The Burning Land

by George Alagiah

  Father Petro’s seemingly perpetual smile was gone. ‘Is there something you are not telling me, sister?’

  ‘I don’t want to make your life any more complicated than it already is.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m used to complicated. What else can it be when you stand in the middle, God on one side and his flawed people on the other, eh? Have you told me everything about your mission here?’

  ‘Well, as much as I can. I don’t mean I’m hiding anything, I just don’t know much.’

  ‘Your organisation, South what-what, is it linked to these people doing the sabotage?’

  ‘Absolutely not! But I do want to find them, find someone who represents them. I’m a bit like you. I’m in the middle too. That’s what we do, try to get two sides talking to each other.’

  ‘So maybe that’s their plan. They are hoping you will lead them to these people. You must be careful. Whoever you meet will be added to the list of suspects.’

  ‘Where does that leave you?’

  ‘Me? I’m already a suspect. They don’t understand me. I talk to everyone, no matter who they are – you know, the good, the bad, the ugly, I talk to them all. But, for sure, we must be careful, you and I. Do they know where you are staying?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I had a reservation at a hotel but I didn’t show up. I took a taxi to Mirabel’s.’

  ‘But they know you are with me.’

  ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘Well, we were supposed to meet someone at Raja’s, someone who says he’d heard rumours about what happened to Lesedi, but when the man came apparently the police were at the shop.’

  ‘Looking for him?’

  ‘No, they are not that clever. I asked Patel, he’s the manager there, to deliver some mealie-meal to the church this morning and they saw his van at our compound so they came round this evening, asking him why he was helping the Mozambicans. Now Patel has got nervous. He has to keep the local officials sweet or they make life difficult for him.’

  ‘Damn! Is there any other way we can reach this guy? I’m not here to play detective, but the more I know about who’s doing what to whom, the better.’

  ‘According to Patel, this man, he used to work for the family at a business they have in Malelane and apparently he saw something or heard something on the day that Motlantshe’s boy was killed.’

  ‘Did Patel say what he’d seen? His employee, I mean.’

  ‘No. He sounded pretty vague. Just something about a couple of strange faces in town, a car he didn’t recognise. These are small places – everyone knows everyone.’

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘Patel told me he’s gone back to Malelane. I have his number and I spoke to him from the shop. I don’t want to use my phone till I get there. These idiots are not so organised, but why take chances?’

  Lindi looked at her watch. It was still only seven thirty but the deserted streets made it feel much later. Back in London, people were only just getting home from a day at work. ‘It’s not too late. How far is Malelane? Couldn’t we go there?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking about it. It’s fifty, maybe sixty klicks from here. About an hour’s drive.’

  ‘If we set off now …’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, especially after those jokers turning up just now. I think we need to be separate. Anyway, if we turn up together it might – how do you say it? – freak this guy out. He’s nervous enough already. If I can persuade him, I’ll bring him back and we can meet very early tomorrow somewhere around here. If not, I’ll find out what he knows.’

  ‘I’d rather come with you.’

  ‘I understand. But this way is better. Let me speak to Patel. We need to get you back to your guesthouse quietly.’

  They walked over to Raja’s Wholesalers. Sanjit Patel, dressed in a pair of dark blue, sharply pressed trousers and a light blue shirt with a button-down collar, saw them coming and started walking to meet them outside the shop. He was on his phone. He shook hands with Lindi while still talking. They listened in to one side of the conversation.

  ‘Okay, chief. No problem. I’ll send someone around now, now … Eh? … Of course, man. Only the best for you … No, don’t worry. That’s what friends are for … Okay, chief. I’ll see you soon.’

  ‘Let me guess, that was Morotse,’ Father Petro said, then, turning to Lindi, ‘He runs the premier’s office here. Hey, I forgot. This is Lindi Seaton from London, this is Sanjit Patel. He is … the mover and shaker of Nelspruit.’

  ‘So pleased to meet you.’ He held out his hand again. ‘Father Petro is teasing me all of the time.’

