty, came home from Oriel College at Oxford for a visit with his family, and it was not remarkable that he met her. They talked about college cla.s.ses, and of recent developments in South Africa. He poured warm sand upon her legs, then gallantly brushed it off, one grain at a time. She told him to be careful where his fingers went, and soon they were kissing in hidden corners where the police would not see them, and on the third afternoon young Saltwood drove her home in his Morris Minor.

He was delighted with her parents. Simon Botha was a skilled builder, head of his own construction company. His wife, Deborah, was a quiet homemaker who took pride in caring for Simon and their three children, of whom Heather was the oldest. Mrs. Botha was often to be found in the kitchen of their home in Athlone making the boboties and sweet confections her family had always prepared with elegance. Like her daughter, she had a glowing complexion, but unlike her, she was shy.

'I often worry about Heather,' she said softly. 'Going to the white beach. She's bound to get into trouble.'

'I'm not trouble,' Craig said.

'For my daughter you are,' Mrs. Botha replied.

Then Mr. Botha talked about the letting of recent contracts to build houses in a new township, and of how white officials discriminated against Coloured artisans, awarding large constructions to certain white builders who really lacked expertise and experience. 'They won't let me build those new boxes, yet when one of the great old houses like Trianon needs attention, they call me.' He laughed. 'Then it's "Botha, can you fix that gable in the old way?" Or "Botha, we want to restore that barn built when Jan Compagnie was here. We've got to protect our cultural heritage." And who protects it? I do.'

There was much laughter in the Botha home, and many books and quite a few records by Wilhelm Furtw.a.n.gler and Arturo Toscanini, plus a shelf of His Master's Voice operas. The Bothas spoke English, but were at ease in Afrikaans, and on Sundays they worshipped at the Dutch Reformed church (Coloured) where Simon and Deborah had been married and their children confirmed.

The Korean War had just ended, and Simon spoke proudly of the South African fighter planes in the Far East, but he could not mask his disappointment when reflecting on his own four-year service during World War II. 'Jan s.m.u.ts came personally to thank our Coloured unit when it was over, and I can still see the Oubaas standing not ten feet from me, telling us we were needed back home to build a new South Africa. "G.o.d bless you all," he said. "May you prosper in peace even more than you did in these years of conflict." Fifty thousand men like me fought against Hitler. For freedom, they said. But when we got home, s.m.u.ts forgot every promise he made, and now they're even trying to take away our right to vote.'

When Heather saw how sympathetically Craig partic.i.p.ated with her family, her response was so warm that all suspected that she might be spending the next nights with him in the Sea Point boardinghouse he was using for his vacation, but on the second night a suspicious woman in a room opposite telephoned the police to warn them that a crime was being committed in Room 318. The case was handed to two policemen, a sergeant fifty-five years old who was revolted by such duty, and a gung-ho young fellow of twenty-two from a country district who was greatly excited by the prospect of bursting into rooms where nude couples were in bed. At four-fifteen one morning, having kept the premises under observation for several nights, they crashed their way into the room, took photographs, and arrested the naked couple, the older policeman blushing with shame.

'The sheets! Don't forget the sheets!' cried the younger man as he watched Heather while she dressed, and the sergeant was forced to strip the bed and wrap the sheets in a bundle. The investigators would send the linen to a medical research inst.i.tute, where highly paid technicians using ultramodern equipment would ascertain scientifically whether miscegenation had truly occurred.

'I'm sorry for this,' the older policeman apologized as he led the lovers down the corridor and past a doorway in which a triumphant woman demonstrated her pride in having served as guardian of her nation's morals.

'You pitiful creature,' Heather said to the watchdog, and this 'act of arrogance and spite against a decent citizen' was cited against her at the trial.

'Insolent and unrepentant, even though guilty of a major crime,' the magistrate thundered at her, after which he delivered a sentence standard in these cases: 'Craig Saltwood, you come of a good family and have a respectable university record. You have clearly been influenced by alien ideas in England, and your behavior is a disgrace. The example set by you and other white men of your ilk cannot but be seen as shocking in the eyes of decent Coloured people, whose daughters must be protected against such liaisons. Three months, sentence suspended for three years' good behavior.' The magistrate glowered. 'But if you ever again consort with any woman outside your own race, you will go to jail.'

He studied Heather for a moment, balefully, then said, 'You have chosen to ignore the warning I issued at your previous appearance. I have pity for what your parents must feel as a result of this disgraceful act. But the court has no alternative. Prison, three months.'

It was a.s.sumed that the white man, feeling the sting of censure from his society, would slink off and keep his mouth shut. But Craig Saltwood was so outraged by the gross unfairness of Heather's sentence that instead of hurrying back to Oxford and forgetting his vacation escapade, he phoned his mother and asked her, 'Will you help correct a grave injustice?'