Last Orders at Harrods

by Michael Holman

  The new trunk road would go ahead. Provided the Bank was satisfied that the people of Kireba would be the beneficiaries, access roads would follow, opening up the slum to redevelopment.

  If all went to plan, Kireba would be upgraded in three phases, over five years. When complete – according to the blueprint drawn up with the help of experts from the UN Development Programme – about one third of the slum’s 600,000 residents would have access to electricity, clean water, and decent toilets; they would be served by tarmac roads; two new primary schools, and six clinics would be built, as well as a post office; and the hawkers would have covered stands from which to sell their goods.

  There was, however, a seemingly intractable problem: was the scheme a device to turn part of the slum into highly desirable properties for presidential cronies and party loyalists, in a long-term strategy to eliminate Kireba altogether?

  In short, could the president be trusted? Residents had been encouraged to give a resounding “No” to the plan by various opposition figures, including Newman Kibwana – though most believed that if Kibwana were in office, he too would have used the prospect of middle class homes in “new Kireba” as a source of patronage.

  But as Lucy pointed out, there was a further problem:

  “Let’s assume it isn’t a scheme to provide homes for Nduka’s cronies. And let us assume that it will be carried out to the letter. We’re still in a pickle, aren’t we?”

  She had to explain.

  “Imagine that – the Bank – and Nduka make the announcement about the $250m at the end of Hardwicke’s visit. Nduka agrees that it can be ring-fenced. Contracts transparent, and so on. Well, even the sceptics in Kireba will have to think about it, and a lot of don’t-knows will back Nduka. This could be enough to tip the balance and win Kireba for his party. And if he gets Kireba on his side, he can win the capital, and his chances of winning the election will be a jolly sight better than they are now.”

  She paused, letting her analysis sink in.

  “A clean contract to redevelop Kireba would be a small price for Nduka to pay for another five years in power. Heads he wins, tails we lose.”

  All that could be done, Lucy argued, was between them to do their best to make sure that the project was closely monitored. WorldFeed and other non-government organisations would be the first to blow the whistle, she warned, if the Bank or its partners started fudging on transparency.

  And then she began to press the buttons that had seemingly baffled Charity: community, self-help, environment, health. Above all, one word cropped up time and again, repeated like a mantra: ownership. If the project was to succeed, whether in the provision of low cost housing, or measures to speed up the delivery of clean water to Kireba, it had to be inspired, driven, monitored, and sustained by the residents.

  By the time the meeting broke up, Lucy had won the day. Kuwisha’s NGOs would support the scheme. She left the Bank’s office with a sense of purpose that she had not felt since the heady first months of her posting to the country. It would be a long and hard struggle, and it would be some time before the results could be seen. But she would know that under her leadership, WorldFeed would have contributed to a lasting improvement in the dreadful conditions that made life hell for the residents of Kireba.

  “Ownership,” she muttered as she drove off in her Land Rover, “ownership.”

  With such a busy life, Ferdinand Mlambo had little leisure time. Most of his spare hours – every Sunday afternoon, unless there was a presidential function – were spent playing football with the Mboya Boys. But the weight of expectation, his own and that of his family, hung heavy on him and put a burden on his shoulders. And it was to ease this burden that, every now and then, he indulged in what some would say was a vice. There was nothing Mlambo enjoyed more than to have a quiet smoke in a makeshift tool shed, near the State House kitchen. It was a habit well known to his good friends, Titus Ntoto and Cyrus Rutere, and it was there in the shed that they caught up with him.

  Although surprised to see his pals, Mlambo was not alarmed. His senses were pleasantly dulled by the euphoria induced by several long drags of Mtoko Gold, which was the best bhang money could buy. But after the initial greetings, and when Ntoto began setting out the plan, and Mlambo’s role in it, the kitchen toto was shocked out of his happy stupor.

  He stubbed out his smoke, and stored it behind his ear.

