by Zeilig, Leo;
Viktor was thinking hard on these questions; the silence persisted. Slowly the expectations of the group gave way to resignation: their speaker, this oracle, could not help them. There was a further round of queries. ‘What are the UK’s interests in Zimbabwe?’ asked someone. ‘Do you think a real, anti-neoliberal alternative can be built here, opposed to both the MDC and ZANU?’ A woman whose hair was swept back into a bun asked, ‘Was Mugabe right to seize the land?’
In place of Viktor, Biko spoke. ‘First, comrades, I don’t support Cuba. There are no independent trade unions. What sort of socialism is that? A socialism where workers can’t organise? They don’t even have what we have in Zimbabwe. Guevara believed in guerrilla struggle, it was his prescription for everything. Armed struggle. Liberation delivered by war. Sankara was an army captain, a good man, but his revolution was a coup. Hani was a brutal ANC hack. For each of them, a revolution from above. Biko and Fanon have much to teach us. UK interests in Zimbabwe? Extensive. Donor funding; political interference; pressure to obey the dogs who have consumed us. Only by directly taking on these dogs, the imperialists, in X- and Y-Party, the fakers, can we build an alternative.’
Then, without pausing, Biko added, ‘I think Viktor is tired and needs to rest. Remember,’ he said laughing, speaking loudly, effortlessly, ‘these comrades are not as tough as us. They haven’t been tested by the African sun or the armed struggle.’
He grabbed Viktor’s shoulder, pulled him through the small group and started to move to the gate and the exit. The movement, the blinding light, unlocked at last an opinion and Viktor spoke to the group: ‘How can Cuba be socialist when it oppresses its gay community?’
The small crowd exploded into speech. A pack of storks flew into the air from the surrounding trees.
‘Exactly!’ Biko exclaimed. Relieved, he slapped Viktor hard on the back.
Viktor didn’t do much better than this one statement, but his hesitancy, his resolute indecision on all meta-questions, on the historical epic, the total narrative posed by the group, drew them nearer to him. Perhaps, he thought, they need my doubt to articulate and fix their certainty, my infernal alternatives to assert their own faith. Maybe they needed to see the slight, puny reasoning of an Englander.
*
‘Stand up.’
Hitler spoke quietly. Biko was still holding his head. Hitler signalled to his colleague who grabbed the chair and tipped it back. The legs skidded on the tiled floor and the chair fell. Biko crashed to the floor, writhed on the ground and struggled to get up. The policemen kicked him expertly. The thud of the boot into Biko’s ribs jolted Viktor, who jumped and stood. Hitler moved quickly to him and held him back with an outstretched hand.
Biko stood, holding his side. He shouted in Shona, ‘Ibvai pano, imbwa dzavanhu!’
The heavy officer reached for him. Biko jerked back. The two officers moved towards Biko.
The policeman who had pulled the chair and kicked him was now screaming, ‘Tinoda kukudzidzisa chidzidzo, ndiwe uchataurira vamwe kuti hazviitwe!’
Viktor tried to get to Biko, just to reach him and help. ‘What are you doing? He hasn’t done anything. It’s me you want, it’s fucking me!’ he shouted.
Hitler lunged at Viktor, missed him, stumbled, tripped. His glasses fell on the floor. ‘Mr Englander, this is what we do in Zimbabwe.’ He remained calm, picked up his glasses and approached Viktor. ‘This is our way. Now you watch.’
Viktor cried, ‘Get off him. Do you know who I am? What I’ll do? You fucking thugs. Don’t you know your fucking messiah is going to fall? He is hated. You are all hated.’
Biko’s back was to the wall. The three men were kicking him. He tried pathetically to dodge their blows and, with inchoate jabs of his feet and fists, to fight back.
Viktor thought of a fox hunt, of a cornered, cowering fox, his burrow dug up, dogs surrounding him, as he snarled and snapped at the impossible odds, the inevitable end.
Hitler, beads of sweat on his forehead, came quickly to Viktor, who tried to stand between the dogs and the fox, to stave the first blood.
