The Colour of Gold

by Oliver T Spedding

  Bogdan was very careful when accepting these “gifts”, making sure that there was never any written reference or receipt that might incriminate him or his suppliers. He also made it quite clear that it made no difference to him whether or not a supplier contributed to his well-being in any small way but such contributions were most welcome and would not be forgotten. From past experiences Bogdan also knew that it was fatal to be greedy and that a lot of small “contributions” were far better and safer than a few large ones. The generous salary that the mine paid him covered all his living expenses and allowed him to save a nice sum each month. As far as he was concerned the little gifts that he received were harmless and simply part of the system.

  Because many of the items used on the Deep Reef Gold Mine premises were very valuable a large security force developed over the years and by the time Bogdan arrived at the mine security had become a major ingredient of the company’s make-up. Nothing that had any value was safe and many ingenious systems to relieve the mine of its possessions were constantly being discovered.

  Bogdan heard about one enterprising thief who purchased a large pile of old used bricks from the mine and arranged to take some of them out each evening using a wheelbarrow. The afternoon shift security personnel inspected the contents of the wheelbarrow each evening and assumed that the man brought the wheelbarrow back to the mine the following morning. It was only several weeks after the pile of old bricks had finally been removed that a mine stock-take found that twenty five wheelbarrows were missing. The man taking out the bricks each evening knew that the morning security shift personnel were unaware that he was taking home a wheelbarrow of bricks each evening and therefore didn’t know that he should have returned the wheelbarrow each morning. He wasn’t doing this though. Each evening the resourceful thief took out his bricks in a new wheelbarrow and sold it to eager buyers as soon as he had offloaded the bricks at his house.

  One of the biggest and most dangerous theft problems facing the mining industry as a whole was the theft of explosives. Large quantities of commercial explosives were used by the mines every day and this had attracted the attention of illegal gold miners, criminals and the African National Congress military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, that realised that the gold mines could be an abundant source of explosives for subversive activities rather than the dangerous and unreliable overseas supplies that had to be smuggled across hundreds of miles of hostile countryside before they could be utilised.

  CHAPTER 5

  Mister Finklestein, the attorney handling Bala’s uncle’s estate, unlocked the door of the shop. Bala stared at the shop front in wonder while Fatima stood next to him holding onto his arm with trepidation and holding Salona's hand with the other. The shop was in the business area of Pageview along Fourteenth Street, only a short distance from the house and faced onto a busy road running through the suburb. The shop had a central wooden door painted a bright blue with a window of four small clear glass panes in the upper half and two narrow display windows on each side. Above the door was a sign, also in blue which stated: DINAT TAYLORS. On the one side of the shop was a shop selling men’s shoes and on the other, a small shop selling herbal and traditional medicines.

  The door swung inwards and the lawyer reached in and switched on the interior light. He turned to his clients.

  "Please go in." he said. "As the shop is to be yours from now on please be the first people to enter."

  Bala and Fatima stepped forward hesitantly and entered the dimly-lit shop. The familiar clean smell of new fabric filled the air. The shop was divided into two halves by a glass-topped wooden counter on the left as one entered, and on the right, a rack of new clothing consisting mainly of men's shirts and jackets. A large antique silver cash register with ornate decorations inscribed on its front and large keys like an old typewriter stood at the far end of the counter. Underneath the glass counter top was a selection of different coloured zips and cards of buttons. The back half of the shop contained a number of rolls of fabric, a wooden cutting table with a large pair of black scissors and several tape measures on it and two black motor-driven industrial sewing machines and chairs. A large wall calendar with a photograph of the Taj Mahal at sunset hung on the back wall. Two fluorescent strip lights were fastened to the white ceiling. There was also a rack filled with clothing either waiting to be repaired or already repaired.

  "The cash that was in the till at the time of your uncle's death has been deposited into his savings account and the name of the account has been changed to your name." Mister Finklestein explained to Bala. "The utility account with the municipality has also been changed into your name and the arrears paid. As the shop was rented by your uncle the lease has also been changed to your name and your landlord will be coming to visit you tomorrow. The clothing that was in the shop when your uncle passed away and was urgently needed was sent to another tailor so what's left here needs to be repaired as soon as possible. I have informed your customers that they can begin collecting their clothing as from next week. Do you think that you can manage that?"

  "I'm sure that I can." Bala replied, nodding eagerly.

  "Before I leave you I must reiterate what I told you earlier in my office." Mister Finklestein said. "The suburb of Pageview has been declared a "white" area by the government and your shop and your house are amongst the few still standing here. The government has moved all the other businesses to the new Oriental Plaza in Fordsburg. Although it's not far from here the centre is still very new, the rents are very high and not many people come to shop there. Hopefully that will change soon."

  Bala nodded.

  "It's very worrying." he said. "At this stage though, we must focus on keeping my uncle's customers happy."

  "In that case I'll leave you and Misses Desai to get yourselves settled." Mister Finklestein said. "If there's anything that I can help with please let me know."

