African Dawn

by Tony Park

  ‘What happened, Hope?’ her mother asked, wiping her daughter's face with a linen serviette.

  Hope looked at the grass. She was shaking. No one had ever grabbed her like that or treated her so roughly. ‘Nothing … I don't know.’

  ‘Why would Emmerson hurt you like that? Did you say something to him?’

  Hope couldn't tell her mother what she'd said. George was standing next to their parents, his face grim. He'd said that Emmerson should be strung up. There was no way Hope could mention Thandi with George there. ‘No, Mom. Nothing.’

  ‘He just grabbed you and started hurting you?’

  ‘Pushed her to the ground behind a tree, out of sight of the other kids, according to Harry,’ George said. Harry was George's friend who had intercepted Emmerson when he'd tried to run away.

  ‘Hope,’ her mother said, crooking her finger under Hope's chin and forcing her to look in her eyes. ‘Is there anything else you want to say before I talk to the police?’

  The tears sprouted from her eyes. She couldn't say anything else. And Emmerson had been like a madman. There was no reason for him to hurt her like he had. ‘No, Mom.’

  ‘Jesus,’ her mother said, and it was very unlike her to blaspheme. ‘These bloody people.’

  7

  Kenneth Ngwenya carefully unfolded a pair of black horn-rimmed reading glasses and balanced them gingerly on the bridge of his nose. The Sellotape that held them together scratched and irritated his skin, as always.

  He hated having to wear glasses. It was just one more sign that he was getting older, and that he was not the man he had been when he had been brought to Chikurubi Prison six years earlier.

  It was rare that he looked forward to coming back to the cell he shared with twelve other men after his two hours of daily exercise in the yard, but today was an exception. The guti had set in and the chilled drizzle made him shiver, even indoors. On sunny days the blue above reminded him of what he'd given up, but today's low cloud made him feel that he had no hope of seeing light again.

  He dealt with the near-crushing depression the way he always did, through a book. There was something comforting about the tattered, red leather-bound legal textbook. Here in black and white, on its musty pages, was a guide to right and wrong.

  Kenneth had been a teacher all his adult life, until his first arrest in 1959, after the bus strike. He'd railed against the assault charge, because he knew from his friend Paul that Philippa had no intention of pursuing it. The prosecution had relied, instead, on the colluded statements of two of the BSAP constables who'd laid into the crowd with their batons. A better lawyer might have saved him from that charge, but he would have still gone to gaol under the Emergency Powers Act. As it happened, he had only served six months, and in that time he had not had a change of heart, but he had had time to think. Violence, he had decided, achieved nothing.

  The police, on the day he'd been arrested, had been looking for an excuse to exercise force. Kenneth believed fervently in the idea of passive resistance, which Mahatma Ghandi had used to such great effect in India's quest for independence.

  Aaron, one of the other inmates who shared the cell, shuffled in, nodded to Kenneth and lay down on one of the remaining five beds. There were only six beds in the cell, so the dozen men took turns at sleeping on them. Kenneth sat on another and scratched at a bug under his arm as he went back to his reading. It was hard to concentrate. Aaron was the same age as Winston would be now. Kenneth missed his family terribly, but the greatest ache in his heart was the lack of news about his eldest boy.

  Kenneth had planned on mounting a search for Winston when he'd been freed from his first stint in prison, but events had conspired against him. Just weeks after he'd enjoyed Christmas at home with what remained of his family, the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress had been banned by the white government. However, on New Year's Day, 1960, a new resistance arose in the form of the National Democratic Party. Patricia joined and Kenneth did likewise, at her urging.

  When he thought on it now, he remembered he had been reluctant, scared even. He'd been more concerned with tracking down Winston, but his wife had shamed him into joining the NDP. Kenneth had had a glimpse of life in prison and that had been more than enough for him. The younger men who had been arriving at Chookie, as everyone in Rhodesia called the gaol, these past months spoke of imprisonment as part of the struggle, as if the scratchy Chikurubi uniform was a soldier's, not a criminal's, and the prison number a medal of honour. Kenneth couldn't feel that way. All he felt was failure.