‘Now, just watch, Mr Englander,’ Hitler continued. ‘Just watch and then tell your British queen that we don’t want her interfering here.’
Hitler dragged Viktor by the collar. His shirt slid up his throat and choked him. He heard the pop of buttons as the material gave way. Viktor flailed and pulled until the shirt was entirely open. He now felt a hand to his throat and heard Hitler grunt as he was thrown against the wall. He tried to push the hand away but couldn’t. Viktor thought he was going to vomit and faint. The force against his throat slowed his movements. When he was still, the hand loosened slightly so he could breathe again, focus on the scene.
The dogs, tired of goading and coaxing the fox, had drawn their batons – the same long sticks that Viktor had seen outlined against the sky days ago, like swords, he thought. Biko was silent. His efforts at self-defence, the principles of counter-attack, had exhausted him. He bent over so that his back, legs and buttocks faced the torrent of blows. The police hit, their arms moving in great arching strokes, drawing down on Biko’s back in chaotic, hammering unison, the only sound in the room their grunts.
With Hitler Viktor stared, the two of them, it seemed to him afterwards, like twin accomplices, watching the spectacle together.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In a dishevelled street, dirty and potholed, with the stink of a broken sewer, they ate from a pavement stall. A woman served sadza from a large aluminium pot over a makeshift campfire burning confidently on the tarmac. Viktor’s suggestion that they eat in a high street café was dismissed with a roar of disapproval by the group.
‘You must eat like we do,’ replied a slight, hollow-chested student, his bamboo frame confirmation of what this would mean.
Viktor paid and they feasted together, shaded in the squalid, narrow alley. The group hunched, bent, eating with their hands from their plastic plates, mopping the sauce and the thin strips of chicken with the sadza. Viktor felt for the second time since his arrival that morning that he was pleased he’d come. He was standing, his plastic plate in his hand, feeling the sadza press gently against his stomach, the joy of being full and wanting, he realised for the first time in years, to be nowhere but where he was. Most of the group finished eating and lay on the pavement, their plates beside them.
When the police appeared it was as though they had been transported from another city and era. What surprised Viktor about what happened next was that they fought. He had seen arrests and police violence in London, on the demonstrations he had supported from a safe ideological distance, then written about – as Tendai had observed: ‘A fucking armchair revolutionary, not even a revolutionary, just an armchair. You are just an armchair, Viktor, a blogger pontificating from your cushioned throne.’ But this was different. When the police attacked, all he could think was, They are trying to kill us. No one thrashes three-foot batons with such force who does not have death, somewhere, on the agenda.
There were twenty policemen, a few more sealing the road with rifles. To Viktor’s mind they had been sent to kill this group of students and this white, long-limbed primate hatching revolt, Cuban-style.
In London, Viktor thought, as the shaded alley was suddenly occupied by police, the sound of sirens rebounding off the buildings, we throw bottles from a distance and accept when we are outnumbered – yet here, here where the stakes are higher, they fight. What else could explain the way the group, almost as if to plan, organised themselves in his defence?
‘Quick, Biko, Tapera!’ The young woman, Eleanor, was the first to her feet. ‘Get rid of Viktor.’
Biko tumbled, losing his footing, and moved towards Viktor. The others, acting together, stood quickly, plates scattering on the ground, and stood in front of Biko and Viktor. At the end of the street, in the light, the police shouted something Viktor couldn’t understand. As they rushed forward out of the sunlight and into the darkened street, they seemed to disa
ppear into the shadows until they could be seen a moment later running in broken formation with their batons drawn. The sadza seller grabbed the oversized pot, kicked out the fire and tried to run holding the enormous scalding pan, panicked not for her own safety but for her income, her plastic plates, the wood, the fire.
Biko seized Viktor and pulled him in the direction of the scattering crowd, the other customers. ‘Why don’t we all run?’ Viktor shouted. ‘Or why don’t we just stand our ground and explain that we haven’t done anything?’
‘That’s not how it works, comrade,’ Biko said, breathless, yanking Viktor harder.
