For the third and then the fourth time, Tom Stillwell of the Times of Pharamaul read the handout from the Information Division of the Government Secretariat. The Information Division had recently redesigned its notepaper, and the emblem at the top, under a sculptured profile of the President, carried the motto: Strength Through Truth.
Summoning all his strength, Tom Stillwell reread the truth:
‘It is officially announced that former Prime Minister Murumba, who was arrested on suspicion of plotting against the State, has died of heart failure while in police custody.
He was aged 72, and had been under doctor’s care for some months. It is understood that before his death he made a full confession of all his crimes.’
Alone in his modest sweat box of an office, with the telephone silent and only distant noises coming from the newsroom down the corridor, Tom Stillwell thought for a full hour before he did anything. Then, having weighed all the chances he could foresee, and dismissed all the alternatives save one, he put a piece of foolscap, and two carbons, into his typewriter, and flexed his stubby fingers over the keys.
He typed – experimentally, because it was not quite what he wanted to say – ‘A truthful good morning to all lying murderers!’ Then he continued typing, with long pauses, for nearly two pages – seven hundred words.
When he had finished, and reread, and altered, and approved, he put the original of what he had written into his desk drawer, the second copy in his inside pocket, and the top copy, with a few words added in longhand, into an envelope. He addressed this to an old friend, a drinking pal of many years’ standing, George Maginnis. Underneath he typed the address: ‘Rand Daily Mail, 174 Main Street, Johannesburg.’
He looked at his watch, and found it was eleven-fifteen. Forty-five minutes – just right … He called out to Maria, his secretary next door: ‘I’m going out. I’ll be back after lunch.’ Then he got his car from the parking place at the rear of the press room, and drove out to the airport.
He was looking for another old friend, and he found him; an airline pilot taking his ease with a cup of coffee in a corner of the restaurant. The pilot had a flight bag and a thick folder of papers on the table in front of him. He looked ready to go.
‘Hello, Jock,’ said Stillwell.
‘Hello, Tom! Long time no see!’ The pilot, who was big and burly and suntanned, waved a gold-ringed arm. ‘Take a pew. Have a coffee.’
Stillwell shook his head. ‘I can’t stop, I’m afraid. Are you off at twelve?’
‘As per usual.’
Stillwell pulled out his envelope, and laid it on the table. ‘I’ve missed the post with this,’ he said, ‘and it’s important. Do me a big favour, and drop it off in Johannesburg.’
‘Now then, now then!’ the pilot answered, in mock alarm. ‘You know the regs, Mr Stillwell, as well as I do. Private carriage of mails – defrauding the Post Office – penalty of fifty pounds for the first offence.’
‘I’ll buy you a drink when you get back.’
‘A drink, he says!’ The pilot picked up the envelope and read the address. ‘Rand Daily Mail, eh? Are you writing for them now?’
‘Now and then.’
‘I wish I had time to write,’ said the pilot. ‘Money for old rope, if you ask me.’ He slipped the letter into his breast pocket. ‘OK, me boy! Will do.’
‘Thanks a lot, Jock. You won’t forget it, will you? It is important.’
‘You sound just like my wife,’ said the pilot, ‘but she’s prettier, thank God. Don’t you fret yourself. I’ll deliver it in person, on the way into Jo’burg.’
‘Thanks again.’
‘I’ll be taking that drink as well!’
Tom Stillwell lunched very well at the Port Victoria Club, though he kept his solitude at a side table, since the only people he seemed to know nowadays were the shrunken Splinter Woodcock gang, whom he could not stomach, and the staunch supporters of the National Party, who – whether they were politicians or civil servants – seemed to move and talk and react under a parallel, bunkered hypnosis. Everyone else was in gaol – or, now, dead.
Over coffee, a man who was something in the Public Works Department asked him, with a kind of gleeful curiosity: ‘Did you hear about Murumba?’ and he answered: ‘Yes, I’m afraid I did. Prime Minister Murumba was a friend of mine,’ and the man said, with the same sort of interior satisfaction: ‘That’s what happens when you go against Government.’
