Rage

When they had purged their airst passion, they lay under the thick kaross of hyrax skins and talked the rest of the night away.

He listened to her boast of her exploits in his absence. She had marched to Pretoria with the other women to deliver a petition to the new minister of Bantu affairs, who had replaced Dr Verwoerd when he had become prime minister.

The march had never reached the Union Buildings. The police had intercepted it, and arrested the organizers. She had spent three days and nights in prison, and she related her humiliations with such humour, giggling as she repeated the Alice in Wonderland exchanges between the magistrate and herself, that Moses chuckled with her. In the end. the charges of attending an unlawful assembly and ' ' incitement to public violence had been dropped, and Vicky and the other women had been released.

'But I am a battle-trained warrior now,' she laughed. 'I have bloodied my spear, like the Zulus of old King Chaka." 'I am proud of you,' he told her. 'But the true battle is only just begi

Before they at last drifted off into sleep, the false dawn was framing the single small window, and Vicky murmured with her lips against his naked chest, 'How long will you stay this time, my lord?" 'Not as long as I wish I could." He stayed on three more days at Drake's Farm, and Vicky was with him every night.

Many visitors came when they heard that Moses Gama had returned and most of them were the fierce younger men of Urnkhonto we Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation, the warriors eager for action.

Some of the older men of the Congress who came to talk with Moses left disturbed by what they had heard and even Swart Hendrick was worried. His brother had changed. He could not readily tell in what way he had changed, but the difference was there. Moses was more impatient and restless. The mundane details of business, and the day-to-day ru

'It is as though he has fastened his eyes upon a distant hilltop, and ca

'The people are cattle, lazy and stupid, what have they done to deserve the things for which I have worked so-long and hard?" 'Perhaps it is a fever. Perhaps your great brother has a worm in his bowel,' his favourite wife suggested. 'I will make a muti for him that will clear his guts and his skull." Swart Hendrick shook his head sadly. He was not at all certain that even one of his wife's devastating laxatives would drive the dark schemes from his brother's head.

!iiz Of course, long ago he had talked and dreamed strange and wi things with his brother. Moses had been young and that was the w of young men, but now the frosts of wisdom were upon Hendrick head, and his belly was round and full, and he had many sons or herds of cattle. He had not truly thought about it before, but he was a man contented. True he was not free - but then he was not su what free really meant. He loved and feared his brother very muc] but he was not sure that he wanted to risk all he had for a word uncertain meaning.

'We must burn down and destroy the whole monstrous system his brother said, but it occurred to Swart Hendrick that in tl: burning down might be included his stores and bakeries.

'We must goad the land, we must make it wild and ungovernabh like a great stallion, so that the oppressor is hurled to earth from il back,' his brother said, but Hendrick had an uncomfortable irnag of himself and his cosy existence taking that same painful toss.

'The rage of the people is a beautiful and sacred thing, we must le it run free,' Moses said, and Hendrick thought of the people ru

'The police are the enemies of the people, they too will perish i the flames,' Moses said, and Hendrick remembered that when the faction fighting between the Zulus and the Xhosas had swept throughout Drake's Farm the previous November, it was the police who hat separated them and prevented many more than forty dead. They hoc also saved his stores from being looted in the uproar. Now Hendrick wondered just who would prevent them killing each other after the police had been burned, and just what day-to-day existence would be like in the townships when each man made his own laws.

Iffowever, Swart Hendrick was ashamed of his treacherous reliet when three days later Moses left Drake's Farm, and moved to the house at Rivonia. Indeed it was Swart Hendrick who had gently pointed out to his brother the danger of remaining when almost everybody in the township knew he had returned, and all day long there was a crowd of idlers in the street hoping for a glimpse of Moses Gama, the beloved leader. It was only a matter of time before the police heard about it through their informers.

The young warriors of Umkhonto we Sizwe willingly acted as Moses' scouts in the weeks that followed. They arranged the meetings, the small clandestine gatherings of the most fierce and bloody-minded amongst their own ranks. After Moses had spoken to them, the smouldering resentments which they felt towards the conservative and pacific leadership of the Congress was ready to burst into open rebellion.

Moses sought out and talked with some of the older members of Congress who, despite their age, were radical and impatient. He met secretly with the cell leaders of his own Buffaloes without the knowledge of Hendrick Tabaka for he had sensed the change in his brother, the cooling of his political passions which had never boiled at the same white heat as Moses' own. For the first time in all the years he no longer trusted him entirely. Like an axe too long in use, Hendrick had lost the keen bright edge, and Moses knew that he must find another sharper weapon to replace him.

'The young ones must carry the battle forward,' he told Vicky Dinizulu. 'Raleigh, and yes, you also, Vicky. The struggle is passing into your hands." At each meeting he listened as long as he spoke, picking up the subtle shifts in the balance of power which had taken place in the years that he had been in foreign lands. It was only then that he realized how much ground he had lost, how far he had fallen behind Mandela in the councils of the African National Congress and the imagination of the people.

'It was a serious error on my part to go underground and leave the country,' he mused. 'If only I had stayed to take my place in the dock beside Mandela and the others --' 'The risk was too great,' Vicky made excuse for him. 'If there had been another judgement - if any of the Boer judges other than Rumpff had tried them, they might have gone to the gallows and if you had gone with them the cause would have died upon the rope with all' of you. You ca