Roots of Outrage
Mahoney sighed. How do you talk to a guy like this? He heard himself say: ‘And the Sons of Ham shall be hewers of wood and drawers of water?’
Colonel Krombrink looked at him.
‘Man, that’s what it says in the Bible, yes. But you must admit we’re being bladdy fair to them, hey, because now the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act is going to give them independence. That’s okay, they can run themselves any way they like there. But Got, man, Mr Mahoney,’ he frowned, ‘you know bladdy well that they can’t run a white man’s country, hey? Do you seriously think they can? You know the Transkei, you’ve seen how simple they are. Stick fights and witch doctors and muti-murders. An’ here in Soweto – how violent they are. Got, man, one side is always knocking the hell out of the other. ANC versus PAC. Xhosa versus Zulu. That’s a kaffir’s idea of politics, hey. That’s how it’s always been since Shaka. Not so?’
Mahoney sighed. Oh, the age-old argument. And, yes, Krombrink had him there. He nodded.
‘Not so?’ Krombrink continued. ‘An’ even if they weren’t like that, even if they behaved properly instead of like animals, do you imagine they’ve got the know-how to run a modern country? You’ve seen them.’ Krombrink shook his head. ‘No, man, it would go to hell. Not so?’
Mahoney shifted. He began: ‘Of course they haven’t got the ability to run the country yet –’
‘Exactly. They hadn’t even invented the wheel when the white man came – an’ even the ancient Greeks had the wheel! No, South Africa would become just another kaffir country, hey. Look at Ghana. Kwame Nkrumah makes himself President-for-life and the country goes to ratshit. Do you want South Africa to go like that?’
Mahoney said grimly: ‘No, but I don’t want it to become a bloodbath either.’
‘Of course not, and that’s exactly what we will avoid with our policies, because the races will be kept apart, to develop along their own lines in their own areas an’ won’t interfere with each other. One day soon each race will be looking after its own affairs, an’ if they want to have a bloodbath in somewhere like the Transkei, it’s their problem, hey, not ours –’
‘But apartheid will bring the bloodbath right here,’ Mahoney said, ‘to Johannesburg. Like Kenya.’
Colonel Krombrink smiled. ‘Mr Mahoney, South Africa is totally different to Kenya – there were only fifty thousand whites in Kenya, there are five million of us here. Here we’ve got control, man.’
‘And Russia – can you control them? Apartheid is driving the blacks into the arms of the communists.’
The colonel shook his head. ‘Mr Mahoney, it is only by apartheid that we can control the communists. Without apartheid there will be chaos in which communists flourish. And apartheid offers the blacks an alternative to the rubbish of communism, it offers them the goal of self-government in their own territories. Russia wants to impose a one-party communist government. To achieve this, Russia wants chaos, it wants a bloodbath so it can seize power. Russia wants our gold and diamonds, Mr Mahoney – and Russia wants the Cape Sea Route. Because with the Gape she dominates all the sea traffic to the Far East, because the Suez Canal is now controlled by Egypt, and Russia can easily dominate Egypt. With the Cape route, she’ll have the whole of Africa in her hand, man. An’ from Africa they start on the rest of their world revolution. Do you want that?’
Mahoney sighed. ‘Of course not, but the point is –’
‘That’s the only point, Mr Mahoney: apartheid or communism. World communism.’ He frowned. ‘Are you sure you’re not a communist sympathizer, Mr Mahoney?’
Oh Jesus. It was intended to intimidate, and it worked. ‘Quite sure.’
‘Then why do you write crap like this, man?’ He smacked the Patti Gandhi story. ‘Trying to make a laughing stock of the Law … The Afrikaner is self-destructing … ’ Before Mahoney could muster a response he continued: ‘Do you know Miss Gandhi is a communist?’
Mahoney frowned. ‘No. She comes from a wealthy family of Indian manufacturers.’
‘Karl Marx was well off. Engels was rich. There’re rich communists too. What they want is power. What Miss Gandhi wants is revolution. She’s been making trouble for years and she makes headlines because she’s pretty. All that crap about going into white libraries and getting on white buses and swimming on white beaches. Even into the Dutch Reformed church. Got, man, she’s got no respect for other people’s feelings, she only thinks of her reputation as a trouble-maker. Then she goes to this high-fallutin’ school in England and they think she’s some kind of hero an’ her head gets more swollen. He frowned. ‘And now she breaks the Immorality Act and people like you write crap like this about her.’
