section and relock them as Manfred and the prison commissioner passed through. It was a long walk, but they came at last to the condemned block.
'How many awaiting execution?' Manfred demanded.
'Eleven,' the commissioner replied. The figure was not unusually high, Manfred reflected. Africa is a violent land and the gallows play a central role in the administration of justice.
'I do not want to be overheard, even by those soon to die.' et has been arranged,' the commissioner assured him. 'Gama is being kept separate from the others.' The warders opened one last steel door and at the end of a short passage was a barred cell. Manfred went through but when the commissioner would have followed, Manfred stopped him.
'Wait here!' he ordered. 'Lock the door after me and open it again only when I ring.' As the door clanged shut Manfred walked on to the end of the passage.
The cell was small, seven foot by seven, and almost bare. There was a toilet bowl against the side wall and a single iron bunk fixed to the opposite wall. Moses Gama sat on the edge of the bunk and he looked up at Manfred. Then slowly he came to his feet and crossed the cell to face him through the green-painted bars.
Neither man spoke. They stared at each other. Though only the bars separated them, they were a universe and an eternity apart.
Though their gazes locked, there was no contact between their minds, and the hostility was a barrier between them more obdurate and irreconcilable than the steel bars.
'Yes?' Manfred asked at last. The temptation to gloat over a vanquished adversary was strong, but he withstood it. 'You asked to see me?' q have a proposal to put to you,' Moses Gama said.
'You wish to bargain for your life?' Manfred corrected him, and when Moses was silent, he smiled. 'So it seems that you are no different from other men, Moses Gama. You are neither a saint nor even the noble martyr that some say you are. You are no better than other men, no better than any of us. In the end your loyalty is to yourself alone. You are weak as other men are weak, and like them, you are afraid.' 'Do you wish to listen to my proposal?' Moses asked, without a sign of having heard the taunts.
'I will hear what you have to say,' Manfred agreed. 'That is why I came here.' 'I will deliver them to you,' Moses said, and Manfred understood immediately.
'By 'them' you mean those who also claim to be the leaders of your people? The ones who compete with your own claim to that position?' Moses nodded and Manfred chuckled and shook his head with admiration.
'I will give you the names and the evidence. I will give you the times and the places.' Moses was still expressionless. 'You have underestimated the threat that they are to you, you have underestimated the support they can muster, here and abroad. I will give you that knowledge.' 'And in return?' Manfred asked.
'My freedom,' said Moses simply.
'Magtig!' The blasphemy was a measure of Manfred's astonishment. 'You have the effrontery of a white man.' He turned away so that Moses could not see his face while he considered the magnitude of the offer.
Moses Gama was wrong. Manfred was fully aware of the threat, and he had a broad knowledge of the extent and the ramifications of the conspiracy. He understood that the world he knew was under terrible siege. The Englishman had spoken of the winds of changethey were blowing not only upon the African continent, but across the world. Everything he held dear, from the existence of his family to that of his Volk and the safety of the land that God had delivered unto them, was under attack by the forces of darkness.
Here he was being offered the opportunity to deal those forces a telling blow. He knew then what his duty was.
'I cannot give you your freedom,' he said quietly. 'That 'is too much - but you knew that when you demanded it, didn't you?' Moses did not answer him, and Manfred went on, 'This is the bargain I will offer you. I will give you your life. A reprieve, but you will never leave prison again. That is the best I can do.' The silence went on so long that Manfred thought he had refused and he began to turn away when Moses spoke again. 'I accept.' Manfred turned back to him, not allowing his triumph to show.
'I will want all the names, all the evidence,' he insisted.
'You will have it all,' Moses assured him. 'When I have my reprieve.' 'No,' Manfred said quietly. 'I set the terms. You will have your reprieve when you have earned it. Until then you will get only a stay of execution. Even for that I will need you to name a name so that I can convince my compatriots of the wisdom of our bargain.' Moses was silent, glowering at him through the bars.
'Give me a name,' Manfred insisted. 'Give me something to take to the prime minister.' 'I will do better than that,' Moses agreed. 'I will give you two names. Heed them well. They are - Mandela and Rivonia.' Michael Courtney was in the city room of the Mail when the news that the Appellate Division had denied Moses Gama's appeal and confirmed the date of his execution, came clattering out on the tape.
He let the paper strip run through his fingers, reading it with total concentration, and when the message ended, he went to his desk and sat in front of his typewriter.
He lit a cigarette and sat quietly, staring out of the window over the tops of the scraggly trees in Joubert Park. He had a pile of work in his basket and a dozen reference books on his desk. Desmond Blake had slipped out of the office to go down to the George to top up his gin tank and left Michael to finish the article on the American elections. Eisenhower was nearing the end of his final term and the editor wanted a pen portrait of the presidential candidates. Michael was working on his biographical notes of John Kennedy, but having difficulty choosing the salient facts from the vast amount that had been written about the young Democratic candidate, apart from those that everybody knew, that he was a Catholic and a New Dealer and that he had been born in 1917.
America seemed very far away that morning, and the election of an American president inconsequential in comparison with what he had just read on the tape.
As part of his self-education and training, Michael made a practice each day of selecting an item of important news and writing a two-thousand-word mock editorial upon it. These exercises were for his own sake, the results private and jealously guarded. He showed them to no one, especially not Desmond Blake whose biting sarcasm and whose willingness to plagiarize Michael had learned to fear. He kept these articles in a folder in the locked bottom drawer of his desk.
Usually Michael worked on these exercises in his own time, staying on for an hour or so in the evening or sitting up late at night in the little bed-sitter he rented in Hillbrow, pecking them out on his rickety old secondhand
