Roots of Outrage

‘Please …’ Mrs Mahoney said. ‘That’s enough.’

‘What happened to Uncle Fred?’ Jill was wide-eyed.

‘Well, I loaded him into the Land-Rover and rushed him to hospital in Nyeri. He was okay. Tough old bugger, Fred. But when he came out a few days later, with his arm stuck out in plaster like a Heil Hitler salute, the swines struck again. We were still erecting our security fence and watchtowers – our labour had just knocked off for the night. Fred and I were sitting having our well-earned sundowners. Suddenly – bang bang bang – windows smashing, and the bastards are attacking with firearms this time, from all sides. And Fred and I dive for cover and grab the rifles and start blasting out the windows, bullets flying everywhere, and there’s poor old Fred firing with one arm, the other stuck out, and these two great brutes come charging through the front door and luckily I mowed them down with the new Sten gun the police had given me.’

‘Wow!’ Jill whispered.

‘Anyway,’ Sheila ended, ‘after that we finished the fence and watchtowers quick-smart. And bought new dogs. The Mau Mau mutilated all our other dogs. Stuck them on spikes. Alive. Now we’ve got four new ones – Dobermans. Trained. Accept food from nobody but me. Only let out at night. And,’ she added, ‘now we’ve got the Masai guards. We’re pretty safe. But the swines still come down out of the forests to maim our cattle.’

‘And how’s Fred now?’ Mr Mahoney said.

Sheila smiled wearily. She took a sip of wine and her glass trembled. ‘Tough as nails, my Fred. I haven’t seen him for three weeks. He’s up in Aberdere Forests – in freezing mist, ten thousand feet above sea level. On patrol, looking for Mau Mau hideouts. Comes back after weeks, wild and woolly and reeking and exhausted, gets roaring drunk, then off he goes to join another patrol.’

Jill demanded: ‘What does he do when he finds Mau Mau hideouts in the forest?’

Sheila looked at George Mahoney. He said: ‘This is her Africa.’

Sheila sighed. ‘To cut a long story short, they spend days, weeks, tracking down their hideouts. Then they ambush. And kill them.’

‘How? Machine guns and hand grenades and all that?’

‘Yes.’ Sheila turned to George. ‘And? Do you think the same could happen in South Africa?’

‘Guaranteed,’ George sighed. ‘This government will drive the blacks to bloody revolution. And be ruthless in trying to stamp it out. So it’s going to be a much worse bloodbath than Kenya. But that’ll be some time coming, the government has got an iron grip at the moment.’ He added: ‘The tragedy is that the bloody excesses of the Mau Mau create the impression that the South African government is right. The man on the street looks at Kenya and says, hell, the blacks are savages, so the South Africans are right.’

Sheila said: ‘And who’ll start it? This African National Congress? What do you make of them?’

George nodded pensively. ‘I like them,’ he said. ‘They’ve been around a long time, since 1912 you know, ever since the British gave them a raw deal at the end of the Boer War. They’re reasonable people. Indeed, they even supported the Smuts and Hertzog governments for a while, because they thought the Natives Land Act may give them a fair deal. Then they seemed to give up. Then apartheid seemed to revitalise them. Now they’ve issued their Freedom Charter, but they’re nonviolent. For the moment – this government will probably drive them to violence soon. But right now they’re the very opposite of the Mau Mau. The people to worry about are the PAC, the Pan-Africanist Congress, under Robert Sobukwe, who split away from the ANC over the multi-racialism of the Freedom Charter – they’re the people who want. “Africa for the Africans”. The only problem with the ANC is they’re clearly socialists. The “commanding heights of industry” must be nationalised, they say. That would be disastrous. And that, unfortunately, is the influence of the communists in their ranks. The South African Communist Party has been banned since 1950 and gone underground, and it’s no secret their policy is to ride to power on the back of the ANC. And their orders come direct from Moscow. So the ANC is in danger of becoming a communist organization unless their leadership is careful.’

‘And, how good is that leadership?’

