by Tony Park
Sara looked miffed, but she was raring to go.
Mia worked the bolt on the .375-calibre hunting rifle, took five rounds from the hand-tooled cartridge belt around her waist and loaded the weapon. She rammed the bolt home, then passed the weapon to Bongani. He gave her the panga.
As they set off, she wondered what had happened to the poacher’s rifle.
Chapter 3
Jeff Beaton sat opposite the two men in camouflage fatigues in the room that served as the kitchen and meal room for the anti-poaching rangers at Lion Plains Game Reserve.
The place had the feel of a military camp, the vibe enhanced by the webbing gear and LM5 semi-automatic assault rifles waiting expectantly beside the dining table and the radio in the corner that occasionally hissed to life with updates about a poacher being pursued.
Jeff guessed the younger of the two men he was interviewing, Graham Foster, was close to his own age, twenty-six. Foster checked his chunky watch.
‘I won’t take too much of your time, I promise,’ Jeff said as he opened his laptop. ‘I imagine you’re keen to join in the pursuit of the poacher.’
‘We’re on standby,’ Foster said, ‘so, like, sorry, bru, if we have to split. You’re American?’
‘Canadian. A common mistake.’
‘Sorry, no offence.’ Foster held up his hands.
‘None taken. Happens all the time.’
Jeff typed Graham Foster’s name into the survey form on his screen. ‘And Oscar . . .’
‘Mdluli,’ the older man said. He looked to be in his early thirties.
Jeff entered the details. ‘Thanks for your time, guys. As you’ve probably been briefed, my studies focus on the use of imithi – you know, traditional medicine – by poachers, and –’
‘Primitive bullshit.’ Foster took a toothpick from the container on the table, leaned back in his chair and started picking his teeth.
Oscar folded his arms. Jeff looked at him and raised his eyebrows. ‘Oscar?’
‘Yes?’
‘What do you think?’
‘About what?’ He glanced sideways at his younger white partner, who looked up at the ceiling.
Jeff consulted the survey form he had prepared. ‘In the course of your duties, when you have apprehended or otherwise encountered a poacher, how often, if ever, have you encountered evidence of the poacher using umuthi?’
‘Otherwise encountered?’ Oscar asked.
‘Slotted,’ Foster weighed in.
‘Slotted?’ Jeff asked.
‘Killed, right? That’s what you mean by “otherwise encountered”, as in the ones that get shot, as opposed to the ones we catch.’
Jeff shrugged. ‘It’s open to interpretation.’
‘Like your study. Look, man, no offence, again, but this stuff is nonsense, hocus-pocus. Izangoma, the traditional healers, sell the poachers magic charms to make them invisible, to turn our bullets to water, to make the magistrates and the judges in the courts fall asleep, or the prosecutors lose their evidence. These people are preying on the poachers’ ignorance and stupidity.’
Jeff looked to Oscar again, who shrugged.
‘Oscar, how often have you encountered –’
‘All the time,’ Oscar said.
‘Umuthi?’ Jeff asked, starting to make notes.
Oscar spoke evenly, quietly: ‘This is our culture, our beliefs, the way we are, that we are talking about,’ he looked to his partner briefly, ‘not people selling something to gullible people.’
‘Kak, man.’ Foster looked to Jeff. ‘Translation: bullshit.’
Oscar turned to Graham. ‘You go to church every Sunday that you are not on duty, and you have a Bible, yes?’
‘Of course, man. I’m a Christian, like you say you are.’
‘I am a Christian. You came to my son’s baptism.’
Foster nodded. ‘I did. So, don’t tell me you believe in this rubbish.’
Oscar looked to Jeff again. ‘Faith is invisible, yes?’
‘Absolutely,’ Jeff said.
‘We believe certain things, in religion, to be absolute,’ Oscar went on, ‘even if we cannot scientifically prove them.’
Foster rolled his eyes. ‘Here we go again.’
Oscar continued, ignoring his partner. ‘The poachers believe in the . . . the talismans they are given, the spells. That is the important thing. It gives them confidence. A confident enemy is an effective soldier.’
