by Wilbur Smith
Although the headmaster had not specifically mentioned this fact to Sean himself during his extended diatribe, the news did not come as a complete surprise.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said.
‘I find it hard to believe what I have been told about you. It is true that you were making a spectacle of yourself with this – this woman?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That you were letting your friends watch you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And charging them money for the privilege?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘A pound a head?’
‘No, sir.’
‘What do you mean – no sir?’
‘Two pounds a head, sir.’
‘You are a Courtney – what you do reflects directly on every member of this family. Do you realize that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Don’t keep saying that. In the name of all that is holy, how could you do it?’
‘She started it, sir. I would have never even thought of it without her.’
Shasa stared at him, and suddenly his rage evaporated. He remembered himself at almost exactly the same age, standing chastened before Centaine. She had not beaten him, but had sent him to a lysol bath and a humiliating medical examination. He remembered the girl, a saucy little harlot only a year or two older than he was, with a shock of sunbleached hair and a sly smile – and he almost smiled himself. She had teased and provoked him, leading him on into folly, and yet he felt a strange nostalgic glow. His first real woman – he might forget a hundred others but never that one.
Sean had seen the anger fade out of his father’s eye, and sensed that now was the moment to exploit the change of mood.
‘I realize that I have brought scandal on the family, and I know that I have to take my medicine—’ His father would like that, it was one of his sayings, ‘Take your medicine like a man.’ He saw the further softening of his father’s regard. ‘I know how stupid I have been, and before my punishment I would just like to say how sorry I am that I have made you ashamed of me.’ This was not exactly true, and Sean instinctively knew it. His father was angry with him for being caught out, but deep down he was rather proud of his eldest son’s now proven virility.
‘The only excuse I have was that I couldn’t help myself. She just drove me mad, sir. I couldn’t think of anything else but – well, but what she wanted me to do with her.’
Shasa understood entirely. He was still having the same sort of problems at nearly forty – what was it that Centaine said? ‘It’s the de Thiry blood, we all have to live with it.’ He coughed softly, moved by his son’s honesty and openness. He was such a fine-looking boy, straight and tall and strong, so handsome and courageous, no wonder the woman had picked on him. He couldn’t really be bad, Shasa thought, a bit of a devil perhaps, a little too cocksure, a little too eager for life – but not really bad. ‘I mean, if boffing a pretty girl is mortal sin, there is no salvation for any of us,’ he thought.
‘I’m going to have to beat you, Sean,’ he said aloud.
‘Yes, sir, I know that.’ Not a trace of fear, no whining. No, damn it, he was a good boy. A son to be proud of.
Shasa went to the gun table and picked up the long whalebone crop, the most formidable weapon in his arsenal, and without being ordered to do so, Sean marched to the armchair and adopted the prescribed position. The first stroke hissed in the air and cracked against his flesh, then suddenly Shasa grunted with disgust and threw the crop on to the gun table.
‘The stick is for children – and you are no longer a child,’ Shasa said. ‘Stand up, man.’
Sean could hardly believe his luck. Although the single stroke had stung like a nest of scorpions, he kept an impassive face and made no effort to rub the seat of his pants.
‘What are we going to do with you?’ his father demanded, and Sean had the sense to remain silent.
‘You have to finish matric,’ Shasa stated flatly. ‘We’ll just have to find someone else to take you on.’
This was not as easy as Shasa had anticipated. He tried SACS and Rondebosch Boys and then Wynberg Boys. The headmasters all knew about Sean Courtney. He was, for a short while, the best-known schoolboy in the Cape of Good Hope.
In the end he was accepted by Costello’s Academy, a cram school that operated out of a dilapidated Victorian mansion on the other side of Rondebosch Common, and was not particular about its admissions. Sean arrived for the first day and was gratified to find he was already a celebrity. Unlike the exclusive boys’ school which he had recently left, there were girls in the classrooms and academic excellence and moral rectitude were not prerequisites for entrance to Costello’s Academy.
