Tandia (69 page)

'Kaffirs always been like that, Peekay. Last week we got a prisoner to hang who chopped off the hands of his daughter to take to the witchdoctor to make a powerful potion,
umuThi,
for a tribal war. This was a township kaffir, not a kaffir from the
bundu!
Magtig, Peekay, they always been brutalized. Kaffirs don't get bad in prison, they already like that, they savages, blood, death, cruelty, that's their way, man!'

'Jesus, Gert, can't you see. Life is no different to prison. The life we give the black people, the poverty, injustice, cruelty, the places we make them live, the crime that goes on around them, that is prison! We brutalize these people from the moment they're born. We've been doing it to them for three hundred years. For fuck's sake, what do you expect?'

'Well then, man, it's too late. If they like that they not going to change now. I'm telling you, show a kaffir kindness and next thing you know you got more trouble than you can handle. Kaffirs understand only one thing, the sjambok or a gun. If you understand anything about a black kaffir you never show him any compassion, because if you do, sooner or later you dead and he pisses on your grave.'

Peekay sighed. He knew it was useless, but he had to try. 'Gert, would you say that the Afrikaners are a violent people?'

Gert thought about this for a moment. 'With everyone, or jus' kaffirs?'

'No, as people. Are they violent?'

'No way, man, we a God-fearing people. We a kind people. You know lots of Afrikaners, Peekay, you answer that one yourself.'

'Personally? Ja, I think they're a generous and kind people, Gert. That is, if I think about them as Afrikaners, meaning you are different from me.'

'That's not true. You think about it a lot. You're a rooinek, Peekay, even if you wanted to, the Afrikaners wouldn't let you think we are no different from you. We are different and we don't want to be the same.'

'Okay, I think about it. But my experience has been mostly a pleasant one.'

'You see, I'm right.'

'Would you say the black man thinks of you as a good people who are not violent?'

Gert grinned. 'Jesus, Peekay, I already told you, kaffirs is different. They more like animals, they don't understand kindness, animals chop off their little daughters' hands for strong
muthi.
They don't know what is good. They violent people and when we dealing with them we got to be violent people also. You think we would have survived three hundred years in the veld if we were kind to the kaffirs?

'We are a
boere
tribe, a white tribe and the strongest tribe, and we understand the law of Africa, kill or be killed,
kragdadigheid.
That's the way it's always been. Kaffirs don't expect kindness. They know if they do wrong they get the sjambok.'

'Like a dog?'

Gert ignored Peekay's remark. 'If they do more wrong we put them in prison, if they do more even than that we hang them.'

'Like the Zulu nursery rhyme,
One, two, three, a policeman caught me,
I
died, Mama cried, now I'm free!'
Tell me? What happens if they live good, blameless lives?'

'Then we leave them alone, of course.'

'That's not true, Gert! We restrict their movement. We make them carry passes. We harass them from the moment they're born. We cram them into the world's most horrific slums where they die like flies of all the diseases of neglect. We pin them down in their tribal lands which is the poorest land, over-populated, over-grazed and a fraction - less than thirteen per cent - of the total land mass of South Africa. We pay them a below subsistence wage so they remain on the edge of starvation. Two years ago when the rains were good our white, government-subsidized farms produced a milk glut; we poured the surplus milk into the sea while our blacks were starving in the slums of our major cities. We tear their families apart as a matter of course, husband from wife and children from parents. We watch their small children die of kwashiorkor and their elderly of enteric dysentry and TB. Those we bother to educate are trained to be slaves, taught by teachers who are barely educated themselves. We give them no say in the future, even their own. We allow them no skills or trades to compete in the workplace above that of the lowest white man. We offer them no hope and no place in their own country beyond that of servant to a white master. That's what we do to them when they live good, blameless lives! That's our idea of justice before we show our teeth and demonstrate our anger and hate.'

