Ah But Your Land Is Beautiful Read online

  Nhlapo sat in silence, recalling the past, and Mansfield did not like to recall him to the present. But Nhlapo recalled himself.

  – Robert, it’s all gone, the happiness has gone, the fear has returned. The jolly laughing man has gone. I ask myself if he will ever come back again. Dlamini is dividing my school in two. On one side there are those who want to pass their examinations, who want to become doctors and lawyers and teachers, who respect their headmaster, who indeed respect all older persons, which, as you well know, Robert, is our ancient custom. On the other side are those who think only of liberation, of equality, of the universal suffrage, of freedom tomorrow. They do not say so to me, they also speak the silent language. I have one outstanding boy, Nathaniel Kuzwayo, whose father was dismissed by the Transvaal Education Department because he spoke out against the new Bantu Education Act. He is a tall, bitter boy, a great admirer of Dlamini. He also speaks the silent language. When I speak to him about the way his work is falling off, he speaks to me in the silent language, he says, Why have you not been dismissed too? Is it because you have not spoken out against the new Bantu Education Act? Why do you not speak out? Is it because you are afraid? This is the boy, Robert, who said to me in open class, Why should we study in days like these? Who wants a certificate in days like these? It makes me angry, Robert, that his Science marks do not fall off, they are as high as ever.

  Nhlapo’s voice rose in protest.

  – Dlamini led a deputation to me, Robert. They asked me to resign my post as a protest against the Bantu Education Act. I refused. I said I had a boy and a girl at university. If I resigned, they would have to leave. I could not do that to them. Do you know that Dlamini can say the most cruel things without raising his voice, without any sign of anger. I think it is a gift some of us have learned during centuries of conquest. It is in the first place a way of talking to white people, and of raising their blood to boiling point, so that they reveal some ugliness that was concealed behind their greetings and their smiles. But it is also a way of talking to your black superiors as well. I have had to suffer under it. But up till now I have kept myself in order.

  – Wilberforce, you must get rid of Dlamini.

  – How?

  – I shall have to think. I can’t see you go on like this. This man is not really a Lutuli man. Lutuli wants to change things, not destroy them. Dlamini is only using Lutuli to destroy you, and sooner or later he will want to destroy Lutuli too. I’ll go to Pietermaritzburg to see the Director. I know he no longer controls African schools, but he can perhaps advise us. You can’t keep this man. Elizabeth is right, he is spoiling your school.

  – Robert, I have something more to tell you.

  – Yes.

  – Somebody tried to kill me. Last Wednesday night, in that little dark avenue that runs to my house.

  – Are you certain of this?

  – I have the instrument. I didn’t bring it to show you. That would have been unsuitable. It is an assegai.

  – It was thrown at you?

  – It was thrown at my back. If it had got me I would have been dead. But by the grace of God, by a miracle, Robert, it struck the space between my body and my right arm. It tore the cloth of my jacket, but it did not touch my flesh.

  – Does Elizabeth know?

  – I could not hide it. There was this long tear in my jacket. How could you explain such a thing except by telling the truth? In any case I have never lied to her, not once in our married life.

  – And beyond what you tell me, you know nothing.

  – Nothing. The assegai fell on the ground, and I could see what it was. I turned round at once, and in the dark I saw the figure of a man. It could not have been a woman, the assegai was too heavy and its force was too great. It was my imagination no doubt — you know, Robert, the strength of my imagination — but the man seemed to be dressed as a warrior, one of Shaka’s warriors.

  – Then you were lucky that he didn’t use the short stabbing spear.

  – Yes, I was lucky. But my luck didn’t fill me with joy. Who wants to kill me at this time of my life? As far as I know, Robert, I have never hurt anyone in my whole life. I’ve caned a few naughty boys, but I have tried never to hurt a boy or a girl in their pride. I must go now, but I shall tell you one good thing that came out of all this. I have had a joint letter from my boy and girl at university. They both thanked God that I was not hurt. They had also heard that I would not resign because of the Bantu Education Act. They said they knew I had done it for them. They said that the whole university is torn in two between those who want to boycott all education, and those who want to continue their studies. But they themselves — my son and daughter — were torn in two inside themselves. Half of them wanted a father who would resign, and half of them wanted a father who cared about their education. It seems to us black people, Robert, that everything is falling apart.

  – You mustn’t think that only black people feel that. I feel it too, very strongly. Apartheid is driving us apart. That’s what it’s meant to do, isn’t it? It’s not only that the centre cannot hold. It’s being torn to pieces. If it isn’t put together again, the whole country will fall apart. Your children will be fighting my children, Wilberforce.

  – Do not speak like that, Robert. I must go now. You know me better than ever. Full of fears, some real, some not. Not without courage though very low at the moment. Imagination much too powerful. Does not lie to his wife. Has two children, both torn in two, want their father to be brave but also want him to be fatherly. Just like their father who wants them to be brave but also wants them to get their degrees. Robert, whatever goes wrong, Elizabeth and I will never forget you.

