Together they were making a strong challenge for the leadership of the young Turks in the Congress hierarchy.
'It is time for us to move on to direct action.' Nelson Mandela leaned forward in his chair and looked down the long kitchen table.
The kitchen was the largest room in Puck's Hill, and all their meetings were held in it. 'We have drawn up a programme of boycott and strike and civil disobedience.' Mandela was speaking in English, and Moses Gama sitting near the end of the table watched him impassively, but all the time his mind was racing ahead of the speaker, assessing and evaluating. He as much as any of them present was aware of the undertones in the room. There was not a single black man present who did not cherish, somewhere in his soul, the dream of one day JeadJng aJJ te others, of one day being hailed as the paramount chief of all southern Africa.
Yet the fact that Mandela spoke in English pointed up the single most poignant fact that they had to face: they were all different.
Mandela was a Tembu, Xuma was a Zulu, Moses Gama himself was an Ovambo, and there were half a dozen other tribes represented in the room.
'It would be a hundred times easier if we blacks were all one people,' Moses thought, and then despite himself he glanced uneasily at the Zulus, sitting together as a group across the table. They were the majority, not only in this room, but in the country as a whole.
What if they somehow formed an alliance with the whites? - It was a disquieting thought, but he put it firmly aside. The Zulus were the proudest, most independent of the warrior tribes. Before the white man came, they had conquered all their neighbouring peoples and held them subjugated. The Zulu King Chaka had called them his dogs. Because of their multitudes and their warrior tradition, it was almost certain that the first black president of South Africa would be a Zulu, or someone with very close ties to the Zulu nation. Ties of marriage - not for the first time, Moses thought about that possibility with narrowed eyes, it was time he married anyway. He was almost forty-five years of age. A Zulu maiden of royal blood? He stored the idea for future consideration, and concentrated once again on what Nelson Mandela was saying.
The man had charisma and a presence, and he was articulate and persuasive, a rival - a very dangerous rival. Moses recognized that fact as he had often before. They were all rivals. However, the Youth League of the ANC was Nelson Mandela's power base, the hotheads, young men burning for action, and even now Mandela was proposing caution, tempering his call for action with reservations.
'There must be no gratuitous violence,' he was saying. 'No damage to private property, no danger to human life--' and although Moses Gama nodded wisely, he wondered how much appeal that would have with the rank and file of the Youth League. Would they not prefer the offer of a bloody and glorious victory? That was something else to be considered.
'We must show our people the way, we must demonstrate that we are all one in this enterprise,' Mandela was saying now, and Moses Gama smiled inwardly. The total membership of the ANC was seven thousand, while his secret union of mineworkers numbered almost ten times that figure. It would be as well to remind Mandela and the rest of them of his overwhelming support amongst the best paid and most strategically placed of all the black population. Moses turned slightly and looked at the man who sat beside him, and felt an untoward pang of affection. Hendrick Tabaka had been beside him like this for twenty years.
Swart Hendrick was a big man, as tall as Moses but wider across the shoulder, and heavier around the middle, with thick muscled limbs. His head was round and bald as a cannonball and laced with scars from ancient fights and battles. His front teeth were missing, and Moses remembered how the white man who had done that to him had died.
He was Moses' half-brother, son of the same father, a chief of the Ovambo, but of a different mother. He was the one man in all the world whom Moses trusted, a trust not lightly given but earned over all of those twenty years. He was the only black man in this room who was not a rival, but was instead both comrade and loyal servant.
Swart Hendrick nodded at him unsmilingly and Moses realized that Nelson Mandela had finished speaking and that they were all watching him, waiting for him to reply. He rose slowly to his feet, aware of the impression he was making, and he could see the respect in their expressions. Even his enemies in the room could not entirely conceal the awe which he inspired.
'Comrades,' he began. 'My brothers. I have listened to what my good brother Nelson Mandela has said and I agree with every word of it.
There are just a few points which I feel I must add--' and he spoke for nearly an hour.
Firstly he proposed to them a detailed plan to call a series of wildcat strikes in the mines where the labour force was controlled by his unions.
'The strikes will be in sympathy with the defiance campaign, but we will not call a general strike which would give the Boers an excuse for heavy-handed action. We will bring out only a few mines at any one time, and then only for a limited period, before going back to work, just enough to thoroughly disrupt gold production and to exasperate management. We will nip at their heels like a terrier harassing a lion, ready to spring away the instant he turns. But it will be a warning. It will let them realize our strength, and what would happen if we called a general strike.' He saw how they were impressed with his planning, and when he asked for a vote to confirm his proposal, he was given unanimous approval. It was another small victory, another addition to his prestige and influence within the group.
'In addition to the strike action, I would like to propose a boycott of all white-owned business on the Witwatersrand for the duration of the defiance campaign. The people will be allowed to buy their necessities of life from shops owned and run by black businessmen only.' Hendrick Tabaka owned over fifty large general dealer stores in the black townships along the gold reef, and Moses Gama was his sleeping partner. He saw the others at the table baulk at the suggestion, and Mandela objected.
'It will cause undue hardship amongst our people,' he said. 'Many of them live in areas where they can trade only with white stores.' 'Then they must travel to areas where there are black-owned businesses, and it will do our people no harm to learn that the struggle demands sacrifices from all of us,' Moses answered him quietly.
'A boycott such as you propose would be impossible to enforce,' Mandela insisted, and this time, Hendrick Tabaka replied to the objection.
'We will use the Buffaloes to make 'sure the people obey,' he growled, and now the more conservative members of the Council looked positively unhappy.
The Buffaloes were the union enforcers. Hendrick Tabaka was their commander and they had a reputation for swift, ruthless action.