  ‘Patel, you have your car?’

  ‘It’s behind the shop.’

  ‘Good, good. Listen, I’ve got a couple of things to do and sister here will be on her own. How about you take her home, give her some of Mrs Patel’s famous biryani? I’ll call by later.’

  ‘Sure, sure, it will be my pleasure.’ He turned towards the counter at the back of the shop. ‘Jacob! Call madam, tell her I’m bringing a guest home. Jacob! Where the hell is that fellow? Hold on, I’m coming just now.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Lindi half whispered, as Patel walked away.

  ‘Everything is fine. I’m just being careful. Those chaps may be hanging around. If I take you to the guesthouse they might follow us. You go to Patel’s, stay there for a couple of hours. Our friends will get bored – they’ll be getting drunk somewhere by then. I’ll pick you up later. If I’m going to be late I’ll phone and Patel can take you home.’

  Father Petro looked at Lindi and saw the doubt in her face. ‘Sister, you don’t like my plan?’

  ‘It’s not that. Why didn’t you tell him where you’re going? You obviously don’t trust him.’

  Father Petro made a face and tapped his nose. ‘How do you say it? Need-to-know basis?’ He laughed.

  ‘I think I’m about to have a sense of humour failure.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind. What about Patel? He must know what you’re up to.’

  ‘He thinks I’m just going back to my flock in the church. I didn’t tell him anything about going to Malelane.’

  ‘You’re sure about him?’

  ‘He’s okay … I think he’s okay. He’s a good man but he’s in a bad place so he doesn’t like to take sides. So we are not going to test him. He will show you off to his wife, you have a nice dinner and then we start again in the morning.’

  Sanjit Patel came back. ‘My wife is very much looking forward to seeing you, Ms Seaton.’

  ‘Okay, my friends, I’d better get going. Now, Patel, you take care of our guest.’

  They watched Father Petro de Freitas drive out of the car park.

  ‘My car is in the back, Ms Seaton. Give me a couple of minutes. Let me just lock up and I’ll be with you.’

  Lindi heard him as she walked out to the back of the shop. The suave soft-spoken elegance was gone. He was barking out instructions to the workers who were still in the shop. One came to the delivery bay, opened a steel box fitted to the wall and turned a switch inside it. It unfurled the steel shutters, which came down sedately, except for the occasional jerk, like a mechanical hiccup. Just before it fell below her eyeline, Lindi saw Patel make another call on his mobile phone. A couple of minutes later he came out with the staff. One pulled down the final shutter manually. He locked that too and gave the keys to Patel.

  ‘Good night, sir,’ they said in unison.

  ‘Six o’clock sharp-sharp,’ he said. He didn’t return their farewell. He turned to Lindi. ‘Okay, Ms Seaton, we’re ready.’

  He opened the passenger door and Lindi sat down, cosseted in supple leather. Patel got in on the driver’s side. He turned on the ignition and they glided away. ‘Can I offer you a drink?’ he asked. ‘There’s a hotel on the way back to my house.’

  ‘No, thanks. I’m really looking forward to meeting your wife – and her famous biryani.’

&n
bsp; ‘So how do you know Father Petro?’

  ‘Oh, we just met this afternoon. I was visiting the bishop.’

  ‘You work for the Church, Ms Seaton?’

  Lindi thought about asking him to be less formal, but decided to leave things as they were. ‘No, I work for an organisation in London. It’s called South Trust.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve not heard of that one. Of course we know about the UN and Save the Children …’

  ‘Well, we’re very different. We don’t go around giving food or money.’

  ‘Oh, very good, very good,’ he said. ‘So you’re interested in the Mozambicans.’

  ‘Actually, I’m interested in what led to the situation with the Mozambicans.’

  ‘I don’t follow. You mean Lesedi Motlantshe’s murder?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, not even that, really. Though I suppose the murder may be a part of it …’

  ‘Part of what?’

  ‘The reason I’m here is to find out what’s going on with all this selling of land.’

