African Dawn

by Tony Park

  Hayes snorted. ‘You weren't there, I was. If you think that demonstration was about the price of bus tickets you're more naïve than I thought. It's about politics – about them thinking they'd know how to run a country. That's why the Branch is involved.’

  ‘But what's Ngwenya done wrong? If my wife doesn't testify you'll have no grounds to hold him on a charge of assault.’

  Hayes smiled. ‘I don't care whether he assaulted anyone or not. You see, there's an operation going on right now in Salisbury and Bulawayo. You'll be able to read about it in tomorrow's Chronicle. It's called Operation Sunrise. A new dawn.’

  Bryant had no idea what Hayes was talking about.

  ‘We're rounding up the rabble and filth who'd sell this fine country of ours out to the communists and the black nationalists. These people think they can bring Rhodesia to a halt by telling honest, hard-working Africans to walk to work rather than catch the bus. All the leaders of the protests have been arrested, and that includes your friend Ngwenya. I doubt he'll be filling any young minds with red propaganda for some time.’

  ‘Can I at least see him?’

  ‘No,’ Hayes said.

  Paul didn't know what else to say. He'd known for years that Kenneth was active in black nationalist politics, but he'd never heard his friend espousing communist propaganda. Far from it, in fact. Kenneth and his fellow agitators wanted one man, one vote – which would mean, of course, black majority rule in a democratic country.

  As a schoolteacher, Kenneth was well educated for a black man, having studied teaching at Fort Hare University in South Africa, but this set him apart from the vast majority of black Rhodesians. Even the most liberal whites Paul knew seemed unified in their belief that while majority rule might be inevitable one of these days, it wasn't something to be rushed. There was a need for more Africans to become better educated before they were ready to govern their own affairs.

  When Paul had put this view to Kenneth the teacher had retorted that this was condescending, racist rubbish. It was the closest he'd ever seen the bookish teacher come to radicalism. ‘Paul,’ he'd said, slapping a closed fist into his palm, ‘can't you see that this will never happen? Our junior education system might be one of the best in Africa for African people, but as long as we are excluded from higher education and so many professions we will never be given the chance to advance ourselves and take control of our destiny.’

  Paul thought of Winston, and the high hopes Kenneth had for his son. He still hadn't worked out when or how he would get back to Kariba to collect the two boys. He hoped they were safe. They were level-headed enough youngsters, but two teenagers together could get up to a good deal of mischief.

  ‘I'll get Kenneth's wife and bring her here. Surely you'll allow her to visit him,’ Paul said to the policeman.

  Hayes nodded. ‘We're not uncivilised, Bryant. I dare say the black communists wouldn't be so accommodating to political prisoners if they were running the country.’

  The phone rang and a white constable sitting at a desk behind the charge counter picked up the Bakelite handset. ‘Mr Bryant, is it?’ the constable interrupted.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It's the hospital, sir. Matron says you're to get back there now. It's your wife. She's gone into labour.’

  *

  Paul sat by Pip's bedside in the Mater Dei hospital in Hillside until at last her eyelids fluttered and she opened her eyes.

  He kissed her cheek.

  ‘Where's George?’ she asked, still groggy from the anaesthetic.

  ‘He's fine. Probably having the time of his life up on Kariba with Winston and without me. We have a daughter.’

  Doc Hammond had told him the delivery had not been without complications. Pip had lost a lot of blood and had needed a transfusion. According to the doctor, their daughter seemed as healthy as could be expected for a premature baby.

  ‘Oh, yes. I remember now.’

  He laughed, but stopped when she tried to join in and he saw her wince.

  ‘Go get her, Paul.’

  Paul went out into the corridor and fetched the nurse, who brought the tiny red-faced baby to her mother. Paul plumped the pillow and helped Pip sit up, and the nurse passed her the tightly wrapped bundle. ‘Hello.’

  ‘She's beautiful,’ Paul said.

  ‘I was so scared.’ Pip kissed her baby tenderly.

  ‘Doc Hammond says she's fine and that you'll be fine after some rest.’

  Pip looked up into his eyes and blinked a couple of times. ‘Not for me and her, Paul … It was what happened, before, in the street.’

