The Sun Between Their Feet Read Online Free PDF

whether starting a mass Party or not, meant twelve different, defined, passionately held viewpoints. The meeting at last had to be postponed for a week to allow those who had not had a chance to air their views to have their say. I attended this second meeting. There were fifteen people present. The two RAF were not there, but there were six white trade unionists from the railways who, hearing of the new party, had come to get a resolution passed. ‘In the opinion of this meeting, the Native is being advanced too fast towards civilization and in his own interests the pace should be slowed.’
    This resolution was always being passed in those days, on every possible occasion. It probably still is.
    But the nine from the week before were already able to forma solid block against this influx of alien thought – not as champions of the Natives, of course not, but because it was necessary to attend to first things first. ‘We have to take over the country first, by democratic methods. That won’t take long, because it is obvious our programme is only fair, and after that we can decide what to do about the Natives.’ The six railway workers then left, leaving the nine from last week, who proceeded to form their Party for Democracy, Liberty and Freedom. A steering committee of three was appointed to draft a constitution.
    And that was the last anyone ever heard of it, except for one cyclostyled pamphlet which was called ‘Capitalism is Unfair! Let’s Join Together to Abolish it! This Means You!’
    The war was over. Intellectual ferments of this sort occurred no more. Employees of the Post Office, all once again good citizens properly employed in sport and similar endeavours, no longer told the citizens in what ways they were censored and when.
    Dick did not stay in the Post Office. That virus, politics, was in his veins for good. From being a spokesman for socialism for the whites, he became, as a result of gibes that he couldn’t have socialism that excluded most of the population, an exponent of the view that Natives must not be advanced too fast in their own interests, and from there he developed into a Town Councillor, and from there into a Member of Parliament. And that is what he still is, a gentleman of distinguished middle age, an indefatigable server on Parliamentary Committees and Commissions, particularly those to do with the Natives, on whom he is considered an authority.
    An elderly bulldog of the bulldog breed he is, every inch of him.

The Story of a Non-Marrying Man
    I met Johnny Blakeworthy at the end of his life. I was at the beginning of mine, about ten or twelve years old. This was in the early Thirties, when the Slump had spread from America even to us, in the middle of Africa. The very first sign of the Slump was the increase in the number of people who lived by their wits, or as vagrants.
    Our house was on a hill, the highest point of our farm. Through the farm went the only road, a dirt track, from the railway station seven miles away, our shopping and mail centre, to the farms farther on. Our nearest neighbours were three, four, and seven miles away. We could see their roofs flash in the sunlight, or gleam in the moonlight across all those trees, ridges, and valleys.
    From the hill we could see the clouds of dust that marked the passage of cars or wagons along the track. We would say: ‘That must be so-and-so going in to fetch his mail.’ Or: ‘Cyril said he had to get a spare for the plough, his broke down, that must be him now.’
    If the cloud of dust turned off the main road and moved up through the trees towards us, we had time to build up the fire and put on the kettle. At busy times for the farmers, this happened seldom. Even at slack times, there might be no more than three or four cars a week, and as many wagons. It was mostly a white man’s road, for the Africans moving on foot used their own quicker, short-cutting paths. White men coming to