The Burning Land

by George Alagiah

  ‘But if it’s you as head of Soil of Africa you could take them on. Soil of Africa is legitimate. You’ve done nothing – nothing illegal.’

  ‘It’s not just a question of what I do, it’s what I know. Lindi, remember at the funeral Willemse telling me how I was the last person to see Lesedi alive and how he heard we’d got on very well?’

  ‘Like a house on fire, was his expression.’

  ‘Who is this Willemse?’

  ‘You know, that Coloured minister.’

  ‘The one making all those speeches and what-what! I don’t like him. He likes to listen to his own voice too much.’

  ‘That’s him. You’ve got it in one.’

  ‘Anyway, what were you going to say?’

  ‘On the day he died, Lesedi came to Soil of Africa in Malelane and met a whole bunch of local people. I think he was genuinely moved by what they told him about the evictions and so on. But it didn’t stop there. After he left us he called Willemse, told him about meeting the people at Soil of Africa and exactly what he thought of the whole land-sales business. Apparently he’d told Willemse he wanted this deal, the Mpumalanga one, done differently. “Above board” was the way he put it.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘He told me. He called me back and said he wanted to meet me urgently. He didn’t want anyone else around so we met on the road. In the morning, at the meeting, he’d been full of life. When I met him that second time he was scared, nervous. Willemse had threatened him. Told him he didn’t know what he was getting into. Said his father would end up in jail. Lesedi had hit back – said if his father was jailed, he’d make sure Willemse joined him there. He told me he had all the details. He said he could have emailed it to the papers right there and then if he had wanted to. He said he knew where the skeletons were buried.’

  ‘It still doesn’t mean they can actually pin anything on you, Kagiso,’ she said. ‘As far as I can make out, this is a fight between Lesedi, his father and Willemse.’

  ‘Wait, I’m not finished. Willemse had asked him, Lesedi, if he’d discussed going public with me. Lesedi had said yes. It was a lie. When he left the first time all he’d said to me was that he would do his best for the people. But he said he was so angry with Willemse he’d told him I knew all about the deals, how farmers were being bribed so they would keep quiet.’

  Lindi pressed the sides of her forehead with her fingertips. She was beginning to understand just how deeply Kagiso was implicated.

  ‘Apparently Willemse had said Soil of Africa was finished – I was finished. Lesedi told me Willemse was a thug – that was what he called him – and he was worried for me.’

  ‘Worried for you?’

  ‘That’s what he said, Ma. He said Willemse would stop at nothing. You see, as far as Willemse is concerned, I’m now on the list of those people who know how the deals are done and who’s doing them.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but it still doesn’t make sense. Willemse could have had you picked up at the funeral. If your take on what Lesedi said is right, why did they pass up the chance to pull you in?’

  ‘I’ve been wondering about that, Lindi. Maybe they thought they could take care of me later. Get everything lined up, link me to the sabotage, make a big deal of my arrest, full media fanfare. Their immediate concern was to make sure no one started to ask whether it was an inside job, a government-backed assassination. They had to make sure the blame was pinned on somebody else, anybody, as quickly as possible. And they succeeded. The Ponte on fire, the lynching of Mozambicans – it’s all going to plan.’

  ‘I’m not sure about this, Kagiso. You’re the one who hasn’t got any proof. All this is assuming that Willemse was behind Lesedi’s death. Would he really bump off the son of a man he’s doing business with?’

  ‘That man would kill his own mother for money.’ Khethiwe was now sitting on the drum of cooking oil. ‘Those people in Pretoria, they are all snakes.’

  ‘You’re right. I don’t have any proof. But one thing is for sure. I’m not going to find any if I get pulled in. They’ve been to my mother’s place during the night and …’ Kagiso remembered that he hadn’t told Khethiwe about the raid on her house in Malelane. He was looking at her now. ‘I took a call from Sissy this morning, just a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Oh, please, please, that child is not involved in this!’

  ‘No, she isn’t, but the police have been searching the house.’

  ‘What? The police have been in my house? I have to call that girl.’ Khethiwe was making for the door.

