One evening these two august gentlemen had joined the Focus Group for an informal discussion, and Wil Hardy found them to be unexpectedly witty and good-humored. When Roxy Ford expressed uneasiness about the Chinese—who had comprised one fifth of the people in the world—not being represented proportionally in the surviving population, Dr. Chan told her not to be concerned. “We are very smart and very industrious,” he said, “so that even a small number of us will make our mark in the new society. Besides,” he continued with a smile, “Ihave a feeling that somewhere in China there is a community that lived through the catastrophe—perhaps underground or through some other good fortune—and one day these people will emerge to reveal to the world a new and glorious civilization.”
“And while they are admiring themselves,” Dr. Nagasaka said with a broad grin, “we Japanese, along with the rest of Asia, will honor them, emulate them, and—without further ado—pass them by!”
In their more serious moments, both Chan and Nagasaka evinced a deep serenity that found its roots in the Buddhism to which they had both been exposed in their youth. For all their modern, scientifically based sophistication, the worldwide disaster did not appear to bring out in them the anger, frustration, or despair felt by many of the survivors, even their fellow engineers.
The Ulundi Indaba’s representatives on the Planning Subcommittee were led by Stephen Healey, senior surviving employee of the provincial government. “Call me Mr. Bureaucrat,” he said to the others with a wry smile. Peter Mavimbela had been head of the National Union of Mine Workers; Eric Steenkamp was an experienced mining engineer from Pretoria. Then there was Harish Kahar, a respected merchant and leader of the Indian community. Other members came from local industry and government and the local farming community. Mavimbela quickly emerged as a key figure, since everyone knew that any plan for technological development would require the cooperation of the indigenous workforce. The most clever ideas of the most brilliant people would be unavailing without the endorsement of the workers among these newly encountered compatriots.
As already noted, the Africans were every bit as anxious as the Westerners to embark on a program of technological redevelopment. And it was obvious that progress would be best served if people performed the work they were most qualified to do, that is, the work they had been doing before the Event. But how could those people who would do most of the physical labor—particularly the miners and factory workers—protect themselves from being exploited? Was the history of the world to be repeated, with a working class in chains?
Mavimbela raised the question and was not impressed by the hearty assurances he received from Alf Richards. Yet, clearly, there was no practical alternative to moving ahead based on a good faith understanding. It would be foolhardy to try to negotiate employment agreements while the survival of the entire populace hung in the balance. The workers would have to perform their tasks with the understanding that they would in due course receive a fair deal, however that might later be defined. Solemnly the group agreed that the situation was to be evaluated—along with the status of all ad hoc committees and other government arrangements—after a year. One circuit of the earth around the sun. A year of good faith.
In the most general terms, the compact ensured that everybody would pitch in to the best of his or her ability. The Joint Planning Subcommittee would do the detailed planning and make specific work assignments. However, there was to be no coercion to accept these assignments, other than family or social pressure. To the extent possible, all groups would attempt to discourage malingering. It was also agreed that food, clothing, and shelter would be shared as equitably as possible. As for personal behavior—coping with the inevitable private conflicts—it was quickly decided that each of the two main communities would be responsible for its own internal order.
“Everyone seems to be avoiding the word ‘communism,’ “ Alf Richards said, “but that’s what we’ve got here.”
“Not in the least,” was Stephen Healey’s response when the question came up. “This is an emergency arrangement among sensible people. We are choosing pragmatic action over suicidal polemics.”
Word spread quickly throughout the Ulundi circle, and the concept of cooperative effort—according to a centrally conceived plan—won wide acceptance. There seemed to be no better alternative.
Could the survivors work without a money economy, without feudalism, without tyranny, without legal compulsion? Yes—not without confusion and complaint, and certainly not forever—but for a year, the answer was yes. One might have expected a breakdown of civility, anarchy of the mob run riot, followed perhaps by the rise of a despot. Yet such fears were not realized. Even criminal offenses decreased to the vanishing point. “A miracle,” exclaimed Hans Potter, a long-time police officer from Dundee.
The political compact could remain essentially vague; but not so the strategy for technological development. In allocating resources and assigning personnel, specific decisions had to be made. And they were.
At the subcommittee’s first meeting, the basic element of a master plan was established so quickly, so arbitrarily, and so unanimously that it seemed preordained. Stephen Healey proposed it, and it came to be known as “the Half and Half Doctrine”: half the population were to be counted on as able-bodied workers, and half of these in turn would be committed to agriculture and animal husbandry.
“I don’t know about your folks,” Healey said, “but among ours I would count on only half the people for our able-bodied workforce. Set aside the very young, the old, the infirm, and the full-time housekeepers, and half is what you’re left with. The individuals I call the housekeepers—mostly the mothers of our families—work extremely hard, as we very well know. But we can’t send them out into the fields and the factories if we hope to maintain a functioning society. They cook, clean, sew, and launder, and many of them keep small gardens and raise chickens as well. In our present situation; they are also the ones who fetch water, or make sure that this vital activity is attended to. We need them in the home to care for their families and to help put their shattered households back in order. Hopefully, we can engage some of them in cottage industry work—weaving and the like. Eventually, if they choose, they can go out into the so-called working world as do so many—well, as so many young women did. But not right now. As for the kids, I understand that you want them to concentrate on education. And we think that’s a good idea.”
“Oh yes,” said Gordon Chan. “If we lose our foundation in learning, we’ll really be back in the Stone Age. Then our descendants will have to spend hundreds of years—maybe thousands—regaining the knowledge that we inherited from our forebears.”
“The youngsters will do chores,” continued Healey, “especially when crops need harvesting. But they will have to understand that their primary responsibility is to study and to learn. And, Peter,” he said, looking intently at Mavimbela, “we want this to be the case with the poorest Zulu child as well as with the most advantaged among the whites.”
Not hearing any questions or objections, Healey continued: “I further propose that half the able-bodied workforce—in other words, one quarter of the total population—be assigned to cultivating food and caring for livestock. I know,” and here he addressed especially the Engineering Village contingent, “that in the United States, less than two percent of the people are farmers; yet they grow food for everybody else, with lots left over for export. But that means absolutely nothing when you think of our condition here today. We have—or had—large farms and cattle ranches that were run quite efficiently. But the mechanical equipment that was so vital to those operations is gone. So are the fertilizers, the stores of feed, and all the fine facilities that we used to boast about in the province’s public relations brochures. Even the small, fairly primitive homesteads are obviously less productive than they were. We’re reduced to poking at the earth with sticks, and harvesting such crops as there are with our bare hands. We absolutely must have half of our workers—a quarter of our people—out in the fields making sure that we have enough food to sustain ourselves.”
“Without objection, then, the plan is agreed to,” the chairman stated. There was no formal vote. The subcommittee began its work in consensus mode.
Millie Fox noted that the twenty-five hundred “Outlanders” did not fall into the same categories as the approximately twenty-five thousand surviving citizens of KwaZulu Natal. Specifically, in Engineering Village there were no full-time housekeepers looking after families. Members of the ship’s crew prepared food and drink for the group, and as for miscellaneous domestic chores, it was every man for himself. However, in the initial planning meeting, nobody wanted to get bogged down discussing such minutiae. The population figures were just rough approximations anyhow; and it would be a long while before anybody took the time and effort to work up a detailed census. So the subcommittee applied the Half and Half Doctrine somewhat arbitrarily by establishing the available