  "Thank you. I will." Bala said as he walked to the door of the shop with the attorney. The lawyer left and Bala closed the door. He turned to face his family.

  "Well, my two beloveds." he said. "This is much more that I ever expected. It's obvious that uncle Rajesh had a very nice little business. We must make sure that we maintain the standards that he had and if possible, even improve on them."

  Fatima nodded her head slowly.

  "Yes." she said. "We have been given something wonderful and we must never let it get away from us. We must work hard and diligently. Salona, you can help me to dust the shop while your father goes through the garments waiting to be repaired or altered."

  While Fatima and Salona cleaned and tidied the shop Bala began to examine the garments on the rack, nodding as he read the instructions pinned to them.

  "Uncle Rajesh was a very meticulous man." Bala said. "Every garment has precise instructions so it'll be quite easy to do the repairs and alterations. I've no doubt that we can have everything ready for the customers by next week. Hopefully, in the mean time, more customers will bring in work. Fatima, my dearest, I'm getting really excited about the future! But one of the first things I'm going to do is change the name of the shop. What do you think of the name DESAI FAMILY TAILORS?"

  Fatima smiled.

  "That sounds wonderful!" she said.

  By the Monday of the following week Bala and Fatima had managed to repair or alter all the garments left by customers before the death of Rajesh Dinat and had also taken in work that would keep them busy for the whole of the next week. On the Friday afternoon the signage company installed the new sign DESAI FAMILY TAILORS above the front door.

  "We must make sure that no customer ever leaves the shop dissatisfied with our work." Bala told Fatima. "From what I've heard uncle Rajesh had a very good reputation for high quality work and we must maintain that and even improve on it if possible. Even if we have to work overtime we must never let a customer down. If we tell them that can have their garments on a particular day then we must make sure that the garments are ready on that day."

  "Ye
s." Fatima said. "We must work out a schedule that tells us exactly when articles must be ready and a progress ticket for each one."

  Fatima arranged for Salona to go to a nearby Indian kindergarten school, leaving her there on her way to the shop and collecting her at midday and taking her to the shop where they ate the midday meal that she had prepared the previous evening. The small family quickly fell into a comfortable routine. The money that they collected from their work was put into a round biscuit tin under the rolls of fabric at the back of the shop and every Saturday morning Bala would take it to the bank and deposit it into his savings account.

  Although the business quickly began to bring in a steady income Bala soon realised that it wasn't sufficient to allow him to save the money that he knew he would need in later years. One of the biggest expenses that he would soon be facing was Salona's education. He was determined that his beloved child would be afforded an education that would allow her to exploit the talents that she was already displaying. The problem was that the standard of education available to "non-white" citizens was extremely low compared to that offered to white children. "Non-white" children were also forced to learn their lessons in the hated Afrikaans language, whereas the main language in business and the academics was English. The only other option open to Bala was to send Salona to a private school and the fees asked by these institutions were far beyond Bala's means.

  One of the main reason's why Bala and Fatima struggled to meet their commitments was that they were far too generous. The prices that they charged their customers for the work that they did were far too low for the effort that they put in but they were too scared that if they increased their prices they would drive their customers away.

  Although the little house in Pageview had been fully paid for by uncle Rajesh before he died there were expenses such as municipal rates and taxes, water and lights' the rental for the shop, Salona's kindergarten fees and unexpected maintenance costs to the house which was close to eighty years old. By the time Bala had paid all these expenses and fed and clothed his family there was almost no money left to save.

  Bala and Fatima were nevertheless extremely grateful for the opportunity that they had inherited and they were determined to honour it with their best efforts. They realised that despite their hard work, they were still far better off than they had ever been and also far better off than the majority of the people that the white government discriminated against.

  ***

  After a thorough medical examination the mine recruiting officer handed Isaiah an employment agreement to sign as well as several other forms that he did not bother to explain and Isaiah didn't query. He signed them and was told that he was now officially an employee of the Deep reef Gold Mine. He was given a special "passbook" and a number that he was to use instead of his name.

  The mine supplied Isaiah with his work overalls, a hardhat with a lamp and battery pack attached and a heavy pair of safety boots. He was taken to one of the mine compounds that consisted of a huge U-shaped single storey building consisting of gloomy rooms where the black miners lived. Each room had three tiers of steel bunks fastened to the walls and a central area that was used for recreation. Isaiah was allocated one of the upper bunks and a steel locker in which he could keep his belongings.

  "The mine will provide you with three meals a day and you can buy any other things that you need from the concession store." the personnel officer said. "Tomorrow you must report to the training centre where you will learn how to be a miner. The men here in your room will explain the mine's rules and regulations to you and what your routine is."

  The following day Isaiah reported to the training centre and for the next two weeks he learnt the language of the mines called "fanagalo" which consisted of a mixture of English, Afrikaans and several African languages. He was also given instruction on the various tools that he would be using underground and the safety procedures that he needed to follow. A vague explanation of the overall mining procedure was explained to him. Once the course was completed Isaiah was assigned to a team of underground workers.