‘Pretty good,’ George nodded. ‘I like this guy Nelson Mandela – he’s head of the ANC Youth League, a potentially powerful branch of the movement. He’s very intelligent, and he’s a lawyer. My firm has had some dealings with his firm in Johannesburg. Sensible chap, he’s a Xhosa, comes from this neck of the woods –’ he waved a finger over his shoulder – ‘I believe he’s of “royal blood” in that he’s heir to the chieftancy of the clan. And he’s recently married a very nice lass from these parts who’s a fully qualified social worker. The leadership impresses me as reasonable, totally unlike the sort of people you’re dealing with in the Mau Mau.’ He added: ‘Nelson Mandela’s law partner is the acting president of the ANC, a chap called Oliver Tambo, also a Xhosa. Or a Pondo, they’re the sort of poor country cousins of the Xhosa –’

Mrs Mahoney said to Sheila, ‘The Pondos are the ones who wear the blue blankets, whereas the Xhosa wear the red blankets –’

‘Except, of course,’ George Mahoney smiled, ‘neither Mandela nor Tambo wear blankets now, they wear pin-striped suits!’

Everybody laughed; then Mrs Mahoney said to Sheila: ‘And is the Mau Mau crisis affecting Harker-Mahoney?’

Sheila sighed. ‘Terrible labour shortage. The Kikuyu who haven’t taken the oath have fled back to the reserves in terror. HM Shipping is still going strong. And most of the stores, because Kenya is swarming with the British Army and Air Force now, fighting the Mau Mau. But our coffee plantations are virtually at a standstill. No labour.’

‘And how’s business in West Africa?’ George said.

‘Well, I’m not au fait with HM’s offices in Ghana and Nigeria. But Fred says things are looking shaky there too, with independence.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Kwame Nkrumah, the Great Redeemer.’

‘Why?’ Mrs Mahoney groaned. ‘Why is the British government hell-bent on giving these people independence, willy-nilly?’

Sheila said: ‘The Tories have lost their nerve … the government’s full of pinkoes.’

‘They must know they’re not ready to govern themselves yet.’

‘I wonder if they do know,’ Sheila said. ‘They meet a few smart ones, like Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah, and think the whole of Africa is composed of charming black Englishmen. They don’t realize that the rest have only recently dropped out of the trees. Independence will be the biggest failure since the Groundnut Scheme.’

Luke glanced at his father and the old man gave him a conspiratorial wink. ‘What’s the Groundnut Scheme?’ Jill demanded.

Sheila began to speak but George Mahoney said, ‘Luke, explain to your sister.’

‘Well,’ Luke said, ‘after the war there was a food shortage. So the British government started a massive project planting peanuts, because they’re very nourishing, and it was called the Groundnut Scheme. They sent out all the seeds and fertilizer and tractors and stuff and hired thousands of blacks. But they made a terrible botch of it because nobody knew about peanuts, and in places they even ploughed cement into the soil instead of fertilizer because they couldn’t read. But the biggest problem was that they couldn’t persuade the blacks to stay on the job because they didn’t understand what money was. They didn’t understand that their wages could buy things, because there were no shops out there in the bush. So the whole scheme collapsed. Cost millions of pounds.’

Jill said, ‘Is that why that book about the Mau Mau is called Something of Value? Things in the shops?’

George Mahoney smiled. ‘Luke? You’ve read the book.’

Luke said: ‘What the book says is that if you take away a man’s tribal customs, his values, you must expect trouble unless you give him something of value in return. Your values. But if he cannot accept your values, because he is uneducated, then he is lost. Neither one thing nor the other. And that causes trouble. And that is what is happening in Africa.’ He looked at his father for confirmation.

‘Right,’ George said to his daughter. ‘The white man came along and said to the blacks: “You must not worship your gods, you must worship my God.” Then, “Now that you worship my God you cannot have more than one wife.” And, “Now that you worship my God you must stop selling your daughters into marriage.” And, “Now that you worship my God you must stop fighting, you must turn the other cheek, you must stop carrying your spears and shields, even though these are symbols of your manhood.” And, “Now that you worship my God you must be industrious, you must stop making your wives do all the work, and you must stop drinking so much beer, and of course you must stop following your traditional laws and obey the white man’s laws, and if you do not we will put you in jail.” Et cetera. And, after a while – decades in the case of Kenya, a hundred and fifty years in the case of South Africa – the black man eventually says: “Very well, now that I have given up my values I want all the advantages attached to your values – I want a good job and lots of money.” And the white man says, “I’m afraid you’re uneducated so the only job you can get is as a labourer, working for me.” And so this uprooted man has received nothing of value. His politicians say: “Then we want the power that is attached to your values, we want to be the government.” But the white man says, “Sorry, you’ll ruin the country.” So the black politician says: “We must rise up and drive the white man into the sea and then we’ll get something of value, because we’ll all be rich with a white man’s house and a car and a bicycle and a radio.”’

