Kraal

by Fenek Solère

  Hastings and his contemporaries tended to deliberately overlook the negative impact of Islam in Africa. The way the Berber and Arabic peoples had traded since Roman times in gold, ivory, ostrich feathers and human flesh. The network of slave pens throughout the continent were inconvenient truths, duly consigned to the memory hole. Facts like Arabic slavers driving Negroes out of Ancient Ghana, forcing them further south, leading to the rise of the Mande clans in upper Niger and the Sundiati, were no-go areas for academics and historians. As were the histories of the West African empires like Mali and Songhai, run by the likes of Mansa Musa, the celebrated Mali emperor, sponsor of the great mosque of Djenne. This, following in the tradition of the mosque of Kairouan, founded in 60 AD by the Arab warlord Uqba ibn Nafi, in Tunisia.

  The implications of the ancestors of the Ashanti and Yoruba of present-day Ghana and Nigeria being heavily involved in slave trading, along with the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania, were too awful to contemplate. The truth of how the slave markets in Khartoum, Zanzibar and the Suko caliphate had flourished seared Hasting’s flesh like a branding iron. He knew that after the Kanem and Bornu empires had embraced Islam, the faith had spread within two generations all over the Horn of Africa, North Africa and the Maghreb, wiping out the indigenous religions. And from access to secret government papers he was aware that, since the end of Apartheid, Muslim migrants had flowed into South Africa, building the Sufi mosque in Kwazulu-Natal. Growing numbers of blacks were converting to the faith as a reaction to the AIDS, alcoholism and domestic violence in the townships. Within a few years the veil as a ‘portable seclusion’ would become a norm. Behind closed doors, beatings and clitoral mutilation were already common practice.

  But Hastings turned his attention instead to the iniquities of the Atlantic Slave Trade, perpetuating the assertion of Maulana Karenga that ‘the morally monstrous destruction of human possibility involved redefining African humanity to the world, poisoning past, present and future relations with others who only know us through this stereotyping…’

  Hastings read the Xhosa poets, and the lines, ‘You thought you were being educated, and yet you were being brainwashed… Chieftainship is one course that is not studied in the classroom!’ struck a chord deep within him. He worked hard to disparage myths that his Hottentot ancestors like the Kalahari Bushmen had behaved like wild animals, descending from their mountain strongholds, under cover of night, like troops of malignant baboons, to bite the snouts off lambs, severing tendons and mauling the others, just to spite the white farmers whose progress they instinctively resented. He ceaselessly fought the lies that blacks had adopted religions from more cultured peoples, because of their own incapacity to develop myths and meanings to explain their existence.

  All of his own energy and those of his fellow faculty was invested in re-connecting with the collective memory of their progenitors. Disseminating the work of Dr Ben at Cornell University, whose book The Black Man of the Nile and His Family was on his class reading list, of Dr Leonard Jeffries of City College New York and Dr Umar Johnson, who argued that whites were a cruel and savage ice people, and blacks a warm and gregarious sun people, and Young Pharaoh who proclaimed that ‘If you are not of African descent you are only ninety-six percent human,’ and ‘We are condensed sunlight.’ For, Hastings ‘blackness was the universal solvent’. It was the reality from which ‘life’s loom was spun.’ Inner vision, intuition, creative genius and spiritual illumination had, he believed, all been found to be dependent on the pineal gland. The blood-borne chemical messengers that controlled skin colour and opened the ‘hidden door’ to the darkness of the collective unconscious mind, ‘universal knowledge of the past, present and future’...

