African Dawn

by Tony Park

  The MDC-T faction tried to get parliament to reopen the police investigation that cleared the innocent Mr Ngwenya of any wrongdoing, but government members of parliament, voting with other opposition parties, successfully defeated the move in parliament yesterday.

  ‘This man is a hero and deserves a medal for bravery, not the baseless and spurious muck-raking that is the hallmark of the MDC,’ the President said following yesterday's vote.

  Natalie tossed the paper back on the table in disgust. ‘You think Ngwenya's behind the missing rhino horn?’

  Braedan set his empty coffee cup down on its saucer and leaned forward, his elbows on the table and his hands clasped. ‘I'm certain of it. Think about it – it all fits. He's obviously the head man in the poaching syndicate, right?’

  Natalie nodded. ‘I doubt even the most ardent of government voters believes that rubbish about him just stumbling upon the poachers. Tate and I saw his limousine parked near the poachers' vehicle. They were talking and no one was threatening anyone. He was there to collect the rhino horn, for sure.’

  ‘Of course he was, but he couldn't take it with him. He couldn't be caught with the evidence when the police arrived, so he killed all the witnesses who could have linked him to the crime. So what does he do, given that he couldn't get away with the rhino horn?’

  ‘Steals a horn from one of Grandpa Paul's rhinos without killing it?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But why didn't he just get someone to kill the rhino, and how did he take the horn?’

  ‘Aha!’ Braedan raised a finger over his head as if it was a light bulb being switched on. ‘Because he's not stupid. Ngwenya sent someone onto the property armed with a dart gun, loaded with M99 probably – it's the same stuff Tate uses when he wants to immobilise a rhino. Ngwenya's man drugs the rhino and chops off the horn. When the job's done the poacher gives the rhino the antidote and slips away.’

  ‘Sounds like a lot of trouble to go to,’ Natalie said.

  ‘It is. You're supposed to be a qualified vet to immobilise a rhino, although it is possible to do a course and be registered to hold M99 for use in relocating game. Either way, you have to know exactly what you're doing.’

  ‘Then why bother going to the trouble to find and pay someone who can do this?’

  ‘Two reasons.’ Braedan held up his index finger again. ‘One, it's quiet. No one heard gunfire and no one was alarmed, at first. Two, the rhino lives, so it can sire more offspring and, in time, regrow its horn. It's not the first time this has happened. In South Africa there have been rhino killed on private game reserves by people using darts to give the animal a silent overdose. I've also heard of a case of a noble-minded poacher darting a rhino and then bringing it around once the horn had been cut off. There's even a term for it down south – “Eco Poaching”.’

  Natalie shook her head. ‘And Ngwenya wants the rhino alive on Grandpa's ranch because he wants to take over the place …’ Braedan nodded, but Natalie knew it wasn't as simple as Ngwenya walking onto the property and staking his claim, as thousands of so-called veterans of the liberation war had done with farms across the country. ‘But the ranch has survived all the farm invasions so far, with the exception of some crop-growing land that Grandpa Paul ceded to the local community.’

  Braedan leaned over and stabbed the newspaper on the table. ‘But now we have this. Ngwenya probably called someone in parks and wildlife as soon as he'd taken the horn from the drugged rhino and set them onto your grandfather. The inference is that he's selling the horns from his own rhinos, animals entrusted into his care by the state for captive breeding.’

  ‘That's preposterous,’ Natalie snorted.

  ‘I know that, and you know that, but it gives Ngwenya a green light to make his next move,’ Braedan said.

  Something else struck Natalie as odd about the theft of the horn. ‘How come no one noticed the rhino's horn was missing? I mean, it's a pretty big animal.’