  ‘It's over now.’

  She shook her head. ‘You should have seen the hatred in the eyes of those constables as they laid into the crowd, Paul. It was madness. Kenneth tried to protect me, but then people were running by us, over us. It's not over. It's just beginning.’

  ‘It was a demonstration over bus fares, that's all. It got a bit out of hand. It's hardly a civil war, although I have to tell you that things don't look good for Kenneth. He's facing more charges and may end up in gaol.’

  Pip rocked her baby gently. ‘It's been simmering for years. I don't want her to grow up in a war, Paul.’

  ‘She won't. What are we going to call her?’

  ‘Hope.’

  *

  It had been, George thought as he walked out of the building, a week for extraordinary names at the Mater Dei Hospital. First there was his little sister, Hope, whose name was quite odd, but not nearly as unusual as the names Mrs Quilter-Phipps had given her new twin sons, Braedan and Tate.

  Apparently Braedan had been named by his father after the farm he had grown up on in England, and Mrs Quilter-Phipps had picked Tate because she thought it sounded like the sort of name an American film star might have.

  Talk of unusual names aside, George found hospitals quite boring; except for the time he'd had his appendix out and had been allowed to see it after the operation. He was certainly very relieved that his mother was fine, and that the baby was normal, but he couldn't really see the point of sitting at the foot of his mum's bed, with nothing much to say after he'd told her about his adventures on the lake. On his father's orders he'd left out the bits about the rhino goring a hole in the side of the boat and Winston nearly drowning.

  He and Winston had been given a lift all the way back to Bulawayo with a motor mechanic. It had been a long, hot drive home and his skin was burned a deep red from sitting in the back of the mechanic's bakkie with Winston.

  The two days extra he'd spent on the lake with Winston had been two of the best of his life, George thought, as he walked out of the hospital, away from its acrid smells and sick people. He tossed a cricket ball up and down and shuddered as he remembered being sick over the side of the bakkie. He'd been embarrassed at the time, but Winston had found it hilarious and had laughed so much there had been tears in his eyes.

  They'd stolen a bottle of whisky from near the campfire after the men had all turned in for bed, and drunk half of it as they'd sat on the shore of the lake. Winston had noticed a ripple in the shallows and they'd found a baby crocodile. Egging each other on, George had run into the water and chased it. Winston, not silly enough again to go out into water past his knees, had herded the little reptile back onto the mudflat. George had dived into the silt and grabbed its tail. It had reared back on him and scratched his arm with its tiny teeth, but Winston had been there a split second later and grabbed its snout.

  ‘You saved my life, boet,’ George had exclaimed drunkenly.

  Winston had smiled at him. ‘You have never called me brother before.’

  ‘You are … you are my brother, Winston,’ George had slurred. He'd been drunk, but he'd meant it.

  ‘Then we are even, brother, because you and your father saved me on the lake, but I am in his debt too.’

  The crocodile had bucked in their hands, with surprising strength for such a tiny little creature, and George had burst into laughter at Winston's yelp. Soon
after, they'd retired, wet and muddy, to their canvas bed-rolls spread out under mosquito nets tied to trees near the water's edge.

  They hadn't spoken of their drunken emotions on the trip back, and instead shared a companionable silence brought on by their mutual nausea as the truck rumbled along strip roads and wide tar down to Salisbury. The mechanic had bought them each a cold beer at Sinoia and although George had tried at first to refuse the gesture, he had found that the man was right and that it really did make him feel better.

  After they'd passed through Salisbury they'd stopped on a roadside on the way to Gatooma and the boys had slept in the back of the bakkie under a big star-studded sky. Driving the last leg back to Bulawayo they'd passed through Gwelo and the high open grasslands of the midlands, dotted with fat cattle.

  George had thought about Winston's plan to join the army when he came of age. George, too, could join up, as the Rhodesian African Rifles, which accounted for the country's permanent military force, was made up of black soldiers and white officers.

  ‘Look.’

