It was a few days before I discovered anything about the conversation between my father and the deputy minister. My parents were in the kitchen and my father sounded agitated, a condition that, on the rare occasions when it existed, he rarely allowed us to witness. At first, I thought he was angry with Mama, but as I got closer, I heard what he was saying. ‘I’m sure the prime minister doesn’t know what he is telling people. This business of saying that we will have to change is the kind of thing that opposition leaders are always saying. I can’t believe one of our ministers said something like that to me in my own home.’
This was much worse than taking down the sign at the lifts in the Indian Council building. It was bad enough that the deputy minister believed that we would have to change, but that he was saying it out loud was an unforgiveable transgression. ‘If he says it to me, who else is he saying it to?’ my father wanted to know. ‘For all we know he may be telling the liberals this and they could use it against us in the by-election.’ It was a relief to my father when the day after the deputy minister visited us he was called back to Pretoria to take no further part in the campaign. Signs carrying his photograph and those of other politicians announcing meetings at which he would be just one of the speakers were taken down and replaced. Apparently my father was not alone in his doubts about the man.
My father had always been a silent man, but now he seemed to draw still more deeply into himself. Whatever he had said about the revolution in Mozambique not being our affair, I think the fact that we had sent no troops had shocked him. And now a deputy minister was saying that we would have to change, talking like some liberal who cared nothing for the survival of the white man. Why had we sorted through Mozambique’s Portuguese and sent the brown ones to Brazil? Why could Mrs Muller’s brother not have a white man’s job? Why did Greenwood Park and KwaMashu, and all the other places like them exist at all? What did any of it mean, if we nevertheless had to change?
twenty
My own view of the by-election and those taking part in it had been formed by every moment of my life up to that time. Our country, our party, Mama, Oupa, Uncle Stefan, my father, my sisters and even the work that my father did: they were all one in my mind. If you loved one, you loved them all. To vote for a party other than ours that had given power to the Afrikaner would have been treachery on the level of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians.
Despite his illness, Abraham helped me put up street posters. We transported them around the neighbourhood in his little wagon, the one we had used to make deliveries to Ruthie and her mother. We had to stop and rest more often than we would have before, but we got the job done.
The girls spent hours phoning to see that our supporters of the previous election were still in the area. Mama baked cakes for a fundraising bazaar and even my father helped with the party’s organisation, although in his position, he was not supposed to.
The schools were closed on the day of the by-election. The voting took place at three polling stations, all situated in the assembly halls of local schools. My father had told me that I was to work for the department that day. My job would be to help check voters’ names against the lists as they came in and put a line through each name so that the person could not vote twice. ‘I need people that I can trust,’ my father told me. I believe he saw his duty as ensuring that our party would not be cheated.
On the day, the fence of the school was covered with posters for perhaps fifty metres on either side of the main gate. Skirting the path to the hall, the candidates had pitched tents where you collected your voting number before entering the polling station. The system meant that all parties had a good idea of the result before the vote was counted.
As the day progressed, my father looked increasingly worried. The parties were counting the votes they thought were coming in for them and our man was no longer sure of victory. Apparently the three parties were so close that it was impossible to be certain who was in the lead. Only the independent, the one whose father had been a cabinet minister, was out of the running. It seemed that his total number of votes was unlikely to get out of double figures.
By midday, people were crowding in, some of them clustering around the magistrate’s table waiting to have their identities ratified. My father had taken up a position near the door, where he had a clear view of the entire hall and could see everyone come and go. He was standing there when the Van Schalkwyk family from the part of Red Hill closest to Greenwood Park came in. Miemsie, the matriarch of the clan, was followed by Ashton, Ashton’s brother, his wife and a string of unkempt adult children. They were all at least as dark as Ruthie’s mother. I had heard my father speak about them. He had them investigated more than once, but their white classification dated back at least two generations. Their ancestors’ names could not be found on earlier documents and there was nothing he could do about them voting. If he had been able to discover just one ancestor who had been registered as anything other than white, they would have found themselves across the road in Greenwood Park as fast as a cartage company could move them. I knew he suspected that a bribe had been paid at some distant time in the past. But, if it were true, the present generation of Van Schalkwyks themselves probably knew nothing about it.
Old Miemsie, as she was known in the neighbourhood, was wearing a cheap cotton house dress. Her hefty arms swung determinedly as she came in. Her eyes were wide with uncertainty, but her jaw was set firmly. She was scared, but she was going to vote, no matter what people like my father thought. Ashton, smaller than her and only voting because he was more afraid of his wife than he was of the authorities, followed in her wake. The rest of the family came straggling behind them.
My father saw Miemsie at the same moment that she saw him. It was already becoming clear to me that he was well known in the families whose ancestors straddled the racial divide. She paused in her stride for only a moment, then moved towards the desk where I was sitting. I saw a twitch of the muscle at the hinge of my father’s jaw, but his impenetrable self-control was in place, as always. I crossed each of the Van Schalkwyks off the list and they went to vote.
