by Fenek Solère
Their initial violence, Hastings had learned from ANC histories, had been limited to electricity pylons and power stations. Only later did they attempt the conflagration of police and military bases. Sobukwe, he recalled, did not want communist interference in the ANC’s strategy. Hastings agreed; after all, black is black. These Jews have their own agenda just like the modern day Antifa in America and Europe. He resented their influence in the affairs of his people. He hated the fact that they could smugly point to the round-ups in 1963 as a moral justification for their ascendancy, or to the fact that a whole batch of key people including Dennis Goldberg and Lionel Bernstein had been among those seized. Hastings was becoming increasingly particular about his political bed fellows. It is however a means to an end, he thought. As long as we get to control everything in the long run, what does it matter?
Ultimately, Hastings, like Biko, favoured the establishment of exclusionist groups like the Black People’s Convention and the South African Students’ Organisation. As long ago as 1967 Biko was writing, ‘Black students owe their first and primary allegiance to the black community … in the long run this will prove far more valuable than the sentimental and idealistic attitude of perpetually trying to bridge the gap between the two races.’
Such sentiments spoke directly to Hastings and other descendants of Tshingwayo, the commander of the impis at Isandhlwana. Unlike white liberal sympathisers like Donald Woods and his mentor Harold Levy at the University of Cape Town, who believed in a utopian brotherhood without race, creed and colour, Biko and his followers fully intended to elevate blacks in the hierarchy. Biko was not a ‘sell out’ like Buthelezi and Mantanzima, Hastings told himself as he took another sip of rum. His undergraduate Black Studies dissertation had been on Biko’s activities among dissident students. Still unnerved by what he had done back at the hotel he reminded himself that in Student Perspectives on South Africa in 1972, Biko had spelled it out loud and clear: ‘No race possesses the monopoly on beauty, intelligence and force, and there is no room for us all at the rendezvous of victory!’
Hastings liked that. It validated what he had done to Marie and sounded like a declaration of war. And in his own way, that was what he had committed was it not? It was not murder, it was justifiable homicide. Kill their women so their race will end. Like Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth: ‘The gaze the colonised fixes on the colonist’s city is a gaze of luxury, a gaze of envy. Dreams of possession. Every kind of possession; sitting at the colonist’s table, sleeping in the colonist’s bed, with his wife if possible…’
→ Prominent members of the British House of Lords like the former Minister of State for Faith and Communities, travel to Pretoria with the Muslim Home Secretary to show solidarity with the South African people;
→ Black activists in the United States are invited to speak before a special committee of the American Congress to advise on how US foreign policy should adapt to the deteriorating situation in the Horn of Africa;
→ The EU Foreign Affairs Minister, who was previously a member of the Italian Communist Federation, speaks in favour of sending a joint Turkish and EU Peace-Keeping force to quell the ‘vile outbreak of white supremacy’ in South Africa;
→ Claims that a clique around the South African President are sequestering large volumes of gold and diamonds and chartering private planes in preparation for exiting the country are denied in the Cape Times, the Daily Sun, the Sowetan and Isolezwe newspapers.
Gijs was roused by a distant rumble. At first he thought it was far off thunder. Then as the noise grew louder he recognised the whirr of motorcycles and he lifted his head to view two pairs of uniformed troopers riding down the tarmac road from Schoemansville, rifles strapped across their backs. Following behind them was an armoured car with a Khoi Khoi gunner standing in the turret. Then, a long procession of heavy vehicles, most filled with goods seized from the farms around Schilpadshek. Typically, the army, under the guise of a state of emergency, were robbing whites of material goods, regardless of their participation or pacifism in relation to the uprising.
They waited for a while and eventually crossed the road with extreme caution, checking at first to see if the government troops had left behind spies to observe movements up and down the road. Once they were confident the way was clear and had circumnavigated the hot tarmac they disappeared into the grass-covered hills rolling down to the Crocodile River, holding up overnight in the high ground to the west.
