If Pretoria is the head of Afrikanerdom, the Transvaal is its throbbing heart. Out there, in the vast fertile high veld, live the real Afrikaner volk, the no-nonsense people for whom every word in the Bible is the pure word of God, who regard themselves as the chosen ones to whom He gave this promised land. They are a kindly if dour people who believe it is their God-given right and duty to govern the black man paternalistically, who is the son of Ham, intended to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. God delivered the Afrikaners from their enemies, first the glistening black hordes with their spears, then the brutal British soldiers with their scorched earth and concentration camps, and surely He will deliver them again from the raging godlessness of black communism, if only they stick to their guns and their holy bibles.
Early that Monday morning McQuade kissed Sarah goodbye and set out into the heartland of Afrikanerdom on the Great North Road. He had to work at it to maintain the self-confidence he had generated over the last weeks because now he was going into a different ball-game. If suburbanites hardly know any of the local policemen by sight, in the rural districts each Mr Strauss was quite likely to be on personal terms with the local police.
But by sunset he had his confidence back. He had visited the first Mr Strauss, been entertained to coffee and cake without the slightest suspicion, had solemnly inspected the security set-up, had discussed at length the immorality of this weak-kneed government who was selling the country down the river to the kaffirs, and had scratched another Hendrik Strauss off his list. He stopped at the roadside, pulled on civilian clothes, spent that night in a small hotel in Nylstroom, and slept as if he had been pole-axed. On Tuesday he set off on the long journey to the next Mr Strauss. That afternoon he arrived in Pietersburg, with a large jar of homemade jam for his children and another Mr Strauss crossed off his list. He checked into a motel on the outskirts, then drove into town to look for a bar. He saw many posters announcing that tonight the Foreign Minister, Mr Pik Botha, would address a rally of government supporters in the Jack Botes Hall, and almost every poster had been defaced with the word Veraaier: ‘traitor’. He realized that this was the meeting Johan Lombard had mentioned weeks ago, the meeting the AWB had vowed to break up. He parked his Landrover and went in search of the Jack Botes Hall.
He heard the noise from several blocks away.
The Foreign Minister had not yet arrived but the hall was packed and a crowd of about a thousand white people heaved and surged outside it, midst waving banners. They seemed to be divided into two camps, roaring at each other in Afrikaans, waving fists and hurling insults. There was a furious group of women in voortrekker costume waving banners which read ‘Yankee Pik Botha Go Home’. There were many banners bearing the AWB colours and the big three-legged swastika. On the other side were the banners of the ruling government party. There were a lot of pressmen, and numerous uniformed policemen stood by while beyond, at a respectful distance, a thousand or more blacks watched the heaving, shoving, furious mob of their lords. And above all the noise rose the roaring chant from the AWB ranks: ‘’n Kaffir is ’n kaffir en hy stink! ’n Kaffir is ’n kaffir en hy stink!’ (a kaffir is a kaffir and he stinks), their faces furiously contorted, spittle flying and fists waving, and hate rising up to the sky.
McQuade stared at this spectacle of Afrikanerdom tearing itself apart. He would never have believed this – Afrikaner hating Afrikaner, the Afrikaner government which had ruled this country for forty years under this siege of hate from Afrikaners. He began to try to make his way through the rear of the mob, to try to get inside. He kept to the government supporters’ ranks. He pushed and squeezed his way between surging yelling people, until he came to the big doors. He peered over the heads. The stage was decked in the government party colours, but still empty, awaiting the arrival of the Foreign Minister and his local party dignitaries. Just then a new roar went up outside as the leader of the AWB, Eugene Terreblanche, arrived to break up the meeting.
His car pulled up outside the hall with its uniformed outriders on motorcycles, and policemen came forward to escort him. He shoved his way towards the steps surrounded by his armed brown-shirted bodyguards, in a roaring shoving screaming blaze of glory and hate, his bodyguards thrusting people aside; then, on cue, his bodyguards hefted him up onto their shoulders. Inside the hall people were now standing and shouting at each other, and suddenly all hell broke loose. On cue AWB supporters inside the hall started surging towards the stage to seize it for their leader, and roaring government supporters surged to stop them, and the fists started flying. In a moment half the hall was a screaming mass of fists and kicks and smashing chairs, Afrikaner fighting Afrikaner midst the shrieks of women and the whack and crunch of flesh and bone. And the first AWB thugs made it up onto the stage with wild fighting, government supporters charging and leaping furiously after them, fists and kicks and bodies flying, Afrikaner trying to hurl and drag and kick and punch Afrikaner off the stage midst the smashing crashing of furniture and the roaring and the screaming. Then Eugene Terreblanche burst into the madness, carried shoulder-high, and a greater roar went up.