  Kagiso moved towards her. ‘You can’t. Please don’t do that,’ he begged.

  ‘You get that child into trouble and now you want to tell me I mustn’t speak to her. Eh? Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘She’s not in any trouble because she knows nothing, but she will be if you start calling her. The police are still there.’

  ‘In my house?’

  ‘In your house, at my office.’

  There was silence, as if the same thought descended on each of them simultaneously. Lindi gave voice to it. ‘Presumably it’s not going to take them long to work out Khethiwe owns this place as well. They’ll be wanting to question you next. Your niece Sessie may—’

  ‘Sissy, her name is Sissy.’

  ‘Sissy almost certainly would have had to tell them the house was yours, Khethiwe. Kagiso, did you tell Sissy that you were here?’

  ‘No. She doesn’t know where I am. I told her to tell anyone who asks that I’m in Jo’burg. But you’re right, they’ll be coming here next.’

  Lindi and Kagiso both looked at Khethiwe. The question was implied but was there nonetheless. Why would Khethiwe get involved?

  ‘What? You think I’m going to help them, the police?’

  ‘It’s just that, with your house being raided and all—’

  Khethiwe didn’t let Lindi finish. ‘You think that is going to scare me? Listen, madam,’ she spat the word, made it sound like filth, ‘when your parents were sitting in their fine houses we were being beaten and jailed. You think those boys in the police are going to scare me?’

  ‘That’s not fair, Khethiwe. Lindi’s parents were—’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Lindi said.

  Resistance came naturally to Khethiwe. It was a state of mind that was practically inbred, as it was in so many of her generation. They and their forebears had spent so much of their time resisting or thinking of resisting that it had become a default setting. It was a rebellious temperament that had been quelled since the end of apartheid but was resurfacing now that the future the likes of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu had promised appeared to be receding.

  For Khethiwe it was not Kagiso’s cause that worried her but what he might have done in its name.

  ‘There’s only one thing I need to know. Look at me, child,’ she said, turning to Kagiso. ‘You swear, like I am your mother, that you not involved in this killing of the Motlantshe boy?’

  ‘Ma Khethiwe, I swear. You think I could do such a thing? Anyway, like I said, Lesedi was ready to help us. Why would I kill him?’

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’

  ‘The first thing we have to do is get out of here,’ Kagiso said.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of Nelspruit, that’s for sure. For all we know Patel has already talked to the police …’

  ‘Patel? Who’s Patel?’

  ‘You know, the businessman I was supposed to be meeting this morning. The one I mentioned on the phone. I think he’s probably okay but—’

  Ma Khethiwe interrupted their duet. ‘Patel? An Indian? Those fellows, they are only interested in making money.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure about that. I did think he was a bit creepy to start with …’

  ‘Crippy? What is that?’

  ‘Sorry, Khethiwe. Creepy. It means suspicious, I thought he was suspicious but—’

  ‘Look, whether he’s suspicious or not we just can’t take any risks,’ Kagiso
said. ‘It’s time to move. Maybe back to Jo’burg?’

  Lindi shook her head. ‘There are checkpoints everywhere. They were searching vehicles when I came yesterday. Most of the buses and cars were coming this way and they were full of Mozambicans and their bundles.’

  ‘They were taking money,’ Khethiwe said, as if it were a matter of fact, like conductors checking tickets. ‘These people, these Mozambicans, they’re scared. They going to give all their money to get to the border. The police are getting rich.’

  ‘Maybe that’s a safer bet,’ Kagiso said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe you and I should get out, go over.’

  ‘And then what?’ said Lindi. ‘What you’ve got to do, what we’ve got to do, is prove that you had nothing to do with Lesedi’s murder, and that he was ready to expose the land deals. You’re not going to do that sitting in Mozambique, on the other side of the border.’

  ‘She’s right.’ Khethiwe was beginning to warm to Lindi. ‘But you have to get out of here now-now.’

