18

IN JOHANNESBURG, I had become a man of the city. I wore smart suits; I drove a colossal Oldsmobile, and I knew my way around the back alleys of the city. I commuted daily to a downtown office. But in fact I remained a country boy at heart, and there was nothing that lifted my spirits as much as blue skies, the open veld, and green grass. In September, with my bans ended, I decided to take advantage of my freedom and get a respite from the city. I took on a case in the little dorp of Villiers in the Orange Free State.

The drive to the Orange Free State from Johannesburg used to take several hours, and I set out on my journey from Orlando at 3 A.M., which has always been my favorite hour for departure. I am an early riser anyway, and at 3 A.M. the roads are empty and quiet, and one can be alone with one’s thoughts. I like to see the coming of dawn, the change between night and day, which is always majestic. It was also a convenient hour for departure because the police were usually nowhere to be found.

The province of the Orange Free State has always had a magical effect on me, though some of the most racist elements of the white population call the Free State their home. With its flat dusty landscape as far as the eye can see, the great blue ceiling above, the endless stretches of yellow mealie fields, scrub and bushes, the Free State’s landscape gladdens my heart no matter what my mood. When I am there I feel like nothing can shut me in, that my thoughts can roam as far and wide as the horizons.

The landscape bore the imprint of General Christiaan De Wet, the gifted Boer commander who outclassed the British in dozens of engagements during the final months of the Anglo-Boer War; fearless, proud, and shrewd, he would have been one of my heroes had he been fighting for the rights of all South Africans, not just Afrikaners. He demonstrated the courage and resourcefulness of the underdog, and the power of a less sophisticated but patriotic army against a tested war machine. As I drove, I imagined the hiding places of General De Wet’s army and wondered whether they would someday shelter African rebels.

The drive to Villiers cheered me considerably, and I was laboring under a false sense of security when I entered the small courthouse on the morning of the third of September. I found a group of policemen waiting for me. With nary a word, they served me with an order under the Suppression of Communism Act requiring me to resign from the ANC, restricting me to the Johannesburg district, and prohibiting me from attending any meetings or gatherings for two years. I knew such measures would come, but I had not expected to receive my bans in the remote town of Villiers.

I was thirty-five years old and these new and more severe bans ended a period of nearly a decade of involvement with the ANC, years that had been the time of my political awakening and growth, and my gradual commitment to the struggle that had become my life. Henceforth, all of my actions and plans on behalf of the ANC and the liberation struggle would become secret and illegal. Once served, I had to return to Johannesburg immediately.

My bans drove me from the center of the struggle to the sidelines, from a role that was primary to one that was peripheral. Though I was often consulted and was able to influence the direction of events, I did so at a distance and only when expressly asked. I no longer felt like a vital organ of the body — the heart, lungs, or backbone — but a severed limb. Even freedom fighters, at least then, had to obey the laws, and at that point, imprisonment for violating my bans would have been useless to the ANC and to myself. We were not yet at the point where we were open revolutionaries, overtly fighting the system no matter what the cost. We believed then that it was better to organize underground than to go to prison. When I was forced to resign from the ANC, the organization had to replace me, and no matter what I might have liked, I could no longer wield the authority I once possessed. While I was driving back to Johannesburg, the Free State scenery did not have quite the same elevating effect on me as before.