  The newly formed NDP had organised a protest march in Salisbury and, illegal as the gathering was, thousands of people had turned out to protest against the government's heavy-handed suppression of African political ambitions. But the government was prepared and as the march wound its way down the capital's tree-lined boulevards, an air force aircraft dived from the skies and roared low overhead. Some in the crowd panicked, fearing the aeroplane was about to strafe them with machine-gun bullets, but all that rained from the heavens were leaflets, telling the demonstrators they were taking part in an illegal activity and would be arrested unless they dispersed. The mood of the crowd changed in the face of this aggressive show of strength and some of the younger men began shouting, working the protesters into a pique of anger at the insult. People grabbed rocks and loose bricks. Government buildings were stoned and windows were shattered before the police arrived and broke up the crowd. Arms and legs were beaten, and blood flowed from head wounds as police truncheons restored the white government's version of order.

  Kenneth was given leave from his school to address the crowd that gathered in Bulawayo, days later, in defiance of the government's edict that no similar demonstration would be permitted in Southern Rhodesia's second city.

  ‘Friends, please,’ Kenneth called into the megaphone, ‘we must stay peaceful today. If we sit in the street, arms linked, we say more about our will and our commitment to the bloodless transition of power in this country than we do if we rampage through the street like the police.’

  ‘Ma-rubbish!’ a young man heckled. Kenneth shielded his eyes and saw the clenched fist of the troublemaker. It was a boy he'd taught just two years earlier. A hooligan.

  The crowd had tired of listening to reason and moved off, its ranks swollen by curious onlookers.

  ‘Remember, passive resistance,’ Kenneth called into his loudhailer as the crowd surged towards the centre of the city. Shoppers were hurrying to their automobiles and shopkeepers bringing down their shutters.

  ‘Zhii!’ the hooligan yelled at the top of his voice.

  ‘Zhii!’ two others cried out jubilantly, as if discovering the word for the first time.

  ‘Zhii! Zhii! Zhii!’

  Crush. Pound to dust. Make war not peace. The definitions of the word were nuanced, but they all had one common theme. Violence.

  ‘No!’ Kenneth called, but he was drowned out by the chanting of that one hateful word, and the increasing tempo of thousands of feet on the pavements of Bulawayo's once peaceful streets.

  The first stone shattered a window at the municipal offices.

  ‘Zhii!’

  A volley of rocks and bricks followed.

  ‘Zhii!’

  Platoons splintered from the army of protesters, running down streets and alleys, waving sticks, throwing missiles. The word gave them freedom to vent years of repressed anger, a licence to beat, bash and break down. The target started out as anything of authority, anything that represented the white establishment, but as the vitriol was given free rein, the fury of the storm lashed anything and everything. A beer hall was broken into and young men guzzled from chigubus of opaque beer.

  A young woman, one of the protesters, screamed as she tripped and was trampled by a rampaging group of youths.

  Kenneth bent to help her and had a horrible sense of déjà vu as he remembered stopping to lift Philippa from the street during the bus strike. An elbow cuffed him from behind. Kenneth grabbe
d the woman by the arm and heaved her to her feet. Patricia was up ahead somewhere, and although she was not stoning or looting, he saw her raised fist and heard her cry.

  ‘Zhii!’

  His wife had ignored him, just as everyone else had. The riptide of hatred caught Kenneth and the woman he had rescued and they swirled forward, unable to swim against it. ‘Calm down, calm down,’ the schoolteacher tried. People laughed at him. One swore at him and told him to fight.

  The police were waiting. They stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking Rhodes Avenue, rifles and shotguns raised, just as they'd stood the last time the Ndebele tribesmen had hurled themselves at their ranks, sixty-four years earlier, when they had taken up arms against the settlers.

  Kenneth tried to turn back, but it was impossible to move against the crowd. A trio of young boys pushed past him, eager to get to the front ranks and carry out their share of destruction.

  ‘Help me,’ he called to one of them.

  The boy, aged about fifteen, the same age as his son Emmerson, turned back at him and raised a knobkerrie high over his head. ‘Zhii!’

