Rage - Smith Wilbur - Страница 27
- Предыдущая
- 27/198
- Следующая
'Well, Mrs Anstey, you have done us proud." He smiled at.her with all his charm. She was tall and rather bony but with silky blond hair that hung in a thick curtain over her bare shoulders.
'I always try to give full satisfaction." Jill Anstey hooded her eyes and pouted slightly to give the remark an ambiguous slant. They had been teasing each other ever since they had met the previous day. 'But I'm afraid I have some more work for you, Mr Courtney.
Will you bear with me just once more?" 'As often as you wish, Mrs Anstey." Shasa played the game out, and she placed her hand on his forearm to lead him away, squeezing just a little more than was necessary.
'The television people from NABS want to do a five-minute interview with you, for inclusion in their "Africa in Focus" series. It could be a wonderful chance to speak directly to fifty million Americans." The TV team was setting up their equipment in the boardroom; the lights and cameras were being trained on the far end of the long room, where Centaine's portrait by Annigoni, hung on the stinkwood panelling. There were three men in the camera crew, all young and casually dressed but clearly highly professional and competent, and with them was a girl.
'Who will do the interview?" Shasa asked, glancing around curiously.
'That's the director,' Jill Anstey said. 'And she'll talk to you." It took him a moment to realize that she meant the girl, then he saw that without seeming to do so, the girl was directing the set-up, indicating a camera angle or a lighting change with a word or a gesture.
'She's just a child,' Shasa protested.
'Twenty-five and smart as a bunch of monkeys,' Jill Anstey warned him. 'Don't let the little-girl look fool you. She's a professional and a strong corner with a big following in the States. She did that incredible series of interviews with Jomo Kenyatta, the Mau Mau terrorist, not to mention the "Heartbreak Ridge" story in Korea.
They say she'll get an Emmy for it." South Africa did not have a TV network, but Shasa had seen 'Heartbreak Ridge' on BBC television during his last stay in London.
It was a gritty, totally absorbing commentary on the Korean war, and Shasa found it hard to believe that this child had done that. She turned now and came directly to him, holding out her hand, frank and friendly, a fresh-faced ingbnue.
'Hello, Mr Courtney, I'm Kitty Godolphin." She had an enchanting southern accent and there were fine golden freckles across her cheeks and her small pert nose, but then he saw that she had good bone structure and interesting planes to her face that would render her highly photogenic.
'Mr Courtney,' she said. 'You speak so well, I couldn't resist trying to get a little more of you on film. I hope I haven't put you out too much." She smiled at him, a sweet engaging smile, but he looked beyond it into eyes as hard as any diamonds from the H'am Mine, eyes that were bright with a sharp cynical intelligence and ruthless ambition. That was unexpected and intriguing.
'Here's a show that will be worth the entrance fee,' he thought and glanced down. Her breasts were small, smaller than he usually chose, but they were unsupported and he could see their shape beneath her blouse. They were exquisite.
She led him to the leather chairs she had arranged to face each other under the lights.
'If you would sit on this side we'll get right into it. I'll do my introduction later. ! don't want to keep you any longer than I have to." 'As long as you like." 'Oh, I know that you have a room full of important guests." She glanced at her crew and one of them gave her a thumbs-up. She looked back at Shasa. 'The American public knows very little about South Africa,' she explained. 'What I am trying to do is capture a cross-section of your society and figure out how it all works. I will introduce you as a politician, mining tycoon and financier, and tell them about this fabulous new gold-mine of yours. Then we'll cut to you. Okay?" 'Okay!" He smiled easily. 'Let her roll." The clapper loader snapped the board in front of Shasa's face, somebody said 'Sound?" and solnebody else replied 'Rolling' and then 'Action'.
'Mr Shasa Courtney, you have just told a meeting of your shareholders that your new gold-mine will probably be one of the five richest in South Africa, which makes it one of the richest in the world. Can you tell our viewers just how much of that fabulous wealth will be going back to people from which it was stolen in the first place?" she asked with breathtaking candour. 'And I am, of course, referring to the black tribes who once owned the land." Shasa was off-balance for only the moment that it took him to realize that he was in a fight. Then he responded easily.
