The covenant - James A. Michener [540]
Like puritans in all countries, he started with sex. He saw that in a decent society white men should marry only white women, Coloureds marry Coloureds, and so on down to the Bantu, who would marry among themselves. Whenever he thought of these matters, or discussed them with his wife, who heartily approved of what he was trying to do, he started at what he visualized as the top with Afrikaners, working his way down to the Bantu, who represented the vast majority at the bottom. Afrikaners were entitled to top position because they respected God and were faithful to the directives of John Calvin; Coloureds stood higher than Indians for two reasons: they had some white blood and they usually believed in Jesus Christ, and even those who didn't, accepted Muhammad, who was higher than the Hindu gods; and Bantu were at the bottom because they were black and heathen. Of course, a large proportion of them were Christian, hundreds of thousands being enrolled in their own Dutch Reformed churches, but this was a complication which he ignored.
His first proposal was simple: no white person, regardless of his or her situation, could marry a non-white. If he attempted to do so, he would be thrown in jail, and if he actually entered into such a marriage, it would be invalid.
This presented little difficulty in the Afrikaner provinces of Transvaal and the Orange Free State, but in Cape Town, where more than half the population was Coloured, it created havoc, and there was great outcry. But that very year in Durban, blacks and Indians engaged in wild communal rioting in which nearly one hundred and fifty people were slain, and Detleef could tell his people, 'See, races should be kept apart.' To those in his confidence he often spoke of his vision: the glass with the perfect separation of jellies.
In 1950 he carried this marriage ordinance to its next logical improvement: he pulled out an old immorality act of 1927, which had struggled ineffectively to deal with the matter, and gave it new teeth, so that sexual relations between persons of unequal color were criminalized; any man embracing a woman of different color would be jailed. His wife and sister approved of this law and said it would perform miracles in purifying life in the Union.
The use of this word Union irritated Detleef, and he wondered how soon the Afrikaner majority would officially break ties with England. When he asked his superiors about the timetable for freedom, they told him gruffly, 'One thing at a time. Get along with your own tasks.' He was diverted temporarily when at the United Nations, Madame Pandit of India launched a bitter attack on South Africa's racial policies, particularly the treatment of Indians. He was enraged that a woman should presume to speak so, and that a Hindu should so make a fool of herself by criticizing a Christian country. At his suggestion, he was given time off to draft a reply to Madame Pandit, but it was so discourteous to an ambassador of another Commonwealth nation that it was not dispatched, but for many weeks he continued to mutter to his Afrikaner friends, 'Imagine. A woman and a Hindu daring to say those things. She should be muzzled.'
When his superiors ordered him to forget India and get back to work, he produced for them four smashing proposed bills, all of which became law. As one newspaper said of this herculean output: 'Rarely in the history of the world has one nation opened its floodgates to such a torrent of legislation.' When he and Maria surveyed what they had accomplished, they could take pride in the fact that they had achieved through quiet application of their talents what their fathers had failed to attain through battle. 'Think of what we've made happen in such a short time!' Detleef said after a six-month stint in Cape Town, and like a professor he ticked off the changes.
One, he had begun to codify customs