The Dust Diaries

by Owen Sheers

  Slowly, the line re-formed. Men emerged from behind rocks and bushes, gathered their rifles, their baggage and arranged themselves into marching order. The wounded askaris were placed on stretchers. An officer blew a whistle, and they trekked on, back towards the camp. As he walked behind the marching soldiers Tendai was certain that now he would have bad luck. His totem had been killed before his eyes. He had not tried to save it and now it would have its revenge.

  So Tendai was not surprised when disease swept through the carriers’ camp, leaving hundreds of porters dead in a month. And he was not even surprised when he was arrested and wrongly accused by the pay master of stealing a tin of ghee from the supply store. He attributed everything to the death of his totem animal. But the punishment for the theft of the ghee had been too much for him, and it was after this that he decided to leave the camp and return to Maronda Mashanu. Four askaris had held him down, one at each limb, with a fifth sitting astride his shoulders. His shirt was pulled up to his neck, and his shorts down over his buttocks, exposing the skin between. A sixth askari stood over him and Tendai could smell the scent of the coconut oil rubbed in the niboko as he flexed the whip in his hands.

  After the fifteenth lash Tendai managed to escape the grip of the askaris and begged the officer in charge to stop. But Captain Mein-ertzhagen had insisted the full punishment be carried out, and they had pinned him down once more for the remaining five lashes.

  He was in the hospital tent for a week after that, but as soon as he could move his back again he left, slipping out of the camp in the middle of the night. He knew if he stayed there he would die, and he knew he could not die yet. He had no children to prepare his burial, to perform the necessary rituals. His spirit would be lost, left to wander for ever. So he left. To save himself and to save his spirit. He would, somehow, make his way back to Maronda Mashanu. There, he would care for his mother and farm the land. He would grow maize and pumpkins and sell enough of his crops to buy cattle. With cattle he would be able to marry and then, when he had a wife and a farm, if Baba Cripps taught him to, perhaps he would teach the children in the school. He would never leave Maronda Mashanu and he would never carry or work for another man again.

  ♦

  Tendai had his eyes shut, so he did not see the ruga-ruga part the long grass with the blade of his bayonet. He did not see the filed points of his sharpened teeth, the raising of his rifle, or the fine dark tattoos etched on the cheeks of his face. He just heard the grunt of effort as the man brought the bayonet down. Felt a sudden cold on the right side of his groin, a rasping scrape as the blade caught the edge of his pelvis, the tug on his body, as if he were a puppet, as it was pulled out again, the cold turn to heat, spreading up his stomach. Then the heat punctured with more cold, as the man stabbed and stabbed again. He did not see anything, but kept his eyes shut, and as the bayonet pierced his throat, he was already dreaming of rhinos charging through the veld, of his mother and his father, standing at the top of the kopje, welcoming him home.

  ∨ The Dust Diaries ∧

  1 AUGUST 1952

  Maronda Mashanu, Mashonaland, Southern Rhodesia

  Fortune is kneeling at his side, holding a tin bowl in front of him and guiding his hand into its contents. He feels the soft, warm sadza there. Like mashed potato, but thicker in the grain. Pinching a little between his finger and thumb, as if he were testing cotton, he brings it to his mouth. Her hand is resting on his knee and his is on her shoulder. This is how he eats now. Holding on. Slowly, like a child.

  Outside he can hear children. The delicate peal of a goat’s bell. The rising of life in the veld. After he has eaten he will sit outside and wait for Noel Brettell to come and read to him. And as he waits, he will smoke his pipe. The doctor who visits him says he should not smoke his pipe. Fortune says he should not smoke his pipe. But he will still smoke his pipe. He will feel the heat of it linger in his mouth, the smoke work its way over his palate and smell its thick scent in his nostrils. He will live in sensation, in now and not in the past, where the memories crowd at the edge of his mind. The tobacco will help him forget, and it will help him remember; reminding him, in his dark, half-deaf, rise-and-fall world, that he is alive.

  ♦

  Alive. He did not expect to return from the war alive. He preached a Christianity of witness and the war had been no exception. He went out on every patrol, on every attack, on every slow gunboat across the sheet-metal water. And every time he expected to die. He was not afraid, but he expected to die, the way he had seen so many others die. But he did not. St Michael kept the bullets flying past him, gave him shelter when the shells fell and jammed the rifles aimed at him. When he returned he built another mission church to celebrate his survival. It was another echo of Zimbabwe and he called it Zuwa Rabuda: Rising Sun.

