The Covenant (178 page)
Authors: James A. Michener
At the end of four days Van den Berghe knew something of conditions at Venloo from both the white and black points of view, and at the final session, to which Philip was invited and Nxumalo, too, he voiced a few of his tentative conclusions:
“What do you suppose the two biggest surprises were for me? Meeting two rugby players of international status and seeing for myself what sterling young men they are. I wish you good luck, Troxels, with your forthcoming games in Australia and New Zealand. The second big surprise was to find that I was on the farm once occupied, or shared, by Paulus de Groot, who was my hero when I was a lad. I was born the year he died, and how often I heard my parents talk about the heroic Dutchman—to us, Boers were always Dutchmen—who held at bay four hundred thousand Englishmen. It was a moment
of deep affection when I was allowed to place flowers on his grave.
“As to the purposes of my visit, it must be obvious that clergymen like me in The Netherlands and France are disturbed by the course your Dutch Reformed Church has been taking since you Afrikaners assumed control of the nation in 1948. It has become a handmaiden not of a religion, nor of the republic, but of a particular political party, and that’s always regrettable. A church should be the handmaiden of Jesus Christ first, the entire society second, and to align it on the side of faction is dangerous.
“Concerning its preachments regarding apartheid, it would be improper for me to voice my personal judgments before the whole commission has had a chance to evaluate and temper them. But I must confess that I leave your country with a heavy heart. I had not realized you had grown so far apart from us. It will now be the duty of all to conciliate our differences.”
When he was gone, Frikkie said with ill-masked fury, “This land has always been cursed by missionaries. That man’s an agent of the World Council of Churches and I should have shot him for a spy.”
“Oh, Frik!” Mrs. van Doorn protested.
“I mean it. What did the foreign churches do in Rhodesia? They gave money to terrorists. And how did they spend it? Killing women and children and missionaries. Is that Christianity?”
Jopie joined in: “You watch what he writes when he gets back to Holland!” And the Troxels were right, for when the commission’s report appeared, it was a devastating attack on the South African church:
With mounting sorrow your committee must report that our Afrikaner brothers in the white Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa have strayed so far and so willfully from the path of Christian morality as evidenced in the preachings of Jesus Christ and St. Paul that reunion now between our church and theirs would be inadvisable and unproductive. Your committee therefore recommends unanimously that the
present severance of affiliations be maintained until such time as the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa manifests a Christian concern in ending its support of the system of repression known as
apartheid
.
Saltwood was surprised at the fury with which the Troxels reacted to this censure: “We’re the polecats of the world, and damnit, if they come at us, we’ll squirt in their eyes.” Sannie agreed, and even though Saltwood cautioned the young people that they could not indefinitely ignore world opinion, Frikkie responded, “We can if it’s wrong.” Philip then asked if young men like him and Jopie ever admitted that anything was wrong with South Africa, and they replied together, “No.” And Jopie added, “We’ve worked out a decent, fair system of handling the races in our society. The laws have been passed, and they must be obeyed.”
“But in most countries,” Philip said, thinking of the drastic readjustments in America in recent years, “provision is made for reassessment. A law tends to be applicable for only about ten or twenty years. The laws your grandfather passed, Sannie—”
“He didn’t pass them. He proposed them.”
“Haven’t they served their day? Shouldn’t they be repealed?”
“Repealed?” the Troxel boys echoed. “They should be strengthened!”
“You see, Saltwood,” Frikkie explained, “we know the blacks. They’re wild veld creatures like the antelope, and we won’t allow them to be spoiled by modern ideas, no matter what the Dutch churchmen advise.”
Jopie was more blunt: “To hell with the Dutch churchmen. They’re today’s missionaries.” And at this, Sannie grasped the hands of her young men and started a dance, chanting an improvised song:
“To hell with the missionaries!
To hell with the men of Holland!
To hell with all who interfere!”
Marius, hearing the clamor, came from his study, and Sannie danced up to him: “We’re consigning the missionaries to hell.”