  ‘Oh, that is very straightforward. There is nothing to find out. Everybody knows what’s going on.’

  ‘If everybody knows, why doesn’t anyone try to stop it?’

  ‘Look, Ms Seaton, I don’t think you know Africa like I know it. My family has been doing business here for generations. My great-grandfather started off in Tanzania. Then one of his sons went to the Congo, another to Kenya and so on. Now I am here. Everywhere we have been it is the same.’

  ‘The same in what way exactly?’

  ‘The big people just look after themselves. Always. That is what is happening here. It is no different,’ he said.

  ‘South Africa is not exactly Congo.’

  ‘You’re right. There is more money to steal here.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh!’

  He shook his head. ‘People saw what Mandela did when he was around and they say South Africa will be different. But they forget that before Mandela there were other good men in Africa. Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Nyerere. They all started off with wonderful words and ideas but it was the people around them. Look what happened to their countries.’

  Patel pulled up outside a walled compound and pressed the horn. Ancient eyes looked through a grille in the metal gate before it began to roll away along a track in the ground. The man, wrapped up in several layers of clothing, raised his arm in a desultory salute. Patel ignored him.

  Patel continued. ‘South Africa is the same. Hundreds of years ago African chiefs were selling their own people to the slavers. Now they are selling the land.’

  A couple of Alsatians came bounding up to the car. Patel ignored them, too. He didn’t get out.

  ‘And where do you come in, Mr Patel? You just watch it all happen.’

  ‘I make my money. I pay my staff. The rest, I send it out. What more must I do?’

  ‘You don’t ask any questions?’

  ‘Why should I? I know the answer already. This is Africa.’

  ‘But how does sitting back and watching Motlantshe come here, buy up the land and sell it off to foreigners help?’

  ‘You think this is Motlantshe? You think he can do all these deals on his own and just keep the money to himself?’ Patel turned the engine off. ‘Ms Seaton, you need to know this whole stinking business goes all the way to the top. Those chaps in Pretoria are getting their cut. Motlantshe is just the deal-maker, the man in the middle.’

  ‘But the figures are all published.’

  ‘Oh, yes, they publish the figures they want you to see. The government got all these farms around here for nothing. Why didn’t the farmers shout and scream, eh?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Because our friend Motlantshe went round afterwards and paid them off.’

  ‘What’s in it for Motlantshe?’

  ‘The land is not sold outright to the foreign players. It is kept in a holding company, fifty-fifty. Motlantshe gets fifty, the foreigners get fifty.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Lindi probed.

  ‘Because I make it my business to know. That is how we Indians have survived in Africa. When the money starts rolling in, Motlantshe gives the big boys their share and everyone is happy.’

  ‘Except the people who get thrown off the land they’ve lived on for generations.’

  Patel got out of the car and walked around to Lindi’s side. She had already opened the door but Patel held it for her. ‘Look, Ms Seaton, I know you don’t like people like me. But I deal with Africa as it is, not Africa as it should be. You think I like to send a case of Johnnie Walker to that bastard tonight? But if I don’t, what happens? They find some problem with my papers and then I pay even more. It is okay for Father Petro. He is always talking to God, but I am dealing with men.’

  They walked up the few steps to the front door, which opened as they approached. Aadashini Patel had been waiting for them. She pressed her palms together and raised them.

  ‘This is my wife,’ Patel introduced them. ‘Ms Seaton is visiting for a few days.’

  ‘I’m sorry to barge in on you like this. And I’ve come empty-handed, too.’

  It was a pleasant enough evening, all the more so given the culinary efforts of a dutiful wife for whom providing a family meal was a defining role. Lindi felt a sense of solidarity with the woman, a need to make a show of her appreciation, something, she sensed, which was lacking in the Patel household. She asked for recipes she knew she would never try out and Aardashini obliged with enthusiasm and in painstaking detail. But all the while Lindi had her eye on the clock and her mind on the job. There came a point when she could no longer keep up the charade of ardent interest in the finer points of Indian cuisine.

