'Unless they are opposed, my friends, they will create of this lovely land a desolation and an abomination; a land devoid of compassion, of justice, a land materially and spiritually bankrupt." Moses Gama spread his arms. 'These men call those of us who defy them traitors. Well, my friends, I call any man who does not oppose them a traitor - a traitor to Africa." He was silent then, glaring this accusation at them, and they were struck dumb for a moment, before they began to cheer him. Only Tara remained still in the uproar, staring up at him, she had no voice, and she was shivering as though there was malaria in her blood.
Moses' head sank until his chin was on his chest, and they thought he had finished. Then he raised that magnificent head again and spread his arms.
'Oppose them? How do we oppose them? I reply to you - we oppose them with all our strength and all our resolve and with all our hearts.
If no price is too high for them to pay, then no price is too high for us. I tell you, my friends, there is nothing --' He paused for emphasis '--nothing I would not do to further the struggle. I am prepared both to die and to kill for it." The room was silent in the face of such deadly resolve. For those of them who were practitioners of elegant, socialist dialectic, the effete intellectuals, such a declaration was menacing and disquieting, it had the sound of breaking bones in it and the stench of freshspilled blood.
'We are ready to make a beginning, my friends, and already 'our plans are far advanced. Starting in a few months' time we will conduct a nationwide campaign of defiance against these monstrous apartheid laws. We will burn th passes which we are ordered by act of parliament to carry, the hated dompas which is akin to the star that the Jews were forced to wear, the document that marks us as racial inferiors. We will make a bonfire of them and the smoke of their burning will sting and offend the nostrils of the civilized world.
We will sit in the whites-only restaurants and cinemas, we will ride in the whites-only coaches of the railways, and swim from the whites, only beaches. We will cry out to the fascist police, Come! Arrest us.
And in our thousands we will overflow the white man's jails and block his law courts with our multitudes until the whole giant apparatus of apartheM breaks down under the strain." Tara lingered afterwards as he had asked her to, and when Molly had seen most of her guests leave, she came and took Tara's arm. 'Will you risk my spaghetti Bolognaise, Tara dear? As you know, I'm the worst cook in Africa, but you are a brave girl." Only a half dozen of the guests had been invited to remain for a late dinner and they sat out on the patio.
The mosquitoes whined around their heads and every once in a while a shift of the wind brought a sulphurous whiff from the sewerage works across the Black River. It did not seem to spoil their appetites and they tucked into Molly's notorious spaghetti Bolognaise and washed it down with tumblers of cheap red wine. Tara found it a relief from the elaborate meals that were served at Weltevreden, accompanied always by the quasi-religious ceremony of tasting wines that cost a working man's monthly wage for the bottle. Here food and wine were merely fuel to power the mind and tongue, not for gloating over.
Tara sat beside Moses Gama. Although his appetite was hearty, he hardly touched the tumbler of wine. His table manners were African. He ate noisily with an open mouth, but strangely this did not offend Tara in the least. Somehow it confirmed his differentness, marked him as a man of his own people.
At first Moses gave most of his attention to the other guests, replying to the questions and comments that were called down the table to him. Then gradually he concentrated on Tara, at first, including her in his general conversation, and at last, when he had finished eating, turning in his chair to face her fully and lowering his voice to exclude the others.
'I know your family,' he told ler. 'Know them well, Mrs Centaine Courtney and more especially your husband, Shasa Courtney." Tara was startled. 'I have never heard them speak of you." 'Why would they do so? In their eyes I was never important. They would have forgotten me long ago." 'Where did you know them and when?" 'Twenty years ago. Your husband was still a child. I was a bossboy, a supervisor on the H'am diamond mine in South West Africa." 'The H'am,' Tara nodded. 'Yes, the fountainhead of the Courtney fortune." 'Shasa Courtney was sent by his mother to learn the workings of the mine. He and I were together for a few weeks, working side by side--' Moses broke off and smiled. 'We got along well, as well as a black man and a little white baas ever could, I suppose. We talked a great deal, and he gave me a book. Macaulay's History of England. I still have it. I recall how some of the things I said puzzled and disturbed him. He told me once, "Moses, that is politics. Blacks don't take part in politics. That's white men's business."' Moses chuckled at the memory, but Tara frowned.
'I can hear him say it,' she agreed. 'He hasn't changed much in twenty years,' and Moses stopped laughing.
'Your husband has become a powerful man. He has great wealth and influence." Tara shrugged. 'What good is power and wealth unless it is used with wisdom and compassion." 'You have compassion, Tara,' he said softly. 'Even if I did not know of the work that you do for my people, I would sense it in you." Tara lowered her eyes from his smouldering regard.
'Wisdom." His voice sank even lower. 'I think you have that also.
It was wise not to speak of our last meeting in front of others." Tara's head came up and she stared at him. In the evening's excitement she had almost forgotten their encounter in the forbidden corridors of parliament.
'Why?" she whispered. 'Why were you there?" 'One day I may tell you,' he replied. 'When we have become friends." 'We are friends,' she said, and he nodded.
'Yes, I think we are friends, but friendships have to be tried and proven. Now, tell me about your work, Tara." 'It's so very little that I am able to do ' and she told him about the clinic and the feeding scheme for the children and the old people, unconscious of her own enthusiasm and animation until he smiled again.
'I was right, you do have compassion, Tara, enormous compassion. I would like to see this work. Is it possible?" 'Oh, would you come - that would be marvelous!" Molly brought him out to the clinic the following afternoon.
The clinic was on the southern edge of the black township of Nyanga - the name meant 'dawn' in the Xhosa language, but was hardly apt. Like most black townships it comprised row upon row of identical brick cottages with asbestos sheet roofs separated by dusty lanes; although aesthetically ugly and uninspiring, the accommodation was adequate and offered reticulated water, mains sewerage and electricity.
However, beyond the township proper, in the bushy dune country of the Cape Flats, had sprung up a shanty town that housed the overflow of black migrants from the impoverished rural areas, and Tara's clinic found its main clientele amongst these wretches.
Proudly Tara led Moses and Molly around the small building.
'Being the weekend, none of our volunteer doctors are here today,' she explained and Moses stopped to chat with the black nurses and with some of the motKers waiting patiently with their small children in the yard.
Afterwards she made coffee for all three of them in her tiny office and when Moses asked how the clinic was financed, Tara told him vaguely.