The Last Resort

by Douglas Rogers

  ‘What is it you would like to discuss?’

  ‘First we must attend inside. We have instructions for you on the election.’

  Dad knew right away he didn’t want them inside the house. That would be a disaster. He knew what would happen. Once inside they would start taking things, knocking things over, breaking stuff. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hold himself back if that happened. He had to keep them away from the house.

  Mom looked over at Muranda and Agoneka. They nodded gravely at her in support. She was suddenly aware that the shotgun was easily visible on the back seat of the car, and that the mob could see it if they looked that way. She lit a cigarette with a shaking hand and took a casual step sideways to block the view. She felt something under her foot as she did so, and looked down. Oh, God. It was a shotgun cartridge. She side-kicked it gently under the bakkie and looked up. No one noticed.

  My father had heard somewhere that if you could get adversaries to sit down, it would calm them. It’s far harder to leap up and attack someone from a sitting position. He pointed to the garden chairs under the giant fig tree.

  ‘Gentlemen, why don’t we sit down? Come, let’s sit and discuss.’

  There were murmurs and finally nodding.

  There were only four chairs. Mom and Dad took the two facing the front gate. Dreadlocks and one of the older veterans, a tall man with flecks of grey in his hair and a striped shirt, sat opposite. A couple of others were dispatched to get chairs from the front lawn. Soon there were eight chairs under the fig tree. A few of the men sat on the grass around the tables. Others stood, keeping an eye on the two Johns.

  Dad thought: Shit, why don’t they all sit down?

  The older veteran slammed his fist on the table.

  ‘We are here to instruct you. If you are not voting ZANU-PF, there will be war. You will return to Britain. To Blair. You must instruct these workers to vote ZANU-PF.’

  He pointed at the two Johns.

  Dad thought of saying, I’m not British, and Blair’s no longer even around. Mom prayed he wouldn’t. He bit his tongue.

  At least half of them are sitting, he thought. It’s a start.

  Just then a truck appeared in the driveway and moved slowly past the front gate. Poor Dawson Jombe could not have chosen a worse time to arrive home at Cottage 1. There was a commotion among the younger war veterans. It appeared they knew Dawson, and they didn’t like what they knew of him. Dreadlocks stood up, military straight, and dispatched three of them to fetch him. Two minutes later, Dawson was frog-marched through the gate and up to the tree, his skinny legs sticking out of his brown shorts. He smiled weakly at Mom and Dad.

  ‘Hello, Dawson,’ Mom said, giving him a smile. Her heart was beating against her blouse. She had taken out another cigarette and offered the box around. Everyone was lighting up her Kingsgates.

  Dawson told the war vets that he was a ZANU-PF supporter and there was no reason to drag him here. They were sceptical, and he was instructed to chant the party’s slogans.

  Every black Zimbabwean knew these slogans. They learned them by heart for when the war vets or militia stopped them or visited their villages at night. Dawson had learnt the slogans, too. The problem was, he had learnt them too well.

  ‘Pamberi ne ZANU-PF!’ he began, thrusting his fist enthusiastically into the air. Forward with ZANU-PF! ‘Pamberi nekushinga Mugabe!’ Forward with consistently supporting Mugabe! ‘Zvikaramba Toita Zvehondo!’ If we do not win the election, we go to war!

  There was suddenly a stunned silence. For a second, Dawson didn’t know what he’d done wrong. This was indeed a ZANU-PF slogan. War veterans used it all the time. But then he realised, as did the two Johns: the slogan was a national joke. Across the country, under their breath, in beer halls and bus stations, ordinary Zimbabweans mocked the war veterans by using the slogan ironically. If there was no bread they joked, ‘We’re going to war!’ When a bus was late they joked, ‘We’re going to war!’

  Anyone who used the slogan who wasn’t a war veteran was having a laugh.

  The war vets erupted. One of them shoved Dawson in the chest. Muranda, a few metres away, muttered something under his breath, and they turned on him, too. Dawson tried to explain himself. They weren’t going to listen. The war vets were shouting now. It was about to turn ugly.