  Mansfield accompanied his friend to his car, and watched him drive away up the street on his way back to the J. H. Hofmeyr High School. He thought with a wry smile of Nhlapo’s summing up of his character, for it was also the summing up of his own. People didn’t know that. They saw him as the confident headmaster of the Newcastle High School. He had no Dlamini on his staff, and no boy like Nathaniel Kuzwayo. He had no disciplinary troubles with the boys, largely because he had played cricket for South Africa, and none with the girls because he was tall and fair and had blue eyes, and had an amiable weakness for girls anyway.

  He and Nhlapo were lucky in their wives. Elizabeth Nhlapo was no docile Zulu woman, and would upbraid her husband in unmistakable language if she thought it necessary — if she thought, for example, that people were trading on his good nature. Naomi Mansfield was also a woman of strong character, but she would upbraid her husband in a more subtle and less spectacular manner. Both of them agonised a great deal over the way in which their son and daughter were growing up knowing nothing of the children who were separated from them by barriers of language and race and colour, but most of all by their segregated schooling. Mansfield and Nhlapo had arranged more than one inter-school visit. Their schools had debated against each other; the boys had played cricket, and the girls hockey. But the resistance of the white parents of Newcastle, and some of the members of the cricket and hockey teams, was painful to both the Mansfields.

  – . . . I don’t mind my boy learning Zulu at school, Mr. Mansfield, but I don’t want him playing cricket against black boys. And he doesn’t really want to play either. He volunteered to play only because you asked him, and he thinks you’re a hell of a good chap. He says they can’t play anyway, and you have to bowl slowly and bat slowly too. He’s a decent lad, and he doesn’t think it’s treating them fairly to play down to them. He says the cleverer ones can easily see through it.

  – . . . I admire you very much for doing it, Mr. Mansfield. And my daughter Janet thought it was wonderful. She wants to ask two of the girls for the weekend and, although we’ve never done anything like that before, my husband and I have decided to do it. He said to me, Do you realise that although we have lived forty years in this country with black people we’ve never had one in our house?

  – . . . I know you believe in what you are do
ing, Mr. Mansfield, but you’re a hundred years before your time. I have been approached by many parents, and by other people too, who object very strongly to racial mixing, and I, as the member of the Natal Provincial Council for this constituency, intend to raise this matter first with the Provincial Executive. Between you and me, this could do great harm to the United Party, because this constituency isn’t one of the safe ones, and I can’t allow that.

  After his talk with the member of the Provincial Council for Newcastle, Mr. Barend Coetzee, a powerful figure in northern Natal, Mansfield realised that he had entered deep waters. He admitted to himself, but not to his wife, that he was afraid. He had opened a door for Janet Armstrong and her parents, who would for the first time in forty years have a black guest in the house, but he had angered many others. His wife had told him of the disgust that his racial experiments had aroused, not only among members of her tennis club, but also among members of the Women’s Anglican Guild. None of these women had expressed their disgust to her, but they had to some of her friends.

  The hardest blow of all was dealt to him by his own Director, Dr. William Johnson, who issued a circular to all headmasters and headmistresses under his authority, stating that it was not the policy of the Department to encourage racially mixed school functions. Mansfield was both friend and admirer of his Director, and he decided to go down to Pietermaritzburg to see him.

  – Robert, I couldn’t do anything else. I’m sure you’ve heard all about the girl Prem Bodasingh. Well, to put it plainly, I won that battle, and now I can’t afford to fight another. I wouldn’t win it anyway. The Administrator-in-Executive Committee instructed me to forbid racially mixed functions.

  – But Bill, the Administrator said to Rotary in Pinetown, only a few weeks ago, that he was shocked by the ignorance of children in white schools, of the languages and cultures of other children, and he advocated the introduction of special studies to remedy the situation.

  – That’s true, and Miss Moberly of the Girls’ High School immediately arranged a hockey match with the Indian Girls’ High. As soon as the Executive Committee heard about it they ordered me to cancel it. Then Professor John Durant of the University of Natal wrote a scathing letter to the Natal Witness, and said the Administrator wanted to teach children how to swim without letting them go into the water. I tell you, Robert, I was ashamed, of myself, and the Administrator, and of the Executive Committee. But the fact is that the Natal Director of Education can’t change the racial policies of the Government. If I had tried to do so, then this time they would have fired me. I was willing to be dismissed over Prem Bodasingh, because to prevent her from going to any school again would have been, in my calendar, a gravely immoral act. But I can’t feel the same about preventing mixed games. Do you see my point?

  – Yes, I see your point. You’re in a cleft stick, Bill, and I’m in a cleft stick, and your damned Administrator-in-Executive Committee is in a cleft stick, and we can all be forgiven because we were all born in a cleft stick. It fills me with despair for the future. We all live in the same country, yet we allow our children to grow up in total ignorance of their future fellow South Africans, and I’m telling you, Bill, that if they don’t play with each other today, then they’re going to kill each other tomorrow. I’m reaching the end of the road. I’m feeling more and more strongly that I must give up my job, and go out and try to do something about it.

