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By Root 3562 0

'Triomf over Sophiatown,' but it never occurred to anyone present to ask what it was that they had triumphed over when they erased this black spot. Over the old women who had worked in white homes for fifty years and hoped for a refuge in which to die? Over young black children who had begun to learn in Father Huddleston's missions? Over sturdy black workmen who had long manned essential jobs in Johannesburg and who now had to travel many miles to work each morning and back at night? Over the clergymen who had protested the immorality of bulldozing serviceable homes so that favored whites could be spared the sight of black neighbors? Over the good white women, English and Dutch, of the Black Sash who had tried to protect the rights of black mothers and their children? Over the attempts at reconciliation, which should have prevailed in South Africa and didn't? Over what had Van Doorn's system triumphed, except the forces of reason?

The pains assailed Detleef again, accompanied this time by a heaviness in the chest which he had to recognize as serious. To the Boer War veteran next him he whispered, 'Damnation! Just as we were getting things truly sorted out.'

He was whisked to a private ward in the Johannesburg General Hospital, and his family was summoned from Vrymeer. When they assembled at his bed and heard his labored breathing they waited for Marius to speak, but Detleef did not want to hear from that one. He distrusted his son, and as older people often will, leaped a generation and extended his shaking hands toward his granddaughter, flaxen-haired Susanna. 'Come closer, San-nie,' he whispered, and when he kissed her hands, a gesture most inappropriate from him, the others realized that death must be near. Marius left the room to call Vrymeer, asking that two things precious to the old man be brought in at once.

'Sannie,' the dying man said, 'you must always do the thing that is right for your country.' This had been the dictate of his life: the honest move, the just act. He felt that the determination of what was just and honest had best be left to the judgment of men like himself, who were above greed or vanity and who acted solely in the interests of society.

'You're inheriting a noble country,' he told the girl. 'Now that people have been told their place and can rely on just laws to help them keep it.' He noticed that Marius had reentered the room and was wincing at this summary, but he could not understand why. He could not conceive that a son of his might ask, 'Who assigned the places? Can such allocations be made without consultation with those who are being assigned?' Detleef was convinced that since well-intentioned men, attentive to God's teachings, had made these decisions, to question them endangered the republic. He could not believe that his son would peck like a raven at a fabric so justly woven.

As the afternoon wore on he again began to visualize the enemies who had endangered his land; immortal adversaries, they ranged themselves along the wall waiting for him to die. First were the blacks, who threatened to engulf the nation, cursed offspring of Dingane and stained, like him, with treachery. No! No! First there were the English. Always there were the English enemies, with their clever ways, their superiority of language and class. Two thousand years from now, when Great Pretoria lay crumbled in dust, you could be sure that some Englishman had knocked down the stones. They were the permanent enemy, and he was about to cry out that he still hated them when his mind cleared and he said boldly to everyone in the room, 'I have never hated anyone. I have acted only from a sense of justice.'

He did not hate the Englishhe pitied them, with their lost empire and their doomed superiorities. Nor did he hate the Indians, either; they were a sad lot huddling in their stores. It was regrettable that they had not been expelled, as the Chinese were; then he smiled, for the vision of Mahatma Gandhi flashed across his mind. 'We got rid of that one,' he said. Nor did he hate the Jews, even though they had stolen