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Superintendent Grobbelaar smiled. 'You English always exaggerate. It's five hundred and fifty thousand.' 'You don't count the illegals?' 'They will be dealt with.' 'You're going to evict them all?'

'Certainly not. Those who are essential to the operation of our businesses and industries will be allowed to remain. The rest? Yes, we'll evict them all. They'll have their own cities in their homelands.'

'How many black servants does Mrs. Grobbelaar have?'

'Two, if that's relevant.'

'You'll allow those two to stay?'

'Of course. They're essential.'

'Mr. Grobbelaar, can't you see that if you evict the blacks, Johannesburg will collapse?'

'We'll keep the ones we need.'

'But not the wives? Nor the children?'

'We want to avoid the clutter. They'll stay behind in the homelands.'

'Is there no appeal I can make in this matter?'

'Mrs. Ngqika is what the law calls a temporary sojourner, and she must go-'

He would make no concession. Never raising his voice or showing any irritation, he rebuffed every suggestion this difficult woman made, but when she was gone his face went livid and he roared at his assistant, 'I want three men to look into every aspect of that Ngqika woman's record. I'm going to teach that pair a lesson.' And forthwith he phoned a friend in the Security Branch: 'I suggest you take a close look at this Laura Saltwood. She consorts with Kaffirs.'

In the case of Mrs. Saltwood, secret police in various cities turned up only the facts that had appeared in newspapers. For some years she had been a thorn, defending non-whites against the just application of the new laws, but she had always acted in the open, so that no reasonable charge could be made against her.

'We'll keep close watch on her,' the Security Branch assured the Johannesburg police. 'One of these days she'll trip.'

In the Ngqika case something was found; a black living in Soweto informed the police that Miriam had a son occupying a location in the sky, but when they went to the address given they found that living there was an official of the government, whose wife protested that Miriam's son was the best and strongest cleaner she had ever employed and his continuance in the job was essential, so he was allowed to stay in Johannesburg, for the time being.

On a night in the third week, the last that Miriam Ngqika would spend in the house she had possessed for more than ten years but which she had not been allowed to own, the black women met in prayer and consolation. Afrikaners believed and tried to indoctrinate foreigners with the thesis that blacks of South Africa could never coalesce because they were tribal, with one group hating the other, but on this sad night Miriam's kitchen housed Xhosa, Zulu, Pondo, Sotho, Tswana and Shona. True, they were sometimes suspicious of one another, the way a respectable Episcopalian worries about a hard-shell Baptist, or the way a Catholic looks askance at a Jew, and sometimes that mistrust flared into faction fights, but that they were engaged in mortal combat was preposterous. These women shared a common destiny, and they knew it.

But as the night wore on, a remarkable event occurred. The schoolteacher who had enlisted the futile aid of the Black Sash crept through the streets leading a white woman, whose presence in Soweto was illegal and whose willingness to come at night was downright revolutionary. 'This is Mrs. Saltwood,' the teacher said. 'You've heard of her.'

The women had, especially the Shona woman who had been paid by Superintendent Grobbelaar to attend this meeting; she would report this criminal act, and the dossier on Mrs. Saltwood would note that at last this dangerous English woman had stepped across the boundary line from open defiance to criminal conspiracy.

What did the conspiracy consist of? Mrs. Saltwood told the black women, 'There are women all over the world who are fighting to stop such injustices. We've lost this battle, and Mrs. Ngqika will have to go this time, but...' Suddenly her stalwart