The South African census distinguished between the various racial groups, the Cape-coloured and other mixed breeds'. These were not, as one might believe, the progeny of white settlers and the indigenous tribes, but were rather the remnants of the Khoisan tribes, the Hottentots and Bushmen and Damaras, together with descendants of Asiatic brought out to the Cape of Good Hope slaves who had been in the ships of the Dutch East India Company.
Taken together they were an attractive people, useful and productive members of a complex society. They tended to be small-boned and light-skinned with almond eyes in faintly oriental features. They were cheerful, clever and quickwitted, fond of pageant and carnival and music, dextrous and willing workers, good Christians or devout Muslims.
They had been civilized in Western European fashion for centuries and had lived in close and amiable association with the whites since the days of slavery.
The Cape was their stronghold and they were better off than most other coloured groups. They had the vote, albeit on a separate roll from the whites, and many of them, as skilled craftsmen and small traders, had achieved a standard of living and affluence surpassing that of many of their white neighbours. However, the majority of them were domestic servants or urban labourers surviving just above or below subsistence level. These people now became the subject of Dr Daniel Malan's attempts to enforce segregation in the Cape as well as every other corner of the land.
Hertzog and Smuts were fully aware that many of their own followers sympathized with the Nationalists, and that to oppose them rigidly might easily bring down the delicate coalition of their United Party. Reluctantly they put together a counter-proposal, for residential segregation, which would disrupt the delicate social balance as little as possible and which, while making law a situation which already existed, would appease their own party and cut the ground from under the Nationalist opposition's feet.
We aim to peg the present position, General Jan Smuts explained, and a week after this explanation a large orderly crowd of coloured people, joined by many liberal whites, gathered in the Greemnarket Square in the centre of Cape Town peaceably to protest against the proposed legislation.
Other organizations, the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress, the Trotsky National Liberation League and the African Peoples Organization, scented blood in the air and their members swelled the ranks of the gathering, while in the front row centre, right under the hastily erected speakers stand, auburn hair shining and grey-blue eyes flashing with righteous ardour, stood Tara Malcomess. At her side, but slightly below her level, was Hubert Langley, backed by a group of Huey's sociology students from the University. They stared up at the speaker, enthralled and enchanted.
This fellow is very good, Hubert whispered. I wonder why we have never heard of him before. He is from the Transvaal, one of his students had overheard and leaned across to explain. One of the top men in the African National Congress on the Witwatersrand. Hubert nodded. Do you know his name? Gama, Moses Gama. Moses, the name suits him, the one to lead his people out of captivity., Tara thought that she had seldom seen a finer-looking man, black or white. He was tall and lean, with the fare of a young pharaoh, intelligent, noble and fierce.
We live in time of sorrow and great danger, Moses Gama's voice had a range and timbre that made Tara shiver involuntarily. A time that was foreseen in the Book of Proverbs., He paused and then spread his hands in an eloquent gesture as he quoted. There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords and there jaw teeth as knives to devour the poor from the earth, and the needy from among men. d again.
That's magnificent! Tara shivered again. MY friends, we are the poor and the needy. When each of us stands alone we are weak, alone we are the prey for those with teeth like swords. But together we can be strong.
if we stand together, we can resist them. Tara joined in the applause, clapping until the palms of her hands were numb, and the speaker stood calmly waiting for silence. Then he went on, The world is like a great pot of oil slowly heating. When it boils over there will be turmoil and steam and it will feed the fire beneath it. The flames will fly up to the sky and afterwards nothing will be the same again. The world we know will be altered for ever, and only one thing is certain, as certain as the rise of tomorrows sun. The future belongs to the people, and Africa belongs to the Africans. Tara found she was weeping hysterically as she clapped and screamed her adulation.
After Moses Gama, the other speakers were dull and halting and she was angry with their ineptitude, but when she looked for him in the crowd Moses Gama had disappeared.
A man like him dare not stay too long in one place, Hubert explained. They have to move like the will o' the wisp to keep ahead of the police. A general never fights in the front line. They are too valuable to the revolution to be used as cannon-fodder. Lenin only returned to Russia after the fighting was over. But we will hear of Moses Gama again mark my words. Around them the crowd was being marshalled to form up into a procession behind a band, a fifteen-piece marching band, any gathering was an excuse for the Cape-coloured people to make music, and in ranks four and five abreast the demonstration began to snake out of the square. The band played 'Alabama', setting a festive mood, and the crowd was laughing and singing; it seemed a parade rather than a demonstration.
We will be peaceful and orderly, the organizers reinforced their previous orders, passing them down the column. No trouble, we want no trouble with the police. We are going to march to the Parliament building and hand a petition to the prime minister. There were two or three thousand in the procession, more than they had hoped for. Tara marched in the fifth rank just behind Dr Goollarn Gool and his daughter Cissie and the other coloured leaders.
With the band leading them, they turned into Adderley Street, the main city thoroughfare. As they marched up towards the Parliament building, the ranks of the procession were swelled by the idlers and the curious, so that as their leaders attempted to turn into Parliament Lane, they were followed by a column of five thousand, a quarter of a mile long, almost half of whom were there for the fun and the excitement, rather than from any political motives.
At the entrance to Parliament Lane a small detachment of police was waiting for them. The road had been barricaded, and there were more police armed with batons and sjamboks, those long black whips of hippohide, being held in reserve further up the road in front of the fence of castiron palings which protected the Parliament building.
The procession came to a ragged halt at the police barrier and Dr Gool signalled the band to silence, then went forward to parley with the white police inspector commanding the detail while the photographers and reporters from local newspapers crowded around them to record the negotiations.
I wish to present a petition to the prime minister on behalf of the coloured people of the Cape Province, Dr Gool began.
Dr Gool, you are conducting an unlawful assembly and I must ask you to get your people to disperse, the police inspector countered. None of his men had been issued with firearms and the atmosphere was almost friendly. One of the trumpet-players blew a loud raspberry and the inspector smiled at the insult and wagged his finger like a schoolmaster at the culprit; the crowd laughed. This was the kind of paternal treatment which everybody understood.
Dr Gool and the inspector haggled and argued in a goodnatured fashion, undeterred by pleasantries from the wags in the crowd, until finally a parliamentary messenger was sent for. Dr Gool handed him the petition and then returned to address the procession.