1. SPEAR OF THE NATION

In the winter they started planting bombs. Nights were cold and the land was dry, and they blew up police stations and army buildings, pass offices and native magistrate courts, railway lines, pylons, bus depots. The idea was to create confusion and send a message, not to kill. The time comes in the life of any nation where there remain only two choices: submit or fight. It was time to fight.

Today the fight led Henry and his passenger down a mostly empty road that skirted the Vals River. They bumped along past low brick farmhouses, arid gardens, the tall spire of a Dutch Reformed church, drab fields. Mines glimmered in the distance, pockmarked slopes fringed by tawny scrub. Their destination, their target, was an army barrack near Kroonstad.

“Let’s twist again,” Henry warbled.

“Spanish Harlem,” said his young passenger, whose name was Nxumalo, though everyone called him Orange. “With eyes as black as coal,” he sang, “that look down in my so-oul.”

“Crazy,” Henry deadpanned. “For loving you.”

Orange laughed. “Six Mabone. Sun Brothers.”

THEY MET in suburban garages, safe houses, dark cellars. By turns cautious, brazen, philosophical, they debated which targets to bomb, planned attacks, considered resources, drew up checklists, restructured teams depending on who was in exile, on the run, at a training camp in Tanzania or Ethiopia, or in prison. They argued about why they were fighting and what each action might achieve. Nelson and Walter were the visionaries, Slovo and Mbede the warriors, Govan the conciliator, Rusty the planner, Bram the Afrikaner, Wolpe the lawyer. Henry and Dunningham were among the foot soldiers.

They spoke the language of ANC doctrine; the Freedom Charter was their mantra: a war to destroy apartheid, to win back the country for all her people. Matla ke arona. Power to the people. Power to the sons and daughters of the soil, power to the oppressed and the poor. They passed round banned copies of Marx, Engels, Fanon, Padmore, camouflaged in pilfered covers—Little Women, Ivanhoe. The High Command argued about Operation Mayibuye. Slovo pushed for war, Rusty and Walter for consensus. Of course civilian deaths were a tragedy, Slovo said, but they were unavoidable. They smoked cigarettes, drank tea and whiskey, confided in one another. They were all scared, but nobody talked about being scared.

Their homemade bombs were crafted from corner chemist supplies—carpet-cleaning products, chemical solvents, nitric acid, magnesium. Some of the bombs were equipped with rudimentary timers made of sea sand and glycerine, others with potassium chlorate fuses. They stole dynamite when they could, but it wasn’t easy. Incendiary bombs required only petrol.

HENRY DROVE past the barracks and parked behind a field that abutted the compound. He switched off the engine and they sat there for a moment, then climbed out of the car without speaking. They proceeded on foot towards the row of squat brick buildings with red tin roofs. They walked under the cover of low trees, waited in a ditch across the road, watching to make sure no one was about. The idea was to get there before the new recruits arrived. His heart was pounding. His spine and back had tightened to the point of pain.

The compound was quiet, a few Bedford trucks parked outside, tarpaulins raised. Orange fastened the satchel across his chest, and they hopped the fence onto army property. He moved swiftly, torso bent, low to the ground. Henry took one last look at his watch, then followed, trying to run stealthily. Five minutes to get inside, ten to plant the bomb and get out. That would leave approximately ten minutes before the blast. He followed behind as Orange glided across the grass, well clear of the barracks and mess hall. They kept low, running around the perimeter of the property to the drill hall. Henry was aware of the sound of their footfall. They heard a car puttering along nearby, but there was no time to stop and look.

Henry was breathing hard when they reached the back door of the drill hall. A moment to catch their breath, then Orange opened the door. Inside it was dim—long tables, folding chairs, scuffed wooden floor. Orange pulled the paint tin from his satchel and set it down beside some chairs in the corner. Together they pried off the lid. Jack Hodgson, a British war veteran, was the bomb maker. His primitive timer consisted of a piece of cardboard taped over a small bottle of acid. When the bottle was turned over, the acid slowly seeped through the cardboard and dripped onto the powder, causing it to explode—and giving them only fifteen minutes to get out, sometimes less. Recently, the target had been a Johannesburg power station. Slovo, driving away, was nearly deafened by the explosion—just five minutes after he’d placed the bomb.

Henry pulled the bottle of acid from his pocket. He kneeled, carefully unscrewed the cap, and turned the bottle upside down on the sandy mixture inside the paint can. They held their breath. Exhaled when the moment passed without an explosion.

They opened the door slowly, looked for signs of movement, then scurried back to the edge of the property. They crouched behind a camphor tree before hopping the fence and dashing across the dry grass to the road. Glanced back at the mess hall as they scrambled back to the ditch. Waited. Leafless branches swayed in the breeze.

The explosion came suddenly, like a double thunderclap. Red glare in the blue sky. The smell of fire and burning wood, a hissing sound, dogs started barking. They stayed clear of the road, made their way through grass and bushes, and hurried back to the car.

