“The accused then smuggled the human organs, hidden in live animals, into Zimbabwe.”
Justice Changamire had made himself a cup of tea and removed his shoes. Then he started reading.
The prosecutor’s statement began with a background of the illegal organ trade. According to informants, the traffickers usually packed organs in plastic bags and transported them in containers full of ice. However, this straightforward method had a major limitation: Most organs deteriorated rapidly if they were not transplanted within hours of being extracted from the donor. Therefore, all the parties involved had to move quickly, a factor that became complicated when the donor and recipient were in different countries. The risk of spoilage was already a major problem with legal transplants. The covert nature of the black market trade worsened the delays and increased the number of failed deliveries. There were more middlemen to pay and even more authorities to bribe. In many cases, the organs were no longer viable by the time they arrived for the transplant. The stress and suspense were significant for all those concerned. This made the trade expensive and, therefore, lucrative.
The file before Justice Changamire described how organized criminals had developed a solution to the delivery problem. Instead of putting the organs on ice, they had pioneered a method of integrating them with the anatomy of livestock. By transporting them in these “cargo herds”, the organs would remain viable for months, allowing them to survive heavy delays anywhere along the supply chain. The lower spoilage rate had raised profit margins. It also reduced the unpredictability that had long caused havoc in the industry.
The benefit of the system was that it allowed the criminals to move from an expensive “just-in-time” business model to a new “just-in-case approach”. The traditional method required the criminals to quickly match the donor and the recipient. The new model allowed the criminals to stockpile organs without a particular customer in mind. The living inventory was tagged and put out to pasture. The animals were fed a steady diet of anti-rejection drugs so that their immune systems would not attack the foreign organs squatting in their bodies. When a customer expressed interest, the criminals would check their inventory and find an organ that matched the recipient’s profile. The animal would then be shipped to a secret surgical facility for the transplant. This morbid trade went back and forth across Zimbabwe’s borders with Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique, and Zambia.
The accused in this case had been caught with a “cargo herd” of several dozen animals. The “courier cows” were intermingled with regular livestock. One of the animals had a human heart grafted onto its own. The nerves and blood vessels of the two organs had been interwoven so perfectly that the human heart did not even know it was helping to pump cow blood. The same cow had also been blessed with an extra set of human lungs. Another animal had a bag full of beard-growing cells hidden in its abdomen. The remainder of the cargo herd was populated by a number of courier cows that were transporting human corneas.
Magistrate Changamire shook his head. He gulped his tea and continued reading.
Zimbabwean police had known of the illegal scheme for some time. However, they had no clue about where or when the shipments would come into the country. The situation was complicated by another practical issue. In a countryside full of rural farmers and livestock, it made no sense to detain every person found herding cattle near the border. Fortunately, the police received a tip a few days before the shipment was due to graze its way into Zimbabwe.
The informant also supplied the police with a range of tests to distinguish the couriers from the ordinary animals. The cattle with the cornea transplants had poor vision and kept running into objects that were right in front of them. These animals needed to be guided by the other cows and tended to cluster in the middle of the herd. The cow with the human heart and lungs could run nonstop for up to an hour. All the police had to do was to find a restless-looking animal and chase it to see if it could run for that long. The one with the beard-growing cells had a furry tongue. The cows with the human kidneys would urinate twice as much as the other animals.
The informant also told the police that among the cows, there might be other smaller livestock, which were ideal for transporting smaller organs. The most popular choices were sheep and goats. It was possible that the smugglers would use a pig, but this was unlikely. Pigs are lazy and unreliable over long distances.
Armed with this information, the police were ready. About five kilometres from Haroni Forest Reserve, they found two young men with a herd of two dozen cattle. One of the men was in his late teens. The other was in his late thirties. Both men were stunned when they saw the police approaching. As they scanned the landscape for a possible escape route, they realized they were surrounded. The officer in charge of the operation asked them where they were going.
To Nyahonde.
Were these their cattle?
Yes. No. Yes.
What about the goat?
Maybe.
When did these animals last drink water?
About an hour ago. At a stream in Mozam—at a stream in Zimbabwe, of course. The water was cool and fresh.
Why was one of the cows so restless?
Which cow?
That one. The one running around with its tongue sticking out.
Oh. It’s in heat.
After this exchange, the men were handcuffed and seated under a tree. The animals simply stared at the officers. The goat was fussing for no reason.
It was time to carry out the tests. The officer in charge split his officers into teams of four. The first group was assigned to isolate the eighteen dazed cows in the middle of the herd. Each cow was to be led towards a tree. If the animal walked into it, this meant that its vision was being blurred by the human corneas that were grafted on top of its own. These animals had to be isolated from the rest of the herd.
The second group of policemen was given the task of finding the cow with the furry tongue. Without a trace of sarcasm, the officer in charge had noted that, “Though cows spend half their lives eating, it is not easy to get them to open their mouths on demand.”
