The Covenant

by James A. Michener

  With Detleef in position, the commission was ready to tackle the vast problems of whipping the various elements of society into shape, and it fell to Van Doorn to draft the preliminary directives, then construct the proposed laws that would convert them into a permanent discipline. He worked endlessly for this goal, at first a faceless bureaucrat, but as his accomplishments became known, a nationally acclaimed hero in the movement to protect the race.

  Like puritans in all countries, he started with sex. He saw that in a decent society white men should marry only white women, Coloureds marry Coloureds, and so on down to the Bantu, who would marry among themselves. Whenever he thought of these matters, or discussed them with his wife, who heartily approved of what he was trying to do, he started at what he visualized as the top with Afrikaners, working his way down to the Bantu, who represented the vast majority at the bottom. Afrikaners were entitled to top position becasue they respected God and were faithful to the directives of John Calvin; Coloureds stood higher than Indians for two reasons: they had some white blood and they usually believed in Jesus Christ, and even those who didn’t, accepted Muhammad, who was higher than the Hindu gods; and Bantu were at the bottom because they were black and heathen. Of course, a large proportion of them were Christian, hundreds of thousands being enrolled in their own Dutch Reformed churches, but this was a complication which he ignored.

  His first proposal was simple: no white person, regardless of his or her situation, could marry a non-white. If he attempted to do so, he would be thrown in jail, and if he actually entered into such a marriage, it would be invalid.

  This presented little difficulty in the Afrikaner provinces of Transvaal and the Orange Free State, but in Cape Town, where more than half the population was Coloured, it created havoc, and there was great outcry. But that very year in Durban, blacks and Indians engaged in wild communal rioting in which nearly one hundred and fifty people were slain, and Detleef could tell his people, ‘See, races should be kept apart.’ To those in his confidence he often spoke of his vision: the glass with the perfect separation of jellies.

  In 1950 he carried this marriage ordinance to its next logical improvement: he pulled out an old immorality act of 1927, which had struggled ineffectively to deal with the matter, and gave it new teeth, so that sexual relations between persons of unequal color were criminalized; any man embracing a woman of different color would be jailed. His wife and sister approved of this law and said it would perform miracles in purifying life in the Union.

  The use of this word Union irritated Detleef, and he wondered how soon the Afrikaner majority would officially break ties with England. When he asked his superiors about the timetable for freedom, they told him gruffly, ‘One thing at a time. Get along with your own tasks.’ He was diverted temporarily when at the United Nations, Madame Pandit of India launched abitter attack on South Africa’s racial policies, particularly the treatment of Indians. He was enraged that a woman should presume to speak so, and that a Hindu should so make a fool of herself by criticizing a Christian country. At his suggestion, he was given time off to draft a reply to Madame Pandit, but it was so discourteous to an ambassador of another Commonwealth nation that it was not dispatched, but for many weeks he continued to mutter to his Afrikaner friends, ‘Imagine. A woman and a Hindu daring to say those things. She should be muzzled.’

  When his superiors ordered him to forget India and get back to work, he produced for them four smashing proposed bills, all of which became law. As one newspaper said of this herculean output: ‘Rarely in the history of the world has one nation opened its floodgates to such a torrent of legislation.’ When he and Maria surveyed what they had accomplished, they could take pride in the fact that they had achieved through quiet application of their talents what their fathers had failed to attain through battle. ‘Think of what we’ve made happen in such a short time!’ Detleef said after a six-month stint in Cape Town, and like a professor he ticked off the changes.

  One, he had begun to codify customs and rules forbidding contact between whites and non-whites in any public amenity. Toilets, restaurants, trolley cars, taxis, elevators, post-office windows where stamps were sold, station platforms and even park benches had to be clearly designated with large signs as to who could patronize them, and across the nation WHITES ONLY proliferated. Maria was particularly gratified by the post-office restriction: ‘I would hate to stand in line behind some big Bantu, waiting for my stamps.’

  Two, he had helped his cohorts in Parliament pass a Group Areas Act that would enable the government to divide the entire nation, and especially every city, into segments allocated to specific groups. Thus, the central urban areas would be cleared of any Indians or Bantu so that whites alone could live there. Huge areas now occupied by Coloureds in Cape Town would be reserved for whites only; the Coloureds would be removed to new housing tracts on the windy Cape Flats. The Bantu would be confined to vast locations outside the limits of white cities and towns, and would be allowed to stay even there only so long as they provided meaningful labor for white interests. ‘With these reasonable actions,’ said Van Doorn, ‘the racial cleanliness which is the mark of any good society will be both defined and enforced.’

  Three, he aided in drafting harsh, good laws for the suppression of Communism, making them so sweeping that almost any activity the Afrikaner majority did not approve could be punished by extremely long prison terms, often without due process of law. ‘This is needed,’ he assured any who questioned him, and when certain liberals, often Englishmen, pointed out that for every Communist thrown into jail without trial, sixteen non-Communists who wanted better schools or labor unions would be so penalized, he answered with a remark he had only recently heard: ‘You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.’

