Rage (21 page)
Authors: Wilbur Smith
W
henever Moses Gama came to Drake's Farm it was like a king returning to his own realm after a successful crusade. Within minutes of his arrival, the word was flashed almost telepathically through the vast sprawling black township, and a sense of expectancy hung over it, as palpable as the smoke from ten thousand cooking fires.
henever Moses Gama came to Drake's Farm it was like a king returning to his own realm after a successful crusade. Within minutes of his arrival, the word was flashed almost telepathically through the vast sprawling black township, and a sense of expectancy hung over it, as palpable as the smoke from ten thousand cooking fires.
Moses usually arrived with his half-brother, Hendrick Tabaka, in the butcher's delivery van. Hendrick owned a chain of a dozen butcher's shops in the black townships along the Witwatersrand, so the sign-writing on the side of the van was authentic. In sky blue and crimson, it declared:
PHUZA MUHLE BUTCHERY
BEST MEAT AT BEST PRICES
BEST MEAT AT BEST PRICES
From the vernacular âPhuza Muhle' translated as âEat Well' and the van provided a perfect cover for Hendrick Tabaka wherever he went. Whether he was genuinely delivering slaughtered carcasses to his butcheries or goods to his general dealer stores, or was engaged in less conventional business â the distribution of illicitly brewed liquor, the notorious
skokiaan
or township dynamite, or ferrying his girls to their places of business nearer the compounds that housed the thousands of black contract workers of the gold-mines so that they could briefly assist them in relieving their monastic existence, or whether he was on the business of the African Mineworkers' Union, that close-knit and powerful brotherhood whose existence the white government refused to acknowledge â the blue and red van was the perfect vehicle. When he was at the wheel, Hendrick wore a peaked driver's cap and a khaki tunic with cheap brass buttons. He drove sedately and with meticulous attention to all the rules of the road, so that in twenty years he had never been stopped by the police.
skokiaan
or township dynamite, or ferrying his girls to their places of business nearer the compounds that housed the thousands of black contract workers of the gold-mines so that they could briefly assist them in relieving their monastic existence, or whether he was on the business of the African Mineworkers' Union, that close-knit and powerful brotherhood whose existence the white government refused to acknowledge â the blue and red van was the perfect vehicle. When he was at the wheel, Hendrick wore a peaked driver's cap and a khaki tunic with cheap brass buttons. He drove sedately and with meticulous attention to all the rules of the road, so that in twenty years he had never been stopped by the police.
When he drove the van into Drake's Farm, with Moses
Gama sitting in the passenger seat beside him, they were entering their own stronghold. This was where they had established themselves when together they had arrived from the wastelands of the Kalahari twenty years before. Although they were sons of the same father, they had been different in almost every way. Moses had been young and tall and marvellously handsome, while Hendrick was years older, a great bull of a man with a bald, scarred head and gapped and broken teeth.
Gama sitting in the passenger seat beside him, they were entering their own stronghold. This was where they had established themselves when together they had arrived from the wastelands of the Kalahari twenty years before. Although they were sons of the same father, they had been different in almost every way. Moses had been young and tall and marvellously handsome, while Hendrick was years older, a great bull of a man with a bald, scarred head and gapped and broken teeth.
Moses was clever and quick, self-educated to a high standard, charismatic and a leader of men, while Hendrick was the faithful lieutenant, accepting his younger brother's authority and carrying out his orders swiftly and ruthlessly. Though Moses Gama had conceived the idea of building up a business empire, it was Hendrick who had made the dream a reality. Once he was shown what to do, Hendrick Tabaka was as much a bulldog in tenacity as he was in appearance.
For Hendrick, what they had built between them, the business enterprises both illicit and legitimate, the trade union and its private army of enforcers known and dreaded throughout the compounds where the mineworkers lived and through the black townships as âThe Buffaloes', all these were an end in themselves. But for Moses Gama it was different. What they had achieved thus far was only the first stage on his quest for something so much greater that although he had explained it many times to Hendrick, his brother could not truly grasp the enormity of Moses Gama's vision.
In the twenty years since they had arrived here, Drake's Farm had changed entirely. In those early days it had been a small squatters' encampment, hanging like a parasite tick on the body of the huge complex of gold-mines that made up the central Witwatersrand. It had been a collection of squalid hovels, built of scrap lumber and wattle poles and old iron sheets, flattened paraffin cans and tarpaper on the
bleak open veld, a place of open drains and cesspools, lacking reticulated water or electricity, without schools or clinics or police protection, not even recognized as human habitation by the white city fathers in Johannesburg's town hall.
bleak open veld, a place of open drains and cesspools, lacking reticulated water or electricity, without schools or clinics or police protection, not even recognized as human habitation by the white city fathers in Johannesburg's town hall.
