Rumours of Rain

by Andre Brink

  After more reflection, I found I could argue more objectively: perhaps this terrible thing could still be atoned for in a way through the emergence of a new and humble discovery of the realities of the situation on the part of the authorities, and a sincere remorse for everything that had gone amiss.

  Instead, a general state of emergency was declared, the ANC was declared illegal, over two thousand leaders were imprisoned and some ten thousand others were arrested.

  This was the position when African leaders met in Pietermaritzburg in an all-in conference and decided to make one more peaceful call on the Government to hold a convention, at least to discuss the constitution for the new Republic of South Africa, failing which there should be a three-day stay-at-home at the end of May. Again the appeal fell on deaf ears. Again instead of sympathy new oppressive legislation was passed, all gatherings were prohibited between 19 and 26 June; nation-wide police raids were conducted; this time between eight and ten thousand Africans were detained, and the army staged demonstrations in the Black areas of our cities. In these circumstances a new era of violent resistance was born.

  I want to say this about Sharpeville. It had a profoundly disturbing influence on me too, all the more so since I found myself on an extended business trip to Europe at the time. I was in London when the reports first hit the news-stands; I saw Trafalgar Square swarming with demonstrators. The situation seemed to grow worse from one edition of the papers to the next; it was as if South Africa was on the point of going up in flames.

  There were some of my British acquaintances who said: “You can thank your lucky stars to have escaped the holocaust.”

  But my reaction was to suspend all my negotiations and take the first plane back home. Even if we had to go down, I thought, I had to be with my people in our shipwreck. It was one of the few wholly irrational decisions of my life. Yet I trust that in similar circumstances I will do so again. I hope so.

  I don’t mean to deny that there were serious wrongs in the system. But a government that yields to pressure in times like those, is asking for its own downfall. In any case I can’t stand the attitude of people who, the moment things start going wrong, assume that all the blame must lie with us for the sole reason that we’re White. This is an impression which can only be enhanced by starting to make concessions without proper reflection or restraint. Even if one gave the demonstrators everything they ask for at a given moment, they won’t be satisfied, will they? It is imperative to first restore a context of law and order without which no natural progress is possible. And at that particular moment the only way of establishing law and order was by forceful action.

  It pains me to think that Bernard couldn’t see it like this. I can only assume that he’d never outgrown the romantic urge in him. But in a situation like ours there is no room for romanticism.

  At the end of an exhausting court case in Johannesburg I drove an old ANC leader to his house in Alexandria one night. On the way I propounded to him the well-worn theory that if you separate races you diminish the points at which friction between them may occur and hence ensure good relations. His answer was the essence of simplicity. If you place the races of one country in two camps, he said, and cut off contact between them, those in each camp begin to forget that those in the other are ordinary human beings; that each lives and laughs in the same way, that each experiences joy and sorrow, pride or humiliation, for the same reasons. Thereby each becomes suspicious of the other and each eventually fears the other, which is the basis of all racism.

  He also asked: “How would Afrikaners react if ever my people were to say to them: ‘From now on you may own land only in the Orange Free State, excluding the gold and coal mines in the area; if you go elsewhere in South Africa, where the majority of your people live and work, you must have a pass and stay out of our schools and universities and restaurants and theatres; you will be allowed to work in our industrial areas, provided you leave your families behind, you live in locations or in compounds, and you be excluded from performing skilled work, accepting that you are there on our sufferance only and that you can be sent back to your area whenever it suits us—’?”

  5

  SOON AFTER BLOEMFONTEIN the sun went down; almost immediately it was dark, unrelieved by dusk.

  “You hungry?” I asked Louis.

  “Not really.”

  “Perhaps we can stop at a café in Aliwal North.”

  He nodded.

  “I suppose you often went without food in Angola?”

  “Sometimes.”