As they drove away they heard the blare of fire trucks, dopplering away. Orange turned to look at the blaze. He seemed satisfied. Henry’s stomach churned; he thought he might vomit. These were the front lines of the war for freedom. There was nothing elaborate or grand about it. They’d put lives in danger—their own, young soldiers’, innocent black groundsmen’s. They had destroyed property. And fled. You had to do your part. You had to trust the master plan. Later, when they told Joe and Rusty of their success, they’d cross the target off the list and congratulate Henry and Orange. And then, maybe then, he’d feel some pride, some sense of achievement. In the rearview mirror, he could still see the red glow on the horizon.

JOE SLOVO and Abongz Mbede headed Umkhonto we Sizwe, the nascent military wing of the ANC. Spear of the Nation, MK for short. They had led many missions themselves. An army drill hall in Wentworth, a police station in Durban. Hodgson had turned his Hillbrow flat into a makeshift weapons factory, grinding permanganate of potash—used by restaurants to wash lettuce—into fine dust, and mixing it with aluminium powder. The mixture combusted when acid was added.

This was the winter of 1961. Henry and Sarah had moved into the house in Observatory. They’d hired a clown for Glenn’s seventh birthday—boerewors and beer for the grownups, magic tricks for the kids. It was the year of West Side Story and Spartacus, the year South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth, while all over Africa colonies were gaining independence. It was the year of JFK’s inauguration and Martin Luther King Jr.’s freedom rides. In the South African Parliament, the Nationalists increased their majority, while Progressives lost all but one seat. Walter Sisulu was sentenced to five-years’ house arrest for not owning a reference book. It was also the year Henry had become a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the year he swore to bring down the government by any means necessary, to fight fire with fire.

So much had happened. The massacres at Sharpeville, Langa, and Mpondoland. Police had shot at unarmed crowds, killed women and children as they fled. Sixteen thousand were arrested for protesting the pass laws. A deranged white farmer had tried to assassinate Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd—aka the Prime Minister. The Unlawful Organisations Act declared both the ANC and PAC illegal, while an emergency decree gave the police sweeping powers.

Just a year before, Henry had been a garden-variety Communist sympathiser and outspoken critic of apartheid, like many people he and Sarah knew. But now he had gone further, first joining the Party, then the ANC. It was like growing up, taking responsibility. And it led here, to clandestine operations, to secret meetings, planting bombs and racing off into the night, waiting for the fear to subside.

HENRY DROVE the borrowed car cautiously, careful not to speed. Orange held the map in his lap, the route carefully marked in pencil, but Henry didn’t need to look at it. He knew how to get home.

They crossed the wagon-wheel Sarel Cilliers Bridge, passed chugging lorries.

“Why do they call you Orange?”

“It’s a family name. When I was a baby, my auntie said my head looked like a big orange.”

They drove beneath the darkening sky, under puffs of clouds and a big blemished moon.

“Where will you go?”

“Tonight? Back to Orlando. I’m staying with a friend.”

“Go tomorrow,” Henry said. “You can stay with us. Have some supper.”

He could feel Orange looking at him, weighing up the offer. They’d bombed an army building together, but Orange wasn’t sure about sleeping in a white man’s house.

“We have to be careful,” he said.

They would be, Henry assured him. He had to return the car anyway. They’d borrowed it for a night from a garage in Doornfontein. The owner, Yusuf Singh, provided cars, no questions asked, and relayed information. That was how the invisible army worked—a bit of borrowing, a makeshift network of sympathisers, a complex chain of communication, friends who helped and didn’t ask questions. Sarah would have supper waiting when he got back anyway, Henry told Orange. They’d make up the bed in the study.

“I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

YUSUF WAS waiting for them. He’d clean the car, make sure there were no suspicious marks, no evidence that it had been taken from the garage. They talked in the little office, surrounded by tyres, boxes of spark plugs and oil filters, exhaust gaskets. Yusuf had information about the day’s activities. Bombs had exploded at power stations and government offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, and East London. But at a police barrack in Johannesburg, Sam Dibakwane, dressed as a gardener and carrying a satchel, had to abort his mission when an officer stopped him. He smiled, Hello baas, and walked away, Hodgson’s explosive sloshing around in a tennis ball can inside his satchel. In Soweto, their man wasn’t so lucky. One of the bombs exploded prematurely at the Bantu Control Office. Lucas Bukhali was killed instantly. His accomplice survived but was badly burned, his left hand severed by the blast. Henry didn’t know Lucas, but Orange did.

HOME. HENRY and Orange sat in the living room. Janey was in the kitchen getting supper ready. Having another black person in the house seemed to make her uneasy, upset the delicate balance—her employers’ nod to equality of having her eat with them in the dining room. Or maybe she sensed what the two of them had just done, why Orange was there.

After a while, Henry went upstairs, washed, gave Glenn a good-night kiss, pulled the blanket over him. His boy was reading and writing now. Seven years old, and he could read the newspaper, was good at long division, could juggle a soccer ball. He built model planes in his bedroom, patiently gluing and painting the tiny pieces, drew elaborate pictures of houses with reticulated roofs and soaring turrets. Weekends they played soccer in the little garden or threw a cricket ball. Soon Glenn would be better at sports than Henry.

