‘I’ve got a parcel for you from Mom,’ Lindi said, unconsciously reverting to the South African idiom. ‘I’ve been dying to call you all day but I’ve been so busy.’
‘I know you have some important work here. Tch, tch. This is a bad thing that’s happening here,’ she said.
Lindi heard Maude click her tongue and remembered how the disapproval it implied used to weigh down on her more heavily than any scolding meted out by her parents. Maude’s admonishments were all the more powerful for their rarity, whereas her parents’ daily complaints about homework not done or clothes left on the floor had lost their potency with each repetition.
‘Isn’t it terrible, this whole business? Maude, I have to go to Mpumalanga tomorrow but I promise I’ll come and see you when I’m back in Johannesburg.’
‘You’re going where? Mpumalanga?’
‘I have to start somewhere and that’s where the trouble is. And it’s where my boss wants me to go,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll be there for just a couple of days.’
‘Kagiso is there – that’s where he’s doing his work. His office, they call it Soil of Africa. He used to work here in town in a good government job but he left. I don’t know what for he wants to go and sit in the bush but he’s there.’
‘What a coincidence, Maude.’
‘Yes, he’s there,’ the old woman said, with a hint of ruefulness.
‘Isn’t it amazing that he should be in Mpumalanga of all places? How can I get hold of him?’
‘You can phone him. He never answers the phone but for you maybe he’ll do it.’
‘Oh, I’m sure he’s just got a lot of work, Maude.’
‘Yes, he’s working hard for those people in the bush but his own mother is here.’
‘Listen, give me his number and I’m going to tell him he’s a naughty boy. I’ll bring him back to Jo’burg with me.’
‘Okay, my baby. I’m going to wait for you.’
Maude read out the number in a deliberate and hesitant way that told Lindi she was an older and less confident woman than the image of her she carried in her mind.
Lindi took a deep breath before she called Kagiso.
9
A couple of hours earlier, Kagiso Rapabane was wedged into the back of a Johannesburg taxi. The needle on the speedometer nudged 80 k.p.h. The minivans that most commuters used, not the metered cabs that ran from the airport or the city’s posh hotels, are notorious for their often deadly disregard for the rules of the road. But, for once, Kagiso was glad the driver was in a hurry. He was in Johannesburg for two meetings – one official, the other not.
Kagiso had hitched a lift with a colleague from Malelane in Mpumalanga Province. It had taken them the best part of five hours. Their meeting with an overseas funder, who was getting nervous about the recent violence, had been delayed, and by the time Kagiso had jumped into the taxi to head off for the second appointment, it was past six in the evening and he was running an hour late.
It was the tail end of the rush hour, but the driver had swerved into a stretch of Oxford Road that had just emptied its traffic onto the highway and put his foot down, swerving back into the southbound stream at the last second amid a blare of horns and shouting. Kagiso had been first on the taxi at the rank in Rosebank and he was on the back bench, next to the window. The seat seemed to be only loosely attached to the chassis. It rolled and bucked, like a flat-bottomed barge in a heaving sea. He grabbed the bench in front of him, trying to stop himself sliding on the shiny, transparent seat covering and into a woman of the most generous proportions, who had positioned herself in the middle of the back row. She sat there, her knees apart, a bag of groceries on one side and a cardboard box on the other. Her voluminous breasts rose and fell with each breath, straining at the buttons of her nylon housecoat.
Outside, the huge sign advertising the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund flashed past, a fleeting reminder of one man’s conscience, its promise of a better life now receding as quickly as the hoarding. No one said a word. For many of the dozen or so other passengers this was the last enervating lap in a day that had begun at five that morning. The silence was interrupted only by the ringtone of a phone or a curt instruction to the driver.
‘Short left,’ somebody shouted, meaning the driver should pull over at the next left turn. Kagiso pulled out twenty rand and handed it to the person in front of him who, in turn, handed it forward, like a game of Pass the Parcel. Other notes and coins were making a similar journey up the cab where the driver, flicking his eyes from the road down to a cashbox next to him and back up again, managed to count the takings and send back the appropriate change. Kagiso took the change and received a surly look from the woman next to him as he stretched his leg towards her so he could squeeze the coins into the tight pocket of his jeans. He looked outside again and they were passing Wits Medical School. Not long now till they got to Hillbrow, where he would be getting off.