'The black tribes who once owned the land on which the Silver River mine is situated were slaughtered, to the last man, woman and child, back in the 1820s by the impis of Kings Chaka and Mzilikazi, those two benevolent Zulu monarchs who between them managed to reduce the population of southern Africa by fifty percent,' he told her. 'When the white settlers moved northwards, they came upon a land denuded of all human life. The land they staked was open, they stole it from nobody. I bought the mineral rights from people who had clear undisputed title to it." He saw a glint of respect in her eyes, but she was as quick as he had been. She had lost a point but she was ready to play the next.
'Historical facts are interesting, of course, but let's return to the present. Tell me, if you had been a man of colour, Mr Courtney, say black or an Asiatic businessman, would you have been allowed to purchase the concessions to the Silver River mine?" 'That's a hypothetical question, Miss Godolphin." 'I don't think so --' she cut off his escape. 'Am I wrong in thinking that the Group Areas Act recently promulgated by the parliament of which you are a sitting member, prevents non-white individuals and companies owned by blacks from purchasing land or mineral rights anywhere in their own land?" 'I voted against that legislation,' Shasa said grimly. 'But yes, the Group Areas Act would have prevented a coloured person acquiring the rights in the Silver River mine,' he conceded. Too clever to labour a point well taken, she moved on swiftly.
'How many black people does the Courtney Mining and Finance Company employ in its numerous enterprises'' she asked with that sweet open smile.
'Altogether through eighteen subsidiary companies, we provide work for some two thousand whites and thirty thousand blacks." 'That is a marvelous achievement, and must make you very proud, Mr Courtney." She was breathlessly girlish. 'And how many blacks do you have sitting on the boards of those eighteen co ' '' mpames.
Again he had been wrong-footed, and he avoided the question.
'We make a point of paying well above the going rate for the job, and the other benefits we provide to our employees --' Kitty nodded brightly, letting him finish, quite happy that she could edit out all this extraneous material, but the moment he paused, she came in again: 'So there are no black directors on the Courtney companies' boards. Can you tell us how many black departmental managers you have appointed?" Once long ago, hunting buffalo in the forests along the Zambezi river, Shasa had been attacked by a heat-maddened swarm of the big black African honey-bees. There had been no defence against them, and he had only escaped at last by diving into the crocodile infested Zambezi river. He felt that same sense of angry helplessness now, as she buzzed around his head, effortlessly avoiding his attempts to swat her down and darting out to sting painfully almost at will.
'Thirty thousand black men working for you, and not a single director or manager amongst them!" she marvelled ingenuously. 'Can you suggest why that might be?" 'We have a predominantly tribal rural black society in this country and they come to the cities unskilled and untrained --' 'Oh, don't you have training programmes?" Shasa accepted the opening. 'The Courtney group has a massive training programme. Last year alone we spent two and a half million pounds on employee education and job training." 'How long has this programme been in operation, Mr Courtney?" 'Seven years, ever since I became chairman." 'And in seven years, after all that money spent on education, not one black of all those thousands has been promoted to managerial status? Is that because you have not found a single capable black, or is it because your job reservation policy and your strict colour bar prevent any black, no matter how good--' He was driven back inexorably until in anger he went on the offensive. 'If you are looking for racial discrimination, why didn't you stay in America?" he asked her, smiling icily. 'I'm sure your own Martin Luther King would be able to help you more than I can." 'There is bigotry in my country,' she nodded. 'We understand that, and we are changing it, educating our people and outlawing its practice, but from what I have seen, you are indoctrinating your children in this policy you call apartheid and enshrining it in a monumental fortress of laws like your Group Areas Act and your Population Registration Act which seeks to classify all men by the colour of their skin alone." 'We differentiate,' Shasa conceded, 'but that does not mean that we discriminate." 'That's a catchy slogan, Mr Courtney, but not original. I have already heard it from your minister of Bantu affairs, Dr Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd. However, I suggest to you that you do discriminate. If a man is denied the right to vote or to own land merely because his skin is dark, that in my book is discrimination." And before he could respond, she had switched again.
- Предыдущая
- 27/198
- Следующая
