African Dawn (3 page)

‘I will.’ He paused and cocked his head. ‘What's that noise?’

Pip heard shouts, and more rhythmic noise, like singing, coming from around the corner. She started walking in the direction of the sound, and Fred, who had been walking in the other direction, turned to follow her. Pip reached the closest corner and saw a group of about forty African men and women holding placards. One read,
Down with unfair bus fares
.

‘Bloody
munts
,’ Fred said.

Pip turned and looked at him. ‘What's all this about?’

‘Probably tied up with the bus fare protests in Salisbury. A friend of mine in the police told me they've had to crack a few kaffir skulls up there because the
munts
are complaining about some increases in the UTC bus fares. I mean, why should we whites be subsidising their bloody travel? If a bus company needs to charge more to make ends meet, then who are they to object?’

Pip frowned. Very few African people owned a bicycle, let alone a motor car and for most of them the bus was the only affordable way to travel. Now that Fred mentioned the Salisbury trouble she did remember reading somewhere that the fare hike meant some Africans were paying up to twenty per cent of their meagre wages on bus tickets.

‘Come on, Pip,’ Fred said, putting a hand on her arm. ‘We'd best get you away from this mob.’

She shrugged off his touch, then turned and gave him a smile to show him she meant him no offence. All the same, Paul was the only man she wanted touching her. And she could look after herself. ‘I'm fine, Fred. I'm only going to the bakery.’

Fred looked past her, at the crowd. The group was well dressed – the men in suits and the women in neatly pressed skirts and blouses. A few were singing, and two of the men were walking up and down the street handing out pamphlets of some sort. Most of the pedestrian traffic was white people and they uniformly ignored the Africans and their handouts. A white man stopped to berate the group and tell them to go back to the bloody trees they'd climbed out of.

One of the men handing out flyers had his back to Pip, but he looked very familiar. When he turned around she saw it was Kenneth Ngwenya. Pip ignored Fred's panicked warning cry from behind her, looked both ways, and walked across the street towards the protesters.

‘Kenneth!’

The tall Ndebele schoolteacher turned and smiled. He closed the gap between them. ‘Hello, Pip, how are you?’

‘I'm fine, and you?’ He nodded and told her he was well. ‘Is this what you do in your school holidays, organise civil disobedience?’

He chuckled. ‘It's a peaceful demonstration. The bus companies are holding people to ransom. There have been big demonstrations in Salisbury and I, as an interested community member, wanted to show my support for the people opposed to these increases. We're calling on all African people to boycott the bus services until the companies drop their prices again.’

Pip knew that Kenneth was much more than an interested community member. He was a member of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress, the dissident pro-black-independence organisation headed by Joshua Nkomo. As a native-born Rhodesian, and the descendant of one of the members of Cecil John Rhodes's Pioneer Column, part of Pip bridled at anyone – African or white – wanting to destabilise the Rhodesian political scene. Rhodesian Africans, in her opinion, were better educated and better treated than any other blacks on the continent. There was agitation for majority rule in countries to their north and Pip, like most other whites, feared what might happen if Britain were to make a blanket decision to give independence too soon to people who were not prepared or educated enough to rule a country themselves. She liked Kenneth, although she found his wife, Patricia, surly to the point of being objectionable. Pip got the feeling that the woman disliked all white people. Kenneth, however, was like Paul – he took people as he found them. Paul often had Kenneth over to the farm for tea or went fishing with him after church on Sundays.

Pip wanted to ask Kenneth more about the demonstration, but their conversation was interrupted by the clanging of a police car's bell. They looked down the street and saw two patrol cars speeding towards them. The cars skidded to a halt and four officers got out of each vehicle, drawing truncheons as they strode towards the protesters.

‘Break it up. This is an illegal gathering and you are hereby ordered to disperse,’ called Chief Inspector Harold Hayes from the head of the group. Pip cringed. She hadn't seen the bull-necked policeman for years. Hayes had been a sergeant during the war and Pip had been partnered with him for a while. He was an inept, racist bully, and proof that many people in uniform were promoted far above their capabilities simply because they hung around long enough. ‘You, move away from that woman!’

Hayes was pointing his truncheon towards Kenneth, but Pip could see the overweight police officer hadn't recognised her yet. ‘Chief Inspector …’

As Pip started to walk around Kenneth, he put out his arm, as if to tell her not to involve herself. At the same moment two of Hayes's young British South Africa Police constables bolted ahead of their commander, obviously ready to break up the gathering by force if they were given the slightest encouragement.

