'Your words are cruel and blasphemous,' she whispered, torn by her love for him and her instinctive rejection of what he had just said.
'And yet your reaction proves their truth,' he said.
'But --' she paused, reluctant to ask, and fearful to hear his reply, 'but are you saying that we should use our children --' She broke off, and an image of the paediatric section of the hospital came into her mind. She had spent the happiest months of all her training amongst the little ones. 'Are you suggesting that you would use the children in the front line of the struggle - as soldiers?" 'If a child cannot grow up a free man, then he might as well die as a child,' Moses Gama said. 'Victoria, you have heard me say this before. It is time now that you learn to believe it. There is nothing I would not do, no price I would not pay, for our victory. If I have to see a thousand little children dead so that a hundred thousand more may live to grow up free men, then for me the bargain is a fair one." Then, for the very first time in her life, Victoria Dinizulu was trul' afraid.
That night they stayed at Hendrick Tabaka's house in Drake's Farn Township, and it was well after midnight before they could go to th small bedroom that had been set aside for them because there were many who demanded Moses' attention, men from the Buffaloes and the Mineworkers' Union, a messenger from the council of the AN( and a dozen petitioners and supplicants who came quietly as jackak, to the lion when the word flashed through the township that Mose, Gama had returned.
At all these meetings Victoria was present, although she nevei spoke and sat quietly in a corner of the room. At first the men .were surprised and puzzled, darting quick glances across at her and reluctant to come to their business until Moses pressed them. None of them was accustomed to having women present when serious matters were discussed. However, none of them could bring themselves to protest, until the ANC messenger came into the room. He was invested with all the power and importance of the council he represented, and so he was the first to speak about Victoria's presence.
'There is a woman here,' he said.
'Yes,' Moses nodded. 'But not just a woman, she is my wife." 'It is not fitting,' said the messenger. 'It is not the custom. This is men's business." 'It is our purpose and our aim to tear down and burn the old customs and to build up the new. In that endeavour we will need the help of all our people. Not just the men, but the women and children also." There was a long silence while the messenger fidgeted under Moses' dark unrelenting stare.
'The woman can remain,' he capitulated at last.
'Yes,' Moses nodded. 'My wife will remain." Later in the darkness of their bedroom, in the narrowness of the single bed, Victoria pressed close to him, the soft plastic curves of her body conforming to his hardness and she said: 'You have honoured me by making me a part of your struggle.
Like the children, I want to be a soldier. I have thought about it and I have discovered what I can do." 'Tell me,' he invited.
'The women. I can organize the women. I can begin with the nurses of the hospital, and then the other women - all of them. We must take our part in the struggle beside the men." His arms tightened around her. 'You are a lioness,' he said. 'A beautiful Zulu lioness." 'I can feel your heartbeat,' she whispered, 'and my own heart beats in exact time to it." In the morning Moses drove her to the nurses' home at the hospital. She stood at the top of the steps and did not go into the building. He watched her in the rear-view mirror as he drove away and she was still standing there when he turned into the traffic, heading back towards Johannesburg and the suburb of Rivonia.
He was one of the first to arrive at Puck's Hill that morning to attend the council meeting to which the previous night's messenger had summoned him.
Marcus Archer met Moses on the verandah, and his smile was vitriolic as he greeted him. 'They say a man is incomplete until he marries - and only then is he finished." There were two men already seated at the long table in the kitchen which had always been used as their council chamber. They were both white men.
Brain Fischer was the scion of an eminent Afrikaner family whose father had been a judge-president of the Orange Free State. Though he was an expert on mining law, and a QC at the Johannesburg bar, he had also been a member of the old Communist Party and was a member of the ANC, and lately his practice had become almost entirely the defence of those accused under the racial laws that the Nationalist government had enacted since 1948. Although he was a charming and erudite man with a real concern for his countrymen of all races, Moses was wary of him. He was a starry-eyed believer in the eventual miraculous triumph of good over evil, and firmly opposed the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military branch of the ANC. His pacifist influence on the rest of the Congress set a brake on Moses' aspirations.
The other white man was Joe Cicero, a Lithuanian immigrant.
Moses could guess why he had come to Africa - and who had sent him. He was one of the eagles, fierce hearted as Moses was himself, and an ally when the need for direct and even violent action was discussed. Moses went to sit beside him, across the table from Fischer. He would need Joe Cicero's support this day.
Marcus Archer, who loved to cook, set a plate of devilled kidneys and oenœs ranchero in front of him, but before Moses had finished his breakfast, the others began to arrive. Nelson Mandela and his faithful ally Tambo, arrived together, followed quickly by Walter Sisulu and Mbeki and the others, until the long table was crowded and cluttered with papers and dirty plates, with coffee cups and ashtrays which were soon overflowing with crushed cigarette butts.
The air was thick with tobacco smoke and Marcus's cooking aromas, and the talk was charged and serious as they tried to decide and agree exactly what were the objects of the defiance campaign.
'We have to stir the awareness of our people, to shake them out of their dumb cowlike acceptance of oppression." Mandela put the premier proposition, and across from him Moses leaned forward.
'More important, we must awaken the conscience of the rest of the world, for that is the direction from which our ultimate salvation will come." 'Our own people--' Mandela began, but Moses interrupted him.
'Our own people are powerless without weapons and training. The forces of oppression ranged against us are too powerful. We cannot triumph without arms." 'You reject the way of the peace then?" Mandela asked. 'You presuppose that freedom can only be won at the point of the gun?" 'The revolution must be tempered and made strong in the blood of the masses,' Moses affirmed. 'That is always the way." 'Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" Brain Fischer held up his hand to stop them. 'Let us return to the main body of the discussion. We agree that by our campaign of defiance we hope to stir our own people out of their lethargy and to attract the attention of the rest of the world.
Those are our two main objects. Let us now decide on our secondary objects." 'To establish the ANC as the only true vehicle of liberation,' Moses suggested. 'At present we have less than seven thousand members, but by the end of the campaign we should aim to have enrolled one hundred thousand more." To this there was general agreement, even Mandela and Tambo nodded and when the vote was taken it was unanimous and they could go on to discuss the details of the campaign.
It was a massive undertaking, for it was planned that the campaign should be nationwide and that it hould be conducted simultaneously in every one of the main centres of the Union of South Africa so as to place the utmost strain on the resources of the government and to test the response of the forces of law and order.
'We must fill their gaols until they burst. We must offer ourselves up for arrest in our thousands until the machinery of tyranny breaks down under the strain,' Mandela told them.