“That was done long ago,” Marius said, and when he joined the young people in a beer, Saltwood asked, “How do you see the church problem?” and after some reflection he replied, “When I accepted my Rhodes scholarship instead of playing rugby for the Springboks
against New Zealand, I knew I was sacrificing a lot.” He smiled at the Troxels. “These lads go against New Zealand next month. It’ll be the great adventure of your lives.”
“Apparently you have regrets.”
“One you’d never expect. When I returned home with an English wife, I couldn’t be a member of the Broederbond, but who cared? What did hurt was that I was denied the right to be a full member of the Dutch Reformed Church. I’ve never been an elder, you know.”
“Does that matter?” Saltwood asked.
“Grievously. I truly believe that our church is the most effective on earth today. It has spirit, meaning, force. It obeys the word of God and endeavors prayerfully to implement it. A real church.”
“But its support of apartheid? Surely …”
Marius rose and went to the refrigerator for another beer. “Churches go through cycles. In America, if I understand correctly, your Catholic church is riding rampant on birth control and abortion. That’s temporary, a fashion of the moment. It has very little to do with the ongoing operation of the church. Same with our church and apartheid. It’s a problem for the 1980s. Fifty years from now it will all be settled.”
“So you support your church in all it does?” Philip asked.
“I do, because it’s the moral force of South Africa. It’s forever.”
“And in the meantime,” Jopie cried, “to hell with the visitors from Holland.”
“And the World Council of Churches!” Sannie cried, resuming their dance.
A few days later Saltwood observed his arrogant young Afrikaners knocked flat by a much different kind of foreign intervention. He was alone in the Van Doorn kitchen, waiting for Sannie, when her father and Jopie burst into the room, looking ghastly. Without speaking, they fiddled with the radio, located a Pretoria station, and listened as the awful news was reported: “There is an unconfirmed report out of Auckland that the governments of Australia and New Zealand will be forced to cancel the scheduled tour of those countries by a rugby team from South Africa.”
“Good God!” Marius said, looking at Jopie as if the latter’s arms had been amputated. “That would mean you wouldn’t get your Springbok blazer.”
“Wait, wait! This can’t be serious.”
But it was. A different newscaster announced in tremulous Afrikaans,
his voice near breaking: “We have nothing definite yet, but governments of Australia and New Zealand have explained that rioting in the streets protesting the tours have made cancellation advisable.”
“Have you heard?” Frikkie bellowed as he rushed into the kitchen. “Tour’s been canceled.”
“Not officially,” Jopie said, his hands sweating.
Then came the appalling bulletin: “It is now confirmed that the Springbok tour of Australia and New Zealand has been canceled.”
Marius fell into a chair, staring pitifully at the brothers. “It’s like you said, Jopie. The world thinks we’re skunks.”
The three rugby players huddled at the radio, shaken by the urgent bulletins that flooded the air, and when the ugly story was fully verified, Saltwood was amazed by the violence of the men’s reactions.
“It’s criminal!” Marius shouted. “Using sport as a weapon of confrontation. A game’s a game, and politics should have nothing to do with it.”
“I’ll teach them politics,” Jopie thundered. “I’ll fly to New Zealand and break those protestors in half, one by one.”
“It’s not the ordinary citizens,” Marius said. “It’s the damned press.”
“The press in all countries should be muzzled,” Frikkie stormed, but at this moment the minister of sports came on the radio to console the nation, and he was bidding them be of good spirit despite the shattering blow, when Sannie burst into the kitchen, weeping. “Oh, Jopie! Oh, dear Frikkie! They’ve stolen your glorious tour from you!” She ran to the cousins and kissed them; Jopie gulped so deeply that Philip feared he might burst into tears, but instead he went about the room, knocking his fist against doorjambs.
Then came more shocking news: “In New Zealand the agitation against our Springboks was led by a South African citizen, one Fred Stabler, who himself used to play rugby for Rhodes University in Grahamstown. This agitator has moved through both North Island and South, spreading the poison about what he calls apartheid, and he raised such a virulent storm that the New Zealand government had to intervene and order the tour to be canceled. In Australia, at least, it was native-borns who led the agitation. In New Zealand it was one of our own.”
