He spoke to me and Zan about it this morning over breakfast. He is very bitter: disillusioned. He says he has sunk millions of rand into the Mail over the years and no one is giving him any credit for that. He is a businessman first and always has been and no one can hide from the fact that the Mail’s numbers don’t add up. When P.W. Botha first came to power ten years ago saying he would change things, Neels was optimistic. But now he says he is pretty sure that the country is going to go up in flames in a couple of years and there’s nothing he can do about it. The police are getting ever more brutal, but so are the blacks. Bombs, necklacings, schoolchildren rioting, the Zulus and the UDF killing each other, his brother’s murder. The spiral of violence that he had hoped to avoid has started and it’s going to end in the most God-awful bloodshed. It’s time to quit.
He directed most of this to Zan, and she listened sympathetically, although I could see she wasn’t convinced. For a moment I almost felt sorry for him. But he deserves all this blame! He’s right, things do look bad with the State of Emergency and the rioting, but this is when his country needs people like him the most.
And there’s the bimbo. I know I don’t have any evidence, but I know she exists. I just know it. It explains everything.
After breakfast Zan and Neels decided they would go for a long walk up into the mountains. I watched them go, two tall energetic figures cutting through the thin layer of mist hovering a couple of feet above the ground among the golden vine leaves. They left their footsteps in the dew glistening on the lawn. It’s three o’clock now and they are still out. Part of me feels a little jealous of Zan; she is taking on the role that I should have, supporting my husband in his hour of difficulty.
Neels has announced that he is going to Durban and then on to Philadelphia next week, to work on the Herald deal. I’ll be glad to have him gone, believe me. One of his bankers is coming to dinner with the Pellings tonight. I will do my wifely duty.
July 3
Had the Pellings over to dinner last night with Neels’s banker. Zan was there and behaved herself welclass="underline" she looks stunning with her tan and her beaded hair and she impressed Graham Pelling. I played the perfect hostess.
Actually, I’m not bad at entertaining, especially for small groups. Neels does it a lot, and we get an interesting bunch of people, most of whom are very friendly. When we were first married in the seventies we used to invite some of the leading radicals, white and black, but nowadays they are all in prison or banned from meeting other people or just too suspicious. Then there are the academics from Stellenbosch University who are quite amusing and so gossipy. There’s one of them I particularly like, a professor of journalism of all things, called Daniel Havenga. He’s a funny-looking man: he’s probably only forty-five but he has a shock of prematurely white hair, a little round face with a beard, wicked brown eyes and little ears that stick out at right-angles from his head. He refers to Stellenbosch as “hanky-panky town,” and if half of what he tells us over the dinner table is true, the name is justified. Although none of them talk to us about their support for apartheid, I think several are members of the Broederbond, including Daniel.
I asked Neels once whether he was a brother, and he assured me he wasn’t. I believe him, but then the whole point of a secret society is that you’re not supposed to admit to being a member. I remember when my friend Nancy discovered her father was a freemason when she was twelve it freaked her out. From what I can make out it is the Broederbond who come up with all the apartheid regime’s bright ideas, so it is highly unlikely that Neels would be part of that. I bet they’d love to have him, though.
We all talked about how important the press is, even in these days of ever more draconian restrictions on what newspapers can report, and then Neels mentioned in confidence that he might be forced to sell his South African papers. He did it very welclass="underline" Graham seemed interested. They talked by themselves after dinner and Neels thinks that Graham might bite. He would make a good owner and with all those gold mines he’s got the cash. Perhaps he’d take the Mail as well?
The banker was black! Oh, my God, can you stand it? We were, I hope, able to treat the man like a normal human being. The poor guy’s name is Benton, and he has to do some kind of work on Neels’s South African newspapers. He’s stuck in an “integrated” hotel in Cape Town but Neels has assigned him a driver to take him wherever he wants. In practice that’s just going to be back and forth to the office.
It was so good to talk to another American, especially just before Independence Day. He seems like a really nice guy, more widely read than most of the investment bankers I’ve come across, and smart too. He’s read all the Latin American literature I like — he said the new Isabel Allende is really good, and he’s just read Nadine Gordimer. He lives in Greenwich Village. Apparently, it’s been hit hard by AIDS; it’s like a ghost town. At least that’s one problem South Africa doesn’t have to worry about.
I feel sorry for the poor man, beavering away at work on the Fourth of July. Maybe I’ll bake some of my chocolate-chip cookies and leave him a care package at his hotel.
But what will I use for the chocolate chips? I’ve still got some Toll House left, but they are made by Nestlé, and I’ve started boycotting them again. I read the other day that they are still trying to sell baby formula to African mothers who can easily use breast milk instead. You would have thought with all the fuss over the years they would have stopped that by now. I might have to slice the chocolate by hand. Perhaps Zan will help me, just like she used to when she was a little girl.
July 4
Independence Day. How I wish I was in America today, without Neels. I delivered the cookies to Benton’s hotel. I hope he likes them.
Zan announced that she’s going back to Jo’burg today for a couple of days. I think it’s got something to do with the End Conscription Campaign, but she wasn’t very forthcoming. I didn’t ask. I’ve asked her about the Black Sash movement, but she won’t tell me anything about it other than it’s an organization for white women opposed to apartheid. I think she still doesn’t trust me. Which is understandable, I guess.
There was a massive bomb blast on Saturday, outside Ellis Park rugby stadium. There was a match going on inside; the papers are amazed that only two people died. It does kind of underline Neels’s point about how the country is falling apart. But I’m not sure we should run away.
July 5
Just got back from dinner with Benton Davis. He sent me a sweet note about the cookies Zan and I baked for him, so I called him and suggested we meet. Benton didn’t want to leave his hotel, so we ate in the dining room. Neels is in Durban tonight, trying to figure out what to do with the Durban Age. Alone, I hope, but of course I have no way of knowing.
Unsurprisingly, Benton can’t stand this country. He says the worst thing isn’t just all the little rules discriminating against blacks, the separate toilets and so on. Those are vile, but he was expecting that. It is the way the white people look at him, a tall black man dressed in an expensive suit. He says the reactions vary: there’s fear, there’s hatred, there’s shock and there’s contempt on their faces. The one response that he can handle is astonishment. That’s what makes it worthwhile.