Cry Havoc

by Simon Mann

  Ceiling, walls and floor are bare concrete, greasy, filmed with dirt.

  I can see where most people lay their blankets to sleep on the concrete by the mark on the floor: along one side, head next to the lavatory base. I throw my four down.

  A voice carries to me, louder than those that I could just hear from ‘A’ Hall’s exercise yard outside. Where is such a voice coming from?

  The voice comes again, urgent.

  A shade of light moves against the door. It catches my eye. I look to the skylight gallery. Two heads and shoulders are dark in silhouette. I see two black heads staring.

  I raise a hand, one waves back, then they go. The skylight, I am to learn, is not there to let light in. It is a way for the watch-tower shift officers to keep an eye on ‘A’ Hall prisoners.

  And an eye on their cage shift and yard shift comrades.

  ‘A’ Hall was built as a punishment block. Twenty cells along one long passage, I later learn. One shower and a dhobi* sink are in the middle, by the officers’ cage and the double entrance doors.

  I must do something. Minutes drag. How am I going to cope with years?

  I fold three of the four blankets longways: my mattress. The fourth will go on top. I see that my cell, built to keep a man in, is not keeping mosquitoes out. I worry about fleas, and lice. At least there is no malaria here. I think (wrongly): at 3,000 feet we must be too high for malarial mosquitoes.

  Walk.

  I walk up and down, up and down. With no map yet in mind, I start to walk.

  Voices catch my ear … not the same as the background ones from the yard, not the gallery either. I strain to hear.

  I try to make out what is being said.

  Afrikaans!

  Slowly I put it together: all of the whites that were arrested at the same time as me are in these cells, along the single long passage of ‘A’ Hall.

  I wait for a pause, then call out to one of them: ‘It’s me – Simon. Can you hear me?’

  He can, and I can just hear him, but it is difficult. My gunfire-damaged hearing doesn’t help. When there is any other noise going on, such as singing, ‘churching’ or praying (Gawd ’elp us), it is impossible.

  The only way is to use Standard Army Voice Protocol, as if we are a radio net. ‘Over and out’ – and other standard words – make it workable. As with a radio net, we must assume that every word is being logged.

  Good information comes from prison cells.

  A surge in sound from the rest of ‘A’ Hall makes our radio net ‘UNWORKABLE – OUT’. I hear doors being opened, held, then slammed shut.

  What’s happening? The door rattles and slams come closer.

  My door flies open… Three officers, one of them a sergeant, and half a dozen black prisoners, all in white drill, all crouching close to the floor.

  A sawn-off black plastic dustbin, so old that it is torn and frayed, holding white thick goo. Sadza. The staple diet of the Shona (and many other southern Africans), made from mealie meal: ground white maize corn and boiling water.

  A second crappy dustbin holds stewed green grass.

  I grab my plate and shove it at the prisoner running this whirlwind: slap, slap. Back it comes.

  An old orange syrup bottle, Mazoe brand, filled with water, flies in.

  Slam – my door crashes shut. Locks.

  That was Norman, I learn later.

  Not long after that – by the sounds – I come to the idea that everyone is being locked up. There is a hubbub of sound around that of the already too familiar slamming doors. More doors this time.

  It makes me think of an old-fashioned railway carriage. Like the one I boarded, aged 12, at that two-track rural railway station, days before the results of the Eton Common Entrance exam.

  A door to every compartment.

  Slam. Shut.

  ‘What if I fail, Daddy?’

  There’s no whistle toot.

  We’re not going anywhere.

  The black population of ‘A’ Hall start to shout to one another. Our mercenary radio net is still ‘UNWORKABLE – OUT’. It stays that way until the quiet of the next morning. At ten at night, that’s it:

  ‘Lights out, girls. No talking.’

  Except that the lights stay always on. Except that there are no girls. The routine of a Chikurubi day, as I begin to learn it, goes like this:

  0600: The cage officers’ and watch-tower officers’ shifts change. Eight-hour shifts.