Not in Yorkshire, my friend, Stillwell thought; not in Canada, not in Barbados, not in Norway … Then, after one more brandy than he had ever drunk at lunchtime on a working day, he went back to his office.
Once there, he took the original of his leading artide from the desk drawer, and sent it along to the composing room. Then he waited; and while he did so, he placed – against himself, the only taker – a very large bet that the next man to come in would be poor old Henshaw, still the chief sub-editor and still the spongy buffer zone between editor and print shop.
After a long delay, poor old Henshaw did indeed shuffle in; as glum as ever, a walking example of the Man Least Likely to Succeed, and bearing in his hand the two foolscap sheets which Tom Stillwell, half an hour earlier, had sent down to that sensitive area, the compositors’ lair itself.
‘It’s more trouble,’ said Henshaw, and sniffed. ‘This time, I must say, you can’t really blame ’em. It’s this here leader, Mr Stillwell.’
‘What about it?’
‘They won’t set it up, that’s what. Joshua Malabar says–’
‘All right,’ Stillwell cut him off curtly. ‘If they won’t, they won’t. Just forget about it.’
It was the most surprising thing that Henshaw had ever heard his editor say. He searched for a clue. ‘You mean, you’re going to rewrite it?’
‘Not on your life! I’ll spike it.’
‘Spike it! But, Mr Stillwell! You wrote it, didn’t you? Don’t you mind at all?’
‘Yes. I mind.’
‘Then don’t you want to see the lads?’
‘Not this time. I know damn well it wouldn’t do any good.’
‘What about the leader, then?’
‘Leave the column blank.’ By the look on his crumpled-walnut face, Henshaw was becoming sadly confused, and Tom Stillwell spelled it out for him, gently and firmly. ‘Print the official handout about Murumba as it came in. Give it a box on the front page. But no other comment, and no follow-up. Then leave my first leader blank.’
‘But what’s it all mean, Mr Stillwell?’
‘It means I’ve had enough, lad.’ Tom Stillwell, rising to his feet, smiled at the old, forlorn ruin opposite him. ‘I’ll tell you something I worked out this morning. I’m not claiming it’s original.’ He drew a deep breath: a long sigh for Pharamaul, for lunchtime brandy, for the crash of many public and private hopes. ‘It’s never too late to wake up – that’s what I worked out. It’s never too late to realize when they’re making a right tit out of you. Once you can swallow that, everything else is easy.’
It was one of those marvellous, pearly African mornings, when the assured and confident sun chose to rise slowly and gently, setting the eastern ocean well aglow before it went to work on the dewy cobwebs of the island itself. The small house which had been Tom Stillwell’s home for more than ten years also came to life slowly and gently, with a wisp of blue smoke from the stoked-up kitchen stove, and a muffled alarm bell from a bedside clock, and the sound of running water, and then a whining creak as the front door opened.
Tom Stillwell, in his rumpled pyjamas, came out on to the polished red stoep just as the expected paper boy trotted up the garden path.
The boy, a small sharp capitalist who ran his paper round as tautly as if he were studying to be a cost accountant, grinned up at him as he reached the steps.
‘Papers, barena.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Tuppence extra for last week. Colour supplement.’
‘I’ll leave it out for you.’
‘Thank you, barena.’
He ran off again towards his laden bicycle, while Tom Stillwell sat down on the swing seat and unfolded the newspapers. There were two of them, as usual – his own Times of Pharamaul, and the Rand Daily Mail, which came in every day on the plane from Windhoek.
He took up the Times first. This was an important hour – perhaps the most important hour of his life – and he wanted to relish it before it fled for ever. He saw within a moment that Henshaw had done his job properly. There on the front page, neatly boxed in, was the bald announcement of Prime Minister Murumba’s death; and there, inside, was the accusing blank space, two whole columns long and wide, which should have held his own leader, which should have said something important about this undoubted crime.