  ‘Come back here at once, boy, and help me with this woman,’ Kenneth yelled over the din.

  The wild-eyed boy looked at him, and then back at his friends. ‘Zhii!’ He raised his club again, turned his back on Kenneth and ran off to join the others.

  Kenneth's nose and eyes started to burn. When he took a breath his throat and lungs felt as though he'd swallowed a mouthful of needles. He coughed. Around him people were suffering the effects as the cloud of acrid tear gas washed over them. Rather than stopping, though, people continued to stumble forward, jostled by those in the rear ranks who had yet to be affected by the gas.

  The noise of the gunfire was muffled by the hundreds of bodies between Kenneth and the police line. It sounded like firecrackers, but there was no mistaking its effect. People slammed into each other as the forward lines of the demonstration fell to the ground. People were screaming in pain and everyone was looking for an exit. Some smashed shop windows and leapt inside over jagged shards of glass. Others turned back.

  Kenneth and the woman in his arms were crushed between those behind who were still pushing forward and those at the front who had turned back. He fell. Kenneth felt a kick in the shoulder and then a man was on top of him. Kenneth cursed and rolled the man off him. He was about to berate him when he noticed the hole drilled in the man's forehead. Blood soaked Kenneth's suit jacket. The woman screamed. The man had been tall – too tall – and had been an easy target.

  Gunfire continued, and a fresh cloud of tear gas shrouded the crowd. Police in gasmasks charged the line and waded in among the dazed, retching survivors. Kenneth raised his arm to try to protect the woman, and a policeman, mistaking the gesture as a sign of aggression, struck down at him with his truncheon. Kenneth's arm felt as though it had been broken. It hung limp and painful by his side as another policeman grabbed him by his collar and dragged him away. He reached out for the woman, but she was shrieking hysterically as another constable pulled her in the opposite direction.

  ‘Fucking zhii,’ a policeman said as he slammed his baton into Kenneth's kidneys.

  *

  Kenneth adjusted his broken glasses. They'd been trampled by a prison officer during a surprise search of the cell. Kenneth wasn't sure if it had been an accident or a petty show of power by the guard. He prayed Patricia would be able to find him a new pair and bring them on her next visit.

  The law was clear on the demonstration. It had been an illegal gathering and the organisers knew this. It had been anything but peaceful – the mob had delighted in venting anger and destroying property. This was wrong. But were the police justified in opening fire?

  Eighteen people had been killed on that day in the streets of Bulawayo. Hundreds more had been wounded or injured by bullet and baton. It had been a swift, bloody response to a violent protest. Patricia had been shot in the arm and admitted to hospital. Kenneth had been locked in a police van and taken to prison. He'd been charged, tried and sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment. The prosecution claimed that he was one of the ringleaders and made much of the fact that he had addressed the mob and that he was a repeat offender, having already done prison time as a result of his first conviction. Patricia had recovered from her wound, but Kenneth was still suffering from that terrible day.

  ‘Good morning, Kenneth, how are you?’

  Kenneth looked up and peered over the top of his broken glasses. He smiled at the man they all called the Headmaster. ‘Ah, good morning, Robert. I am fine, and you?’ Aaron rolled over and pulled a blanket over his head. Sometimes a man just needed to be alone.

  ‘Fine, thank you, Kenneth. May I borrow your textbook on civil law?’

  ‘Of course.’ Kenneth stood and selected the volume from the simple wooden shelf that held their communal collection of books. ‘Sit a while, if you wish.’

  Robert looked back, as if searching for an excuse not to, then finally settled on a bed opposite Kenneth. Robert, another political prisoner being detained under the Emergency Powers Act, was a quiet man who did not seem to make friends easily. He too had been a teacher and had been a voracious reader and studious during his five years of incarceration. Robert taught the less educated inmates how to read and write, and while Kenneth also took classes, there was no questioning the fact that Robert was in charge – the Headmaster.

