The Tanzania Conspiracy

by Mario Bolduc

  As a socialist, Nyerere preferred to do without West German help than stop doing business with the East. And he slammed the door on the British when they refused to boycott the racist regime in what was then called Rhodesia.

  “That’s ancient history,” Kilonzo said. “Forgotten quarrels.”

  “But the Chinese are still here,” Max pointed out.

  “We’ve always been able to count on them.”

  The inspector was right. When Nyerere decided to an­­swer Idi Amin’s attacks and liberate the people of Uganda from his reign of terror, neither the Germans nor the British supported him, but the Chinese did.

  The Chinese appetite for raw materials increased their interest in Tanzania. And the Komba government answered by opening the doors wide.

  “Joseph Lugembe continued Komba’s work when he took over the presidency,” the policeman told Max.

  Lugembe owed his meteoric rise to power to Komba, as Kilonzo explained. After Nyerere stepped down, Komba found himself head of state. He set out to modernize the country and dust off its civil service. In 1991 the fall of the Soviet empire, once a model but a model that had run out of steam, marked the beginning of a formidable decade of economic progress for Tanzania.

  Komba surrounded himself with modern, educated men with their eyes on the future, who could discuss with the West as equals. Joseph Lugembe was that kind of man. It wasn’t surprising that when he sensed the time was right to retire and to begin searching for an heir apparent to continue his work, Komba turned to Lugembe. For the international community, Lugembe seemed to be a credible leader, one of the hopes for a new Africa, far from tyrants like Mobutu Sese Seko, Laurent Gbagbo, or Robert Mugabe, who pillaged the wealth of their countries and got rich off their citizens’ poverty.

  “Perfectionists accuse Lugembe of being a despot in disguise and playing at democracy,” Kilonzo said. “Maybe that’s true. But he was able to preserve Nyerere’s legacy and set us on the path to the future. Barack Obama was the first to see that.”

  Obama again. Were Africans so discouraged by their leaders that they had to transfer their hopes to the president of a foreign nation?

  After an hour and a half of driving, the town of Biharamulo came into view. Followed by Shembazi and his men, Kilonzo led Max to the park’s administrative headquarters. Inside was a counter where permits were issued and checked, a small office where an employee worked, who was astonished and impressed by the police deployment. On the wall, the usual photos of big game brought low by hunters in paramilitary getup, rifles in hand, an impala or a leopard lying at their feet in imitation of Ernest Hemingway.

  In 1994 the prey changed. The Tutsis, who were being hunted down, flooded into the reserve, since Biharamulo and Burigi weren’t far from the Rwandan border.

  “When that country went crazy,” Kilonzo remembered, “Komba’s government had to send in the army to keep the peace and make sure the Hutu militias didn’t invade.”

  At the worst points in the civil war, and continuing afterward, Burigi was host to one of the largest refugee camps in the region. Coming back from a visit to one of those camps, Richard Stroner, Valéria’s husband and Sophie’s father, met his death in a road accident.

  The guard on duty was from Bukoba. While Kilonzo kept Max busy outside, his men went through the list of employees. They had already undergone a security check before being hired to make sure they weren’t mixed up in criminal activities, especially those involving poaching.

  The list was examined and produced nothing. Kilonzo questioned the guard personally and made no further progress.

  “If you ask me,” said the guard, “you’ll find the same thing at the other reserves and parks. Key positions aren’t given to just anyone.”

  Max looked on, bemused.

  “Could it have been a freelance guide?” asked Kilonzo.

  Many safari companies used such guides, and it was impossible to determine their character. And some of those companies had Land Rovers and Mitsubishis equipped with Codan communications.

  “But those vehicles normally display the company’s logo on the door,” Kilonzo told Max.

  The guard nodded his agreement. The fisherman hadn’t mentioned seeing any logo. But it wouldn’t be hard work to hide, or simpler still, borrow a private vehicle that belonged to someone else.