‘Next robot,’ he shouted, hoping the instruction would alert his immovable neighbour that he would shortly have to squeeze past her. When the time came she stuck to her spot, and Kagiso had to try to get over her to the door without touching her – a movement that was as ungainly as it was impossible.
Eventually, he fell out onto Claim Street and made for the Hot Line internet shop on the other side, almost colliding with a youth riding a shopping trolley down the gentle slope towards Klein Street. Ahmadu, who ran the shop, had just put a handful of egusi with yam into his mouth. He held out an arm, which Kagiso shook at the wrist. ‘Howzit,’ he said.
‘Can’t complain,’ said Ahmadu, one of the many Nigerian traders who had colonised the area. The shelves were stacked deep with DVDs, the output of Nollywood, Nigeria’s prolific but variable film industry. These days he made almost as much from renting out the films as he did from the phone business, but both were eclipsed by the lucrative room rentals and the express abortions that invariably followed. The clients for his medical services were always too desperate to wait for the state’s lumbering alternative. Ahmadu asked no questions, and he wasn’t told any lies. As long as the bills were paid he didn’t care.
Ahmadu was watching one of the films on a laptop, engrossed in a storyline that had a young bride telling her mother that her marriage was floundering.
‘Are you denying him?’ the older woman in the film asked.
‘Eh-heh! You see now, that’s the problem,’ shouted Ahmadu, at the screen. ‘Our women are behaving like white women. They don’t want to take care of their man.’
Kagiso ignored the comment. ‘Are the others here?’
Ahmadu nodded. ‘They came over an hour ago. You are the last,’ he said, with what sounded like reproach. He reached out to a shelf behind him, never taking his eyes away from the laptop, worked his practised fingers behind the last few DVDs and pressed a button. Kagiso waited by a back door until he heard the latch release, then pushed.
He walked down a dark corridor with several doors leading off it. He didn’t bother with the light switch. Experience had taught him that the bulb had long since blown. He pushed open another door, which brought him into a hallway, lit by a flickering neon strip. On one side of it there was a stairwell going up to what had once been the rather desirable apartments of Rondebosch Court. Its original purpose had been to act as a service entrance for domestic servants and tradesmen; now it provided a route for those who needed a discreet way in and out of the building – whether it was the suited men who used one of two apartments that Ahmadu rented out by the hour or the women who carried the consequences of these clandestine encounters in their bellies.
Kagiso bounded up the steps two at a time, no longer even seeing the sign that advertised ‘same-day abortions’ and ‘womb cleansing’. The greasy grey hand smears along the wall were proof that the progress of others up and down the stairs was much slower and hesitant. On the first landing, he passed two women. One was bent over, her eyes shut, her face glazed with sweat. She had one arm around the shoulders of the other woman.
Kagiso looked down, as if to suggest he hadn’t seen them, to spare them the embarrassment of being noticed, and took the next flight of steps.
He walked along the second-floor corridor, its thick, undisturbed air infused with the heavy smell of cheap, fatty meat being fried. Behind each door he heard the muffled ritual of families coming together in that brief interregnum between the end of one day’s efforts and the preparation for the next. Eating, drinking, chatting, listening, watching, arguing, loving and lusting – it all had to be squeezed into a couple of hours. Voices competed with the indiscriminate cacophony of a TV soap opera, the intermittent canned laughter and applause a cue to shout even louder. Adults tried to get themselves heard over the incessant squabbling of children; women scolded men who, in turn, took it out on their kids.
Kagiso reached the end of the corridor, looked back towards the stairwell, knocked three times on the last door on the left, then used his key to open it and walked into the room.
‘Nice of you to join us,’ François said. He was smiling.