‘She was acquitted!’ Mahoney interjected.
‘But only just! The magistrate said the evidence was very suspicious – “sinister”, he said – but it was just possible she hadn’t had sexual intercourse and he had to give her the benefit of the doubt! We all know she committed perjury! But you make her a heroine!’ He quoted: ‘“Beautiful … gorgeous … brilliant cross-examination … brilliant school record … courageous”.’ He frowned. ‘Got, man, that brings the law of the land into disrepute. Can’t you see that’s irresponsible journalism?’
Mahoney badly wanted to retort about the law of the land – but, oh shit, he just wanted to get out of here. ‘My editor approved it.’
Krombrink snorted. ‘Your editor, hey? That English pinko. An’ all those black colleagues of yours, no doubt.’ He shook his head. ‘Of course they would. All those drunkards at Drum are ANC.’
Mahoney wanted to protest their innocence, and thereby his own, but before he could think of anything, Krombrink banged the desk and said with exasperation: ‘Got, man, Mr Mahoney, what’s a well-brought-up chap like you doing working for a kaffir magazine like Drum, hey?! A communist rag, man? An’ you with all the advantages! Your father a lawyer an’ MP. Head prefect of your school. First class pass in matric!’ (Mahoney was amazed he knew all this.) ‘The Mahoney family goes back to the Great Trek days.’ He shook his head. ‘Got, such a proud record, an’ then you come along, a Mahoney with real brains, an’ first you get expelled for screwing the communist history mistress, you lose your Rhodes scholarship, then you go to work for a kaffir magazine and write crap like this –’ he thumped the stories – ‘about Sharpeville, and Miss Patti Gandhi.’ He looked at Mahoney with grim, steely eyes; then said theatrically: ‘BOSS has watched your downhill slide with great alarm. And sadness, hey.’
Mahoney’s heart was knocking. The statement was loaded. Krombrink looked at him witheringly, then stood up. Satisfied. He held out his hand, unsmiling. ‘Thank you for dropping round. Nice to have a chat about things of national interest. Contact me anytime you feel like another one.’
Mahoney stood up. National interest? Oh Jesus … He took the hand. ‘Thanks for the tea.’
As Mahoney reached the door Krombrink said: ‘Oh, Mr Mahoney?’ Mahoney stopped and looked back. ‘As you’re not a communist sympathiser, or ANC, any bits of information that come your way we would much appreciate to know about.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Do I make myself clear?’
Mahoney looked at the man. And, oh God, he hated himself for not having the courage of his convictions, for not giving the man a withering stare and turning on his heel. ‘You make yourself clear.’
He turned again, and Krombrink said: ‘Mr Mahoney?’
He stopped again. Krombrink smiled: ‘Remember Miss Rousseau. A Banning Order is a terrible way for a young man to live, with all those pretty girls out there going to waste …’
9
Colonel Krombrink was dead right: all the journalists at Drum were pro-ANC. What else was there to be in South Africa in those days if you were black? But none of the Drum writers was a communist, as far as Mahoney knew. It was true that if you supported the ANC you were indirectly sympathetic to the South Africa Communist Party because the two were partners in crime now that both were banned: the ANC relied on the communist’s cell structure and experience in underground survival. And Krombrink was dead wrong when he called Drum’s writers crap, but he was right when he called them heavy drinkers.
Mahoney could hold his booze but those Drum guys had livers like steelworks. Hard living was part of the job at Drum, part of its black mystique: ‘Work hard, play hard, die young and leave a good-looking corpse.’ The ambience and prose at Drum was styled on the tough American journalism of the fifties, the rough scribes with hats tilted, ties loose, cigarette hanging out of the corner of the mouth, a hip-flask to hand, pounding out flash, hard-hitting copy on their beat-up Remingtons before sallying out once more into the tough, dangerous, fun world of gangsters, shebeens, cops, jazz, politics, injustice, flash cars and fast women. Most mornings Mahoney stayed at home studying for his law degree: at lunchtime he hit the streets of Johannesburg and Soweto, the courtrooms and the copshops and the mortuaries, looking for copy, chasing blood-and-guts stories. When he got to the office for the editorial meeting the boys were already getting along with the booze as they bashed out their prose; it was against the law for blacks to drink anything but kaffir beer, but Mahoney and the boss bought it for them, or they got it illegally at the Indian and Chinese fast-food joints that did a roaring trade servicing the black workers in downtown Johannesburg because they weren’t allowed into bars and restaurants. The editorial meetings were very stimulating, a barrel of laughs, ideas flowing as fast as the wine and whisky and brandy as the boss kicked around subjects with his scribes and dished out assignments. It was at one of these meetings that he tossed a letter on the desk.