  ‘You're right,’ Braedan conceded, spreading his hands. ‘But to be fair, your grandfather sometimes gets a bit mixed up with the names of the rhinos and numbers of horned and dehorned animals. I don't know them all by sight yet, so I'm partly to blame for not being on top of it. Doctor Nkomo should have known, because the men he supervises, to track the wild rhinos, should have reported it to him. There seems to have been a forty-eight hour period where the rhino involved wasn't spotted by anyone, and when he finally was, the news was already out about the missing horn. We had two scouts away on leave – mysteriously they both claimed to be sick and had to go to the clinic the morning before the horn was taken – and that left Doctor short of two trackers. Also I was in town getting supplies that day. It was a catalogue of errors that we're trying to ensure doesn't happen again, and as the man in charge I'm as much to blame as anyone.’

  There was something else that was troubling Natalie. She'd seen photos of Emmerson Ngwenya on the web when she was researching Zimbabwe's troubled state of affairs, but it had been a very different experience when she'd seen him first-hand, standing wild-eyed in the middle of the road holding a gun, dead bodies around him. He had smiled at her and she had felt the physical, lung-crushing grip of pure terror.

  ‘Natalie?’

  ‘What?’ She looked up at Braedan. ‘Sorry, I was somewhere else.’

  He smiled, but it didn't cheer her. ‘A million miles away by the look of it.’

  ‘No, thirty years away,’ she said.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  She folded the newspaper so that the headline was face down. ‘No, not right now, but I want you to.’ Natalie reached into her daypack and pulled out a digital voice recorder, little bigger than the cigarette lighter Braedan took from his pocket and used to light up. ‘I've been waiting weeks to talk to you.’

  ‘I've been dreading this, but yes, I suppose now's as good a time as ever,’ Braedan said, smiling through the exhaled smoke.

  She liked being in his company. He was self-assured, easygoing, and when he smiled his eyes glowed. She was sure he was suppressing some terrible memories, but unlike Tate, Braedan seemed to have the ability to get on with life and to find the humorous or the irreverent in even the bleakest of situations. ‘I suppose the rhinos are safe without me for another hour, even if half of them are stoned on drugs at the moment.’

  Natalie placed the recorder on the table and waited for the waiter to clear their plates away. She'd barely finished half her chicken and felt guilty about leaving it, in a country where the poverty line was an impossible aspiration for so many. ‘I'll have a Castle,’ Braedan said to the man. ‘I have a feeling I'm going to need a beer.’

  She took out a pen and notebook and flipped it open. Natalie always took notes, just in case the recorder wasn't working properly or it ran out of batteries without her noticing. God, she thought, why was she even putting herself through all this? Writing a book was a much bigger endeavour than putting together a feature story for a magazine or newspaper – the difference between taking out a kayak for a quick paddle on one of Sydney's rivers and crossing the Atlantic in a rowboat. It was daunting enough given the number of words she would have to write, but as she flicked the toggle on the recorder she realised that she was also about to embark on the most difficult interview of her life.

  ‘Tell me about what happened, the day you parachuted into Grandpa Paul's farm. The day you saved me …’

  He flicked an imaginary flake of tobacco off his lip then closed his eyes for a moment as he drew another deep lungful of smoke. Halfway through exhaling he opened his eyes and pierced her with his stare. ‘What, specifically, do you want to know?’

  ‘All of it.’

  He shook his head. ‘Most of it's in three or four books about the Bush War and the RLI. You can read about how we jumped in, how the boys and me were pretty much on our own – no air support, no command and control for most of the time.’

  ‘I've read the books.’

  ‘Then what do you reall
y want to know, Natalie?’

  ‘I want to know what really happened.’

  He swallowed and looked away from her. ‘It's all in the history books.’

  ‘No, it's not. Look at me, Braedan.’

  He beckoned to the waiter for another beer. The first one had disappeared quickly and he set the empty bottle down on the table.

  ‘The man you shot, the man who had hold of me … he wasn't the one who kidnapped me from the farmhouse. He was part of a different group of terrs.’

  Braedan shrugged, accepted his next Castle with a nod of thanks, and raised the bottle to his lips. ‘So what? There were two groups operating in the area and they linked up. The guy I shot must have taken you off the other one.’

  She closed her eyes, forcing herself to recall the images she had spent thirty years trying to forget. ‘There was so much shooting.’ When she opened her eyes again she saw he was looking at her, but he glanced away once more.