  ‘Okay.’ Kagiso stood up with the look of a man who intended to take charge. ‘Here’s what we’ll do. Let’s head to Komatipoort – it’s a small place, a border town, perfect to get out if we have to.’

  He looked at Lindi. ‘I know it a bit, I’ve passed through it many times for my work. It’ll be pretty chaotic with all these Mozambicans and that should work for us. We’ve got to assume they, the police, think I’m still in Johannesburg. Let’s stay the night in Komatipoort and work out what to do.’

  ‘How do we get there?’

  ‘There are taxis going there always,’ said Khethiwe. ‘I know one of the drivers very well. I can ask him to take you.’

  ‘No, no. We’ve got to be more random. But there is one thing you can do for us, Ma. We need a new SIM.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A new phone number. There’s a Stax back up towards the station. Just say you need a new phone. Get the cheapest, most basic one they have. They’ll ask you what sort of deal you want. Say pay-as-you-go. You can tell them it’s a gift for a relative or something. Don’t use a Stax bag. Buy some bread and oranges and stuff and put the phone in with them. Go to the taxi rank and I’ll look out for you. Lindi, you and I’ll go there separately. You need to change your clothes, and if you’ve got a hat, put it on. At the taxi rank just say you want to go to Mozambique. Komatipoort is the last stop on the SA side. Aim to get a taxi leaving in about forty-five minutes. I’ll be watching, I’ll try to get on the same taxi but don’t look at me or talk to me. If we get separated, just head for a café or bar in Komatipoort and I will find you.’

  Lindi was transfixed, no longer really listening to what Kagiso was saying but how he was saying it. In an instant, she had seen why others might follow him.

  19

  Priscilla Motlantshe had not gone to sleep on the night after the funeral. She’d left her husband, drunk and dead to the world, and gone upstairs to Lesedi’s room. She’d stayed there, lying on his bed, clutching his pillow. She had gone through her last conversation with him over and over again. It was as if she were trying to fashion a different ending, like a storyteller wanting to leave her audience feeling happy and wholesome.

  If only she’d done something different at the time. She could have confronted Jake Willemse. Or told Josiah everything when she’d called him and asked him to come back to South Africa. Could she really have prevented his … She could barely bring herself to acknowledge what had happened. Immediately after Lesedi’s death, and before the funeral, her friends had told her not to read the papers or go to the websites that were reporting the details. But the visions kept crashing in. They had invaded her mind, filling it with horror and doubt. In the end she had persuaded one of her relatives to tell her what had happened. Even that sanitised version had left her gasping, drowning in a tide of pain that she felt as keenly as if the wounds had been inflicted on her own body. She’d barely eaten anything since then, nibbling at food when the girls had had their meals.

  At the funeral she’d had a sensation that she wasn’t really there. She’d gone through the motions and emotions without being conscious of what she was doing. She’d felt as if she was on a different plain, in a state of emotional limbo, somewhere between life and death. And then, when Josiah had announced his business plans, it had been like a shot of adrenaline: she had been catapulted back into the real world.

  That had been two days earlier. Now Priscilla Motlantshe was alone in the house, except for the staff. She sat on the edge of the vast bed that she and her husband used but no longer shared. Not for the first time, she reminisced about how much simpler, more intimate, their lives had been when all they could afford was a mattress on the floor.

  The girls had gone back to school, their first day since their brother had been killed. The head teacher at the American International School, where the children of South Africa’s burgeoning middle class and the offspring of the country’s growing expatriate population came together, had assured her that the school counsellor would be on hand to help them through what would be a difficult few weeks. Before he’d left, Josiah had said, rather grandly, that they could take as much time off school as they wanted. Priscilla had let it pass. She knew different. She knew that routine would bring its own comfort.

  As for herself, Priscilla knew that the old pattern – allowing Josiah to get on with his life so long as he didn’t bring it into the home – had to stop. She had to come off the fence and take sides. And she’d decided that if the consequence was the unravelling – final and irrevocable – of her marriage to him, it was a price she was willing to pay. Anything, she decided, was preferable to allowing Willemse, whom she’d never trusted, to get away with being responsible for the death of her only son. She’d convinced herself that he was to blame. Hadn’t Lesedi implied that Willemse had threatened him?