Now only metres separated the two groups: the policemen holding their weapons aloft, his friends waiting, unarmed, their fists clenched.
Tapera turned sideward to a policeman, his right leg forward, his arm out and hand closed into a fist. The others did the same. The student who had insisted Viktor eat with them held his ground and shouted, ‘Qina Msebenzi Qina!’ and then, ridiculously, unbelievably, charged the police. He was the first down, struck on the head and then beaten over and over again.
The last thing Viktor saw, as Biko part-dragged, part-carried him in his arms, was Tapera snatching the baton as it came down, pulling hard until he was next to the policeman and then, still gripping the baton, kicking the man in the stomach. The policeman, winded, released his cudgel. Before Viktor was finally wrenched away, from the corner of his eye he saw Tapera wield the stick over his head, shout something and try to make his way to a fallen comrade.
*
Hitler had taken a book from Viktor’s bag and, still holding his captive with one hand, the diminutive, thickset policeman held up the book and read: ‘The native cures himself of colonial neurosis by thrusting out the settler through force of arms. When his rage boils over, he rediscovers his lost innocence and he comes to know himself in that he himself creates his self.’ Staring Viktor directly in the eyes, Hitler smiled.
The blows sliced the air, cut the room into photographic stills; the violence a movie in slow motion, each image a minor distinguishing frame. Within a few seconds one policeman gave up and rested on his bent knees, panting. Biko was still crouched over, clenching his arms, tensing his muscles. The second officer continued to rain blows. The sound echoed through the room.
Even this man, fitter than his colleague, was tiring. Is this all? Viktor thought. Is this all they’re going to do?
Viktor gripped Hitler’s wrist with his two arms, struggled to move it from his throat. Hitler dropped his arm and moved away.
‘You fucking cowards. You idiots. You know you will regret this!’ Viktor rushed towards Biko, leant down to his friend, still shouting. ‘You fucking thugs, you know I’m a writer and I’m going to expose you!’ Then quietly, in a whisper, ‘Are you okay?’ Viktor muttered into Biko’s ear. The smell of sweat and fear made him recoil slightly. He put his hand gently on his friend’s back. Biko gasped. ‘Get a fucking doctor, you monsters. Now!’ Viktor shouted, turning his head to the policemen.
‘Be quiet,’ Biko hissed, breathless, ‘just keep calm. They have been looking for me.’
Biko’s voice was so faint Viktor had to move closer. His cheek touched Biko’s. ‘What, what did you say?’ All he could hear was Biko’s pained breathing. Each time his chest heaved and he inhaled more air, he let out a thin, suppressed sigh.
‘Get a fucking doctor. You have broken his ribs. He can’t breathe.’
*
‘Why did they fight against these odds?’
‘Because you can’t show you are afraid. If you do it will be worse when they arrest you. They will beat you harder. We have to fight, men and women, no difference. Fight,’ Biko had replied to Viktor as they ran.
When they were out of the knotted alleyways, back into the bleached, white sunshine, the sprint gave way to a gentle amble.
‘Surely we should have all run,’ Viktor persisted.
‘Then we would all have been arrested, comrade, and you would have been sent back to the UK.’
Viktor, the park-wizard, had been seen preaching under the old Rhodesian bandstand where white couples had once danced, asserting their superiority. The police had been alerted because of him, his hooked frame, his pale face, taller even than Biko – taller than anyone else, a human lighthouse that drew people near so they could be torn to pieces at the rocks of his feet.
Biko and Viktor were now walking, moving between hawkers selling batteries and cheap radios on pavement stalls of flattened cardboard. Viktor’s chest heaved and he fought to hold back tears. They had kept the police away, he knew, for him.
*
Viktor felt himself being pulled away from Biko’s side by the two policemen. He was dragged and lifted from the ground to the back of the room. The movement was sudden; he didn’t react. When he was pinned against the wall Hitler came up to him, put an arm up to his shoulder, leant forward and said in a soft, deep voice that almost sounded comforting, ‘Mr Englander, I don’t like you. You have no right to interfere in our country. Here no one cares about you.’