When the dawn mist lifted they could stare down into the south where the famous dolomitic caves preserved the fossilised remains of early hominids, who the anthropologists claimed had split away from the African Apes between five and six million years ago. Further on was the Lesedi Cultural Village, which despite its best efforts, seemed to contradict the academics’ claims of a clear divide between the early apes and hominids, leaving one with the distinct impression that their theory of a new branch of mankind was still very much a work in progress here in Africa.
Gijs stood silently among the yellow stalks of grass and prickling bracken. Above him the titihoya circled, their cries filling his ears as he looked out across the Magaliel and the Pilanesberg National Park.
→ Saudi Arabia allocates a further $100 billion to support groups preaching an ultra-Conservative interpretation of Islam in Africa;
→ The leadership of the South African Economic Freedom Fighters proclaim it is time to ‘Slaughter all the Whites!’ at a meeting in Newcastle, Kwazulu Natal;
→ Zimbabwean revolutionary musician Chika Chika is deified by the Cagn religious sect;
→ Namibia’s newly pronounced President for life orders land seizures from white settlers;
→ Bejing’s crack People’s Liberation Army training unit opens up a camp in the former US Army base at Camp Lemmonier in Djibouti;
→ The Chinese navy deploys two new Liaoning aircraft carriers to support battle cruiser and troop ships moving in convoy off the coast of Madagascar.
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The fighting in Botshabelo had been merciless, with both sides imposing a ‘take no prisoners’ order on their battle groups. Aarde declared that malingerers and stragglers would be hanged. According to the Minister of Defence, one hundred and twenty-two death sentences were imposed on deserters in Ecelsior and Fricksburg. Evidence of self-inflicted wounds was provided to the minister in over fifty-three separate cases during military reverses in Shishen, Vryburg and Christiana.
In Zumaville the Commander in Chief of the South African National Defence Force, Solly Shoke, read a government order to ‘fight to the death’. Kefilwe Aba of the 46th South African Brigade was court-martialed for criminal negligence when his troops were ambushed and cut to pieces on the Rouxville road.
‘What were you thinking?’ the prosecutor upbraided him at his trial. ‘These Boers were attacking with spades and shovels?’ His defence, that his men were unfamiliar with the guns they were using, led to laughter around the court. ‘Pedi aren’t used to fighting,’ the Inkatha Zulus said in open contempt of their allies.
Within days all the cattle in the Kenhardt were herded together and killed for no apparent reason. When three South African National Defence Force officers were captured by Aarde’s troops they admitted to having raped and murdered Boer women in Luxton. Witnesses stating that they were violated while knives were held to the throats of their children. One nineteen year old was raped multiple times and then disembowled when she refused to swallow yet more Swati semen. The Boer tribunal was swift in its judgement, and the dancing spider legs hanging off the Acacia trees sent a clear message.
Back in Pilanesberg the column could see their leader standing aside, evaluating the risk of moving openly in daylight. Gijs bent down on his haunches, running his fingers through the soil, that earth fed by the intermittent rain and the blood of Boers over many generations. A country that had been barely capable of subsistence farming when the Bakwena and Tswana peoples roamed here, was now a rich canal watered matrix of tobacco, w
heat, lucerne and fruit farms. Slowly, his attention was drawn to the song of the streams singing in the kloofs. His sharp blue eyes focused on the long path ahead. ‘This is our land,’ he insisted to himself fiercely. ‘No one will steal it from us!’
→ Suppressed reports by US Foreign policy analysts indicate Saudi donations to fund schools, training and children’s charities are being systematically diverted to violent groups like Boko Haram in the Zamfara region of Nigeria, and Al-Shabab in Somalia with Sheikh Abdul-Aziz, Saudi Arabia’s spokesman for African affairs, repeating his previous assertion ‘that Islamic law must apply across all of Africa!’ And the scholar and leader of the Muslim World Council Mohammad Al- Arifi insisting that ‘the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls and sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of his religion is, un-doubtfully, an honour for the true believer.’ The latter adding further to an earlier comment, saying, ‘the Qu’ranic verses that deal with fighting the infidels and conquering their countries, mean that they should convert to Islam, pay the jizya poll-tax, or be killed!’;
→ Sheikh Abdou Daouda, a graduate of the Islamic University of Medina, attracts tens of thousands to the Grand Mosque in Niamey in Niger where he declares ‘We must adopt Islam, we cannot adapt it!’;
→ The Club Tatoo in Sandton serves human flesh on its menu;
→ Dr Mocha Luzeda is declared a god by the Manjonjo healers;
→ A suicide bomber kills 220 in the town of Mubi in Nigeria;
→ The Chinese Dwandong Jizwan Moi Group establish plantation like work camps in the Semien hills north east of Gondar, in Ethiopia.