  The NDP had split into two rival factions, the Zimbabwe African People's Union and the Zimbabwe African National Union. This had happened after Kenneth's incarceration, so he hadn't given much thought to the matter of which organisation he should align himself with. Robert was a Shona, a member of the majority tribe of black Rhodesia, and was a senior figure in ZANU, most of whose members were Shona. Kenneth was an Ndebele and most of his people supported ZAPU, which was headed by Joshua Nkomo.

  Kenneth knew Joshua Nkomo personally. The giant of a man, a carpenter who had moved through the ranks of the railway union, had been the face of Rhodesian African nationalism until the rise of ZANU. ZANU was headed by the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, who, like Joshua, was in prison.

  ‘It was bad news, about the constitutional referendum,’ Kenneth said.

  Robert nodded. ‘Bad, but predictable. The whites have simply cemented their grasp on power.’

  ‘I can't help but think, though, that if more of our people had voted in the last election then we might have advanced our cause some,’ Kenneth said. Under the old constitution there were two electoral rolls – A and B. Voter registration was decided by how much property and wealth a man had. The richest were on the A roll, and they elected members of parliament to fifty seats, while those with less wealth, but still men of means, were on the B roll and allocated fifteen seats. There was nothing stopping a black man being on either roll, though in reality very few made the B roll, and fewer still the A.

  Robert scoffed. ‘No, Kenneth. There was no way we could be seen to be legitimising their patronising, racist system. Even if one or two black men had been elected nothing would have changed.’

  Kenneth nodded. Ian Smith advocated a policy of gradual empowerment of African people. His view and the view of his Rhodesian Front party was that not enough blacks were educated or experienced enough to take a greater role in national affairs, and that not enough of them paid tax – hence their lack of representation on the voter rolls. As blacks became better educated and more prosperous over time, they could play a greater role in voting and shaping the country's future. The catch, of course, was that educational and job opportunities for Africans were limited. Also the new constitution, as well as finally proclaiming the rebel state of Rhodesia as a republic, had actually closed off the A roll on the electoral register to any blacks.

  Kenneth believed the number one priority for Africans should be education, and that if the white government was serious about gradual empowerment of blacks it would have given all the children in the country, regardless of colour, the same access to
schooling and university. This was not the case. Ironically, people such as he and Robert were educating themselves far better inside the grey walls of Chikurubi Prison than they could have done outside. Here they were supplied with books and other study materials from charities and care groups opposed to the Rhodesian government's policies. Kenneth had completed his Masters of Education by correspondence from London University and both he and the Headmaster were now immersed in law degrees.

  ‘What news of the reverend?’ Kenneth asked cryptically.

  Robert fixed him with his serious eyes and Kenneth wondered if he had overstepped the mark. Kenneth had been courted, casually, by other members of ZANU inside the prison, and the fact that Robert occasionally deigned to talk to him let Kenneth know that he was not regarded as a ZAPU man – which he wasn't – or as an outsider. However, Kenneth was asking about the general secretary of Robert's party and obliquely referring to the Reverend Sithole's increasingly erratic behaviour. The stare went on for a few more seconds and Kenneth experienced a shiver of fear. A fine educator and reserved, studious man the Headmaster might be, but there was something more to him. Something a little frightening.

  Yet Kenneth had also seen this senior party cadre in tears. In 1966 Robert's only son, three-year-old Nhamodzenyika, had died of cerebral malaria in Ghana. Robert had pleaded with the prison authorities to let him travel out of Rhodesia to be with his wife, Sally, so that they could bury the little boy together. Robert had sworn he would return and urged the authorities to send armed escorts with him. The government had refused. Robert had been crushed and had only in the past few months resumed his studies.

  ‘You read his confession?’ Robert said at last.

  Kenneth nodded. He doubted that a single political prisoner inside Chikurubi did not know it word for word. Ndabaningi Sithole had recently become obsessed with the idea of assassinating Ian Smith. He'd managed to get word to some of his supporters outside the gaol and told them to loiter near its walls and await his orders. Sithole had written his plan for Smith's death on scraps of paper and pushed these inside oranges, which he threw over the wall. Unfortunately the security services had infiltrated his support base and Special Branch police officers were instead waiting outside the gaol to catch the oranges.