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Even so, when the bells of Venloo marked the beginning of a new year, he knew that despite his victories, he had failed to deal with the worrisome nettle that would torment his nation into the next century, and on New Year's Day 1951 he posed the dilemma to Maria and Johanna: 'What are we going to do about the Coloureds?'

The question was most perplexing. The Bantu were clearly black, with historic areas to which presumably they belonged: the Transkei of the Xhosa, Zululand, the lands of the Tswana and the Sotho. It wasn't really as neat and tidy as that, for there were millions of Bantu living loosely throughout the nation, but it was a definable problem that could be solved.

Since the Indians kept to their crowded ghettos, mainly in Natal, they, too, could be handled logically. 'Give them a shop, restrict them, and don't allow them too many liberties' was Detleef's prescription.

But the Colouredswhat to do about them? They were not of any one clear racewhite-black-Malay-Indian-Hottentotnor of any one religion, for many were Muslim. They had no specific terrain, for they lived everywhere. And they were certainly not primitives, for most of them had the intellectual and technical capacities of whites. But they were in a sense unidentified, unspecified, and as such they could be ignored.

They were needed. In every industry, jobs went unfilled because Coloureds were not allowed to take them. In every aspect of growth there was inhibition because Coloureds were forbidden to associate equally with whites. Constantly they were restricted to lower levels of achievement when obviously they had the capacity to do much better. In these years a marvelous opportunity was lost.

All nations make mistakes, terrible miscalculations which once adopted can rarely be amended. In England it was social categories that inhibited normal development in many areas, creating animosities that festered. In India it was rigid stratification of caste, descending even to untouchability. In Japan it was the persecution of the Eta and the denigrating of the Okinawan. And in America it was the blundering incapacity to deal with blacks. In South Africa the fearful miscalculation occurred in the 1920-1960 quadridecade when the white ruling classes could have reached out and embraced the Coloureds, welcoming them into a respected partnership.

Only by following the logic of Detleef and his two women on New Year's Day 1951 can one approximate an answer to this enigma of a nation's casting aside a major treasure. Detleef opened the conversation: 'It occurs to me that we are far from solving the big problem.'

'The Bantu?' Johanna asked. She was seventy-one now, no longer employed in Johannesburg, but nevertheless a major factor in Afrikaner women's circles. 'We know very well what to do with the Bantu. Treat them justly but keep them in their place.'

'I mean the Coloureds.'

'That is a problem,' Maria agreed, and she set the tone for the discussion: 'They are the children of sin, and God must despise them.'

'They are mongrels,' Johanna said, 'and I wish we could cleanse the nation of them as we did the Chinese. Remember that day, Detleef, when you saw the last Chinese go down the cog railway to Waterval-Onder. That was a wonderful day in our history.' Longingly she thought of this, then said briskly, 'In Cape Town the other day I walked about District Six. That could be made into one of the finest sections of Cape Town, but it's crowded with Coloureds. They must all be moved out.'

'To where, Johanna? Where?'

That line of discussion ended, but the three puritans were not finished with Maria's opening statement. 'They really are children of sin,' Detleef agreed. 'They're a rebuke to God-fearing Christians, a reminder of our fathers' transgressions.'

'Not our fathers,' Maria protested. 'It was sailors from the ships that stopped here.'

Detleef and his sister nodded. The existence of the Coloureds was an affront to them, and it was a