  “You are mad, Ntoto. You expect me to hide this tape recorder you have shown me in the president’s study, before Mrs Nugilu comes for her meeting?”

  “So you know when Mrs Nugilu is coming?”

  Mlambo was affronted.

  “Am I not the senior kitchen toto? Of course I know. She has been many times.”

  He could not help showing off: “And she is coming today, this afternoon even.”

  Ntoto’s eyes lit up.

  “So what is your problem, Mlambo?”

  The toto shook his head incredulously.

  “And when the meeting is finished, I must go back to the study, get the machine, and come straight away to meet you at Harrods, and give it back to you?”

  Ntoto nodded.

  The effect of the bhang on Mlambo seemed to disappear, and his head cleared.

  “You must have been sniffing very bad glue, Ntoto my friend. As we say in my country, the bird who picks the meat from the teeth of the crocodile takes care not to shit in its mouth.”

  Ntoto smiled.

  “Listen to me, fat boy, fat boy from Zimbabwe. As we say in this country, when the elephant farts, even the mighty baobab tree bends.”

  Mlambo smiled back, for he had still not taken on board the gravity of his situation.

  “You must stop sniffing glue, Ntoto. It is making you crazy.”

  Ntoto tried a different tack. Patiently he went through the plan again. He produced the tape recorder. He showed Mlambo how easy it was to operate. Finally, he told Mlambo how much the machine was worth, and hinted that he and Rutere planned to sell it once it had served its purpose.

  “It will buy us food for a year at Harrods,” Rutere chipped in, forgetting that Mlambo ate very well in the State House kitchen.

  Their pleas made no impression on the boy. He was adamant.

  “I won’t do it.”

  He folded his arms, and sat solidly on his substantial bottom, as if daring Ntoto to move him. He then recovered his smoke from behind his ear, lit it, took a deep pull, and blew smoke rings towards the corrugated iron roof of the hut.

  Ntoto had expected no less from Mlambo. He changed tack.

  “What,” he asked menacingly, “if I kick your fat butumba until you cry?”

  Mlambo shrugged. He stood up, turned round and pointed his substantial butumba in Ntoto’s direction, and invited Titus to do his worst.

  “Kick. Go on, kick,” he said, and blew another smoke ring as he bent over.

  Ntoto was uneasy about his next move, but there was no alternative. It was now a matter of face. The toto’s rebellion could not be tolerated.

  “You have read, Mlambo, that bhang rots your head? Bishop also said so.”

  Ntoto, a great admirer of Bishop David Mupanga, did not know this for certain. In fact, Titus had never met the Bishop, and had never been to church. He was guessing, and as it happened, had guessed incorrectly. Bishop Mupanga had not gone public on the subject of bhang before he died, but the papers he left behind had included a draft sermon calling for its legalisation.

  Ntoto was right in one respect. Mlambo would not be able to say he was wrong.

  It seemed to have little effect, however. Mlambo just shrugged, and continued to present a derisory bottom, while Ntoto put forward as good a case for blackmailing the Zimbabwean as he could manage. Now came the crunch.

  “Also,” he said, “also, the president has praised the mungiki who destroyed a bhang crop near the city.”

  Mlambo nodded, still unmoved and still unconvinced, but wondering what was coming next. He wanted to point out that the b
hang crop was being grown on land that was to be developed for private housing, and plots had already been allocated to President Nduka’s cronies. The mungiki, on this occasion at least, were little more than the tools of rich men’s ambitions. He decided to hold his tongue.

  “Well, Mlambo,” Ntoto continued, “it would be a great shame if the president was told that you sell his staff bhang. Here, at State House. And although you are a young boy, you yourself smoke it a lot.”

  Ntoto paused. So far the Zimbabwean had appeared unmoved. What was to come was literally a blow below the belt, and he had to steel himself before delivering it.

  “And you are not circumcised, Mlambo, and you know what the mungiki do if they find a boy who is not circumcised.”