  He remembers his return from the war clearly. But not for the relief it brought. And not even for the unsettling sensation of being back in Maronda Mashanu where so little had changed. Where, despite all that had happened, the goats still grazed and the women still walked from the river with firewood and water on their heads, making it seem impossible they had lived through the same period of time. That the same dates had passed over them. That is not why he remembers his return. He remembers it because for eighteen months at the lake he witnessed the insult of war. The injury of it, man to man, black and white, and he thought his return would mean an end to such witness. But he was wrong. On his arrival back in Mashonaland he found the insult continued. Not in the way of the war: carriers withering under neglect, askaris cut down under machine-gun fire, men dying in a war that was not theirs to fight. But in a quieter fashion. Delivered in the language of the law. Devised by ministers and commissioners not generals and captains. Slower, less immediate in nature, but still fuelled by the same idea. But then, as he came to realise, in Southern Rhodesia it was always the same idea. There had only ever been one idea in the country, one idea that dominated all others. The idea that shaped the country and fuelled its forming. The idea of Land. It was the only idea that mattered. Land had brought the settlers, the missionaries, the war. Land held the stones, the iron, the gold. Land held the Africans’ ancestors, their spirits and their myths. Land held the past of the country, locked in its earth, and, as he realised on his return from the war, its future too.

  The insult came in the form of an Imperial Commission report on the native reserves. The author, Government Surveyor Atherstone, recommended a reduction of one million acres in this land set aside for native use. In the Sabi Reserve, in Arthur’s own district, the land taken by the government would be used to build a railway. The reserve would be cleared of native villages for six miles on each side of the line, and the land there assigned for white settlement only.

  Arthur knew the reserves were already too small for the growing population that lived there. That water supplies were short, and much of the earth infertile. And he also knew the BSA Company didn’t want the Africans to be able to farm their own land, so they would take the best land from the reserves. They wanted workers, not farmers. He also knew the Company had millions of acres of unassigned land it could draw upon elsewhere. But that unassigned land would be left and kept for when more white settlements would be built, and now, after a war where thousands of Africans had died, land would be taken from the reserves instead.

  He was exhausted by his experience of war. His soul felt shredded.

  But he recognised that without land the natives would become strangers in their own country. The reserves were not the answer, but as he wrote to his friend John White at the Aboriginal Protection Society, they were the ‘best makeshift harbour of refuge’. So he chose to fight again and began writing a pamphlet, A Million Acres, in protest. Looking back it seemed inevitable, but there must have been a choice. He could have allowed the report to go unchallenged. Returned to just his local mission work. Perhaps even returned to England. But really, there had been no choice. He had to fight the Commission’s report. He had always foug
ht. He had only ever chosen not to fight once in his life and he’d never stopped regretting that choice. Even now, years later, pinching sadza to his slow mouth, holding Fortune’s soft shoulder, her hand on his knee, the thought of that choice, that walking away, still haunted him. Like a recurring dream that he will never wake up from, that he will only forget when he never wakes up again.

  ♦

  Annual Meeting of the B.S. A. Company, 1917

  Address by Company Chairman, Dr Starr Jameson

  Now gentlemen, besides the record of progress, in various directions, measures have been taken to clear up ambiguities and uncertainties, to consolidate our position, and so make our property more valuable. Our native areas have always been in rather a fluid state. A commission was appointed by the Imperial Government to inquire into the necessary areas to be set aside for natives…The needs of the natives, both now and in the future—after careful examination by this Commission—which travelled all over the country, accompanied by the surveyor general—have been amply provided for, and the net result is that more than 1,000,000 acres of land have been added to the land which may be leased for white settlement. That means really that you people get another million acres odd of what is called unalienat-ed land in the country. That is very satisfactory…

  §

  13th March, 1918

  Waddilove Methodist Mission

  Mashonaland

  Dear Arthur,

  When this Commission was investigating I was asked to give evidence and refused. I thought that the composition of it was so palpably one-sided that the British Government would take no notice of its findings. Had things been normal, I am sure they would not have done so. This war has meant the passing of many things that would have been more fully investigated and probably turned down. The fact that such a large number of Natives in the whole of this country are living on private farms and paying in many cases big rents, proves conclusively that the land set apart for them is either unsuitable or very insufficient.

  It seems to me a shameful thing that when quite a number of Africans are assisting the Empire in this gigantic struggle against tyranny that this time should be selected to rob them of their heritage.

  With kindest regards,

  Yours affectionately,

  John White

  §

  October 30th, 1918

  Private Secretary to the B.S. A.

  Company’s Resident Administrator

  Salisbury

  Dear Rev. A.S. Cripps,

  I am directed by the Administrator to acknowledge receipt of your pamphlet entitled ‘A Million Acres’. His Honour regrets that your zeal for the natives should lead you to make such an undeserved and offensive attack upon those responsible for the administration of this territory…the unfairness of your action seems to His Honour to be quite inexcusable.

  I think you will be well advised to accept without further protest the Commission’s decision and you will find, I feel certain, that in the result of putting the decision into effect, the natives will suffer no hardship.

