The covenant - James A. Michener [642]
kaplan: Your Worship, I happen to have the full text, and with your permission may I read a few additional sentences? I think you will find them instructive:
'I want every student to learn Afrikaans, for it is an excellent medium for conducting our affairs in this country. I speak Afrikaans, use it all the time, to my great profit, but when I do speak it I can communicate with less than three million. When I speak English, I communicate with the entire world.'
scheepers: Why would a black child in Venloo wish to communicate with the entire world?
nxumalo: Because we are citizens of the entire world.
scheepers: But repeatedly we find evidence that you call yourself African. Is not your claim
nxumalo: I am a citizen of Venloo, which makes me a citizen of eastern Transvaal. That gives me citizenship in South Africa
scheepers: Not South Africa. You're Zulu, I believe. You belong to kwaZulu, the Bantustan of the Zulu.
nxumalo: I was born at the farm Vrymeer. I have taught in the University of Zululand, but Vrymeer is my home.
scheepers: Nevertheless, you are a citizen of kwaZulu and must eventually make your residence there. That is the law.
nxumalo: So as a citizen of South Africa
scheepers: M'Lord, I protest this insulting behavior.
broodryk: Let him make his point.
nxumalo: As a citizen of South Africa, I automatically become a citizen of Africa the continent, and as a citizen of Africa, I am obligated to behave as a citizen of the world.
scheepers: With allegiance to Communist Russia.
nxumalo: With allegiance to the total human race. It is because I want to share ideas with them that I advocate the learning of English.
scheepers: Then our language is not good enough for you?
nxumalo: I speak your language, and it is certainly good enough for communication with Pretoria and Cape Town. But, your Honor, it is not understood in Paris or Madrid or Rio de Janeiro, and on certain occasions we require to speak with them, also.
As the trial droned on, with only such flimsy evidence as might have been appropriate in a public school if some obstreperous scholar had misbehaved, Saltwood began to realize that in this courtroom the real culprit was never mentioned. Daniel Nxumalo was being prosecuted not for what he had done but because his brother Jonathan in Mocambique was a thorn. Since Prosecutor Scheepers never charged 'You are guilty, Daniel Nxumalo, because your brother is a revolutionary,' Philip had to assume that the state had no proof of complicity; and because Judge Broodryk did not thunder 'We are going to imprison you, Daniel Nxumalo, because we can't get at your brother,' Philip supposed that the state wished this aspect of their case to be smothered. But that Daniel was being attacked because of Jonathan, there could be no doubt.
And that raised a fascinating point, which Philip contemplated many times as the trial progressed: Daniel did receive Jonathan in his house in Venloo. He did conspire with him, in a manner of speaking. Is he not guilty if one accepts South African law? And when that rhetorical question had to be answered affirmatively, an even more perplexing one presented itself: I was there that night. I was at the clandestine meeting in Soweto. Am I not also guilty of conspiracy? When he first acknowledged this question, he was looking at Judge Broodryk, and it occurred to him with horror that on the facts, the judge would be justified in sentencing him, Philip, to imprisonment. Thus, at unexpected moments, the visitor to South Africa found the realities being driven home, and it was as a condemned man that Saltwood listened to the final two days of a trial in which he had subtly become a co-defendant.
This sense of unspecified doom intensified when Mr. and Mrs. Frikkie Troxel, accompanied by their cousin Jopie, entered the courtroom to hear the concluding testimony against their neighbor, the son of Moses Nxumalo. Arrival of these two distinguished athletes caused approving smiles, and Judge Broodryk welcomed them to this court. They sat not with Philip