The Colour of Gold (11 page)

"Thank you. I
will." Bala said as he walked to the door of the shop with the
attorney. The lawyer left and Bala closed the door. He turned to
face his family.

"Well, my two
beloveds." he said. "This is much more that I ever expected. It's
obvious that uncle Rajesh had a very nice little business. We must
make sure that we maintain the standards that he had and if
possible, even improve on them."

Fatima nodded
her head slowly.

"Yes." she
said. "We have been given something wonderful and we must never let
it get away from us. We must work hard and diligently. Salona, you
can help me to dust the shop while your father goes through the
garments waiting to be repaired or altered."

While Fatima
and Salona cleaned and tidied the shop Bala began to examine the
garments on the rack, nodding as he read the instructions pinned to
them.

"Uncle Rajesh
was a very meticulous man." Bala said. "Every garment has precise
instructions so it'll be quite easy to do the repairs and
alterations. I've no doubt that we can have everything ready for
the customers by next week. Hopefully, in the mean time, more
customers will bring in work. Fatima, my dearest, I'm getting
really excited about the future! But one of the first things I'm
going to do is change the name of the shop. What do you think of
the name DESAI FAMILY TAILORS?"

Fatima
smiled.

"That sounds
wonderful!" she said.

By the Monday
of the following week Bala and Fatima had managed to repair or
alter all the garments left by customers before the death of Rajesh
Dinat and had also taken in work that would keep them busy for the
whole of the next week. On the Friday afternoon the signage company
installed the new sign DESAI FAMILY TAILORS above the front
door.

"We must make
sure that no customer ever leaves the shop dissatisfied with our
work." Bala told Fatima. "From what I've heard uncle Rajesh had a
very good reputation for high quality work and we must maintain
that and even improve on it if possible. Even if we have to work
overtime we must never let a customer down. If we tell them that
can have their garments on a particular day then we must make sure
that the garments are ready on that day."

"Yes." Fatima
said. "We must work out a schedule that tells us exactly when
articles must be ready and a progress ticket for each one."

Fatima arranged
for Salona to go to a nearby Indian kindergarten school, leaving
her there on her way to the shop and collecting her at midday and
taking her to the shop where they ate the midday meal that she had
prepared the previous evening. The small family quickly fell into a
comfortable routine. The money that they collected from their work
was put into a round biscuit tin under the rolls of fabric at the
back of the shop and every Saturday morning Bala would take it to
the bank and deposit it into his savings account.

Although the
business quickly began to bring in a steady income Bala soon
realised that it wasn't sufficient to allow him to save the money
that he knew he would need in later years. One of the biggest
expenses that he would soon be facing was Salona's education. He
was determined that his beloved child would be afforded an
education that would allow her to exploit the talents that she was
already displaying. The problem was that the standard of education
available to "non-white" citizens was extremely low compared to
that offered to white children. "Non-white" children were also
forced to learn their lessons in the hated Afrikaans language,
whereas the main language in business and the academics was
English. The only other option open to Bala was to send Salona to a
private school and the fees asked by these institutions were far
beyond Bala's means.

One of the main
reason's why Bala and Fatima struggled to meet their commitments
was that they were far too generous. The prices that they charged
their customers for the work that they did were far too low for the
effort that they put in but they were too scared that if they
increased their prices they would drive their customers away.

Although the
little house in Pageview had been fully paid for by uncle Rajesh
before he died there were expenses such as municipal rates and
taxes, water and lights' the rental for the shop, Salona's
kindergarten fees and unexpected maintenance costs to the house
which was close to eighty years old. By the time Bala had paid all
these expenses and fed and clothed his family there was almost no
money left to save.

Bala and Fatima
were nevertheless extremely grateful for the opportunity that they
had inherited and they were determined to honour it with their best
efforts. They realised that despite their hard work, they were
still far better off than they had ever been and also far better
off than the majority of the people that the white government
discriminated against.

***

After a
thorough medical examination the mine recruiting officer handed
Isaiah an employment agreement to sign as well as several other
forms that he did not bother to explain and Isaiah didn't query. He
signed them and was told that he was now officially an employee of
the Deep reef Gold Mine. He was given a special "passbook" and a
number that he was to use instead of his name.

The mine
supplied Isaiah with his work overalls, a hardhat with a lamp and
battery pack attached and a heavy pair of safety boots. He was
taken to one of the mine compounds that consisted of a huge
U-shaped single storey building consisting of gloomy rooms where
the black miners lived. Each room had three tiers of steel bunks
fastened to the walls and a central area that was used for
recreation. Isaiah was allocated one of the upper bunks and a steel
locker in which he could keep his belongings.

"The mine will
provide you with three meals a day and you can buy any other things
that you need from the concession store." the personnel officer
said. "Tomorrow you must report to the training centre where you
will learn how to be a miner. The men here in your room will
explain the mine's rules and regulations to you and what your
routine is."

The following
day Isaiah reported to the training centre and for the next two
weeks he learnt the language of the mines called "fanagalo" which
consisted of a mixture of English, Afrikaans and several African
languages. He was also given instruction on the various tools that
he would be using underground and the safety procedures that he
needed to follow. A vague explanation of the overall mining
procedure was explained to him. Once the course was completed
Isaiah was assigned to a team of underground workers.

Apart from the
food that the mine provided, the living conditions in the compound
were appalling. The cramped environment was a breeding ground for
infectious diseases and the abuse of alcohol by the men resulted in
assaults and accidents. The men were rough and uneducated and had
little consideration for each other. Theft was rife and hygienic
conditions sorely lacking. As the occupants of the compounds were
all men there was also a strong presence of homosexuality.