Sean had found his spiritual home and he set about sorting out the most promising of his fellow scholars and organizing them into a gang which within a year was virtually running the cram school. His final selection included a half-dozen of the most comely and accommodating young ladies on the academy’s roll. As both his father and erstwhile headmaster had noted, Sean was a born leader.
Manfred De La Rey stood to attention on the reviewing stand. He wore a severe dark pinstripe suit and a black Homburg hat, with a small spray of carnations and green fern in his buttonhole. This was the uniform of a Nationalist cabinet minister.
The police band was playing a traditional country air, ‘Die Kaapse Nooi’—‘The Cape Town girl’, to a lively marching beat and the ranks of the police cadets stepped out vigorously, passing the stand with their FN rifles at the slope. As each platoon drew level with the dais, they gave Manfred the eyes right, and he returned the salute.
They made a grand show with their smart blue uniforms and sparkling brasswork catching the white highveld sunlight. These athletic young men, proud and eager, their perfect drill formations, their transparent dedication and patriotism, filled Manfred De La Rey with a vast sense of pride.
Manfred stood to attention while the formations wheeled past him and then formed up in review order on the open parade ground facing the stand. The band played a final ruffle of drums and then fell silent. Resplendent in full dress uniform and decorations, the police general stepped to the microphone and in a few crisp sentences introduced the minister, then fell back relinquishing the microphone to Manfred.
Manfred had taken especial care with the preparation of his speech, but before he began he could not prevent himself from glancing aside to where Heidi sat in the front row of honoured guests. This was her day also, and she looked like a blonde Valkyrie, her handsome Teutonic features set off by the wide-brimmed hat and its tall decoration of artificial roses. Few women would have the presence and stature to wear it without looking ridiculous, but on Heidi it was magnificent. She caught his eye and smiled at Manfred. ‘What a woman,’ he thought. ‘She deserves to be First Lady in the land, and I will see that she is – one day. Perhaps sooner than she imagines.’
He turned back to the microphone and composed himself. He knew that he was a compelling orator, and he enjoyed the fact that thousands of eyes were concentrated upon him. He felt at ease up here on the dais, relaxed and in total control of himself and those below him.
‘You have chosen a life of service to your Volk and to your country,’ he began. He was speaking in Afrikaans and his reference to the Volk was quite natural. The intake of police recruits was almost exclusively from the Afrikaner section of the white community. Manfred De La Rey would not have had it any other way. It was desirable that control of the security forces should be vested solidly in the more responsible elements of the nation, those who understood most clearly the dangers and threats that faced them in the years ahead. Now he began to warn this dedicated body of young men of those dangers.
‘It will require all our courage and fortitude to resist the dark forces which are arrayed against us. We must thank our Maker, the Lord God of our fathers, that in the covenant he made with our ancestors on the battlefield of Blood River he has guaranteed us his protection and guidance. It needs only that we remai
n constant and true, trusting him, worshipping him, for the way always to be made smooth for our feet to follow.’
He ended his address with the act of faith that had lifted the Afrikaner out of poverty and oppression to his rightful place in the land:
Believe in your God.
Believe in your Volk.
Believe in yourself.
His voice, magnified a hundred times, boomed across the parade ground, and he truly felt the divine and benevolent presence very close to him as he looked out upon their shining faces.
Now came the presentation. Out on the field there were shouted orders and the blue ranks came to attention. A pair of officers stepped forward to flank Manfred and one of them carried a velvet-lined tray on which were laid out the medals arid awards.
Reading from the list in his hands the second officer called the recipients forward. One at a time they left the ranks, marching briskly, to halt before the imposing figure of Manfred De La Rey. He shook hands with each of them, and then pinned the medals upon their chests.
Then came the moment, and Manfred felt his pride suffocating him. The last of the award-winners was marching towards him across the parade ground, and this one was the tallest and smartest and straightest of them all. In the front rank of guests, Heidi was weeping silently with joy, and she dabbed unashamedly at her tears with a lace handkerchief.