At the dinner table there was no ready conversation, and they ate cold chicken and drank red wine mostly in silence. Sarah asked politely where Orange came from. Natal. Did he have a wife? No. A smile. Just a boy, Henry thought, sixteen, eighteen at most. The face of a high-school prankster, not a terrorist. But he’d performed well, stayed calm. Henry wanted to say something. Here they were, two terrorists and two women, looking for all the world like some post-apartheid dream—two happy couples dining together. Only no one was happy. And they weren’t two couples. One was a servant (who never drank with her employers), and two of them would be tried for treason and the destruction of government property if they were ever caught and linked with the crime they’d committed.

When they’d finished the meal, Sarah helped Janey with the plates. Orange sat at the dining-room table, oblivious or just exhausted. Henry stayed where he was as well. Bone-tired, now that the adrenaline rush had been replaced by the flush of red wine. You always wondered if someone had been killed by the bomb you planted. You rarely found out. You lived with maybe. Maybe people had died because of your actions. Maybe the attack would mean something. They sipped their wine and Henry stared at the night sky outside the window. Come, seeling night. Lucas, friend of Orange, was dead. Somewhere a mother was weeping. Could have been Orange or Henry. He had slept in a donga once. With Dunningham. He remembered the taste of dirt in his mouth, the cold night hardening around them. They’d planted a bomb outside the Sterkfontein police station. This was an act of retaliation, after the cops there had beaten an ANC man almost to death.

Henry hadn’t been there to put his boy to bed tonight. Sometimes he didn’t want to be read to, and Henry would lie beside him and they’d make up stories together. Glenn’s tales involved soldiers and guns, daring cowboys, fistfights in saloons. Henry’s stories took a more pacific bent. The cowboy who stole the moon, the horse who was afraid of flowers, singing mice, and treacherous banana peels. Weekends when the weather was warm they read in the garden—Henry, Sarah, and Glenn, each with a book and a cool drink, and sometimes Glenn would fall asleep curled up on the grass. Henry would watch him, his tranquil face, listen to his quick, even breathing. His boy. His son.

Henry and Orange finished the bottle of wine after Janey and Sarah had gone to bed. Orange said he’d head back to Natal in the morning. Henry wondered where he saw it all ending, whether he thought he could run forever, run into the future. They said good-night and clasped each other briefly at the threshold of the study, and Henry, slightly drunk and calmer now, felt a surge of emotion for this brave boy and comrade.

HE CLIMBED into bed beside Sarah and stroked her pale arm. She didn’t turn around.

He smoothed her hair. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on. He had nowhere to go. What could I do, send him away?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t think so.”

She lifted herself for a moment, patted her pillow, and then curled back into the bed. Neither of them said anything, and the silence and the sound of the slapped pillow hung in the air. Henry pictured Orange downstairs in his unaccustomed bed. How good the freshly laundered sheets must feel to him, surrounded by walls of books.

Sarah reached over and touched Henry’s face and neck. “Sleep now,” she said.

But he couldn’t sleep. He watched the branches swaying outside the window, inhaled her warm buttery scent. Was it just Orange’s presence in the house, or was she angry about what he’d done, the whole enterprise? It was safer not to reveal details, not even to wives or husbands. But she knew, if not the details, then the type of mission. She probably thought he was going too far, but it was too late. He was one of them now. Umkhonto we Sizwe. Spear of the Nation. And they were going to change history.

WHEN SARAH came downstairs in the morning, Orange was already gone, the sheets and blanket neatly folded. She watched as Henry drank his coffee while Janey cooked scrambled eggs and tomatoes. Glenn told his father about a soccer match and somebody’s birthday party. Henry was tired, fidgety; he didn’t touch his eggs. Whenever Henry was late getting back, when he looked worried or went straight to the liquor cabinet, Sarah didn’t ask, didn’t say anything. What had he done last night? She didn’t know the details, didn’t want to know, but only one type of mission brought him home in the middle of the night with a stranger, smelling of veld and fire.

It was Mrs. Moore’s week to drive the carpool, and Sarah waited with Glenn in the driveway until the white car appeared. And then Henry drove to work, leaving Sarah in the kitchen with a cup of tea, scanning the morning papers. There was no mention of an attack, but of course there wouldn’t be.

A pamphlet distributed to newspapers and government offices later that day proclaimed: The choice is not ours. We hope that we will bring the government and its supporters to their senses before it is too late.

YEARS LATER, Henry would quote Malcolm X on the subject: “Concerning nonviolence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.” His grandson, Saul, would give him a baseball cap for his birthday with “Malcolm” stitched across the crown in white graffiti lettering surrounded by multicoloured Xs, and Henry would surprise everyone by wearing it and attracting strange though not disapproving looks on the streets of Park Slope, Brooklyn.