Golden Fox

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Please, Baas,’ he piped, and cupped his hands in a beggar’s gesture. ‘Me hungry. Please give one cent, Baas!’

  Michael opened the door, and the child backed away uncertainly. Michael picked up his cardigan which he had thrown on the seat beside him and slipped it over the child’s head. It hung down almost to his ankles, and the sleeves drooped a foot beyond his fingertips. Michael rolled them up for him and said in fluent Xhosa: ‘Where do you live, little one?’

  The boy was obviously flabbergasted, not only by this attention but also to hear a white man speak Xhosa. Six years before, Michael had realized that it was impossible to understand a man unless you spoke his language. He had been studying and practising since then. Not one white in a thousand went to those lengths. All blacks were expected to learn either English or Afrikaans; otherwise they were virtually unemployable. Now Michael spoke both Xhosa and Zulu. These languages were closely related and between them covered the vast majority of the black population of southern Africa.

  ‘I live at Drake’s Farm, Nkosi.’

  Drake’s Farm was the sprawling black township which almost a million souls called home. From here it was out of view to the east of the highway, but the smoke from the thousands of cooking fires hazed the sky to a dirty leaden grey. The wage earners of Drake’s Farm commuted daily by train or bus to their workplaces in the homes and factories and businesses of the white areas of the Witwatersrand.

  The huge commercial and mining complex of greater Johannesburg was surrounded by these dormitory townships, Drake’s Farm and Soweto and Alexandria. Under the bizarre conditions of the Group Areas Act, the entire country was divided up into areas reserved for each of the racial groups.

  ‘When did you last eat?’ Michael asked the child gently.

  ‘I ate yesterday, in the morning, great chief.’

  Michael took a five-rand banknote from his wallet. The child’s eyes seemed to expand into a pair of luminous pools as he stared at it. He had almost certainly never possessed so much money at one time in his short life.

  Michael proffered the note. The child snatched it and turned and ran, tripping over the skirts of the dangling cardigan. He gave no thanks, and his expression was one of desperate terror lest the gift be taken back from him before he could escape.

  Michael laughed with delight at his antics and then suddenly his amusement turned to outrage. Was there another country in the modern First World, he wondered, where little children were still forced to beg upon the streets? Then mingled with his anger was a sense of utter hopelessness.

  Was there any other country that embraced both the members of the First World, like his own family with its vast estates and stunning collection of treasures, and the desperate poverty of the Third World epitomized here in the townships? The contrast was all the crueller for being so closely juxtaposed.

  ‘If only there was something I could do,’ he lamented, and drew so hard on his cigarette that a full inch of ash glowed and a spark fell unnoticed on to his tie and scorched a spot the size of a pinhead. It did not make much difference to the general appearance of his attire.

  A small blue delivery-van turned off the main highway into the carpark. It was driven by a young black man in a peaked cap. The sign-writing on the body read: ‘Phuza Muhle Butchery. 12th Avenue, Drake’s Farm.’ The name promised ‘good eating’.

  Michael flashed his lights as he had been instructed to do. The van pulled into the parking-bay directly in front of him. Michael climbed out and locked the Valiant before he crossed to the blue van. The rear doors were unlocked. Michael climbed in and slammed them behind him. The body of the van was more than half-filled with baskets containing packages of raw meat, and the skinned carcasses of a number of sheep hung from hooks in the roof.

  ‘Come this way,’ the driver called to him in Zulu, and Michael crawled down the length of the body. The hanging carcasses brushed against him, and the drippings stained the knees of his corduroy bags. The driver had prepared a niche for him between two of the meat-baskets where he would be hidden from casual inspection.

  ‘There will be no trouble,’ the driver assured him in cheerful Zulu. ‘Nobody ever stops this van.’

  He pulled away, and Michael settled down on the grubby floor. These theatrical precautions were annoying but necessary. No white was allowed into the township without a permit issued by the local police station in consultation with the township management council.

