fuck off. the press is still pursuing them.
never mind your car. let's get away from these vultures.
by the way, i'm melanie bruwer.
ten out of ten, mr. du toit. i know about you too.
we have a mutual friend. one stanley.
stanley? no. just careful. a big black rough uncut diamond. don't be fooled by his happy-go- lucky attitude. there's much more to him.
i thought a cooling drink at my house.
i promise you. i'm not after an interview or anything like that. she smiles.
please, mr. du toit, and you'll meet my darling father. she smiles again. a disarming smile.
there he is by the eucalyptus tree, on the left. that's old bruwer.
oh, about twenty-one years. i love this house.
of course, dad. i want you to meet a friend.
mr. du toit, dad.
be careful, i can see philosophy coming.
what about individuality, dad?
a drink, dad?
that's my daddy. melanie and ben enter the house.
now you see in what environment i was spawned. ben looks at the shelves and smiles.
please sit down, on that chair. that's dad's. drink?
a brandy?
the mugs are the few things that dad brought from germany. he studied philosophy in tubingen and berlin before the last war.
mr. du toit, tell.
all right, ben, tell me, why are you so depressed? you really expect a different verdict?
of course i understand it. what could they have. i'm not cynical. i'm only trying to be realistic.
ben and melanie, that's fair.
i'll never stop believing. but in this country i've learned it's pointless to look for it in certain situations.
exactly. and you cannot fight for justice unless you know injustice very well. you've got to know your enemy first.
not at all, ben. you have already taken the first steps. welcome to south africa! she smiles.
i didn't think you would want to have anything to do with me after that crap in the ossewa.
i'm a journalist, perhaps tarred with the same brush.
so what happened? i can imagine. the family, the dominee, colleagues, neighbors.
thanks for the compliment. but remember, you're an afrikaner, you're one of them. in their eyes they regard you as the worst kind of traitor.
my mother was a foreigner, i'm not pure, wragte afrikaner. they don't expect the same loyalty from me that they demand from you.
has it ever occurred to you that the volk may be scared to leave the laager? that's the downfall of this country. so, where do you go from here?
justice.
we know each other well.
what?
and living in this chaos with my eccentric father? i love him and we get on perfectly. we have been together since i was a year old. my mother could not adapt to south africa. she went back to london and we've never heard from her since.
dorothy, dear dorothy, she was a fantastic mother. in fact she had two families, me and her three children in alexandra township.
sometimes i ask myself the same question. she leans against the sink and picks up her mug of coffee.
alright. i'll tell you. i was brought up in a sheltered way, not that dad was possessive, not openly anyway. i think he'd just seen enough of the mess the world was in, to want to protect me as much as he could. then, i went to university. i don't know what you'll think.  being a teacher.
then i married my ex-teacher.
fifteen years difference. he too protected me like dad. then one day i visited dorothy in alexandra and saw her home and the appalling conditions in that township. i was shocked, ben, and ashamed.
that made me think that i was a parasite, something white and maggot-like.  just a thing.  a sweet and ineffectual thing. i felt more and more claustrophobic. poor brian, who loved and pampered me. had no idea what was happening. i left him for a whole year and we divorced.
i thought it would force me, or help me, to expose myself. to force me to see and to take notice of what was happening around me.
i wish i could give you a straight answer. what did help me was my wanderings in africa.
my mother was english, remember? so i get a british passport. it comes in handy even for the paper.
i wonder what he's doing right now. most likely standing on a rock, looking through his old binoculars at springbok or a lion or whatever. one of the two large cats approaches them, tail in the air, and goes to melanie, drubbing against her legs, purring luxuriously. she picks it up into her arms.
it depends -- -- bonjour, ben. i'm porto and my friend is bello! ben smiles and starts to caress porto in melanie's arms.
they don't know what you've got and you're a danger to them. i know there's a point of no return, but with our system, one has to plot the route with care.
and your safety also, ben, lies in the press. that way the world will know the brutality and power of our security services; here questions can be asked in parliament. and the white public can appreciate the implications of the fascist laws of this country.
we better win before the blacks have won. ben and melanie laugh.
zambia? i'm going to rhodesia.  i can go to zambia.
and i can use my british passport. i know my way around lusaka.
this calls for a drink. gin and tonic?
of course, ben. she goes into the kitchen.
cheers!
don't worry.
that's my favorite, ben.
rugger player? they laugh as they start to dance to the slow blues music. the laughing subsides as they hold each other closer. the dancing starts to lose the beat of the music. they look into each other's eyes and ben envel- ops her tenderly in his arms hugging her as close as possible against him. they stop dancing. ben kisses her. a long, warm and tender kiss.