Kraal

by Fenek Solère

  They were moving as fast as they could, the rear guard backing slowly over the next hill, guns at the ready as the chanting rose and fell behind them.

  Three hours later, with the sun falling away to the west, Eelskje found clean water and the stragglers wrapped themselves in blankets to keep out the cold. They drank and drank, unsure when they would be able to refill their canteens.

  ‘Which way?’ Eelskje asked.

  ‘Due west. I’ll go up ahead and see how the land lies.’

  Eelskje watched Gijs move off in the falling dusk. She thought how thin and fragile he now looked against the horizon. ‘Like chipped ceramic,’ she murmured under her breath.

  Gijs was tired and panting when he reached the summit, exhausted from the travail of those days, the slumberless nights, the sleepless anxieties; and he sat on a large jutting rock to rest. From there he could see out over the great valley, its distant western rim running black like a newt’s back against the endless blue. For a moment he was lost in contemplation, but then, true to his upbringing, but against his instinctive inclination, he clasped his hands, feeling the suction of sweat between his palms, and began to pray.

  The stars continued to shine and the wind began to climb despite his beseeching words. He knew the people of the valley would have alerted the local police and army units by now. And he also knew that they had not put sufficient distance between themselves and their enemy to proceed without opposition for long. The only hope he had was for low cloud cover and the damn lazy blacks to slumber on in the barracks.

  Then, after returning to the group, exhausted by the day’s exertions, he rolled up next to Eelskje’s shivering body in an effort to warm her. A cold sweat lathered his flesh. He knew the hyena gods lurked in the darkness, with their biting jaws and acidic saliva. Their drool smearing the corpses of white babies from Saldanha to Fort Shepstone. It was all he could do to hold it together in front of the survivors he was marshalling to safety. Sometimes he felt they sensed his inner turmoil but had no other option but to follow him. He had never sought leadership, leadership had been forced upon him by bitter circumstances. The same circumstance that came back every night to haunt him. A violated wife and two dead eyes looking up from the swaddling through a smothering cellophane wrap.

  He dreamed of his old house and imagined how things could have been different. If only his father had lifted a rifle to the crack in the window and held off the raiders, at least until he could drive out there.

  Gijs was moving and talking in his sleep. Eelskje turned and wrapped him in her slim arms, massaging his clavicle and broad scapula, gently kissing the sweat off his fevered brow.

  When he woke Gijs sensed a wind coming in over the southern uplands. He checked his leather holster and found his fingers to be cold and numb. Moving achingly slowly down the slope he saw the camp feeding on stale maize cakes and tepid water. Eelskje was there among them, smiling at him, lifting a hand, inviting him to eat and drink.

  Light was beginning to seep through the greyness. Above him the tithoya swooped, their forlorn cries a warning of the rigours of the impending day’s trek. Gijs knew the dawn would break soon and he was fearful of what the day might bring.

  ←→

  With a good day’s march behind them, Gijs circled around the sentries before turning in. It was about five in the morning when the mist began to slowly clear and a guard fired his machine pistol, shouting that he could see men rushing the camp. Almost instantaneously the others replicated his action as they realised they were surrounded.

  ‘Staan op! Wake up!’ Gijs was screaming. Men and women rolled over reaching for their weapons, frantically taking aim at the oncoming force. Fortunately, the first wave was only a small group of Vakhomana and Mujibas, with no mortars or heavy weaponry. It was a feint to test their firepower, and as a consequence the defenders were able to inflict heavy casualties very quickly.

  Beyond, an armoured car and some trucks were disgorging helmeted boy soldiers out the back doors of their vehicles. A machine gunner wearing goggles and a woollen cap was swivel firing from side to side, white puffs rising from the heated barrel as his colleagues fanned out to mount a second attack.

  Eelskje threw the butt of an AK47 into the crevice formed by her shoulder and drilled three troopers as they advanced. In the distance, through swirling fog, she could make out an officer rallying his men. Next to him stood a man waving their rainbow flag and Eelskje killed them both with a snarl of satisfaction.

