Murderous

by David Hickson

  “It’s the season,” he said. “All this alternating from hot to cold, I just don’t know where we are. Think I’m getting a cold.”

  “So it’s an extraordinary military victory for the Afrikaners?” asked the colonel. “Or there’s another layer?”

  “Of course there’s another layer. Why did Dingaan murder the Voortrekkers? We need to understand that. And so we keep moving further back in search of the start of the story. We think that surely in the origins of it all we will discover the truth. But the only truth is that there is no start to any story. My life in the media has taught me that.”

  “The start to the story is two different cultures coming together and wanting the same thing,” I suggested. “The land.”

  Piet raised a warning finger. “Ah, Mr Moss, you’re about to fling about some pithy, but inappropriate misconceptions.”

  “Am I?”

  “You cannot mention the word ‘land’ without it. Not in this country.”

  “What misconceptions was I about to fling around?”

  “You were about to express an opinion over who had the right to the land.”

  “Was I?”

  “On the Afrikaner side,” said Piet, “we could claim our origins as celebrated explorers, who bravely set out from Europe to find new lands. A few generations later, our pioneering spirit had us travelling north to discover this new land. We were the Christopher Columbuses of Africa. Wonderful stuff. In those days explorers were lauded for their efforts, held in great esteem. Not only for discovering new lands, but for their role in extending and advancing civilisation. At the time our European forebears set sail, they were seen as doing the ‘right’ thing. To this day, missionaries are generally regarded in a positive light.

  “On the other hand, the origins of the Afrikaner story could be interpreted as meddling colonialism. The missionaries and explorers who arrived in this land are now condemned. Colonialism has become a dirty word. Descendants of the colonials, which is all of us pale-faced Europeans, including the Afrikaners – despite the fact they rejected fellow colonial powers like you Brits – must now bear the guilt of our colonial forebears, not walk with our heads held high because of the way our forebears brought civilisation to the land. Two ways of seeing the same thing.”

  “What guilt?” asked Hendrik, but Piet ignored him.

  “The Zulu have sides to their story as well. We can choose to consider the glorious uniting force that they were. The first time in history that African people had been united, as the Zulu nation swept down from the north, and drew all the smaller tribes in. On the other hand, they were brutal, and mostly drew those other tribes in by killing many of them, particularly dissenters. Africa is no stranger to genocide. Entire tribes have been wiped out in the tumultuous history of this continent. It was largely the civilising influence of colonialism that stopped the genocide, but it is considered anathema to express such ideas nowadays.”

  “They got here first,” I said. “Isn’t that the accepted root of all this? In any contest over who has the right to the land, it surely comes back to that?”

  “Did they? There you go with your misconceptions again.”

  “They were there before the Afrikaners. That royal kraal you mentioned was established before the Afrikaners started their trek.”

  “Up north, yes, by a handful of years, two handfuls at the most. But if you’re going to argue that the land belongs to who got there first, you will not do the Zulu people any favours. They weren’t first, they came down from the north and took the land from the people they found there. Swazi, Sotho, Khoisan. Consider for a moment our farm in the Eastern Cape. I own that farm, don’t I?”

  “It’s our farm,” said Hendrik.

  “Because I paid money for it. And the person I bought it from paid the previous owner. But if you go far enough back, you’ll find someone who arrived there and drove a stake into the ground, climbed to the top of the hill and announced that they claimed it as theirs because they ‘got here first’. The ‘empty land’ approach. But it was nonsense because before they drove their stake into the ground the ‘strandlopers’, or ‘beach walkers’ roamed freely over the same land. The nomadic Khoisan people. You don’t get any of them appealing to the courts asking for their land back.”

  “Because they’re all dead,” I said.

  “Damn right,” agreed Piet. “They were hunted down and killed, every last one of them. You know that? Literally hunted for sport. Not by us, but by you British. That’s something the British like to skip over when they’re polishing their feel-good medals. Trying to establish ownership by going back to who got there first is a difficult path to tread.”

  “What guilt?” asked Hendrik again.

  Piet sighed and blew his nose.

  “It’s the reason we’re at war, Hendrik,” said Roelof without taking his eyes off his mineral water. “We’re at war because of the actions of our ancestors.”

  After dinner there was a scene change, with the servants as shadowy stage hands. The glass walls with the view of the ocean which had stood open through the meal were closed in order that no more of the fire’s heat should be lost. The lights were dimmed and sweet wine was produced to be enjoyed with the sugar-dusted cubes of dried fruit that appeared on the table.

  “You’ve been very patient with me,” said Piet as he tried to light a cigar with the flame that Roelof held for him. “So let me get to the point.” He puffed at his cigar and disappeared for a minute behind the smoke. When it had cleared he said, “This nasty business in Minhoop, the church. It has highlighted our situation, our vulnerability.”

  “I understand,” said the colonel.

  “We have a farm, as I mentioned. Very vulnerable out there.”

  “Of course.”

  Piet sat back in his chair and discovered that his cigar had gone out. He leaned towards Roelof, who produced a flame to rekindle it. “We’ve done a little due diligence,” he said between puffs. “Wanted to be sure that you were the men of integrity you seemed to be.”

