SOUTH AFRICA AND APARTHEID
1
This time the funeral would be different from the others Oscar had attended since arriving in South Africa. This time it would be held at the Soweto football stadium and not at Regina Mundi Catholic Church or St. Paul’s Anglican Church. This time the security police had killed twelve young anti-apartheid activists, shooting them in the back as they fled the scene of a banned demonstration, and those churches were too small to accommodate the number of mourners expected to attend. Each funeral he had gone to as Canada’s official representative had left him heart-sick and he wanted a break from the emotionally draining duty.
“Why don’t you send someone else?” he asked Canada’s ambassador to South Africa, Stuart Henderson. “I’ve covered more than my fair share of these things since I arrived.”
But Henderson, who liked to adopt an avuncular tone when dealing with his staff, did not agree. “Look here, Oscar,” he said. “We’ve had this conversation before. The Department in its wisdom sent you here because it thought that you could do a better job in representing Canada at the funerals of black militants than one of its white diplomats. And now you’re trying to wiggle out of your job when Ottawa has such high expectations for you. So do what you were posted here to do, or get on a plane and go home!”
Ambassador Stuart Henderson was not a career diplomat like most Canadian ambassadors and high commissioners who join the Department as junior officers and work their way through the ranks to the top. He had been a major fundraiser for the party in power in Ottawa just after the war, and as his reward the prime minister posted him to head up, successively, Canada’s consulates in Detroit, Los Angeles, and Chicago. At the end of the fifties, the prime minister sent him as head of post to South Africa as a sort of farewell gift before retirement. When he sent his political ally to South Africa, however, Canada’s leader did not know that Henderson usually accepted as true what the friends he made at the local golf clubs, service clubs, and churches told him, whatever the facts of the matter.
And if he hadn’t had political connections at home, he wouldn’t have lasted long in his new post. Soon after his arrival in Pretoria, he sent a lengthy cable back to the Department that shocked everyone who read it. “The Afrikaners are reasonable people doing reasonable things,” he said in his message. “I know this for a fact because some very nice senior ministers of the government and a pleasant and well-informed gentleman who is head of an organization here with the amusing acronym of BOSS have taken the time to brief me on apartheid over drinks at the country club and at intimate dinners in their homes. I am convinced that the reason so many people outside South Africa condemn apartheid is because they don’t understand the benefits of separate development for South Africa’s blacks, whites, Asians, and coloureds.”
Aghast, the Department recalled him to headquarters and tried to explain to him the iniquities of racism in all its forms. “Don’t rely on government ministers for your information. Get to know the people fighting for their freedom. Stay away from BOSS; it’s the South African Bureau of State Security responsible for torturing and killing political prisoners. And come up with an initiative or two to show Canada’s solidarity with South Africa’s oppressed communities.”
To Henderson’s credit, although he continued to play golf and share meals with his Afrikaner friends, including the gentleman from BOSS, he made an effort to cultivate the people leading the fight against apartheid, although they suspected he was only going through the motions when he professed support for their cause. He even came up with the idea of asking the Department to send, as a sign of solidarity, an officer to the mission to attend the funerals of militants killed by the South African security service. He was disappointed, however, when Ottawa sent Oscar to do the job, since he didn’t like Canadian Indians any more than he did South African blacks, Asians, and coloureds.
The Department and its senior officers expected their juniors to obey their orders without question, and so Oscar assured Ambassador Henderson that he would attend the funeral. But he was deeply unhappy. And not just because of the emotional cost. Some months before, Canada’s prime minister had made two impressive decisions to advance the cause of human rights in Canada and the world. He announced that Canadian Indians would be allowed to vote in federal elections, and he became a leader in the fight to have South Africa expelled from the Commonwealth because of its apartheid policies. But then he ruined everything by getting up in the House of Commons and saying that “there would always be a light in the window” welcoming South Africa back to the civilized world when the time was right. All it had to do was to behave toward its downtrodden peoples with the same just and humane policies followed by Canada in its treatment of its Indian population.
