Brink Homework

 Part III, section 6

1. Write down three or four most important points of Ben's confrontation with Colonel Viljoen.

1. - Ben accuses Viljoen’s men of “waging a campaign of intimidation against [him] for months on end”. He brings up that there was a search in his home and that they were questioning his friends and colleagues as well as how his telephone and mail are being messed with. He also brings up how his car and house are being vandalised, how he keeps getting anonymous phone calls, and how he finds insults written on the board in his classroom. He accuses Viljoen’s men of being behind this abuse and asks him to leave him in peace

• Ben asks why Viljoen wants to stop Ben’s investigation into Gordon Ngubene so badly and if he isn’t haunted at night by what happened to Ngubene.
• Ben brings up the evidence that was deliberately kept from the court, to which Viljoen accuses him of being involved in dangerous activities. Viljoen threatens Ben to stop his investigation, but calls it just a warning

Part III, section 7

2. What is the advice that Melanie gives Ben early in this section? What does she want to protect him from?

2. Melanie tells ben to give the investigation over to the Afrikaans press in order to retain his safety. She tells Ben how soon they may “try to silence [him] altogether” if he keeps working it privately, and that publicizing it and letting the press handle it is the way to protect himself from the SB.

3. Who is Audries Lourens, and how does he react fto Ben's proposition? How does he justify his decision?

3. Ben goes to meet Andries Lourens following Melanie’s advice to pass the investigation over to the press. He meets with Lourens to convince him to publish the investigation in order to give it more publicity and reach. Despite the fact that Lourens works at a progressive Afrikaans paper, he is still reluctant to publish Ben’s findings. He declines Ben’s proposition and justifies his decision by claiming that he would lose even more readers, as they would accuse the press of turning against them. He claims that it is not the right moment to publish such a case and that he will come back to Ben when the time is right.

4. What does Cloete accuse Ben of in this section? What allusion he uses, and how is that significant in the context of what we earlier said of the Boer religion & sense of identity?

4. Cloette accuses Ben of selling his story out to the British press in order to gain fame, money and publicity. He alludes to the biblical story of Judas by asking ben if they paid him “Thirty silver pieces”, which is what Judas was paid for betraying Jesus. Through this comparison Cloette accuses Ben of being a traitor and betraying the Afrikaans people.

* 5 (optional). Please identify the paragraph in which Ben identifies his chief/ ultimate enemy. What makes this paragraph so powerful?

• “Today I realise that this is the worst of all: that I can no longer single out my enemy and give him a name. […] What is set up against me is not a man […], but a a thing, a something, a vague amorphous power that inspects my mail and taps my telephone[…]”

• Ben realises that he can no longer blame one person for the injustice that has happened. He realises that Stolz is just a part of the systemic injustice that is an integral part of apartheid. He realises that he is in the losing position, and that there is nothing he can do as he is only one man against the entire racist system that has the ultimate advantage and control over what happens. Ben realises how naive his hope of success was.

Part III, section 8

6. List 2-3 most romantic moments in this section (Ben& Melanie).

6. - When Ben asks Melanie “Why don’t we build us a little hut up there too?”. In a sense, through this question Ben proposes a future together with Melanie. To which she replies “You can teach the children”, which is a confirmation to his proposition. They both are talking of a common shared future where they have children and live together.

• Later in the evening Melanie and Ben talk about their lives and what love means to them and what it is really about. Ben confesses his love to her and they spend the night together at the fireplace.

Part III, section 9 

7. Explain the nature of Levinson's betrayal.

7. Levinson fled the country and was granted political asylum in London. He took all the files and documents with him and intended to publish them as a book, using the money from the deposits by black clients, Ben and Melanie’s newspaper fund.

Part III, section 10 

8. Why does Stanley interrupt Ben's Christmas dinner? What events lead to this situation?

Stanley interrupts Ben’s Christmas dinner because he is drunk and shaken up from finding out that Emily committed suicide. What lead up to that was the fact that her eldest surviving son Robert was killed while crossing the border to Mozambique.