Roots of Outrage

It was lovely to be twenty years old and head over heels in forbidden love with a beautiful woman most of South Africa knew about – but didn’t know he had. Lovely, exciting, knowing that they had the whole weekend to themselves until Monday morning, with nobody to knock on the door. Each weekend he brought his law books – he had finished her story – and in the mornings he studied but midday found them lying beside the little pool, drinking wine, cooking on the barbecue, the sun glistening on her goldenness, her long legs so gloriously female, her tiny bikini covering her mount of Venus, the wonderful olive line where her thighs touched, her rounded soft-firm hips, her glorious breasts naked, her long black hair loose, her mouth happy below her sexy sunglasses. They were lovers who had been kept apart most of the week, catching up on each other’s news, what happened at the office, who said what about whom: the delightfully important business of talking about unimportant things when out there in the rest of the land awful things were happening. It was a relief ‘to get away from South Africa’. And, oh, the blissful knowledge of what they were going to do after lunch: just take each other by the hand and lay themselves down upon that big double bed with a smile of anticipation, happiness all over their faces. It seemed that each time he looked at her, her perfect body, cool and warm, the droplets of the swimming pool on her, he took a happy sigh. And she was as beautiful a person as she was beautiful. And their love-making was as beautiful as she was.

Sometimes they got away from it all by getting the hell out of South Africa. Gandhi Garments had outlets in Botswana and Mozambique, all of which fell under Patti’s jurisdiction. About once a month she had to visit one of them, and they made a holiday out of it. They had to go in separate cars, because a white man leaving the country in the same vehicle as an Indian woman, particularly one as well known to the authorities as Patti Gandhi, would be a prime suspect for contravention of the Immorality Act when he returned – the wires would be hot between the border and Police HQ. So they left in separate cars and met in the hotel on the other side of the border. Patti had a cousin in Botswana whom they sometimes visited, but they always stayed in hotels. And, oh, it was a lovely feeling to be free. God knows there is nothing beautiful about the towns of Botswana, flat and dry, the sun beating down hot as hell, but to them it was lovely, freedom. Freedom to be like two people in love, to lie together by the motel pool, to have dinner together by candlelight, to dance together for all the world to see. To them Botswana was beautiful. But Mozambique was truly beautiful: the Portuguese motel on the palmy beach outside Lourenço Marques, the Indian Ocean warm and clear, the fishing boats, fooling together in the warm surf, chasing, splashing, ducking each other like two kids let out of school, pulling her bikini off midst girlish squeals, the wonderful fleeting feel of her nakedness, the laughing salty kisses, lying in the sun, her long hair shiny, her golden skin glistening. Oh God, he was proud of her; he loved the way people looked at her, stole glances at her, the furtive stares when she walked into a room.

‘How does it make you feel?’

‘It amuses me,’ she said. ‘But in South Africa it makes me angry because I’m good enough to lust after but I’m not good enough to be one of them. I’m like an Amsterdam prostitute to be drooled over and left behind in the window. In fact, I’m lower than the prostitute because it’s legal to fuck her. I’m an Untouchable.’

‘Damn right, anybody touches you and I’ll break their bloody necks. Apartheid’s done me a favour …’

Then there were the long languorous lunches at the beachside bistros under the palms, piri-piri prawns and fresh crayfish and barbecued suckling pig and chicken Portuguese style. There they would talk and talk, with the sun sparkling on the sea, the vinho verde slipping down cold and crisp, getting good and replete and sensuous in delicious anticipation of what they were going to do. And waking up in the late afternoon, in the hours after love, sweaty, replete, and diving back into the sea together to start the whole lovely process again.

‘Do we make love more than other lovers, d’you think?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we want each other more than other lovers.’

She said: ‘Because we’re abnormal lovers. We’re not allowed to be normal. So every time we’re together it’s a honeymoon.’

‘If I came home to you every night it would feel the same.’

She smiled. ‘Would it, darling?’ She stroked his eyebrow. ‘Yes, I know how it feels. However I doubt the best of lovers could keep this up. But …’ she sighed, ‘even if we did end up moderating our carnal appetites wouldn’t it be lovely to come home to each other every night?’

Oh, it was a heartbreaking thought. With all his heart he did not want the weekend to end, he did not want to drive back alone to South Africa tomorrow, he did not want to go to bed alone in The Parsonage, he did not want to wake up on Monday morning without her, he did not want to wait for next weekend on Buck’s Farm.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And that’s how it’s going to be one day.’

She snorted softly, and stroked his eyebrow. ‘One day when apartheid is gone? When it’s torn us to bits? When we’re old?’

