The Soldier who Said No

by Chris Marnewick

  In the background a policeman stood with his legs apart and his arms folded in the classical pose that announces to the world, I am here and I see what’s happening. He didn’t move when a woman with a child on her back was surrounded by a foursome of boys no older than ten. The boys were bare-chested and wore Zulu skins on their wrists. They pushed her to the ground. She sat with her legs straight in front of her. Tears streamed down her face as they rummaged through her parcels and walked away with the loot.

  The commentator repeatedly used a word foreign to De Villiers’s ear. Ubuntu.

  ‘What is ubuntu?’ he asked.

  Liesl Weber thought for a while. ‘I think it is one of those words that can’t be translated.’ She touched an earring. ‘Something like a spirit of togetherness, an attitude of well-meaning, goodwill, I don’t know.’

  ‘Charity.’ De Villiers didn’t know where the insight had come from.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. Charity.’

  The woman’s tears tore at his conscience.

  I could have shot him but I didn’t.

  Liesl interrupted his thoughts. ‘It was nice to get away from my mundane existence in Durban for a change.’

  On the screen behind her the news turned to rural KwaZulu-Natal. Two town councillors had been shot dead in their car when they arrived for a council meeting where a new mayor was to be elected after some floor-crossings. The police held up AK47 shell casings and appealed for information. A sweating politician in a pinstriped suit blamed the deposed party for the killings, saying that they had no respect for the democratic process.

  ‘I have a witness now,’ De Villiers said suddenly, changing the topic. He took Liesl’s hand across the table. ‘I have a credible witness, one whose sanity can’t be questioned, an unimpeachable witness. It’s no longer my word against theirs. !Xau exists and he recognised me, he really knew me.’

  But the witness was deaf and blind.

  Liesl Weber echoed his thoughts. ‘He’s deaf and blind, Pierre. You’re going to need more than this.’

  South Africa

  June 2008 33

  While Pierre de Villiers and Liesl Weber were squinting into the afternoon sun outside Schmidtsdrift, Detective Inspector Henderson and Detective Sergeant Kupenga were making their way through the chaos that was OR Tambo’s International Arrivals Hall. Their luggage trolley was rebellious, one wheel insisting on going its own way. Anxious friends and relatives stood three-deep in the hall, waiting to catch a glimpse of those they had come to fetch. The airport was a construction site, inside and out, with preparations for the thousands of visitors expected for the 2010 Football World Cup in full swing. In time the airport might match the best overseas, but for the moment it smelled of uncured concrete and diesel fumes.

  They had booked a connecting flight to Durban. They looked in vain for a sign directing them to the domestic terminal, but once outside the building, their glances left and right gave the game away and a young man rushed to their rescue. He was all smiles as he offered to push their trolley and show them the way. Another came unbidden and took their carry-on bags. The young man with their bags made conversation as he led them ahead of their trolley.

  ‘Where you from, Boss?’

  Kupenga answered, ‘New Zealand.’

  ‘Oh, All Blacks, rugby, beating the Springboks all the time,’ the young man grinned. ‘Good! Good! Fantastic!’ he exulted.

  The two policemen had to walk fast to keep up with their bags and Kupenga was soon out of breath.

  A phone beeped and the young man put the bags down and pulled a cellphone from his jacket pocket. After studying the screen, he pulled a face and said, ‘Sorry, Boss, have to go,’ and started running back towards the International Arrivals Hall.

  Henderson and Kupenga lifted their carry-on bags and looked around for their porter and their trolley. Both were missing. They realised immediately that they had been scammed, relieved of their luggage within half an hour of stepping onto African soil.

  The police at the airport were unlike any policemen they had ever encountered: fat, sullen, uncommunicative and downright rude. ‘It’s your own fault,’ the desk sergeant said. ‘Can’t you read? There are signs all over telling you not to give your luggage to anyone other than an official porter.’

  Henderson demanded the man’s name and number but the desk sergeant swore at him and walked into a back room.

