The covenant - James A. Michener [532]
On December 17 Piet Krause rode among the wagons already in position, assuring the men that all was in order; the two major wagons from Pretoria and Cape Town would arrive next morning. By now the crowd approached a hundred thousandfamilies camping on the slopes, as in the old daysand friendships that had languished for years were renewed with pledges to maintain them.
On this day rumors began to circulate: 'The mayor of Benoni will not be allowed to participate. He's Jewish. They've told the general not to appear. He's English. Best news of all, Jan Christian Smuts will not be coming. They want nothing of him in this celebration. He's more English than he is Afrikaner. No speeches in English will be allowed tomorrow.' Piet Krause, the originator of most of these rumors, had personally decreed that what would be the major monument in South Africa must be a purely Afrikaner affair.
On December 18 some two hundred thousand people gathered on the hill south of Pretoria to consecrate the spot on which their monument would rise. If, despite everything they had heard, General Smuts and other Afrikaner supporters of the government did appear, the occasion would become an affair of state, and 'God Save the King' would have to be played, but Piet Krause openly avowed that if the band played one note of that anthem, he and a gang of toughs would smash every instrument. Aware of the bitterness of the issue, Smuts prudently stayed away, and to the joy of the Afrikaners only 'Die Stem van Suid-Afrika' (The Call of South Africa) was played, and many swore that it would soon be the official anthem of the Afrikaner republic when the new nation came into being.
The orations in Afrikaans, one delivered by Reverend Brongersma, were dignified but charged with heavy implications. Hardly any words of historic evocation could be spoken without producing cheers from the massed throng, and when symbol-words like Slagter's Nek, Black Circuit and Christoffel Steyn were uttered, the crowd cheered automatically. When heroes were recalledPretorius, Retief, De Grootthe crowd yelled till it was hoarse, and as the day waned and the leaders realized how far beyond their expectations their success had been, it began to penetrate to all involved that something more than a celebration had occurred here this day. 'This is the opening gun of our campaign to break away from England altogether,' Piet Krause cried in an ecstasy of patriotism.
He became so mesmerized by that assembly of two hundred thousand Afrikaners that it was not long before he began to have visions of a vast national uprising, and to discover how this could be orchestrated, he slipped down to Cape Town, boarded a ship for England and quietly crossed to Germany, where he quickly made contact with Nazi leaders.
He was overwhelmed by what he saw. At a tremendous rally in the stadium used by the 1936 Olympics he realized how amateurish the Voor-trekker thing had really been. 'We had all those people in one place,' he told his Nazi guide, 'and did nothing with them. They went away with the same thoughts they had when they came. Next time it must be different.'
He was so intelligent, and appeared to be so highly placed in South African politics, that the men about to launch a total war in Europe were captivated by the possibilities he offered: 'Could you arrange an uprising against the English governmentif war happened to come to Europe?'
'Look at what we did in 1914, without help or guidance from you,' he reminded them. When they admitted that they were ignorant of that affair, he told them of the courageous effort made by men like Paulus de Groot and Jakob van Doorn, who devoted their lives to the struggle for freedom. 'Van Doorn was my father-in-law. De Groot you've heard of, naturally.'