African Dawn

by Tony Park

  Kenneth shook his head.

  ‘He said, Dad,’ she drew a breath, ‘that Mugabe will never stand trial for the deaths of thousands of people – thousands of our people in Matabeleland in the 1980s.’

  Kenneth brought his palms together in front of his face, as though he was about to pray. Perhaps he should, perhaps they all should. ‘He is too scared to go peacefully.’

  ‘That man is scared of nothing, he is the hero –’

  ‘Shush, Emmerson, at least let our father speak.’ For a moment the younger brother deferred to the older sister.

  But Kenneth had no more to say. The fact was that many people – no one still knew exactly how many, but best estimates put the figure between two and ten thousand – had been slaughtered by the 5th Brigade in Matabeleland during the early years after independence. Ex-ZIPRA cadres, dismayed at their party coming in as runner-up in the race for power against Mugabe's Shona-dominated ZANU, and angry that their erstwhile leader, Joshua Nkomo, had entered into a political alliance with Mugabe, had staged a show of force in Matabeleland and denounced the newly formed ZANU Popular Front party. The response by the army to this localised rebellion was disproportionate in the extreme. As well as killing former Ndebele freedom fighters, civilians were executed en masse, some in the most horrible ways imaginable. Pregnant mothers had been bayoneted, their unborn children torn from their wombs; people had been buried alive or burned to death in their homes; and ordinary people were tortured before being executed, for no other reason than they came from the Ndebele tribe.

  His tribe.

  ‘I tried to turn my back on tribalism,’ Kenneth whispered. ‘We all did. You, Thandi, went to Mozambique and became a senior member of ZANU. You, Emmerson, also turned away from your people, as I did. We all bear the blame for what happened.’

  ‘Well,’ Thandi huffed, ‘at least I've seen the light.’ She got down on one knee beside her father and laid a hand on the armrest of his chair. She leaned in close to him. ‘Please, Father, come meet Morgan, he is a good man. At this time, more than ever, we need the voice of experience in our party.’

  Kenneth only stared straight ahead. It had been the same with Emmerson. He'd come back, asking for forgiveness right at the time Mugabe was having one of his regular cabinet reshuffles. The President had needed another Ndebele in his government to try to counter the impression that his was a one-tribe government. Kenneth wasn't a regular visitor to Zimbabwe House, but he was still on the list for significant state receptions, and the annual Hero's Day reception. His old friend Robert invariably acknowledged him at these functions and on one occasion they also exchanged a few words.

  ‘Your son shows promise, Kenneth,’ the President had said to him at a reception for a visiting Chinese delegation.

  ‘He throws himself into everything he does with great vigour,’ Kenneth had said. He and his son had made their peace just the week before, but Kenneth had been scared by the inflammatory language Emmerson had used on television a few days before when describing how the people would rise up and kill any white who decided to use force to defend his farm in the face of eviction. He'd shaken his head at the hate he'd seen burning in his son's eyes.

  After independence Emmerson had transferred into the new Zimbabwean Army, a force that was a blend of ZIPRA and ZANLA guerillas, black soldiers who had served in the Rhodesian African Rifles, and even a few whites who stayed on in technical roles, such as pilots and armoured-car crews.

  ‘I turned my back on nothing,’ Emmerson said, interrupting Kenneth's thoughts. ‘We united under a strong man, the President, and he is as strong now as he was when we put down those armed rebels in Matabeleland. Father is right, we cannot live by tribalism. There can be no mercy for people who would destabilise the peace of this country.’

  ‘You twist my words, Emmerson.’ Kenneth lowered his forehead to the tips of his clasped hands. Perhaps I should just go to church and pray, he thought. There is nothing else that will mend this family, let alone this country.

  Enough of their words, Emmerson thought as he walked out of the lounge room and into the kitchen. It was no wonder his sister had become a politician.

  Despite his own high office, Emmerson Ngwenya still thought of himself first and foremost as a soldier. He was a man of action, not words. If he had his way he would take the traitor Tsvangirai, and his white puppet masters, Bennet, Colthart and the others who told him how to dance, line them up against a wall and shoot each of them in the back of the head with his Makarov.