The protesters had stopped their singing and chanting and looked at each other for guidance. Some stood defiantly facing the oncoming police, but two younger men and a woman started to flee. One of the men, perhaps a student, was looking back over his shoulder at the advancing constable as he ran, and as Pip moved out of Kenneth's protective reach, the man collided with her and she fell over backwards, hitting the ground hard.

‘No!’ Kenneth yelled.

‘He's kicking her, sir!’ one of the junior constables cried out as the young man's legs became entangled in Pip's and he dropped to one knee beside her. The policemen raised their batons and charged.

2

‘C
ome around behind her, George,’ Paul Bryant said to his son. George swung the tiller and the boat scribed a wide arc on the silvery surface of the lake. At least it was calm today, Paul thought.

Lake Kariba was still filling, but it was already a monstrous body of water. By the time it reached its capacity, in three to four years, it would be two hundred and twenty kilometres long and up to forty kilometres wide. The huge expanse was already proving treacherous. As well as boats running aground, or having their hulls gashed open by submerged treetops, the freshwater lake was prone to violent storms that whipped up waves of up to a metre. More than a few small boats had capsized and sunk, their crews suffering the same fate as the baboons and monkeys the volunteers were continually finding stranded in branches.

The black rhino and her calf were still swimming steadily towards certain death. Paul reckoned they were paddling towards another stand of trees that were half-submerged. From water level the branches might have looked like an island, but the animals were paddling further out into the lake instead of to the shore, which was also close but out of the rhino's poor field of vision.

‘Check, Dad,’ George called, and pointed to a fish eagle executing a shallow dive off to their left. The majestic snowy-headed bird had its talons extended ahead and as it brushed the surface of the water it plucked out a sizeable bream. It beat its long red-brown wings and made for the nearest tree, where it landed and began ripping the fish apart.

The damming of the Zambezi had been a death sentence for thousands of animals, but the rising waters had also provided an unending feast for other creatures. Fish eagles were breeding like crazy and their high-pitched lilting calls were becoming synonymous with any trip to the lake. The lake was being seeded with fish species to provide food for the nation, and a livelihood for the Batonka people who, like the animals that once lived in the valley, had been moved to higher ground.

Some tribespeople had resisted the government's repeated urging to relocate to new resettlement villages, and there had been protests and violence. At Gwembe, on the Northern Rhodesian side of the lake, troops and police had been called in to forcibly relocate some Batonka, but the villagers had rebelled and, armed with spears and clubs, had charged the security forces. Several Batonka had been killed by gunfire.

Paul shielded his eyes against the glare and tracked the rhinos' progress. This was Africa, he told himself. Life and death, predator and prey. Someone always lost while someone – or something – grew fat. If they did somehow manage to steer the rhino cow to the mainland, her tiny calf might still be taken by a crocodile. Like the fish eagle, these prehistoric predators were thriving on the diet served up by the man-made sea. Every crew of volunteers had tales to tell of near misses by the cunning, ruthless
ngwenya
, whose numbers were rising in proportion with the increasing flood level and ever-growing number of animal carcasses.

Paul looked back at George. The motion of the boat through the hot, still curtain of African air produced enough breeze to ruffle the boy's bushy blond hair. His tanned skin highlighted his mother's blue eyes even more. George would grow into a handsome young man, and Paul almost envied his son being able to come of age in such a fascinating, bounteous and prosperous young country. Paul had lived through the depression in Australia and gone off to war as a young man. The things he'd seen and the friends he had lost during his time in Bomber Command had nearly destroyed him, but meeting Pip had turned his life around. He'd finished the war a better man, back on active service flying twin-engine Mosquito aircraft in a pathfinder unit, and he'd left the Royal Australian Air Force as a highly decorated wing commander. The medals meant nothing to him, though, and his strongest hope was that George and the new baby could live in peace for the rest of their lives.

George grinned back at him.

‘Will the electricity from the dam reach Bulawayo, Mr Bryant?’ Winston asked.

