Rage - Smith Wilbur (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .TXT) 📗
'I owe you a great deal - for my son, Sean, and now my wife." 'Ja, you owe me a great deal,' Manfred nodded. 'Perhaps I will kT you for something in return one day." as hope so,' said Shasa. I do not like having outstanding debts." Outside the Supreme Court both pavements were filled with people.
They were standing shoulder to shoulder and overflowing into the street, complicating the efforts of the traffic wardens and impeding the flow of traffic until it was reduced to a crawl.
A newspaper poster, 'GUY FAWKES KILLER TRIAL BEGINS TODAY', hung drunkenly from one of the lampposts until it was knocked down by the push of the crowd and trodden underfoot.
The throng was thickest at the colonnaded entrance to the Supreme Court and each time one of the players in the drama arrived, the journalists and photographers surged forward. The state prosecutor smiled and waved to them like a film star, but most of the others, intimidated by the crowds and the exploding flash bulbs and shouted questions, scurried for the entrance and the protection of the police guards.
Only minutes before the court was due to go into session, a chartered bus turned into the slow-moving stream of traffic and came down towards the entrance. The sound of singing grew louder as it approached, the lovely haunting chorus of African voices rising and sinking and weaving the intricate tapestry of sound that thrilled the ears and raised the gooseflesh on the skins of the listeners.
When the bus finally halted in front of the Supreme Court, a young Zulu woman stepped down into the street. She wore a flowing caftan of green and yellow and black, the colours of the African National Congress, and her head was bound in a turban of the same colours.
Her pregnancy had given Vicky a fullness of body that enhanced her natural fine looks. There was no trace left of the shy little country girl. She carried her head high, and moved with all the confidence and style of an African Evita.
The press cameramen recognized instantly that they were being presented with an unusual opportunity and they rushed forward with their equipment to capture her dark beauty, and the sound of her voice as she sang the thrilling hymn to freedom. 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika - God Save Africa." Behind her, holding hands, and singing, came all the others, some of them white like Molly Broadhurst and some of them Indians and coloured like Miriam and Ben Afrika, but most of them pure African.
They streamed up the steps into the court house to fill the section of the gallery of the courtroom reserved for non-whites and to overflows into the corridors outside.
The rest of the court was packed with the press and the curious.
while a separate section had been set aside for observers from the diplomatic corps. Every one of the embassies was represented.
At every entrance to the court were police guards wearing sidearms, and four policemen of warrant officer rank were drawn up around the dock. The prisoner was a killer and a dangerous revolutionary. They were taking no chances.
Yet when he stepped up into the dock, Moses Gama seemed none of these things. He had lost weight during his imprisonment, but this merely enhanced his great height and the wide angularity of his shoulders. His cheeks were hollow, and the bones of his face and forehead were more prominent, but he stood proudly as ever with his chin up and that dark messianic glow in his eyes.
His presence was so overpowering that he seemed to take possession of the room; the gasp and hum of curiosity as he stood before them was subdued by an almost tangible sense of awe. In the back of the gallery Vicky Dinizulu sprang to her feet and began to sing, and those around her came in with the chorus. As he listened to her beautiful ringing voice, Moses Gama inclined his head slightly, but he did not smile or give any other sign of recognition.
Vicky's freedom song was interrupted by a cry of 'Stilte in die hof/ Opstaan! Silence in the court! Stand up!" The judge-president of the Cape, wearing the scarlet robes which indicated that this was a criminal trial, took his seat on the bench beneath the carved canopy.
Justice Andr Villiers was a big man with a famboyant courtroom style. He had a reputation for being a connoisseur of food, good wine and pretty girls. He was also noted for handing down savage sentences for crimes of violence.
Now he slumped massively on the bench and glowered around his court as the charge sheet was rad, but his gaze checked momentarily as it reached each female, the length of the pause proportional to the prettiness of the recipient. On Kitty Godolphin he spent at least two seconds and when she smiled her angelic little-girl smile at him, he hooded his eyes slightly before passing on.
There were four main charges on the sheet against Moses Gama, two of attempted murder, and one each of high treason and murder.
Every one of these was a capital offence but Moses Gama showed no emotion as he listened to them read out.
Judge Villiers broke the expectant silence that followed the reading.
'How do you plead to these charges?" Moses leaned forward, both clenched fists on the rail of the dock and his voice was low and full of scorn, but it carried to every corner of the crowded court.
'Verwoerd and his brutal government should be in this dock,' he said. 'I plead not guilty." Moses sat down and did not raise his eyes while the judge enquired who appeared for the crown, and the prosecutor introduced himself to the court, but when Mr Justice Villiers asked: 'Who appears for the defence?" before the advocate whom Vicky and Hendrick Tabaka had retained could reply, Moses sprang to his feet again.
'I do,' he cried. 'I am on trial here for the aspirations of the African people. No other can speak for me. I am the leader of my people, I will answer for myself and for them." There was such consternation in the court now, such uproar that for a few moments the judge, pounded his gavel in vain, demanding silence, and when it was at last obtained, he threatened them.
'If there is another such demonstration of contempt for this court, I will not hesitate to have it cleared." He turned back to Moses Gama to reason with him and try to persuade him to accept legal representation, but Moses forestalled him.
'I wish to move immediately that you, Judge Villiers, recuse yourself from this case,' he challenged, and the scarlet-robed judge blinked and was for a moment stunned into silence.
Then he smiled grimly at the prisoner's effrontery and asked, 'On what grounds do you make this application?" 'On the grounds that you, as a white judge, are incapable of being impartial and fair to me, a black man, forced to submit to the immoral laws of a parliament in which I have no representation." The judge shook his head, half in exasperation and half in admiration. 'I am going to deny your application for recusal,' he said. 'And I am going to urge you to accept the very able services of the counsel who has been appointed to represent you." 'I accept neither his services, nor the competence of this court to condemn me. For all the world knows that is what you propose. I accept only the verdict of my poor enslaved people and of the free nations out there. Let them and history decide my innocence or guilt." The press were electrified, some of them so enchanted that they made no effort to write down his words. None of them would ever forget them. For Michael Courtney sitting in the back row of the press section, it was a revelation. He had lived with Africans all his life, his family employed them by the tens of thousands, but until this moment he had never met a black man of such dignity and aweinspiring presence.
Judge Villiers sagged down in his seat. He always maintained hi place firmly in the centre-stage of his court, overshadowin everybody in it with the ruthless authority of a born actor. Here hid sensed he had met an equal. The entire attention of everybody in th court was captivated by Moses Gama.
