The covenant - James A. Michener [639]
state advocate scheepers: What events did you have in mind?
nxumalo: The deaths of our children who protested apartheid.
scheepers: Mr. Nxumalo, those schoolchildren rioted in the streets, burned down buildings, killed innocent civilians, and challenged just authority. You see that as equivalent to a battle fought between two armies?
nxumalo: I agree that the circumstances are not the samewell, not entirelybut the end result, my people were left with anger and sorrow.
scheepers: And you wanted to use that anger to generate disorder?
defense counsel kaplan: I must object to the way my learned friend phrases that.
scheepers: That anger and sorrow were at the basis of your wanting to celebrate Soweto '76 as a remembrance day?
nxumalo: I believe we owe a great deal to those children. They showed us that change in this country must come from within. That we must make stand against a system we abhor.
scheepers: You presume to speak for all blacks?
nxumalo: Someone must. We have been silent for too long.
scheepers: In celebrating our great victory over Dingane, we Afrikaner people observe a solemn Day of the Covenant in which we pray for peace, not disorder; for unity, not chaos. Were those your aims in sponsoring Soweto '76?
nxumalo: We also want peace and unity for all. And prayers for the children who fell at Soweto, victims of the unjust system which deprives them of a right to citizenship in the land of their birth.
judge broodryk: Mr. Nxumalo, this court is not here to debate what happened at Soweto in 1976. We cannot decide whether the students were victims of injustice or not. Confine your answers to Mr. Scheeper's questions.
nxumalo: My Lord, the Afrikaner in his schools, his churches, his celebrations of the Day of the Covenant is reminded by his teachers, his ministers and his political leaders of Slagter's Nek, of ground glass in the mealies, the execution of Christoffel Steyn. With deepest respect I submit at such constant remembrance of blood that flowed in the past engenders bad feeling between the races.
broodryk: Mr. Nxumalo, the Afrikaner and the Englishman are of the same race, so what you charge could not possibly take place. We are concerned only with the delicate balance between the white and black races this country and the danger of fostering ill-will between them. By your responsible speeches, for example.
nxumalo: I do not believe that the black people of this country can denied the right to remember the Slagter's Nek of their history. I mean Sharpeville and Soweto '76. Until we find our own dignity and identity, we will never be free.
scheepers: What would have to happen, Mr. Nxumalo, for you to consider yourself a free man?
nxumalo: Apartheid would have to end. Blacks would have to have a proper voice in running this country.
scheepers: Ah! You mean one-man, one-vote?
nxumalo: Yes, I suppose I do.
scheepers: Do you think that by encouraging bitterness among your people, by waving Soweto '76 at them, you'll get your vote?
nxumalo: A man has a right, surely, to remember ugly things that have happened to him. To us the dead children of Soweto were heroes.
scheepers: It's impossible to follow your reasoning. Those young people were undisciplined rioters. They were led by professional agitators.
nxumalo: I must beg to contradict. The young black boys of Soweto were rather similar to the young Boer lads who fought the English in 1899. They took up arms against their oppressors, the English.
scheepers: Ah-ha! So you do advocate that young blacks take up arms against the Afrikaner? Against the legal government?
kaplan: My Lord, my client said nothing of the sort. I must object most strenuously to my learned friend's attempt to misconstrue the evidence.
broodryk: