Power Of The Sword Part 32

The skip stopped so abruptly that his knees buckled and he felt the flesh of his face sucked down from the bones of his skull, stretching like rubber. The gates crashed open and he was carried out into the main haulage, a cavern walled with glistening wet rock, filled with men, hundreds of men like rats in a sewer, streaming away into the endless tunnels that honeycombed the bowels of the world.

Everywhere there was water, glistening and s.h.i.+ning in the flat glare of the electric light, running back in channels on each side of the haulage, squelching under his feet, hidden water drumming and rustling in the darkness or dripping from the jagged rock of the roof. The very air was heavy with water, humid and hot and claustrophobic so that it had a gelatinous texture, seeming to fill his eardrums and deafen him, trickling sluggishly into his lungs like treacle, and his terror lasted all that long march along the drive until they reached the stopes. Here the men split into their separate gangs and disappeared into the shadows.

The stopes were the vast open chambers from which the gold-bearing ore had already been excavated, the hanging wall above supported now by packed pillars of shoring timber, the footwall under them inclined upwards at an angle following the run of the reef.

The men of his gang trudging ahead of him led Hendrick to his station, and here under a bare electric bulb waited for the white s.h.i.+ft boss, a burly Afrikaner flanked by his two boss-boys.

The station was a three-sided chamber in the rock, its number on the entrance. There was a long bench against the back wall of the station and a latrine, its open buckets screened by sheets of burlap.

The gang sat on the bench while the boss-boys called the roll, and then the white s.h.i.+ft boss asked in Fanakalo, Where is the new hammer boy? and Hendrick rose to his feet.

Cronje, the s.h.i.+ft boss, came to stand in front of him. Their eyes were on a level, both big men. The s.h.i.+ft boss's nose was crooked, broken long ago in a forgotten brawl, and he examined Hendrick carefully. He saw the broken gap in his teeth and the scars upon his head and his respect was tentative and grudging. They were both hard, tough men, recognizing it in each other. Up there in the suns.h.i.+ne and sweet cool airs they were black man and white man. Down here in the earth they were simply men.

You know the hammer? Cronje asked in Fanakalo.

I know it, Hendrick replied in Afrikaans. He had practised working the hammer for two weeks in the surface training pits.

Cronje blinked and then grinned to acknowledge the use of his own language. I run the best gang of rock breakers on the CRC, he said, still grinning. You will learn to break rock, my friend, or I will break your head and your a.r.s.e instead. Do you understand? I understand. Hendrick grinned back at him, and Cronje raised his voice.

All hammer boys here! They stood up from the bench, five of them, all big men like Hendrick. It took tremendous physical strength to handle the jack hammers. They were the elite of the rockbreaking gangs, earning almost double wages and bonus for footage, earning also immense prestige from lesser men.

Cronje wrote their names up on the blackboard under the electric bulb: Henry Tabaka at the bottom of the list and Zama, the big Zulu, at number one. When Zama stripped off his jacket and tossed it to his line boy, his great black muscles bulged and gleamed in the stark electric light.

Ha" He looked at Hendrick. So we have a little Ovambo jackal come in yipping from the desert. The men around him laughed obsequiously. Zama was top hammer on the section; evervbody laughed when he made a joke.

I thought that the Zulu baboon scratched his fleas only on the peaks of the Drakensberg so his voice can be heard afar, Hendrick said quietly, and there was a shocked silence for a moment and then a guffaw of disbelieving laughter.

All right, You two big talkers, Cronjeintervened, let's break some rock. He led them from the station up the stope to the rock-face where the gold reef was a narrow grey horizontal band in the jagged wall, dull and nondescript, without the faintest precious sparkle. The gold was locked away in it.

The roof was low; a man had to double over to reach the face; but the stope was wide, reaching away hundreds of metres into the darkness (in either band, and they could hear the other gangs out there along the rockface, their voices echoing and reverberating, their hinterns throwing weird shadows.

Tabaka!" Cronje yelled. Here! He had marked the shot holes to be drilled with splashes of white paint, indicating the inclination anti depth of each hole.

The blast was a Precise and calculated firing of gelignite I charges. The outer holes would be charged with shapers to form the hanging wall and foot wall of the stopc they would fire first, while the pattern of inner shots fired a second later. These were the 'cutters that would kick the ore back and clear it from the face.

Shaya! Cronje yelled at Hendrick. Hit it! and lingered a second to watch as Hendrick stooped to the drill.

it squatted on the rock floor in front of the face, an ungainly tool in the shape of a heavy machine-gun, with long pneumatic hoses attached to it and running back down the slope to the compressed airsystem in the main haulage.

Swiftly Hendrick fitted the twenty-foot-long steel jumpers bit into the lug of the drill and then he and his line boy dragged the tool to the rockface. It took all the strength of both Hendrick and his a.s.sistant to lift the tool and position the point of the drill on the white paint mark for the first cut. Hendrick eased himself into position behind the tool, taking the full weight of it on his right shoulder. The line boy stepped back, and Hendrick opened the valve.

The din was stunning, a stuttering implosion of sound that drove in against the eardrums as compressed air at a pressure of 500 pounds a square inch roared into the drill and slammed the long steel bit into the rock.

Hendrick's entire body shuddered and shook to the drive of the tool against his shoulder but still he leaned his full weight against it. His head jumped on the thick corded column of his neck so rapidly that his vision blurred, but he narrowed his eyes and aimed the point of the drill into the rock at the exact angle that the s.h.i.+ft boss had called for.

Water squirted down the hollow drill steel, bubbling out of the hole in a yellow mist, splattering into Hendrick's face.

The sweat burst from his black skin, running down his face as though he were standing under a cloudburst, mingling with the slimy mud pouring down his naked back and scattering like rain as his straining muscles fluttered and jumped to the impulse of the pounding steel drill at his shoulder.

Within minutes the entire surface of his body began to itch and burn. It was the hammer boys affliction; his skin was being scrubbed back and forth a thousand times a minute by the violent shaking motion of the drill, and with each minute the agony became more intense. He tried to close his mind to it but still it felt as though a blowtorch was being played over his body.

The long steel drill sank slowly into the rock until it reached the depth marker painted on it and Hendrick closed the valve. There was no silence for even though his hearing was dulled, as though his eardrums were filled with cotton wool, yet he could still hear the echoes of the drill thunder resounding against the roof of his skull.

7.Ne The line boy ran forward, seized the jumper bit and helped him withdraw it from the first shot hole and reposition the tip on the second daubed paint mark. Once again Hendrick opened the valve and the din and the agony began again.

However, gradually the itching burn of his body blurred into numbness and he felt disembodied as though cocaine had been injected under his skin.

So he stood to the rock all that s.h.i.+ft, six hours without let or relief. When it ended and they trooped back from the face, splattered and coated with yellow mud from head to foot and weary beyond pain or feeling, even Zama the great black Zulu was reeling on his feet and his eyes were dull.

In the station Cronje wrote the total of work completed against their names on the blackboard. Zama had drilled sixteen patterns, Hendrick twelve and the next best man ten.

Hau! Zama muttered as they rode up to the surface in the crowded skip. On his very first s.h.i.+ft the jackal is number two hammer. And Hendrick had just enough strength to reply: And on his second s.h.i.+ft the jackal will be top hammer. it never happened. Not once did he break more rock than the Zulu. But at the end of that first month as Hendrick sat in the company beer hall with the other Ovambos of the Buffalo totem gathered around him, the Zulu came to his table carrying two one-gallon jugs of the creamy effervescent millet beer that the company sold its men. It was thick as porridge, and just as nutritious, though only very mildly alcoholic.

Zama set a one-gallon jug down in front of Hendrick and said: We broke some rock together this month, hey, jackal? And we'll break a lot more together next month, hey, baboon? And they both roared with laughter and raised the beer jugs in unison and drank them dry.

Zama was the first Zulu to become initiated into the brotherhood of the Buffaloes, not as natural as it sounded for tribal barriers, like mountain ranges, were difficult to cross.

It was three months before Hendrick saw his brother again, but by that time Hendrick had extended his influence throughout the entire compound of black mine workers at the CRC mine property. With Zama as his lieutenant, the Buffaloes now encompa.s.sed men from many different tribes, Zulus and Shangaans and Matabeles. The only criterion was that the new initiates should be hard reliable men, preferably with some influence over at least a section of the eight thousand odd black miners, and preferably also appointed by the mine administration to positions of authority on the property: clerks or boss-boys or company police.

Some of the men who were approached resisted the brotherhood's overtures. One of these, a senior Zulu bossboy with thirty years service and a misplaced sense of duty to his tribe and the company, fell into one of the ore chutes on the sixtieth level of the main haulage the day after he refused. His body was ground to a muddy paste by the tons of jagged rock that rumbled over it. It seemed that n.o.body had witnessed the accident.

one of the company police indunas, who also resisted the blandishments of the brotherhood, was found stabbed to death in his sentry box at the main gates to the property, while yet another was burned to death in the kitchens. Three Buffaloes witnessed this last unfortunate incident caused by the victim's own clumsiness and inattention and there were no more refusals.

When at last the messenger came from Moses, identifying himself with the secret sign and handclasp, he bore a summons to a meeting, and Hendrick was able to leave the mine property without check.

By government decree the black mine workers were strictly confined within the barbed-wire fences of the compounds. It was the opinion of both the Chamber of Mines and the Johannesburg city fathers that to let tens of thousands of single black males roam the goldfields at will would invite disaster. They had the salutary lesson of the Chinese before them. In 1904, almost fifty thousand Chinese coolies had been brought into South Africa to fill the huge shortage of unskilled labour for the gold mines. However, the Chinese were much too intelligent and restless to be confined to compounds and restricted to unskilled labour and they were highly organized in their secret long societies. The result was a wave of lawlessness and terror that swept over the goldfields, rapine and robbery, gambling and drugs, so that in 1908, at huge cost, all the Chinese were rounded up and s.h.i.+pped home. The government was determined to avoid a repet.i.tion of this terror and the compound system was strictly enforced.

However, Hendrick pa.s.sed through the gates of the CRC compound as though he were invisible. He crossed the open veld in the starlight until he found the overgrown track and followed it to the old abandoned shafthead. There, parked behind the deserted rusting corrugated iron shed, was a black Ford sedan and as Hendrick approached it cautiously the headlights were switched on, spotlighting Hendrick, and he froze.

Then the lights were switched off and Moses voice called out of the darkness, I see you, my brother. They embraced impulsively and then Hendrick laughed.

Ha! So you drive a motor car now, like a white man. The motor car belongs to Bomvu. Moses led him to it, and Hendrick sank back against the leather seat and sighed comfortably. This is better than walking. Now tell me, Hendrick my brother. What has happened at CRC? And Moses listened without comment until Hendrick finished his long report. Then he nodded.

You have understood my wants. It is exactly as I wished it. The brotherhood must take in men from all the tribes, not just the Ovambo. We must reach to each tribe, each property, every corner of the goldfields. You have said all this before, Hendrick growled, but you have never told me why, my brother. I trust you, but the men I have a.s.sembled, the impi you bid me build, they look to me, and they ask one question. They ask me why? What is the profit in this thing? What is there for us in the brotherhood? And what do you answer them, my brother? I tell them they must be patient. Hendrick scowled. I do not know the answer, but I look wise as if I do. And if they nag me, like children, well, then I beat them like children. Moses laughed delightedly, but Hendrick shook his head.

Don't laugh, my brother, I can't go on beating them much longer. Moses clapped his shoulder. Nor will you have to much longer. But tell me now, Hendrick, what is it you have missed most in the months you have worked at CRCV Hendrick answered. The feeling of a woman under me. That you shall have before the night is finished. And what else, my brother? The fire of good liquor in my belly, not the weak slop from the company beerhall. My brother, Moses told him seriously, 'you have answered your own question. These are the things that your men will get from the brotherhood. These are the sc.r.a.ps we will throw our hunting dogs: women and liquor and, of course money, but for those of us at the head of the Buffaloes there will be more, much more. He started the engine of the Ford.

The gold-bearing reefs of the Wit.w.a.tersrand form a sprawling arc one hundred kilometres in length. The older properties such as East Daggafontein are in the eastern sector of the arc where the reef originally outcropped; the newer properties are in the west where the reef dips away sharply to great depth; but like Blyvooruitzicht, these deep mines are enormously rich. All the mines are laid out along this fabulous crescent, surroun e the urban development which the gold wealth has attracted and fostered.

Moses drove the black Ford southwards, away from the mines and the white man's streets and buildings, and the road they followed quickly narrowed and deteriorated, its surface rutted and riven with pot holes and puddles from the last thunderstorm. it lost direction and began to meander, degenerating into a maze of lanes and tracks.

The street lights of the city were left behind them, but out here there was other illumination: the glow of hundreds of wood fires, their orange light muted by their own drifting smoke banks. There was one of these cooking fires in front of each of the shanties of tarpaper and old corrugated iron that crowded so closely that there were only narrow lanes between them, and there was amongst the shacks a feeling of the presence of many unseen people, as though an army were encamped out here in the open veld.

Where are we? Hendrick asked.

We are in a city that no man acknowledges, a city of people who do not exist. Hendrick glimpsed their dark shapes as the Ford b.u.mped and pitched over the rough track between the shanties and shacks and the headlights swung aimlessly back and forth illuminating little cameo scenes: a group of black children stoning a pariah dog; a body lying beside the track drunk or dead; a woman squatting to urinate in the angle of one of the orrugated iron walls; two men locked in silent deadly combat; a family at one of the fires eating from tins of bully beef, their eyes huge and s.h.i.+ning as they looked up startled into the headlights; and other dark shapes scurrying furtively away into the shadows, hundreds of them and the presence of thousands more sensed.

This is Drake's Farm, Moses told him. One of the squatter towns.h.i.+ps that surround the white man's Goldi. The odour of the amorphous sprawling aggregation of humanity was woodsmoke and sewage, old sweat on hot bodies and charred food on the open wood fires. It was the smell of garbage mouldering in the rain puddles and the nauseating sweetness of bloodsucking vermin in unwashed bedding.

How many live here? Five thousand, ten thousand. n.o.body knows, n.o.body cares. Moses stopped the Ford and switched off the headlights and the engine.

The silence afterwards was not truly silence; it was the murmur of mult.i.tudes like the sea heard at a distance, the mewling of infants, the barking of a cur dog, the sounds of a woman singing, of men cursing and talking and eating, of couples arguing shrilly or copulating, of people dying and defecating and snoring and gambling and drinking in the night.

Moses stepped out of the Ford and called imperatively into the darkness and half a dozen dark figures came scurrying from amongst the shacks. They were children, Hendrick realized, though their age and s.e.x were obscure.

Stand guard on my motor car, Moses ordered, and tossed a small coin that twinkled in the firelight until one of the children s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the air.

Eh he! Baba! they squeaked, and Moses led his brother amongst the shacks for a hundred yards and the sound of the women singing was louder, a thrilling evocative sound, and there was the buzz of many other voices and the sour smell of old stale alcohol and meat cooking on an open fire.

They had reached a long low building, a rough shed cobbled together from discarded material. Its walls were crooked and the outline of the roof was buckled and sway backed against the fireglow. Moses knocked upon the door and a lantern was flashed in his face before the door was thrown open.

So my brother! Moses took Hendrick's arm and drew him into the doorway. This is your first shebeen. Here you will have all that I promised you: women and liquor, your fill of both. The shed was packed with human beings, jammed so tightly that the far wall was lost in the fog of blue tobacco smoke and a man must shout to be heard a few feet away; the black faces shone with sweat and excitement. The men were miners, drinking and singing and laughing and groping the women. Some were very drunk and a few had fallen to the earth floor and lay in their own vomit. The women were of every tribe, all of their faces painted in the fas.h.i.+on of white women, dressed in flimsy gaudy dresses, singing and dancing and shaking their hips, picking out the men with money and tugging them away through the doors at the back of the shed.

Moses did not have to force his way through this jam of bodies. It opened almost miraculously before him, and many of the women called to him respectfully. Hendrick followed closely behind his brother and he was struck with admiration that Moses had been able to achieve this degree of recognition in the three short months since they had arrived on the Rand.

There was a guard at the door at the far end of the shebeen, an ugly scar-faced ruffian, but he also recognized Moses and clapped his hands in greeting before he pulled aside the canvas screen to allow them to go through into the back room.