The prime minister’s remarks made Oscar wince. Surely Canada’s leader must have known that the South Africans had modelled their apartheid policy, at least the part providing for the herding of black people into townships and homelands, on Canada’s system of Indian reserves? Surely he must have been aware of the pitiful state of the people on the reserves?
Making him feel worse, despite his best efforts, was the fact that he had made no friends in the anti-apartheid movement. When he made his calls on Anglican bishop Jonathan Tumbula and other black leaders, they had greeted him warily, almost as if they thought he had come to give them lessons on how to deal with oppressive white governments. He did not know that they, in fact, believed his posting was a stunt, devised by Ambassador Henderson to cover up his insincere support for their aspirations.
2
Oscar backed his car out of his garage in a whites-only leafy suburb of Pretoria early on the morning of the funeral and drove through streets lined with purple jacaranda trees and red and pink hibiscus bushes to the motorway to Johannesburg. Before he left Ottawa, perhaps because he had seen so many pictures in National Geographic of smiling khaki-clad bronzed game wardens in national parks and people frolicking in the Indian Ocean surf, he had assumed South Africa would be hot and sunny twelve months of the year. But he had been mistaken. The summers on the veldt were hot and dry interspersed with violent thunderstorms, and the winters, more often than not, were cold and damp. The day he set out for the funeral was one of the bad ones. A steady drizzle was falling, the clouds were low and dark, and the air smelled heavily of coal smoke drifting in from cooking fires in the nearby black townships.
The traffic through Johannesburg was not as bad as he expected, but slowed to a crawl when he started down the road into Soweto. Crowds of people, singing “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika,” the anthem of the banned African National Congress, clogged the way. Oscar had been haunted by the beauty of the song’s melody ever since he heard it at the first funeral he attended. It reminded him of the hymns sung in Chippewa back on the reserve when he was a boy, and he learned the words in English to be able to sing along at funerals.
Lord Bless Africa
May her horn rise high up
Hear Thou our prayers and bless us
Descend, O Holy Spirit,
Descend, O Holy Spirit.
A mile from the stadium, a line of heavily armed police was stopping and turning back traffic. Oscar eased his vehicle off the road, parked on a patch of bare land, and continued on foot. Passing through a police line was usually an ordeal. A sullen police sergeant would study the document issued to him by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs identifying him as one of the several first secretaries on staff at the Canadian embassy, entitled on strict basis of reciprocity to all the rights and privileges as outlined in the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations between states, including but not specifically spelling out his right to live in a leafy whites-only suburb of Pretoria despite his dark-brown skin and black hair and eyes. The policeman would motion Oscar to follow and lead him to a mobile police headquarters and leave him standing outside for an hour, presumably in an attempt to humiliate him, before returning his document and telling him he was free to go.
This time, Oscar seemed to have been expected. An officer stepped forward before he reached the barrier and, brushing aside Oscar’s identity card, said “That won’t be necessary today, sir. Just follow me.” And he escorted him through the lines and saluted him when he said goodbye with what might have been a sarcastic smile. Maybe the police have decided to go easy on the mourners today, Oscar thought. Maybe no one’s going to get hurt afterwards on the way to the cemetery.
Oscar joined the jostling crowd pushing to gain entrance to the stadium, and once inside, made his way to a group of people gathered around a raised platform in the centre of the field.
“Ah, Mr. Wolf,” said Bishop Tumbula, who was to lead the service, “I was afraid you weren’t coming. Unfortunately, it appears that you may have to represent the diplomatic corps today. None of your colleagues has as yet put in an appearance. Perhaps they are afraid things may get out of hand.”
Oscar shook the bishop’s hand and quickly made the rounds, introducing himself to the dozen or more priests and ministers who were to participate in the ceremony, expressing his sympathies to the families of the deceased and saying a few words to people he had met in less public occasions and who belonged to banned organizations. Everyone, except the members of the families of the victims, who did their best to smile, looked through him when they accepted his hand.
3
One week later in his hospital room in Pretoria, Oscar emerged from oblivion with a great headache, his jaw wired shut, his right arm in a cast, and Ambassador Henderson looking at him from a seat beside his bed.