  At least their connecting flight was on time. And they would in due course return to the Gauteng Province for several meetings with the top brass in Pretoria.

  In accordance with their routine, De Villiers drove Johann Weber to his chambers. A dishevelled woman had made the corner of Old Fort and Stanger Street her own. At the next intersection another woman, perhaps her daughter, was harassing motorists at the drivers’ windows each time the traffic light trapped them in her sphere of operations. There were beggars at every street corner. De Villiers had never seen white beggars before.

  The news on the car radio made De Villiers sit up and take notice. Mr Sibusiso Sibisi, owner of the Sibusiso Stars, had employed three of the political prisoners who had been granted a pardon a few months earlier. They would act as bodyguards. Sibisi’s team was to play Moroka Swallows in a National Soccer League fixture at Loftus the following weekend.

  ‘There are many days when I wake up and I just want them dead,’ Weber said from the passenger seat of his Porsche. ‘Sibisi used to be a drug runner. He never took part in any struggle activities, but he was clever enough to channel some of his profits to the ANC in exile. In return the ANC has deployed him – that’s the term they use – to commerce and by a number of affirmative action transactions made him a multi-millionaire, obviously against an undertaking to plough some of the money back into the Party coffers.’

  De Villiers shook his head, still not sure that he understood.

  ‘Recently,’ Weber smiled, ‘he pocketed more than ten million rand from a sponsorship deal with a bank. The money was supposed to go to the Soccer League. It’s a joke, but that’s how it is.’

  ‘Johann, this doesn’t make sense,’ De Villiers complained.

  Weber elaborated. ‘They were drug mules for Sibisi before they became involved in political activities. He owes them.’

  De Villiers waved a toothless man selling cellphone chargers away from his window and let the clutch out. The Porsche moved forward slowly, struggling at low revs in first gear. Then the whole line of cars was forced to stop again. A minibus on the diagonal blocked two lanes of traffic while heading for a third.

  ‘Since when do they play soccer at Loftus?’ he asked after a while.

  ‘Since the country belongs to them. The Bulls are pretty useless anyway,’ Weber said.

  That soccer was being played at Loftus didn’t bother De Villiers and he was pleased that he would now be able to find all three of the killers at the same place at the same time.

  But a change of plan was required.

  ‘I might need a car again,’ De Villiers said with a sidelong glance. He did not mention that he had for some time been making plans to use the Porsche, and also to involve Marissa. He saw no reason to tell Weber the details.

  ‘Take the Porsche.’

  ‘The Porsche will be perfect.’

  ‘Fine,’ Johann Weber said.

  ‘I’ll need a cellphone too, with a new number,’ De Villiers said.

  ‘What?’

  De Villiers realised that he had spoken his thoughts aloud and didn’t answer.

  They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  The traffic lights were out at the intersection of Smith and Gardiner Streets. ‘Why aren’t the lights working?’ De Villiers asked. ‘At every fourth or fifth intersection the lights are out.’

  Weber shrugged his shoulders and gave an enigmatic response. ‘You can have a PhD in Town Planning and still be blind to the fact that your traffic lights aren’t working and that the city under your control is dirtier than a pig’s belly.’


  De Villiers waited for a fuller explanation but none was forthcoming. He stopped the Porsche in front of the advocates’ chambers.

  Weber looked at him sideways. ‘The Porsche needs a good, long run. I’ll arrange for a service in Johannesburg.’

  De Villiers let out the clutch and rejoined the traffic to travel quickly and without incident to the oncology centre. He had two more weeks to go, ten more shots of radiation under the groaning machine. Then he could go home. He listened with half an ear to the sports news on the radio. The Springbok Tri-Nations squad was about to leave for New Zealand, where they had not won a rugby test in the years De Villiers had lived in Auckland.

  De Villiers spent the day planning his operation. Liesl Weber had gone to work at her charity and there were no distractions. By the late afternoon he had a plan, but still in inchoate form. He considered that the infiltration was going to be problematic. Exfiltration could also be difficult, but he could always create a diversion and escape in the chaos.