  0800: The yard officers’ shift comes on. Unlock prisoners from their cells.

  0800–1000: Breakfast – thin gruel – bota – appears.

  1100–1200: Lunch – sadza – appears.

  1200–1400 (or thereabouts): Prisoners are locked back up – for the officers’ lunch break.

  1400: The cage officers’ and the watch-tower officers’ shifts change.

  1400–1600: Prisoners are unlocked again. Supper – sadza – appears.

  1600: Head counts. Lock-up. Yard shift officers go home.

  2200: No more talking or noise. Cage officers’ and watch-tower officers’ shifts change.

  I don’t know all that to start with, but it doesn’t take long to find out.

  Anyway, for the first two weeks we – that’s the mercenaries – are kept locked up all of the time.

  Each shift of officers coming on duty, parade, are inspected, then sing their stupid bloody national anthem: sometimes well, sometimes so badly that the sergeant taking the parade makes them sing it again.

  Right under my cell.

  White men make rude remarks – or shithouse noises – before, during or after the anthem. Not popular.

  No prisoners black or white ever join in.

  Over these first days in Chikurubi, the shock of capture is wearing off. I find my bearings.

  A shower is my greatest prize, when it comes. Then they are allowed daily.

  A mad chaos comes out of the blue when – without warning – we mercenaries have to sign in our other property – for me that’s my suitcases and all their strange contents.

  While that is happening, we meet our lawyers for the first time. This is done in a mob of all my 69 men, many prison guards, police CID and CIO.

  The law is now to start its pantomime of justice. In Zimbabwe, the law is very British. To understand that, think of the plumbing of a house in which all the parts are there, and most of them work: pumps, tanks, pipes, cisterns, taps, plugs and drains. In Zimbabwe, all those parts are made in England, but the water that flows through the plumbing of the house is all filthy: don’t bathe in it, let alone drink it. The law in Zimbabwe is corrupt from top to bottom, left to right.

  I know my man, my Zimbabwean lawyer, as soon as I see him. Small, fancily dressed, very black, round and smiling. I nickname him the Croc.

  What can I say? Days become weeks, then weeks months. Remand hearing follows hearing.

  I hear from the Croc about EG. Niek and the others have been arrested. Gerhard Merz died while being interrogated. They are being mistreated. Their conditions are terrible. The news makes me feel sick. For them. For me, if I go there.

  Letters and messages to Amanda get through. She replies.

  Amanda, I am lovesick. I think of our love, of our love affair, of our love story. I want to write it, but that’s selfish … but why not write it as a love letter to her?

  Even if I never get out of prison, then that would be something for her, whatever happens in the rest of her life. A souvenir. Our children might gain something from it one day. At least they would know that the love from which they came had been strong and beautiful. That their births were willed with care, as well as by passion.

  Amor vincit omnia.

  I believe that now. I understand it now. Love is denied me now.

  An armed robber has befriended me. We talk a lot. He’s called Kaunda because he is fat – just like Kenneth Kaunda, the former President of Zambia – but his real name is Elisha. All the time he’s weighing me up. One day he says that he and his
friends have been watching me. I am different. They see that I am the boss. A great man.

  I don’t feel great. I know I’m not. I laugh it off.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘we know – we watch – you are not like these farmers. You think – you walk… We know…’

  I laugh it off again.

  ‘No, Simon – I mean it – we’re serious – you are one of us – the armed robbers … we watch you – how you stand back to let an old poor man walk through a door before you … or in the queue at food time… You have respect for us, you see…’

  It sounds like nothing but it means a lot. Then. Now.

  Then Elisha backs off me. He has been warned not to be close to me. Security told him. They have spies everywhere. Security and the CIO are one.

  We keep apart – but it doesn’t work. A couple of weeks pass and Elisha is moved to a ‘big section’. It is because of me. I see him three months later, but he is no longer Kaunda. Time in the big section has stripped the fat off him better than any stick-thin fashion lady’s spa.