Isaiah began
working underground as a "lasher boy", loading broken rock into
cocopans and into skips that hoisted the ore to the crushers up on
the surface of the mine. It was back-breaking work and the leader
or "boss-boy" treated the lasher boys with contempt, often shouting
at them and even assaulting them at times. The boss boy was
responsible to the white miner and it was he who incurred the wrath
of the white man if things went wrong. Conversely, if the work went
well the boss boy took all the praise. Most of the boss boys were
terrified of the white miners and as a result abused the men under
them in order to earn the white miner's approval. They also
demanded a percentage of the men's weekly wages and failure to pay
this money could easily lead to "accidents' many of which were
fatal.

The blasting
process at the mine began each day when a team of drillers, using
huge drills powered by compressed air, drilled deep holes in the
rock face in places that had been marked out earlier by a qualified
white miner. These holes were then packed with explosives in the
form of nitro-glycerine or based on ammonium nitrate, and connected
with safety fuses and igniter cords. Once the mine had been cleared
of personnel the explosives were detonated by an electric current.
A re-entry time of four hours was observed to allow the fumes and
dust to dissipate after which the lasher boys began clearing the
broken rock.

***

After toiling
in the suffocating heat and dust and being constantly abused for
two weeks Isaiah decided that working underground at the Deep Reef
Gold Mine was not what he was prepared to do for much longer. Apart
from the strength-sapping work there was also the constant danger
that the miners lived with. Almost daily Isaiah heard of men being
seriously injured and killed by rock falls and accidents, the
result of negligence and poor safety regulations. The mining
methods used on the mine were often crude and extremely dangerous
and, in the short period of time that Isaiah worked on the mine he
came close to being badly injured and even killed several times. He
began to make surreptitious enquiries about other work
possibilities in the mining industry. In the mean time he continued
to send back most of his pay to his mother.

Hiding the
stolen explosives wasn't a problem. He hid them in the buffer zone
between Soweto and Johannesburg. There were plenty of places where
he could safely bury the goods and to make sure that his cache
wasn't discovered he changed the hiding place each week.

Isaiah was
amazed at how lax the white miners were with the explosives that
they were supplied with, even though they must have been aware that
some of it was being stolen. He was also surprised at how
inefficient the security personnel were when they searched the
miners as they arrived at the surface after their shifts. In the
first week he was able to bring out a phial of explosives every day
and each evening before darkness fell, he casually walked to the
nearby buffer zone and buried his loot in a small plastic container
amongst a small clump of bushes. On the Saturday he collected the
container and went to the entrance to the abandoned gold mine. Paul
was waiting for him.

"You've done
well." Paul said as they transferred the stolen dynamite into a
larger plastic container that Paul had brought with him. "But you
must still be very careful. It's not necessary that you steal
dynamite every day. Be content with less. Remember that you will go
to jail for a long time if you're caught."

Paul paid
Isaiah seventy five Rand and disappeared into the mine. Isaiah put
the money in his pocket and walked into the nearby white suburb. He
found a branch of his favourite bank and went in. He opened a
savings account and deposited his money in it.

As he left the
bank Isaiah began to make plans. It was obvious to him that the
people that really made money from the stolen dynamite had to be
the dealers who bought the stuff and re-sold it at a large profit.
What he needed to do was get a team of black miners together who
would be prepared to steal for him and he would then sell the
dynamite to illegal miners all over the Reef.

***

"My informants
tell me that a certain doctor Joseph Mpilo has a large number of
A.N.C. patients who visit him on a regular basis. They also tell me
that many of the patients have injuries that are consistent with
gunshot wounds and other forms of military violence. It's very
obvious that he is an A.N.C. supporter and is helping the
organisation, not only with medical assistance, but also be
relaying secret messages and other information." Tiaan Botha said
as he sat in one of the visitor's chairs in front of Brigadier van
Tonder's desk. "He's got to be an important link of their
communications network."

The Brigadier
nodded.

"Yes. His
name's cropped up on several occasions in the past but we've never
been able to pin anything on him." the Brigadier said. "We've
brought him in for questioning twice now and, even though my men
gave him a really tough going-over, he denies that he's connected
to the A.N.C. in any way."

"My guys tell
me that they've also seen several well-known A.N.C. cadres visit
his rooms without any visible injuries." Tiaan said. "But that
doesn't prove that the bastard sympathises with the A.N.C. and is
helping them. After all, he's a doctor."

"Quite right."
the Brigadier said. "He's a very clever fellow and his standard
answer is that he's a doctor and is merely doing his duty according
to the Hippocratic Oath and has no political agenda. Every time we
question him he tells us the same story. Perhaps we can try and
trap him."

"I've thought
about that." Tiaan said. "But apparently he never commits anything
to paper. He's got a photographic memory and only passes on
information verbally. Even if we lured him into a trap of some kind
he would simply say that he was doing his duty as a medical
doctor."

The brigadier
stared down at the top of his desk, deep in thought. In the silence
Tiaan could hear a typewriter clacking in the adjacent office.
Finally the brigadier looked up at Tiaan.

"If we can't
trap him and we can't get him to confess to anything incriminating
with regard to subversive activities then I cannot see any
alternative but to eliminate the man. We can't let him carry on
working for the enemy and we can't detain him for any length of
time. The newspapers will kick up a fuss if he tells them that
we're harassing him when all he's doing is performing his medical
duties. Put together an operation to eliminate the man and let me
have it for approval."

Tiaan stood
up.

"I'll get onto
it right away, sir." he said.