  “Trust is the only basis for any relationship,” said the colonel. “Very important.”

  Piet nodded, and for a moment he held the colonel’s eyes. I knew very well that any due diligence they might have performed would have returned an echoing void of information. But Chandler had insisted we could leave it all to the assumption of our association with Richard Mabele and his reputation, because there was a wealth of information about him. Our presence here this evening was probably vindication of that.

  “You’re here,” said Piet, and he opened his arms as if we were a manifestation of some magical trick he had performed. He exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke.

  “Very pleased to be here,” said the colonel in a soft voice. We had arrived at the moment of truth.

  “Guns,” said Hendrik suddenly. “We want guns. Big fucking guns.”

  Piet’s face compressed with irritation. He didn’t look at his son but kept his eyes on Chandler. Roelof made a small sound of annoyance. Chandler nodded solemnly.

  “Richard Mabele’s name was mentioned,” said Piet.

  “Ah,” Chandler smiled as if the name brought back fond memories. “The things they say about Dicky aren’t true. A man of integrity, that’s what Dicky is.”

  “You’ve had dealings with him?” asked Roelof, his eyes hard and cold.

  “Dicky and I go way back, don’t we, Freddy?”

  “You do,” I said without enthusiasm, and shared a look of right-hand man kinship with Roelof.

  “That’s what we thought,” said Piet. “That he was a man of integrity. We had that impression.”

  Chandler nodded and then smiled.

  “Dicky might be your man,” he said. “What do you think, Freddy?”

  “Best there is,” I said. “Dicky works miracles.”

  “He does,” agreed Chandler, and sipped at his wine to seal the deal.

  “Full disclosure,” said Piet. “We tried a direct approach, but no dice.”


  “Dicky only works with people he knows,” said Chandler.

  “We wondered whether our meeting at the airport might not have been coincidence. Whether Richard Mabele was doing some diligence of his own.”

  The colonel’s smile broadened. “Dicky has an unusual approach to his work.”

  Piet nodded and looked pleased. Roelof looked doubtful. Hendrik looked blank and Melissa looked inebriated.

  “Give us a wish list,” said Chandler. “We’ll set something up.” He raised his glass towards Piet. Piet raised his glass and Roelof obligingly poured a little more dessert wine into it so that the deal could be made.

  “Transport is the issue,” I said.

  “Logistics,” said the colonel. “I’ll let you work that out, Freddy. Always fussing about the details, is Freddy.”

  “Why is transport an issue?” asked Roelof.

  I turned to him. “State of emergency. Moving anything by road has become impossible.”

  “We’ll sail them down,” said Chandler.

  “Sail them?” asked Roelof, as if we were planning to load the weapons onto a private yacht.

  “Sea is better,” I agreed. “But even the cargo ships are subject to endless searches.”

  “Hendrik already has guns,” said Melissa, who had roused herself from her reverie. We all looked at her. “They’ve got him into enough trouble already. You shouldn’t be getting Hennie any more guns, Oom.”

  “I wonder,” said Piet, “whether your fiancée is tired?”

  Hendrik looked around the table as he wondered how many of us were in possession of a fiancée.

  “The fire has made me a little dizzy,” admitted Melissa.

  “She’s had too much wine,” said Hendrik, but he stood up to help Melissa out of her chair.

  Piet gave a tight smile and turned back to us.

  “I might have a solution regarding transport. Bit of a ‘get out of jail free’ card. I have government clearance to transport live animals during this time. For the farm.”

  “That sounds good,” said the colonel.

  “It is,” agreed Piet, and he drained his glass as we said our farewells to Melissa.

  “We Afrikaners will keep going to our churches, you know,” said Piet, after Melissa had been escorted by Hendrik to a lower floor where she could rest and recover from the dizzying effect of the warm fire. “We will keep going even if the shooter, when they find him, declares that he is the advance scout of an army preparing war on our people. We will sing our hymns and say our prayers because that is what our religion is to us. It’s our identity. Not a belief. It’s who we are. Good Christian folk, that’s how we see ourselves. We will carry our weapons into the house of our God. And we will make promises to remember Him with gratitude when He protects us.” Piet emphasised the capital letters without irony.

  The shimmering veil of wind on the water made a dash for the shore. The glass wall had been opened now that the business of the evening had been done. Piet shivered and blew his nose as the chill wind reached us.

  “Melissa was correct in saying that we Afrikaners made a vow before the Battle of Blood River. A vow to our God. That if He would help us to victory in battle, we would forever remember Him on that day. It became a holiday in this country. The Day of the Covenant. It was celebrated every year until the end of apartheid.”

  “Is that so?” said the colonel.

  “After that it seemed inappropriate to remember a God who had helped us to kill so many Africans.”

  “So no more holiday?”

  “Well … there’s the funny part, colonel. We still celebrate the day. But we have changed the name of the holiday. It is now the Day of Reconciliation. A little ironic, but there it is. It means that the promise to remember our God on that day has not been broken after all. We might give it a new name, but in our hearts we are still honouring the promise.”