Gloom settled over the Van Doorn kitchen as the Afrikaners realized the full impact of this decision. A generation of fine young
athletes would never know whether they could match courage with the ferocious All-Blacks. The great good feelings that welled up when a touring side ran onto the field against New Zealand would be lost. It was important when a South African tennis player was barred from competing in world tennis, a thing to be deplored, but when a whole rugby team was denied an opportunity to win the green blazer, it was a national scandal, and men of all stripe were finally driven to wonder if perchance their nation was on the wrong track.
This self-exploration was intensified next day when newspapers carried full reports from New Zealand, and one Auckland paper, long a defender of South African teams, editorialized:
Through the years this newspaper had prided itself on being a champion of restraint in dealing with the thorny problem of South African rugby. In 1960, when our Maoris were threatened with expulsion because their skins were not white, we apologized for the backward attitudes of a nation grappling with a serious problem. In 1965, when in the heat of one of our grandest victories Prime Minister Verwoerd announced that henceforth no New Zealand team containing Maoris would ever again be welcomed in South Africa, we discounted his threat as one given in despair over the unexpectedly poor showing of his Springboks. And in 1976, when all the world condemned us for sending the All-Blacks to perform in a country so ridden with racial hatred, we supported the tour. And even when the refereeing proved disgracefully one-sided, we argued that any All-Black–Springbok championship series was worth the effort, and we urged our boys and our nation to enjoy it.
But we can no longer see anything to be gained by allowing sport, however noble its intentions, to be used to shore up a racist regime. Belatedly, and with the saddest possible regret, we support Government’s decision that this tour must not be allowed to proceed. There are some things in this world bigger than an All-Black–Springbok match, and humanity among brothers is one of them.
Jopie Troxel folded the paper and shoved it over to Sannie. There was so much he wanted to say, but he would not trust himself to speak. They don’t understand us, he thought. They accuse us of things
we’ve never done. All we want is to maintain an orderly society, and they protest.
While Sannie and Frikkie prepared sandwiches and beer, he sat staring at his knuckles and brooding. The United Nations had condemned South Africa, but that was a bunch of dark-skinned third nations flexing their feeble muscles, and could be disregarded. The World Council of Churches had condemned apartheid, but they were a gang of radicals. The French-Dutch Commission had spoken harshly, but they were vexed because South Africa did not follow supinely in their missionary-socialist trail. But when Australia and New Zealand canceled a rugby tour, the heart and spirit of the nation were endangered.
“Why can’t they try to understand us?” Jopie cried. Sannie and Frikkie kept cutting sandwiches.
A few days later Saltwood was introduced to a South African game even more brutal than rugby, if that was possible. Daniel Nxumalo came casually to Swartstroom and asked, “You free tonight?”
“Let me phone Sannie.” But when the call went through, Mrs. van Doorn said that her daughter had gone to Pretoria with the Troxel boys, and Philip visualized them moving as a threesome beneath the jacaranda trees. “I’m free.”
By roundabout paths Nxumalo led Philip to a shack where three tall blacks waited: “This is my brother Jonathan. This is my cousin Matthew Magubane. This is a new recruit, Abel Tubakwa.”
Philip gasped. A thousand police were searching for Jonathan and Matthew; indeed, the Troxel boys had been on the border primarily to pursue these two into Moçambique, yet here they were, boldly in the same hills as those who were hunting them. “They were in Soweto last night,” Daniel said, “and they go north tomorrow. Or at least that’s what they told me.” The conspirators laughed.
“We suggested the meeting,” Jonathan said in Afrikaans.
“Why?” Philip asked.
“So that you could tell the Americans, when you go home, that we are far from defeated.”
“I may not go home.”
“You should. In a few years this could be an ugly country.”
Magubane interrupted: “Marry the girl and get her out of here.
All the bright young whites are leaving.” He spoke in such rapid Afrikaans that Saltwood failed to catch his full meaning, so Abel Tubakwa interpreted in fine English.
“How do you see the future?” Philip asked in English, and after that the men used this language.
Jonathan was obviously the tactician: “If they caught us tonight, we’d all be shot. But they won’t catch us. We move about pretty much as we wish.”