  → Egypt’s Youm al-Sabaa newspaper celebrates the arrest of an Egyptian songstress for ‘inciting debauchery’ and the stoning to death of a fashion model for making negative remarks about pollution in the river Nile;

  → The Senegalese football team manager is subjected to house-arrest after the national team is defeated 3-0 by the all-white Icelandic eleven in the World Cup qualifiers;

  → Boko Harum, meaning ‘Western Education is Forbidden’, seizes another 175 girls from Chibok;

  → The poaching of black and white rhinos reaches crisis proportions;

  → A chemical analysis of the rivers and streams around Soweto and Johannesburg indicate high levels of uranium, arsenic and cyanide contaminants in the soil and water table;

  → The problem of soil erosion grows as the run-off rate from South Africa’s Great Escarpment increases;

  → Population growth projections indicate South Africa will have inadequate fresh-water and the development of dams could have a negative impact on forests, indigenous wild life and increase the rate of climate change;

  → The Global CleanTech Innovation index describes South Africa as being ‘below average’ when it comes to clean technology innovation.

  ←→

  The red rind of sunrise was streaking across the horizon as Czapski’s commandos descended on the Xhosa encampment. A little girl, balancing a clay pot on her head, was the first to die, a nine millimetre shell plumbing the hollow between her shoulder blades, blowing her bony sternum clean over the wall of the hut where her unsuspecting parents slept.

  Within seconds the automatic reports of rifle fire were cutting down the blacks as they ran for their weapons. Czapski was on horseback beating heads with the butt of his machine pistol before wheeling around to lead another charge back through the camp.

  ‘How do you like it, you bastards?’ he was bellowing. Men, women and children were dropping into the mud. One Boer whose bedridden mother had been slaughtered while she lay in a hospital ward slid off the side of his horse and took a knife to the face of an ANC reservist who was naked except for his military boots. The man slipped to the ground decapitated, his head dangling incongruously like a coconut at a village fair, held aloft by the smiling face of the commando.

  Czapski ordered everything to be burnt. Taking four captives to the village well he shot each in the back of the head and then had them tumbled down into the water. An insulting snap of limbs echoed off stone walls. ‘Hopefully that will warn these squatters to stay away from our land!’ he exclaimed before mounting his horse once more and signalling for his men to ride north.

  → The Rand falls a further 8 percent in value, continuing the 70 percent collapse since the ANC came to power in 1994;

  → A UN Human Development report re-affirms an earlier assessment made in 2006, stating that South Africa is now in ‘virtual free-fall’ on the human development index;

  → Uncontrolled looting across the Witwatersrand escalates into violent clashes between Indians and blacks in the shanty markets and bazaars of Transkei, Basutoland and Zululand;

  → Chinese military analysts draw up contingency plans for the protection of transport routes ensuring mineral asset acquisition and portage to Durban remains unaffected by civil disturbances;

  → The American Congress concurs with the White House that the unfolding tragedy in South Africa is the direct result of Apartheid and confirms a special budget allocation of twenty billion dollars for humanitarian aid.

  ←→

  They slept on a flat shelf of rock overlooking the roadside, unwrapping their bags and pillows, trying to find a level space clear of rocks and thorns. Gijs posted sentries and sanctioned fires to be lit, a small cluster of flames winking in the overwhelming darkness.

  After walking the perimeter, Gijs returned to join the men and women loitering about, feeding the fire with broken twigs. Sitting to eat, he listened, all too familiar with the circular arguments that rose and fell on the scrub wind.

  ‘This thing,’ an old woman called Annie was muttering to the group squatting about her, ‘this thing in my heart here,’ tapping her breast, ‘it is anger, anger, anger!’

  ‘I know, I know,’ another woman tried to say.

  ‘I am fed up of living from day to day,
putting more and more chains and locks on my windows and doors. Our dogs have had boiling water poured over them, our fences have been cut, crops trodden down and our yard filled with…’ Her voice unwilling to use the word everyone was thinking, ‘How much more can we take?’

  ‘It is the same for all of us,’ an English-speaking doctor called Anderson said. ‘Nation building for the mompies means destroying everything that was the old South Africa.’ Then, ‘We are not settlers who failed to depart, as Mbeki said, but founders! Without us this country will degenerate into inter-tribal warfare. The minute resources run out they will revert to their Rwandan instincts.’ Anderson seemed fatalistic but determined. Looking across at his family he added, ‘If we can make it to the river unchallenged, then we have a chance, but who knows, there are patrols everywhere and their trackers...’ Gijs lifted his head.