Viktor struggled once more, lifted a leg, tried to knee Hitler.
‘Leave him. He’s done nothing.’ Biko spoke, raised himself, his face creased in agony, his voice shrill and taut. ‘Viktor, comrade!’ he cried.
Viktor continued to move his legs, pushing, trying to make contact. Hitler pressed against him so that Viktor could feel his large, firm stomach and smell his acrid, piercing breath. Then he felt Hitler’s hand grip his penis and testicles and hold them hard.
For a second Viktor stopped thinking. The interrogation, the violence, the hand to his throat, Biko’s beating, had a fantastical logic that could be incorporated into his conceptual vocabulary, but not this grip that felt simultaneously comforting and violent. Hitler tightened his grip, massaging his fingers around Viktor’s groin.
Quietly this time, Viktor said, ‘Get off.’ Then, a little louder, he repeated, ‘Get off me.’
‘Leave him!’ Biko screamed through his pain.
*
Two mornings later the papers reported the events and included a peculiar, opaque quote from the president. Nothing for Viktor symbolised the breakdown of Zimbabwe more profoundly than Mugabe’s comment on the ‘Protests and Arrests in Bulawayo’. Why would this mighty statesman, this man of the anti-imperialist chimurenga fighting in the last great battle of the continent, bother to comment on these arrests? Weren’t these inconsequential students in an inconsequential provincial city? The president expressed his regret at having to ‘teach these students a lesson’. The paper reported that ‘President Mugabe castigated the so-called radicals now emerging in Bulawayo, who, he said, called themselves revolutionaries but fought for nothing more than sadza and more allowances.’
All the students had been arrested.
Biko and Viktor shared a bed and a single blanket in a city squat. Viktor laid the few clothes he had brought with him on the sheetless mattress and tucked his trousers into his socks. Biko fell into an instant and deep sleep, but not before he had spoken about their struggles at the university. His comrades were being tortured, bludgeoned, on Mugabe’s orders, and Biko spoke merrily about their campus commune.
‘It is not quite the Paris commune, com, but it is not too far away either. That’s why ZANU hate us. We are actually showing what poor, hungry students can do in a few square kilometres. It was around, I guess, February. That was the time of price controls. So we had a general meeting and we simply decided that these guys providing us with food were profiteering and students could not afford lunch. So what’s the way out of this? The following day everyone wakes up to find posters all over the university that say “Presidential Declaration on Price Controls” – I was the president. And the staple food for students is buns, so naturally buns were our main target; we said no one is going to sell a bun for more than a certain amount. No one is going to sell a plate of sadza for more than this much and a number of other things, Freezits, which is the cheapest drin
k, but that’s what students get for their lunch, so we put controls on Freezits.
‘And the beautiful part, the really beautiful part of it, was that the language was quite threatening. If anyone fails to abide by this, we said, they are not going to be able to exist here. We are simply not going to tolerate them and they cannot do their business here. So a number of guys, because they knew us, knew our record, knew that we were not playing, a number of them put down their prices a bit. And I tell you, students were appreciative.’ Biko’s animation as he spoke belied his exhaustion.
‘However. One old man, who was the main supplier of buns, adopted our controlled prices, but because initially he had shown some resistance, on the next demonstration he was punished. His shop was looted. People broke in and they looted. But later on he came to me after the looting and said, “I adopted the prices that you gave me but still you are looting my shop. I thought we were now coexisting well.” And so on.
‘In some cases like that you have to be a little bit diplomatic. You can only say that you will look into this. This was part of the strategy that we have, you solve day-to-day problems this way. We are even working out a transport facility for students. We are demanding that the university gives students a university bus. This is very close to happening because we are demanding that since the university has got buses and cars, students should use the bus as a shuttle for commuting. Because university workers are paying something like a tenth of what students are. Do you see? Viktor, Viktor, comrade, like the commune, like Paris. We were actually inspired by the Paris Commune.’