  Once in the last couple of days, when she had hit the nadir of her emotional collapse, she had even thought her husband might have been involved. She had rejected that. Josiah was many things but he was not a murderer.

  Whatever Lesedi had known, she was going to make public. In all the enervating confusion of the last few days that was the one thing she had got right, the one thing she’d been sure of. All she had to go on was Lesedi’s fateful boast – ‘I do understand, Mom. I’ve got the accounts, the files, the letters. I’ve got copies of it all.’

  Immediately after that call with Lesedi Priscilla had gone to his room and searched it from top to bottom. She’d imagined a stash of papers – nothing. In the end she’d grabbed his laptop, the cables and the satchel in which he usually carried it. She had acted on pure instinct. He was always using the thing. Perhaps that was where he’d kept his secrets.

  She stared at the laptop now, having retrieved it from a cupboard in the guest wing of the house. Priscilla had no idea what to do with it. She had never used a computer in her life. And even if she knew how to turn it on she didn’t know what she was looking for.

  She needed help. It dawned on Priscilla that almost anyone she could turn to would be someone who was beholden to Josiah. That was how it worked. Like a contemporary version of the ancient kings and chiefs, who had held sway before the onslaught of the settlers, Josiah had dispensed his patronage far and wide. In return he received unquestioning allegiance. There was no one she could trust.

  But perhaps there was someone Lesedi had trusted. The charity worker, the man Lesedi had seen on his last day. Lesedi had been full of admiration for him. She remembered now that she had met him briefly at the funeral. Kagiso, that was his name. Kagiso Rapabane. Now she wished she’d quizzed him more carefully. At the time it had seemed enough to know that she had met someone Lesedi had found for himself, and someone who seemed to respect her son for what, rather than who, he was.

  She had to find him. She needed a phone number. Priscilla covered the laptop with a pillow and walked across the upstairs hallway to Lesedi’s room. She looked at the cardboard carton
on the desk: it was no bigger than a shoebox. On the lid someone had written ‘Personal Effects’ followed by a number. No name, just a number. The sum total of her son’s life reduced to a standard-issue police box. She hesitated. She hadn’t wanted to open it until now.

  Priscilla took the lid off carefully, as if she were dismantling a ticking time bomb. The silver chain and cross, a gift to mark his confirmation, was cold to the touch. What was it doing in here? Why wasn’t he allowed to take it with him? Priscilla imagined rough hands in some dingy police room ripping the chain off her son’s neck. She shivered. There were some coins, his handkerchief, still neatly pressed, his sunglasses, his watch and his car keys. Priscilla looked at the silver fob. She remembered Lesedi getting it made to his design. On one side there was a miniature engraving of the family, on the other an extract from Nelson Mandela’s famous speech from the dock. It was a facsimile of the handwritten document he’d seen in a museum, barely legible to the naked eye but perfect in every detail.

  ‘It is an ideal for which I have lived. It is an ideal for which I still hope to live and see realised. But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.’

  Even Mandela’s corrections were there. Lesedi had had it etched in Germany, a laser-something, he’d said.

  But there was no phone.

  Priscilla sat down in front of the desk. She wondered whether the police had kept it or whether Josiah had taken it. She thought back to the funeral. The Premier of Mpumalanga, Jeremiah Mhlanga, had given her the box personally. He’d made quite a show of it. The police had wanted to keep all of Lesedi’s things, he’d said, but he’d insisted that they hang on only to what was essential to the investigation. The box had sat on her lap on the journey back from Soweto and she’d brought it up to this room that very evening. Josiah had been too drunk when he’d got back and he’d left first thing in the morning. The Mpumalanga police must have kept the phone. They had all Lesedi’s contacts, including, she presumed, Kagiso Rapabane’s number.

  Priscilla decided to call the Premier of Mpumalanga. What would be more natural than a grieving mother enquiring about how the hunt for her son’s murderer was going?