  In the ordinary course of events this permit was not difficult to obtain. However, Michael Courtney was a marked man. He had three previous convictions for contravention of the Publications Control Act for which he and his newspaper had been heavily fined.

  Under the Act, the government censors had been given almost unlimited powers of banning and suppression of any material or publication, and they were encouraged by the full caucus of the ruling National Party not to flinch from exercising those powers to uphold the Calvinistic moral views of the Dutch Reformed Church and to protect the political status quo.

  What chance, then, did Michael’s writings have against their vigilance? Michael’s application for a permit to enter Drake’s Farm township had been summarily rejected.

  The blue van entered the main gates of the township without a check, and the indolent uniformed black guards did not even glance up from their game of African Ludo, played with Coca-Cola crown tops on a carved wooden board.

  ‘You can come up front now,’ the driver called, and Michael clambered over the meat-baskets to reach the passenger-seat in the cab.

  The township always fascinated him. It was almost like visiting an alien planet.

  It was back in 1960, almost eleven years ago, that he had last visited Drake’s Farm. At that time, he had been a cub reporter for the Mail. That was the year in which he had written the ‘Rage’ series of articles that were the foundation on which his journalistic reputation was built, and incidentally the grounds for his first conviction under the Publications Control Act.

  He smiled at the memory and looked around him with interest as they drove through the old section of the township. This dated from the previous century, the Victorian era during which the fabulous golden reefs of the Witwatersrand had first been discovered close by.

  The old section was a maze of lanes and alleys and higgledy-piggledy buildings, shacks and shanties of unburnt brick and cracked plaster, of corrugated-iron roofs painted all the shades of an artist’s palette. Most of the original colours had faded and were running with the red leprosy of rust.

  The narrow streets were rutted and studded with potholes and puddles of indeterminate liquid. Scrawny chickens scurried and scratched in the litter of rubbish. A huge sow with a pink hide that looked as though it had been parboiled wallowed in one of the puddles and grunted irritably as the van passed. The stink was wondrous. The sour stench of ripening garbage mingled with that of the open drains and the earthen toilets that stood like sentry boxes behind each of the hovels.

  The government health inspector had long ago abandoned all hope of ever regulating the old section of Drake’s Farm. One day the bulldozers would arrive and the Mail would run front-page photographs of the distraught black families crouching on the pathetic piles of their worldly possessions, watching the brutal machines demolishing their homes. A white civil servant in a dark suit would make a statement on the state television network about ‘this festering health hazard making way for comfortable modern bungalows’. The anticipation of that day made Michael angry all over again.

  The blue van bumped and weaved over the rutted lanes, passing the dismal shebeens and whorehouses, and then crossed the invisible line from the old into the new section that the same civil servant would describe as comfortable modern bungalows. Thousands of identical brick boxes with grey corrugated-asbestos roofs stood in endless lines upon the treeless veld. They reminded Michael of the rows of white wooden crosses that he had seen in the military cemeteries of France.

  Yet, somehow, the black reside
nts had managed to imprint their character and individuality upon this forbidding townscape. Here and there a house had been repainted a startling colour in the monotonous grubby white lines. Pink or sky blue or vivid orange, they bore witness to the African love of bright colour. Michael noticed one that had been beautifully decorated in the traditional geometric designs of the Ndebele tribe from the north.

  The tiny front gardens were a mirror of the personal style of the occupants. One was a square of dusty bare earth; another was planted with rows of maize plants and had a milking goat tethered at the front door; yet another boasted a garden of straggly geranium plants in old five-gallon paint-tins; while still another was fenced with high barbed wire and the weed-clogged yard was patrolled by a bony but ferocious mongrel guard-dog.