‘What about your beliefs?’ Jeff asked.
Oscar looked down at the table, across to Foster, then back at Jeff. ‘They are my business.’
Jeff nodded. ‘For sure, I understand and respect that,’ he made eye contact with Foster, ‘and I’m not here to judge anyone.’
‘Nor am I, bru.’ Foster reached over and grabbed Oscar’s shoulder and squeezed it. Then he threw back his head and laughed.
Oscar exhaled. ‘There are some things that cannot be explained.’
Jeff typed into his laptop. ‘Such as?’
‘We were tracking a man, a couple of weeks ago, and –’
‘Sjoe, not that one again, bru.’
‘Please,’ Jeff said to Foster, ‘I’m interested in what Oscar has to say.’
Foster held his hands up in surrender again, then leaned back in his chair and went back to picking his teeth.
‘We followed a man to a mostly dry spruit, the Manzini, near where there is a waterhole. I was tracking him, his footsteps quite clear, and then we came to a place where there was water, a little bit . . . and he disappeared.’
‘You lost the spoor,’ Foster said under his breath, toothpick resting on his lower lip.
Oscar glared at his partner. ‘I did not lose anything.’
Foster shrugged. ‘So the guy backtracked.’
‘He was not backtracking,’ Oscar said.
‘How do you know?’ Jeff asked.
‘Even the best, most skilled poacher who backtracks will eventually put a foot wrong, he will step so that his foot is not exactly in the first track he made. I checked. He was not walking backwards.’
‘Right,’ Foster gave an exaggerated nod, ‘he ascended to heaven, or was beamed up by aliens.’
Jeff thought about the two men’s testimony. ‘Could he have gone upward? Was there a low-hanging branch of a tree or something like that?’
‘No,’ the other two said in unison.
At least they agreed on something.
‘You said there was water there, in the dry “sprite”, is that how you say it?’
‘Close enough. Creek, to you,’ Foster said. ‘Where there is water, poachers will walk along a stream and then exit somewhere downstream or upstream to try to confuse a tracker or throw a dog off the scent. We then cast up and down the far side until we find his spoor – his tracks, as you would say.’
Jeff nodded. ‘I see. And what did you find?’
They looked at each other. ‘Nothing,’ Oscar said.
Foster spread his hands wide. ‘What can we say? Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. The oke could have taken off his shoes, swept the sand, used a pole and pole-vaulted for all we know. It’s never easy to track in sand. Maybe we just didn’t try hard enough.’
Jeff looked to Oscar, whose mouth was crinkled into a frown. ‘What do you think, Oscar?’
Oscar looked up from the tabletop and into his eyes. ‘That man, he disappeared.’
‘You think he had help? Some medicine – some muthi?’
‘Sheesh, Oscar,’ Foster interrupted. ‘It’s bad enough these simple poachers believe this stuff, but you?’
Jeff made a mental note to interview the anti-poaching rangers individually from now on. Foster’s scepticism was intimidating Oscar, or so he thought.
‘I was confused that day, when I saw those tracks disappear,�
�� Oscar said.
‘Babelaas, more like it,’ his partner scoffed.
‘I was not hungover.’
‘Sorry, man,’ Foster said, then chuckled.
‘Izangoma, they give the poachers imithi not just to protect them, but also to affect us, to make us not see clearly, to confuse us.’
Jeff nodded. ‘So I’ve heard. Was there any indication you picked up, while you were following him, that he might have been using umuthi?’
Foster reached in his breast pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘If you don’t need me any more, I’m going outside for a smoke.’
‘Fine with me,’ Jeff said, ‘thanks for your time.’ Thanks for nothing, he meant, though to be fair, Foster was entitled to his beliefs and he was not alone in them. Many people saw the whole business of umuthi as a rip-off, a con played by izangoma against scared men who were risking their lives to hunt rhinos.
‘Do you think you were affected by the poacher’s muthi, Oscar?’
Oscar looked to the door, perhaps to make sure Foster was out of earshot, then back at Jeff. ‘I do not know. I can track a man, but I am telling you, this man, he disappeared. We cast along the water, both sides, upstream and downstream, and there was nothing. I felt sick that night.’