  ‘Their trackers are excellent!’

  ‘Do you see any hope, de Wet?’ Gijs waited a second before answering. He suddenly remembered leaning across the dinner table, reaching for the Raats wine to toast baby Agetha’s health. Betje’s eyes bursting like blueberries in spring. Then he rose, pulled a stick from the fire and lit the short butt of a cigar Anderson had offered him. Above, the stars were shining in the blue metallic distance, silver-speckled diamonds snatched from the mines on the Rand and tossed helter-skelter into the night.

  ‘There is always hope,’ he smiled. ‘But I think we’ll have to fight!’

  ‘Just like Rhodesia!’ Anderson smiled back, lifting an arm in the darkness.

  ‘Ian Smith was a British war hero,’ Heerden cut in. ‘Even at the end of his UDI speech in 1965, he prayed, God Save the Queen!’

  ‘You Rhodesians are more British than the British,’ Anderson laughed. Venter was also laughing.

  ‘You know the song?’

  ‘What song?’

  And he began to quietly sing:

  We’ll preserve this little nation

  For our children too,

  Once you’re a Rhodesian

  No other land will do.

  We will stand tall in the sunshine

  With the truth upon our side,

  And if we have to go alone

  We will go alone with pride.

  But we’re all Rhodesians

  And will fight through thick and thin,

  We’ll keep our land a free land

  Stop the enemies coming in.

  We’ll keep them north of the Zambesi

  Till the river’s running dry,

  And this land will prosper

  For Rhodesians never Die.

  — Rhodesians Never Die

  → Mount Nyiragongo in the Virunga mountains in the Democratic Republic of Congo erupts, its lava and pyroclatic flow killing hundreds of thousands in nearby Goma causing a refugee crisis of cataclysmic proportions;

  → The Red Cross, Red Crescent, Oxfam and Save the Children immediately fly in to set up camps to greet the millions fleeing the country;

  → Insanitary conditions lead to a cholera and typhus epidemic;

  → Following an emergency plenary session the UN recommends wholesale redistribution of Congolese refugees to Europe, Canada and Australia.

  Black Uhuru

  Chapter I

  Flora’s dress was ripped and her tattered summer hat askance in the heat of the day. Hastings was ashamed. He had always felt ashamed that his grandmother had cleaned the houses of the Settlers. ‘It was better than starving!’ he had heard her say in that familiar patois. ‘Or watching while your man got drunk all day.’ Hastings baulked at that, this idea that his father was lazy and preferred the bottle to work. Ol’ Rubin had been a character though. Five children by three different women and a knife scar the length of his chest. He had disappeared with the Post Office money when Hastings was seven, leaving Flora owing three months’ rent.

  One of Hastings’s earliest memories was watching his grandmother standing with a wet mop in her hands while he ran with the corn-haired Wyk boys in their yard. They played football and soldiers in the heat of the day and Hastings darted around laughing like he had no worries until dinner time, when he would go back to the township on the bus, dust trails rising across the road, looking at his reflection in the window and running his fingers down the length of his thick flat nose.

  His mother would tell him the Bushmen’s story of how the Mantis Gave the Antelopes Their Colours:

  The Gemshok once ate liquid honey which is white. This is why he is white. The Mantis gave some of it to the Gemshok. The Hartebeest was the one to whom the Mantis gave some of the comb of young bees; that is why the Hartebeest is red, because the comb of young bees which he ate was red. So he became like the comb of young bees. The Eland was the one to whom the Mantis once gave some wasps’ honey; this is why he is dark, because he once ate wasps’ honey.

  The Quagga was the one to whom the Mantis once gave some of the small bees’ honey; that is why he is dark, because he ate the small bees’ honey. So he is dark. The Springbok was the one who once ate the liquid from the young bees’ cells; that is why he is red. The Mantis squeezed it out for him and he drank. That is why he is red.

