The covenant - James A. Michener [611]
'I don't get it,' Philip said.
'Don't you see?' Sannie explained as her two suitors tried to control their raucous behavior. 'If Andy Young and your other black leaders in America lived in South Africa, and if they got their wayone-man, one-voteand the blacks took over, the very first people to be done in would be Andy Young and his gang.'
'Now wait!' Philip snapped. As a loyal American, he felt obligated to defend President Carter and former Ambassador Young when they were attacked, which in South Africa was almost daily. 'I don't approve of Andy when he shoots from the hip, but on basic African policy he makes sense.'
'How could he?' Frikkie asked. 'One-man, one-vote?'
'I mean his view of the continent as a whole. There are three million Afrikaners at most. Three hundred million blacks at least. Should we support you few against so many?'
'Of course you should, since our interests are the same as your interests,' Frikkie said.
'But what was your point about Young being in danger?'
'My dear stupid American,' Frikkie said, winking at Jopie. 'Don't you know that Zulu, Xhosa, Fingo, Pondoall of themdislike Coloureds even more than they dislike whites?'
'Why?'
'Because they feel that when decisions are made, Coloureds will side with whites. They're seen as traitors to the black cause.'
Jopie broke in: 'You may have heard. When the blacks rioted at Paarl. Quite a few dead. The Coloureds didn't raise a finger to help. Believe me, Philip, when the crunch comes, Andy Young would be in a lot more danger than me. The blacks know they'll need men like me to help organize their new world. But they'll have no place whatever for Andy Young and his light-skinned Coloureds.'
Frikkie became quite serious: 'We've watched this in many former English colonies. When the natives assume power, they ostracize the light-skins ... if they don't slaughter them. The reason's simple. "If we must do business with people other than ourselves, let's do it with the best of the lot, the real white people." The Coloureds in this landhow many of them? Three million, perhaps. They have no future except with us. So if your Ambassador Young wishes to help his kind, he better come to Jopie and me and say, "Afrikaners, save me!" because the blacks will do him in.'
Jopie broke the tension by tickling Sannie under the chin as she finished her beer. 'You know, I don't believe I've ever seen an American black. I wonder if anyone in South Africa ever has. We made a big to-do over Arthur Ashe, and the rock musicians, and what not. But when the crunch comes, everyone like them will be dead. Because there'll be no place for those cats in the new South Africa.'
Sannie said, 'Would you like a Van der Merwe cocktail? Perrier and water?'
It was language, which tyrannizes us all, that converted Laura Saltwood into a major criminal. It began accidentally during a trip home to England; she had stopped at a store in Salisbury and the shopkeeper had said, 'I can't deliver it today, Mrs. Saltwood. My temp didn't report.'
'Your what?'
'My temp. The boy who comes in occasionally.'
On her way back to Sentinels she used a footpath through the cathedral grounds, and as she glanced about her she thought: How we English do corrupt our language. Mr. Dixon has a temp. I go to the hairdresser's for a perm. My cousin leaves the telly, goes to the fridge to get herself a snack of meat and veg. How awful.
In succeeding days she paid extra attention to what was being said around her, and heard such words as perks for perquisites, grungey for objectionable, grotty for distasteful, and what was probably the ugliest verbal invention of all time, brolly for umbrella.
When she spoke about this debasement with her cousin she noticed approvingly the precise English pattern of Lady Ellen's speech: 'Mustn't be put off by the odd bit of verbal invention,