This room was less crowded, and there were tables and benches for the customers. The girls in here were still graced with youth, bTight-eyed and fresh-faced. An enormous black woman was seated at a separate table in the corner. She had the serene round moon face of the high-bred Zulu but its contours were almost obscured by fat. Her dark amber skin was stretched tightly over this abundance; her belly hung down in a series of fleshy balconies onto her lap, and fat hung in great black dewlaps under her arms and formed bracelets around her wrists. On the table in front of her were neat stacks of coins, silver and copper, and wads of multicoloured bank notes, and the girls were bringing her more to add to the piles each minute.

When she saw Moses her perfect white teeth shone like precious porcelain; she lumbered to her feet, her thighs so elephantine that she waddled with her feet wide apart as she came to him and greeted him as though he were a tribal chief, touching her forehead and clapping with respect.

This is Mama Nginga, Moses told Hendrick. She is the biggest shebeen keeper and wh.o.r.e mistress on Drake's Farm.

Soon she will be the only one on Drake's Farm. only then did Hendrick realize that he knew most of the men at the tables. They were Buffaloes who had travelled on the Wenela train and taken the initiation oath with him, and they greeted him with unfeigned delight and introduced him to the strangers in their midst.

This is Henry Tabaka. He is the one of the legend. The man who slew Tshayela, the white overseer, and Hendrick noticed the immediate respect in the eyes of these new Buffaloes. They were men from the other mines along the reef, recruited by the original Buffaloes, and Hendrick saw that on the whole they had chosen well.

My brother has not had a woman or a taste of good liquor in three months, Moses told them as he seated himself at the head of the central table. Mama Nginga, we don't want your skokiaan. She makes it herself, he told Hendrick in a loud aside, and she puts in carbide and methylated spirits and dead snakes and aborted babies to give it kick and flavour. Mama Nginga screeched with laughter. My skokiaan is famous from Fordsburg to Bapsfontein. Even some of the white men, the mabuni, come for it. It's good enough for them, Moses agreed, but not good enough for my brother. Mama Nginga sent one of the girls to them with a bottle of Cape brandy and Moses seized the young girl around the waist and held her easily. He pulled open the European-style blouse she wore, forcing out her big round b.r.e.a.s.t.s so that they shone like washed coal in the lamplight.

This is where we start, my Buffaloes, a girl and a bottle, he told them. There are fifty thousand lonely men at Goldi far from their wives, all of them hungry for sweet young flesh. There are fifty thousand men, thirsty from their work in the earth, and the white men forbid them to slake their thirst with this. He shook the bottle of golden spirits. There are fifty thousand randy thirsty black men at Goldi, all with money in their pockets. The Buffaloes will give them what they want. He pushed the girl into Hendrick's lap and she coiled herself about him with professionally simulated l.u.s.t and thrust her s.h.i.+ning black b.r.e.a.s.t.s into his face.

When the dawn broke over the sprawling shanty town of Drake's Farm, Moses and Hendrick picked their way down the reeking convoluted alleys to where they had left the Ford and the children were guarding it still, like jackals around the lion's kill. The brothers had sat all night in the back room of Mama Nginga's shebeen and the preliminary planning was at last done. Each of their lieutenants had been allotted areas and responsibilities.

But there is still much work to be done, my brother, Moses told Hendrick as he started the Ford. We have to find the liquor and the women. We will have to bring all the little shebeens and brothels like goats into our kraal, and there is only one way to do that. I know how that has to be done, Hendrick nodded. And we have an impi to do it. And an induna, a general, to command that impi. Moses glanced at Hendrick significantly. The time has come for you to leave CRC, my brother. All your time and your strength will be needed now. You will waste no more of your strength in the earth, breaking rock for a white man's pittance. From now on you will be breaking heads for power and great fortune. He smiled thinly. You will never have to pine again for those little white stones of yours. I will give you more, much more. Marcus Archer arranged for Hendrick's contract at CRC to be cancelled and for him to be issued travel papers for one of the special trains that carried the returning miners who had worked out their ticket back to the reservations and the distant villages. But Hendrick never caught that train. Instead he disappeared from the white man's records and was absorbed into the shadowy halfworld of the towns.h.i.+ps.

Mama Nginga set aside one of the shanties at the back of her shebeen for his exclusive use, and one of her girls was always on hand to sweep and wash his laundry, to cook his food and warm his bed.