  Apart from the food that the mine provided, the living conditions in the compound were appalling. The cramped environment was a breeding ground for infectious diseases and the abuse of alcohol by the men resulted in assaults and accidents. The men were rough and uneducated and had little consideration for each other. Theft was rife and hygienic conditions sorely lacking. As the occupants of the compounds were all men there was also a strong presence of homosexuality.

  Isaiah began working underground as a "lasher boy", loading broken rock into cocopans and into skips that hoisted the ore to the crushers up on the surface of the mine. It was back-breaking work and the leader or "boss-boy" treated the lasher boys with contempt, often shouting at them and even assaulting them at times. The boss boy was responsible to the white miner and it was he who incurred the wrath of the white man if things went wrong. Conversely, if the work went well the boss boy took all the praise. Most of the boss boys were terrified of the white miners and as a result abused the men under them in order to earn the white miner's approval. They also demanded a percentage of the men's weekly wages and failure to pay this money could easily lead to "accidents' many of which were fatal.

  The blasting process at the mine began each day when a team of drillers, using huge drills powered by compressed air, drilled deep holes in the rock face in places that had been marked out earlier by a qualified white miner. These holes were then packed with explosives in the form of nitro-glycerine or based on ammonium nitrate, and connected with safety fuses and igniter cords. Once the mine had been cleared of personnel the explosives were detonated by an electric current. A re-entry time of four hours was observed to allow the fumes and dust to dissipate after which the lasher boys began clearing the broken rock.

  ***

  After toiling in the suffocating heat and dust and being constantly abused for two weeks Isaiah decided that working underground at the Deep Reef Gold Mine was not what he was prepared to do for much longer. Apart from the strength-sapping work there was also the constant danger that the miners lived with. Almost daily Isaiah heard of men being seriously injured and killed by rock falls and accidents, the result of negligence and poor safety regulations. The mining methods used on the mine were often crude and extremely dangerous and, in the short period of time that Isaiah worked on the mine he came close to being badly injured and even killed several times. He began to make surreptitious enquiries about other work possibilities in the mining industry. In the mean time he continued to send back most of his pay to his mother.

  Hiding the stolen explosives wasn't a problem. He hid them in the buffer zone between Soweto and Johannesburg. There were plenty of places where he could safely bury the goods and to make sure that his cache wasn't discovered he changed the hiding place each week.

  Isaiah was amazed at how lax the white miners were with the explosives that they were supplied with, even though they must have been aware that some of it was being stolen. He was also surprised at how inefficient the security personnel were when they searched the miners as they arrived at the surface after their shifts. In the first week he was able to bring out a phial of explosives every day and each evening before darkness fell, he casually walked to the nearby buffer zone and buried his loot in a small plastic container amongst a small clump of bushes. On the Saturday he collected the container and went to the entrance to the abandoned gold mine. Paul was waiting for him.

  "You've done well." Paul said as they transferred the stolen dynamite into a larger plastic container that Paul had brought with him. "But you must still be very careful. It's not necessary that you steal dynamite every day. Be content with less. Remember that you will go to jail for a long time if you're caught."

  Paul paid Isaiah seventy five Rand and disappeared into the mine. Isaiah put the money in his pocket and walked into the nearby white suburb. He found a branch of his favourite bank and went in. He opened a savings account and dep
osited his money in it.

  As he left the bank Isaiah began to make plans. It was obvious to him that the people that really made money from the stolen dynamite had to be the dealers who bought the stuff and re-sold it at a large profit. What he needed to do was get a team of black miners together who would be prepared to steal for him and he would then sell the dynamite to illegal miners all over the Reef.

  ***

  "My informants tell me that a certain doctor Joseph Mpilo has a large number of A.N.C. patients who visit him on a regular basis. They also tell me that many of the patients have injuries that are consistent with gunshot wounds and other forms of military violence. It's very obvious that he is an A.N.C. supporter and is helping the organisation, not only with medical assistance, but also be relaying secret messages and other information." Tiaan Botha said as he sat in one of the visitor's chairs in front of Brigadier van Tonder's desk. "He's got to be an important link of their communications network."

  The Brigadier nodded.

  "Yes. His name's cropped up on several occasions in the past but we've never been able to pin anything on him." the Brigadier said. "We've brought him in for questioning twice now and, even though my men gave him a really tough going-over, he denies that he's connected to the A.N.C. in any way."

  "My guys tell me that they've also seen several well-known A.N.C. cadres visit his rooms without any visible injuries." Tiaan said. "But that doesn't prove that the bastard sympathises with the A.N.C. and is helping them. After all, he's a doctor."

  "Quite right." the Brigadier said. "He's a very clever fellow and his standard answer is that he's a doctor and is merely doing his duty according to the Hippocratic Oath and has no political agenda. Every time we question him he tells us the same story. Perhaps we can try and trap him."