  Some of the plots were separated from each other by ornamental walls of concrete breeze blocks or old truck tyres painted gaudy colours and half-buried in the brick-hard earth. Most of the cottages had extraneous additions tacked on to them, usually a lean-to of salvaged lumber and rusty corrugated iron into which a family of the owners’ relatives had overflowed. There were abandoned motor vehicles, sans engine or wheels, parked at the kerb. Hillocks of old mattresses, disintegrating cardboard boxes and other discarded rubbish which the refuse removal service had overlooked stood on the street corners.

  Across this stage moved the people of the townships. These were the people whom Michael loved more than his own race or class, the people with whom he empathized and for whom he agonized. They delighted him endlessly. They amazed him endlessly with their strength and fortitude and will to survive.

  The children were everywhere he looked, the crawlers and totterers and squawkers who rolled and roistered in the streets like litters of glossy black Labrador puppies or rode high, strapped to their mothers’ backs in the traditional style. The older children played their simple games with wire and empty beer cans which they had fashioned into toy automobiles. The little girls played with skipping-ropes in the middle of the road, or imitated the games of hopscotch and catch that they had seen the white children play. They were tardy and reluctant to give way and clear the roadway when the driver of the blue van hooted at them.

  When they saw Michael’s white face they danced beside the slow-moving van with cries of ‘Sweetie! Sweetie!’ Michael had come prepared and he tossed them the hard sugar candy with which he had stuffed his pockets.

  Though most of the adult population had made the long daily journey to their workplace in the city, the mothers and the old people and the unemployed had been left behind.

  Gangs of street-youths stared at him expressionlessly as he passed, gathered in idle groups on the littered street-corners. Though he knew that these teenagers were the jackals of the townships who preyed upon their own kind, Michael’s sympathy went out to them. He understood their despair. He knew that even before they had fairly embarked on life’s journey they were aware that it held nothing for them, no expectation or hope of better things or kinder times.

  Then there were the women at their chores, hanging the long lines of laundry to dry like prayer-flags on the breeze; or stooped over the black three-legged pots in the backyards, cooking the staple maize porridge of their diet over open fires in the traditional way, preferring that to the iron stoves in the tiny cottage kitchens. The smoke of the fires mingled with the blown dust to form the perpetual cloud that hung over the township.

  The illegal hawkers or spouzas, who had eluded the Afrikaner government’s passion for regulations and licensing, wheeled their barrows and shouted their wares in the busy streets. The housewives bartered with them for a single potato or cigarette or orange or slice of white bread, depending on their circumstances.

  Despite these dreary surroundings and all the evidence of poverty and neglect, Michael heard in every street and at every corner they turned the sound of laughter and music. The laughter was spontaneous and merry. Their shouted greetings and repartee were carefree. Wherever he looked were those lovely African smiles that filled his heart and then squeezed it to the point of pain.

  The music rang and echoed from the bleak little cottages and, in the streets, from the transistor radios that men and women carried in hand or balanced on their heads as they walked. The children played their penny whistles and banjos made from paraffin-tins and wood and pieces of wire. They danced and they sang in a spontaneous expression of the sheer joy of living, even in these most insalubrious circumstances.

  For Michael the laughter and the music depicted the indomitable spirit of the black African in the face of all hardship. For him there could not be another race on earth quite like them. Michael loved them, every one of them, no matter what age or sex or tribe or condition. He was of Africa, and these were his people.

  ‘What can I do for you, my brothers?’ he whispered. ‘What can I do to help you? I wish I knew. Everything I have attempted so far has failed. All my efforts have died like a hopeless shout upon the desert air. If only I could find the way.’

  Then abruptly he was distracted. They topped a rise in the gently undulating veld and Michael straightened in his seat.

  Eleven years ago when last he had passed this way there had been nothing but open grassland here, with a few scrawny goats grazing amongst the red wounds with which erosion and neglect had raked the earth.

  ‘Nobs Hill.’ The driver of the van chuckled at his surprise. ‘Beautiful, hey?’