It was only after the war that the Transvaal Divisional Council had decided to recognize reality and to expropriate the land from the absentee landowners. They had declared the entire three thousand acres an official township set aside for black occupation under the Group Areas Act. They had retained the original name, Drake's Farm, for its picturesque connotations to old Johannesburg, unlike the more mundane origin of the nearby Soweto, which was merely an acronym for South Western Townships. Soweto already housed over half a million blacks, while Drake's Farm was home to less than half that number.
The authorities had fenced off the new township and covered the greater part of it with monotonous lines of small three-roomed cottages, each identical except for the number stencilled on the cement brick front wall. Crowded close together and separated by narrow lanes with dusty untarred surfaces, the flat roofs in galvanized corrugated iron shone like ten thousand mirrors in the brilliant highveld sunlight.
. In the centre of the township were the administrative buildings where, under a handful of white municipal supervisors, the black clerks collected the rents and regulated the basic services of reticulated water and refuse removal. Beyond this Orwellian vision of bleak and soulless order lay the original section of Drake's Farm, its hovels and shebeens and whorehouses â and it was here that Hendrick Tabaka still lived.
As he drove the delivery van slowly through the new section of the township, the people came out of their cottages to watch them pass. They were mostly women and children, for the men left each morning early, commuting
to their employment in the city and returning only after nightfall. When they recognized Moses, the women clapped and ululated shrilly, the greeting for a tribal chief, and the children ran beside the van, dancing and laughing with excitement at being so close to the great man.
to their employment in the city and returning only after nightfall. When they recognized Moses, the women clapped and ululated shrilly, the greeting for a tribal chief, and the children ran beside the van, dancing and laughing with excitement at being so close to the great man.
They drove slowly past the cemetery where the untidy mounds of earth were like a vast mole run. On some of the mounds crudely wrought crosses had been set while on the others raggedy flags fluttered in the wind and offerings of food and broken household utensils and weirdly carved totems had been placed to placate the spirits, Christian symbols side by side with those of the animists and witch worshippers. They went down into the old township, into the higgledy-piggledy lanes, where the stalls of the witch-doctors stood side by side with those offering food and trade cloth and used clothes and stolen radios. Where the chickens and pigs rooted in the muddy ruts of the road and naked toddlers with only a string of beads around their fat little tummies defecated between the stalls and the young whores strutted their wares and the stink and the noise were wondrous.
This was a world no white men ever entered, and where even the black municipal police came only on invitation and under sufferance. It was Hendrick Tabaka's world, where his wives kept nine houses for him in the centre of the old quarter. They were sturdy well-built houses of burned brick, but the exteriors were left deliberately shabby and uncared for, so they blended into the general squalor. Hendrick had learned long ago not to draw attention to himself and his material possessions. Each of his nine wives had her own home, built in a circle around Hendrick's slightly more imposing house, and he had not limited himself to women of his own Ovambo tribe. His wives were Pondo and Xhosa and Fingo and Basuto, but not Zulu. Hendrick would never trust a Zulu in his bed.
They all came out to greet him and his famous brother
as Hendrick parked the van in the lean-to at the back of his own house. The obeisances of the women and their soft clapping of respect ushered the men into the living-room of Hendrick's house where two plush chairs covered with tanned leopard skins were set like thrones at the far end. When the brothers were seated the two youngest wives brought pitchers of millet beer, freshly brewed, thick as gruel, tart and effervescent and cold from the paraffin refrigerator, and when they had refreshed themselves, Hendrick's sons came in to greet their father and pay their respects to their uncle.
as Hendrick parked the van in the lean-to at the back of his own house. The obeisances of the women and their soft clapping of respect ushered the men into the living-room of Hendrick's house where two plush chairs covered with tanned leopard skins were set like thrones at the far end. When the brothers were seated the two youngest wives brought pitchers of millet beer, freshly brewed, thick as gruel, tart and effervescent and cold from the paraffin refrigerator, and when they had refreshed themselves, Hendrick's sons came in to greet their father and pay their respects to their uncle.
The sons were many, for Hendrick Tabaka was a lusty man and bred all his wives regularly each year. However, not all his elder sons were present today. Those of them whom Hendrick considered unworthy had been sent back to the country to tend the herds of cattle and goats that were part of Hendrick's wealth. The more promising boys worked in the butchery shops, the general dealers or the shebeens, while two of them, those especially gifted with intelligence, were law students at Fort Hare, the black university in the little town of Alice in the Eastern Cape.
Only Hendrick's younger boys were here to kneel respectfully before him, and of these there were two whom Moses Gama looked upon with particular pleasure. They were the twin sons of one of Hendrick's Xhosa wives, a woman of unusual accomplishments. Apart from being a dutiful wife and a breeder of sons, she was an accomplished dancer and singer, an amusing story-teller, a person of shrewd common sense and intelligence, and a noted
sangoma,
a healer and occult doctor with sometimes uncanny powers of prescience and divination. Her twins had inherited most of her gifts together with their father's robust physique and some of their uncle Moses' fine features.
sangoma,
a healer and occult doctor with sometimes uncanny powers of prescience and divination. Her twins had inherited most of her gifts together with their father's robust physique and some of their uncle Moses' fine features.