After they had left, my father walked past our table and one of the clerks doing the same work that I was doing, spoke to him. ‘Mister Vorster, did you see where they got their voting numbers?’
He did not have to tell my father who he was talking about. ‘From the liberal table, I suppose,’ my father said. ‘You would think people like that would have more decency. You would think they would vote for the government that let them pass for white.’
The Van Schalkwyks were not the only family who, in my father’s opinion, should not have been allowed to vote. There were one-hundred-and-twenty such voters by the calculation of my colleague who had raised the matter.
By late afternoon it was raining. The workers of all the parties were standing in the rain under garden umbrellas, trying to usher in people in a last bid to influence their votes. The darkness came early and the entire event took on a mournful appearance. The number of voters had slowed to a trickle and the party workers seemed less enthusiastic than before, only venturing into the rain themselves when they were sure the new voter was one of theirs.
When the polls closed, my duties for the day were not yet over. My father had arranged for me also to be one of those who counted the votes.
Getting into the Indian Council building where the counting would take place in the company of some of my father’s junior staff members took a brief tussle at the front door. The old Dutch caretaker of the building felt that he had already let in enough vote counters for one by-election. ‘Mister Vorster said only the necessary people,’ he was trying to say, as we pushed past him. We found the candidates and their representatives in the main office on the fifth floor. To my father’s annoyance, our candidate was an English-speaking university professor. He sat upright in a cane chair, his face lean and hawk-like, and seemed to be exerting the same kind of control that my father possessed. I heard him speaking to the
liberal candidate, a tall, tanned man, sprawled in a chair, somewhere between relaxation and exhaustion. ‘Absolute mediocrities,’ the professor was saying. ‘They were absolute mediocrities. I can’t understand how they achieved those positions.’
The liberal was nodding through half-closed, tired eyes. ‘I’ve had dealings too—’
I saw my father looking at them with a troubled expression. To him, what our candidate was doing was as good as consorting with the enemy. You did not speak to an active liberal any more than you spoke socially to a Zulu, unless there was no other option. If you had to speak to one of them in the course of your work or as a representative of state, party or church, that was a different matter. When you did speak to them, you were impeccably polite. As he had told me more than once, ‘We should show that we have good manners, but there is no need for us to talk casually to just anyone.’
The liberal party’s main organiser was also a tall man. His dark receding hair and lean face were striking characteristics, but I noticed him because he spoke so well, seeming to choose each word with care. He possessed a beautifully controlled baritone voice that was striking in its elegance. I watched him as he walked slowly among the tables while the votes were being counted. I was sure that no liberties could be taken with him. He would spot the slightest irregularity immediately. He seemed to me a far greater force for that side than the candidate himself. Whenever he passed close to me, I was careful to give him a clear view of what I was doing.
My father had always been an excellent organiser and the counting of the votes went smoothly. After the counting of each batch, he looked at each of the party organisers in turn to see if they were satisfied with the way things were being done. Each time the liberal organiser would nod without smiling and say in the same well-modulated voice, ‘I have no objection, Mister Vorster.’
After months of campaigning and hostile comments about each other, there was none of the drama I expected from the candidates or their organisers. All parties knew that the battle was over and there was nothing they could do now but wait. For me, it was an anticlimax. The scene was just one of some twenty civil servants, seated around long tables and counting votes, first into piles of fifty and then counting the piles.
The votes of the three polling stations were counted separately. Then there were the special votes and the postal votes arranged for people who were overseas or in hospital.
As each set of votes was counted, my father, notebook in hand, moved between the tables, noting the totals. The table where the liberal vote was being counted was always last. You had to know my father well to see the slight stiffening of surprise at how well they were doing. But by the time he read the result of each batch, just a few seconds later, there was no hint of it. The party organisers all scribbled down the scores as he read them out.
After the special votes and the postal votes had been counted, the liberal candidate was leading by a few votes. But those votes were only a small part of the total and everyone knew that the party with the best organisation won the postal votes. The general voting would show an entirely different pattern.
When we led in Red Hill, I could see my father give the quickest nod of satisfaction. But when all the polling stations had been counted and he had noted all the scores, he looked sternly at the page as if it had somehow offended him. Then he turned and walked quickly to the liberal candidate. He shook the candidate’s hand firmly and said, ‘Congratulations, Mister Pitman. You are the new member of parliament for Durban North.’
At the tables, the mouths of civil servants were hanging open in disbelief. One of the women was crying, and not for joy. Without exception, all supported our party. People who had other politics did not feel comfortable working in the department. The liberal candidate, still looking more exhausted than excited, was receiving muted congratulations from the other candidates and the representatives of their parties. The liberal organiser had smiled once briefly and shaken his candidate’s hand. No voices were raised and no enthusiasm was obvious. None of the civil servants, including myself, moved from his place.