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‘I don’t know,’ Gijs said quietly to himself, ‘I just don’t know?’
Behind him, below the rise, his group rested up. There were a couple of well-trained men who could clearly handle their weaponry. And alongside them were the freckle-faced Kappie Commando girls, all hard bodies and glowing with health. Gijs could see they carried themselves with a casual unsophisticated sensuality even in the rising heat of the day. He tried to avoid staring, or meeting their shy but calculated glances. He knew they could only progress at the pace of the slowest. The instructions were clear. All must survive. All must arrive. Each and every one has a value to our community. And with that in mind Gijs realised that it was time to eat and sent his marksmen out to hunt.
In the country they were trying to leave behind, Special Tribal Operation Units were searching homesteads suspected of hiding Boer guerrillas from Pietersburg to the Eastern Cape. They burnt Kings Williams Town to the ground and rounded up survivors into forced labour groups that were marched south towards Jeffrey’s Bay.
Commander Shoke was becoming desperate for a decisive blow. ‘We cannot pin them down with just our bayonets, we need to use nerve agents!’
‘You must force the issue,’ Minister Mapsla-Nqakula dribbled into his mobile. ‘The uncertainty is hurting us, our control is breaking up.’
Stories circulated that in government liberated areas internment camps were being built to hold the white population. ‘It is their turn to carry the dompass,’ the Youth Wing of the ANC shouted. ‘Kill the Boer! Kill the Boer!’
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Around sunset he watched his men fan out across the blank mountainside, stalking their prey. Gijs observed one young man from Zeerust who had worked Safari at the Metswedi Camp turn his slim and tanned upper body gracefully, a long Interceptor 6.5 held firmly in his hands, the cross hairs of the telescopic sight moving slowly, rising and dipping with the graceful bobs and leaps of the nimble antelope he had been tracking. Then the Ystergarde squeezed gently on the trigger and his target tumbled as the butt of the rifle recoiled into the Boer’s muscled shoulder, cause and effect, like simultaneous coitus.
Gijs saluted the shot with a wave and walked over the undulating terrain towards the felled antelope. The springbok lay there on its side, bleeding out in the dry grass. Gijs saw its snowy plume twitch, the honey-scented aroma from its nerve glands filled his nostrils. He kneeled, drawing a Bowie knife from its sheath, ending the animal’s pain with a swift jerk of his hand.
By the time he got back to the encampment the other men had gathered around the shallow pits they had dug in the veldt, watching the glowing embers of the braaivleis reflect in the women’s faces. Fresh-roasting meat was spitting up into the air. Beside the salads and the mampoer, strong peach brandy passed from hand to hand amongst the gathering as one of the young boys began singing the popular ‘General De La Rey’ song.
This is good, Gijs told himself, people need to eat well if they are to march, and there is a long way to go.
Once their appetites had been satiated by the grilled venison, Gijs found himself drawn aside by some of the older men, a little away from the fire. It was obvious that they wished to share their experience and give advice, so Gijs indulged them. By now rumour of armed hordes from Thlabane laying siege to Rustenburg, just as they had in 1841, had reached the camp. Likewise news of the last-ditch defence that the people of Mafeking were mounting in a thin red line along the junctions of Victoria, Nelson and Tillard streets had arrived by text message. There the Nationalist students, the Afrikaanse-nasionale Studentebond, had fought back to back against the savage hordes, falling like their ancestors, standing strong and proud. Singing the Bondslied as they struggled hand-to-hand to the end.
‘We must have a plan if we are to be captured,’ they insinuated darkly. ‘The women cannot be taken.’