“How are you, Oscar?” the ambassador asked, speaking quickly and coldly, making it clear he just wanted to get an unpleasant task over with as soon as possible. “I guess you can’t talk, so I’ll fill you in. The police brought you here two days ago. They said they found you after the funeral outside some bootlegger shebeen place in Soweto where loose women hang out and where they sell beer. They say you got drunk and fought with the patrons over a woman. They’ve even provided signed affidavits from the proprietor to back up their case. You can just imagine the damage this affair has done to the embassy. Everybody in the country is talking about it. The newspapers, including the South African liberal press, are saying Canada made a colossal mistake in sending a drunk to its embassy in South Africa at such a delicate time. Some enterprising journalist even dug up the press coverage in Colombia and Australia on your escapades during your postings to those countries.
“I’m on your side, of course, as is headquarters, at least publicly, but only because we have to be, only because the good name of Canada is at stake. Back home, the CBC, which always takes the side of the underdog whether justified or not, gave the story lead coverage in its national radio and television news, claiming you had been hard done by. Editorial writers across the country, who have never had anything positive to say about developments in this country, have accused the South Africans of using the same sort of brutality against a Canadian Indian as they use against their black people. The prime minister has defended you in the House of Commons, saying you were set upon by thugs from the South African security service who then concocted a story claiming you had been beaten up in a house of ill-repute. I hope for your sake it turns out he’s right. Now I must go. Someone from the office will drop by to see you every day until you are fit to travel. Then you are going home. The Department has cancelled your posting.”
Oscar saw the ambassador’s lips moving but the ringing in his ears was so loud he couldn’t hear what he was saying. It was evident that he was agitated and angry about something. He was probably upset that one of his first secretaries had been injured. Oscar wasn’t surprised. He had always suspected that under his pompous exterior, Henderson had a big heart.
In the coming days, the staff of the Canadian embassy took turns visiting Oscar, and as the noise in his ears diminished, he learned to his distress that he was the major figure in a diplomatic row between Canada and South Africa. Still not able to remember what had happened, and unable to talk, he could only listen as his colleagues, some in all seriousness, others unable to suppress their laughter, and everyone believing that he was in some way responsible for his own misfortune, did their best to cheer him up.
Disconnected images then began to flash through his mind. He once saw twelve coffins draped in the flag of the African National Congress being borne onto the football field on the shoulders of seventy-two pallbearers. Another time, he was in his car frantically turning the key in the ignition and trying to escape someone or something that was trying to seize him and do him harm. The engine would not start and he got out and raised the hood only to find that the distributor coil was missing and to face the same policeman who had escorted him through the police lines.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” the policeman said, before the scene faded away. And yet another time, he saw coffins being dumped onto the ground with bloody corpses spilling out and people running, and he heard screaming and he smelled tear gas and coal smoke and felt cold rain on his face.
Each day fresh visions appeared: Bishop Tumbula angrily haranguing the crowd before turning and pointing an accusing finger at him as if he were in some way personally responsible for the deaths of the militants; a policeman, armed with a heavy leather whip, beating an old woman until he, Oscar Wolf, intervened, pushing the policeman to the ground and kicking him repeatedly in a blind rage until driven off by other policemen who lashed him with their whips until he outran them and escaped; drinking homemade corn beer in a garishly lit front room of a shebeen and joking and laughing and frolicking around the floor to loud African music with a six-foot-tall, wide-hipped black woman with enormous breasts who had come out of nowhere to sit on his lap.