  Winston, with his keen eyes, had pointed up into the sky as the bakkie had raced along at its top speed of fifty miles per hour. George had shielded his eyes and seen the glint of light reflected on shiny bare metal. ‘Vampire,’ he'd said, immediately identifying the twin tail booms of the British-made jet fighter.

  George had watched the silvery jet come in to land at Thornhill Airbase, feeling the vibration of its engine in his chest as it roared low over the waving boys, and he'd made up his mind then and there about what he wanted to do. His father would fight him all the way, of that he was sure, but he didn't care. ‘I don't want to join the army. I want to be a pilot.’

  ‘At least you can choose to do that. There are no black pilots in the air force or officers in the army.’

  George thought about Winston's comment now as he picked up his pushbike from under the tree in the hospital garden. He started cycling out from the all-white suburb of Hillside towards Mzilikazi Township. Not many whites ventured into the black township, but George went often enough, when he was home on holidays, that he warranted friendly waves and greetings from many of the people he met.

  Kenneth and Patricia lived in a two-bedroom brick house, with a tin roof held in place by an assortment of rocks and concrete blocks, behind the school where Kenneth was principal. The house was modest compared to the rambling colonial farmhouse George had been born into, but substantial by African standards, as befitted a man of Kenneth's standing.

  Winston had a sister, Thandi, who was a year younger than George. George hadn't paid much attention to girls up until his thirteenth birthday, but now he found himself thinking about them a lot of the time. Sometimes, when he was alone in his bed in the dorm at school, or home on the farm, he found his body responded to these thoughts.

  To his horror, George once got the reaction, down there, in the middle of a church sermon, while he and his mother were standing behind Susannah Geary and her mother. Susannah was named after her mother. Her father had also been in the air force during the war, in bomber command like George's father, except Susannah's dad had been an air gunner. He'd lost the sight in his left eye thanks to a metal splinter from a flak round. He was now a butcher in town.

  ‘Howzit, Thandi,’ George muttered as he propped his bicycle against the Ngwenyas' front fence.

  ‘Hello, Georgie Porgie.’ Thandi was as tall as George, and try as he might he couldn't help but notice her budding breasts.

  ‘Very funny. Is Winston home?’

  ‘Mmm,’ she said, smiling at him. He felt his face start to colour. ‘Have you come around to play?’

  ‘I'm too old to play these days, Thandi.’ She giggled. He walked past her briskly.

  To his even greater consternation, George sometimes thought about Thandi when he was alone in his bed. He fantasised about what she might look like, minus the pink pedal pushers and black sleeveless blouse she often wore. His tummy fluttered as he knocked on the door frame. He heard soft footsteps on the paving stones and was aware of her behind him.

  ‘Why does your face go red when you talk to me, Georgie?’ she said quietly.

  He couldn't look back at her. He felt his throat constrict, so that he couldn't have said a word even if he could have thought of one. His cheeks burned and he could feel a vein in his temple begin to beat like an African drum.

  He coughed. ‘Mrs Ngwenya,’ he squeaked.

  Thandi giggled behind him.

  George thought he might catch fire on the spot and burn like the sinner he knew he was. A boy at school had smuggled in some postcards of rather plump European women, either naked or in their underwear, and the older boys at school sometimes joked about the female maids who cleaned the dorms. He knew the term for white men who had sex with black women – ‘nanny knockers’ they were called. His mother and father were friends with Winston's father, and they tolerated his mother, Patricia, but never in his wildest imagination could George imagine a white man and a black woman together. It just wasn't supposed to happen. They'd been for a holiday the previous year, to Beira in Mozambique, which was a Portuguese colony, and things were different there. George's mother had been to Mozambique once before, but it was a new experience for his father. His father had expressed surprise at the amount of ‘intermarriage’ in the colony, and his mother had told him it was the way the Portuguese were, and to not talk about such things in front of George. This, of course, had aroused George's interest even more. He'd seen plenty of coloured people growing up, but it was only in the last couple of years, when he'd started taking a keen interest in girls that he started to put the pieces together. Somewhere, somehow – not just in Mozambique but also Rhodesia – some black people and some white people must be making coloured babies.