It was six days after his arrival at Drake's Farm that the Buffalo impi opened its campaign. The objective had been discussed and carefully explained by Hendrick and it was simple and clear-cut. They would make Drake's Farm their own citadel.

On the first night twelve of the opposition shebeens were burned to the ground. Their proprietors burned with them, as did those of their customers who were too drunk to crawl out of the flaming hovels. Drake's Farm was far outside the sector served by the white man's fire engines, so no attempt was made to fight the flames. Rather, the inhabitants of Drake's Farm gathered to watch the spectacle as though it was a circus arranged particularly for their entertainment.

The children danced and shrilled in the firelight, and screeched with laughter as the bottles of spirits exploded like fireworks.

Nearly all the girls escaped from the flames. Those who had been at work when the fire began ran out naked, clutching their scanty clothing and weeping wildly at the loss of all their worldly possessions and savings. However, there were kindly concerned men to comfort them and lead them away to Mama Nginga's.

Within forty-eight hours the shebeens had been rebuilt on their ashes and the girls were back at work again. Their lot was much improved; they were well fed and clothed and they had their own Buffaloes to protect them from their customers, to make certain they were neither cheated nor abused. of course, if they in turn s.h.i.+rked or tried to cheat, they were beaten soundly; but they expected that, it made them feel part of the totem and replaced the father and brothers they had left in the reservations.

Hendrick allowed them to keep a fixed proportion of the fee they charged and made sure his men respected their rights to it.

Generosity breeds loyalty and firmness a loving heart, he explained to his Buffaloes, and he extended his happy house policy to embrace his customers and everybody else at Drake's Farm. The black miners coming into the towns.h.i.+p were as carefully protected as his girls were. In very short order the footpads, pickpockets, muggers and other smalltime entrepreneurs were routed out. The quality of the liquor improved. From now on all of it was brewed under Mama Nginga's personal supervision.

it was strong as a bull elephant, and bit like a rabid hyena, but it no longer turned men blind or destroyed their brains, and because it was manufactured in bulk, it was reasonably priced. A man could get falling-down drunk for two s.h.i.+llings or have a good clean girl for the same price.

Hendrick's men met every bus and train coming in from the country districts, bringing the young black girls who had run away from their villages and their tribe to reach the glitter of Goldi. They led the pretty ones back to Drake's Farm. When this source of supply became inadequate as the demand increased, Hendrick sent his men into the country districts and villages to recruit the girls at the source with sweet words and promises of pretty things.

The city fathers of Johannesburg and the police were fully aware of the unacknowledged halfworld of the towns.h.i.+ps that had grown up south of the goldfields but, daunted by the prospect of closing them down and finding alternative accommodation for thousands of vagrants and illegals, they turned a blind eye, appeasing their civic consciences by occasional raids, arrests and the wholesale imposition of fines. However, as the incidence of murder and robbery and other serious crime mysteriously abated at Drake's Farm and it became an area of comparative calm and order, so their condescension and forbearance became even more pragmatic. The police raids ceased, and the prosperity of the area increased as its reputation as a safe and convivial place to have fun spread amongst the tens of thousands of black mine workers along the Rand. When they had a pa.s.s to leave the compound, they would travel thirty and forty miles, bypa.s.sing other centres of entertainment to reach it.

However, there were still many hundreds of thousands of other potential customers who could never reach Drake's Farm, and Moses Gama turned his attention to these.

They cannot come to us, so we must go to them. He explained to Hendrick what must be done, and it was Hendrick who negotiated the piecemeal purchase of a fleet of second-hand delivery vans and employed a coloured mechanic to renovate them and keep them in running order.

Each evening convoys of these vehicles loaded with liquor and girls left Drake's Farm, journeying down the length of the goldfields to park at some secluded location close to the big mining properties, in a copse of trees, a valley between the mine dumps, or an abandoned shaft building. The guards at the gate of the mine workers compound, who were all Buffaloes, made certain that the customers were allowed in and out, and now every member of the Buffalo totem could share in the good fortune of their clan.

So, my brother, do you still miss your little white stones? Moses asked after their first two years of operation from Drake's Farm.

It was as you promised, Hendrick chuckled. We have everything that a man could wish for now., You are too easily satisfied, Moses chided him.

There is more? Hendrick asked with interest.