‘My meeting was delayed. I got here as quick as I could.’ Kagiso looked around the room. He couldn’t decide which was worse – the second-hand odour of other people’s cooking, which he’d just left behind, or the stale smell of cigarette smoke that caught the back of his throat now. ‘Sis, man! How many times have I told you guys to open the windows?’
‘He arrives late and the first thing he does is give us a tongue-lashing.’
Sharmi Meer had one leg over the end of a threadbare sofa. Her jeans were tucked into black knee-length boots. Her black hair, cut short, framed a face of angular, strong features. There was a muscularity about her, enhanced by her choice of clothes. Sharmi dropped her cigarette stub into a mug in front of her. It hissed as it sank into what was left of the coffee. She pulled her leather jacket tight across her chest as Kagiso opened the window above her.
‘You missed your calling. You should have been a headmaster.’
Kagiso saw the bottle of Klipdrift on the packing case that doubled as a table. It was half empty. There were a couple of Coke cans next to the brandy and a column of plastic cups.
‘Where’s Two-Boy?’
They heard the lavatory chain being pulled and pulled again. Sharmi shouted across the room towards the toilet door. ‘Stop being so gentle. One firm jerk, man!’ She looked at the others. ‘All these times we’ve been here and he still can’t do it.’
Two-Boy shuffled in.
‘You’d be bloody hopeless if a girl wanted a bit of rough,’ she said, smiling. ‘Pour me a Klippies-and-Coke and let’s get on with this.’
Two-Boy, the fourth member of Land Collective, was a software engineer at SABC. A tall man, he nonetheless could not disguise his ample belly, though he carried it with some aplomb. He wasn’t embarrassed by his weight. The tail of his shirt hung out from under his knitted jumper, and the laces on his suede ankle boots were untied. His dishevelled look and the fondness for a little dop, as he put it, belied a rare gift for navigating his way around the ether unnoticed. He saw Kagiso. ‘Heita! Howzit?’ He looked sheepish.
The two men shook hands, touching alternate shoulders as they did so.
‘How many of those have you had already?’ Kagiso asked.
‘For Chrissake, leave him alone. I think we’ve got more than Two-Boy’s drinking habits to worry about,’ said Sharmi.
‘Yah. Let’s do this quickly and get out. It’s not looking good,’ said François. ‘I just drove past Ponte City. There’s still a big crowd there – probably a few hundred. They say they’re not leaving till every last foreigner is thrown out of the building. And the cops are just lounging about. Every now and again someone tries to get back in to restart the fire. Even the Red Cross people are being shoved around.’
‘It makes 2008 look like a picnic,’ Sharmi said, a reference to an earlier bout of xenophobia in which immigrants had been killed as competition for scarce jobs had turned to violence. ‘It doesn’t bloody help that SABC reports it as fact that a Mozambican killed Motlantshe’s poor little rich bastard.’
‘Stop that, man!’ Kagiso glowered at Sharmi. ‘He’s not even buried and you’re badmouthing him. The fact that he was rich has got nothing to do with it.’
‘Oh, I must have got this all wrong. I’m so sorry.’ Sharmi played the mock-innocent. ‘And there I was thinking this was all about rich people fucking over the poor people. I seem to have got the wrong end of the stick. All this secret sabotage we’ve been organising and it turns out I didn’t even know who the bad guys were.’
‘You know that’s not what I meant. We’re not here to pass judgement on Lesedi. We’re here to make sure his murder doesn’t derail us.’
‘We’re not here to pass judgement? Christ! Where is this coming from? The guy makes one measly trip to your friggin’ cooperative or whatever and suddenly he’s the people’s hero.’
They had history, the two of them. You had to know someone well enough to have seen their weaknesses and understand how to exploit them. She knew she could keep going, locked in a self-perpetuating cycle of trying to goad him into saying something she could pounce on and use for another line of attack. It had happened so many times before.
