The Cuban
Page 6
I moved to the north-western corner of the site and dropped my rucksack over the fence. I struggled to get over the fence, almost bursting a vein in my head. I eventually dropped to the other side and lay on my back for a while to catch my breath, and to nurse my throbbing head, ribs and shoulder. There was open veldt on the other side of the fence with the Delmas road fifty metres to the west.
I walked back to my car, removing the latex gloves on the way and depositing them in my jacket pockets. I got to the car fifteen minutes later and dropped the rucksack in the trunk.
I drove onto the N1 highway and headed north for Polokwane. There were a lot of places I never want to go back to. And the semi-completed Elardus Park mall was one of them.
I stopped to refresh at the Total One Stop Filling Station ten kilometres north of Pretoria. My body was aching and covered in drying sweat. My cracked rib was healing and so was my right bicep, but I could feel pinpricks from my right wrist going all the way up into my shoulder. I could also smell myself and it was most certainly not Old Spice.
At the One Stop I parked at the truck section as there was no one around. I entered the wash-up area unobserved and was able to remove my shirt to enable me to clean my face of most of the dried blood from my left ear and neck. I sprayed deodorant and put on a fresh T-shirt. I felt much better, but my whole body was aching.
I bought a can of Coke, some crisps and Grand-Pa headache powder from a vending machine, and pointed the nose of the car north.
I was maybe pushing the car along a little too fast, but it was late, and I was afraid of falling asleep. I was whipping along, but alert for the wildlife. Kudus and warthogs are very common in this area.
It had been a long, long day, and I was anxious to get back to the farm, to a long hot bath and a long cold drink and a long deep sleep.
I reached my farm outside Polokwane at two o’clock the next morning without any further happenings.
CHAPTER 6
Tom’s Farm — Sunday, 1 March
I woke up at nine with my body aching all over. After a long relaxing bath, I turned on the TV to see what happened between the Bulls and the Lions the previous afternoon at Ellis Park.
The Bulls won by seven points, and as I was watching the highlights, I remembered that my phone was still switched off.
As I turned my phone on, it immediately started to ring. It was my sister, Retha, sounding hysterical.
“Why is your phone switched off? The whole world has been trying to get hold of you! Jan Steyn was murdered yesterday.”
She was screaming, not giving me a chance to reply at all.
“And poor Danielle. Shame on you, Tom. Are you at home? Karlien said that she drove to your farm yesterday, but you weren’t there. Jan is dead, Tom! Murdered!”
My head started aching again and I could feel the lameness settling down my body.
“Slowly, Retha. What happened? One thing at a time!”
Retha lived on our family farm in the Vivo area.
“Jan was shot dead yesterday morning,” Retha exclaimed.
I swore loudly. I could see the fingers of my right hand going white from gripping the mobile phone — almost cracking the thing.
Retha and I grew up with Jan Steyn, attending the Vivo primary school together and both later matriculating from Pietersburg High School. Jan and I were of the same age, while Retha was three years younger. Jan was her secret school love and hero.
We were farm neighbours and saw each other every day at primary school. We hunted together in the afternoons, first with our ketties, later with pellet guns, and eventually with hunting rifles.
Jan went to study at Potchefstroom College of Agriculture after school, while I went to do my two years of compulsory military service. I extended my military service after earning my Sharpshooter Badge with the South African Infantry Battalion, and eventually became a sniper with the Special Forces Regiment as a ‘Joiner Recce’.
I served my country until after the ANC was legalised in South Africa and saw Jan every time I went to visit my family in Vivo.
“Dirkie heard a shot twenty minutes after his dad went to inspect a cattle post. He decided to investigate half an hour later when his dad did not return to the house. He thought it was his dad shooting at guinea fowl.
“He found his dad lying next to the corrugated reservoir at the wind pump; his head was shot away with a blast from a shotgun at close quarters. Dirkie immediately raced back home and called us on the radio.
“Hendrik and some of the other neighbours rushed over and followed up on the spoor. The spoor went all the way to the tar road a kilometre away, and then disappeared.
“The police from Mara police station arrived another hour later. They didn’t find many more clues and are still on the farm investigating.”
Hendrik Botha was Retha’s husband and my brother-in-law. They had been farming on the farm since my mother passed away six years ago.
Retha studied at Normaal College in Pretoria and qualified as a teacher. She lived on the farm with her husband and their two children and taught at the Vivo primary school ten kilometres from the farm. She and Antoinette became very good friends and would talk for hours about teaching and their pupils.
In 1994, the ANC had tangible success in the War of National Liberation, but it hadn’t taken long for that to turn into a pile of dung. The black masses in the townships and rural areas didn’t give a toss about the new ‘Rainbow Nation’, or unification with their white brothers.
The unemployment rate today was the highest it’s ever been, and only the politicians believed that everyone could work together to improve unemployment for the masses and justify the crippling level of taxation on the white minority.
The alarming increase in farm murders all over the country showed how out of touch the government was with the inverse racism that had started in the country.