The final test was left to the fittest officers. Though their task was simpler, it was physically demanding. Their job was to chase the restless cow. When one of the officers started trotting towards it, the animal turned and sped off into the grass.
An hour later, the tests were complete. The results were exactly as the informant had predicted. After several scuffles and a few chomped fingers, the cow with the furry tongue was identified. Two of the cattle had urinated nonstop during the hour. Eight of them had collided repeatedly with trees that were right in front of them. The restless cow had galloped for the entire hour. It would have continued if the pursuing officers had not tipped it over and put it in a giant leash. Even then, it had continued to prance about until it rejoined the herd. The tired officers nicknamed the animal “Vital Capacity”. The goat was later found to be carrying several small organs ...
There was always something akin to murder in cases of organ trafficking. The “donors” in such transactions usually had their organs harvested without their permission. Many did not survive the procedures. They were usually marginalized people such as the homeless, the poor, or the mentally ill. Sometimes, they were regular citizens who had a rare genetic quality that matched that of the recipient. In such situations, the prices for the organs were much higher.
The organ harvesters were obsessed with maximizing their profits. They did not bother with unnecessary expenses such as anesthetic for their victims. They also understood the desperation of the buyer and charged them the standard rate for a new life. This usually meant whatever amount they asked. The criminals only gave discounts when their asking price was higher than the sum of the buyer’s net worth and their moral dilemma. With years of experience, they had honed their pricing strategy into an exact science. Such callousness provided a key element for passing a death sentence.
On its face, this case smelled of ca
pital punishment. However, the herders who had been caught with the courier animals were lowly recruits. They were only responsible for herding the animals across the border. Unknown superiors had harvested the organs and grafted them into the livestock. Others had transported the animals to the border, from where the herders smuggled them into Zimbabwe.
If the organ herders had not been caught, they would have taken the cattle to some unknown location and left them by a river to drink. After they left, someone else would have arrived and separated the prize animals. They would have shipped them to a secret location where the valuables from the animals would have been extracted and transplanted into more than two dozen patients.
Nearly four million dollars would have changed hands. Every participant in the scheme would have gotten their share. The herders would have been paid five hundred dollars each. They also would have been allowed to return to the riverbank to claim the remaining animals. For a day’s work, the wage for smuggling the cattle was more than the herders could earn in a year. However, in their desperation, they had not stopped to think that their windfall was less than they could earn in five years of honest work. This was how long they would spend in prison if they were convicted. Nevertheless, five years was nowhere close to the death penalty. Even though some people along the chain of criminality had committed capital crimes, those people were outside of Zimbabwe.
Magistrate Changamire was troubled by this aspect. He could not shake the feeling that this case had been put on his desk so he could arrive at this very conclusion. He knew that the sensational nature of the alleged facts would lead to media speculation that the herders should be sentenced to death. In the past year, there had been several media reports of ritual murders in which the victim’s organs had been extracted for the purposes of witchcraft. The outraged public was baying for blood. Condemning the organ herders to death would be a popular move. It would be considered a powerful deterrent for all such criminals. However, herding stolen organs was the only crime the courts could punish in this case. The death penalty was out of question for this level of participation.
Magistrate Changamire dabbed the tip of his thumb with saliva and disciplined the rogue hair that often tried to flee his eyebrow. He leafed through the pages of the file several times and squinted.
Was someone trying to relieve him of his reputation as The Hanging Judge?
Over the past three years, Magistrate Changamire had been assigned fewer cases with the potential for the death penalty. Were the invisible powers trying to shut down the pipeline to the gallows? Or were they trying to break his pattern for passing so many death sentences?
Magistrate Changamire had been tempted to raise the issue of his case allocation with the registrar once more. On considering it further, he decided against this move. As a judge, it would be inappropriate to question why he was getting fewer death penalty cases.
After weeks of mulling over his strange situation, Magistrate Changamire finally figured out what was going on. He kept his theory to himself and began looking for signs to confirm his suspicions. The first one appeared in the form of another notable change in his caseload. The registry started to reduce the number of serious criminal matters that came before him. Magistrate Changamire was given more cases involving stock theft, civil disputes, burglaries, and assaults. None involved murder. Though he still had enough work to tax the most competent of judges, for Magistrate Changamire, this new trend felt like a working holiday.
The strongest confirmation of his theory came from an unlikely place. The courthouse cafeteria started serving corned beef sandwiches. The sudden appearance of this boarding school delicacy was too jarring to be a coincidence. It was official. Magistrate Changamire would soon be receiving a special guest who also worked in the legal profession. His visits always carried more weight than was evident from his humble personality. It was a matter of time before he received a visit from a High Court judge named Justice Athabasca Murambi.
* * *
Justice Athabasca Murambi
Every day, Justice Athabasca Murambi ate a corned-beef sandwich for lunch. This was common knowledge. The habit started when he was eighteen years old. There were two schools of thought on what had inspired this dietary preference. Of course, the first involved a pretty girl with eyelashes that would humble a peacock’s tail.