  ‘Ja. The lead was flying.’

  ‘I think they might have been shooting at each other before you arrived.’

  He picked at the sodden label of the bottle, peeling it. ‘That's possible – not even unusual. What you have to remember is that in 1979, when things were coming to a head in Rhodesia, the blacks were also fighting among themselves. Mugabe's ZANLA and Nkomo's ZIPRA hated each other, on tribal and political grounds. It was a three-way contest sometimes. The Special Branch and army intelligence guys used to keep scoreboards of terrs killed by each other and terrs killed by us. We used to joke about it, saying our aim was to kill more of them than they killed of each other.’

  Natalie nodded rapidly. ‘Yes, yes, I've heard all that before, but there was something else going on there in the bush. You know the real story, don't you?’

  He reached for his cigarettes and lighter and finished his beer. She wondered if he was going to walk out on her and leave her stranded in the pub. Braedan's cell phone chirped the high-pitched call of a woodland kingfisher from his pocket. ‘Ja?’

  Natalie could tell immediately that something was wrong.

  ‘We're on our way.’ He ended the call.

  ‘What was that all about?’

  Braedan stood and pulled a few grimy dollar bills from his wallet and left them crumpled on the table. ‘Your grandfather's farm. The gooks are trying to invade it again.’

  *

  They flew back to the Bryant ranch, the little Nissan bakkie squeaking noisily on its wornout springs as they bucked along the uneven surface of the main road and swerved to miss the occasional pothole or goat.

  ‘What should I do?’ Natalie asked as Braedan slowed down.

  There was a crowd of about fifty Africans gathered around the ranch's entrance gate, which was locked. Braedan took the phone from his pocket, driving one-handed, and scrolled down his contact list until he came to the number for the member in charge at the Plumtree police camp. He handed her the phone. ‘Call this number if things go bad.’

  ‘Bad?’ She was wide-eyed with fear.

  ‘OK, if things go worse.’ He smiled for her, though he felt out of his depth. He stopped the car a hundred metres from the crowd and leaned across her to open the glove compartment. She smelled clean and fresh, despite the heat of the day. A woman in the crowd turned to them, pointed, and started ululating. Other heads swivelled and took up the chant. Some of them started dancing. Braedan saw the glint of light on a panga, the wicked blade bobbing above the black heads.

  He remembered the day he and Lara were kicked off their own farm, and the crippling sense of helplessness he'd felt. He'd thought, at the time, that if he'd been a single man he might have made a fight of it – barricaded himself in the farmhouse with his FN and his .458 hunting rifle and taken as many of the bastards with him as he could. But that was just a fantasy, an oft-replayed daydream in which his life ended in a blaze of glory instead of in a series of dead-end jobs and a mounting pile of debts.

  Braedan clenched his fists as he approached the mob. These were ordinary people; pass them on the street in Bulawayo or Harare and they would most likely return a polite nod and ask, ‘How are you?’ Individually they were the peaceful, smiling heart and soul of Africa; as an angry mob, they were its secret nightmare.

  ‘Kill the Boer!’ the woman broke her ululating to chant.

  ‘Kill the Boer, kill the Boer!’ the mob responded, taking up the chant and turning to face him.

  At another time he might have laughed at the words. He was not a farmer any more and he'd certainly never been an Afrikaner farmer – a Boer – but this new generation of so-called war veterans had delved back into the old Cold War era language of the Chimurenga, when ‘Boer’ had been the term for any evil whitey, whether they were residents of Rhodesia, South Africa or the old South-West Africa.

  Braedan could see Doctor on the other side of the locked gates, about a hundred metres up the access road, leaning against the bonnet of one of the game viewers. He had Elias, the senior game scout, with him. Doctor lifted a hand in a laconic wave and Braedan nodded to him.

  Braedan scanned the group of protesters and located the eldest man. He had a tight cap of grey curls and he stood, immobile, while the younger demonstrators danced and chanted around him. He alone was actually old enough to remember the war as an adult. Braedan turned side-on to ease his way into the press of bodies, and while he felt a couple of brushes and shoves, the crowd reluctantly cleared a path for him.