  There was a heavy explosion, followed almost immediately by a second. The hill shook, a cloud of grey and orange dust particles blowing along the ripped clay. From that moment Gijs knew they were in trouble. The main column had arrived.

  Anderson’s only son was eighteen, barely a man. But after having his arm broken in two places in hand to hand combat, he began firing his TAR-21 at close quarters as the Umctyu and Unkandampenvu troops came on singing their Somagwaza battle song. They cleared the ground up the slope past an intervening ravine like trained athletes, jumping the laager ditch, and coming up so close that he could smell their foul breath as his barrel stuttered in their faces.

  Gijs was watching out for Eelskje throughout the battle, glancing her way between gunshots, a revolver with a bullet resting snugly in its chamber, set aside for her. ‘No one is taking another woman from me,’ he swore to himself again and again, as the sweat began to sear in his eyes.

  One charging Inkatha regular died at his feet, turned over by a Gecado pistol bullet. The death sheen on his chocolate forehead caught in the dawnlight as he somersaulted with surprised eyes. An SKS rifle clattering on the stony earth. Gijs worked the bolt and picked off another skulking creature. Eelskje kept shooting until the AK’s barrel was so hot it began to glow, her eardrums filling with the death rattle of the savage assailants coming at them through the scrub and stone.

  Chapter IX

  Fighting soldiers from the sky

  Fearless men who jump and die

  Men who mean just what they say

  Those brave men of the RSA

  Silver wings upon their chests

  These are the men, South Africa’s best

  One hundred men, we’ll test today

  But only three will wear the maroon beret

  — Maroon Beret

  Gaining height as they circled airily out of the vast yellow field, the choppers lifted on their rotors, settling into a holding pattern above the encampment. Despite the loud throb of the turbines the pilot was engaged in conversation with the base below, checking coordinates, waiting for instructions as the troop behind in the hold ran through their pre-battle ritual, checking weapons, adjusting ammo clips and headsets, readying their hearts and minds.

  Then the Chinooks turned, banking into the low mist. Flying south west at high speed, lights flickering on the helicopter’s flight deck, heavy machine guns tilted thirty degrees so that they could lay down covering fire for the troops preparing for the extraction of Gijs’ column.

  By now the sun was up, Lynx attack helicopters riding point in the haze of orange coming in over the eastern horizon. The fat-bellied Chinooks surfing in their wake, skimming on top of the river mist, hurtling down the Caledon River at 180 kilometres an hour.

  A mere thirty minutes later and the air cavalry were dropping their rear ramps, troopers squatting down, thumbs up, readying themselves as the pilot counted down to contact. Five, four, three two, one... Then the ratta-tat-tat of SMG’s coming up out of the broken ground below, tracer trails from a ZPU-2 looping in the sky ahead. The first attack ’copter opened fire, rockets and cannons strafing the government forces hiding in their foxholes. A second cutting in from the opposite direction, muzzle flashes raking the enemy’s command and control post with devastating effect. Then the air litter, the chaff, bright yellow dazzling flares and strips of aluminium coming down in clouds to confuse and disrupt the enemy, who by now were breaking cover, running wildly about, firing blindly in an uncoordinated battle line more rem
iniscent of tribal riots than a professional army.

  Seconds later a wall of sound rolled over the surrounded encampment as the door gunners brought their belt-fed weaponry into play, smashing holes in the vehicles below, cauterizing engine blocks and shredding tarps and tyres as they passed overhead.

  On the third pass, the first men went down the ropes, fanning out as their boots hit the dry grass. Some burrowed down on their stomachs firing their FN M24’s into the black phalanx ahead. One, two, three they were counting whilst others ran headlong at the enemy. There was a series of flashes and explosions as the Diemacos let rip their M20 grenade launchers. Smoke drifted across the veldt, providing cover as the assault teams began close quarter combat with the Government’s finest, the Nqakula Commando, leaving thirty dead with no loss to the relief force, in less than three minutes.