  He opened one of the double doors of the new stainless-steel fridge he had bought for his father – something else the old man had neglected to thank him for – and took out a bottle of Coke. He fixed himself a double Scotch, then added the soft drink and held the tall glass under the ice dispenser while the cubes plopped out. He downed it in three gulps, then poured himself another.

  The cell phone clipped to his belt vibrated.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘It is Nguyen here, how are you?’

  ‘Fine, and you?’

  There was a pause. ‘I am fine, thank you. Ah … we had discussed a time for the delivery, and that time has passed. I know this is Africa, but …’

  Emmerson snarled. How dare the oriental insult him with the veiled reference to ‘Africa time’. Nguyen van Tran was a political officer – a spy by any other name – with the Vietnamese embassy in Harare. Emmerson had made a deal to deliver another rhino horn to him. Nguyen had a diplomatic bag leaving for Hanoi tomorrow, and the horn should have been delivered to him yesterday. Emmerson had known the call would come, but he was still annoyed at the man's supercilious tone.

  ‘It will be here, soon. There have been problems. When is your next shipment?’

  ‘You are lucky. This one has been delayed by three days. Yours is not the only … ah, commodity, that has failed to arrive on time.’

  Again, the insult, the implication of failure. Emmerson would like to beat the smile off the dapper, oily little man. But the deal was too lucrative, so he bowed and scraped, just as the Vietnamese wanted. ‘No problem. It will be there, trust me.’

  ‘I do trust you, but I can always look for alternative supplies. The market grows stronger by the day.’

  It was true. The demand in Asia for rhino horn was increasing faster than it had for years, right at the time Zimbabwe was running out of the animals. Emmerson saw the pros and the cons of this situation and knew that he could make himself rich. He'd needed an alternative source of funds since the President had formally done away with the Zimbabwean dollar and the economy had switched to foreign currency.

  The President was clever, Emmerson knew, but his decisions didn't always benefit the rank and file of the party. Mugabe had, eventually, made a concession to world opinion by forming the Government of National Unity with the hated MDC. Emmerson had been appalled at the time, and privately thought his leader was showing the first sign of weakness, but he'd been impressed these last few months with just how little power had been ceded to the opposition, and very pleased at the talk of Tsvangirai pulling out of the GNU. It was like a game of chess, he thought. Chess was a game Emmerson had never had the time or patience to learn. He remembered his father trying to teach him once, when he was six; Emmerson had swept the pieces from the board with his hand. That was how to win a game. By force.

  It had been the same with the switch to a foreign currency economy. The wily old President had been smart, politically, to do away with his country's own valueless currency. Inflation had ended and virtually overnight traders were legally able to buy and sell goods that had been missing from shop shelves for years. There was fuel in the service stations and food in the supermarkets. By adopting foreign currency and bowing to pressure to form a government of national unity with the MDC, the president had also released the pressure valve of international media interest in Zimbabwe. As far as many people overseas were concerned, peace had returned to the country. Prices were still high, as nearly everything had to c
ome from South Africa, but wealthy families like the Ngwenyas wanted for little.

  Except cash.

  Until recently Emmerson had made his money, as his sister pointed out, by continually changing hard currency for Zimbabwe dollars then back again. If you could get hold of US dollars from the reserve bank at the ludicrously low official rate – and as a government minister Emmerson could – then sell them on the street again at a stupendously inflated black-market rate and repeat the transaction, there was no limit to how much money a man could make. But that had ended with the switch to a hard currency economy, and Emmerson had seen the end to his cashflow problems in the skyrocketing demand for rhino horn in China and South-East Asia.

  Emmerson had retired from the army as the commanding officer of the 1st Zimbabwe Commando Regiment. He had access to a network of serving and ex Special Forces soldiers that he called on from time to time to help him in his work as Assistant Minister for Land Redistribution. At his order, and with payment from a slush fund he'd personally set up, these men had beaten opposition politicians, intimidated farm workers who had dared to stick up for their white masters, and, lately, located and shot rhino to order.

