The covenant - James A. Michener [492]
'Out they go!' Piet Krause exulted as the wagons stood in the sun. 'A fearful wrong is being corrected.'
The Chinese, bewildered when they left Canton years ago, bewildered by their treatment in the mines, and now bewildered by this enforced exodus, looked out impassively at the boys they had never understood and the grownups they had never known. One schoolboy picked up a stone and threw it at the hateful exportees, but Piet Krause halted that: 'No abuse. Just cheer when the train starts.' And when it did, and the trucks moved again, everyone applauded, for a heavy burden was being removed from the homeland. 'Die Volk,' said Krause, 'is nou skoon!' (The Volk has been purified.)
When the boys returned to their school, Krause said, 'Our next task is to repatriate all the Indians. Gerrit, what does repatriate mean?'
To send back a person to where he belongs.'
'That's right. Every person on earth has a place where he belongs. He should stay there. We've sent the Chinese back to China. We must send the Indians back to India. And the English should go back to England. This is the land of the Afrikaner.'
'What about the Kaffirs?'
'They belong here. They're as much a part of Africa as we are. But they're inferior. They know nothing. It's our responsibility to protect them, and explain to them how they must obey our laws. The Kaffirs will always be with us, and we must treat them with respect, but also with firmness.'
Whenever Detlev heard such preachments he thought of that glass of layered jellies, each color in its proper place, each clearly demarked from the other, and as he recalled that moment of revelation, he remembered the earlier day, when Johanna's experiment had not worked and she had mixed all the jellies together. That result had been pleasing neither to the eye nor to the taste: It was a jumble without character and I didn't like it. But when it was done right, look what happened! It was beautiful to see, and when you dipped your spoon in, each layer had its proper taste. The orange was the way orange should be, the lemon on top tasted right, and even the currant on the bottom preserved its real flavor. That's the way races should be.
Not long after the disappearance of the Chinese, Piet Krause invited three of his best students to accompany him to an important meeting near Johannesburg: 'You are to hear the one man in this country who knows what he's doing.'
It was General J. B. M. Hertzog, a hero during the Boer War, a brilliant lawyer afterward. He was not overpowering, like old General de Groot, for he was only of medium height and weight. He was a handsome man, with a close-clipped mustache and neatly parted hair. He wore steel-rimmed glasses and a business suit, and spoke softly as he offered a justification of his recent behavior:
'I said that South Africa must be for South Africans, and I make no apology. By South Africans, I mean those persons whether of Dutch or English heritage who have committed their lives to this country, and who do not think fondly of some place else as "home." [He spoke this word derisively.]
'I said that I wanted my country to be ruled by men who are totally South African at heart, and I make no apology. By this I mean that we should be governed only by men who understand this land and its language, who are working for its welfare and not for the welfare of some empire. [Here there was both applause and boos.]
'I have been accused of wanting to make the Afrikaner baas in this country, and I confess to the charge. I certainly don't want some newcomer who knows nothing of the land or the language or the religion to be my baas. I want South Africa to be ruled by South Africans.
'I have been accused of not being willing to conciliate, and I confess to that charge also. On what principle should I conciliate, and whom? I