‘“And the nice Russians,”’ Aunt Sheila said, ‘“will help us get rid of the white man.” And the simple black man believes it all.’

Jill sighed, wagging her golden pigtails. ‘So if we can’t give him something of value it’s better to leave him in his tribe.’

George smiled. ‘That’s the African dilemma, isn’t it, my darling? But we didn’t leave him alone – we’re here, and we can’t undo that fact. The question is what do we do from here, to give him something of value?’

‘Not apartheid,’ Luke said.

‘So you want to give them all the vote?’ Aunt Sheila asked.

‘No,’ Luke said. ‘Because they’re still too uneducated. But we should give the civilized ones the vote. “Equal rights for all civilized men”, like in Rhodesia. Gradualism, that’s the answer.’

‘And what constitutes “civilized”?’ his mother asked.

‘Education,’ Luke said. ‘Maybe, second year of high school: Or a certain amount of money in the bank. If a man’s smart enough to make money, he’s smart enough to vote. That’s what they’ve done in Rhodesia.’

‘And Rhodesia will have plenty of trouble too,’ Sheila promised.

‘But meanwhile,’ Mrs Mahoney asked, ‘what about all the ones who haven’t got education or money but who’re demanding the vote and a white man’s job, house, car and bicycle? They won’t be satisfied with your gradualism, Luke, they’ll want the vote now. If you give the vote to some, they’ll all want it.’

‘Well,’ Luke said, ‘we’ll just have to be strict. Strict but fair. But to be fair we must abolish apartheid.’

George Mahoney nodded judicially. Jill said: ‘I agree. Apartheid,’ she pronounced, quoting her father, ‘stinks.’

Mrs Mahoney said: ‘Choose a more ladylike word, Jill. Why do you say that? Isn’t separateness the natural order of things, dear? We are separate, separated by civilization. The government is only legalizing the status quo.’

‘It’s doing a hell of a lot more than that!’ George said. ‘It’s setting the status quo in stone, to hold them separate and down there for ever. It’s damned unnatural to try to keep people apart – and it’s asking for trouble. Let people find their own level.’

‘Well, I think it’s perfectly natural for a civilized people to want their standards protected by the law. And thereby prevent trouble.’ She turned to Sheila. ‘George and I don’t see eye to eye on this little detail. Not that I’m a National Party lady, mark you – I’d vote for the United Party, if I dared, but George is an Independent and he’d divorce me – I’m never quite convinced those ballots are secret!’ She grinned at her husband. ‘I’d never vote for those horrid Afrikaners – I exaggerate of course – some of them are very nice – but I must say, darling, our Minister of Bantu Affairs, Hendrik Verwoerd, strikes me as a sincere man who believes he’s doing his best for the blacks in the long run.’

‘Hendrik Verwoerd,’ George Mahoney sighed, ‘is not a malicious man. And he’s probably sincere when he talks about apartheid as “a mighty act of creation” and “the will of God” – he believes he’s got the blueprint for successful co-existence between the races. And he has appointed the Tomlinson Commission to look into the viability of the black homelands becoming independent –’

‘Independent?’ Sheila asked, surprised.

‘Yes,’ Mrs Mahoney said. ‘Apartheid is evolving, my dear, to a higher moral plane –’

‘Yes,’ George said wearily to Sheila, ‘apartheid is evolving under Verwoerd, he does now talk in Parliament about giving the black homelands their independence, about dividing South Africa up into a number of black independent states and one white state, which will all live together side by side in a “constellation of southern African states”, bound loosely together in a kind of common market – Verwoerd doubtless does believe his own rhetoric when he says the blacks will be eternally grateful to us. It’s a pretty vision but it won’t work, because the homelands are barely capable of supporting the blacks now, in thirty years’ time they’ll be hopelessly inadequate, because the black population will have trebled. How’re all those people going to earn a living? They’re cattle-men, not factory workers –’

Mrs Mahoney interrupted mildly: ‘But he says industrialists will be encouraged with tax incentives to open up factories on the homelands’ borders to provide employment –’