  He went to fetch Johann Weber.

  ‘Go up Broadway, please,’ Weber indicated when they passed the building site where the 2010 soccer stadium was being erected. ‘I need to drop some papers at an attorney’s house.’

  Minutes later they crossed the Umgeni River.

  ‘Shouldn’t you have been a judge by now?’ De Villiers asked to break the silence.

  ‘Our time here is up,’ Weber said, pointing at a street sign. ‘We are being erased like the names of our streets and towns.’

  De Villiers looked more closely at the sign. There were two street names on the pole. The name on the lower plate read Broadway with red lines crossing it out. The name on the upper plate read Swapo Road.

  ‘Stop over there, please,’ Weber said. He pointed at a house on the left.

  De Villiers watched as Weber dropped a file of papers into the letter-box of a house completely obscured from the street by a solid wall.

  ‘I want them dead,’ Weber said when he returned to the car. De Villiers was unable to reconcile the words with what he knew of the man next to him.

  Weber spoke again, and this time there was no mistaking his intention. ‘I have to work on an appeal tonight and Liesl will go to bed at about nine-thirty. If you come up to my study at, say, about ten, we could have a chat.’

  De Villiers paused with his hand on the ignition key.

  ‘I know you are planning something,’ Weber said.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ De Villiers asked.

  ‘I know you, Pierre. I’ve known you for a long time.’

  De Villiers looked at his brother-in-law. Weber held his gaze.

  ‘We’ve got to talk this through,’ Weber said. ‘This is no place to risk going to jail.’

  Late that night Weber was still bent over his books and files, but he beckoned to De Villiers to enter and sit down while he finished a note in the margin of a case record and highlighted a phrase with a yellow marker. There was a bottle of red wine on the desk. Next to it stood a clean glass. De Villiers helped himself.

  Weber pushed his papers aside and lifted his glass.

  ‘What can we do?’ he asked Weber, getting directly to the point.

  Weber pursed his lips. ‘The only option available to me is the legal option.’

  De Villiers looked up sharply.

  Weber continued, ‘We can go to court with an application to review the State President’s decision to grant them a pardon. It’s not a difficult case to advance, but will take time and money.’ He paused. ‘In this case it might not cost all that much. I could get one of the juniors at my chambers to do the paperwork and I could do the appearances myself. But it will take time, especially for the succession of appeals which are inevitable in this kind of situation. The government appeals every decision they don’t like, wearing down their opponents with delaying tactics and repeated requests for postponements.’

  ‘How long?’ De Villiers asked, but he wasn’t interested in the answer.

  ‘Three to five years, I think.’

  ‘That settles it then,’ De Villiers said.

  Weber stood over De Villiers as he refilled their glasses. ‘Whatever you do, Pierre, be careful. We might both want them dead, but they’ve ruined your life once before. We don’t want to give them a second chance.’

  But De Villiers was unmoved. I’ve been trained for this and I’ve done it before, he said to himself.

  It was nearly midnight when they went to bed. De Villiers calculated the time in New Zealand and called Emma at her school. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘Having lunch,’ she said.

  ‘I’m coming home in about two weeks,’ he said.

  There was a long silence. ‘It’s about time too,’ she said.

  Durban North

  June 2008 34

  The next day Henderson and Kupenga finally caught up with De Villiers at the Weber home.

  Liesl opened the door to their polite knock and brought them to the dining room.

  ‘Pierre,’ Liesl announced from the door, obscuring those behind her. ‘You have visitors.’

  Pierre de Villiers looked up from the arrow under the magnifying glass. Behind Liesl Henderson and Kupenga filled the doorway.

  De Villiers stood up and extended his hand. The three men shook hands perfunctorily. Henderson picked up one of the arrows and studied it closely.

  ‘That’s a Bushman arrow,’ Liesl offered. ‘They were the original inhabitants of this part of Africa and a few of them are still living according to their customs. They use these arrows for hunting.’

  She missed the glances being exchanged between Henderson and Kupenga.