At their birth, Hendrick had asked Moses to name them,
and he had chosen their names from his treasured copy of Macaulay's
History of England.
Of all his nephews they were his favourites, and he smiled now as they knelt before him. They were almost thirteen years old, Moses realized.
and he had chosen their names from his treasured copy of Macaulay's
History of England.
Of all his nephews they were his favourites, and he smiled now as they knelt before him. They were almost thirteen years old, Moses realized.
âI see you, Wellington Tabaka,' he greeted first the one and then the other. âI see you, Raleigh Tabaka.'
They were not identical twins. Wellington was the taller lad, lighter-skinned, toffee-coloured against Raleigh's mulberry-stain black. His features had the same Nilotic cast as Moses' own, while Raleigh was more negroid, flat-nosed and thick-lipped, his body heavier and squatter.
âWhat books have you read since we last met?' Moses changed into English, forcing them to reply in the same language. âWords are spears, they are weapons with which to defend yourself and with which to attack your enemies. English words have the sharpest blades, without them you will be warriors disarmed,' he had explained to them, and now he listened attentively to their halting replies in that language.
However, he noted the improvements in their command of the language and remarked on it. âIt is still not good enough, but you will learn to speak it better at Waterford,' and both boys looked uncomfortable. Moses had arranged for them to write the entrance examination for this elite multi-racial school across the border in the independent black kingdom of Swaziland, and the twins had both passed and been accepted and now were dreading the day not far away when they would be uprooted from this comfortable familiar world of theirs and packed off into the unknown. In South Africa all education was strictly segregated, and it was the declared policy of the Minister of Bantu Affairs, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, not to educate black children to the point of discontentment. He had told parliament quite frankly that education for blacks should not conflict with the government policy of
apartheid
and should not be of such a standard as to evoke in the black pupil expectations
which could never be fulfilled. The annual expenditure by the state on each white pupil was £60 while that on a black student was £9 per annum. Those black parents who could afford it, the chiefs and small businessmen, sent their children out of the country to be educated, and Waterford was a favourite choice.
apartheid
and should not be of such a standard as to evoke in the black pupil expectations
which could never be fulfilled. The annual expenditure by the state on each white pupil was £60 while that on a black student was £9 per annum. Those black parents who could afford it, the chiefs and small businessmen, sent their children out of the country to be educated, and Waterford was a favourite choice.
The twins escaped from the daunting presence of their father and uncle with relief, but their mother was waiting for them in the yard beside the blue and crimson van, and with a sharp inclination of her head ordered them into her own parlour.
The room was a sorceress's lair from which the twins were usually barred, and now they crept in with even more trepidation than they had entered their father's house. Against the far wall stood their mother's gods and goddesses carved in native woods and dressed in feathers and skins and beads, with eyes of ivory and mother-of-pearl, and bared teeth of dog and baboon. They were a terrifying assembly, and the twins shivered and dared not look directly upon them.
Before the family idols were arranged offerings of food and small coins, and from the other walls hung all the gruesome accoutrements of their mother's craft, gourds and clay pots of ointments and medicines, bundles of dried herbs, snake skins and mummified iguana lizards, bones and baboon skulls, glass jars of hippopotamus and lion fat, musk of crocodile, and other nameless substances which festered and bubbled and stank so foully that it made the teeth ache in their jaws.
âYou wore the charms I gave you?' Kuzawa, their mother, asked. She was incongruously handsome in the midst of her unholy and hideous tools and medicines, full-faced and glossy-skinned with very white teeth and liquid, gazelle eyes. Her limbs were long and gleamed with secret and magical ointments and her breasts under the necklaces of
ivory beads and charms were big and firm as wild Kalahari melons.
ivory beads and charms were big and firm as wild Kalahari melons.
In response to her question, the twins nodded vehemently, too overcome to speak, and unbuttoned their shirts. The charms were hung around their necks, each on a thin leather thong. They were the horns of the little grey duiker, the open ends sealed with gum arabic, and Kuzawa had taken all the twelve years of their lives to assemble the magical potion that was contained in each of them. It was made up of samples of all the bodily excretions of Hendrick Tabaka, the father of the twins, his faeces and urine, his spittle and nasal mucus, his sweat and his semen, the wax from his ears and the blood from his veins, his tears and his vomit. With these, Kuzawa had mixed the dried skin from the soles of his feet, the clippings of his nails, the shavings of his beard and his pate and pubes, the lashes of his eyes plucked in his sleep, and the crusted scabs and pus from his wounds. Then she had added herbs and fats of wonderful efficacy, and spoken the words of power over them and finally, to make the charm infallible, she had paid a vast sum to one of the grave-robbers who specialized in such procurements to bring her the liver of an infant drowned at birth by its own mother.
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