  ‘I wonder what’s keeping Father Petro,’ she said, affecting as nonchalant a manner as she could muster.

  ‘Let’s see, what’s the time?’ replied Patel. ‘Oh, yes, nine forty-five. Father Petro never stops but it is late even for him. Let me call him.’ There was no answer. He gave it another fifteen minutes before trying again. It went straight to voicemail. Lindi felt the need to take charge before there were any questions about exactly what he could be doing.

  ‘Listen, he did say to me that he was tired, and if it got too late he would just see me in the morning. I’m really sorry, but could you give me another lift?’

  ‘Of course, no problem at all. We could go by the church and see what he’s up to. It’s only a little bit out of the way.’

  ‘No need for that. To be honest, I’m shattered. I was up at five this morning. I just need my bed.’

  When they pulled up outside the Mirabel Guesthouse, Patel came round to Lindi’s side of the car.

  ‘Look, what we were talking about before in the car, you know, about the corruption and so on. Please understand, I care about this country. I do what I can, but if you don’t play the game their way you’re finished. End of story.’

  ‘I understand. I’m sorry if I sounded like I was judging you.’

  ‘Good night, Ms Seaton.’ Patel got back into his car. ‘And you be careful. This is not a game they’re playing here.’

  Lindi woke up with a start. Her phone was ringing. She grabbed at it but dropped it on the floor. It landed screen side up. Two thirty in the morning.

  She picked it up and pressed the green button. She recognised Patel’s voice straight away.

  ‘Ms Seaton, I am afraid I have some bad news. Father Petro has been in a car crash. It’s bad, very bad.’

  16

  Kagiso arrived in Nelspruit at 4 a.m., having taken the overnight train from Johannesburg. He was glad he’d spent the previous day, the day of Lesedi’s funeral, with his mother.

  Nelspruit was the nearest mainline station to Malelane, Soil of Africa’s home. Kagiso had done the journey many times before and knew he’d have to wait no more than an hour or so before the first taxis to Malelane started plying the route.

  Nelspruit station resembled a vast covered dormitory. Every wall and pillar had some
one slumped against it; bags and blankets were strewn over every available patch of floor space, in front of shop windows, under staircases, even the approaches to the toilets.

  In one corner the Red Cross had set up a stand. He noticed a message board with dozens of photos pinned to it – people who had become separated from their families, many of them children.

  He walked out of the station and started along Voortrekker Street towards the city. He was heading for Mama K’s. It was the last café to close at night and the first to open in the morning. Kagiso rented a room in a property owned by the eponymous Mama K – Khethiwe Shabangu – in Malelane. The pain of parting with his money when he went to see her to pay the rent was always eased by the ample meal he got in return. Ma Khethiwe was as generous as she was well proportioned. She was large, buxom, sensual, the kind only Africa produces: women who have no desire to hide what they see as nature’s gift. If Ma Khethiwe was there, he knew he’d be set up for the day. He was in luck.

  ‘You are working too hard, child,’ she said, putting down a plate with two thick slabs of airy white bread, covered with margarine and jam. ‘These other fellows,’ she was pointing at two uniformed men slumped at an adjacent table, ‘they are security guards, they working all night. But you, you supposed to be resting before you go to the office.’ She’d already stirred three heaped spoons of sugar into the milky tea (out there in the sticks, anything less and you might be accused of mimicking ‘white’ habits). Kagiso leaned back on the plastic chair, which gave way disconcertingly till his head rested on the wall behind. He shut his eyes.

  He had spent much of the train journey awake (sleep was impossible in ‘sitter class’), turning over the events of the previous forty-eight hours and trying to quell his anxiety. No, not anxiety: fear. That was what it was. It wasn’t fear for his personal safety, though he did worry about that too, but something bigger, more amorphous and sinister. He was frightened by the magnitude of what was unfolding all around him, and knowing that he was at the centre of it, even if he’d never intended it to be that way.