  Having seen their rescuers punch a hole in the surrounding perimeter, Gijs and Eelskje led their people out under the covering fire of the chain guns. Weaving between the trashed sixty-one and eighty-one millimetre mortars and stumbling over the prostrate bodies of the dead and dying, they fired from the hip as they rushed for the sliding doors of the carriers. Within twenty minutes the extraction was complete. Forty-two people retrieved from ground zero, three Air Cav killed, five wounded and fifty-six regulars, ten ANC militia and three Chinese advisers killed or wounded.

  The ’copter lifted, the gunship firing its gattling guns in wide interlocking arcs as it moved off at one hundred and twenty knots. Wheels rolling on the slipstream about ten metres above the veldt. The craft dipping and tipping to avoid the Chinese and North Korean air to ground ordnance. Below Gijs could see the assault teams retreating in the classic fire-and-manoeuvre technique, backing towards the other Chinooks, ready to take to the air.

  As he looked around him, wind ripping through his hair, the smell of motor oil and the drum of rotor engines turning, he tried to gauge the speed at which they were moving. He smiled and leaned over to thank the sandy-haired lieutenant cleaning a bloody blade on a green hand towel.

  ‘Fuckin’ cannibals!’ was all Gijs could hear over the roar of the engine as the guy tried to explain how he had gutted a man who was trying to toss a hand grenade through the Chinook’s open window.

  Kraal

  Hastings had taken the name Shaka and declared his followers to be Celestials. His kraal of over four thousand huts was laid out on the banks of the Leeuwen River, with many more sleeping in the fields all about. Naked boys and girls ran about defecating. Comely bare-breasted women bartered at stalls while their men fought over petrol. Flies buzzed everywhere, mosquitoes flitting in and out of the cholera vapours.

  Hastings had surrounded himself with drug-taking Undis, a Zulu sect of elite fighters originally from the Nkobamakosi regiment, but now little more than a street gang with a cartel approach to narcotic distribution. His Thonga doctors and Baloyi sorcerers advised on the First Fruits ceremony, celebrating his kingship, which was marked by the ritual burning of clothes and utensils. ‘Take life, take life!’ they sang. ‘May no black cat cross between us!’

  Over on the opposite bank were the huts and tents where menstruating women were sent during their dirty times. Hastings insisted all live under skins stretched over poles in the traditional way. Women followed him around to catch his spit and piss, so that his water could not be collected and used against him. He would stand wearing charms, armlets and bracelets of tinkling metal, girdled by the skins of snakes and scorpions. Standing directly under the smoke hole in his own tent, his head dressed in ostrich plumes, he would choose his concubines.

  ‘Let the witch beat the grave with his switch. Bring forth our army of the dead!’ he intoned. ‘Use the Basuto women’s bones for divination.’ Then, ‘Surround me with owls, bats and fireflies!’

  On certain days he would walk out among his worshippers, a servant carrying a boombox playing P. Diddy. Then, when the mood took him he would read excepts from his own teachings or quote short phrases from people he admired:

  Some of us think when we have power, we shall revenge ourselves on the white man who had had power, and because our desire is corrupt, we are corrupted, and the power has no heart in it. But most men do not know this truth about power, and they are afraid lest we get it.

  Other times he would read poetry to dumbfounded faces:

  The child who only wished to play at Nyanga in the sun is everywhere

  The child has become a man and travels through all Africa

  The child has become a giant and travels through all the world

  Without a pass

  ‘That,’ he would say, nodding with a furrowed brow, ‘was in memory of a child killed at Sharpville.’

  His followers had no sense of ceremony as such, other than as a chance to dress up and cover themselves in unearned military regalia. The people would yell back, ‘Kwewuku! Ubabetile! You hit them!’ in Xhosa, or ‘Umnqundu wakho! Your backside!’ Around the central clearing the Ho-ta ti-te se would be sung in a melancholy air, the bass line forming a harmony with the thud of women beating blunt pestles into the corn. As it grew dark the gaggle and babble of the tribe folk would rise as they drank, and the sound of reed pipes came along with the feasting and laughter. A hippopotamus would be roasted on an open fire, fermented milk swilled by children. Then the stamping feet again, two lines of men and women facing off against each other in a fertility rite.