  He had a team of six men deployed at this very moment, looking for an animal to fill Nguyen's latest order. ‘The men blame the moon – it is nearly full,’ Emmerson said into the phone.

  ‘The moon? Is this one of your African superstitions?’

  Emmerson gritted his teeth. These people, he thought, were more racist than whites. Who was Nguyen to call him superstitious when he was paying tens of thousands of dollars for a pointed lump of matted hair? ‘They are hard to track, especially at night when the moon is high. They see the men coming.’

  ‘Ah … I understand, but unfortunately my, ah, backers at home are not so understanding. I don't need to remind you that a good deal of money has already changed hands.’

  Emmerson gulped down half of his second Scotch and Coke. ‘Yes, yes, yes. I know. My men are on the job. I expect a call at any time.’

  There was another pause on the end of the line. ‘I do hope you are not leaving this business to your underlings. I am going to Victoria Falls the day after tomorrow. Your men, I gather, are in the area?’

  Emmerson knew they had probably said too much over the phone, but who would be listening? The only threat he faced from the police or CIO was that they were probably also involved in poaching rings of their own and might see him as a competitor. Parks and wildlife were the only ones Emmerson had to worry about, and they were a toothless bunch of bunny-huggers. ‘Not far from there, yes.’

  ‘Normally, I would not wish to get ah … personally involved, but time is of the essence and I would feel, ah … more confident in our relationship if you were to take a stronger interest in this transaction.’ ‘You want me there, to do the handover?’

  ‘Ah … yes.’

  Emmerson licked his lips. He had kept himself at arm's length from the killing of the animals and the transport of their horns. It had all been done by his foot-soldiers and Nguyen's minion, a security guard at the embassy. The Vietnamese was putting him on the spot. He weighed the risks quickly. He did not want to appear weak, and there was nothing to stop Nguyen shopping elsewhere for his commodity. Emmerson needed this relationship more than Nguyen did. The President was an old man and Emmerson, despite his very public support for his leader and party, feared that ZANU–PF would crumble once Mugabe was gone. Emmerson needed to make as much money for the future as he could, while he was still in a position to do so.

  ‘I will be there,’ Emmerson said at last.

  ‘Good. I am pleased. I will be staying at the Kingdom.’

  ‘I will see you there.’ Emmerson ended the call. Perfect, he thought. It would give him an opportunity to call on the twenty-three-year-old croupier he'd met the last time cabinet had sat at Victoria Falls. He loved the way she screamed his name when she rode him.

  24

  Braedan knelt and traced a finger around the spoor. It was a black rhino, and there was no notch carved in any of the tracks he'd seen. That meant it still had its horn.

  He'd found the place where the poachers from the nearby community had been coming and going from the ranch. It was a dry creek bed, sandy and studded with smooth granite boulders. The electric fences followed the contours of the land, but the soft bed was easily dug away to make tunnels so a man could crawl under the wire. Someone had used a cut-off branch to smooth away their tracks, but the brushing marks stood out as clear as footprints to Braedan's eye.

  Braedan was disappointed. It was an obvious point to enter and exit the farm and he'd found it in less than two hours of walking outside the ranch's fence line. He used the same method of entry as a poacher would, sweeping his tracks up to the fence, digging away a gap with his hands, then sliding the sand back into place. Between the fences was the dirt access road. Braedan saw that one of the ranch's vehicles had not only passed recently but had stopped at this point, in the dry bed. Doctor – or perhaps the former head of security – clearly knew this was a spot worth checking.

  Braedan had decided he would put a man in a hidden observation post, to watch this entry point. Doctor gave a good show of efficiency, but it had been laughably easy to enter the ranch.

  Braedan paused by the tracks and listened to the bush. It was good to be back. A Cape dove cooed nearby and a woodpecker tapped out a Morse code welcome on a mopane. Braedan wiped the sweat from his eyes with a green handkerchief. It was humid for this time of year. There was a line of cloud building on the horizon. He set his rifle between his knees and tied the cloth around his forehead and knotted it. He'd worn a sweatband like this when he'd been a troopie. He picked up his weapon and moved forward.