  I have one book in my cell now, and Security will swap it for another of mine when I ask. And when they feel like it.

  Security have at last agreed to let me lend books to others in ‘A’ Hall. That feels good, and has come about because of popular demand. It also means that I can have more of my books to hand. I’m learning to work the Chikurubi system.

  I find that religious books are popular. I have a very good History of the Jews (by Paul Johnson) that everyone wants to read, especially the three Madzibabas, or priests, in the section. They want to study. They think that the Jews absolutely are the chosen people, so it must be worth knowing about them.

  One of these Madzibabas has a regular supply of delicious crocodile biltong. I eat all he gives me, taking the chance of eating them, rather than them me. He’s in for rape, having convinced a number of his female followers that their cure for being barren was to be fucked … by him.

  Another Madzibaba is keen to read Paradise Lost. Having found that the way to read it is out loud, I loved it. Incredible sound … So, the Madzibaba takes it, after days of asking, then soon hands it back. He hadn’t enjoyed it as much as the cover (a naked Eve) had lead him to hope.

  That one is in for molesting two little girls of his congregation. Whether he did or not is a matter of Section debate. I have asked him to pray silently if he can, because he keeps on waking me in the middle of the night. His prayer sounds like a horror movie.

  Noise, I am to find, is the true horror of prison. It doesn’t stop inside. Every pin drop by every man can be heard. There is so much noise that everyone shouts. Coughs, farts, guards working their rifles, guard dogs, the cooking boilers. Prayer. Singing. Churching. Moans and cries of the sick.

  Noise is bad, but I am already aware that any sentence, for any crime, is meaningless and wicked when it has been meted out by a ruling gang who are themselves guilty of terrible sins … genocide, for one.

  Take away a man’s freedom, or his life, then you and your set-up had better be squeaky clean.

  But learning to work the Chikurubi system, however, isn’t hard. Aged eight I had to deal with North Foreland prep school. Here, I’m an aristocrat in the prison hierarchy. The armed robbers are at the top of the heap – and for good reason. Blaggers.

  ‘We are locked up for trying to knock off a bank, carrying a handgun… You are locked up for trying to knock off a country, carrying two tons of arms and ammo!’

  I’m also rich. Cigarettes are the prison currency and, despite my smoking 20 a day, I have plenty to spend. A packet of 20 Madison cigarettes will get you married, to a prison ‘wife’.

  Two more will buy your divorce.

  Everyone wants my fodya, my fags. I dish them out fairly. As many as I can. It is never enough. My fellow prisoners are not shy. They know how to ask.

  ‘What do you think I am?’ I joke. ‘A fucking fag machine?’

  One guy comes to me – a povo, very skinny and weak – with an escort, to interpret.

  ‘Shumba, this man asks for your help. Perhaps you can help him. He has nothing – the rags that he was arrested in were taken by the police… When he is released he will need clothes, but he has none. It worries this man… All he will need is a shirt, a jacket, a pair of trousers, and a pair of tackies…’

  Of course I will help.

  ‘When is his release?’

  The escort sucks, then frowns, hesitates. He turns to me. ‘Fifteen years, Shumba… I’m sorry…’

  The man doesn’t look as if he’ll last five. (He will die two years later.)

  Quite a few men I do help. A system gets going whereby I tell my Zim lawyer, the Croc, who to pay. They, or someone, go to the Croc’s offices. Sometimes it is a few hundred dollars, to help someone released to be resettled. Sometimes it is money for medicine, for a child or a sick mother.

  I do this for officers as well as prisoners. I can’t differentiate between the two as well as I should be able to. Chikurubi is such a sump of misery that you don’t know where to start.

  One place I could start was with the morning mug of tea. My cigarette wealth allows us to get regular hot water for tea. Mvura pisa. Hot water: the life-saver. This comes once in the morning and once in the afternoon, just before lock-up. A pack of 20 Madison pays for two weeks’ supply. The essential item is a five-litre plastic fruit juice container used for carrying the water. These are precious and suitably decorated to the owner’s taste.