  ‘What do you want?’ Patricia Ngwenya blocked the doorway, arms folded. She wore a white apron over her floral-print dress. She was a formidable woman who was becoming more so, and better able to block a doorway, with each passing year. She scowled at him.

  ‘Afternoon, Mrs Ngwenya.’ If she wasn't going to be polite, that didn't give him an excuse not to be. ‘I'd like to see Winston, please.’

  ‘Ah, he's not here.’

  ‘But Thandi said –’

  ‘I don't care what she said.’ Mrs Ngwenya looked over his shoulder and scowled at her daughter. ‘What are you staring at?’

  ‘Nothing, Mama,’ she cooed.

  Winston's five-year-old brother, Emmerson, toddled up to his mother's legs and peered up at George from behind the stout trunks. ‘Hello, Emmerson,’ George said.

  ‘I told you, he's not here,’ Mrs Ngwenya said, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘You must go, now.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Go, NOW! I don't have time to jump for you, white boy. My husband is in gaol because he tried to help your mother and now I am here with three children to look after and no man. Ah, but I don't even know if the school will let us stay in this house!’

  George wouldn't talk back to an adult, but he had to bite his tongue to stop from challenging her. He didn't know exactly what Winston's father had done, and this was the first he'd heard about him being in gaol. The reference to his mother confused him. His father had told him she'd tripped and fallen in the street in Bulawayo.

  ‘Do you know where Winston's gone?’

  Mrs Ngwenya shrugged. ‘How would I know? That boy, he tells me nothing.’ She took a pace back, nearly tripping over little Emmerson, and slammed the door in George's face. George puffed out his cheeks and then spun around in fright when he felt a touch on his shoulder.

  Thandi grinned at his shock and subsequent embarrassment. ‘I know where he has gone,’ she whispered. ‘Come with me.’

  George followed her to the gate and glanced over his shoulder to see if the fearsome Mrs Ngwenya was still watching. He saw no curtains twitching. ‘Is it far?’

  Thandi nodded. ‘Very.’

  He frowned. ‘What about my bicycle?’

>   ‘You can take it.’

  ‘I can't have you running along behind me.’

  Thandi put her hands on her hips. ‘You wouldn't dare. You can double me. I'll sit on the handlebars.’

  Gosh, thought George, there was probably a law against that. Thandi straddled the front wheel, with her back to him, then wriggled her backside up onto the handlebars. She looked back at him. ‘Ready?’

  God, no, he thought to himself, but at the same time he felt marvellously excited and naughty and brave. He steadied the bike, and the girl, with a light hand on her hip, then pushed off and leapt onto the saddle. Thandi squealed as they wobbled a bit, but he told her to hush, and after a few hard pumps of his legs they picked up enough momentum for her to stay stable.

  He could smell her body as he pedalled. It was a rich, musky scent. Not unpleasant. He'd never been this close to a girl – black or white – in his life. He followed her directions, and although they skirted the edge of the sprawling township, there were enough locals about to take an interest in them. A trio of young men in suits whistled and hooted; an old man smiled; a woman of Mrs Ngwenya's size and vintage shook her head and waved a finger at them.

  They left the dusty dirt roads for a stony track and when the going became too rough George reluctantly stopped the bike. Thandi put a hand on his shoulder for support as she eased herself down. ‘Eish. My bottom hurts.’

  He felt himself colour again and she laughed. ‘Thank you, George. That was fun, wasn't it?’

  He nodded, once more unable to speak. Thandi was only twelve, but she never seemed lost for words. George, however, often felt tongue-tied around girls.

  ‘Come,’ she said, with an imperious flick of her wrist.

  He followed her, pushing the bike by its saddle, and eventually caught up so they were walking side by side. The stunted, rain-starved trees closed in on the track, forcing them to walk closer together.

  ‘Do you know where you're going?’ George asked her.

  ‘Always.’

  They walked on for a while longer in silence. George started to feel nervous. He hadn't been to this place before. They were outside town, and the shadows were lengthening as the bush around them started to glow in the mellow, golden light. He should be getting back to his mother and father at the hospital. He presumed he and his father would be going out to the farm tonight, but George wanted to make sure Winston was all right first.