  I felt like taking him by the shoulders and shaking him to force some conversation from him. But it was no use. I had to find a way of gaining his confidence first. Would it help if I were to put my arm round him? (The last time such an idea had occurred to me was the rainy night with Bernard.) But with Louis it might have just the opposite reaction. I probably hadn’t touched him, not even by accident, in years. For some reason I don’t like physical contact with people. Women are an exception, of course. But only up to a point, really. When we’re in bed it’s all right; there I have no inhibitions at all. But once it’s over I can’t stand kissing and cuddling, or holding hands, or touching in any other way.

  “At least we’re past halfway now,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  Clenching my teeth, I looked at the clock on the dashboard. Three minutes to six. I switched on the radio. There was a silly piece of music. After a while it came to an end. The time signal. The dashboard clock was right, to the second, I noticed with satisfaction. The news, read by some young male voice thoroughly conscious of its own air of authority. New skirmishes in Beirut. The pound was down again. In the Pretoria Supreme Court Bernard Johannes Franken had been found guilty on twenty-three charges under the Terrorism Act and the Suppression of Communism Act, and had been sentenced to life imprisonment. In his verdict Mr Justice Rossouw had pointed out that although the death penalty might have been appropriate in view of the gravity of the evidence—

  Why had I switched it on in the first place? Perhaps just to make sure. One’s sense of reality might have gone wrong or something. Now there really was no doubt. I switched off the radio and selected a cassette. Mozart. Ingrid Haebler.

  Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika the moment after the sentence had been pronounced. That one moment, that one strange moment of utter astonishment in court as if a spell had been cast – only Bernard stood smiling, curiously serene, as if he was the only one not involved in it all, or the only one who really grasped it all – before the orderlies and the police began to react and cleaned up the public galleries. Even then they continued to sing outside, in the large pillared entrance hall and on the wide stairs leading to the street, and on Church Square where they stood gathered in a solid mass round the statue of Paul Kruger; singing Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika.

  As for those who gave evidence against me, including some whom I once knew as clients or as friends, I have no wish to blame or reproach them in any way. I do not know under what circumstances they were persuaded to turn against me. There are facts of which the State knows, in connection with methods of interrogation used by the Security Police on detainees, methods through which the human personality can be twisted and distorted; these facts bring shame to our country, and in the light of what is known about them this Court will be competent to reach its own conclusions on the reliability of the evidence thus obtained. I must specifically remind the Court of the suicide of one person who had been approached to give evidence against me, a man of whom no one who had ever known him would have believed that he would try to take his own life; and of two other serious attempted suicides among those witnesses who were finally called by the State. In circumstances like these I suggest that the administration of the law changes its character. It ceases to have integrity. It becomes an inquisition instead. It leads to the total extinction of dignity and freedom.

  My Lord, even if you should decide to impose the death penalty on me, I shall not offer any plea in mitigation. Wha
t I have done I did in the full awareness of my responsibilities, for the sake of a freedom greater than that of one individual. I put myself into your hands. I have no fear either of the future or of death. And now nothing can impair my ultimate freedom.

  There was certainly no lack, in his trial, of the sort of “drama” journalists flourish on. In order to put it into perspective I have to summarise part of Bernard’s biography: the “public” part, that is, of which I had as superficial a knowledge as anyone else.

  When Bernard had told me, that far-off night, that he was going to put on his knuckle-dusters, he obviously meant it. In his first political case – which must have been in 1965 or 1966 – he appeared for some fourteen defendants accused of conspiracy against the State, planned sabotage and anti-White propaganda. It became one of those judicial marathons which eventually lasted for more than a year. (When it started, Bernard stayed with us; but in spite of all our protestations he insisted that he couldn’t “impose” on us, and found himself a furnished apartment, the owner of which, a lecturer at Wits, had gone abroad for his sabbatical.) In the end all the accused were found not guilty. In judicial circles it was interpreted as a triumph for Bernard. (Beyond those circles his life was made more unpleasant: ever since the day of the verdict he would regularly find his car tyres slashed or his windscreen shattered; his house in Tamboer’s Kloof was burgled more than once; his front door was painted with hammer-and-sickle motifs; one night an incendiary bomb was hurled through his bedroom window, fortunately without causing much damage. Needless to say, nobody was ever arrested in connection with any of these events.)