‘Which is bullshit,’ George Mahoney said. (Jill snickered into her hands.) ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but it is nonsense. Because, sure, some industrialists will take advantage and open factories on the borders, but not nearly enough. The Tomlinson Commission –’ he jabbed his finger – ‘showed that the homelands could only support fifty-one per cent of the black populace as farmers. What happens to the other forty-nine per cent? Find jobs in the new factories? It’ll never happen. It’s a Utopian dream of Verwoerd’s.’ He turned to his wife. ‘And the hard fact remains that the black homelands are only thirteen per cent of South Africa’s surface.’ He shook his head at Sheila. ‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong in giving these so-called black homelands self-government – provided, as Luke says – ’ he touched his son’s head – ‘it’s supervised and done gradually, because the poor old black man has no experience of democracy – but the towering sin of Dr Verwoerd’s new-look apartheid is that it says to the poor black man: Thou shalt live and vote in thy inadequate homeland. Thou shalt only come out of it to work in if I need you and give you a Pass. Thou shalt live in impermanence in locations and squatter shacks. Thou shalt not have thy women and children living with you. Thou shalt have no political or social rights in my nice white South Africa where thou workest. Thou shalt return to your black homeland when I’ve had enough of your cheap labour. Thou shalt, thou shalt thou SHALT …’

George glared around the table, then said wearily to his wife: ‘Oh, Verwoerd’s vision is a fine one, on paper. But the arithmetic proves it’s a recipe for black pain, and poverty, and conflict. Rebellion.’ He sighed. ‘I tell him at every opportunity in Parliament.’

Mrs Mahoney shifted and said: ‘Darling, I’m all for the underdog. But I don’t consider that saying a black can’t be my next-door neighbour and keep his cattle in his backyard is exactly making him an underdog – he’s got his own territory, his own customs, and I have mine. I respect him but I do not want him as my neighbour.’

Luke said: ‘Mother, you’ve got five of them as neighbours already, in your backyard.’

‘Servants are entirely different. And talking about that, I don’t mind in the least you helping Justin with his homework, dear, but I won’t have him starting political discussions in my kitchen about the Russians coming, please?’

Jill said: ‘Well, Miss Rousseau says the Russians are already here.’

‘And she’s right,’ George said.

‘Who’s Miss Rousseau?’ Aunt Sheila asked.

‘Our new history teacher,’ Jill said, ‘and she’s brilliant.’ She added with a giggle: ‘And Luke’s in love with her!’

‘I am not!’ Luke glared. ‘I only said all the guys think … have got a crush on her!’

‘Except you?’ his father grinned.

That was another thing Luke and Justin had in common: their enthusiasm for girls. That year both of them had their first sexual experience. Justin had been through the Abakweta ceremony, living alone in a grass hut for six weeks, daubed in white clay and wearing a grass skirt and mask before emerging on the appointed day to be circumcised in cold blood with a spear: he was now a man, eligible to buy a wife when he could afford the cattle to pay lobola, the bridal price. Justin had lain with women. ‘Is it nice?’ Mahoney asked, agog. ‘Ooooh,’ Justin said.

Luke had been circumcised as an infant but his customs forbade him to lie with a woman yet; Luke’s earliest memories seemed to be of having a persistent erection he was incapable of doing anything about, and he was desperately determined to do something about it in his final year at school. Oooh is what Luke felt climbing the stairs behind the girls in their short gym skirts – if you contrived to be at the bottom of the stairs as they were approaching the top you could see right up to their bloomers. Oooh is what he felt sitting in class waiting for the girls to reveal a bit more thigh (‘beef’ it was called). Oooh is what he felt when he was allowed to grope his girlfriend of the moment but never allowed to take his cock out for a bit of reciprocity. Ooooooh is what he felt as Miss Rousseau unfolded the dramas of history with her creamy smiles, her breasts thrusting against her sporty blouse as she stretched to jot her ‘lampposts’ on the blackboard, her skirt riding a little higher up her lovely legs – for Miss Rousseau was also the girls’ gym mistress and came to school in short athletic skirts.