‘Set aside one bullet for each,’ Gijs told them, as unhesitating as one to whom such ideas were nothing new. ‘Each one of us must be responsible for each one of them. Aim and do not miss. These beasts will show no mercy.’ They agreed.
‘God has chosen us as stewards over this land,’ a white beard called Heerden was pontificating. It was a familiar line; Gijs had heard it nearly every night ever since he joined the Wit Perd, so he just nodded and gave out some small noncommittal words, conscious he was becoming restless, his mind desperately searching for a strategy to cover the distance ahead and avoid stumbling across government troops or ANC militia along the way.
‘There is still a long way to go,’ another named Venter said as if reading Gijs’ mind. ‘Our only chance is if the tribal splits will give us an opportunity to slip through?’
‘So much for Father Mandela’s model society!’ Heerden commented bitterly. ‘Some chance!’
‘I heard the Ministry of Agriculture openly justify farm murders on the news today!’
‘Hah, that’s the way. Now they have declared open season on us!’
‘Yes! Where are our American, British and French friends now?’ Venter asked, glaring out at the horizon, as if those he had mentioned were right there, at the other side of the mountains that loomed menacingly against the deep wall of the sky. ‘It would seem their arms embargo only applies to us!’
‘They only intervene when their economic interests are at risk, like when the oil or mineral supplies of the multinational corporations are jeopardised,’ Heerden said dismissively. ‘All that shit about humanitarian intervention turns my stomach. It is all hypocrisy. Where were they when Mugabe was slaughtering whites, seizing privately owned companies, holding fraudulent elections and assassinating political rivals? I’ll tell you where — nowhere! The Yanks are too scared to be seen acting against the Hotties because of their own surly black populations. Look what happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the L.A. Riots and Baltimore and Ferguson. And the Brits have still got the squits after the Mau Mau stuff in Kenya. They never even moved against those West Indian hoodlums who burnt down half their capital city! We are the only people who know how to deal with the African. You can’t wait a thousand years for these australopithecines to develop, or spend all your state’s budget on trying to educate and medicate them. We are different; separate development for both, I say! Let’s see the Hotties finance and build some hospitals, train doctors, develop cures for tropical diseases — indeed, run one single func
tional self-sustaining state that isn’t lorded over by some semi-educated Bantu who has convinced himself he is the reincarnation of Tutankhamun. Then we can talk.’
‘Yes and all that crap about Afro-centrism. Cleopatra and Akhenaten were of Greek descent anyway. They were Ptolemies. Some of the best preserved mummies have red and golden hair!’
‘I know — but try telling that to the public school kids. They are taught that Egyptian culture emerged out of Nubia!’ Everyone was laughing. ‘You can laugh all you want,’ said Heerden with a frown, ‘but they teach them that Zimbabwe Castle was a great city!’ There was even more laughter.
‘It was a holding centre built by Arab slavers!’ Venter cried, angrily. ‘The Hotties never constructed anything more than dung huts, or at least their women did. The men were so lazy they just lay around in the sun all day!’
But Gijs was no longer listening. His mind was flung on the path to come, the dangers awaiting them ahead — that single bullet he would hold fast in his gun, and the lithe fair-haired girl for whom it might be destined.
→ The Head of the Saudi backed High Islamic Council of Mali agrees to provide personal guidance to the country’s President in the transition to the Sharia;
→ Pakistani missionaries from the Tablighi Ja’ Amat work ever more closely with former Tuareg rebel leaders and Muslim converts to establish a refreshed and re-equipped Ansar Eddine Movement to dominate northern Mali;
→ Al-Qaeda announce a new Caliphate in the Maghreb;
→ In the wake of widespread church burnings, including the Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity in Onitsha, the King Cathedral at Aba in Nigeria, the massacre of Catholics and Anglicans in Boma in Congo and the Lalibela Roch Churches in Ethiopia, the patriotic leaders of Poland and Hungaryr, who demand that the EU should ‘protect Christianity in Africa and the Middle-East, or risk its destruction in Europe’ are defined as bigots and racists by the European Court in the Hague.