lovely woman going out of the window. He didn’t give a damn about the CCB’s loss, it was his own. He said, truthfully, ‘Oh yes. We didn’t talk about it much in the officers’ mess but I and a good few others had considerable qualms. But I considered myself to be fighting the greater evil of communism only, the important thing was to defeat the enemy, drive him into the sea, and then let the politicians unscramble the mess of apartheid.’
She smiled sweetly. ‘And if the politicians had not unscrambled the mess of apartheid, what would you have done? Would you have quit the army?’
‘I quit anyway. The politicians still haven’t unscrambled apartheid, but here I am.’
‘But you were wounded.’
‘But not killed. I could have stayed in the army in a non-combatant role.’
She looked at him calculatingly, smiling. ‘Okay, but when you went into battle did you really feel that you were only fighting against communism?’
Harker smiled. ‘Yes.’ That was more or less true.
‘But in the heat of battle too?’
He didn’t think it would be helpful to explain that in the heat of the battle all you felt was terrified hatred for the bastards trying to kill you. Like the saying ‘There are no atheists in a fox-hole’, there are few starry-eyed liberals on an African battlefield. But he didn’t want an argument with this beautiful woman, he wanted to have a nice lunch while Clements burgled her apartment again and then, if at all possible, he wanted to get laid. If not today then some time. Soon. ‘Yes, in battle too. Shall we order?’
She gave him a dazzling smile. ‘A bit later perhaps; I’m enjoying this conversation, I’ll bring it into my book.’
Harker smiled. The Chairman would love that. ‘So tell me about your book. May I?’ He indicated the folder containing her typescript.
She placed her hand protectively on it. ‘Please, not yet.’ She gave him another dazzling smile. ‘I’ve only written about ten chapters so far, anyway. I thought I was ready to show them to you but now I know I’m not. You’ve given me some new ideas.’ She grinned, then hunched forward earnestly. ‘So tell me, what’s going to happen in South Africa?’
This was the opening he was waiting for, the reason why Clements was burgling her apartment at this moment. He turned the question around: ‘What do you think is going to happen?’ He particularized: ‘In Angola?’
‘I asked first.’
He decided to give his honest opinion rather than the propagandist one.
‘The war will go on for some time. But communism is on the ropes. Russia is in big economic trouble. Cuba is Russia’s cat’s-paw and Russia cannot afford to support them much longer. Angola is Russia’s Vietnam. However, nor can South Africa afford it much longer, though we’re in better shape than Russia and Cuba. So even if we don’t achieve a knockout blow now and drive the Cubans back home – which we could do militarily – Russia’s poverty will eventually do the job for us. So I think South Africa will finally win the war.’ He added, in the hopes of drawing her out, ‘I don’t think the South Africans will ever quit, no matter what economic hardships they encounter. And I think Castro realizes this and he’ll soon start looking for a face-saving way to make a peace deal.’ He added, ‘Don’t you?’
Josephine was not to be drawn. She had her hands clasped under her chin, her eyes attentive. ‘And what’s going to happen to apartheid?’
Harker took a sip of wine. ‘Meanwhile apartheid is on the ropes too. It is a proven failure. Cruel, and economically unjust – and economically wasteful. So there will be reform – already the state president has warned his Volk that they must “adapt or die”, and a lot of apartheid’s petty laws are not being enforced. So after the communist threat is removed, I expect apartheid will be eroded until there is none of it left. There’ll be resistance to the process, of course, diehards threatening civil war, but my guess is that by the turn of the century apartheid will be well and truly dead and we can get on with reforming ourselves our way.’
Josephine took an energetic sip of wine. ‘And what is “our” way? One man, one vote?’
‘Yes, but we must prepare for that over at least a decade. To instil a democratic culture into the blacks.’ He added, ‘One of the greatest sins of apartheid is that we wasted forty years during which we could have done that, brought them up gradually into political maturity. Instead, apartheid just translocated them back into their tribal homelands, threw independence at them and let them make a mess of it.’
Josephine sat back, on her hobby horse. ‘You don’t think that their “mess” is perhaps a teeny-weeny bit due to the rape of colonialism?’
Harker sat back also. He frowned reasonably. ‘Indeed, some of it. The Germans, for example, were bad colonialists, ruling by the whip. But they were kicked out of Africa during the First World War. The Portuguese were also bad – but at least the Latins didn’t practise segregation. King Leopold raped the Belgian Congo and brutalized the natives with forced labour, and the government did nothing to prepare the natives for the independence they threw at them at the first sign of rebellion, so of course the place erupted in chaos – particularly as the Russians and Chinese were fuelling the flames in their quest for worldwide communist revolution. Yes,’ he agreed sagely, ‘the communist powers were very bad neo-colonialists.’
Josephine sat back firmly in her chair, one hand clutching her wine glass to her breast.
‘And the Dutch were bad colonialists,’ Harker continued. ‘They subjugated the natives, very much like you Americans did with the Red Indians – you people were also bad colonialists.’ He smiled and took a sip of wine, then frowned. ‘But the British were pretty good colonialists, Josephine. They tried to teach the Africans democracy, tried to bring them into government gradually. But the Wind of Change forced them to go too fast, grant independence too soon and their colonies became corrupt dictatorships.’ He ended mildly: ‘Don’t you think?’
‘So,’ Josephine said, ‘you think that South Africa should spend the next ten years teaching them a democratic culture, before giving them the vote?’
‘It’s starting now. The government has created a separate parliament for Coloureds, by that I mean the half-castes, and another one for Indians. Apartheid is in retreat.’
Josephine leant forward. ‘Bullshit!’ She tapped her breast. ‘I’ve just come from that neck of the woods and I can tell you that apartheid is monstrously alive and hideously well! South Africa is not ruled by parliament any more, it’s ruled by the goddam security forces! By so-called securocrats. By the so-called State Security Council which is nothing more than a committee of police and army generals which bypass the whole goddam parliament!’ She looked at him. ‘Your parliament is irrelevant now, the country is run by the goddam generals, like the Argentine was. Like Chile.’ She glared at him. Before Harker could respond she went on, ‘And what about the NSMS – the National Security Management System that this State Security Council has set up – hundreds of secret intelligence committees across the country with tentacles into every facet of life, spying on absolutely everybody, committing murders and mayhem. Absolutely above the law.’ She glared. ‘What your parliament says is irrelevant in these days of the Total Onslaught, Total Strategy.’
Harker was impressed with her general knowledge. He said: ‘But that sort of thing happens all over the world when a state of emergency is declared. However, I doubt that parliament