Paul nodded. Winston had an enquiring mind and was proving to be a good student at the Catholic college he attended in Natal, South Africa. There were few opportunities for higher education for young Africans in Rhodesia, yet in the more liberal provinces of South Africa, at the far extent of the National Party Government's reach, privately funded church schools offered local students and those from other African countries a chance to better themselves, at a price. Paul had tried to give Kenneth money towards Winston's education, but his friend had refused the charity. Instead, Kenneth had agreed that Winston would work at the Bryants' dairy during every school vacation. The other employees on the farm didn't know, but Winston was being paid well over the odds, on the assumption that most of his earnings went towards his school fees. The arrangement allowed Kenneth to retain his dignity and Winston to continue his schooling. Sometimes, especially on the farm, Winston called Paul ‘
baas
’ in order to not flaunt his education or close connection to the boss and his family, but Paul preferred plain old ‘mister’.

‘The power from the hydro-electricity plant will go into the national grid, so it could end up anywhere, theoretically.’

Winston nodded. ‘Then despite the fact that the Batonka and the animals are suffering, this dam is a good thing.’

Paul shrugged. He knew the job of politicians was to make tough decisions – when they had the balls to do so – but all three of them had seen the sad toll of animals killed by the flooding. Paul guessed, too, that Winston's father had some strong views on the forced relocation of the Batonka, which had probably filtered down to his son.

‘There are winners and losers,’ George interrupted from behind them. ‘Some animals, like some people, were smart enough to move to higher ground. The lions mostly moved inland when the waters rose – didn't they, Dad?’

George was right about the lions – on the evidence they'd seen so far – but Paul was uncomfortable with the inference that the Batonka who had resisted relocation were stupid or ‘losers’ because they were opposed to leaving their ancestral homelands. Personally, having made a home in Rhodesia, Paul couldn't imagine a worse fate than being kicked off the farm by the government and told he would have to live somewhere else. He was about to make the point when Winston pointed out that the rhinos had changed course and were now heading towards them.

‘Easy,’ Paul cautioned George. ‘Come alongside the mother, my boy. She's still heading the wrong way. Let's try and shepherd her.’

George slowed the throttle and it looked as though they would be able to take up a position behind the calf, moving at more or less the same pace as the ponderous swimmers.

‘See how the calf is behind its mother,’ Paul said to the boys. They were all momentarily entranced by this rare opportunity to come close to an animal that had a justified reputation for unpredictability and fierceness in the wild. ‘That's one of their downfalls. White rhino cows make their young walk ahead of them, so they can keep an eye on them, but black rhino babies follow their mothers, which make them more vulnerable to lions and hyenas when they're small.’

‘Like the difference between black mothers and white mothers. A black mother carries her
picannin
on her back, and a white woman pushes hers in front with a pram,’ Winston said.

Paul and George laughed. ‘But, Dad,’ George asked, ‘isn't it bad for the mother rhino to go ahead of her baby? What if it gets lost?’

‘There's a reason for everything in life, George,’ Paul said. ‘Black rhino live in thick bush and often the mother needs to walk ahead to clear a path for her calf. White rhino live on the grasslands where visibility is better.’

The lesson ended when the rhino stopped.

It took Paul's brain a full two seconds to comprehend what had happened. The rhino's feet must have touched ground on an unseen hilltop beneath the water's surface. It had probably been a rocky kopje, with no trees to give away its position. The water was up to the rhino's chest as she turned and issued a long, loud snort that rippled the lake's shiny surface in front of her. The calf, confused, continued to paddle up beside its mother. Its legs were too short to touch the bottom, and its swimming became instinctively more panicked. Its little head thrashed from side to side as it picked up the shape, size and noise of the approaching boat.

‘Cut the throttle! Reverse, George, reverse!’

But they all acted a fraction too slowly. The mother rhino charged.

Each step was boosted by the effect of the water, allowing the cow to surge forward on a near weightless body. When her curved horn splintered the wooden boat just above the waterline, the impact sent Winston toppling over the far side into the water.

Paul crashed to the bottom of the boat and had to roll to one side to escape the wicked point of the rhino's horn. The beast shook her head and grunted and snorted bubbles in the water as she fought to free herself.

As the rhino lowered her head the boat tipped to one side and Paul slid closer to the horn's point. He could hear her grunting and the sound terrified him almost as much as the deadly tip. Water seeped in through the hole she'd created, then poured over the gunwale as she pushed down again, threatening to capsize the small boat.

