Kruger's Alp by Christopher Hope Page B

you can’t stop the grieving relatives and ask them whether they suffer from dry, greasy or normal hair. I mean that’s not exactly the time and place to start getting finicky. Can I drop you somewhere in town?’
    Blanchaille mentioned the suburb where Bishop Blashford lived.
    â€˜Sure. Happy to help.’
    â€˜What disturbs the peace in the townships?’
    Breslau shrugged. ‘Everything – and nothing. Of course thetrouble is not having what they want, and then getting what they want. Like I mean first of all they don’t have any sewage so the cry goes up for piped sewage and they get it. Then there’s no electricity, so a consortium of businessmen organised by Himmelfarber and his Consolidated Holdings put in a private scheme of electrification. Then a football pitch is asked for. And given. And after each of these improvements there’s a riot. It’s interesting, that.’
    â€˜It’s almost as if the trouble with the townships is the townships,’ Blanchaille suggested.
    â€˜You can’t not have townships or you wouldn’t have any of this,’ the salesman gestured out of the window at the blank and featureless veld on either side of the road. ‘Cities have townships the way people have shadows. It’s in the nature of things.’
    â€˜But we haven’t always had townships.’
    â€˜Of course we have. Look, a township is just a reservoir. A pool. A depot for labour. I mean you look back to how it was when the first white settlers came here. You look at Van Riebeeck who came in – when was it – in 1652? And he arrives at the Cape of Good Hope – what a name when you think how things turned out! A bloody long time ago, right? What does Van Riebeeck find when he arrives in this big open place? He finds he’s got to build himself a fort. He finds the place occupied, there are all these damn Hottentots swanning around. Anyway he sees all these black guys wandering around and he thinks to himself – Jesus! This is Christmas! What I’m going to do is sit in my fort, grow lots of vegetables and sell them to passing ships. And all these black Hottentots I see wandering around here, they’re going to work for me. If they don’t work for me they get zapped. So he sits there at the Cape and the black guys work for him. Afterwards he gets to be so famous they put his face on all the money. It’s been like that ever since.’
    â€˜But he didn’t have a township.’
    â€˜What d’you mean, he didn’t have a township? The whole damn country was his township.’
    Ever cautious Blanchaille got Breslau to drop him not outside Blashford’s house, but at the foot of the hill on which the Bishop lived. The salesman drove off with a cheerful wave, ‘Keep your head down.’
    Blanchaille picked up his cases and began the slow painful ascent of the hill.

    Puzzled by this conversation, in my dream I took up the matter with Breslau.
    â€˜Surely things aren’t that bad? That’s a very simplistic analysis of history that you offered him.’
    â€˜Right, but then it’s a very simplistic situation. There is the view that we’re all stuffed. We can fight all we like but we’re finished. The catch is that if anyone takes that line they get shot or locked up or whipped. Or all of those things. That’s how it was. That’s how it is. Nothing’s changed since the first Dutchman arrived, opened a police station and started handing out passes to the servants.’
    â€˜Can nothing be done to improve conditions in the townships?’ I persisted.
    Breslau laughed and slapped the steering wheel. ‘Sure. As I told the traveller. Lots can be done. Lots is done. Ever since the longhaired vegetable grower arrived from Holland, people have been battling to improve the townships. But after the beer halls and the soccer pitches, the electric lights, the social clubs, the