  Just then my father saw a peculiar sight. A tall, handsome black man in loose-fitting slacks and a fashionable floral shirt was walking calmly through the front gate up to the house, as if he was taking a stroll on the beach. He approached with confidence, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He carried a cellphone in his left hand.

  Christ, Dad thought, Tendai. What the fuck is Tendai doing here? He must have no idea what’s happening. Why on earth would he be coming here voluntarily?

  But then his heart sank. After casually strolling up the moss-covered brick steps onto the lawn, Tendai said hello to the war veterans hassling Dawson and the two Johns, and they immediately nodded to him and cleared a path for him to the table.

  Fuck me, thought Dad. Tendai knows these people?

  Tendai stood casually over the table and said in his smooth, relaxed drawl: ‘Hello, Mr Rog. Hello, Mrs Rogers.’

  Then he clicked his fingers at the war veteran sitting next to Dreadlocks.

  ‘You. Up. Get off my seat.’

  The war veteran leapt to his feet and gave him his chair, apologising as he did so. Tendai fell in it, crossed one long leg over the other, nodded politely at my father again, and then turned to Dreadlocks.

  ‘Continue, Guruwe,’ he motioned with his hand. ‘Continue.’

  Now my father’s head was spinning. He knows their names? Are these his men? Is he part of this?

  Muranda and Agoneka were now instructed by Dreadlocks to chant. Agoneka held up his right fist and started moving his feet, marching on the spot, weakly reciting the slogans like some wretched political dissident in a labour camp. Muranda muttered something underneath his breath once more. One of the older veterans started pushing him again, shoving him in the chest, trying to slap his face. Muranda shoved him back and started shouting. Dad had seen Muranda in a rage a few times before, usually arguing with drunks down at the camp who didn’t want to pay for a chalet. It was an impressive sight. You didn’t mess with a kraal headman from the Honde Valley. His targets usually backed down. But now? Now there was no chance. They were outnumbered twenty-five to four. Or was it twenty-six to four? Whose side was Tendai on?

  And then an astonishing thing happened. Tendai’s cellphone rang, a loud, shrill blast, sharp as a cockerel crowing at dawn. He had been holding the phone in his left hand all this time, as if he’d been expecting a call, but before he answered it, he raised his hand in the air to command silence. The chanting stopped. The war veterans hushed.

  Tendai made a great display of leaning over to Dreadlocks and showing him who the call was coming from.

  Then he answered it. ‘Brigadier Gatsi,’ he said with a smile, and it was suddenly so silent that all you could hear was a paradise flycatcher somewhere in the back of the land.

  Tendai continued, ‘Everything is calm … No problems, Brig … Do you need to send a truckful of soldiers out here to discipline these war veterans? No, I think everything is calm.’

  Tendai seemed to be speaking as much to the war veterans around him as to the voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘No, Brig, I think it is going to be fine. I think they are going to apologise soon and be on their way. … Okay, Brig, see you later.’

  Tendai closed his cellphone and turned to Dreadlocks. He addressed him and his men as if he was talking to unruly children.

  ‘Guruwe,’ he said, ‘that was my friend Brigadier Gatsi. I left a message for him earlier that you and your men were here, threatening us. Now he has called to ask if things are okay. Now this can be a very big problem for you. Understand?’

  Dad recognised the name Brigadier Gatsi. He was the commander at the barracks where Walter was
based. He had no idea Tendai knew the brigadier at all, but then there was so much to Tendai that he didn’t know.

  ‘Guruwe,’ Tendai continued, ‘in our Shona custom, if you wanted to discuss a problem, you did not have to arrive with lots of people. You should have come on your own or with a friend. If you come with many people, it suggests you are prepared to have a fight. It means you are trying to intimidate the people you are calling on. There will be no understanding of your position. If you intend to intimidate, it will be a problem for you in the end. Do you understand?’

  Guruwe nodded and lowered his head. He looked ashamed. The other war veterans shuffled nervously, their eyes darting, looking away.

  Tendai spoke with that calm, confident authority my parents had so admired in him.