It was even mentioned that the murders, as well as illegal tobacco smuggling and cash-in-transit heists, were funded by the government. They had the infrastructure, the knowledge, and the weapons to be major players in the world of crime.
“Is Danielle still at the hostel, or is she with Karlien?” I enquired.
“Karlien picked her up yesterday afternoon and they tried to get hold of you. I’m sure she is still at Karlien’s place.”
I finished my call with Retha and immediately phoned Karlien. She told me that they were all okay, and that I must come over for lunch.
I was unable to concentrate on the rugby highlights and decided to move to my studio to get my thoughts in order.
I phoned Kwinzee and we spoke for fifteen minutes about Jan’s murder. Kwinzee wanted to have a look at the crime scene.
“The sooner, the better, DC. You know that these farm murders are rampant and police corruption common knowledge. Most of the force is composed of crooks who are more interested in protecting their partners in crime than the local farmer.”
He convinced me to stay in Polokwane, while he would drive to Vivo to have a look. I then phoned Hendrik to tell him to meet up with Kwinzee.
I lived on a small farm of a hundred and fifty hectares, a few kilometres to the north of Polokwane. Antoinette and I bought the undeveloped farm when we moved from Pretoria to Polokwane.
Initially we rented a town house in town while we built a little cottage with the money that we had available. After Antoinette passed away, I added a small painting studio to the farmstead.
It was a loose standing building with me and Kwinzee having the only keys to the studio. It was never cleaned or tidied up by the maid, resulting in piles of semi-finished paintings and heaps of photos lying all over. It was equipped with an alarm system with two passives detecting any illegal entering. The alarm system was connected to my mobile phone.
My main reason for the extra security was that I had a lockable cupboard built into one of the walls containing my rifle safe. My reloading equipment was installed next to the safe inside the cupboard as well.
Both the rifles were equipped with long range Schmidt und Bender PMII riflescopes, with P3 reticles, and mil dots on the vertical as well as horizontal crosshairs.
The two rifles were used on the farm for hunting and culling and also for my work with the SSA. It was through Nic that I got hold of the Schmidt und Bender riflescopes as they were not readily available to the general public in South Africa.
Even though the studio seemed to be in a state of chaos, the inside of the cupboard was neat with everything in its place. I loaded all my own ammunition, and this was stored inside the safe with the firearms, propellant and primers.
Besides painting wind pumps, I was also busy with a study of goats. Goats that Antoinette introduced to the farm. Her family farmed with ostriches, Brahman cattle, and Appel goats close to Okahandja in Namibia.
She imported twenty ewes and two rams from her father’s stud in Namibia right after we moved onto the property and was an avid member of the South African Indigenous Veld Goat Association.
The Appel goats were referred to as Eastern Cape Xhosa Lob-ears in South Africa, and her goats grew to a herd of close to a hundred, very sought-after, stud animals.
As there were many species of acacia trees on the farm and the goats being browsers which flourished on these leaves, her goats were in excellent condition all year round.
The thought of acacia trees made me think of a programme that I watched on television a few weeks ago where a name change from acacia to something else in Africa was discussed.
Scientists from Australia claimed that Australia had close to a thousand species of acacia trees that are indigenous to their continent. They approached the botanical naming committee with an appeal to be the only continent with the right to the genus name acacia. Should they succeed in their mission all acacias in Africa will have to be renamed.
In the same programme the pardoning of Australian officers who murdered Boer prisoners towards the end of the Anglo Boer War in 1902 was discussed.
It seemed that some pressure group in Australia was busy writing a petition requesting the pardoning of those Australian officers who were convicted and executed for the murder of innocent unarmed Boer prisoners, which were held in custody.
Specific emphasis was directed at the arrest, incarceration, trial and execution of Lieutenants Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant and his sidekick, Peter Handcock, of the Bushveldt Carbineers. They were both executed on 27 February 1902 by a British army firing squad.
Should this pressure group succeed, my grandmother, Ouma Hannie, would certainly turn in her grave! ‘Breaker’ Morant operated close to Louis Trichardt in our part of the country. Although it was more than a hundred years later, the Boers were still scratchy about him.
After Antoinette passed away, I kept the goats and made it Danielle’s project. There were heaps of A4 glossy photographs of the goats which Danielle took with my Nikon camera, as well as photos of wind pumps from all over the country.
I had started to paint some of them, and others are new projects which might turn into paintings one day. At some stage I had to decide which ones to keep and which to discard.
As I looked around the studio, my eyes fell on a painting of two Airedale terriers. It was a painting I did two years after Antoinette passed away. It was a painting of our two Airedales that we used for breeding.
Antoinette bought the Airedale bitch in Windhoek when we got married and named her Nandi, after the mother of Shaka Zulu. I bought the Airedale dog from a German breeder close to Rustenburg and named him ET after Eugene Terreblanche, the leader of the far-right wing Afrikaner Weerstand Beweging, or AWB as they were known. Danielle always thought ET was named after a character in one of her favourite movies.