  The little bees when chewed are white like milk, but they were still in their cells which were red. The Springbok ate the squeezed-out liquid of the bees and the cells together.

  Hastings could not help comparing such folklore to the Grimm’s Fairy Tales he overheard in the Wyk household, and feeling envious as a result. There was rebellious talk back in the huts and around the fires at night. He saw in documentaries how Michael Jackson bleached and straightened his hair, surgically altering himself in any way money could buy. Hastings swore he would never be like that. The Wyk boys would be made to pay for their beauty and so would every one like them. Hastings could not bear the piteous condescension in their eyes, the natural distance they kept once they reached puberty, the protective posturing of their shoulders and chins the minute he neared their sister.

  Oh yes, he thought as he accompanied Flora to the shops and she regaled him about the price of things, there are differences between us and them, and one day they’ll find out just how many!

  In order to explain his father’s absence Flora told him parables about Heiseb and his son, but by the age of twelve he was already organising stone-throwing attacks on the cars that came to his township filled with white officials taking photographs and using surveying instruments to measure out new homes, sanitation systems and electricity supplies. At the age of thirteen he was circulating pornographic photos of Afrikaner women. His sticky bodily fluids flowing like a geyser in the sewer. ‘I want what they got,’ was his mantra, ‘and I will take it!’

  As he grew older, he would lie awake at night looking up at the starlit sky, knowing that Africans had flown there on the back of rockets long before the white man. Sensing as he waited that he was growing stronger day by day, nourished by the shops and farms that his kin-folk ran so effortlessly. And in that concentrated darkness between the North Star and the Milky Way, a black whirlwind was forming, waiting to rush the earth like a hurricane, wave upon wave washing the Boer away. Then a pleasant feeling would arise between his legs and soon his already mottled sheets would stain even further with the glutinous excitement he had aroused by such imaginative acts.

  Hastings remembered the racist headlines, events and innuendos that scarred his formative years:

  → The Baragwanath Hospital, dedicated to black healthcare in the apartheid era, which was the largest hospital in the Southern hemisphere and employed world-class physicians from all around the globe, is reduced to ruins;

  → 800,000 to one million whites are living in squatter camps. Many having been forcibly moved out of trailer parks with amenities;

  → By 2013 South Africa’s education system plunged to the third worst in the world. ‘Teachers just talk about whatever, nothing to do with education. They are not being monitored to make sure they are doing a good job!’ Gugulthu Xhala (student);
/>   → A head of one teaching department, testing a class on geography, asked them to name two countries in South America. When they struggled, she gave Italy as an example;

  → Only 44 percent of blacks stay on to complete the National Senior Certificate and only 11 percent pass maths with a basic 40 percent or over;

  → Alternative media protests that crime statistics in South Africa are not released by racial categories. It is believed that on average fifty or more murders occur per day in South Africa . Over 95 percent of the white deaths are at the hands of blacks;

  → Dr Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch, who predicted the Rwandan atrocities, says ‘Whites in South Africa are being set up for genocide,’ and states, ‘The worst thing is that it is being orchestrated.’ Genocide Watch estimates that South Africa should be rated 6 out of 8 on the scale of genocidal activity;

  → The world press says South Africa has emerged as the murder and rape capital of the world;

  → In 2010, a medical research foundation survey revealed that 37 percent of men admitted to raping at least one woman and 7 percent acknowledging they had participated in gang-rape;

  → By the time of Mandela’s death 60 percent of all South Africans thought the country was better off 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 the same year, 83 percent of South Africans indicated that they believe the police force is corrupt, with as many as 36 percent openly admitting paying bribes to the police;

  → A new type of crime wave begins when HIV infected African males are led to believe that having sex with a virgin is a cure for AIDS;

  → 12 percent of the South African population are HIV positive;

  → Between 1995 and 2000 the average salary in South Africa dropped by 40 percent;

  → On the 13th June 2015, the ‘Say We Can’ group protest against the violent crime directed against white farmers in South Africa, at a rally in London;