London Sunday Times
I am leaving South Africa. I have lived here for 35 years, and I shall
leave with anguish. My home and my friends are here, but I am terrified.
I know I shall be in trouble for saying so, because I am the widow of
Alan Paton.
Fifty years ago he wrote 'Cry, The Beloved Country.' He was an unknown
schoolmaster and it was his first book, but it became a bestseller
overnight. It was eventually translated into more than 20 languages and
became a set book in schools all over the world. It has sold more than
15 million copies and still sells 100,000 copies a year. As a result of
the startling success of this book, my husband became famous for his
impassioned speeches and writings, which brought to the notice of the
world the suffering of the black man under apartheid. He campaigned for
Nelson Mandela's release from prison and he worked all his life for
black majority rule. He was incredibly hopeful about the new South
Africa that would follow the end of apartheid, but he died in 1988, aged
85. I was so sorry he did not witness the euphoria and love at the time
of the election in 1994. But I am glad he is not alive now. He would
have been so distressed to see what has happened to his beloved country.
I love this country with a passion, but I cannot live here any more. I
can no longer live slung about with panic buttons and gear locks. I am
tired of driving with my car windows closed and the doors locked, tired
of being afraid of stopping at red lights. I am tired of being
constantly on the alert, having that sudden frisson of fear at the sight
of a shadow by the gate, of a group of youths approaching – although
nine times out of 10 they are innocent of harmful intent. Such is the
suspicion that dogs us all.
Among my friends and the friends of my friends, I know of nine people
who have been murdered in the past four years. An old friend, an elderly
lady, was raped and murdered by someone who broke into her home for no
reason at all; another was shot at a garage. We have a saying, "Don't
fire the gardener", because of the belief that it is so often an inside
job - the gardener who comes back and does you in. All this may sound
like paranoia, but it is not without reason. I have been hijacked,
mugged and terrorised. A few years ago my car was taken from me at
gunpoint. I was forced into the passenger seat. I sat there frozen. But
just as one man jumped into the back and the other fumbled with the
starter I opened the door and ran away. To this day I do not know how I
did this. But I got away, still clutching my handbag.
On May I this year I was mugged in my home at three in the afternoon. I
used to live in a community of big houses with big grounds in the
countryside. It's still beautiful and green, but the big houses have
been knocked down and people have moved into fenced complexes like the
one in which I now live. Mine is in the suburbs of Durban, but they're
springing up everywhere. That afternoon I came home and omitted to close
the security door. I went upstairs to lie down. After a while I thought
I'd heard a noise, perhaps a bird or something. Without a qualm I got up
and went to the landing; outside was a man. I screamed and two other men
appeared. I was seized by the throat and almost throttled; I could feel
myself losing consciousness. My mouth was bound with Sellotape and I was
threatened with my own knife (Girl Guide issue from long ago) and told:
"If you make a sound, you die." My hands were tied tightly behind my
back and I was thrown into the guest room and the door was shut. They
took all the electronic equipment they could find, except the computer.
They also, of course, took the car.
A few weeks later my new car was locked up in my fenced carport when I
was woken by its alarm in the early hours of the morning. The thieves
had removed the radio, having cut through the padlocks in order to
bypass the electric control on the gates.
The last straw came a few weeks ago, shortly before my 71st birthday. I
returned home in the middle of the afternoon and walked into my sitting
room. Outside the window two men were breaking in. I retreated to the
hall and pressed the panic alarm. This time I had shut the front door on
entering. By now I had become more cautious. Yet one of the men ran
around the house, jumped over the fence and tried to batter down the
front door. Meanwhile, his accomplice was breaking my sitting- room
window with a hammer. This took place while the sirens were shrieking,
which was the frightening part. They kept coming, in broad daylight,
while the alarm was going. They knew that there had to be a time lag of
a few minutes before help arrived - enough time to dash off with the
television and video recorder. In fact, the front-door assailant was
caught and taken off to the cells.
Recently I telephoned to ask the magistrate when I would be called as a
witness. She told me she had let him off for lack of evidence. She said
that banging on my door was not an offence, and how could I prove that
his intent was hostile?
I have been careless in the past - razor wire and electric gates give
one a feeling of security. Or at least, they did. But I am careless no
longer. No fence - be it electric or not - no wall, no razor wire is
really a deterrent to the determined intruder. Now my alarm is on all
the time and my panic button hung round my neck. While some people say I
have been unlucky, others say: "You are lucky not to have been raped or
murdered." What kind of a society is this where one is considered
"lucky" not to have been raped or murdered - yet?
A character in 'Cry, The Beloved Country' says: "I have one great fear
in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving they will find
we are turned to hating." And so it has come to pass. There is now more
racial tension in this country than I have ever known. But it is not
just about black-on-white crime. It is about general lawlessness. Black
people suffer more than the whites. They do not have access to private
security firms, and there are no police stations near them in the
townships and rural areas. They are the victims of most of the
hijackings, rapes and murders. They cannot run away like the whites, who
are streaming out of this country in their thousands.
President Mandela has referred to us who leave as "cowards" and says the
country can do without us. So be it. But it takes a great deal of
courage to uproot and start again. We are leaving because crime is
rampaging through the land. The evils that beset this country now are
blamed on the legacy of apartheid. One of the worst legacies of that
time is that of the Bantu Education Act, which deliberately gave black
people an inferior education.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that criminals know that their
chances of being caught are negligible; and if they are caught they will
be free almost at once. So what is the answer? The government needs to
get its priorities right. We need a powerful, well-trained and
well-equipped police force.
Recently there was a robbery at a shopping centre in the afternoon. A
call to the police station elicited the reply: "We have no transport."
"Just walk then," said the caller; the police station is about a
two-minute sprint from the shop in question. "We have no transport,"
came the reply again. Nobody arrived.
There is a quote from my husband's book: "Cry, the beloved country, for
the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the
earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs
through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red
the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land
are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley.
For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much." What has changed in
half a century? A lot of people who were convinced that everything would
be all right are disillusioned, though they don't want to admit it.
The government has many excellent schemes for improving the lot of the
black man, who has been disadvantaged for so long. A great deal of money
is spent in this direction. However, nothing can succeed while people
live in such fear. Last week, about 10km from my home, an old couple
were taken out and murdered in the garden. The wife had only one leg and
was in a wheelchair. Yet they were stabbed and strangled - for very
little money. They were the second old couple to be killed last week. It
goes on and on, all the time; we have become a killing society. As I
prepare to return to England, a young man asked me the other day, in all
innocence, if things were more peaceful there. "You see," he said, "I
know of no other way of life than this. I cannot imagine anything
different." What a tragic statement on the beloved country today.
"Because the white man has power, we too want power," says Msimangu.
"But when a black man gets power, when he gets money, he is a great man
if he is not corrupted. I have seen it often. He seeks power and money
to put right what is wrong, and when he gets them, why, he enjoys the
power and the money. Now he can gratify his lusts, now he can arrange
ways to get white man's liquor. I see only one hope for our country, and
that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money,
but desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for
it. I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned
to loving, they will find we are turned to hating."