In this version, the girl worked at the store where the future judge and his mother went to stock up on boarding-school supplies. The store had a section with a dizzying array of coloured pens. Without fail, Athabasca’s mother drifted to it like a bee to a bouquet of flowers. She would spend half an hour considering and rejecting at least one hundred pens. After many frowns and even more sighs, she would finally settle on a plain black Biro. To the ordinary person, it looked like all the rest. But Mrs. Murambi swore that she had found the pen with the most scholarly vibrations.
While Mrs. Murambi was distracted by her search, the adolescents exchanged awkward smiles. They never spoke because Mrs. Murambi’s pen-induced hypnosis did not dull her immaculate hearing.
When mother and son met at the till to pay for their shopping, the girl always slipped an extra can of corned beef into one of the bags. She had done so nine times over three years. Then one day, she was gone. Before leaving for his last year of boarding school, young Athabasca visited the store. Behind the till, he found a dour lady with a hostile outlook on customer service. Only then did he realize that he had never asked the girl her name. Her replacement refused to shed any light on the matter: “I don’t know her. She was fired. Are you sure you can afford those sweets?”
Yes, he could afford them. But all he wanted was to find the girl who smiled like an unfurling blossom. The girl who always gave him free cans of corned beef.
According to legend, Athabasca promised to eat corned-beef sandwiches every day until he found the girl again. No one knew whether he had grown tired of the taste. If he had, his lost love had cursed him with a difficult thirty years.
The second theory was much simpler. The company that manufactured the product paid the judge to encourage the first theory. Proponents of the less romantic version pointed out that Justice Murambi only ate Mhitsa Corned Beef. The company that made the product was widely regarded as the canned food version of Zuva Redu. Sensation was its trademark. Apparently, its cattle were fed a special diet of spices that made it unnecessary to season their meat. Every can of Mhitsa Corned Beef was proudly stamped with the slogan: “Naturally flavoured cow!” Using a prominent community figure to market the product was consistent with the company’s cheeky marketing strategy.
Justice Murambi had refused to confirm or deny either theory. He loved to feed the speculation, as much as he loved to feed his stomach with corned beef sandwiches. In light of this history, the High Court judge was sure to be visiting soon. Why else would the courthouse cafeteria start stocking his favourite meal?
One afternoon, Magistrate Changamire walked into the cafeteria just before lunch. Behind the counter, he found Wilbert, a member of the kitchen staff.
“Hello, Wilbert. What brand of corned beef is in that sandwich?”
“It’s Mhitsa Corned Beef, Magistrate. Naturally flavoured cow!”
“May I have one?” asked Magistrate Changamire.
“Of course,” replied Wilbert.
“Actually, can I have both of them?”
“Uh. Well, I only have these two. I cannot sell you both, Magistrate.”
“Why?”
Wilbert hesitated.
“Well ... One of them has mayonnaise.”
“I don’t mind mayonnaise.”
“Sorry, I meant mustard. It has made the bread soggy. But I do have this other delicious sandwich with bacon and tomatoes. Would you like that?”
“But that one looks like it has mustard too. Didn’t that make the bread soggy?”
“True.”
“So then?”
“Magistrate, these are the only corned-beef sandwiches we have. I can only s
ell you one of them. However, if you like, I can make two for you tomorrow? Today, I must insist you go for the bacon sandwich. It is so delicious that I am sure we broke some law by making it. You can have it for free if you buy only one corned beef sandwich.”
“That won’t be necessary. I can only eat corned-beef sandwiches in pairs, or not at all. Thank you, Wilbert. Have a nice day.”
Magistrate Changamire had the confirmation he needed. Justice Murambi was visiting that afternoon. But why did everyone in the courthouse seem to know this long before the unwitting host figured it out himself?
* * *
Luxon Hurudza
After returning to his chambers, Magistrate Changamire pretended to immerse himself in his work. He had no idea when Justice Murambi would arrive. The magistrate needed something to distract him from his anxiety. All the cases on his docket felt like popcorn: lots of volume, little substance. There was only one solution for his failure to focus. After scouring a neat row of books on his shelf, Magistrate Changamire found his cure to inattention: An Unhurried Analysis of Customary Conveyancing Law in the Context of Postcolonial Legal Thought by Chief Justice Lameck Dinhiwe.
Few people find it easy to swim through mud. However, reading Justice Dinhiwe’s book was like swimming through a brick. The text had taken him fifteen years to write. When the former chief justice died, the legal community was struck with a mixture of grief and relief. Though everyone mourned the passing of a legendary legal mind, no one would miss the collective headache he caused with his dense judgments.
Justice Dinhiwe’s book was a compulsory text for all law students in Zimbabwe. For the law faculty, the book’s only purpose was to weed out students who did not have the stamina to handle a demanding profession. Sadly, those who gave up their dreams of becoming lawyers did not know that life could get no worse than Justice Dinhiwe’s book.
The Hangman's Replacement: Sprout of Disruption (BOOK 1) Page 23
