'It is as though he has fastened his eyes upon a distant hilltop, and cannot see anything in between. He speaks only of strange men in distant lands and what do they think or say that concerns us here?" he grumbled to the twins' mother, his only real confidante. 'He is scornful of the money we have made and saved, and says that after the revolution money will have no value. That everything will belong to the people --' Swart Hendrick broke off to think for a moment of his stores and his shebeens, the bakeries and herds of cattle in the reservations which belonged to him, the money in the post office savings book and in the white man's bank, and the cash that he kept hidden in many secret places - some of it even buried under the floor upon which he now sat and drank the good beer brewed by his favourite wife. 'I am not sure that I wish all things to belong to the people,' he muttered thoughtfully.
'The people are cattle, lazy and stupid, what have they done to deserve the things for which I have worked so-long and hard?" 'Perhaps it is a fever. Perhaps your great brother has a worm in his bowel,' his favourite wife suggested. 'I will make a muti for him that will clear his guts and his skull." Swart Hendrick shook his head sadly. He was not at all certain that even one of his wife's devastating laxatives would drive the dark schemes from his brother's head.
!iiz Of course, long ago he had talked and dreamed strange and wi things with his brother. Moses had been young and that was the w of young men, but now the frosts of wisdom were upon Hendrick head, and his belly was round and full, and he had many sons or herds of cattle. He had not truly thought about it before, but he was a man contented. True he was not free - but then he was not su what free really meant. He loved and feared his brother very muc] but he was not sure that he wanted to risk all he had for a word uncertain meaning.
'We must burn down and destroy the whole monstrous system his brother said, but it occurred to Swart Hendrick that in tclass="underline" burning down might be included his stores and bakeries.
'We must goad the land, we must make it wild and ungovernabh like a great stallion, so that the oppressor is hurled to earth from il back,' his brother said, but Hendrick had an uncomfortable irnag of himself and his cosy existence taking that same painful toss.
'The rage of the people is a beautiful and sacred thing, we must le it run free,' Moses said, and Hendrick thought of the people runnin freely through his well-stocked premises. He had also witnessed th rage of the people in Durban during the Zulu rioting, and the vet first concern of every man had been to provide himself with a the suit of clothing and a radio from the looted Indian stores.
'The police are the enemies of the people, they too will perish i the flames,' Moses said, and Hendrick remembered that when the faction fighting between the Zulus and the Xhosas had swept throughout Drake's Farm the previous November, it was the police who hat separated them and prevented many more than forty dead. They hoc also saved his stores from being looted in the uproar. Now Hendrick wondered just who would prevent them killing each other after the police had been burned, and just what day-to-day existence would be like in the townships when each man made his own laws.
Iffowever, Swart Hendrick was ashamed of his treacherous reliet when three days later Moses left Drake's Farm, and moved to the house at Rivonia. Indeed it was Swart Hendrick who had gently pointed out to his brother the danger of remaining when almost everybody in the township knew he had returned, and all day long there was a crowd of idlers in the street hoping for a glimpse of Moses Gama, the beloved leader. It was only a matter of time before the police heard about it through their informers.
The young warriors of Umkhonto we Sizwe willingly acted as Moses' scouts in the weeks that followed. They arranged the meetings, the small clandestine gatherings of the most fierce and bloody-minded amongst their own ranks. After Moses had spoken to them, the smouldering resentments which they felt towards the conservative and pacific leadership of the Congress was ready to burst into open rebellion.
Moses sought out and talked with some of the older members of Congress who, despite their age, were radical and impatient. He met secretly with the cell leaders of his own Buffaloes without the knowledge of Hendrick Tabaka for he had sensed the change in his brother, the cooling of his political passions which had never boiled at the same white heat as Moses' own. For the first time in all the years he no longer trusted him entirely. Like an axe too long in use, Hendrick had lost the keen bright edge, and Moses knew that he must find another sharper weapon to replace him.
'The young ones must carry the battle forward,' he told Vicky Dinizulu. 'Raleigh, and yes, you also, Vicky. The struggle is passing into your hands." At each meeting he listened as long as he spoke, picking up the subtle shifts in the balance of power which had taken place in the years that he had been in foreign lands. It was only then that he realized how much ground he had lost, how far he had fallen behind Mandela in the councils of the African National Congress and the imagination of the people.
'It was a serious error on my part to go underground and leave the country,' he mused. 'If only I had stayed to take my place in the dock beside Mandela and the others --' 'The risk was too great,' Vicky made excuse for him. 'If there had been another judgement - if any of the Boer judges other than Rumpff had tried them, they might have gone to the gallows and if you had gone with them the cause would have died upon the rope with all' of you. You cannot die, my husband, for without you we are children without a father." Moses growled angrily. 'And yet, Mandela stood in the dock and made it a showcase for his own personality. Millions who had never heard his name before, saw his face daily in their newspapers and his words became part of the language." Moses shook his head. 'Simple words: Amandla and Ngawethu, he said, and everyone in the land listened." ' 'They know your name also, and your words, my lord." Moses glared at her. 'I do not want you to try to placate me, woman. We both know that while they were in prison during the trial - and I was in exile - they formally handed over the leadership to Mandela. Even old Luthuli gave his blessing, and since his acquittal Mandela has embarked on a new initiative. I know that he
!:
has been travelling around the country, in fifty different disguis consolidating that leadership. I must confront him, and wrest t leadership back from him very soon, or it will be too late and I be forgotten and left behind." 'What will you do, my lord? How will you unseat him? He riding high now - what can we do?" 'Mandela has a weakness - he is too soft, too placatory towar the Boers. I must exploit that eakness. He said it quietly, but the W was such a fierce light in his eyes that Victoria shivered involuntaril and then with an effort closed her mind against the dark images 1 words had conjured up.
'He is my husband,' she told herself, fervently. 'He is my lord, or whatever he says or does is the truth and the right." The confrontation took place in the kitchen at Puck's Hill. Outsic the sky was pregnant with leaden thunder clouds, dark as bruis that cast an unnatural gloom across the room and Marcus Arche switched on the electric lights that hung above the long table in thei pseudo-antique brass fittings.
The thunder crashed like artillery and rolled heavily back and fort] through the heavens. Outside the lightning flared in brilliant crackling white light and the rain poured from the eaves in a rippling silve curtain across the windows. They raised their voices against tumult uous nature so they were shouting at each other. They were the higt command of Umkhonto we Sizwe, twelve men in all, all of then black except Joe Cicero and Marcus Archer - but only two of theft counted, Moses Gama and Nelson Mandela. All the others wer silent, relegated to the role of observers, while these two, like dominant black-maned lions, battled for the leadership of the pride.