In his own newspaper, he had been silenced, and the crime was passed off as innocent truth. But the other paper had spoken up for him. Friend George Maginnis of the Rand Daily Mail had really done him proud.
The Mail gave prominence to the official death announcement, as a news item, and underneath had added: ‘See Editorial Comment, p. 12.’ On page 12, there was a short italicized lead: ‘We are glad to reprint, from the Times of Pharamaul, Editor Thomas Stillwell’s comments on the circumstances surrounding Prime Minister Murumba’s death.’
Then there was a nicely-spread headline:
‘Criminal Liars!’
Then came his own leader.
‘On another page, readers will have seen the official announcement of the death in prison of Prime Minister Murumba. We cannot guess what our readers’ reaction will be, but we are strongly aware of our own.
‘It is the duty of this newspaper to rake over the disgusting rubbish contained in this bulletin, and place it under the microscope.
‘It contains four separate and distinct lies.
‘First, that Prime Minister Murumba was arrested “on suspicion of plotting against the State”. This is not true! He was arrested because he would not condone the wasteful display, the corruption, and the tyranny of President Dinamaula’s rule, and he dared to stand up and say that he could not continue in office unless a halt was called to such misconduct. The private defiance earned the public disgrace.
‘Second, that Prime Minister Murumba “died of heart failure while in police custody”. This is not true! Certainly this brave man was in police custody, but he did not die of heart failure. For many months he had been beaten, and tortured, and starved, in an effort to make him confess to non-existent crimes. At the end, still in solitary confinement, he died a broken and abused old man – and it must not be forgotten that, even as these words are read, many of the hundreds of political prisoners who lie rotting in Port Victoria gaol are also being beaten and tortured.
‘Third, that Prime Minister Murumba “had been under doctor’s care for some months”. This is not true! We have sworn evidence from another prisoner, released four days ago, that Chief Murumba was being refused all medical aid.
‘Fourth, that Prime Minister Murumba “made a full confession of all his crimes”. This is not true! Chief Murumba was a man of deep conscience. He would never plot against the State, nor would he confess to crimes which did not exist. For his own stubborn honour he died; and much of the honour of Pharamaul died with him.
‘There is an old proverb in the north of England which runs: “Clogs to clogs in three generations.” Clogs are the shoes of poor people; and the proverb means that unless he behaves honourably and prudently, the grandson of a poor but successful man will throw away all the efforts of his father and his grandfather, will waste the precious past, and will sink back into poverty again.
‘There is a danger, in Pharamaul, that our own proverb, our own epitaph, will be: “Tribe to tribe in three generations,” that the ancient, bloodthirsty tribal rule, which was relaxed by Maula the Great, rejected by his son Simaula, but now revived by his grandson Dinamaula, will lead this country back to the evil times of a hundred years ago, when Pharamaul was an iron-fisted tyranny, when no man could raise his voice against his ruler without spilling his own blood.
‘Many times in the past, this newspaper has spoken out against the creeping dictatorship of the present government of Pharamaul. Now we have been brought face-to-face with our last crossroads.
‘Unless we wish to become, for ever, a nation of what we crudely call rau bachas – tail-waggers, bottom-wavers, wretched slaves fawning upon men whom we have elevated to the status of gods – then it is time to call a halt.
‘We can best do honour to our first political martyr, the late Prime Minister Murumba, by denouncing, bringing to judgment, and punishing the wicked régime which has murdered him!’
He read it with slow satisfaction, and at the end – for all its grim subject matter – he was smiling. He had dealt his best blow, and it had not missed … Presently he walked back into the house, and woke his wife; and when they had drunk their coffee in the early sunshine, they went on with their packing.
The police had a wild and woolly time rounding up copies of the Rand Daily Mail, which was read by a fair-sized élite who wanted to know a little more about the outside world than the Times of Pharamaul had space for. The Mail had disappeared from the news-stands by mid-morning; street sellers were ordered to surrender all their stocks to the nearest police station; and then there began a series of swift raids on private houses, to impound as many copies of this disgusting libel as could be tracked down.
