Kraal

by Fenek Solère

  ‘Like why you were in the field with the gun?’

  ‘Yes, the gun?’ Diakanyo’s feet were shuffling on the parched boards.

  ‘It is my field. I have a license for the gun!’

  ‘You don’t have a license to kill, Mr de Wet?’ Now it was Mthethwa’s turn to sound irritated.

  ‘No, no license to kill!’ Diakanyo stopped moving and hugged his weapon tight to his hip.

  ‘Look,’ Gijs went to say as the pink palm of Mthethwa’s black hand pushed on the door. He saw Diakanyo’s shadow with the silhouetted Uzi held out before him and then there was an exchange of gunshots at very close quarters. Two bodies fell with the sound of the splintering jacaranda wood burning in their flaring nostrils.

  → Members of Robert Mugabe’s extended family are provided with private apartments in the luxury Morningside district in the Sandton district of Johannesburg;

  → An activist with AgriSA is arrested for formenting bigotry and social dissension when he talks about drills being taken to people’s knees and molten plastic being dripped onto the naked flesh of the victims by the perpetrators;

  → The premier of North West Province says once again, ‘I continue to have a problem with continued white superiority in this country. They still control the land and the banks. We are at last going to tell them that they are visitors in this, our blessed country’;

  → An orphanage for abandoned Boer children set up by a former parachutist with the South African Defense Force is burnt to the ground;

  → The Government closes the Volksteun charity which assists Boer families living below the poverty line on the grounds that is continuing apartheid style practices.

  Gijs stared down at his hands; they were trembling violently like an alcoholic with the DTs. The pain was settling sharply into the flesh of his wounded arm. Johan and Jooste sat either side of him in the pickup. He thought they would have taken him straight to the police station but they had veered off the road, turning south, heading for accident and emergency at the local village hospital.

  ‘Is this for my sake, or yours?’ Gijs breathed.

  ‘For yours!’ Johan stuttered, glancing nervously at the road. ‘There is no point in making a report to the police. They’ll just arrest you and charge you for murder.’

  ‘Murder? I was defending my home!’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘I do!’

  Johan laughed cynically, shaking his head and glancing at Gijs reproachfully. ‘Your word, as a vengeful Boer, against all those Hotties!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘And the policemen?’

  ‘Them too!’

  ‘You are not thinking straight!’

  ‘But it’s true, they were coming to kill me!’

  ‘And who’s side do you think the kaffir judge is going to take? Have you heard of many blacks being charged for farm attacks lately? Or corrupt policeman being sacked?’ The to and fro of their conversation went on until they got to the clinic and took their seats in the emergency room. Gijs’s head dropped, his pale blue eyes staring blankly at the ammonia saturated floor.

  ‘Isn’t it dangerous here, too?’ he murmured.

  For a moment Johan did not respond. ‘We’ll get you patched up by one of ours and then we will get out of here,’ he said simply.

  ‘To where?’

  ‘We have some friends,’ Johan winked wickedly.

  ‘But my place. My things?’

  Johan shook his head. ‘They’ll be crawling all over it by now.’

  ‘Like flies on cow shit!’ Jooste interjected angrily.

  ‘My bank account?’

  ‘You’ll need to empty it of all you can today and disappear!’

  ‘What, like a fugitive?’

  ‘That’s what you are, Gijs! Wake up, man!’ Johann said.

  ‘But remember — you are not alone,’ Jooste said sympathetically, gripping Gijs’ good arm in solidarity.

  → The wives of the Presidents of both Zimbabwean and South Africa announce they are to establish a high end shopping chain throughout Australasia;

  → New Black Economic Empowerment statutes are introduced;

  → The South Africa Public Investment Corporation (PIC) is bankrupted after years of maladministration;

  → The author of a less than flattering biography of Nelson Mandela is sued for libel by members of the former President’s family;

  → Uganda’s health ministry admits that it has lost control of the large-scale epidemic of the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever, VHF, which causes victims to suffer burning fever before bleeding freely from orifices, including eyes, anuses and mouths;

  → Open discussion by whites on Facebook and elsewhere about the possibility of a tax revolt results in a mass arrests in the Pinetown district of Durban.