  Even so his success was short-lived, since within a fortnight all the accused were rounded up again, this time under the Ninety Days Act (only two of them, probably warned in the nick of time, managed to escape to Britain); and after innumerable delays they all reappeared in court on a variety of new charges.

  Increasingly severe legislation made it more and more difficult for accused in political cases to be acquitted, yet Bernard, indefatigable and undaunted, continued to accept their briefs, often, I suspected, for the most trifling of fees. Most sensational of all was the so-called “Terrorism Trial” early in 1973, in which all seven of his clients, including the Dr Mewa Patel to whom reference has already been made, were given life sentences. The fact that they escaped the gallows, must be ascribed in equal measure to Bernard’s by then almost legendary brilliance in court and (even though he wouldn’t agree with me) to the remarkable moderation of the South African judiciary.

  At the time the full irony of that trial wasn’t grasped by anyone apart from Bernard himself. I’m referring to the circumstance that, in point of fact, Bernard was not only their counsel in the case but their accomplice. More than that, he was their leader. This didn’t become fully clear until the day he himself appeared in the dock, although there had been rumours to that effect ever since the shocking news had been broadcast in December 1974, namely that Bernard and three other Capetonians had been detained in terms of Section 6 of the Terrorism Act.

  To act as counsel to people involved in an underground struggle against the Government was one thing; to indulge in criminal action oneself was something totally different. (Perhaps I should have expected it? In the course of that first conspiracy case he’d defended and won he’d once told me: “Do you know what I find most upsetting about the whole case, Martin? The fact that although all fourteen of the accused, Black, Brown and White alike, are South African there isn’t a single Afrikaner among them – whereas it was the Afrikaners who set the first example of fighting for freedom and justice in this country. Sometimes I feel I can only regain my self-respect if one day, among the Smiths and the Weinsteins and the Moosas and the Tsabalalas, there also appears a Jan Venter in the dock.” In the end, as it turned out, it wasn’t Jan Venter but Bernard Franken.)

  As if that first shock about his detention hadn’t been enough, it was followed, less than a month later, in January 1975, by the news that Bernard had escaped, together with one of his co-detainees, a Coloured named Ontong. Until that moment I’d continued to believe that his detention had been no more than a ghastly administrative error. But I knew he wouldn’t have escaped without good reason.

  The two others who’d originally been picked up with Bernard and Ontong were held in detention in spite of predictable protests by NUSAS, the Christian Institute and academics with too much time to spare. And as it invariably happens, the reason for their continued detention became obvious in the end: they were to give evidence against Bernard. In comparison with him they were only very small fry.

  It took no less than thirteen months before Bernard was arrested again in February this year. In the interim, it was revealed later, he’d even spent a few months abroad. That really shook me. If a man wants to get out of the country, let him. It’s bad enough. But then to return knowing he’s bound to be arrested, is quite beyond me. It just makes no sense at all. It’s madness.

  Three others were arrested with Bernard, including the Coloured Ontong who’d escaped with him. At last everything seemed to be in order and the trial was scheduled to open in the middle of May. But that was where the “drama” and the sub-plots started, as if the main intrigue wasn’t enough.

  Two days before the opening it was announced that Ontong (from the very nature of things a key witness, especially as far as the period of their escape was concerned) had attempted to commit suicide in his cell. And before the Court had been in session for a week a second witness tried to cut his wrists. Still, the trial went on. Some of Bernard’s earlier “clients” were brought from prison to give evidence for the State; and what they had to say about his leading part in the conspiracy of ’73 belonged to the most sensational material produced by the whole case. Even so, one of them nearly wrecked it all by beginning to falter in the course of his evidence, until he lost all control and started sobbing. The Court had to adjourn to the following day, when the man appeared more restrained. But when the judge began to question him on his personal feelings towards Bernard, he suddenly broke down completely. An unwholesome spectacle, as far as I could make out from the newspapers.