At the Port Victoria Club it was found that some unknown opportunist had already absconded with it. Up at the Palace, it was ceremonially burnt on a garden bonfire. Tom Stillwell himself left his own copy in a prominent position on the front stoep. But by the time the police discovered it, he and his wife were already seated in their Johannesburg plane, waiting for the doors to be closed and taxiing to begin.
There was, at the very end, a moment of exquisite farce. The passenger door of the plane was slammed shut, and then almost immediately opened again. There was some shouting, and a panting policeman appeared inside the aircraft. He walked along the aisle till he came to Tom Stillwell’s seat; then, with a very stern look, he thrust a piece of paper towards him.
‘What’s this?’ Stillwell asked.
‘Deportation order,’ answered the policeman. And as Stillwell made no move to accept it, he shouted: ‘Take it! Take it!’
‘I don’t need a deportation order,’ said Stillwell. ‘I’m leaving of my own accord.’
‘You must take it!’
‘No, thank you.’
‘If you do not take deportation order, you will not be allowed to leave!’
After that, it seemed proper to round off the joke by complying. In flight, sipping an early drink and holding his wife’s hand, he read that his offence was “endangering the safety of the Republic by spreading false rumours”, and that if he ever returned to Pharamaul he would face imprisonment, for up to five years.
While policemen poked through a baffling jungle of files, and secret talks went on, and orders filtered down from the highest in the land, there was no issue of the Times of Pharamaul. Then, after two blank days, it reappeared on the streets and in the shops, as suddenly as it had dropped from sight.
There was a slightly new look to it, principally on the front page, where the masthead now included a head-and-shoulders drawing of President Dinamaula, and underneath a banner with a rather long motto: ‘Total Loyalty! Total Respect! Total Vigilance!’
Its lead story, on the day of its reappearance, was the promulgation of special regulations for newspaper and other conduct, with penalties attached. These new laws were four in number, and quite explicit.
‘There will be no mention of political parties which are now disbanded–
‘There will be no defamation of members of Government –
‘There will be no printing of false statements, rumours, or reports calculated to bring officials into disrepute –
‘Penalty: A fine of £250, or two years’ imprisonment, or both.
‘There will be no statements which cause alarm or hostility–
‘Penalty: Five years’ imprisonment.’
On the centre page, Koffie Sanka, the new editor, had tried his hand at a leading article.
‘Our readers, who are our dearest possessions,’ he began buoyantly, ‘will in future notice many changes in their very own newspaper. The harsh tyranny and ambitious manoeuvres of the former editor have been ended. There will be no more vile rumours, no more stupid criticism of Government. From now onwards, the Times of Pharamaul will be written BY loyal Maulas FOR loyal Maulas!
‘This is a very fine moment to pay our respectful tribute to the greatest Maula of all, our own President. Few may realize that his fame is known far beyond this country. It is not an exaggeration to say that the earth trembles as the Lord Protector speaks!
‘But it must be noted that his greatest love and care is for his own country, and so it is time to sound a warning. So far the Lord Protector has been very patient, in the face of little men who insult him, and bigger men who would like to take his place. So far, the Leopard has rested motionless upon the throne, his haunches not yet flexed, his claws still sheathed!
‘But in face of shameless provocation, this will not always be so! We have printed elsewhere the new laws, based on the laws of our great good neighbour, Sierra Leone, which have been passed so that our rulers may be protected from insults and scandalous attacks.
‘But there can be more than insults! There can be treason! So let all the opposition take warning! If there is treason anywhere, whether in our capital city where the gaol is full of miserable dogs of traitors, or in the north where certain hyenas have taken refuge, it will be hunted down and it will be crushed without mercy!
‘In this our first message, we demand for our Lord Protector all the tributes which you will find on our front page: “Total loyalty! Total respect! Total vigilance!”’