‘Sick? You were ill?’
‘Yes.’ Oscar patted his stomach. ‘I was not right inside, you know? But that morning I was fine. I wondered if it was umuthi. You asked about evidence?’
‘Yes.’
‘I did see a sign, near the last track of the man we were following.’
‘What was it?’
‘Some string, like a small rope, made from bark that had been stripped from a tree and braided. It had been laid across the track.’
‘What did that mean?’
Again, Oscar looked to the door. He ran a tongue over his lips. ‘Danger.’
Jeff was confused. ‘Do you mean it was a threat?’
Oscar shrugged. ‘It was a spell.’ He straightened, sitting taller in his chair. ‘I was not afraid of this man or his magic.’
‘Of course.’ Jeff made some more notes. ‘What happened, after you lost the man?’
Foster walked back into the room, his cigarette finished, and he was carrying a green canvas satchel bag. ‘What happened was that we found a dead rhino, covered with branches. The poachers do that so the carcass can’t be seen from the air, by helicopters or by vultures.’
‘Vultures?’ Jeff said.
Foster nodded. ‘Often that’s the first notice we get of a rhino being killed – the vultures will spot the dead animal and lead us to it. Poachers hate vultures; sometimes they even poison them deliberately just to take them out of the game.’
‘The man you were tracking killed the rhino?’ Jeff asked Oscar.
Oscar nodded, a grave look on his face. ‘Yes, we picked up his tracks by the carcass. It was the same man.’
‘And he vanished.’ Foster snapped his fingers. ‘Poof, into thin air. Magic.’
Oscar looked up at him.
Foster again put his hand on Oscar’s shoulder. ‘It’s not your fault, bru. We’ve all been outsmarted by these bastards one time or another, but we’ll catch that one and we’ll drill him, hey?’
Oscar gave a small nod.
‘Do you know,’ Foster locked eyes with Jeff, ‘that there are now more gunfights per year in the greater Kruger Park – including here – than there were at the height of the old South African Defence Force’s war in Namibia?’
‘I did not know that,’ Jeff said. ‘Do you ever get scared, Graham? Do you pray for protection?’
‘God is on our side,’ Foster said, his eyes not wavering from Jeff’s. ‘Of that I have no doubt. You can write that in your laptop.’
Jeff nodded. ‘I will. Belief systems play a role in many conflicts. In some, like the fighting in the Middle East, and in extremist terrorism, they’re the root cause.’
‘You know they tried to get izangoma on side, in the Kruger Park?’ Foster said.
Jeff knew what Foster was referring to, but he wanted to hear his take on it. ‘Really?’
‘Ja. They called all these witch doctors together for an indaba, a big meeting, and urged them not to supply umuthi to poachers. It was all a PR stunt.’
‘You don’t think it did any good?’ Jeff asked.
Foster shook his head and rubbed his thumb against his forefinger and middle finger together. ‘It’s all about money. Those guys will say one thing and then charge some dumb poacher a fortune for a spell or some potion or whatever to keep him safe.’
‘I have seen pictures, videos, on Facebook,’ Oscar interjected, ‘of American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq taking communion before they go into battle. Isn’t that the same thing?’
‘No.’ Foster slapped the table. ‘Those men are praying that if they get killed, they will go to heaven.’
‘Not for protection?’ Jeff asked.
Foster shrugged. ‘Well, maybe.’
‘Then it’s the same thing,’ Oscar said to his partner.
‘But,’ Foster said, ‘they’re not paying for it. This is about izangoma conning people who don’t know any better.’
Oscar said nothing, but he looked to Jeff like he was seething. Jeff decided he had definitely better keep these interviews to one on one in the future. He needed to change the subject. ‘You said you had some samples to show me, of stuff you’d confiscated from poachers?’
‘Sure,’ Foster said. He went to a storeroom adjoining the mess area and came back with a cardboard filing box. He set it down on the table, took off the lid and rummaged inside. Oscar pushed his chair back from the table.
Jeff craned forward to see what was inside.
