Roots of Outrage

13

Politics. They tried not to think about politics when they were together, but you couldn’t avoid politics in South Africa, because you lived it. The laws of the land rubbed your nose in it every day. You worried about it, read about it, argued about it, despaired over it. Mahoney wrote about it, daily Patti seethed under it; both were the victims of it, riven apart by it.

The newspapers were full of it. Every other day, it seemed, the ANC caused another explosion, and Poqo kept striking at random. Much of this bad news was half-concealed from the public by censorship laws, but everybody knew about the terrible politics of the rest of Africa: that was not censored. The terrifying triumph of the devil in Kenya, the whites selling up their lovely farms for a song, the convoys of farmers fleeing to South Africa – ‘Thank God for South Africa and Hendrik Verwoerd’. Everybody knew about the independence of Uganda, the slaughter of his tribal enemies by Milton Obote, the chaos of his socialist policies. Everybody knew of the economic chaos of Tanzania where Julius Nyerere was uprooting whole peoples with his socialist policies of ‘villagization’. Everybody knew about the chaos in the Congo, the mayhem, the murder, the rape, the looting, the arson, the cannibalism. Everybody knew about that terrifying shit happening in the rest of Africa. Everybody knew that the USSR and China were behind it all, that they intended to turn Africa into a communist continent. Everybody knew that the USSR and China were behind the ANC and PAC, that the ANC was dominated by the South African Communist Party; and everybody knew that Nelson Mandela and his MK were the bastards causing these explosions.

‘He’s National Hero Number One,’ Patti said. ‘I pray for him …’

Nelson Mandela, the ‘black pimpernel’ who flitted in and out, organizing support outside the country, training, arms, money, masterminding the sabotage inside the country. Rumour had it he moved like a fish through the waters of the people, as a tribesman, a businessman, a delivery boy, a mine worker, visiting his underground cells, reconnoitring his targets, drawing up his plans, smuggling his explosives, building his bombs, getting them to his men. His face was well-known, a handsome, intelligent face, splashed across the police posters offering huge rewards for information leading to his capture; but the bombs kept exploding, damaging electric pylons, post offices, government offices, prisons, railway installations.

‘Don’t you think he’s a hero?’ Patti demanded.

Yes, Mahoney thought Mandela was heroic. But Patti believed that Mandela’s bombs would eventually frighten the whites so much it would bring about the collapse of apartheid; Mahoney did not believe that. Mandela’s bombs would only frighten the whites into the government’s laager, like the Mau Mau atrocities did in Kenya, like the nihilism was doing in Rhodesia. No way would Nelson Mandela’s bombs bring down the South African government: they would only make the laws harsher. The only thing that would bring down the government was a full-scale invasion, and the Defence Force would shoot the shit out of that too. And who was going to support such a communist invasion in the middle of the Cold War? If America was prepared to risk nuclear war against the USSR when she tried to emplace missiles in Cuba, who was prepared to support an ANC war and place the Cape sea route in the hands of the South African Communist Party and Russia? America had just fought the Korean War, it was fighting the Vietnam War: the West had already lost most of Africa to the USSR and China – no way were they going to lose South Africa and the Cape sea route by supporting Mr Mandela and his home-made bombs. Yes, Nelson Mandela and his boys in MK were brave men taking on an unjust system, but were they not also quixotic figures?

‘Quixotic!’ Patti cried indignantly.

‘No, look: government offices and electric pylons are important targets, but he can’t win like that. The Afrikaner won’t be scared away by bombs – his whole culture, his whole history is one of fighting, fighting the Kaffir Wars, trekking into the unknown, then fighting the whole mighty British Empire – so he’s not going to surrender because of a few bombs, that’ll only make him more repressive.’

‘It’s a start,’ Patti said. ‘Somebody’s got to start hitting this government. We can’t just accept our fate. And it’s got great propaganda value – it shows the masses that the flame of freedom is burning brightly.’

But bombs? There was something distasteful about bombs that tarnished Mandela’s image. Blowing up bridges, railway and electrical installations was legitimate in an armed struggle, but the step from there to bombs in supermarkets and hotel foyers was a short one.

‘Sooner or later innocent people are going to get killed, and Mandela will lose his moral high ground.’