'Justice? That's a funny word, man. Ask any Boer about justice, we know about British justice, they say that supposed to be the best kind.' Gert spoke slowly, deliberately. 'I am a Boer, Peekay. When I was born, the English were on top; the Afrikaner was nothing, a crushed, defeated people. My father was a dirt-poor farmer and all my uncles left the land and went to work in the mines on the Rand, the mines which belonged to the Englishman and the Jews.

But my pa said if we
never
forgot, if we swore revenge every day of our lives the first thing when we woke up and if we learned to hate enough, one day we would win;
die volk
would be on top again. When Malan came into power in 1948 my pa was so happy on election night, he had a heart attack. You were away at school, but my
ousis
phoned from the police station and I drove most of the night and was at his bedside just before dawn.

He'd been unconscious all night but I hadn't been sitting beside his bed for long when he reached out and pulled at my sleeve. He spoke softly, he was a big man with a great white beard, but now his voice was like a small child. "Gert, my son,
die volk het gewen!
The beloved country is yours again.
Nou sal alles reg kom…
Hold it tight, never give it up, there will be no second chance. God is with His people again.'"

'But how will you win, Gert? More and more gun and more and more sjambok. You know why the Boers won the last election? They won it in bed. Afrikaners now outnumber the English-speaking South Africans; your revenge over the British was plotted between the sheets! That's okay, that's what the voting system is all about, the majority point of view wins - providing, of course, that it's white. Enough Afrikaners bought Malan's shit about it being time to return to the laager, to prepare against
die swart gevaar,
the black danger, when the blacks would rise up and murder us all in our beds: this time, not with the rattle of shields and the stamping of feet until the earth trembles, but silently on padded feet. Like the Bible says,
They will come like a thief in the night.
Isn't that how Malan put it? Shadows in the night, they will come to slit our throats. The spectre of
die bloed smoor,
choked by blood, was a surefire vote-winner not only on the
platteland
but in the cities as well.'

Peekay drew his breath, he was excited and angry but knew he must calm down, that Gert would grow impatient and his natural good manners forsake him. 'But think about this, Gert. When the Boer War ended there were about four million Africans and about one million whites. Now fifty years later there are ten million Africans and three million whites. That's not too bad really, with enough sjambok and gun the odds are still okay. By the year two thousand, less than fifty years from now, there will be thirty-five million Africans and five and a half million whites. Will we hold them with a sjambok and a gun then? Will hate be enough to arm your fear when the impis of the dispossessed come at the white man in endless waves like wind in the grass?'

Suddenly Gert raised the hunting knife and plunged the blade into the surface of the work bench. The large knife vibrated from the impact.
'Jy praat leak!
You talk shit,' he spat. 'At the battle of Blood River four hundred and seventy Boers held off ten thousand Zulus! The odds were a hundred to one, our hate held then, it will hold again! With modem weapons on our side and only sticks and stones on their side, those odds are no different to Blood River!'

'They will get guns and if we don't give them hope they will be trained by someone, somewhere to use them. Gert,
ou maat,
it is not just South AFrica, all of black Africa stirs. Colonialism of every sort is coming to an end. In the whole of Africa, in West Africa, Tunisia, Kenya, both Rhodesias, Angola and Mozambique there are about two hundred million Africans and four million whites. And in all these places the black man is questioning the laws which justify the concept of white supremacy.'

Peekay paused. 'I once asked my friend Gideon Mandoma, you know, the black welterweight, whether he respected the laws of South Africa? He looked at me and then he slowly shook his head, "The only law is the law that is in a man's heart. There is no white man's law in my heart,
Peekay."

'That's about it, Gert. Until we have the same law in every South African's heart we have no country and we have no future. Gert, please listen! It's my country too! Like the black people and the coloured people, I too would like to have a say in its future, don't you see, we're all brothers and sisters! Christ, Gert, I am about to become an advocate, a lawyer and, like Gideon Mandoma, I cannot feel the law of this land in my heart.'

Gert's voice suddenly sounded a warning. 'Don't speak like that, Peekay! I heard what you said the first time, that we must all fuck kaffir woman so we all end up the same. If we all
hotnots
then we going to love each other all of a sudden. You talking shit, you hear? A
boesman
isn't much better than a kaffir; some are worse even,
skollies
and drunks and liars, the coloured people are shit, the scum of the earth!'