  Four—his major achievement—he conceived the law which came closest to his heart, and in the formative stages, long before it had passed, Maria and Johanna had applauded the far-sightedness of his planning. ‘What we propose,’ he explained to the parliamentary members who would push the bill through, ‘is that every human being residing in this country shall be listed in our records—available always to police and government—as to his or her specific racial identity.’

  ‘What I mean,’ an English member fumbled, ‘if this classification is to follow a man all his life, oughtn’t we to be fairly careful—’

  Detleef did not let him finish: ‘Sir, the utmost care will be taken. White people of the finest reputation will do the classifying, and of course we can expect a few mistakes. You know that and I know it. But when they’re pointed out, and any man can challenge his classification, a committee of three responsible white persons will meet with that complainant, look at his skin color, study his background, even take testimony from his close friends and neighbors, and reclassify him upward, if the facts warrant.’

  ‘And if the facts are unclear?’

  ‘Then it will be better if the classification stands.’

  ‘And what if a man you classify as white wants to be classified as Coloured?’

  ‘Downward?’ Detleef asked. The question was so preposterous that he could think of no answer, but what he did reply was interesting: ‘I can see the day when a man classified tenuously as Coloured will have lived such an exemplary life and so clearly have acquired civilized habits that his community will assent to allowing him to change his classification upward to white. Everyone can aspire to upward movement, especially if his skin is on the light side.’

  Because Detleef exulted over these new laws, it must not be assumed that he had much to do with their actual passage through Parliament. He never forgot that he was only a bureaucrat working out of a small Cape Town office, and many members of Parliament, especially those of the opposition parties, almost forgot that he existed, for he never appeared on the floor. But through persistent pressure and the fact that he kept his job while the members often lost theirs, he gradually acquired a leverage quite out of proportion to his position.
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br />   Even so, when the bells of Venloo marked the beginning of a new year, he knew that despite his victories, he had failed to deal with the worrisome nettle that would torment his nation into the next century, and on New Year’s Day 1951 he posed the dilemma to Maria and Johanna: ‘What are we going to do about the Coloureds?’

  The question was most perplexing. The Bantu were clearly black, with historic areas to which presumably they belonged: the Transkei of the Xhosa, Zululand, the lands of the Tswana and the Sotho. It wasn’t really as neat and tidy as that, for there were millions of Bantu living loosely throughout the nation, but it was a definable problem that could be solved.

  Since the Indians kept to their crowded ghettos, mainly in Natal, they, too, could be handled logically. ‘Give them a shop, restrict them, and don’t allow them too many liberties’ was Detleef’s prescription.

  But the Coloureds—what to do about them? They were not of any one clear race—white-black-Malay-Indian-Hottentot—nor of any one religion, for many were Muslim. They had no specific terrain, for they lived everywhere. And they were certainly not primitives, for most of them had the intellectual and technical capacities of whites. But they were in a sense unidentified, unspecified, and as such they could be ignored.

  They were needed. In every industry, jobs went unfilled because Coloureds were not allowed to take them. In every aspect of growth there was inhibition because Coloureds were forbidden to associate equally with whites. Constantly they were restricted to lower levels of achievement when obviously they had the capacity to do much better. In these years a marvelous opportunity was lost.

  All nations make mistakes, terrible miscalculations which once adopted can rarely be amended. In England it was social categories that inhibited normal development in many areas, creating animosities that festered. In India it was rigid stratification of caste, descending even to untouchability. In Japan it was the persecution of the Eta and the denigrating of the Okinawan. And in America it was the blundering incapacity to deal with blacks. In South Africa the fearful miscalculation occurred in the 1920–1960 quadridecade when the white ruling classes could have reached out and embraced the Coloureds, welcoming them into a respected partnership.

  Only by following the logic of Detleef and his two women on New Year’s Day 1951 can one approximate an answer to this enigma of a nation’s casting aside a major treasure. Detleef opened the conversation: ‘It occurs to me that we are far from solving the big problem.’

  ‘The Bantu?’ Johanna asked. She was seventy-one now, no longer employed in Johannesburg, but nevertheless a major factor in Afrikaner women’s circles. ‘We know very well what to do with the Bantu. Treat them justly but keep them in their place.’

  ‘I mean the Coloureds.’

  ‘That is a problem,’ Maria agreed, and she set the tone for the discussion: ‘They are the children of sin, and God must despise them.’

  ‘They are mongrels,’ Johanna said, ‘and I wish we could cleanse the nation of them as we did the Chinese. Remember that day, Detleef, when you saw the last Chinese go down the cog railway to Waterval-Onder. That was a wonderful day in our history.’ Longingly she thought of this, then said briskly, ‘In Cape Town the other day I walked about District Six. That could be made into one of the finest sections of Cape Town, but it’s crowded with Coloureds. They must all be moved out.’

  ‘To where, Johanna? Where?’

  That line of discussion ended, but the three puritans were not finished with Maria’s opening statement. ‘They really are children of sin,’ Detleef agreed. ‘They’re a rebuke to God-fearing Christians, a reminder of our fathers’ transgressions.’

  ‘Not our fathers,’ Maria protested. ‘It was sailors from the ships that stopped here.’