Lothar De La Rey came to a halt in front of his father and stood to rigid attention. Neither of them smiled, their expressions were stern; they stared into each other’s eyes, but between them flowed such a current of feeling that made words or smiles redundant.
With an effort Manfred broke that silent rapport, and turned to the police colonel beside him. He offered the sword to Manfred, and the engraved scabbard glistened in silver and gold as Manfred took it from him and turned back to his son.
‘The sword of honour,’ he said. ‘May you wear it with distinction,’ and he stepped up to Lothar and attached the beautiful weapon to the blanched belt at his son’s waist. They shook hands, both of them solemn still, but the brief grip they exchanged expressed a lifetime of love and pride and filial duty.
They stood to attention, holding the salute, as the band played the national anthem:
From the blue of our heavens
From the depths of our seas—
And then the parade was breaking up, and young men were swarming forward to find their families in the throng, and there were excited female cries and laughter and long fervent embraces as they met.
Lothar De La Rey stood between his parents, with the sword hanging at his side, and while he shook the hands of an endless procession of well-wishers and made modest responses to their fulsome congratulations, neither Manfred nor Heidi could any longer contain their proud and happy smiles.
‘Well done, Lothie!’ One of Lothar’s fellow cadets got through to him at last, and the two lads grinned as they shook hands, ‘No doubt about who was the best man.’
‘I was lucky,’ Lothar laughed self-deprecatingly, and changed the subject. ‘Have you been told your posting yet, Hannes?’
‘Ja, man. I’m being sent down to Natal, somewhere on the coast. How about you, perhaps we’ll be together?’
‘No such luck,’ Lothar shook his head. ‘They are sending me to some little station in the black townships near Vereeniging – a place called Sharpeville.’
‘Sharpeville? Bad luck, man.’ Hannes shook his head with mock sympathy. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Nor had I. Nobody has ever heard of it,’ said Lothar with resignation. ‘And nobody ever will.’
On 24 August 1958 the Prime Minister, Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom, ‘Lion of the Waterberg’, succumbed to heart disease. He had only been at the head of government for four years, but his passing left a wide gap in the granite cliffs of Afrikanerdom, and like termites whose nest has been damaged, they rushed to repair it.
Within hours of the announcement of the Prime Minister’s death, Manfred De La Rey was in Shasa’s office, accompanied by two of the senior Cape back-benchers of the National Party.
‘We have to try and keep the northerners out,’ he announced bluntly. ‘We have to get our man in.’
Shasa nodded cautiously. He was still regarded by most of the party as an outsider in the cabinet. His influence in the coming election of a new leader would not be decisive, but he was ready to watch and learn as Manfred laid out their strategy for him.
‘They have already made Verwoerd their candidate,’ he said. ‘All right, he has been in the Senate most of his career and has little experience as an MP, but his reputation is that of a strong man and a clever one. They like the way he has handled the blacks. He has made the name Verwoerd and the word apartheid mean the same thing. The people know that under him there will be no mixing of races, that South Africa will always belong to the white man.’
‘Ja,’ agreed one of the others. ‘But he is so brutal. There are ways of doing things, ways of saying things that don’t offend people. Our own man is strong also. Dönges introduced the Group Areas Bill and the Separate Representation of Voters Bill – nobody can accuse him of being a kafferboetie, a nigger-lover. But he’s got more style, more finesse.’
‘The northerners don’t want finesse. They don’t want a genteel prime minister with sweet lips, they want a man of power, and Verwoerd is a talker, hell that man can talk and he’s not afraid of work – and as we all know, anybody whom the English press hates so much can’t be all bad.’ They laughed, watching Shasa, waiting to see how he would take it. He was still an outsider, their tame rooinek, and he would not give them the satisfaction of seeing their raillery score. He smiled easily.
‘Verwoerd is canny as an old bull baboon, and quick as a mamba. We’ll have to work hard if we are to keep him out,’ Shasa agreed.