My father had one more task before he would be finished with this distasteful business in which the people of the Durban North constituency had let him down, had failed the country and shown themselves to be traitors to the cause of the white man in Africa. The public announcement had to be made. The first lift took my father, the candidates and a few others to the ground level. I bounded down the five flights of stairs to get there as they were arriving.
A wall of people, anxious for the result, was pressed against the glass doors that had been locked in the interests of order. Here there was none of the restraint that had been visible upstairs. Workers and supporters of every party were straining to get closer. I recognised Mrs Pitman, the pretty blonde wife of the liberal candidate, held against the glass by the mass of people behind her. I had the momentary impression of a butterfly pressed between the pages of a book.
My father stepped forward with the liberal candidate next to him and his main organiser, the one with the elegant baritone voice, just behind them. Something had happened to the other candidates. Perhaps they had slipped out by a side door, but they were no longer present. Pitman made a quick victory sign to his wife and the anxiety outside the glass panel broke into pandemonium. For my father, reading the result, which by law had to be done, took more than even his immense self-control. ‘And these are the people who want to run the country,’ I heard him mutter to himself, but loud enough that the liberal candidate and organiser overheard him. For just a moment the iron self-control fell away and he started back towards the lift, but was stopped by the liberal organiser who spoke to him too softly for me to hear. My father turned back to face the glass doors again. Finally the crowd, exhorted by the liberal organisers, quietened enough for him to speak. He had a clear voice and it obviously penetrated the glass without any trouble. ‘I, Bernardus Christoffel Vorster—’ he started reading the official wording in English. When he got to the scores that confirmed the liberals’ victory, the noise again drowned him and this time, when he turned away, there was no need for him to return. He disappeared into the lift, leaving the victor to his moment of triumph.
At last someone opened the glass doors and the liberal candidate was dragged outside and lifted onto the shoulders of supporters. Champagne corks were popping loudly. Someone was shouting, ‘We did it! We finally did it!’ A liberal member of parliament who had helped run their campaign was hugging one young female supporter after another. Another was drinking champagne straight from a bottle and shouting insults at members of the other parties.
The turbulent crowd moved away from the doors of the building into Marine Parade, blocking what little traffic remained at that time of night. Among the shouting people, some were articulating words. Others were just screaming, letting out the tensions of the day, or perhaps those of the months building up to the by-election. Their exultation flowed into a wild excitement that I realised in later years would soon be joined and stimulated by other more basic needs.
And then they were gone, disappearing into cars that slipped away into the night, probably all aiming for some pre-arranged rendezvous. Marine Parade’s normal midnight traffic, a scattering of thinly spread late-nighters, took over. The caretaker emerged from one of the lifts, still complaining about people having no manners, looked around at the lobby that was now littered with cigarette butts, political leaflets and champagne corks. After the briefest of surveys, he went back upstairs to fetch a broom.
It was perhaps half an hour before my father appeared. He had waited until he was sure there would be no sign of the victors. When he stepped into the street, apart from some extra litter on the pavement, the Indian Council building and Marine Parade were no different to what they were on any other night. For most of the city’s people, nothing had changed.
I doubt that anyone who has written a history or even a memoir of that period would have suggested that the Durban North by-election wa
s a turning point in the country’s history. The real issues were brewing far away in the schools of a place I had never heard of called Soweto. In that dusty township a generation of black pupils was on the brink of refusing to accept their inferior status. The revolt that was fermenting was soon to infect the entire country.
But for my father that one by-election was a step towards catastrophe. It was a day he would never be able to comprehend. A substantial group of his friends, neighbours, perhaps even fellow parishioners had done the unthinkable and voted for a party that wanted to treat as equals the blacks, who outnumbered us seven to one. And he felt guilty. I believe that the knowledge that his department had let the country down by allowing onehundred-and-twenty suspect voters to upset the result weighed heavily on him ever afterwards.
twenty-one
Nathan’s idea of a social life is to invite one of his employees round from time to time and talk about work. I have no other social life, so I am always happy to oblige. On the other hand, the absence of a social life gives me plenty of time to work on my project. I learnt long ago that too many friends can destroy ambition.
I had been with his operation about six weeks when my turn to visit Nathan at home came up. His wife, Rochelle, who apart from doing Nathan’s books has her own florist business in town, came home that evening looking tired. She had ordered food in and did her best to look interested in the conversation, but excused herself soon after we had finished eating.
‘So tell me,’ he said after she had left us, ‘how does the electoral system work?’
Before answering, I thought about the system as it now existed, the mile-long queues at some of the polling stations and the long waiting for results to come in, some areas taking days, even weeks. I also thought about the old days and the Durban North by-election, which was the closest I ever came to the workings of that system. I tried to describe some of it, but fancy that I only succeeded in replacing Nathan’s lack of knowledge with full-blown confusion.
The Classifier Page 16