Foster started taking out some of the objects, laid them on the table and gestured to them with a sweep of his hand. ‘Check.’
Jeff could see thin brown roots, a bundle of leaves and a snuff container. There was also a small pouch, decorated with what looked like hyena hairs on the top; it was partly open with dark powder inside. There was also a length of string or wool, dyed red and knotted in places.
‘This was gathered as evidence, but the cops don’t need it any more,’ Foster said.
‘We should put this away,’ Oscar said.
Curious, Jeff picked up the length of string. He looked to Oscar. ‘Do you mind?’
Oscar shrugged. ‘It’s fine.’
‘This is a xitsungulu, right? Hunting band?’
Oscar raised his shirt to show he wore a similar thing above his hips. ‘Not just for hunting, for protection.’
Graham stared at the ceiling and exhaled.
‘Cool,’ Jeff said. ‘The Catholic church has a similar tradition, with people wearing a scapular.’
Oscar lowered his shirt. ‘We take this stuff seriously.’
‘I respect your feelings, Oscar,’ Jeff said, next examining the pouch. ‘I’d like to find out what this is made from and what its significance is.’
‘Its significance,’ Foster said, taking up a clump of dried roots, then grinding them up between his hands, ‘is kak.’
‘No!’ Oscar reached for Foster, who brushed the fragments from his hands, stood and ground them into the cement floor with the heel of his boot.
Jeff looked down at his laptop screen.
‘Don’t do that, man,’ Oscar said to Foster.
Graham stared at him, mouth half open, and started blinking.
‘Aaagh . . .’
Jeff looked up.
Foster was clutching his chest near his heart with two hands. His legs began shaking and he dropped to his knees, head slumped forward.
Oscar sprang to his feet, as did Jeff.
‘Is there a medic or someone here?’ Jeff asked.
Foster was rolling on the floor, groaning
.
Oscar dropped to one knee beside his partner and put a hand on his chest. ‘Tell me what’s wrong!’
Jeff went to the door of the dining room. ‘Help, help!’
Foster shuddered once more, and was then still.
Jeff darted around the dining table to get to the young man, who looked to be unconscious. ‘Heart attack?’
Then Foster thrust an arm up and grabbed Oscar by the shirtfront and started laughing.
Oscar fell back, out of reach, gasping. ‘You scared me to death.’
Foster sat up. ‘Got you!’
Jeff sat on the floor of the dining room, waiting for his heart rate to settle.
Oscar, to his surprise, joined in, laughing heartily as he helped Foster to his feet and embraced him.
Jeff shook his head. These anti-poaching guys were crazy.
The radio on the table hissed. ‘Kaya Nghala, this is Sean, over.’
Graham wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes and took up the handset. ‘Sean, this is Kaya Nghala, go.’
‘Graham, I’m trying to raise your new helicopter pilot, Mike someone, over.’
Graham pressed the send button. ‘Ja, Mike de Vries. Sorry, Sean, he tells me the bird’s gone to the mechanics in Nelspruit again. Bloody thing seems to be on the ground more than it’s in the air these days.’
‘Copy, thanks, Graham.’
Jeff wondered if the helicopter was needed to chase the poacher on the loose in the reserve. Graham told Sean he would send the pilot a WhatsApp message and then he and Oscar began going through a check of their gear, readying for battle. Jeff took his cue to leave them to it.
*
Mike de Vries had his phone in a car mount in front of him, on the control panel of Julianne Clyde-Smith’s Robinson R44 helicopter. He saw the message flash onto the screen but ignored it, concentrating instead on safely landing on the neatly manicured lawn in front of a sprawling faux-Tuscan manor.
The house was set in the rolling hills on the Sabie Road between the quaint historic town of the same name and Hazyview, the rather chaotic tourist town that serviced the Sabi Sand Game Reserve, the Kruger Park and the surrounding villages and farming areas.
Even before Mike had settled into the grass he saw Elizabeth stride from the house to meet him. Mike settled the chopper and let the engine run, blades still turning above him, to cool down. That didn’t stop Elizabeth Oosthuizen.