  Chapter 5

  The cowards are scared

  (Shoot! Shoot!)

  Shoot the Boer

  (Shoot! Shoot!)

  For almost twenty years Hastings Mabuza’s family had lived in a large bungalow near the Vaanderbilt Park country club. It was an exclusive location, many of the houses having been confiscated, after Majority Rule, from the Europid entrepreneurs, stockbrokers and doctors who had inhabited the ranch-style houses since the nineteen seventies.

  Now liquorice limbs paddled and bladders freely urinated in the swimming pools. The thoroughbreds’ paddocks, whites-only tennis courts and Italianate cafes were a mere parody of an opulent past, as the kleptocratic noveau riche tried to convince themselves that they too were worthy inheritors of the space they now occupied, sipping lattes and reading abridged literature in the shade cast by the tarps.

  This was where Hastings relaxed, being himself a direct beneficiary of Rector Pityana’s Afrocentric ideology. He was very fond of quoting Frantz Fanon, ‘The wealth of the imperial countries is our wealth too … for in a very concrete way Europe has stuffed herself inordinately with the gold and raw materials of the colonial countries… Europe is literally a creation of the Third World.’

  And he would quite happily shout down those who said that Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin and Jacob Zuma were Popes of Terror, who had merely wrapped their illegal acquisition of other people’s property and wealth in the verbiage of anti-colonialist rhetoric. ‘Saying that in itself is racist,’ Mabuza would laugh scornfully, ‘and typical of the evil culture that had created apartheid. Who else, but the bigoted white man could deny the black man’s economic, cultural and sporting success!’

  Hastings had the roof of his villa re-tiled while he was in Paris attending the World Conference Against Racism, telling his Afrikaner gardener to plant bougainvillaea around the boundary walls. In the quiet of his study he would meet with fellows from the Pan African Socialist Bloc, now working together to impose quotas on the number of whites attending university, and to set up a new Black Union that would establish cooperative associations once they had completed the compulsory transfer of Settler farms in the Transkei.

  He was only too aware that his government was in secret discussions with China and fully supported the ANC government’s declaration that South Africa would use Beijing as a model for its own economic and social development. Excited by the thought of repeating Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, he steadfastly defended the African Union spurning favourable trade deals with India and selecting China as a priority market for all strategic minerals and food production. After all, Chinese direct investment in Africa had now reached four hundred and fifty billion dollars per annum and three quarters of the continent’s governments imported Chinese military equipment, like the Dong Feng 21 anti-ship ballistic missile, the Shenyang J 15 fighter, the VT-4 MBT and ZTZ-99A tank, CH -5 drones and Pterodactyl WJ-1 unmanned aerial vehicles. With the twenty-five thousand trained technical personnel from the People’s Liberation Army to install and maintain this vast arsenal, President Xi Jin Ping’s vision of a new maritime Silk Road across the Indian Ocean, leading straight towards the east coast of Africa, was being realised despite
objections from Delhi.

  Mabuza was firmly of the belief that China was proving to be a staunch ally. Had they not quadrupled their contribution to the Chinese-Africa Investment Fund while at the same time announcing plans for over four hundred and twenty key infrastructure projects involving world-class rail links between Mombasa and Nairobi? The professor had no time for those who raised objections about the fact that Chinese-government-owned corporations had acquired two thirds of Africa’s vanadium, gold and diamond reserves and that the Chinese demographic had tripled along the coastlines of Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique.

  ‘There are only twenty million of our people living there among the mangroves, coral reefs and savannah woodlands. There is plenty of room for us all. And is it not true that like us the Chinese were victims of Colonialism too?’ Mabuza would say. ‘Look at what the Fascist Palmerston did with his gunboat diplomacy, so that the British could force their opium on our brethren in Canton and other cities! So what if Bejing provides incentives to the population of Zhezing Province to migrate to regions where the eco-systems are fragile and bio-diversity is under threat? What about prosperity? We need jobs, and our benefactors in the East are responding to skills shortages they have identified in the key sectors of our economies. It will only improve our competitiveness in the future.’