  §

  From The Sabi Reserve by Arthur Sliearly Cripps, Missionary to Mashonaland

  Tourin the Sabi Reserve, Oct. 1919

  From map 2 (appended) some idea of the lie of the land in the Sabi Reserve may be obtained. The route A marked upon it represents what is by far the more probable railway route. Route B—the Government Cattle Road (used in moving cattle towards Odzi for East African Campaign supplies), generally speaking, represents a possible alternative—a route much less likely I should think. The map shows approximately the defined areas of several native clans. The commission’s recommendation of reduction applied to Route B would wipe out much of perhaps the loveliest stretch of natives’ open country in all the Reserve—that ruled by paramount Chief Marara. On the other hand applied to route A, which is much the more probable railway route, as I believe, the recommendation, literally carried out, would wipe out most of the fine, if hilly block of Chief Magaya’s country, and slice deep into the adjacent territories of Chiefs Kwenda and Tshitsungi.

  Moreover, I suppose that Chief Mambo would be mulcted of some land, possibly not worth much to him, in the neighbourhood of the Sabi river-crossing. For practical politics, it seems fair to assume that route A is the railway route we have to reckon with.

  It occurred to me that it would be well if one would make effective representations against the proposed tampering with the Reserve, to make certain investigations of sorts on the spot myself. So I set myself a route through some of its reputed dry bush-veld country last October, and followed it out without much deviation. It was the end of the dry season proper then; I make that admission for what it is worth, with the qualification that a quite unusually early September rainfall had demonstrably made itself felt in some of the parched country I passed through. Indeed, in a patch I visited, munga (native bulrush-like millet) seemed to have made real headway already. I left the Assistant Native Commissioner’s Camp at Buhera’s behind me and travelled on by Matin dera Ruins and Mut-shutshu’s Ruins, through some desolate country, towards Betera’s. Afterwards I crossed the Mirihari river not far from its junction with the Sabi, and passed on amid interesting big-game and (reputed) lion country. I went thence into Mambo’s tract, that seems to have been much depopulated (owing to the pressure of droughts in recent years, time and time again). Then at last I came into fine native hilly country (I was in Tshitsungi’s realm then), and on to the beautiful river Rwenje, up whose right bank (going upwards) route A runs. I was to see something for myself of an already well-populated country, that promises soon (under pressures of evictions from private lands) to be quite thickly populated as Mashonaland goes, a country that is threatened by the Reserves Commission’s verdict, a country that our big but partially barren Sabi Reserve can ill afford to lose.

  I went through bad country that the Commission has proposed to leave our natives undisturbed in their possession of, a real bad class of country, comparatively speaking. I pursued my travels on this Reserve in a countryside of some very fair country (on the whole) that the Commission has seriously menaced with a loss of over a quarter of a million acres. I give some extracts from my revised notes such as they are:

  Saturday, October 11th

  I saw no water for some while after that on the ground we travelled. The water bottle that had been lent me was to do me splendid service…Not far beyond was the site of the old Camp, which is reported to have been abandoned owing to shortness of water supply…

  Sunday, October 12th

  After service and breakfast we came through some very dry country indeed…The country we had got amongst seemed of a different class to that around Enkeldoorn, generally speaking. Shown a plant with purplish pink flower that is used to burn salt. Saw a comparatively small number of human inhabitants and cattle. We struck paramount Chief Nyashano’s wagon road some way from Matindera Ruins…Great baobabs stood up fantastically with but small show of earth to nourish them…We saw water on rock near, a small rain-fed pool in appearance; it was screened with turfs…

  Monday, October 13th

  We travelled on to Mutshutshu’s where there seems to be a fairly well-watered sort of oasis in a very dry countryside…We decided not to go on till morning; the road ahead was said not to be very well watered. We slept outside near the little town of grain-bins beside the kraal. Smallness of grain-bins was, it appeared to me, rather a feature of this countryside.

  Tuesday, October 14th

  There seemed to be cultivation and inhabitants about, for some way, then the country became wild. Bush grew very thick in one strip…

  Wednesday, October 15th

  I heard how people had migrated from Mambo’s drought-stricken country—making for Magaya’s and Tshitsungi’s countries. We came on to paramount Chief Mambo’s tiny village…country very desolate apparently. We came on…into Tshitsungi’s country. We had got into better-looking country now, at least country more of the sort one knew nearer home
, not that water-short bush-country of Nyashano’s realm. We had crossed a small flowing stream (it was my first sight of such a thing for full five days, I believe)…We descended by a great descent to the River Rwenje—a beautiful and ample stream where we crossed it. We were now in the country menaced by that decision of the Reserves Commission, which claims as reversion not only a fifty-yard strip, but a six-mile belt on each side of the proposed railway.

  Friday, October 17th

  There seemed to be fine open ground about in that valley, as well as rough ground…I had just been directed towards my journey’s goal by a native iron-worker. I found him hammering with a stone at a hoe-head, his anvil being a rock. The goatskin bellows blew while he left his job to help me. We came on…sighting various villages, some rough ground and some open ground. I noticed some promising-looking red soil, and also some swamp-ground. We came on largely by a sledge-way, to Kwenda’s mission farm…Let us hear one conclusion on this whole matter!—There is some poor land apparently very ill-suited in its present state to carry a large population of folk or cattle in the Sabi Reserve. Therefore the Sabi Reserve can ill-afford to lose fine native ground.