George revved the engine hard and the outboard screamed. ‘It's still in neutral,’ Paul called. As Paul got to his knees and started moving aft he saw Winston's arms thrashing in the water. The boy's mouth was open wide in a scream that was drowned out as his head slid below the surface.

Paul crawled to George and reached out, turning the throttle setting to reverse. The boat strained against the rhino, locked in a tug of war. As the great beast finally unhooked her horn the boat surged backwards and Paul used the momentum to help propel himself over the side and into the cool waters of the lake.

When he broke the surface he waved at George to keep going in reverse. Paul struck out, overarm, for a pale pink palm he saw disappearing below the lake's surface. He duck-dived and groped blindly in the murky waters for Winston. He flailed around him but couldn't feel the young African.

He swam to the surface again and sucked in a lungful of air. George was turning around and had the boat back in forward gear. Paul shook his head, but he didn't have time to warn his son. The rhino was walking in circles on her underwater island, and she shook her head and snorted again when she saw him. Paul wiped the water from his face and eyes. ‘Winston!’ To lose his friend's son would be like losing his own.

Paul thrashed around in circles until he saw the bubbles. In two fast, hard strokes he was there and diving down again. His outstretched hand brushed something that flicked and groped for him. Paul wrapped his hand around Winston's forearm and felt the boy weakly grasp his in return. He kicked for the surface but Winston seemed stuck. He sensed the boy's panic as he let go of his arm and prised Winston's fingers from his own arm. Paul dived deeper and felt for the problem. Winston's leg was trapped in the fork of a submerged tree. Paul grabbed his foot and untangled the creeper vines that had wrapped around his ankle. He took hold of the young man's limp upper arm and kicked again for the sunshine above.

When he broke free of the water's grasp, Winston was floating motionless beside him.

‘Over here,’ he spluttered unnecessarily, because George was beside him in the boat in an instant, and reaching over the side to help him. Paul had underestimated George's strength as he felt his son drag Winston almost effortlessly over the gunwale. Paul grabbed the boat and boosted himself aboard. He rolled the unconscious Winston onto his side and checked his airway was clear, then pushed him onto his back and blew into his mouth. Paul broke from the kiss of life and started pumping the boy's chest.

‘Come on.’ He lowered his lips again to Winston's and blew in another deep breath. The boy coughed water and began spluttering. Paul rolled him onto his side again and thumped him on the back as Winston continued to cough.

‘The rhino, Dad!’

Paul saw, too late, that they had been drifting closer to the cow and her calf while reviving Winston. She lifted her head and blew a challenge at them, then lowered her horn and started her waterborne charge again.

Their rocking movements up and down the boat had caused water to leak in through the hole the rhino had gored in the planking. Paul reached in the bilge for the wartime .303 he brought along for emergencies. This qualified as one, he reckoned, though he had no idea if the round would kill the cow or even slow her. He worked the bolt and as he raised the rifle to his shoulder he saw, in his peripheral vision, George's arm moving in a blur.

The smoking tin canister tumbled through the air, hissing towards the rhino. Suddenly it detonated with a bang as loud as a hand grenade and in a storm of instant lightning that rocked all of their senses to the core. The thunder flash had the same effect on the rhino, which stopped mid-charge and turned away from the painful burst of noise and light. She started swimming and her startled calf paddled slowly behind her.

‘Good work, George,’ Paul said, clasping his son's shoulder. They'd had three thunder flashes – ex-army hand grenade simulators – in the boat since their last round-up of impala and kudu on an island further south in the lake. The noisy devices were used to scare the antelope into running into a funnel of nets that forced them into the water, where they were made to swim towards shore, or into a
boma
where they could be roped and carried to waiting boats. George had saved the day, and the rhino cow, by his quick thinking. Winston was on his knees, still retching, but apparently not permanently harmed by his own near-death experience.

‘Boat,’ George said, hiding his red-cheeked flush of pride by pointing towards the oncoming craft that cleaved through the lake's molten metal surface. ‘It's Rupert Fothergill, by the look of it.’

Paul cupped his hands either side of his mouth, and yelled, ‘Rhino!’ His first priority now was to get the two boys back to shore, so they could give Winston time to rest and recover. He pointed to the cow and her calf, hoping Fothergill would take over the shepherding duties, but the ranger's boat ploughed on towards them, its bow riding high until the driver cut the engine and allowed them to coast up to the wallowing dinghy.