He’d rejected her once, walked away when they should have talked. It had made her feel used, tawdry. So now she did the talking. For Sharmi this whole enterprise – and it was Sharmi who had pushed the group from debate to direct action – had been visceral. She was the only one of the four who could claim any direct link to the old anti-apartheid struggle. Her father had been imprisoned on Robben Island for six years and died shortly after release, disillusioned and mad. For her the Land Collective was as much about getting even with a state that had robbed her of a father, never mind that that state was now in black hands. It was about striking a blow. The act itself was cathartic. She’d never understood how you could want change – real change – if you didn’t want it in your guts.
Sharmi looked across at Kagiso. She decided to hold fire. For now.
‘This thing has got scary. We’re not in control,’ Kagiso said.
‘But we’re not meant to be in control,’ said François. ‘This is exactly what was supposed to happen.’
‘No, it wasn’t. We never sat here and said, “Let’s have execution squads roaming the countryside and, just to make sure they get the message, let’s make sure they donner some Mozambicans.” This is just mayhem now. It isn’t political.’ Kagiso rolled his head around trying to unwind the tension locked into his muscles. He had a splitting headache.
‘Of course it isn’t all neat and tidy,’ said Sharmi, her hostility barely disguised. ‘What did you think was going to happen when we did that first job and you started firing off all those anonymous statements?’
‘Look, I’m not saying we planned Lesedi’s murder or that we predicted all this Mozzie-bashing,’ said François, picking up where he’d left off. ‘And I’m not saying any of it is good. But I suppose we did want this thing to develop a momentum of its own and that’s what’s happening.’
‘Come on, François! You know as well as I do that this is not what we had in mind.’ Kagiso was pacing from one end of the room to the other.
‘It is exactly what we had in mind.’ Sharmi stood up. Now. This was the time to move in. Sharmi felt the surge of adrenaline. ‘Now the bastards are going to sit up and listen. What did you think – another fire here, a power cable cut somewhere, a few more of your terrific words and the land deals would stop? This – what’s happening out there – this is what’s going to make them scared.’
‘Listen, there’s no point arguing over whether we’re responsible or not. The fact is that it’s happening.’ Two-Boy could see where this was going. The next thing, Sharmi would accuse Kagiso of being squeamish and then there’d be an almighty row that would take another half an hour to resolve. ‘What we have to decide is whether any of this helps us,’ he continued. ‘If it does, well, we can just sit back and have another dr
ink. If not, we’ve got some thinking to do and quick. What’s happening at Ponte is happening all over the place. I had a look at the wires coming into the newsroom before I left.’
‘Well, it doesn’t help us. That should be clear enough to anyone,’ said Kagiso, shooting a glance at Sharmi. ‘Lesedi’s murder changes everything. Even the people we’re supposed to be representing thought of him and his father as heroes. This is a gift for Pretoria.’
‘Okay, so the first thing is to put some distance between us and the murder,’ said Two-Boy. ‘What you’ve written so far is not enough. We’ve got to find a way to make it absolutely clear we had nothing to do with Lesedi’s killing.’
‘Unless of course we did have something to do with Lesedi’s death,’ Kagiso said, staring at each of the others in turn.
There was silence. It wasn’t just the absence of sound but a moment of utter quiet that filled the room, like a poisonous gas leak. Each of the others absorbed what had been said and what had been implied.
‘We’re not going there.’ François broke the silence.
‘No, let’s go there. Go on, point your fucking finger.’ Sharmi was now just a metre away from Kagiso. ‘Tell us who you think is behind this. Which one of us do you think is so low and dirty? Come on, say it.’
‘Jissis, man. Stop this fokken nonsense now,’ François said, walking over to where Kagiso was standing. ‘You of all people should know better. It was your idea, remember? What we do with our own teams is our own business. Ask no questions, get told no lies. Isn’t that what you used to say?’
‘This is different,’ Kagiso stressed. ‘We’re talking about a murder here.’
‘Oh, no! Not a murder. Oh, let’s just leave that sort of thing to the land-owners, shall we?’ Sharmi was finding her stride again. ‘Let them drag people off their own land to die in some godforsaken place. We’ll just keep our hands clean.’
‘This was a brutal killing. No ifs or buts, just a gruesome and senseless murder. Full stop!’
The Burning Land Page 9