  “You need a permit to use satellite communications,” Kilonzo retorted. “I’ll order the list of permits for the Kagera region and eliminate commercial companies like the travel agencies that offer safaris and the like.”

  The guard nodded again.

  Shembazi got in touch with the Ministry of National Parks. A few minutes later Kilonzo had a list of five names, all linked to churches or missions around Bukoba. The information would need to be verified, though with subtler methods than the one used with the guard at the reserve. The missions were never happy to have the police show up, especially if they were there to check on employees.

  Max nodded. Kilonzo was playing his role perfectly. He seemed determined, professional. Max had no doubt that a guilty person would be found sooner or later, though he thought it unlikely it would be the man responsible for killing Valéria and her daughter.

  Shembazi checked the online archives to see if one of the five names had been investigated, or if a complaint had been filed. Four of the five missions boasted clean slates, but the fifth, All Saints Church, an Anglican mission, had registered a formal complaint against the witch doctor Zuberi, Samuel Musindo’s alleged accomplice. The church owned an all-terrain vehicle with the Codan satellite communication system.

  The coincidence was promising, at least at first sight. “Remember,” Kilonzo pointed out, “All Saints Church specializes in rehabilitating former prisoners and giving them a second chance. One of them, dazzled by the thought of a rich lawyer living nearby, a potentially defenceless woman, to boot, might have carried out the operation. The anonymous four-by-four, impossible to track down, would never have been noticed if not for the fisherman making repairs on his engine.”

  Kilonzo had staged the scene flawlessly. Nothing was left to chance. Max couldn’t help but admire how the inspector was playing the game.

  The mission was located in the back country, on the way to Rwanda. A series of smaller buildings were set around a solid red-brick structure that reminded Max of Lancashire cottages. The place seemed surprisingly calm but that hadn’t always been the case. In 1994, Kilonzo told Max, Pastor Summers had opened the church’s grounds to Rwandan refugees. For weeks the area had been a regular anthill, teeming with refugees and soldiers from the Tanzanian army sent to the border by President Komba.

  As they drove up to the mission, Max looked for a four-wheel drive in the lot, but there was only a beat-up Toyota. A tall bald man stepped out of one of the smaller buildings and came out to meet them. He was British, in his sixties, and had spent the past forty years in this country, surviving one tragedy after another without losing hope in human nature. Nothing could faze the good man.

  In his office lined with photos of Dover, where he was from, he explained to Kilonzo and Max that he’d stopped hiring former prisoners several years ago. He’d had too many bad experiences. He trusted people, opened the doors of his mission to them, and too often had been the victim of his own generosity.

  “You own an all-terrain vehicle according to our records,” Kilonzo said.

  “A Mitsubishi. It was stolen ten days ago.”

  “Right before Valéria’s death,” Kilonzo pointed out.

  Max was bored. Let’s just get to the end of this bad melodrama, he thought.

  “I informed the police when I learned of the theft.”

  Kilonzo shook his head and frowned as he glanced at Max. No one in Bukoba had bothered sharing that information with him. When all this was settled, he would have to clean house. Find out who had betrayed him and make him pay.

  “Do you suspect anyone?” the inspector asked. “One of your former employees?”

&n
bsp; “I lent the vehicle to everyone who asked. My mistake.”

  “Do you have a list of who used it?”

  The pastor handed Kilonzo a sheet of paper. He passed it over to Shembazi. A minute later, as they were preparing to leave, Shembazi returned with an answer. One of the ex-prisoners lived in the area.

  “Would you like to come with us, Cheskin, and see how an arrest is made?”

  “I’m sure you’ll do fine. The poor criminal doesn’t stand a chance.”

  Two hours later, as Max was entering Bukoba, a voice he recognized came on the radio. It was Kilonzo, announcing a major new development in the murders of Valéria Michieka and Sophie Stroner. A suspect had been identified, to all intents and purposes the guilty party. A small-time criminal from Dar es Salaam who was well known to police.

  Disgusted, Max switched off the radio.

  His cellphone rang. It was Jason Chagula, agreeing to meet him at his office tomorrow at noon.