  The enormity of the implied threat sank in. Mlambo could hardly believe his ears. A sound kicking was a price he was prepared to pay for his refusal to co-operate. But to threaten to betray him in this way, with the clear suggestion that he – and in particular, his shlonga – would be exposed to the rusty knives of the mungiki! This went against the unwritten code of the Mboya Boys club.

  He was about to say as much to Ntoto, and then took a second look at the face of the boy in front of him. Ntoto’s eyes were hard and unyielding, his jaw set, his lips tight, and Mlambo realised he would be wasting his breath.

  He took a final puff from his joint, and listened carefully to Ntoto’s instructions.

  Not even Mtoko Gold had been able to steady Mlambo’s nerves when, soon after the meeting with Ntoto and Rutere, tape recorder in hand, he crept into the president’s inner sanctum. He was so nervous that for a few moments he thought he would lose his lunch. He was not sure which prospect alarmed him most – the consequences of vomiting on the presidential carpet, or the loss of the tasty dish of kapenta (fish) and rice that lined his stomach.

  President Nduka was at the weekly cabinet meeting, and the door to his study was ajar. Heart beating furiously, Mlambo pushed on it gently, and slipped in, looking around as he did so. He had lost count of the number of times he had brought the president his mid-afternoon glass of hot water, with a quarter of a fresh lemon and a bottle of honey, or the midday meal, or the morning tray of Earl Grey tea and scones which the president almost invariably failed to touch.

  Mlambo never failed to experience a sense of awe at being in the presence of such a powerful man, but the sheer terror he endured now came close to paralysing his limbs.

  The study smelt faintly of cigar smoke, even though a cigar had not been smoked there for years, overlaid with the aroma of beeswax furniture polish and the scent of fresh picked roses.

  The trembling Mlambo peered about him. He had been mad to have succumbed to Ntoto’s threats, crazy to agree to take part in a harebrained plot. But those mungiki . . .

  Ntoto had refused to tell him what would be done with the tape, although Mlambo could guess. The boy had been very specific: the machine had to be in place, under one of the armchairs, or the desk, in time to record any meeting between the president and Anna Nugilu.

  What else could he have done, other than comply, he asked himself? To have lost his job would have been bad enough. But to be held down by those mungiki, as they went to work with a rusty razorblade, or a sharpened nail! His testicles shrank at the thought, and his cock seemed to shrivel with fear.

  For a few minutes Mlambo stood and snivelled, and then with a low wail, he began confessing to his Zimbabwean ancestors, asking forgiveness, and seeking advice. He imagined his great grandfather, one of the heroes of Zimbabwe’s first chimurenga, or liberation war, in the 1890s, listening patiently. But advice came there none.

  He made a huge effort, pulled himself together, followed Ntoto’s instructions, and placed the tape recorder under the president’s desk. And not before time. The sound of voices came closer. The cabinet meeting had ended early, and the president was returning.

  While Mlambo was a coward, he was not a fool, and had taken the precaution of coming into the study with a tray of tea. The toto blew his nose, wiped his fingers on the underside of one of the armchairs, adjusted his uniform of white shorts and white vest, retied the laces of his white plimsolls, took a deep breath, and stood to attention at the entrance to the study.

  Nduka entered the room, small by the standards of the rest of State House, comfortably – but not extravagantly – furnished, in a style that seem heavily influenced by Britain of the 1950s.

  The president vividly remembered his first visit to State House in the days when it was the seat of the colonial government. He was still a young man, just entering his thirties, but a political veteran who had been hardened by a spell in detention for various offences. The Governor of the day had done something that would have horrified the settlers had they ever learnt about it: he had invited a black man to take tea in what was then the inner sanctum of white rule.

  A file was brought out, and some tough words exchanged, and both parties had stuck to the terms of the deal that was struck. And although it was a deal that paved his path to power, what he most vividly recalled was the ambience in that small room: cool on the hottest day, fresh-cut roses on the desk, the smell of polish and a lingering aroma of cigar, and armchairs too comfortable ever to go out of fashion.