  ‘Mangwanani, baba,’ Braedan said to the man, using the correct form of greeting for an older man, and one who clearly held sway with the mob. Braedan guessed from his heavy-set features that he was Mashona, a stranger to the land of the Ndebele.

  ‘Mangwanani.’ The man was unsmiling.

  ‘How are you, baba?’ Braedan said.

  ‘I am fine, and you?’ The reply was instinctive.

  ‘Fine, thank you, all things considered. May I ask what you and your friends are doing here?’

  The younger men in the group were growing tired of chanting for the sake of this one white man, who was showing no signs of being intimidated, and some had stopped in order to listen to the conversation between him and the older man, who introduced himself to Braedan by his old Chimurenga name, which was Comrade Styx.

  ‘The people are here to claim the land that was stolen from them over a hundred years ago. This land is ours and our ancestors died here fighting to defend it,’ Styx said.

  ‘The owner, Mr Bryant, has given away twenty per cent of his land. I recognise some of the people here who live as his neighbours,’ Braedan said, looking around the quietening crowd.

  The old man shook his head. ‘This land was never his to give, and besides, it was poisoned land, nothing grew on it. He gave up his barren land and kept only the good.’

  Braedan gritted his teeth. It was the same across the country. Where land had been ceded it had been left idle and become overgrown or, at best, planted with straggly, undernourished subsistence crops. There was nothing wrong with the land Paul Bryant had given up, voluntarily, just the ability and commitment of the ‘new farmers’ to prepare and work it.

  ‘Mr Bryant is breeding rhinos here, on behalf of the Government of Zimbabwe. This ranch is an intensive breeding zone, monitored and approved by the parks and wildlife department. You have no claim on this place. It is protected by law.’

  ‘We are the law in this country now, white man,’ the so-called comrade said, aiming a crooked finger at Braedan's chest. ‘The people are taking back what is rightfully theirs, and if rhino are to be bred then it will be by the rightful inhabitants of Zimbabwe, not some Boer.’

  The woman who had whipped the mob into a frenzy on Braedan's arrival had positioned herself behind the old veteran; at the sign of his defiance she threw back her head and started whooping her war cry again. The others in the crowd joined her and Paul felt the bodies press closer around him.

  ‘We are the law, we are the law, we are the law …’ they chanted.

  The
y may as well be, Braedan thought, as it seemed no one was actually running the country at the moment.

  Eyes turned then at the sound of a vehicle's engine. A black double-cab Toyota roared up the access road, past Braedan's Nissan, and pulled up a few metres from the crush of people surrounding the lone white man. Braedan caught a glimpse of Natalie standing outside his truck, nervously bobbing her head from side to side to try to keep him in sight, the phone clasped in her right hand.

  If she was thinking of calling the police she needn't bother, because four uniformed officers dismounted from the cargo area at the rear of the Toyota and brushed the dust from their uniforms. The doors of the double cab opened and out stepped Emmerson Ngwenya, dressed in pressed khaki bush clothes, along with another man in a black T-shirt and jeans, and two men in cheap suits and dark glasses.

  ‘Shit,’ Braedan said. The crowd parted and he walked across to Ngwenya.

  ‘I might have known you were behind this,’ Braedan said.

  Ngwenya used a meaty index finger to slide his Ray Ban sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. ‘You talk to me like I know you … as though we have something to discuss.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Ngwenya smiled and spread his arms to show off the men he had brought with him. ‘I am doing my civic duty, assisting the local police and these two gentlemen from the Central Intelligence Organisation in their investigation of wrongdoings at this ranch. You read, no doubt, of the unaccounted rhino horn that missing from here?’

  ‘Yes, I read about it,’ Braedan said.

  Ngwenya looked past him, to where Natalie was standing, and Braedan saw the flare of panic in her eyes.

  ‘A striking woman, and the second time I've seen her in recent weeks. She's the Bryants' granddaughter, isn't she?’