‘An application for a job from a friend of yours, Luke. Justin Nkomo, says he was your garden boy. Know him?’
‘Justin? Sure! Good guy. Where is he?’
‘Transkei. Says he’s done a teacher’s diploma but wants to try his hand at journalism. Suggests he can be our education columnist. I’m embarrassed to tell him we haven’t got an education desk, none of you guys are educated enough.’
‘I’m educated,’ Mike Moshane said. ‘C-O-A-T spells JACKET. How’s that?’
Mahoney said: ‘He was bloody good at English. And a marvel at cricket. Best batsman I’ve ever seen. Hit anything.’
‘Cricket?’ the boss said.
‘I swear, if he were white he’d be a Springbok cricketer. No bowler can get him out. Even if he uses a baseball bat.’
‘Baseball?’ The boss looked up at the ceiling for a moment. ‘Now there’s an angle: “Apartheid Foils Brilliant Sportsman.” If he’s as good as you say we could blow it up into a big story, make the government look silly. Now, how do we test him?’
Mahoney said: ‘Take him to a private cricket pitch. Like Wits University, they’d turn a blind eye for a few hours. Get their best bowlers to turn out. I guarantee he’ll knock ’em for six. Invite some sportswriters from the dailies to watch.’
‘Then?’
‘Then,’ Mahoney said, ‘you invite some baseball league people along. Give Justin a baseball bat, let their best pitchers have a go at him. Invite the American Chamber of Commerce, maybe. Maybe Justin’ll get a scholarship to some Yank university.’
The editor nodded pensively at the ceiling. ‘Now this bears thinking about. I’ll invite him to drop round, tell him to write me a piece, take it from there.’ Then he tossed a second letter on the desk. ‘And, you’ve got one other friend, Luke – nice letter from Patti Gandhi thanking us for your “excellent, witty, and sympathetic story” about her trial.’
The room resounded to ribald remarks about bearing the Immorality Act in mind when he crawled on his hands and knees to thank her for her nice thank-you letter. Then Willy Thembu said: ‘Why doesn’t Luke do a full-length feature on her, her whole history, a sort of “Day in the Death of an Indian Beauty under Apartheid”? Hey – why doesn’t he talk her into screwing a few top-cops, and then we blow the story?’
‘Hey, how about that …’
The boss grinned. ‘But we’d be sued – and Miss Gandhi would go to jail.’
‘But so would the politicians and the top-cops!’ Butch Molofo said happily. ‘The Afrikaner establishment would have egg all over their faces! We’d make a sort of Mata Hari out of her – a love-nest spy. I bet that girl would go for it, she’s a trouble-maker. And I bet she’s in the thick of the ANC’s underground – I bet she knows what this guy Nelson Mandela’s up to …’
But the boss shook his head. ‘We’re trouble-shooters, not troublemakers, and we don’t make ourselves accomplices to crime. Anyway, Miss Gandhi’s been over-written lately.’ (Mahoney was very disappointed.) ‘But what we should do is start building a profile on this guy Nelson Mandela – to be ready for the day he does something dramatic. Luke – you start on that, between other stories. Start in the newspaper cuttings; look up every reference to him and his wife, Winnie. And you’re a law student – maybe it’s time you wrote us a nice piece on that ridiculous Treason Trial that Mandela was involved in. “What is treason in this land of ours?” Reminding us how the cops broke up the Congress of the people at Kliptown when the Freedom Charter was formed, arrested thousands, put a hundred and fifty-six on trial for treason, how five years later there were only thirty-one accused left because the government had withdrawn charges against the rest due to lack of any real evidence of treason. Explain to us what treason now means in our poor benighted country under our new draconian legislation. Can do?’
‘Can do,’ Luke said. ‘I’ll get my father to check me on the law.’
‘Good.’ The boss looked around the table. ‘So what else is happening out there?’