One week later, the pieces of the puzzle were in place and Oscar remembered what had happened. Pallbearers carried coffins draped with the flags of the African National Congress onto the football grounds as massed choirs of women sang “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.” There were hymns, prayers, and speeches, and the crowd roared. The drizzle became a downpour and the smell of coal smoke became overpowering. Pallbearers hoisted back onto their shoulders the coffins and raised their right arms in clenched salutes before exiting the grounds followed by the clerics, the members of the banned organizations, the people in their thousands, and Oscar Wolf. Policemen forced their way into the crowd to attack the pallbearers and force them to drop the coffins and spill the bodies onto the ground. Fighting broke out and Oscar went to the rescue of an old woman only to be chased back to his car where South African policemen were waiting for him. They punched and kicked him and he fought back, at first holding his own before being overpowered by superior numbers. He broke loose and ran through the streets until he found refuge in a shebeen, where, despite his decision never to touch liquor again, he had a drink, or two or three or four, with someone who reminded him of Anna while he waited for an opportune moment to flee Soweto. He fought with someone who said something bad about his mother and was thrown outside into the rain. The rest he did not remember; he did not want to remember.
4
Two weeks after the police dropped him off at the hospital in Pretoria, Oscar’s doctors removed the wires from his damaged jaw and told him to go home.
“I’m giving you a week to pull yourself together,” Ambassador Henderson said when he went by to see him later in the day. “Then you got to pack up and leave for Ottawa where your family can take care of you.”
But Oscar didn’t want to go back to Ottawa. He saw himself eating greasy grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch in some grungy restaurant in downtown Ottawa, sharing an office with someone who had just returned from Paris or London and who spent his time talking about all the important people he had met, going home in a crowded bus after work to a one-bedroom, sparsely furnished apartment, cooking dinners of wieners and beans and piling the dirty dishes one on top of the other in the sink, and spending his evenings alone watching NHL hockey matches and television game shows. And dashing from his bus stop through sleet and snow over slush-covered sidewalks to his overheated domicile in winter or lying in bed with the windows open in summer as Ottawa sweltered through yet another heat wave.
If only he had challenging work to look forward to on his return, none of this would matter. But he would be sent once again, he was sure, to another dead-end job for the indefinite future. No, for all its problems, South Africa was where Oscar wanted to spend the next three years of his life.
“But I don’t have family in Ottawa,” Oscar told the ambassador. “I’d rather stay here and finish my posting where I can continue to help fight apartheid.”
“That’s quite out of the question,” the ambassador said. “You know how they are at headquarters. Once a decision has been taken, there’s no going back on it. I think they’ve found someone to replace you.”
“It would look like I was a coward, running away after a beating. That wouldn’t be good for Canada’s image,” Oscar said. “I wouldn’t be able to attend any more funerals if I stayed, but there are lots of other things around here I could do. Maybe I could work in the consular section, helping Canadian tourists who land in jail or have lost their passports. Maybe I could find something to do in the administration or trade sections.”
Ambassador Henderson did not welcome these suggestions.
“When headquarters proposed that you come here to take on this delicate job, I warned it that something like this could happen if it posted someone with your background here, and I was right. You let alcohol get the better of you when you were in Colombia and it is no secret you drank too much in Australia. The Department seemed to think you had stopped drinking when it sent you here, but it was wrong and you’ve made a fool of yourself and your country again here in South Africa. I can’t trust you and you must leave.”
“I admit I’m an alcoholic,” said Oscar. “But with the exception of the incident in Soweto, I’ve been on the wagon since I left Canberra. Surely an alcoholic is allowed to make a mistake from time to time. I’ve learned my lesson.”
“I don’t believe you, Oscar. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, they say. And there’s more to it than that. You never got along with the people you were supposed to be helping. Although I’m sure you would never admit it, that’s because you think you’re better than everyone else around here when you’re really not. That’s why your contacts, including your diplomatic colleagues, laugh at you behind your back.”
“But with respect, sir, those people sent me flowers and get well messages after the police assaulted me,” said Oscar.
“Are you sure it was the police who assaulted you, Oscar?” the ambassador said. “I think there’s some truth to the allegations that you drank too much after the funeral and got into some sort of brawl. At least that’s what I’m hearing from my friends in BOSS.”
“If you really think that’s what happened,” said Oscar, “why haven’t you told headquarters?”
“I haven’t done so,” said the ambassador, “because I’m aware of some of the things you’ve been up to in the past and I don’t want to ruin your career any more than it has been already. So why don’t you just leave and make a fresh start elsewhere, out of my sight. I’ll give you a good report for your file if that will make you happy.”