The covenant - James A. Michener [524]
As a consequence of this policy, South Africa would become one of the most overly administered governments on earth, and gradually, because of the bilingual requirement, this plethora of officeholders became predominantly Afrikaner. Piet Krause had shown far-seeing wisdom: the English insurance company did continue to make money, but it operated under rules promulgated by Afrikaner functionaries, who drafted these rules in accordance with the wishes of the unseen Broederbond.
While cells of the Broederbond in all parts of South Africa were convening secretly to determine the future character of their nation, awakening young black men were meeting, also in secret, to decide what patterns should be followed when they attained the leadership to which they felt entitled.
Micah Nxumalo was not a great man, but he had always associated with great men, and that was almost as good. Paulus de Groot, Christoffel Steyn, the various Boer generals during the warhe had worked with them all. Usually they had not been aware of him, but in his quiet way he had been intensely aware of them, and had learned from them lessons which would have amazed them had they known the depth of his perception.
He was bewildered by white men. They lived surrounded by blacks, but made no effort to understand them or to profit from the association. The whites were outnumbered in many areas forty-to-one, but they continued living as if they alone possessed the landscape and always would. He watched them making decisions which had to be against their own best interests, and doing so only to maintain control over the larger number of blacks who surrounded them.
For example, Micah was astounded that the two white tribes, Boer and English, should have fought each other so viciously for so long, when at any time each could have achieved everything that came out of the peace treaty and at one-fiftieth of the cost. For him the insanity of their behavior was epitomized by the Battle of Spion Kop, in which he had played a major role. 'I tell you, Moses,' he said to his son, 'one side marched up to the top of the hill, then the other side marched up, then one side marched down, then the other side marched down. Then, long after midnight, General de Groot and I walked up, and we captured it. And three days later it didn't make a bit of difference who held it, but hundreds of white men lay dead and wounded.'
He saw also that it made very little difference, really, which side won: 'We fought for the Boers, Moses. They were good people and we could trust them, men like Jakob from this farm, and the old general. But when it was over, we got no thanks. They made laws against us just the same. And don't you ever believe that the Kaffirs who fought on the English side came off any better. Because the English abandoned them as soon as peace came. "We will never desert you," they promised in 1899 when they needed black help, but at the peace treaty they forgot about our rights. And now they're just as eager as the Afrikaners to hold us down.'
Micah, who could not read or write, could formulate such sophisticated analyses because he had for many years been quietly associating with that remarkable group of black leaders who moved through the countryside talking about actual living conditions, legislation and civic rights. These few men were well educated, some in England, one or two in the black colleges of America, and some of them had even visited the Parliament in London with petitions drawing attention to the worsening conditions in South Africa. 'It would be improper for England to interfere with the internal relations of a dominion,' they were always told, and helplessly they watched the deterioration.
These men, who would be the leaders of their race in coming years, first brought Nxumalo's attention to the problem of the poor