  Hastings would smile indulgently. He knew he had led his people back home.

  Orania

  Our nation will become free; I see them trekking inland where they congregate in a large mass. I see some going west, where they will fight and revolution breaking out among them, but everything will happen without any blood being shed. On the past of our nation, and in the present, there is no stigma; hope in the future and aim for the best you can achieve!

  — The Seer, Nicolaas van Rensburg

  ‘Ex Unitate Vires,’ said Cornelius van Beek. ‘We Afrikaaners have been farmers and family people for centuries; now it is time for us to master the skills of international trade, global commerce and enter the digital age. What this country needs so very desperately is not the false gelykstelling, the myth of equality, that the liberals force upon us. For we know in our hearts Oordad is sonde; their excesses are sinful. What we need to do is create the wealth to make sure our vision wins through.’

  The volksaamtrek, or people’s gathering, swaying like swathes of golden wheat in the wind, nodded their ascent before the wooden platform from which van Beek was speaking. ‘We need a new kind of man, as comfortable speaking English as Afrikaans. As comfortable in the bank as the mealie field!’

  There were at least fifteen thousand people present to hear van Beeks’s oration and thunderous applause broke out when a group of English speakers hoisted a banner declaring solidarity with the Boers. ‘And they say, miracles never happen,’ Cornelius laughed, shaking his great greying beard. ‘Welcome friends, welcome to Orania!’

  Then turning his attention once again to his speech, ‘This is just the start! We demand our land in the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, Northern Natal and free passage for our kinfolk languishing in misery in the Cape Province to join our Boer Volkstsaat!’ A group of horse commando circled the stage and fired their guns into the air in a symbolic show of strength. ‘Eievolk, eie taal, eie land, our own people, our own language, our own land!’

  Afterwards the meeting broke up into a traditional celebration, with folk dancing, sports, food and the usual bonhomie that was a trademark of these people’s casual but resolute daily lives. It was a pure echo of the wagon trekker commemorations, when the Johanna van der Merwe came through Namaqualand, the Magrieta Prinsloo through the Western Cape, the Hendrik Potgieter, and the Andries Pretorius through the southern cape, eastern cape, and Orange Free State respectively.

  When dark fell, a river of flame would start with two torches brought from Dingaan’s Kraal. Despite a soft rain, sure-footed Boer women rushed forward to igni
te their handkerchiefs and the corners of their kappies, marching in a long winding line silhouetted against the lights of Orania. Climbing the slopes, ascending through the protea bushes with the campfire chorus echoing in their ears.

  Then Aarde stepped forward to recite Rensburg’s Flag of Blood prophecy:

  It will be the greatest gathering of Afrikaners in our national history. All this will happen without any leader summoning the people together. The people will take things into their own hands and those who do not want to stand out of the way, they will trample to death. Then a great silence will ensue before the storm. That storm will be severe but of very brief duration. One pail of blood will tumble over in which our flag will be dipped and the flag of blood will then fly over a free people.

  The crowd clapped for their military leader and he responded enthusiastically. ‘This place, as D.G. Cronje, predicted is ‘n Tuiste vir die Nageslag, is our home for posterity!’

  ←→

  As Gijs soon learned after his arrival, the Great Council was the Executive of the Free State of Orania. It comprised a cabinet of seven, a symbolic number to demark the members from the figure six of the anti-Christ of Revelations. A similar configuration was evidenced in its newly consecrated military flag, where the same three digits, set out in stark black against a white background, at the centre of a red circle, represented perpetual forward movement, intended to suggest advancement and progression of mind and body. Clear evidence of the optimism these people had in the future. Each cabinet member held a portfolio and led an administrative infrastructure to deliver the services the volk desired.