Luke wasn’t in love with Miss Rousseau as his sister teased – not yet – he was only madly in lust with her. All the boys were, and the girls idolised her: ‘She’s such fun!’ And she didn’t have a boyfriend! Oh, she had all the young men in town after her but there seemed to be none with brains enough to hold Miss Rousseau’s interest. ‘She says she’s very hard to please,’ Jill reported with the breathless smugness of one privy to royal confidences – ‘and she says we must all be when we grow up. None of these men are capable of having an interesting discussion, she says, she expects a real man to hold meaningful conversations, not just play sport, she says. She wants her mind wooed, she says …’

Her mind wooed … Miss Rousseau was very sporty and played a dashing game of hockey (you could often see right up to her bloomers as she dashed) and she loved watching rugby. Luke wasn’t really a rugger-bugger but he played so hard that year to impress Miss Rousseau that he made it to the first team. And on Fridays after school when he and Justin fetched his parents’ horses for the weekend from the country stables he rode the long way round into town in order to pass the girls’ hostel (that veritable cornucopia of beef bums and tits) because Miss Rousseau sat on the verandah marking books in the afternoons – in the desperate hopes of impressing her with a meaningful conversation about horses. But no such luck; she gave him a cheery wave, that’s all. He read in bed late into the night (with a hard-on) surrounded by history books, trying to dredge up obscure points to discuss with the wonderful Miss Rousseau, to have meaningful conversations about with the divine Miss Rousseau. (It wasn’t easy concentrating on all that heavy-duty history with all those hard-ons.) But it didn’t work. When he did manage to put one of his obscure points to her there was no discussion because Miss Rousseau knew all the answers and all he ended up saying was, ‘I see, Miss Rousseau. Thank you, Miss Rousseau.’ And there was no privacy for a meaningful conversation because he could only catch her in the school corridors. And she wasn’t interested in fuckin’ horses. So how the hell could a real man get to discuss anything? And then, one night, he thought of those family journals his great great grandfather Ernest had started, and all the obscure points therein.

But of course! What historian wouldn’t be interested in those rare journals? Their obscure detail was a goldmine for meaningful conversations. Burning the midnight oil, he feverishly dredged up a stockpile of obscure points before he made his move to grab the divine Miss Rousseau’s interest. And it worked.

‘What an interesting detail, Luke – I’ll have to look it up in Theal.’

‘I’ve checked Theal, Miss Rousseau, and he doesn’t say anything about it. Nor does Walker, Miss Rousseau.’

‘Where did you get your hands on Theal? He’s not in this town’s library.’

‘My father’s got the whole set of Theal histories, Miss Rousseau.’

‘I see. How lucky you are, even I don’t have the whole set. But where exactly did you get this detail, Luke – your great grandfather’s diary, you say?’

‘My great great grandfather’s journals, Miss Rousseau.’ (Stop saying Miss Rousseau every sentence!) ‘He was on the Great Trek and fought at Blood River. His son, and his grandson, fought in the Boer War, and they kept the journals going. My father kept them up, starting with World War I.’ He shrugged airily. ‘And, of course, I’ll keep them up, Miss Rousseau.’

‘Fascinating …’ Miss Rousseau said.

He blurted: ‘You can look at them any time you like, Miss Rousseau,’(Oh you tit …)

‘Oh wow – will you ask your father’s permission?’

It had worked! With or without his father’s permission she would see them!

‘Well, all right, seeing she’s a teacher,’ his father said, ‘but don’t encourage it, son, they’re very personal records.’

‘My father says he’s delighted you’re interested, Miss Rousseau,’ he said the next day when he delivered the first volume.

And was Miss Rousseau interested? ‘Fascinated’s the word, Luke! I sat up in bed all night!’ (Ooh, Miss Rousseau sitting up in bed – while he sat up in his bed with a hard-on dredging up more obscure detail to woo her mind with meaningful conversation – ) ‘What priceless glimpses of living history you’ve given me!’ (He’d given her!) ‘These belong in the archives. You must keep them up yourself, Luke.’

‘I will, when I’ve done something to write about, Miss Rousseau.’ (Cut out the Miss Rousseau!)

‘Start now! You’ve seen the introduction of apartheid, which is the culmination of the Kaffir Wars and the Great Trek and the Boer War! Seen it through the eyes of a very intelligent young man of the times – your youthful evaluations will make fascinating historical material one day. I can’t wait to read the next volume.’

A very intelligent young man of the times! Young man … ? And she couldn’t wait? He couldn’t wait. He hurried home from school, on air, locked himself in his bedroom and jerked off over the heavenly Miss Rousseau. The next day he delivered the next volume, reeking of aftershave and toothpaste. ‘This one’s written in an old cash ledger that Ernest Mahoney’s grandfather gave him for accounts, Miss Rousseau. It starts when Ernest accompanies Retief to visit Dingaan.’