  Detleef and his sister nodded. The existence of the Coloureds was an affront to them, and it was a blessing, the gathering felt, that the original Dutch and Huguenot settlers had not been involved. ‘It was the sailors,’ Detleef repeated, and as he thought of this blot on the nation he resolved to do something about it. Accordingly, when he returned to Cape Town and the session of Parliament, he labored far into the night, week after week, trying to devise some cauterization of this ugly moral wound.

  When the year was well spent he discovered one area in which he could introduce reform, but it was so controversial that it would occupy major attention for five years. In 1910, when England had engineered Union between its colonies, two clauses in the enabling legislation were entrenched—that is, they were judged so vital that they could be altered only by a vote of two-thirds of the two Houses of Parliament sitting together. Section 137 protected English and Dutch (later Afrikaans) as languages of equal legal merit; Section 35 assured the Coloureds that they would always have the right to vote in Cape Province.

  Although no Coloured men could stand for Parliament—that would be repugnant—they did vote on a common roll with the whites, casting their ballots for the white candidate who would best represent their interests. In 1948 more than fifty thousand had voted, almost all for Jan Smuts’ party, and in seven crucial constituencies their vote defeated the Nationalists. They were a growing power, and the vote must be taken from them.

  ‘They pollute the political process,’ Detleef warned again and again. ‘This is a white man’s country, and to allow those damned Coloureds to vote dilutes our purity.’ He located parliamentarians to bring onto the floor the bills he masterminded, but trouble ensued. ‘It’s that miserable Section 35,’ he growled to his women. ‘I’m afraid we can’t muster a two-thirds vote.’ He was right. When his men carried to the floor their bill stripping Coloureds of their voting rights, it failed to win the majority required, and it seemed as if the attempt was dead, at least for the 1951 session.

  But Detleef was resourceful, and spurred by a suggestion thrown out by his sister, he convinced his supporters in Parliament to try a daring gambit: ‘Because of changes in the laws governing the British Empire, Section 35 is no longer operative. We can pass our bill with only a simple majority.’

  With excitement and joy his men did just that, and the Coloureds were disenfranchised. But the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, sitting in Bloemfontein away from the pressures of the Cape, declared the new law unconstitutional, and 1951 ended with Coloureds still allowed to vote, a most offensive situation.

  Detleef would not surrender, and his next move was downright ingenious. He did not dislike Coloureds personally; he knew some of excellent reputation and wished them well. But he was galled that these offspring of sin should have equal rights with white people, and now he came up with a master plan: ‘Maria, I think I have it! We will supersede the Appellate Court!’

  ‘I shouldn’t think that would be possible. It’s in the constitution.’

  ‘We’ll leave it there. What we’ll do is establish Parliament itself as the “High Court of the Nation.” If the two Houses, sitting together, approve a law which they themselves have passed—and it seems to me they always would, having just passed it—then it becomes law and the Appellate Court can say nothing in the matter.’

  It was clean and simple. It passed Parliament quickly and the High Court, composed entirely of Nationalist members, reversed the decision of the nation’s highest court of justice. With blazing speed the Coloureds were thrown off the common rolls, and with almost equal speed the Appellate Court annulled the whole process, pronouncing it a mockery. So 1952 ended in another defeat.

  Elections in 1953 gave the government more Afrikaner seats in Parliament, so once more Detleef shepherded his bill toward a two-thirds majority, and once more he failed. At this point the average man would have quit, but Detleef was so offended by those who resisted his attempts to simplify matters that he barged ahead with still new devices. As he told Johanna and Maria after this third disappointment: ‘The damned Coloureds don’t seem to realize that we’re doing this for their own good. It’s our job as white men to study the nation and determine what’s best for all, and then to pas
s the necessary laws.’

  ‘They don’t really need the vote,’ Maria agreed. ‘They can’t possibly be interested in the things that concern us. They should fall back into place and be quiet.’

  Johanna, feeling her life slipping away, was more bitter: ‘Detleef, you must eliminate them from national life. Clear them out of the cities. Keep them off the work force. They’re an affront to the nation, and if you don’t keep trying to get rid of them, I’ll be ashamed of you.’

  ‘You speak as if you wanted us to ship them out, the way we did the Chinese.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘But don’t you see, Johanna, there’s no place to ship them. They have no homeland. They’re the bastards of the world, and we’re stuck with them.’

  ‘Well, think of something!’

  ‘I will. I promise you I will, but I must have time to plan.’

  National attention was diverted from the Coloured question by ‘Virtue Triumphant,’ a rather florid statue that was placed in front of the government buildings in Pretoria. It had been carved by a promising young Afrikaner much influenced by Michelangelo and sculptors of the Quattrocento; it showed a woman of rather heroic proportions fending off lions, pythons and a politician who looked remarkably like Hoggenheimer. As with the work of many great sculptors, the woman was nude.

  Many Afrikaner housewives, especially those from the Transvaal country districts, questioned the propriety of such a statue, and Johanna van Doorn, now seventy-four, came rushing down to the Cape, where Parliament was in session, to share her outrage with Detleef: ‘It’s immoral! There’s no place in the Bible that condones naked women. St. Paul is emphatic that they must remain covered.’