  ‘I have told you before,’ he said softly. ‘This is my business. This is my farm. Why would you want to trouble these old people? They are doing nothing. Next time you come to this area here, you ask for me or Mr Muranda. You leave the Rogerses alone.’

  Guruwe nodded, and then, amazingly, he apologised. ‘Tineu-rombo, tiregerereiwo, hatidi mirizhonga naBrigadier, hatizvi pamhe zvakare.’ [We are sorry, please forgive us, we do not want any trouble with the brigadier, we don’t do it again.]

  Sheepish smiles broke out. The situation had been completely defused. There was much nodding and murmuring. Everyone shook hands.

  My parents found it strange to be shaking hands with men who only minutes ago had wanted to do them terrible harm. Dad found he had nothing but contempt for them. Mom, too.

  Then Dad shook hands with Agoneka and Muranda and patted them on the back. ‘Okay, John, thank you, thank you,’ he said. He couldn’t find the words to tell them what he wanted to say.

  He shook Tendai’s hand and smiled. ‘So, Tendai. Okay. Well done …’ Again, he couldn’t find the words.

  Mom was shaking. Tendai went up to her.

  ‘It’s okay, Mrs Rogers. These people, they are just harassing. I find them boring. How am I expected to run a business with these things going on? What will our customers think?’

  Boring? she almost blurted out. You find them boring? It wasn’t the word she would have used. Threatening, terrifying. But not boring.

  The war vets had now gathered themselves and began to walk away. Tendai, Agoneka and Muranda escorted them to make sure they left. When the mob got to the gate, one of the war veterans turned around and said to my father, ‘Do you have any beer?’

  Dad was stunned. For people coming to deliver threats they were suddenly very amiable.

  ‘Ask Tendai or Mr Muranda,’ he said. ‘They look after this place.’

  And then they watched them head into the tall grass, over the creek and beyond the avocado trees toward the camp. Tendai had a beautiful walk, the walk of a prince. A man you could trust. Agoneka and Muranda were next to him. Faster steps, urgent, reliable. Diamonds in the rough. Men you could put your house on.

  When the gang was out of sight, Dad took the gun out of the car and collected the bags and his documents. He was humming to himself, going over in his head what had happened, still unsure how they had managed to escape.

  Mom held his hand and they walked into the house. She was unsteady on her feet. They didn’t say anything to each other, not even when the albino frog hopped onto the kitchen countertop and stared straight at them, silent, unblinking. Naomi was still on the veranda, still in shock, gently rocking back and forth, moaning to herself. Mom sat with her for a while. Then she started sneezing again. She would sneeze all afternoon and most of the next day, some strange nervous reaction.

  ‘I think I am allergic to war vets,’ she would say later.

  It was twelve-thirty, early afternoon, and they found that they were suddenly utterly exhausted. Mom went into their room and lay down on the bed. Dad locked the gun away, hid the passports and joined her. The sun was high in the sky and birds were singing in the banana tree. Naomi’s gentle sobs drifted through from the veranda on a clear, cloudless day.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘Is this the place on the way up, or down?

  ON 22 JUNE 2008, the day after the visit of the war veterans to Drifters, Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of the runoff election. The death toll was already too high; he did so to avoid a bigger bloodbath. Walter the soldier had been right: only one party was ever going to win an election in Zimbabwe. The party that had a ‘history’.

  But something else happened during those three terrifying months: for the first time, the entire world saw the regime for what it was. Mugabe could no longer hide behind the patina of ‘democracy’, or claims that he was fighting a defiant struggle against British imperialism: he had brutalised his own people in full view of the world.

  Pressure finally came from even his closest enablers in South Africa, and on 15 September 2008 he signed a power-sharing agreement with the MDC. Five months later, on 5 February 2009, a Government of National Unity, the Gnu, was formed, and Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in as prime minister. Mugabe was still president, though, and few people gave the Gnu any chance. They had reason to doubt. MDC activists were still being abducted, beaten and detained, and farm invasions and assaults on white farmers continued remorselessly. ‘It’s not a Gnu,’ went the local joke, ‘it’s a wildebeest.’