  13

  From the airport to downtown Kigali, heavy trucks loaded with goods blocked the road. Or perhaps it was the city employees, sending traffic down side streets to avoid roadworks, only to find those, too, were under construction.

  For the past hour, the driver had been muttering and swearing, furious and impatient, shaking his fist and leaning on the horn. The matutus tried to make their way among the bicycles, motorcycles, and pedestrians, stoic, moving through the crowd nonchalantly, carrying all kinds of products. Land Rovers from humanitarian aid organizations tried to avoid the traffic jam, but they were bogged down along with the Audis and Mercedes-Benzes that belonged to the beautiful people of the new Rwandan economic boom.

  There was no way out. No matter what the vehicle, the roads were a mess and forward motion was impossible. Max thought he was travelling to a sleepy capital city. Instead he got a forest of cranes and building sites.

  “That’s the Kigali City Tower!” the driver shouted.

  Since Paul Kagame had taken power, Rwanda had been on the road to economic development. At the airport Roosevelt Okambo’s Cessna had flown over enormous billboards praising the country’s economic stability. The customs official smiled at the tourists like a carpet seller. The airport was clean and functional, more like an exhibition hall than a place to take a plane. An hour away, the Nairobi airport, a dusty, disorderly place, seemed to belong to another time. At first sight the 1994 genocide was far in the distant past, a painful memory that everyone tried to forget by working frenetically.

  Max had hired Okambo for the day, hoping to return to Bukoba before nightfall. Jason Chagula, the lawyer, had answered the call of the Kagame government to help reduce and then eliminate corruption to make the country more attractive to foreign investment. Chagula had built up a certain amount of experience in the field, having worked for the Tanzanian government in its fight against corruption, once he put aside his career as a criminal lawyer. Still more proof that Kagame wanted to align himself with English-speaking Africa. After all, he spoke very little French himself, having spent many years in exile in Uganda. A few months earlier he’d made English the language of government and education.

  Chagula waved him over the minute Max stepped onto the terrace that bordered the swimming pool at the Hôtel des Mille Collines. Even if he worked for the government, he admitted to Max, he kept a few private clients and liked to receive them here under a parasol with a glass of lemonade, his files on the table and his cellphone close at hand. During his career in Dar es Salaam, he’d cultivated an image as a dandy who never lifted a finger, though his track record said different. Very casually, before setting up shop in Kigali, he’d managed to achieve acquittals or reduce the sentences of the accused he’d defended over the past twenty years.

  The lawyer had failed with Musindo but succeeded in freeing Zuberi the witch doctor, whom the author­ities had suspected of inciting the former to kidnap and murder the minister of home affairs’ daughter.

  Chagula had heard about Valéria’s tragic death. They’d been law students together at Makerere University in Uganda. Back then they’d shared the same ideas when it came to shutting down the trafficking in albinos but had gone their separate ways when Valéria demanded the return of the death penalty.

  “I didn’t agree. And I told her more than once. But she wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “Did she criticize you for defending Musindo and Zuberi?”

  “Yes, probably. But we’d broken off contact well before the trials.”

  “Tell me about Zuberi.”

  “Not much of a talker. Shy despite his threatening air. I saw that immediately. He’d always wanted to be a pastor, but the Presbyterians rejected him. So he turned to magic — potions, creams, and other accessories.”

  “Including albino body parts.”

  “Maybe. Like all the others.”

  “And you defended him, anyway?”

  “Whatever you might think of Zuberi, the evidence against him was slim. Vague threats against Lugembe. Indirect, as well. When Zuberi was in jail, a few months before the minister’s daughter was killed, Lugembe supposedly received a message that his daughter would be harmed if Zuberi wasn’t freed … and fast. Those were just rumours. Nothing concrete was ever presented.”

  “Musindo and Zuberi knew each other, right?”