  A zebra gave its high-pitched braying call ahead of him. There were also wildebeest, impala, kudu and leopard occurring naturally on the ranch. Braedan spotted a length of wire in the grass. He stopped and knelt again. His fingers traced it to a loop that had been fashioned in the free end. The other was fixed to a sapling. A snare.

  ‘Bastards,’ Braedan whispered.

  The so-called new farmers, who had squandered the wealth of the farm they had stolen, were now sneaking onto Paul's property and snaring game. It could have been to feed themselves, or to sell illegally in town, but either way it was still theft. Braedan pulled the Leatherman from the pouch on his belt and snipped off the wire near the trunk. He wound it into a loop and hooked it on his belt. He'd bring back the evidence to show Paul.

  Braedan scooped up a handful of powdery dust and let it trickle through his hand. He watched its fall and saw the wind was building. However, he was still downwind of the rhino, so it wouldn't smell him as he approached it. He wanted to see how close he could get to one of the animals – how easy it would be to shoot one. The rhino he'd seen on the drive with Natalie and Paul had been as tame as a pet. He wondered if they were all as easy to approach. He guessed it would depend on how many had been hand-reared and how many had been allowed to grow up ‘wild’ within the confines of the ranch. He thought about Natalie. She was beautiful and smart, and at the same time there was something vulnerable about her. She reminded him so much of Hope it almost hurt. He wondered what sort of effect her presence was having on his cold, introverted brother. Braedan felt a prick of jealousy, knowing that Natalie was at this moment in a car with Tate, but he forced the thought from his mind.

  He returned his attention to the job at hand. Black rhino were unpredictable and prone to aggressiveness. Tame or not, they might not take kindly to the presence of a stranger on foot in their domain. He followed the spoor along a well-trodden game path.

  A pile of dark brown droppings littered the track. Unlike the white rhino, black rhino did not defecate in specific middens to mark their territory. They let it go wherever they felt like it. Braedan reached into the pile. It was still warm. He crumbled a cricket-ball sized piece in his hand. Black rhino browsed from trees and bushes rather than grazing grass. This one had bee
n feeding on a russet bushwillow and each little twig in the dropping had been sheared off and chewed with teeth set at an angle of precisely forty-five degrees. This one was close.

  He felt a charge of hunter's adrenaline. It was like being back in the war, hunting gooks. The rhino couldn't shoot back, but in time he might find himself stalking armed poachers around the farm.

  Braedan had confirmed his terms of employment before Paul Bryant had left for the game count. The wage was only $15,000 US dollars a year. He'd earned nearly that much in a month, contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but those days were gone and he had no other prospects in Zimbabwe. The deal included food and board, in the security manager's cottage on the ranch, and a vehicle; yet even though the wage was reasonable compared to the pittance most people in this country earned, there would be little left over to put towards his debts. He was already a year behind on his child support payments and Lara was threatening to sue him. Also, he would have to set aside part of his pay for his mother. She'd supported him for the past year and he knew it had drained her meagre savings. She was living on the charity of her neighbours and an organisation called SOAP – Save our Old Age Pensioners. He felt disgusted that she had been feeding him for a while from her care parcels.

  Braedan didn't want to think about his life and where it was heading. His new job would allow him to exist, but not get ahead. He might never be able to afford an airfare to Australia to see his kids, or to fly them over for a visit, and if he couldn't contribute to their education, then his wife might make sure he never saw them again. He knelt in the dust to check the spoor again, sighed, and shook the depression away. This was where he belonged, on the ground, in Africa. Right or wrong, he was at home here.

  He had a rifle in his hands and he was back in the Rhodesian bush of his youth. The sun was tanning his bare arms and legs, which were now crisscrossed with scratches from thorns. Everything about this environment was hostile, from the cruel sun overhead to the snakes and scorpions that lurked in the grass and rocks at his feet. Even now a leopard might be watching him from a tree and today might be the day it chose to feast on a human instead of an impala. And the rhino, which he'd been enlisted to protect, might charge and gore him just for the hell of it. But he loved it here.