  By then, in October 2008, a month after the power-sharing agreement was signed, the regime had turned its attention to the Marange diamond field. Bankrupt, desperate for revenue, they saw easy pickings in the stones buried in Marange’s dust. Fatso and his friends were right in the cross hairs.

  It was called Operation Hakudzokwi – No Return. Planned and carried out by the Joint Operations Command – the same officials and military commanders who directed the election rampage – tanks, bulldozers and helicopters were sent in to Marange. Soldiers opened fire on gwejas in broad daylight. Some were buried alive in tunnels, other mauled by dogs. More than 200 diggers were murdered, many of them teenagers machine-gunned from helicopters as they ran for the hills. Some of those feral kids who had swarmed my vehicle on that aborted trip to the field in early 2008 would have been among the dead.

  Up until that October I had kept in touch with Fatso by intermittent e-mails. He told me No Matter was in jail; the Baron had been arrested – then released for lack of evidence. But in November, all communication with him stopped. I presumed he was dead or in jail. Then, on 8 January 2009, an e-mail popped up in my inbox:

  hie douglas,

  it has been quite long when we last communicated and too much has been happening. soldiers came, i tell you people were killed like flies. there were choppers, ground force, commando, riot police name it. its now a no go area. we were in exile and some are still even myself i am not staying in mutare. actually as i write to you people are at a funeral of one buyer called Mabota. beaten by the soldiers. all the same the soldiers are mining with their syndicates. i have since started scripting for filth way to riches in marange

  regard ‘Fatso’

  I feared for Fatso’s life, and when I told him I was writing a magazine article about our adventure together, he asked me not to use his real name.

  By now, a cholera epidemic had broken out and spread to South Africa, another headline in the world news. The country was quite literally diseased. Without medicines or money to pay nurses or doctors, hospitals across the country were closing. Word came to me that Dawson Jombe was praying that his wife Patricia, pregnant with their second child, would give birth to their baby prematurely – before the last hospital closed.

  In January 2009, some relief: the government, tired of lopping zeroes off the currency, finally legalised the American dollar and the South African rand. In one move, hyperinflation and the currency black market was wiped out. Goods reappeared in the shops, and workers were allowed to be paid in American dollars, which had real value. But the problem was, so few people had jobs, and the price of fuel and utilities – water, electricity, phone lines – was now astronomical.

  Then, on 8 March 2
009, barely a month after the fractious power-sharing government was formed, another catastrophe: a lorry smashed into Morgan Tsvangirai’s vehicle as it sped to Buhera, his rural home district – the area where I had interviewed him after the political rally in 2006, and been terrified a lorry would smash into me. His wife, Susan, was killed instantly, and he was in hospital. Everyone suspected an assassination attempt, and once again the country held its breath. It seemed certain that a civil war was coming.

  But Zimbabwe has a penchant for surprise. Tsvangirai did something quite extraordinary at that point. From his hospital bed, grieving the loss of his beloved wife, he calmly announced to the world that it was an accident. And, when he was released from hospital, he calmly went back to work as Prime Minister in the Gnu. Who knows what cataclysm was averted by his extraordinary response to the crash? Indeed, the belief widely persists in Zimbabwe that it was an assassination attempt, and that when Tsvangirai referred to it as being an ‘accident’, he meant the wrong person had been killed – Susan, not him.

  And, of course, who knows what cataclysm still awaits Zimbabwe? As I write this from Brooklyn in the summer of 2009, the power-sharing government, though still together, seems as fractious as ever. What will happen when there’s another election? Or another ‘accident’.

  No one can sift the mud and tea leaves of Zimbabwe’s past and accurately predict its future, and I am not about to try. But what I can tell you is what has happened at Drifters since that terrifying visit by the war veterans in June 2008; to the people on and around the farm; and, in the end, to my parents. And perhaps in that you might find your portent.

  Brian James, still grieving the loss of his own wife, Sheelagh, remains mayor of Mutare, and a member of the MDC executive committee. A white farmer running the third largest city in Zimbabwe is something to behold. The day he was inaugurated at the Mutare Civic Centre was emotional and inspiring: a dozen black city councillors cheering and singing as they carried him aloft to the mayoral chair.