  “I shit on this Court!” he shouted, or words to that effect. Continuing in the following vein: “I shit on the lot of you! I shit on the whole sordid system which forces one to turn against one’s friends.” Then, apparently, he turned to Bernard and cried out: “I respected that man, I worked with him, I loved him, I still honour him in my heart. But I can’t take it any more. They promised me a remittance of my sentence if I testified against him. I didn’t want to, but if I don’t do it I’ll go mad. It’s two years now that I’ve been in solitary confinement. They know how to break one down, all right. They piss on your food and then force you to eat it. They force you to listen to the condemned men singing in the death-cell before they go up to the gallows …” And much more emotional nonsense to the same effect.

  And then, of course, there was Dr Mewa Patel, also called by the State against Bernard. Something truly sensational had been promised by the newspapers. But unexpectedly it misfired. The morning before Patel was to have been called, he jumped from the tenth storey of the Security Police headquarters in Pretoria. In itself it was unpleasant enough, but then all sorts of complications arose out of the post mortem. A journalist who’d seen the body immediately after the examination (but how was it possible?), alleged that he’d noticed all sorts of other wounds on Patel – burns and cuts – not consistent with a fall. The next thing, the district surgeon’s report on the inquest disappeared miraculously from his files. Et cetera.

  With all this fuss the trial soon became something of an international cause célèbre, and in its own way a unique case in our legal history. One can only hope that the press, especially abroad, will realise sooner or later how out of the ordinary it all was, so that it will not continue to be used as a standard for judging our entire system. For Bernard himself, the lawyer par excellence, it was no good advertisement. He deserved
something more dignified.

  In short, my Lord, there came a day when I could no longer tolerate that history in our country be kept in a straitjacket. It meant that I had to turn against my own people: those very Afrikaners who in the past had fought for their own freedom and who had now assumed for themselves the historical vocation to decide utterly the lives of others.

  In order to survive in South Africa, I realise today, more than ever before, it is necessary to shut one’s eyes and one’s conscience: one has to learn not to feel or to think, else it will become unbearable. In other words, the paradox obtains that one should really learn not to live, in order to go on living. And how can that be worth anybody’s while?

  Still it can never be easy for the normal citizen of a State to break the law. He has an instinctive tendency to obey the rules of his society. If, in addition, he has been trained as a lawyer, as I have, his instincts are reinforced by his training. Only profound and compelling reasons can lead him to choose such a course.

  I have never regarded it as sufficient motivation merely to experience a vague “dissatisfaction” with one’s situation. One must be able to formulate very specifically both one’s objections and one’s remedies. That is what I propose to do now.

  Cool and sparkling the Mozart effortlessly ran its intricate course. The E-flat major sonata. In a life as busy as mine I find that music is really the only pure form of escape. Often, when I arrive home late at night, too tired to think and even too tired for sleeping, the most effective cure is to withdraw into my study and listen to Mozart. Invariably, when Bernard was visiting up North, he and I would spend at least one night listening to music. It was like a conversation without words. By abandoning ourselves to the music, we seemed to enter into an intensely private and profound communication extending far beyond language. It might have been a subjective and illusory experience like so many others; but then at least it worked the same for both of us, judging by our reactions of complete relaxation and renewed mutual confidence afterwards. In that world of ordered sound everything else would become unreal: the house around us, the dark garden and the swimming pool and shrubs and lawns surrounded by walls, the distant city, the land, all the concentric circles of the outside world. In the music ancient systems and certainties were reaffirmed as slowly the thousand natural shocks ebbed away from us. Something comparable to the splendid seclusion I’m experiencing in London at the moment.