Fred Kalanga took his feet off the desk to pour himself another shot of brandy. ‘Talking about Nelson Mandela, I’ve heard a bit of talk in the shebeens that we’re going to start seeing a few bangs from him soon. Something about the ANC changing its policy of non-violence.’
There were some cheers. The boss said: ‘Doesn’t surprise me – the ANC has got to resort to violence sometime soon if it’s going to retain credibility with the blacks. But Drum doesn’t publish rumours …’
Two weeks later Justin Nkomo came to work for Drum, on probation. Mahoney was delighted to see him again but he soon concluded that Justin was not going to fit in: he was too serious and bookish. Sure, he drank, but not enough. He wrote good prose, but not flip enough. He wanted to enjoy life but he was not flash enough for Soweto. Sure, he loved women but he was not hip enough. ‘Our intellectual’ they called him at Drum.
It was a month after his arrival that Drum staged their debut of Our Black Springbok. Justin had been sufficiently tested at nets to convince the publisher he was on to a winner of a story. Now he persuaded the Witwatersrand University first cricket team to turn out, and the first baseball team, he invited the sportswriters of the daily newspapers to come along, and several members of the British and United States consulates in the hopes that Justin might be offered a scholarship.
‘I hope to God he doesn’t let us down after all this.’
Mahoney was worried too – this had been his idea. Please God … he prayed as Justin walked out onto the university cricket pitch.
It was not, of course, to be a cricket match: it was an exhibition, and a wager. The publisher had offered five hundred rands to the university cricket club if Justin failed to score a century. And what an exhibition of slugging it was! The university team were astounded – and so were the sportswriters.
‘They did not know what hit them,’ the Star reported. ‘There at the crease stood this gangly young black man, holding his bat like a caveman’s club, smashing the university’s best bowlers to all corners of the field as if swatting flies. Having reached his century in record time – thus winning the wager for his sponsor, Drum – the batsman, armed now with a baseball bat, repeated the same phenomenon against the best pitchers of the university’s baseball club. The man is a genius with a bat: he has little style but who needs that with an eye and brawn like his? It would be foolish to tamper with such unorthodox brilliance. If there were no apartheid in this sports-mad land of ours he would, without a doubt, be a Springbok cricketer in a year or two, if not immediately. There is every chance that if he and Drum play their cards right, this man Justin Nkomo will be offered a sports scholarship to an overseas university. Indeed, the United States cultural attaché, watching wide-eyed, told me that he was certain that an American university would snap him up. South Africa will be the loser. What a sporting tragedy …’
Three months later Justin Nkomo accepted a scholarship to the University of Miami. Many years were to pass before he returned.
10
In those days Mahoney shared a big, seedy, four-bedroom apartment with three other bachelors: Shortarse Longbottom, a tall, thin, mournful young reporter on the Star, Hugo Wessels, known as Huge Vessel because of his capacity for beer, who was a young reporter on an Afrikaans newspaper, and Splinter Woodcock, a law student who was justifiably pleased with his genital endowments. The apartment was on the top floor of an old apartment block in Hillbrow, on the edge of downtown Johannesburg, one of the most densely populated areas of the world. By day the area teemed with blacks, employees of the shops and restaurants and cheap hotels, and servants who worked in the cheap apartments, but at night they all disappeared back to the townships beyond the horizon.
Most of the apartment blocks had servants’ rooms on the very top but ‘locations in the sky’ were discouraged under apartheid. There were servants’ rooms on Mahoney’s rooftop and it was a term of the lease that they should not be occupied, but Mahoney had purloined a key and he went up there to work when the partying got too hectic downstairs. They called the apartment The Parsonage because there was a substantial turnover of young ladies at breakfast all weekend. The parties were fine with Mahoney, because he had most mornings free, but the weekend was an important time for him to study, at least during daylight, though it was great to know the party was going strong downstairs whenever he was ready to join it.