We had lots of fun breeding with the two and thinking of suitable names for the puppies. We named our kennel Uhuru, meaning ‘Freedom’ in the Swahili language.
In the first litter there was a monster boy puppy that bossed all the other puppies around, eating most of their food. Antoinette named him Uhuru Prancing Wolf, or PW for short. It was our private joke as PW was the state president of South Africa in the 1980s.
The two Airedales died a few years after Antoinette passed away and I never replaced them. I still miss Antoinette a lot and know that there will never be another person who could take her place. But maybe, one day, I might get married again and will be able to replace the two Airedales.
I had been occupying two favourite spots in the farmstead since Antoinette passed away; the couch in front of the TV and my La-Z-Boy armchair in my studio.
Sitting in my favourite La-Z-Boy armchair, I let my mind drift. It was my defence mechanism. I needed to clear my mind of all conscious thoughts; very important for my subconscious mind to take control.
My radio was set on a local radio station and when a song by Bok van Blerk about General de la Rey started to play in the background, my train of thoughts subsequently moved to my grandparents.
My grandfather passed away when I was seven years old, and my grandmother, Ouma Hannie, decided to move into an old age home in Pietersburg, where two of her widowed friends already resided.
The old age home had medical facilities, and between the three of them, they had a car to travel around with. It took her a while to adapt from living on the farm in Vivo to living in town, but she eventually lived for another thirteen years before she passed away. I was in the Defence Force by that time and received regular letters from her until the day she died.
I was in primary school in Vivo when my grandmother moved to town and would visit her once or twice monthly over weekends. I would catch a lift from Vivo to Pietersburg with a parent collecting his or her children from school on a Friday, and would get a lift again on Sunday afternoon back to the farm when the farmers would drop their children off at secondary school in Pietersburg after a weekend on the farm.
I was quite fond of my grandmother and used to play rummy with her and her two friends on a Friday night. Saturdays were our special time and we would play tennis in the morning and canasta at night. She would prepare home-made ginger beer and milk tart, and she would let me eat as much as I desired.
And when it was bedtime, it was story time. Not any stories. Real ones. Like the story of Hannie Strydom. Her story. She had told it so many times. It was the blood that ran in my veins. And as a small boy I had wept on my grandmother’s shoulder as she told it to me.
As I was sitting in the armchair, relaxing, my mind drifting, I was telling the story to myself. It was Hannie’s story, and in my lifetime, I would never be free of it, or want to be.
***
Zeerust, 1901
It was early in the morning of a summer day in 1901 when we heard the sound of horses coming at a full gallop down the farm road towards the farmhouse. We lived on a farm close to Zeerust in the western part of Transvaal and I was playing with my brother and two sisters outside the farmhouse, which was fifty metres from the Klein Marico River.
As my mother heard the sound of galloping horses, she grabbed her four children and ran to the river, hiding us in the reeds next to the wash area.
The hooves of the horses sent sparks flying from the quartz stones in the road and chickens and ducks were scurrying to get out of the way.
We had heard shots for the past four days in the koppies not far from the farmhouse but hoped and prayed that our father and elder brothers, who were fighting with General Lemmer, would safeguard us against the Kakies.
The Kakies stopped at the verandah in front of the house, their leader with some sort of a shiny sabre in his hand. “Burn it down,”, he commanded. As my mother heard the command, she could no longer stop herself. She jumped up and ran to the house.
“Where is your husband?” the officer barked.
“Fighting,” my mother replied.
“You’ve got five minutes to take whatever you need from the house, then my men are burning it down,” he told her.
The Kakies arrived with two horse wagons and, thirty minutes later, we were loaded and on our way to Mafeking. Not that we knew where we were going at that stage. We were loaded on one horse wagon whilst the loot of the soldiers was loaded on the other.
As we drove around a bend in the round, we looked back at the farmhouse and could see smoke spiralling towards the blue skies. Soldiers and natives who followed the soldiers on foot were running around chasing chickens and ducks, and not even the old tame house pig was left in peace.
The natives, like beasts of prey, robbed the farmhouse of blankets, pots and whatever they cared to take. The soldiers killed whatever fowls and ducks they could catch, and these were tied to the saddles on their horses.
We wore the best clothes we had, and each had our own personal treasures clamped to our chests. Mine was a straw doll which my dad had given to me two months ago for my sixth birthday.
Some of the black farm workers were lined up on the side of the road, as if they were standing watching a parade. Some couldn’t look us in the eyes, but others abused us, threw rocks and stones at us. Among those were people who came to my father begging for work and, even though he could not afford it, he assisted them.
As a stone hit my mother against the side of the head, I looked at the Kakies driving the cart for protection, but they were laughing and shaking their heads. One young officer said to my mother who stared back with a wry smile, “You smile, maybe you do not understand what is going to happen to you.”
“Why would I weep as I still have a husband and a son who are fighting the war for my country?” she dauntlessly replied. “To me you are a waste of a white skin. You are all bloodhounds and thieves.”