  ‘I forget my manners,’ Liesl said. ‘Please come into the lounge and I’ll organise some tea.’

  She led them into the lounge. Henderson carried the arrow with him. When Liesl had left for the kitchen, De Villiers confronted Henderson.

  ‘What do you want from me? I thought we had sorted everything out back in Auckland.’

  Kupenga stared out of the window at the row of monkeys on the wall. They were waiting for Liesl Weber to feed them.

  Henderson ignored the distraction and kept his eye on De Villiers. ‘We’re investigating the assassination attempt on the Prime Minister. We told you not to leave New Zealand …’ De Villiers shook his head, but Henderson ignored the gesture. ‘… and we’re pursuing the investigation here because there’s an obvious connection.’ He pointed at De Villiers with the arrow before placing it on the coffee table between them.

  ‘You have no authority here,’ De Villiers said. ‘And all you said was that I was not to leave my house except for medical treatment.’

  ‘We have as much authority as we need.’ Henderson laid his trump card next to the arrow on the coffee table in front of De Villiers. De Villiers read the letter perfunctorily. It was an order addressed to all members of the South African Police Service and directed them to cooperate with Detective Inspector Henderson and Detective Sergeant Kupenga of the New Zealand Police Force in the confidential investigation they were conducting. All members were ordered to render such assistance as may be requested of them. The nature of the investigation was not specified. The illegible signature at the foot of the letter appeared above a line reading Acting Commissioner: SAPS.

  ‘This letter says you have to be accompanied by a member of the South African Police Service at all times.’

  ‘We are,’ Henderson said. ‘Look out the window.’ He pointed behind him with his thumb.

  De Villiers stood up to look through the window. There was a marked police car in the driveway.

  ‘I’ll get the tea,’ he said.

  He found Liesl in the kitchen preparing a treat for the monkeys, some old bread, a couple of green apples and a bunch of overripe bananas. ‘Give it to me, I’ll take it out,’ De Villiers offered. He left the house via the kitchen door and crept up on the police car from behind.

  An obese man in civilian clothes filled half the front of t
he police car. He was eating a hamburger. De Villiers slid the tray with the monkeys’ food onto the roof of the car and straightened up next to the driver’s window. The monkeys watched attentively from the wall.

  ‘May I see your appointment card?’ De Villiers asked when the policeman looked up from his meal.

  The policeman put the half-eaten hamburger on the dash board and wiped his hands. He dug around in his shirt pocket, tugging with fat fingers at a flimsy card. He held it up for De Villiers to read, not bothering to make eye contact. De Villiers casually spread the contents of the monkeys’ food tray on the roof of the car and leaned forward to read the small print: Superintendent GD Meyer – SAPS Diplomatic Unit.

  ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ De Villiers asked the policeman.

  ‘General van den Bergh wants to see you,’ Meyer said.

  De Villiers was stunned. ‘What does he have to do with this?’ he asked.

  ‘He wants to see you. That’s all I know and all I had to tell you.’

  De Villiers pressed him for an explanation but Meyer refused to say more. ‘All you need to know is that he wants to see you.’

  De Villiers turned on his heel and walked slowly back to the lounge, convinced that it had to be personal. The tea had arrived and he took his time to regain his composure as Liesl asked each of the men in turn what their preferences were with regard to milk and sugar and offered sweet and savoury eats on side plates. They made polite small talk until Liesl, sensing their unease, feigned another commitment and left.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ De Villiers asked a second time.

  Kupenga spoke for the first time. ‘We want you back in Auckland and we’ll arrest you if we have to.’

  Outside the monkeys were making a racket, but De Villiers kept a straight face. Superintendent Meyer had got out of the police car and was doing his best to shoo them away, but they paid him scant attention. Some were on the roof of the car while others were hanging in through the open windows. A large male with a blue scrotum had got into the car and was playing with a pair of sunglasses. De Villiers watched as Meyer took his jacket off and took a swipe at the leader of the pack. With nothing else to gain, the monkeys slowly retreated, looking insolently over their shoulders at the policeman at the car.