  “The dispensary where Musindo worked is close to the village where Zuberi was born. At the time he had a practice there. Patients move back and forth between science and superstition. They didn’t want to risk offending either, or missing out on some benefit. I would’ve done the same. You, too, most likely. That’s human nature. Before the trial, when I first visited him in his cell, I tried to make him understand that his closed, hardened face would play against him. I put him in front of a mirror. I told him, look, that’s the guy who’s going to face the jury. Would you give him the benefit of the doubt? These aren’t your patients, your customers, your victims. These are educated people who aren’t going to believe in your miracle cures and visions.”

  Chagula laughed at his own joke. But his next question was serious. “Do you think he could be involved in the murder of Valéria Michieka and her daughter?” Chagula was obviously trying to tease out what Max knew.

  “What do you think?” Max asked.

  “I can’t imagine him killing anybody.”

  “That’s been said of many killers.”

  “You’re right, but Zuberi isn’t the type. A strange man with a twisted manner — that’s true. But not a killer.”

  “He could’ve hired someone to do it.”

  Chagula sighed, as if bored with the subject. “You need to understand the role of healers in Tanzanian society.”

  More magician than mafioso, Chagula explained, they invented potions, elixirs, and other concoctions that they tried out on the poor and defenceless, the desperate. The authorities didn’t trust them, but they played a role in the Tanzanian health care system nonetheless: where the government didn’t have the resources to go, witch doctors took its place. Valéria attacked the lot of them, and Zuberi in particular, without provoking any reprisals, at least according to Chagula. No matter what she might have said, their business wasn’t affected.

  “Except for Zuberi,” Max pointed out. “He did time in jail, had to leave the region.”

  “Yes, but he was already a millionaire — in dollars, not shillings. He used the unpleasantness to disappear. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Has he contacted you since he was freed?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where he is? Where he lives?”

  “Last I heard he was hiding somewhere in northern Tanzania. I don’t know any more than that.”

  “His house is empty. But he’s still the owner, according to what people say.”

  Chagula smiled. “I try not to maintain contact with my former clients unless they need my services a second time.” The lawyer bent close to Max and lowered his voice, as if afraid someone was eavesdropping. “I don’t know
who’s behind the murders, but I’d start with the murder of Clara Lugembe. There’s a lot more hiding behind that story … hard to separate truth from fiction.”

  Max waited for what was coming next.

  “Did you know that Valéria Michieka met Samuel Musindo? They knew each other. There were pictures showing the two of them standing in front of the dispensary where he worked. Then all of a sudden the photos disappeared, and it’s impossible to find them anywhere. I wanted to use them for the trial, but I couldn’t.”

  Max was more than surprised. No one had ever told him that Valéria knew the man who murdered Clara Lugembe. And that included Valéria herself.

  That set up a trio: Zuberi knew Musindo, who knew Valéria.

  Chagula smiled again. “There are other disturbing facts. The living ghost of Zuberi the witch doctor has the authorities afraid. But it also hides many things and keeps people busy at certain key times. Do you want proof? You came here, didn’t you?”

  Max had to admit the man was right.

  “What is the expression — a kangaroo court? Musindo’s trial was stained with irregularities. And not just regarding Zuberi.”

  “Are you trying to say Musindo was innocent?”

  “There’s no doubt he was guilty. He admitted to the crime. All I was hoping was to commute his sentence to life in prison. But the authorities decided to make an example of him.”

  According to Chagula, more attention needed to be paid to the benefits Valéria Michieka and Joseph Lugembe derived from the trial. Michieka saw capital punishment reinstated for the murder of albinos. And Lugembe became a martyr, which earned him points in the race to replace President Komba.

  “During the 1992 presidential campaign in the U.S., do you remember how Bill Clinton decided to attend the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, the man found guilty of killing an Arkansas policeman?”

  “Vaguely,” Max said. “I must have read about it in the papers.”

  “The man tried to kill himself when he was arrested, and all he managed to do was cause himself brain damage. Despite his diminished mental capacity, Rector was sentenced to death. Clinton’s decision, not only to support the sentence but to attend the execution, gave him increased credibility among conservative voters. And that helped him win the presidency.”