It made him burn to talk like this. He hated those Afrikaner bastards who had done this to them. He said: ‘So there’s only one thing to do: get out.’ He looked at her. ‘Get out when I’ve got my LLB and we’ll go and live happily ever after in another land.’

She looked at him. It was the first time he had expressed his commitment like that. Her face softened. ‘Thank you, Luke.’ Her big brown eyes were moist; then she clenched her fist and clenched her teeth and heaved herself up and clasped her knees and said to the glorious sunset: ‘And I mean this too: I will never, never leave South Africa!’ She glared at the sunset. ‘Fuck them! I’ll never let them drive me away from the land of my birth! From my parents. From my livelihood!’ She shook her head angrily. ‘If we stand up to these Afrikaner bastards we can pull them down!’ She glared at the sunset. ‘I hate them! And I love what Umkhonto we Sizwe is doing …!’

Umkhonto we Sizwe – MK, for short. Spear of the Nation.

That year the ANC and the Communist Party decided violence was their only policy now that they were banned, driven underground and into exile. Mau Mau violence had worked in Kenya. All over Africa the colonies were getting their independence: the ANC could be sure of support from many places in the north. It was common knowledge that Nelson Mandela was the leader of MK, but it was the South African Communist Party who hurried to Moscow to arrange weapons and training for his new army. MK’s existence was unveiled on 16th December of that year, the anniversary of the Battle of Blood River when the Boers defeated Dingaan’s Zulus. That day bombs exploded in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Durban, at post offices, government administration offices and electrical installations, and MK’s manifesto was broadcast over Radio Freedom:

‘The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices: submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means within our power in defence of our people, our future and our freedom …’

The recruits made their way over the border to join MK, to go for training in Eastern Europe and China and elsewhere in Africa, all arranged by the South African Communist Party. That year two hundred explosions rocked the land. The journalists called Nelson Mandela The Black Pimpernel; the police called him Public Enemy Number One, a Tool of the Communists.

That year Gandhi Garments opened a factory in Swaziland, which was a British protectorate. Swaziland was ideal for those long weekends, the border only 150 miles from Johannesburg. It is high, hilly country with forests and valleys with tumbling streams. Patti usually drove up on Friday morning and completed business in one day so they would have the whole weekend free. Mahoney followed on Friday afternoon. They stayed in the Mountain Arms, in the high forests near the border. It was lovely to sit on the verandah in the evening with a bottle of wine looking down on South Africa turning mauve, the sky turning orange red and setting the western horizon on fire. It was extraordinary that up here on this side of the border they were free to watch that romantic sunset together, to be in love, to stay in this hotel – and down there the law forbade it.

‘Don’t think about it,’ she said. ‘Or it’ll drive us mad.’

‘I am mad. Fighting mad.’

She smiled. ‘Never be fighting mad. You’ve got to be cold, calculatingly mad in this game. And you’re more valuable as a wordsmith, the pen is mightier than the sword. Leave the fighting to us.’

He looked at her. ‘In what game?’

‘Dealing with those bastards down there.’

‘What fighting? And who’s “us”?’

She smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’m keeping my hands clean. If the cops had anything on me they’d have gleefully nailed me long ago.’

That was the first time he really worried.

‘I don’t want you involved in any of this MK business, Patti.’

She put her hand on his. ‘I promise you I’m far too smart to get my hands dirty or my nose bloodied.’

‘For Christ’s sake, what are you talking about? “Far too smart”?’

‘I simply mean we should leave the fighting to MK.’ She squeezed his hand brightly. ‘Now can we please stop talking about bloody apartheid?’

‘No, I want to know what you mean about being far too smart to get caught.’

‘I didn’t say that. I said too smart to get my hands dirty.’

‘Patti – are you involved in these explosions?’

‘Do I look like a bomb-artist?’

‘Answer me, damn it!’

She looked at him. ‘No.’

He glared at her. ‘But you are still a member of the ANC?’

‘You know the answer to that one.’

‘I mean, are you a member of an ANC underground cell?’

She smiled. ‘Darling, if I were I’d be the last to admit it.’

‘And that’s what worries the shit out of me. Answer me, Yes or no.’

She looked him in the eye. ‘No, darling. There – better?’

Not much. ‘And are you a member of the Communist Party?’

She smiled. ‘Darling, a Communist Party member never admits it. The membership is so secret that not even other party members know who’s a member apart from their immediate cell. Not even all the members of the national executive know who’s who.’

‘So even the ANC executive doesn’t know which of its members are also members of the Communist Party.’