  Everyone turned a blind eye to the increasing penchant of a small clique of black Africans for the ‘show’ of wealth, gold chains, expensive cars and ghetto slang. It was now common to see rich government-placed men, steeped in kick-backs, parading with their numerous Ashanti wives and sometimes their blonde girlfriends for the paparazzi. White flesh was still a potent status symbol. If you were not born with it, you could acquire access to it, using your ill-gotten gains, and have it hang off your arm, decorate your publicity photographs, or better still, sweeten your bed.

  Every morning Hastings would wake up in sweat-soiled sheets, slump over to the bathroom and look at the fuliginous face that stared back at him from the mirror. Those swollen brown eyes popping out of a carved Yoruba tribal mask. Prominent canine teeth, like one of Dian Fossey’s specimens, all animalistic and primeval.

  It pained him that everything, from the minor things like the scissors he used to clip his nails, to the electricity that lit his house, the combustion engine that drove his car, and the tie, shirt and suit he wore, were all assumed to be products of the inventive genius and inspiration of other peoples. In his library he had a pristine first edition George G.M. James’s book Stolen Legacy as well as the collected works of Cheikh Anta Diop. His writing desk was smothered with Afrocentric publications proving that Africans had invented traffic lights, blood banks, small pox vaccines, ironing boards and airships. His beloved Nation-of-Islam-style writers lucidly explained how these ideas had all been stolen by the Europeans or Orientals like the Japanese. And how the great cities and libraries, motorways and statues that had differentiated advanced Africa from backward London had been destroyed by Livingstone and Stanley as they advanced along the Zambesi. These emissaries from the ricket riven ghetto slums of Victorian England, giving their scorched-earth orders to the vast army of Christian Missionary zealots, who had levelled every manifestation of African achievement, reducing the electrified cosmopolitan trading centres of the so-called Dark Continent to windblown ash.

  Hastings particularly liked books and films about real history. TV shows like the BBC’s Troy: Fall of a City with Ghanian David Gyasi in the role of Achilles and theatre productions like Amadeus with the Tanzanian Lucian Msamati playing Salieri, Mozart’s deadly rival. Then there was the 2013 movie Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom, the 2016 re-make of the Magnificent Seven, and Pacific Rim: Uprising. He would run his finger longingly across the covers of books like C.L.R. James’ Black Jacobins and Laurent Dubois’ Avengers of the New World. He would replay the Black Panther DVD and Sengbe Pieh’s masterful oration from the Spielberg movie Amistad time and again.

  ‘We will re-discover Wakanda,’ he would whisper at the glowing flat screen.

  But he kept his most cherished works like Negroes with Guns by Robert F. Williams and Roots by Alex Hailey in his bedside cabinet, nestled safely up against sticky plastic DVD cases with titles like Six Black Sticks for One White Chick, Blacks in Blondes and Black Gangbangers.

  → A former American First Lady accepts the Chairmanship of the Civil Rights sponsored charity ‘Educate an African Child’ and speaks at the opening ceremony of a new gymnasium at the Kakenya Boarding School for Girls in Kenya;

  → It is estimated that during the first five years of ANC rule the official crime figures (despite widespread recognition of under-reporting) increased by 33%;

  → Unemployment in South Africa rises to 58%;

  → The Rand has fallen 70% in value since the African National Congress took power in 1994;

  → An economic researcher reveals that following Majority Rule the base-line of South African salaries dropped by 40% and that today the average South African earns less than $3000 per annum;

  → Polls taken at the time of Mandela’s death revealed that 60% of the whole population (including blacks) thought the country was better run under Apartheid;

  → In 2013, Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer found South Africa to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world;

  → In 2013, 83% of South Africans believe the police force is corrupt. As many as 36% openly admit paying bribes to the police;

  → Mozambique’s President uses seven million pounds given by the British Government in foreign aid to purchase a second private jet;

  → A sixty-four year old pharmaceutical executive who was tortured with blow torches for hours, is held in police custody after he is reported to have made a racist comment in relation to the culprits;

  → The remains of a white farmer shot during a raid on his home in Stellenbosch are disinterred when those accused of the crime overturn their conviction; it is feared that the grave might become a shrine for those attempting to make a martyr out of the victim.

