Black and White

By William McWhirter

THE COVENANT by James A. Michener Random House; 873 pages; $15.95 James Michener is the last conquistador.

Where he walks, gold appears, usually in the form of royalty checks. Under his feet, the South Pacific, Hawaii, Spain, even the Chesapeake Bay, have become the subjects of phenomenal bestsellers. No nation seems capable of resisting his advances--including the harsh social terrain of South Africa. After 14 weeks on the bestseller list, The Covenant demands more than a review; it requires a salute.

In his 30th book, Michener manages to cover 15,000 years of African history, from the ritual-haunted tribes of Bushmen to present-day Afrikaners obstinately jeering at appeals for "human rights."

Michener has necessarily compressed much of that history into an almost biblical form, begetting his own intertwining generations of English, black and Afrikaner families--the Saltwoods, Nxuma-los and Van Dooms. He describes the public politeness and private ruthlessness, the arranged frontier marriages--homely Dutch orphan girls shipped out to lonely farmers--and the Afrikaners' thousand torments, among them, the first modern concentration camps, set up by the British during the Boer War. Michener reconstructs that war, and its scenes of tenacity and loathing. Says one Afrikaner, summing up the lessons learned in that conflict: "When you are twelve, use your knowledge against the English boys that age. At eighteen, use it against the young men in college. At thirty, against the Hog-genheimers [Jewish mining barons] in Johannesburg. At fifty, against the government people in Pretoria. And when you're an old man like me, keep using it."

To Michener, the central paradox of the Afrikaners remains their gift for overcoming adversity and their inability to deal with compromise. After the Boer fighting ends in 1902, South Africa moves backward onto narrower and narrower ground. The warring English and Afrikaners unite in a fear of darker races.

Their government is to be a rule of one tribe for the sole benefit of its own people --the whites. The now familiar witch hunts begin: discrimination, forced removal of blacks to "homelands," detentions without trial and "racial classification" tests. What should be a period of progress becomes a harvest of sorrow and cruelty.

After some 800 pages of braided plots and seething annals, Michener inserts himself into The Covenant, disguised as an American cousin of the Saltwoods, searching South Africa for the big strike.

In an act of faith that contradicts many of his own facts, Michener finds the possibility of a mother lode: "A grand coalition of black capacity, Coloured adaptability, English skill and Afrikaner force could forge a nation that would be one of the most powerful on earth, situated in one of the best settings, and with a way of life that most other people would envy."

The author will undoubtedly be rebuked for mining pure fool's gold. A better appraisal would be his own simpler, but profoundly honest one: "It requires the eyes of Africa to see Africa."

If Michener cannot uncover the African soul, he understands the African soil --the blood that has spilled on it, the exploiters who have trampled it, the survivors who must scratch it for a living.

Covenant derives from an Old French word meaning "to be suitable." To dramatize a complex and tragic history, whether of Asia, America, Europe or Africa, is beyond the powers of all but a few popularists. Of those few, as The Covenant proves, James Michener remains the most suitable bridge between the protagonists of history and the outsider. --By William McWhirter

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.