‘It is our policy that there will be no loss of human life.’

Our policy? Jesus, that worried him. ‘Patti, you aren’t involved in any of this, are you?’

‘Of course not, I mean it’s ANC policy, made loud and clear at the start of the armed struggle. Mandela is a very principled man.’

‘Yeah, but how principled are all his boys scattered across the country? How long before one acts on his own initiative and blows up a crowded railway station? Mandela may be smart, but he can’t be everywhere at once keeping his hitmen under control.’

‘“Hitmen”,’ she said quietly, ‘is hardly the right word for freedom fighters. However, yes – there is a risk that life will be taken, arid I agree that’s regrettable, and it’s our policy to avoid it. But history is full of human life being taken in the struggle for freedom, Luke – it’s sad, but sometimes it’s a risk that has to be taken. Good God, how many lives are the Americans taking every day in Vietnam, as we speak? How many lives did the British take in establishing their empire? How many lives of Aborigines did the Australians take? How many Maoris were slaughtered in New Zealand? Red Indians in America? Who started the barbaric custom of scalping in America? Not the Indians, but the white settlers, to claim a bounty from the government for every Indian they killed. How many lives did Castro have to take in Cuba?’ (Oh Jesus, it worried him that she saw nothing wrong with communism.) ‘God, how many people did the South African police shoot at Sharpeville? The history of freedom is soaked in blood. This country’s history is soaked in blood. So don’t expect “us” to be too squeamish about the risk of a little more blood – regrettable though that is.’

Regrettable … Jesus, she frightened him when she talked like that. Out there bombs were going off and the police were scouring the land for Nelson Mandela – and where was she five nights a week when he couldn’t see her? He held a finger out at her perfect nose. ‘As long as you have nothing to do with that blood.’

She pretended to bite at his finger and grinned. ‘It’s not the blood that worries you, is it, darling – it’s me? Us. And the police. The Immorality Act. Boy, that’s typical South African liberal schizophrenia! All talk and no do. “Blood is historically inevitable, it’s academically necessary – as long as it’s not on my fair hands. Oh, apartheid is brutal, oh, apartheid must be toppled, and to do so there’ll be blood – but I can’t lift a finger in case a spot falls on me! So, alas, I can do nothing” …’

‘I do nothing? I write my articles for Drum, and the Globe. What I want to know is what you do, Patti?’

‘Wellshe said reasonably, ‘I run Gandhi Garments. I make nice cheap dresses and pants for “kaffirs” …’

‘And that’s all?’

‘That’s all, darling. Please stop worrying …’

14

Michael Sullivan was a geography teacher, twenty-seven years old. It was a cold winter’s afternoon and he wore a hat and overcoat as he hurried into Johannesburg railway station, his collar turned up. He was carrying a large, new, cheap suitcase. He made his way to the platforms. Some white people were already waiting for the 5.15 train, where the whites-only first-class coaches would pull up. Further down the platform, where the second-class coaches would stop, a good number of Coloured people were waiting. Past them, where the third-class coaches would be, many more blacks were waiting.

Michael Sullivan walked to a bench marked ‘Europeans Only’. where an elderly woman was sitting with her two grandchildren. They moved up to make space for him. Sullivan placed his suitcase down beside him at the end, then moved it back to make it less conspicuous. He consulted his watch, then began to read a newspaper.

It was fifteen minutes before the first rush-hour train was due. As the minutes ticked by the long platform began to fill up. The blacks and Coloureds hurried past Sullivan, and the whites began to collect in the area in front of him, waiting impatiently. Michael Sullivan looked at his newspaper sightlessly. By five o’clock there were at least two hundred people, he estimated. Over there on the big concourse people were now hurrying in all directions to different platforms. Michael Sullivan stood up. He folded his newspaper and moved away down the crowded platform, trying to look like a man wanting to stretch his legs. He wandered off through the throng, tapping his newspaper on his leg. When he reached the concourse he increased his pace.