  Chapter 6

  Do you realise what a powerful force

  is gathered here tonight between these four

  walls? Show me a greater power on the whole

  continent of Africa!

  —H.J. Klopper

  First Chair of the Broederbond, 1968

  After Gijs was wrapped and dosed with antibiotics at a clinic on the outskirts of Lichtenburg, he was driven by the Oswald Pirow Commando through the next day and night in a relay of cars between Vrystaad and Newcastle, along the M14 and R34. Eventually he found himself in a secret camp in the shrub-studded hills. There Gijs met a cell called the Wit Perd or White Horse, a group of hardened ex-servicemen. They were armed with R1 and R4 rifles, M26 hand grenades and a steel-hard determination to fight back. They swore that for every settler the ANC killed, the Wit Perd would wreak revenge sevenfold.

  ‘It is kill or be killed!’ he was told that night as they sat around a roaring fire. ‘You know, they are describing you as a psychotic killer both in the newspapers and on TV. Apparently your father is a hardened racist who committed war crimes on the Angolan border!’

  ‘Crap!’ Gijs spat. ‘My father served in the 32 and was in the Selous for a while.’ His companions were grinning; several even chuckled.

  ‘So that’s where our so-called free press got the idea? From the black’s perspective the Selous are no better than the Waffen SS!’

  The Wit Perd had established a training camp in Umtata along similar lines to the Rhodesian Wafa Wafa base on the banks of Lake Kariba, which had been formed to counter terrorists in the nineteen seventies. Their command structure was founded on veterans of the 5 Reconnaissance Commando, previously based at the Rabi barracks in Mangula. They drew recruits from the sons and daughters of former Blanke Bevrydingbeweging, Orde van die Dood and Orde Boervolk sympathisers. A certain Major Jan Muller was the commandant, a veteran of several insurgencies who had served with Australian and British Spec
ial Forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia and Libya. As Gijs was to learn, trainees were dropped from a helicopter into the nearby swamp lands, starved, exhausted and antagonized for hours on end by their future commanders, then reconstructed into autonomous self-reliant killing machines. Recruits were expected to stay for two or three months ‘in country’. ‘The land is our best teacher!’ quipped one of the old recruits. ‘It knows no shame, no mercy...’ There were strict controls on access and exit to the camp. After the weak and ideologically suspect had been weeded out, the survivors, the ‘mad and the damned’ as they were nicknamed, undertook advanced firearms, unarmed combat and explosives training. Weapons like SMGs, hand-grenades and ground-to-air Stinger missile systems were stored in sealed containers and buried in the ground. Gijs was pretty sure that if the police ever visited they would be met with civility at the gate and watched carefully through the elongated carbon fibre telescopes of snipers in the dry crags above. Trainees were told in no uncertain terms to forget about their women. Muller would give seminars on the Nyadzonya Raid in the Rhodesian war where the kill ratio was thirty to one in the attacker’s favour and the seizure of the Ruacana-Calueque dam by South African reconnaissance forces.

  ‘That is the threshold ratio,’ he emphasised. ‘Anything below that, given the current demographics, is a defeat!’ Then Muller would remind them of the rules. About ten minutes in to his talk he would look about them with hard eyes, waving a Vector Z88 pistol in the air. ‘If anyone runs away or betrays us, I will shoot them myself, with this gun!’ And no one was left in any doubt after he did precisely that to one English-speaking comrade and they were forced to hide the body in the bush. ‘Dig it deep,’ Muller was muttering from his perch in a nearby Matoppie tree. ‘We don’t want the jackals digging up the Kafferboetie!’

  By Gijs’s reckoning they had a stockpile of twelve MILAN 3 anti-tank weapons; twenty-two air-to-ground missiles; three hundred Milkov SMG’s; forty to fifty thousand rounds of ammunition; twenty-nine Glock and Vektor pistols; fifty crossbows; seventeen two-way radios; ten night vision head-sets and a melange of Dinogel, Emex and Tovex explosives, along with an array of fuses, detonators, camouflage netting and bullet-proof vests. Not quite an army, but materiel which in the hands of capable or desperate men represented a substantial threat to the daily routine of the regime.