It was the first time McQuade had seen the man in the flesh. He was about fifty, bearded and beefy and handsome, but it was the eyes that impressed: blue and piercing, blow-torches of eyes. But it was the bodyguards who made McQuade’s blood run cold: uniformed beefy toughs in brown with the swastikas on their sleeves, armed with holstered pistols, invincibly bulldozing a path through the fighting mob towards the stage for their leader. McQuade stood jammed just inside the doorway, staring amazed at the spectacle; then he turned and began to squeeze his way out of the hall.
He made his way down the steps. The crowd was still furiously yelling at itself. He jostled his way around the edge of it. He saw Johan Lombard. ‘Dear boy,’ Johan shouted, ‘see what I mean?’
‘What’s happened to the Foreign Minister?’
‘I guess the dear fellow’s hiding somewhere!’
‘Why aren’t the cops putting a stop to this?’
‘Well we can tell whose side those cops are on, can’t we?’
McQuade headed back to his Landrover. He ducked into a liquor store and bought a six-pack of cold beer – he was in no mood for bars any more. He drove back to his motel, opened a beer and lay back on the bed.
‘ ’n Kaffir is ’n kaffir en hy stink …’ God … He saw again the heaving flags and swastikas, and remembered the words, ‘… but let a regime come which not only liberates these instincts but makes a virtue of them, then the snout of the beast appears …’
It was the middle of Wednesday afternoon when he left the farm of the second-last Mr Strauss on his list, with a gift of a bag of oranges. As he drove into the pretty mountain town of Tzaneen to find a cheap hotel, he saw the black boy selling newspapers beside a billboard which read, ‘RUDOLF HESS DOOD!’
McQuade slammed on his brakes, causing a screech of tyres and an angry blast behind him. He thrust a coin to the boy, and snatched the newspaper. It read in Afrikaans:
Rudolf Hess, Deputy-Führer of the Third Reich, Hitler’s right-hand man in Nazi Germany, died today in West Berlin, aged 93, after forty-one years in prison for war crimes …
McQuade parked the Landrover and went hurrying down the street looking for a public telephone. He banked up his coins and telephoned Johan Lombard’s home. The maid said he was out. He dialled the German Club and asked for him. He could hear mournful German music in the background.
‘Johan! I see Hess is dead?’
‘Hullo, dear boy! Yes, at last and very much so. Come and join the party!’
‘Is there going to be a formal service?’
‘You bet. All the Nasty brass are gathering tomorrow at noon in the Rebecca Street Cemetery. I’ll be in the Jewish mausoleum from eleven o’clock onwards, if you want to join me. I’ll bring my video camera for you …’
McQuade thanked him and hung up. He pulled out his notebook, feverishly flicked through it, and dialled Oosthuizen, the young video-cameraman. He arranged to meet him at the cemetery at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. Then he telephoned the vehicle rental company to reserve two panel-vans. Finally he telephoned Roger Wentland.
‘Okay,’ Roger said, ‘I received the news and I’ve got people covering two memorial services for you tomorrow. One in Windhoek, the other in Swakopmund. I’ve heard of a couple of other get-togethers, but they’re on private farms.’
‘Many thanks, Roger! Can you possibly get the tapes sent to me by special delivery on the late afternoon flight to Johannesburg? I’ll pick them up at the airport.’
McQuade thanked him profusely and hung up. He hurried up the street, looking for a shop that sold fabric.
He bought ten yards of cheap, blue cotton cloth. From a hardware store he bought adhesive tape, super-glue, string. He hurried back to the Landrover. He drove fast out of town, heading south, for Pretoria. At nine o’clock he stopped at a motel. He dyed his hair and had an early night, to be fit for tomorrow.