He strode away through the crowd, side-stepping people, until he got to the big entrance, then he broke into a run. He tried to make it a jog, like a man in a bit of a hurry – he had practised this, and timed the distances involved – but panic gripped him and he sprinted, dodging people, making for the two telephone boxes across the parking area. He raced up to the nearest box; across the dial was his handwritten adhesive tape reading ‘Out of Order’. He ripped it off, rammed coins into the slot and dialled 999 feverishly.

He shouted: ‘There’s a bomb in a suitcase about to go off in ten minutes on Johannesburg Station! Clear the area! This is a warning from the anti-apartheid forces of freedom!’

He slammed down the telephone, and he felt the vomit rise in his guts. He clutched his chest and reeled out of the box, taking deep breaths. But once the vomit was forced back, what he felt was elation. He had done it! He had done his duty as instructed! Only he could have done it because no black man in his cell could have sat down on a Europeans-Only bench. He had done it! And he’d given the bastards enough time to clear the station – a lot of Johannesburg’s first-class whites-only passengers would be very late getting home tonight. He lifted his head to listen for the police sirens: but instead he heard a thud. He jerked, and looked at the big station, and he saw glass flying up into the air. He stared, horrified, aghast. Then he heard the screams, and saw the pandemonium, the people reeling out.

Michael Sullivan stared in horror. Then he vomited. He retched and staggered away into rush-hour Johannesburg.

Politics. They tried not to talk about politics, but those bombs kept going off, and now lives were going up with them. Patti was shaken when they heard of the first life lost; she was absolutely shocked by the Johannesburg Station blast that killed nine people and wounded over thirty. But she vehemently denied that any of them were Mandela’s bombs – they must have been Poqo’s, or that white student group called the African Resistance Movement.

‘Our policy is no loss of life … And anyway what alternative is there? We can’t wage a guerrilla war like Castro did because we haven’t got Cuba’s mountains and jungles, and South Africa is buffered by the European colonies to the north – Mozambique, Rhodesia, Angola. We have no option except classical urban guerrilla warfare.’

Jesus. Classic urban guerrilla warfare? ‘How do you know about urban guerrilla warfare?’

‘I don’t know anything – you’re the one who’s had the military training, not me. But it’s common sense – guerrillas need sanctuaries when the pressure is on, like mountains and jungles. And friendly neighbouring states where they can get supplies. Well, the ANC hasn’t got that.’

‘South Africa has got mountains and dense bush. The mountains of Basutoland, the Drakensberg, Swaziland, all that vast bush –’

‘Yes, but we’re surrounded to the north by hostile territory – the Portuguese in Mozambique and Angola, the British in Rhodesia – so it’s very difficult for us to get supplies through.’

‘Castro,’ Mahoney said, ‘had no friendly neighbouring territories either. Cuba is surrounded by sea.’

‘Exactly. So he could get his supplies by sea –’

‘So is South Africa surrounded by sea – almost three thousand miles of coastline.’

‘But South Africa’s got a powerful navy –’

‘Bullshit, we’ve got a very small navy. Castro was faced by the United States Navy. Even a United States naval base on the island, which is there to this very day.’

She cried, ‘So what’s your point?’

‘The point, darling, is that Castro and eighty men – only eighty – landed off the yacht Granma on the coast of Cuba and ran straight into gunfire. Only three years later Castro marched triumphant into Havana, despite all the odds against him.’

‘So?’

‘And Mao Tse-tung didn’t have any friendly territories to supply him either. On the contrary he had the whole might of America and Chiang Kai-shek dropping bombs on him –

‘So – what’s the point?’

He only knew that he did not accept that South Africa and its borders were unsuitable terrain for guerrilla warfare. The point was that although he rejected communism he admired Castro as a soldier. He admired Mao Tse-tung as a soldier. They had tremendous odds against them but they waged courageous and efficient guerrilla wars. Efficient – that was the point. The ANC and their MK were inefficient. The ANC had been in existence fifty years, apartheid had been in existence for fourteen years and all the ANC had managed was bombs. They had not liberated one square foot of territory. Bombs were bad soldiering. Oh, he admired Mandela’s courage, but as a soldier he was no Castro, no Mao Tse-tung. He was pissing into the wind with his bombs – it would all come back at him. Soon he would be caught and hanged and then the police would run rings around MK; the Spear of the Nation would flap around like a chicken without its head.