We have only just begun, Moses told him.

What is next, my brother? Have you heard of a trade union? Moses asked. Do you know what it is? Hendrick looked dubious, frowning as he thought about it. I know that the white men on the mines have trade unions, and the white men on the railways also. I have heard it spoken of, but I know very little about them. They are white men's business, no concern of the likes of us. You are wrong, my brother, Moses said quietly. The African Mine Workers Union is very much our concern. It is the reason why you and I came to Goldi!

I thought that we came for the money. Fifty thousand union members each paying one s.h.i.+lling a week union dues, isn't that money? Moses asked, and smiled as he watched his brother make the calculation.

Avarice contorted his smile so that the broken gap in his teeth looked like a black mine pit.

It is good money indeed! Moses had learned from his unsuccessful attempts to establish a mine workers union at the H'ani Mine. The black miners were simple souls with not the least vestige of political awareness; they were separated by tribal loyalties; they did not consider themselves part of a single nation.

Tribalism is the one great obstacle in our path, Moses explained to Hendrick. If we were one people we would be like a black ocean, infinite in our power. But we are not one people, Hendrick pointed out. Any more than the white men are one people. A Zulu is as different from an Ovambo as a Scotsman is from a Russian Cossack or an Afrikaner from an Englishman. Hay! Moses smiled. I see you have been reading the books I gave you. When first we came to Goldi you had never heard of a Russian Cossack- You have taught me much about men and the world they live in, Hendrick agreed. Now teach me how you will make a Zulu call an Ovambo his brother. Tell me how we are to take the power that is held so firmly in the hands of the white man. 'These things are possible. The Russian people were as diverse as we black people of Africa. They are Asiatics and Europeans, Tartars and Slavs, but under a great leader they have become a single nation and have overthrown a tyranny even more infamous than the one under which we suffer.

The black people need a leader who knows what is good for them and will force them to it, even if ten thousand or a million die in achieving it. A leader such as you, my brother? Hendrick asked, and Moses smiled his remote enigmatic smile.

The Mine Workers Union first, he said. Like a child learning to walk, one step at a time. The people must be forced to do what is good for them in the long run even though at first it is painful. I am not sure, Hendrick shook his great shaven round head on which the ridged scars stood proud like polished gems of black onyx. What is it we seek, my brother? Is it wealth or power? We are fortunate, Moses answered. You want wealth and I want power. The way I have chosen, each of us will get what he desires. Even with ruthless contingents of the Buffaloes on each of the mine properties the process of unionization was slow and frustrating. By necessity much of it had to be undertaken secretly, for the government's Industrial Conciliation Act placed severe limitations on black labour a.s.sociation and specifically prohibited collective bargaining by black workers. There was also opposition from the workers themselves, their natural suspicion and antagonism towards the new union shop stewards, all of them Buffaloes, all of them appointed and not elected; and the ordinary workers were reluctant to hand over part of their hard-earned wages to something they neither understood nor trusted.

However, with Dr Marcus Archer to advise and counsel them and with Hendrick's Buffaloes to push the cause forward, slowly the unionization of the workers on each of the various mine properties was accomplished.

The miners reluctance to part with their silver s.h.i.+llings was quelled.

There were, of course, casualties, and some men died, but at last there were over twenty thousand dues-paying members of the African Mine Workers Union.

The Chamber of Mines, the a.s.sociation of mining interests, found itself presented with a fait accompli. The members were at first alarmed; their natural instinct was to destroy this cancer immediately.

However, the Chamber members were first and above all else businessmen, concerned with getting the yellow metal to the surface with as little fuss as possible and with paying regular dividends to their shareholders. They understood what havoc a labour battle could wreak amongst their interests, so they held their first cautious informal talks with the nonexistent union and were most gratified to find the self-styled secretary general to be an intelligent articulate and reasonable person.

There was no trace of Bolshevik dialectic in his statements, and far from being radical and belligerent, he was cooperative and respectful in his address.

He is a man we can work with, they told each other. He seems to have influence. We've needed a spokesman for the workers and he seems a decent enough sort. We could have done a lot worse. We can manage this chap. And sure enough, their very first meetings had excellent results and they were able to solve a few small vexing long-term problems to the satisfaction of the union and the profit of the mine owners.