  – Robert, you can’t do that. In a couple of years Jenkins retires and Maritzburg College will be yours. You always wanted that, didn’t you?

  – Yes, I did want it, but I don’t want it any more. What would I do there? Teach another generation of boys to uphold the mores of the Administrator-in-Executive Committee? Teach another generation not to look at the truth about their own country? It would be an act of criminal negligence on my part, and I won’t do it.

  – You are of course implying — or shall I say that you are implicitly saying — that I as Director am also criminally negligent.

  – Look here, Bill, I haven’t come all the way from Newcastle to insult my boss. And I didn’t come here to say that. Yet I can’t deny that there is an implication, not only for you but for all of us.

  – Then there’s no point in talking further. I was appointed as Director, and I’ll do the job as I think best. Now I’m sorry, but . . .

  – I shan’t waste any more of your precious time. But I must congratulate you and the Executive on saving Newcastle for the United Party.

  So he went, leaving Johnson subdued and angry. It was all very well for Robert Mansfield to take a brave stand; after all his mother had left him a tidy sum of money. Cleft stick? Yes, he was in a cleft stick, and we were all in cleft sticks, but not all of us had the money to get out of them.

  Just suppose he had refused to forbid the white schools to play the others. This time he would have been dismissed. If the Administrator-in-Executive had changed its decision, which was highly improbable, indeed impossible, the Government would have intervened. No province of the Union of South Africa could defy the laws of the country.

  The chances were that he would have been dismissed without pension, and he would have had nothing to live on. A dismissed Director of Education is not a likely candidate for re-employment. How pleased he had felt when the Administrator-in-Executive had dropped the matter of Prem Bodasingh. And a bit proud too, he had to confess. But the feeling of pride had gone. He knew perfectly well that the Administrator’s speech to Rotary and his order to cancel the hockey game were mutually contradictory actions, but he had to carry out the order. He thought with bitter self-criticism that his pension was now safe, just as Newcastle was safe for the United Party. At that particular moment, after his unpleasant encounter with Mansfield, he recalled with distaste that he had spoken, half-jokingly it is true, of his anticipation of ten years of golf followed by ten years of bowls.

  – A note for you, Director, from Mr. Mansfield.

  Bill, sorry for my remark about Newcastle, I understand your position, but I don’t want to stay any longer in mine. Robert.

  It was typical Robert.

  The resignation of Mr. Robert Mansfield from the headmastership of the high school has come as a shock to the people of Newcastle, pleasant to some, unpleasant to others. The parents are more or less divided into two equal parties, the one totally opposed to the headmaster’s racial experiments, the other not necessarily all in favour, but unanimous in their high opinion of his headmastership. The majority of those white citizens who are not parents are glad to see him go. They do not all agree with Mr. Barend Coetzee, who had told Mansfield that he was a hundred years before his time; some of them reckon that his time will never come at all, that the Government, and especially the powerful Dr. Hendrik, have a master plan for the total separation of the races, not for a hundred years but for ever.

  The school itself is not so sharply divided. There are a few boys and girls who are glad to see him go, and most of these are the sons and daughters of parents who find the racial experiments abhorrent. But most of the boys are full of regret to lose a headmaster who has played cricket for South Africa, and as for the girls, many of them have been in love with him in schoolgirl fashion, which is not altogether surprising, for he is a very handsome man.

  And what has he resigned for? The newspapers have asked him of course, but he has refused to tell them until the day after he leaves the service of the Education Department. This gives credence to the rumour that he is going into politics, and that he is going to join the new Liberal Party. The party has attracted a fair number of whites who would call themselves liberals, including the redoubtable Margaret Ballinger, one of the three white members of Parliament elected by those black voters who in 1936 were removed from the common roll. In return for their removal they were given three white M.P.s, and the black voters of Cape Eastern chose Margaret Ballinger to represent them. She is one of the finest brains in the House, and has energy to match her intelligence. The Liberal Party considers itse
lf lucky and privileged to have got her.

  The Liberal Party has had a contemptuous reception from the ruling National Party. Indeed some Nationalists are implacably hostile, and want it to be made a criminal offence to oppose the policies of separate coexistence. They regard the establishment of a nonracial party as a flagrant defiance of the powers-that-be. Most other white South Africans are hostile also, because, while they reject certain forms of racial discrimination, they really cannot approve of cooperating with other races to fight it. The African Congress, and still more the Indian Congress, accuse the new party of undermining the Congress front. Most hostile of all is the white Congress, which is strongly Marxist, and regards concern about civil rights as almost irrelevant in a war situation. Their hostility is understandable, because the Liberal Party has expressed its condemnation of all forms of totalitarianism, including communism and fascism.