They worked hard, all of them. Shasa was convinced that despite his record of introducing racially inspired legislation to the House, Dönges was the most moderate and altruistic of the three men who allowed themselves to be persuaded to stand as candidates for the highest office in the land.
As Dr Hendrik Verwoerd himself said, as he accepted nomination, ‘When a man receives a desperate call from his people, he does not have the right to refuse.’
On 2 September 1958, the caucus of the National Party met to choose the new leader. The caucus was made up of 178 Nationalist members of parliament and Nationalist senators voting together, and Verwoerd’s short term in parliament that had seemed at first to be a weakness turned out to be an advantage. For years Hendrik Verwoerd had been the Leader of the Senate, and had dominated the upper house by the strength of his personality and the powers of his oratory. The senators, docile and compliant, men whose ranks had been enlarged to enable the governing party to force through distasteful legislation, voted for Verwoerd as a block.
Dönges survived the first ballot in which ‘Blackie’ Swart, the Free State’s candidate, was eliminated, but on the second ballot, a straight contest between Verwoerd and Dönges, the northerners closed their ranks and swept Verwoerd into the premiership by ninety-eight votes to seventy-five.
That evening when, as prime minister, Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd broadcast to the nation, he did not try to conceal the fact that his election had been the will of Almighty God. ‘He it is who has ordained that I should lead the people of South Africa in this new period of their lives.’
Blaine and Centaine had driven across from Rhodes Hill. It was a family tradition to gather in this room to listen to important broadcasts. Here they had heard speeches and announcements that had shifted the world they knew on its axis: declarations of war and peace, the news of the evil mushroom clouds planted in the skies above Japanese cities, the death of kings and beloved rulers, the accession of a queen, to all these and others they had listened together in the blue drawing-room of Weltevreden.
Now they sat quietly as the high-pitched, nervously strained but articulate voice of the new Prime Minister came to them, jarring when h
e repeated platitudes and well-worn themes.
‘No one need doubt for a single moment that it will always be my aim to uphold the democratic institutions of our country, for they are the most treasured possessions of Western civilization,’ Verwoerd told them, ‘and the right of people with other convictions to express their views will be maintained.’
‘Just as long as those views are passed by the government board of censors, the synod of the Dutch Reformed Church and the caucus of the National Party,’ Blaine murmured, a sarcastic qualification for him, and Centaine nudged him.
‘Do be quiet, Blaine, I want to listen.’
Verwoerd had moved on to another familiar subject, how the country’s enemies had deliberately misconstrued his racial policies. It was not he who had coined the word apartheid, but other dedicated and brilliant minds had foreseen the necessity of allowing all the races of a complicated and fragmented society to develop towards their own separate potential. ‘As the Minister of Bantu Affairs, since 1950 it has been my duty to give cohesion and substance to this policy, the only policy which will allow full opportunity for each and every group within its own racial community. In the years ahead, we will not deviate one inch from this course.’
Tara had been tapping her foot restlessly as she listened, but now she sprang to her feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted. ‘I’m feeling a little queasy. I must get a breath of fresh air on the terrace—’ and she hurried from the room. Centaine glanced sharply at Shasa, but he smiled and shrugged, was about to make a light comment, when the voice on the radio riveted them all once more.
‘I come now to one of the most, if not the most sacred ideal of our people,’ the high-pitched voice filled the room, ‘and that is the formation of the Republic. I know how many of the English-speaking South Africans listening to me tonight are filled with a sense of loyalty to the British Crown. I know also that this divided loyalty has prevented them from always dealing with the real issues on their merits. The ideal of monarchy has too often been a divisive factor in our midst, separating Afrikaners and English-speakers when they should have been united. In a decolonizing world, the black man and his newly fledged nations are beginning to emerge as a threat to the South Africa we know and love. Afrikaner and Englishman can no longer afford to stand apart, but must now link arms as allies, secure and strong in the ideal of a new white republic.’