The Parsonage piss-ups began on Friday afternoons in the staff canteen of the Star, where the junior reporters of Johannesburg’s various newspapers gathered to solve the problems of the world and flirt with the female junior reporters, including Gloria Naidoo, who wrote for the fashion page, and Wendy Chiang, who wrote for the book page, and Innocentia Molo, who wrote for the Sowetan. This multi-racial gathering was not illegal, but to adjourn together across the road to the Press Bar of the Elizabeth Hotel was illegal because of the Group Areas Act and the Liquor Act. Miss Chiang, Miss Naidoo and Miss Molo were not allowed to darken its white doors, so the party usually graduated back to The Parsonage. And this, strictly speaking, wasn’t illegal either: people of different races were not actually forbidden to meet in private homes provided there was no question of contravention of the Immorality Act, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, the Prohibition of Political Interference Act, the Influx of Unwanted Persons Act, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which authorized a policeman to detain you for twelve days without trial, the Suppression of Communism Act, the Seditious Publications Act … It wasn’t actually illegal – not yet – but Sergeant van Rensburg and his squad were very optimistically suspicious about The Parsonage. Out there in Soweto there was murder going on, but there was Sergeant van Rensburg cruising Hillbrow trying to get evidence of the English press contravening the Immorality Act with Miss Chiang, Miss Naidoo and Miss Molo. As it happened, neither Shortarse, Huge, Splinter nor Mahoney were screwing Gloria – who had the reputation of preferring ladies – Wendy or Innocentia, though not for want of trying. The three women usually left The Parsonage together in Wendy’s car – she did not drink – to go home over the horizon where they belonged, but they took great delight in reeling out of the building blowing kisses up to the boys in the hope that Sergeant van Rensburg was watching through his binoculars.
It was on one of these Friday piss-ups, the week after Justin Nkomo left for America, that Gloria Naidoo said to Mahoney: ‘You remember Patti Gandhi?’
‘How could any man forget?’
‘Well she’s a friend of mine, and she’d like to talk to you – she likes the sympathetic way you wrote up her trial. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind her calling you? She’ll use a public phone in case her line’s being tapped. I gave her the number of the Star canteen, she’ll phone here next Friday in case your number is being tapped too. Okay?’
Was it okay?
‘Of course I remember you,’ he said when she telephoned. ‘And I thought you were very clever. You should be a lawyer.’
‘Flattery will get you everywhere. So, I have a business proposition to put to you.’
Flattery would get him everywhere?
‘Is this a story?’
‘That’s your business, isn’t it? There are no other grounds upon which we can legally meet, are there?’
‘Where do you suggest?’
‘Well, there’s no bar we can legally meet in. Not even a park bench, like they do in the movies. So would you come to my shop? Where my workers will ensure the bed temperature remains normal?’
Perish the thought … !
Gandhi Emporium was in the Indian quarter in Diagonal Street. The streets were teeming with people and traffic at five o’clock, blacks hurrying home from work to the locations. The shop was closing up as Mahoney walked in. An Indian salesgirl led him through to the workshop, where a dozen black tailors were shutting down their sewing machines. They entered the office beyond. Patti Gandhi was descending a staircase, her hand extended. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. She wore a lime-green silk dress that flared over her breasts revealing a breathtaking cleavage.
‘Thank you for coming!’
As she got a beer for him from the refrigerator Mahoney said: ‘You won’t remember me, but we come from the same home-town, Umtata.’
‘Yes, I know, though I don’t believe we met. Your father was my father’s lawyer.’ She smiled. ‘And I’ve checked you out.’ (Checked him out?) ‘By the way, we needn’t worry about Sergeant van Rensburg,’ she continued matter-of-factly. ‘He’s not gunning for me anymore: I neutralized him.’
Neutralized him? ‘How?’
She sat down on the sofa opposite him with a glass of wine and crossed her legs elegantly. ‘I screwed him.’
Mahoney tried not to show his amazement. Exactly as Willy Thembu had suggested in jest. His heart was knocking in hope. She smiled. ‘That’s off the record, for the moment. Do I shock you?’
He was blushing. ‘No …’
‘Liar,’ she said, smiling.
‘I mean, why shouldn’t you sleep with whoever you like?’
‘But I didn’t like. I did it for two reasons. One, to get him off my back. Two, for the future. You never know in this country when it’s going to be necessary to have a few cops on your side.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Not only did he contravene the Immorality Act, he’s also a married man.’
Why was she telling him this? ‘I see. You’re right.’
‘Sure I’m right. This is a wrong country. I don’t care what I’ve got to do to get a few levers. So look at this.’
She got up and went to a wall-safe. She took out a large envelope. She pulled out a photograph. Mahoney stared at it. It showed a couple naked on a bed, having sexual intercourse. The woman was Patti Gandhi. And the man was unquestionably Sergeant van Rensburg.