Roots of Outrage

‘So the bed could have been unmade like that for days. So why do you say it had been “recently” slept in?’

‘Because,’ the sergeant said triumphantly, ‘the bed was warm.’

‘Ah, yes, so you said. Warm? You used a thermometer, of course?’

‘No,’ the sergeant sighed, ‘I felt it with my hand.’

‘Oh, yes, your hand. I suppose your five years’ experience in vice has made your hand a reliable thermometer?’

‘The bed was warm, Your Worship,’ the sergeant insisted.

‘How warm, Sergeant?’

‘It was warm – it was obvious people had been lying in it.’

‘Obvious? People? Not just one person? It was obvious the temperature was caused by two or more human beings?’

The sergeant sighed. ‘The point is it was warm. And there were two people in the apartment.’

‘And two people will always jump into the same bed? Two people couldn’t possibly be in the presence of one bed without feeling irresistibly compelled to jump into it? Is that your experience?’

The sergeant sighed again. ‘I’m just telling the magistrate what I saw.’

‘And felt. With your experienced hand. So tell me, what was the temperature of the bed – in Fahrenheit. Or Centigrade.’

The sergeant muttered: ‘I don’t know. Just warm.’

‘I see. Hold your hand up in the air, please, Sergeant.’

The sergeant did so, grimly.

‘What is the temperature of the air in this courtroom?’

‘I don’t know, Your Worship,’ he sighed. ‘It’s normal.’

‘Normal for what? For Africa in general? Johannesburg in particular, six thousand feet above sea level? What is normal?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know! And what is the normal temperature of a bed that has just been vacated?’

‘I don’t know.’

In those days Drum had its premises in a rundown building called Samkay House, Troy Street, in downtown Johannesburg. It was a small outfit, with sales of only 80,000 copies per month, but over a million blacks read it. There was also a Rhodesia Drum and a Kenya Drum and the publisher intended to publish from Cape to Cairo in the fullness of time. Drum was also strong on black culture, all aspects of black urban life: Sophiatown had been the most dramatic manifestation of that urbanization, but Sophiatown had been razed to the ground and now Soweto was Drum’s new focus. Drum’s treatment was very American in style, heavy on American movies, cars, clothes, music and rising stars like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. In those days the ANC and PAC imagined that the repressions of apartheid would make their causes bloom into open rebellion, but the government clampdown on all dissent in pursuit of its dream state was so effective that Drum was the only mouthpiece the blacks had, and they loved it. In short, Drum owed its success to apartheid.

But Drum was careful. The basic, day-to-day enemy was the Police Censorship Department, the Subversive Publications Act as supported by the Suppression of Communism Act, but the editor managed to steer a precarious course through this maze of legislation. Nonetheless, every Drum writer – and many from the other newspapers – had received an ‘invitation to tea’ with BOSS, the Bureau of State Security, a branch of the South African Police. It was the week after Mahoney’s story of Patti Gandhi’s acquittal was published that he received his invitation.

BOSS had its offices on the eleventh floor of Marshall Square Police Station, in the heart of Johannesburg. You were escorted into the building, and you rode up in a special elevator with only one button. You passed through a security gate, walked down a row of offices to the big one, and there was Colonel Krombrink, his hand extended and a smile all over his Afrikaner face.

‘Mr Mahoney, thank you for coming to see us …’

‘Us’ included a young man in plain clothes at the window, smiling faintly, holding a fat file conspicuously marked Luke Mahoney, which he now carefully placed before Colonel Krombrink. Tea was served on a tray by a black constable, with a saucer of Marie biscuits.

After the niceties, Colonel Krombrink said: ‘Mr Mahoney, every man is entitled to his opinions, hey, provided he doesn’t commit subversion, but tell me, have you read the Communist Manifesto, and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital?’

Mahoney had: it was in his father’s library. But now Das Kapital was a banned book. ‘No.’

‘No? That’s interesting, because it strikes us here in BOSS that so many of you English journalists have had a grounding in communism, hey. Particularly you people in Drum. Nothing wrong, I suppose, with an intellectual inquiry, hey, provided you don’t write about it, indirectly encourage it. Anyway, it’s nice to chat about these things, us intellectuals.’ He waved his hand at his bookcase behind him. ‘I’ve studied just about every book that’s ever been written on communism, hey. It’s my business. So I’m very interested to hear what you have to say, Mr Mahoney. About our Suppression of Communism Act.’

Mahoney’s heart was knocking. He said: ‘I don’t believe in communism, Colonel Krombrink. For what my youthful opinion is worth, I think it is doomed because it must, by definition, be repressive, imposing a one-party state on the populace. And secondly, by definition, it must also suppress the most valuable resource a nation has, namely human initiative. Ambition. The work ethic. The determination to prosper.’

Colonel Krombrink smiled. ‘What big words for such a young man. But, of course, you are a journalist. And your father –’ he indicated the file – ‘is a Member of Parliament, an “independent”. And he is always proposing his votes of no confidence in the government, hey, so I suppose he taught you a lot of big words too.’ He smiled. ‘Tell me, Mr Mahoney, why don’t you have confidence in our government?’

Oh Jesus, he wanted to get out of here. ‘Because I think apartheid is also doomed to failure. Unworkable. And unjust.’

‘Ah. But you say you’re not a communist? Tell me, was – or is – Lisa Rousseau a communist?’

Mahoney was taken aback. Lisa – they knew about her? ‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘Perhaps your knowledge of her was only carnal? Oh yes, she’s a communist. Do you know where she is now?’

A communist?! ‘At the University of Cape Town, doing her doctorate.’

‘She’s in a house in Cape Town, doing her doctorate. She’s been banned.’ Mahoney stared. Lisa banned? Oh God, how awful!

‘It’s a terrible business being a banned person, hey, Mr Mahoney. Imagine, she’s not allowed to be in the presence of more than three people, she’s not allowed to make any speeches, or write anything for publication, she can’t play sport, she must be in her house from five in the afternoon to eight next morning. For three years. That’s a hell of a way to live, hey? It would be a pity if it happened to you. But it’s necessary in her case.’

Mahoney’s pulse tripped at the threat. ‘Why was it necessary?’

‘That’s our business. But you know she’s a member of the ANC. And now the ANC is a banned organization, after Sharpeville.’

‘I didn’t know she was a member. But being a member of the ANC doesn’t make her a communist.’

‘No? Have you read the so-called Freedom Charter of the ANC?’

‘Of course.’

“‘Of course”?’ Krombrink smiled. ‘Yes, journalists love to read things like the Freedom Charter, hey. Well, the so-called Freedom Charter says, amongst other things, that the land, and the mines, banks, life insurance companies, industry, big business, they all belong to the people and will be nationalised. What’s that if it’s not communism, hey?’

Mahoney took a deep, tense breath. Oh, he wanted this over. ‘But I think somebody like Lisa Rousseau can be a member of the ANC without supporting all its economic principles.’

‘You think so? Are you a secret member of the ANC, Mr Mahoney?’

‘No.’ Thank God he could truthfully say that. They could have no evidence to gainsay that.

‘Are you an ANC sympathiser?’

Mahoney mentally closed his eyes. And, oh God, he hated himself for being frightened of the bastards. ‘No’ would have been untrue. So would ‘Yes’. ‘Partly’ would open a Pandora’s box. ‘No.’