The covenant - James A. Michener [581]
But his real education came not from Wits, where he acquired an M.A., but from a university unique to South Africa and one of its most commendable inventions. The University of South Africa had no campus, no buildings, no classrooms in the sense of a regular university. Its campus was merely a post-office address in Pretoria and a faculty of learned men and women capable of supervising students throughout the republic. By mail Nxumalo registered for his doctoral studies and by mail he conducted them. He rarely met his professors, posting them each week the results of his study. He worked in silence, spending large sums on books published in London and New York, and if he lacked the advantage of arguing with students in dormitories, he achieved a comparable intellectual stimulus when his professor wrote: 'Interesting, but apparently you haven't read what Philip Tobias says on this subject. Can you dismiss Peter Garlake's theory on Great Zimbabwe?' In fact, he read rather more widely than young men his age at Stanford or the Sorbonne.
UNISA enabled any bright young man or woman in even the most remote village to acquire an advanced degree, and from government's point of view this produced two desirable results: South Africa was becoming one of the most capable nations on earth; and the lack of a central campus prevented potentially rebellious students from congregating at one spot, where ideas offensive to the proponents of apartheid might germinate. It also avoided the problems that would arise when the government ordered other universities like Wits and Cape Town to segregate.
At the conclusion of his doctorate-by-mail, Daniel Nxumalo, having utilized the system to maximum advantage, was an educated man with a burning determination to effect revolutionary change in his birthplace, and a firm resolve to escape entanglement with BOSS. Few men graduating that year from universities like Harvard or Oxford were undertaking a more difficult, tightrope assignment, but unexpected assistance from Matthew Magubane enabled him to fulfill it.
In his early years this Matthew had showed little promisea bull-necked boy who resented disciplineand his education might well have ended at fourteen, except that his father knew the Nxumalos and asked young Daniel, already studying for his doctorate, to talk with his son.
Nxumalo found the boy quite difficult and was about to conclude that further education would be wasted, when the boy said suddenly and with great arrogance, 'Man don't have to go to college like you did to get what you want.'
'And what do I want?'
'Change things. I can tell by your face.'
'And you want to change things, too?' When the boy just sat there, refusing to answer, Nxumalo wanted to shake him as if he were a stubborn child, but he repressed the urge and said quietly, 'Matthew, to achieve what you want, you, too, must have an education.'
'Why?'
'Because I can see that you want to lead others. And you can't do this unless you know at least as much as they do.'
He arranged for Matthew's entrance to the black high school at Thaba Nchu, erected on the very site which Tjaart van Doorn and his Voortrekkers had occupied when they were seeking their freedom. There, like Nxumalo before him, he fell under the spell of an inspired woman teacher who kept on her desk a wood-carved motto: teach this day as never before. She was convinced that a revolution in values was under way across all of Africa; the Portuguese had been driven from Mozambique and Angola; South-West Africa would soon be black-governed; and great Rhodesia was crumbling. She never ranted about these vast changes, merely kept on the wall behind her as she lectured a large map of the area with three changes indicated by paste-on alterations: South-West Africa became Namibia; Rhodesia was Zimbabwe; and the fine port city of Lou-renco Marques was now Maputo. Day after day her students saw those signals.
'You will be with me only for a brief time,' she told them. 'I must arouse enough enthusiasm to last