  “And hoping,” I suggested, “that remembering that vow means that He will protect you again if the time has come for another round.”

  “Exactly.” Piet smiled.

  Twelve

  “Sawubona,” said Khanyi.

  “Sawubona,” I replied dutifully.

  “Unjani?” she said.

  “Ngikhona, ngiyabonga. Wena unjani?”

  “I’m impressed,” said Khanyi, without looking it. “We’ll make an honorary Zulu out of you yet.”

  “Just so long as that doesn’t involve slaughtering any animals or undergoing circumcision rituals.”

  “Those are the fun bits,” said Khanyi. “You wouldn’t want to skip those.” She smiled. Her hair was newly braided, and she was wearing a simple black two-piece that looked like it had been made to measure, although the tailor had skimped just a little on the material for the skirt so there was a substantial length of leg that emerged in sheer stockings with coy butterflies fluttering around them.

  She looked incongruous on the steps of Pollsmoor maximum security prison. It is not a prison that Hollywood would employ as a location for the next prison-break blockbuster. It is a downright ugly complex of squat face-brick buildings strung on a spider’s web of pathways flanked by fine mesh steel fencing, topped with coiled razor-wire, and endless steel gates.

  “What happened to you?” asked Khanyi as she took in my bedraggled appearance. She was oblivious to the fact that her beauty earned her a parking spot close to the roofed walkways, whereas lesser, non-female mortals like me were directed to leave our rusty Fiats in the overflow parking. “I suppose it suits the conversational role,” said Khanyi before I had a chance to reply.

  “You arranged everything?” I asked.

  “They were very reluctant,” she said, “but the captain pulled some strings.”

  “He’s a good man,” I said.

  Khanyi’s eyes regarded me coolly as she analysed those words for sarcasm, but they passed muster, so she gave a small nod and said, “Let’s do this then.” She turned abruptly and led the way into one of the world’s most notorious prisons.

  “Unprecedented,” said Warden Noxolo, whose name required the speaker to use their tongue as a percussive instrument in the middle section. “Absolutely unprecedented.”

  Warden Noxolo was a short man, built like a snowman, a spherical ball balanced upon twig legs, and a smaller ball for a head. Even though we had entered his prison voluntarily through the visitors’ door, his eyes glinted with suspicion; he had the air of a man who compensated for his lack of height by occasionally doing rash and unexpected things which could include losing us on the wrong side of all that barbed wire.

  I smiled. Warden Noxolo did not smile back.

  “We’re very grateful,” I said.

  “It’s unprecedented,” said Warden Noxolo again. “I said no to it.” A brief glance at Khanyi, but then back to me. He preferred to direct his anger at me.

  “You don’t take the shackles off a man like that,” he said. “He’s dangerous. You people have no idea. We had that lawyer killed in the interview room, you know that?”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “Few years ago,” said Warden Noxolo, and he squeezed his lips together and looked as if he was trying to perform a difficult bowel movement. Perhaps he had realised how ambiguous the comment about the lawyer sounded and wanted to stop any further incriminating comments from slipping out.

  “And you’ll be in a low-security rec-room,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said, because that was an important element of our approach, but Warden Noxolo was not mollified.

  “There will be guards in the corridor,” said Khanyi with a contrite flutter of the eyelashes.

  “No good,” said Warden Noxolo. “These people can kill in seconds.”

  I did not point out that the person in question was supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Warden Noxolo didn’t look as if he was in the right mood to discuss ethics.

  “And hot chocolate?” he spluttered. “Hot chocolate?” His lips squeez
ed together again, and he made another effort at the bowel movement. I said nothing because, although that had sounded like a question, I wasn’t sure what the correct answer would be.

  “Well?” asked Warden Noxolo, whose anger must have blinded him to the inadequacy of his sentence structure.

  “It’s unprecedented,” I said.

  Khanyi put her hand on my arm as if to hold me back as Warden Noxolo’s face darkened. She fluttered her eyelashes a little and gave him a smile. We were standing in the reception area where it seemed he had allowed his resentment to build as he waited to greet us, and the sounds of a large institutional building rushed in to fill the awkward silence. Distant clanking of steel against steel, feet squeaking on linoleum, voices hushed by distance, although the pain in those voices was undiminished.

  “Shall we go to the room?” suggested Khanyi.

  Warden Noxolo nodded. We all knew everything had been prearranged, but he probably felt better about it after expressing his dissatisfaction. He pressed a button on a radio he was holding and spoke into it while keeping his eyes on me. Then he turned about sharply and led us down one of the corridors that radiated out from the reception area. The corridor was probably not the usual one that guests who arrived here of their own volition used, so it was not as carefully maintained. Some bulbs were missing, and patches of plaster had crumbled and been swept into dusty piles. A framed photograph of Nelson Mandela hung on the wall near a bulb that dripped yellow light over him. Warden Noxolo stopped abruptly before it.

  “Had some famous people here,” he said and pointed at the photograph as if he was taking us on a guided tour. Khanyi and I admired the photograph. It was one of the official portraits taken of Mandela after he became State President. The glass was cracked but the corner of the photograph was signed.