  When State House was being refitted, shortly before Kuwisha won independence, and Nduka was about to be installed as the country’s founding president, he ordered that the contents of the Governor’s study was to be saved, including the chintz armchairs and the leather sofa.

  None of the furniture would have looked out of place in a conservative London club. Forty or so years later, the armchairs were still there. True, they had been re-upholstered at substantial expense. Every few years they were air freighted to London, transferred to a small family firm in Worcestershire which retained details of the original order, together with bolts of the original cloth, and flown back to Kuwisha, as good as old.

  The walls were oak-panelled. On either side of a life-size portrait of the president, which hung over a vast fireplace, were the heads of two lions, shot and mounted by the colony’s last governor, Sir James Kennedy. After independence, he kept up his ties, taking tea with the president after regularly, escaping the foul British winters each year to soak up the Kuwisha sun.

  Both men made much of the fact that as governor during British colonial days, he had ordered Nduka’s detention.

  “The best thing I ever did,” Sir James would joke.

  The president agreed.

  “I got my education in detention, at the British government’s expense,” he used to beam in response to Sir James’ comment. He always called his mentor Sir Kennedy. Whenever they met, the two men would slap each other on the back, hug, and discuss the follies of the world in the presidential study, over Earl Grey tea, and scones.

  Sir James referred to Nduka as “young man”, and the president would smile with adolescent pleasure. When Kennedy died in a polo accident at the coast he was in his late eighties. Nduka ordered a state service, at which he delivered an eloquent and moving address, and was hurt by the daughter’s insistence that the body should be buried on the family estate in Northumberland, rather than in Kuwisha.

  Some commentators traced the decline of Kuwisha and the increase in presidential despotism to the former governor’s demise, and the loss of his moderating voice. Others claimed that the death of Nduka’s first wife, Sally, at about the same time was to blame for a change in the president’s personality. Whoever was right, Earl Grey tea and scones were served in the study, every day, at mid-morning, when the president was in residence.

  The president was in a mellow mood.

  He looked across his desk at the fat boy, still standing to attention at the doorway.

  “So, Mlambo, how is the football?” – or “footyball,” as Nduka pronounced it.

  If it was true that the tape recorder began automatically, when someone started to speak, it should now be recording.

  Mlambo, petrified, stayed silent. Th
is was not the first time Nduka had raised the subject, and invariably he used it as an excuse to wander down the byways of his fading memory – most of which the kitchen toto had no desire whatsoever to discover or explore.

  “The Mboya Boys United Football Club,” the president continued, rolling the words around his mouth. A distant look came into his eyes.

  “Mboya, Mboya . . . we met when we were both new Members of Parliament. Kenya was already independent, and Kuwisha soon followed. He was a good man, very clever, and a good man. But he was ambitious.”

  After a minute’s pause, Nduka recited the pantheon of Africa’s might-have-beens:

  “Chisiza of Malawi, Lumumba of Congo, Mboya and Ouko of Kenya . . . Mupanga of Kuwisha – we all had those ambitious young men. All clever, some too clever. All ambitious.”

  The president’s voice trailed off. Mlambo stood rigid with fear. He had heard the rumours about Bishop David Mupanga’s accident. The last thing he wanted was to know more.

  “Would Africa be different if they had lived? What do you think, Mlambo? Your Zimbabwe, it has lost its clever men too . . . Chitepo, Tongogara, Edson Sithole . . .”

  The meeting with Anna Nugilu was soon to start, and Mlambo got increasingly nervous.

  President Nduka had a grudging respect for Anna Nugilu.

  He no longer bothered to conceal their regular weekly meetings, same place, same time. Let the mischief makers and the dissidents spread their rumours. As the elections drew closer, so did the speculation that Mrs Nugilu was prepared to do a deal with him become more widespread. Few voters now believed that he had either the energy or the ideas to lead the country out of the mess into which it had sunk during his tenure.