  Such is the determination and fortitude of men that even in the face of the most adverse circumstances there are those few who will not only survive, but who with courage and ingenuity far beyond the average will flourish and rise high above the obstacles and pitfalls with which their path is strewn. Along the low ridge of ground, standing above the huddled shacks and cottages of Drake’s Farm, were the homes of the black élite. There were a hundred or so of these successful men set apart from all the million inhabitants of Drake’s Farm. Through business acumen and natural ability and hard work they had wrested material success from the hands of their white political masters, from those who had attempted to dictate their fate through the monumental framework of interlocking laws and regulations which was the Verwoerd-inspired policy of apartheid in action.

  Yet their victory over circumstances was hollow. No matter that they could afford to make their home in any part of this land, they were constrained by the Group Areas Act to live only in these areas which those architects of apartheid had set aside for them. The homes that these black businessmen and doctors and lawyers and successful criminals had built for themselves would have graced the elegant suburbs of Sandton or La Lucia or Constantia where their white counterparts lived.

  ‘See!’ the driver of the van pointed proudly. ‘The pink house with big windows. It is the home of Josia Nrubu, the famous witchdoctor. He sells his charms and potions and spells by mail order all over Africa, even to Nigeria and Kenya. He sells a charm to make all men and women love you, and lion bones to give you success in business and money matters. He can give you the fat of vultures for your eyesight and another potion made from the hymen of a virgin that will make your meat-plough hard as granite and tireless as a war assegai. He has four new Cadillac motor cars and his sons go to university in America.’

  ‘I’ll take the lion bones,’ Michael chuckled. The Golden City Mail had run at a loss for the last four years, much to the chagrin of Nana and Garry.

  ‘See! The house with the green roof and the high wall. There lives Peter Ngonyama. His tribe grows the weed that we call dagga or boom and which you whites call cannabis. They harvest the dagga in the secret places in the hills and send it by the truckload to Cape Town and Johannesburg and Durban. He has twenty-five wives and is very rich.’

  They left the crumbling surface of the old road for the smooth blue asphalt expanse of the newly laid boulevard. The driver accelerated down between the green lawns and high brick walls of Nobs Hill, officially designated Drake’s Farm Extension IV.

  Suddenly he braked and turned o
ff to pause before the steel gates of one of the more luxurious mansions. The electric gates slid aside silently and then closed again behind them as they drove through into a garden of planted shrubs and green lawns. There was a free-form swimming pool below the terrace with a rock fountain at the centre. Sprinklers played upon the lawns, and Michael noticed two black gardeners in overalls working amongst the flowering plants.

  The building was of ultra-modern design with plate-glass picture-windows and exposed woodwork. The roof was split into various levels and planes. The driver parked below the main terrace, and a tall figure came down the steps to welcome Michael as he stepped out of the van.

  ‘Michael!’ Raleigh Tabaka’s greeting took him unprepared, as did the friendly smile and hand-clasp. It was so different from the spirit of their last meeting in London.

  Raleigh wore casual slacks and a white open-necked shirt which emphasized his fine unblemished skin and his romantic African features. Michael felt a charge of sexual electricity ripple across his fingertips as they shook hands. Raleigh was still one of the most impressive and attractive men that he had ever met.

  ‘You are welcome,’ he said, and Michael looked around him and lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘Not bad, Raleigh. You are still keeping fine style.’

  ‘This does not belong to me.’ Raleigh shook his head. ‘I own nothing other than the clothes on my back.’

  ‘Who does all this belong to, then?’

  ‘Questions, always questions,’ Raleigh chided him with an edge to his voice.

  ‘I am a journalist,’ Michael pointed out. ‘Questions are my meat and drink.’

  ‘Of course. This house was built by the Trans Africa Foundation of America for the lady you are about to meet.’

  ‘Trans Africa – that’s an American civil rights group?’ Michael asked. ‘Isn’t it run by the coloured evangelist preacher from Chicago, Doctor Rondall?’

  ‘You are well informed.’ Raleigh took his arm and led him up on to the wide terrace.