His hand shot out and he pulled the knife from the bench and used the point of the blade to prick the inside of his arm just below his wrist. A trickle of dark blood appeared immediately and Gert watched it as it ran down his wrist towards his elbow which now rested on the work bench.

'That's Afrikaner blood, little
boetie,
I will willingly die to keep it pure.' His voice was menacing, though hardly above a whisper. 'If you don't fight with me then I will kill you too, Peekay!' He picked up a piece of grey cotton wadding from the work bench and wiped the blood from his arm. 'I love you, Peekay. You are my little brother, but I will kill you just the same. If it is necessary to preserve Afrikanerdom we will drown this country in blood!'

Peekay rose and grabbed Gert by the shoulder. He had to reach up to do so, the prison sergeant was six feet three and weighed two hundred and sixteen pounds. 'Take it easy,
ou maat!
Remember, we promised at the beginning of this talk that we'd stay friends. Try to remember, I love my country just as much as you do.'

Gert sniffed and gave a bitter laugh. 'No, Peekay, you've said that twice now, but you lie. You have other ties. You have just returned from England where you finished your education. Inside you there is still a Britisher, still a
verdoemde rooinek.
When the trouble comes you can leave and go and live in England or Canada or Australia, you can start a new life, be someone else, somewhere else. Me, I'm a Boer, I don't speak English so well, I don't speak Dutch or French at all, it is three hundred years since my forebears spoke those languages. For three hundred years I have belonged to the Afrikaner tribe and we have kept our bloodline pure. When the shit hits the fan, you can run away, you will run away, but my tribe will have to stay and fight. We have no place to go.
Dit is hier of dood,
it's here or dead.'

'Maybe that's why we have to stop the hating now, before it's too late,' Peekay said softly.

'You might as well try to stop the sun coming up tomorrow morning, Peekay.'

Peekay returned the tiny brass death's head to the work bench and Gert picked it up and screwed it onto the end of the handle. The leather grip had been roughly shaped, though it hadn't yet been sanded and polished; nevertheless it was a beautiful piece of work. 'It's magnificent, Gert.' Gert looked up and grinned, breaking the tension between them. 'Good! I'm glad you like it, Peekay. It's a coming-home present for you. You better learn how to use it to kill. With your
kaffir boetie
politics you're going to need to protect yourself with something better than your fists, even if you do end up the welterweight champion of the world.'

Peekay gripped Gert by his arm, 'Thanks,
ou maat,
I shall treasure it. No hard feelings hey? When I've fought Jackson I'm going to defend my title only once, against Geldenhuis or Mandoma. After that, like I told you, I'm going to be an
advokaat,
a barrister. I just want you to know that I'm not on the white side or the black side, but on the side of all South Africans.' Peekay grinned. 'And so you can see, I'm on my ace, up shit creek with a broken stick as a paddle!'

Gert laughed, glad that the tension had passed between them, glad also that Peekay had stopped in time, for as an Afrikaner he knew he could never back down. 'I guess I'm going to have to tell Captain Smit you a hopeless case, hey? No way you going to learn to hate that black American bastard in time for the title fight.'

But Gert was wrong. Peekay was beginning to understand the hate he was against. While he'd always seen hate as an evil and repulsive force which must - his nice, clean, rational mind told him - lead to destruction, he hadn't seen how powerful it was and how it could be channelled. Gert's hate could be focussed; he exercised it in the same way as he did his love and lived with it as easily. Whereas Peekay's initial hate for the Judge had become fear which was mindless and totally unfocussed, Gert's hate, Jackson's hate, was a force they could use, it
was
the force they used to create fear, the unreasoning fear that weakened Peekay, made him vulnerable to the hate Jackson would bring into the ring with him. He could look into the blind eyes of hate and in their reflection see his own fear, which was just as blind, just as senseless but was totally useless as an emotional force.