  I learn how to use a blanket as a way of wrapping up the container. A homemade thermos. I can make a cup of tea an hour after lock-up, but still drink it hot. That becomes important as we head for a cold winter. Harare lies 5,000 feet ASL. In winter it is cold, often below freezing. We are in one shirt and shorts. In the early days, that is all we have.

  I learn how to use a strip of old blanket to wrap up my head. Not flattering, I imagine. But there’s no mirror. Who cares?

  But the idea of a love letter to Amanda – that tells the story of our love – remains a burr in my mind. Why not? I have some writing stuff. I have been using it to smuggle letters out already.

  I start the letter. It grows fast. Then it grows in scope.

  Then they take away all my papers, notebook and pencil. The letter is taken too. There are stories that I have smuggled letters outside. These have been bought and sold and are in the UK press. I wonder how the media could have got hold of them.

  Things are going badly and getting worse. My faith in home’s ability to do what has to be done is shrinking. I have heard nothing at all from those who could be helping me, the bosses in this coup – not a squeak, and not a squeak from them to Amanda, or my lawyers. I’m sure they are busy with something to get me out. They must be … surely? But what are they doing? Why not send a message?

  Things had been looking good. Hush-hush talks. Buying our way out of Zim. We were working towards fines. Not custodial sentences. Haggling.

  It’s just a question of: ‘How much?’

  Then Thatcher pleads guilty in South Africa. To supplying a helicopter for the coup plot. Unwittingly, he says.

  He needn’t have done that. He would have won his case, had he fought it. Instead, Thatcher does a deal. To avoid a custodial sentence, he pleads guilty to breaking anti-mercenary legislation. He receives a $500,000 fine. And promptly flies back to the UK a free man. This, I’m told, infuriates Mugabe and his cronies. Stiffens their collective hard-on for me and the men. Now we must be made an example of. The white man won’t make a mug out of Mug.

  Thanks, Mark.

  But all the time I am making decisions that are not in my best interests. I can fight the case in Zim, but to do so would be worse for the men. I will win, but the case might take five years, during which time everyone would be stuck.

  At the same time, I hear things from the big sections, where the men are. For the first time, through the network of my fellow prisoners, I find out that all the men with me were fully aware of what the Op actually w
as before they left South Africa.

  I want to try to write the love letter again, only the idea has grown. It’s a book now, that will tell the whole story. It is for Amanda and the children. It will tell them who I was. What I did with my life.

  It may even make them some money. They can sell it, if nothing else.

  You see: I may be going to Equatorial Guinea any day. There I will be killed.

  Here I may be killed. The prosecution are asking for the death penalty against me.

  I’m sure that I can get the book done in here. I find that Chikurubi is like my prep school or Eton or the Army: its rules are not rigid. The rules can be bent; but not too far, or they snap.

  If I write the book such that – to a casual passing prison officer – it looks like a piece of fiction, I may get away with it. If it looks like any kind of log, journal or memoir, then I won’t.

  Thinking about it, I will need more cover than that. How will I write my story without making it obviously mine? I can use what we used to call ‘veiled speech’. Not a code really, just a thin cover.

  I scribble. I start to write. I will go on writing that book for two and a half years – off and on – one way or another – over and over. The whole manuscript is to be taken off me twice more. In February 2007, the book – by then codenamed Straw Hat – will be smuggled out of Chikurubi, then flown to London.

  Much of what you have already read in this book came out of Chikurubi, from Straw Hat.

  This is Straw Hat 2.

  SUNDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 2004

  Yesterday, a fourth child was born to Amanda and me. Arthur. That’s a week after I was convicted, then sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment and hard labour.

  Shit. Treble shit.

  Even Arthur’s naming goes wrong. Amanda has asked me to come up with one, working from a shortlist we have agreed in our letters. She kept the names a secret from everyone … until they read it in the UK newspapers.