Strong Medicine (6 page)
Authors: Angela Meadon
Inmate Number: 7865649
Bongani Zulu
04 October 2005
CMAX Prison, Pretoria
Detective Tshabalala (DT): Were you in the village when Simphiwe Moremi was attacked in 1987?
Bongani Zulu (BZ): I lived there, it was my home.
DT: So, you were there at the time?
BZ: I was, but I didn’t do anything to Moremi.
DT: Did you see his body after the attack? (Inmate nods his head to indicate ‘yes’.) What can you tell us about it?
BZ: I saw it there. A lady found it and came to call the doctor. All of us went to see what had happened to him.
DT: So you saw the body where it was found?
BZ: I saw it there where the doctor went to examine it.
DT: Who found the body?
BZ: A lady found it I think. She was going to fetch water and she saw it in the grass.
DT: Where was the body? Was it near her home? Was it hidden?
BZ: It was a few meters from the sand road. Maybe five meters. I think that she must have followed the blood from the road.
DT: There was blood on the road?
BZ: Yes. Lots of blood on the road, then leading through the grass to the body.
DT: Was the body covered?
BZ: No, it was just there in the grass. And it had no clothes.
DT: What was missing from the body?
BZ: Only the genitals.
DT: And what was the state of the body?
BZ: He was dead. The doctor said he’d been murdered that night, maybe five hours before.
DT: How had he been killed?
BZ: He was cut in the throat. From here to here.
DT: Do you think the organs were taken by an
inyanga
?
BZ: It was taken by someone who knew what he was doing. He knew how the body part was extracted. The doctor said it was done by a big knife probably. There were no injuries, the genitals were taken clean. One cut. One cut.
DT: Why do you think this happened?
BZ: It’s for
muti
. For ceremonies. Or something like that.
DT: Were you involved in the murder?
BZ: No, I had nothing to do with it. Why do you think every
muti
murder was me? Hey?
DT: You have a record, Mr. Zulu. We know you’ve done these things before. The boys in the forest. You killed them. You could have done this one too.
BZ: This one wasn’t me.
DT: You know this murder is still unsolved? How many years now since Moremi was killed? Nearly twenty.
BZ: People die in the villages every year. They are killed for
muti
, or for cheating on a lover, or for stealing cows. The cops don’t solve their cases. Nobody cares about them.
DT: Do you care, Mr. Zulu? Do you really care about Simphiwe Moremi?
BZ: Yes, I do. He was my friend.
Lindsey blinked out the sunlight as the man pulled the cloth sack away from her.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, but with the panties in her mouth it came out muffled and slurred. She couldn’t even understand herself.
The man with the yellow eyes leaned in close to her and breathed in her face. His breath stank like
vrot
food.
“Shut up,” Yellow Eyes said. Little drops of spit fell from his lips when he spoke, sprinkling down on her cheeks like rotten spring rain.
Lindsey’s eyes prickled with tears and she tried not to let them out, but her vision blurred and she felt the hot liquid running down into her ears.
The men leaned over, wrapped their dry hands around her ankles and wrists, and hefted her out of the wheelbarrow. They were in a little clearing in the pine trees. A white car stood in the shade, the boot open, waiting for her like the mouth of a hungry shark.
“No, no, no!” Lindsey twisted and kicked at the men. She mustn’t let them put her in the car. The men grabbed her tighter, wrapped their arms around her, and shouted at her to be quiet.
She couldn’t. She mustn’t. Her skin was wet with sweat and her chest ached.
She could remember being afraid on the first day of school, her hands were damp all day. She’d cried and cried when her mommy left her in the class, with a too-happy teacher and all the other children crying for their mommies.
She would do that a hundred times over if it would save her from these men.
She turned her head and bit the nearest thing she could find. Yellow Eyes yelled and dropped her, clutching at the wet tooth marks in his side.
Lindsey landed on her back, the air burst from her lungs, pushing the panties out of her mouth. The other man lost his grip on her legs as she dropped. She gasped for air and kicked at them. This was her last chance.
Dirt shot up into the man’s eyes as Lindsey scrabbled to her feet. She clutched her broken wrist to her chest and started running.
There were a lot of trees here. She’d never explored them before. Her mommy said it was too dangerous. Now she dodged broken branches and ran, as fast as she could, towards the sound of the cars going past on the road.
She’d never been really good at running, that’s why she played netball instead of doing athletics. She thought of mister De Villiers blowing his whistle and making the kids sprint down the soccer field as fast as they could. She almost always came last, but today the memory of that whistle made her pump her legs harder than she ever had during tryouts.
A blur of colour beyond the trees marked the road. It was so close she could smell the smoke from the cars. Someone drove past playing loud music, with base thumping in time to her legs.
She was almost there.
Something heavy slammed into the back of her legs and Lindsey fell into the dirt and leaves on the floor. Hard hands wrapped around her, grabbed at her, twisted her to face the sky.
“Don’t you ever do that again.” It was Yellow Eyes, breathing hard, spit bubbling on his chin and staining his shirt.
The other man arrived with a dirty brown rope in his hand. He tied it around her ankles while Yellow Eyes held her down.
“Let’s get her in the boot and get out of here,” Yellow Eyes said.
The small house hummed with the sound of his family. Women sang together in the kitchen, his wife and daughters preparing
pap
and
vleis
for the evening meal. Children shrieked and laughed in the yard outside, the
creak-crick
of trampoline springs filling the warm afternoon.
He closed his eyes, let the sounds and smells fill him.
A hand on his shoulder woke him with a start. “Tata, it is time for dinner.” His daughter, Evelyn, smiled at him. He’d never seen anyone so beautiful.
“Thank you, my child.” His knees popped as he rose; the muscles in his back needed encouragement to get moving too.
Expectant faces turned to him as he entered the dining room. The children crowded around a plastic table off to one side of the main dining table. The family had grown so large now, his family. He smiled at all the children and spouses and took his seat at the head of the long wooden table.
Thandeka, his third wife, smiled and started heaping ladles of stiff white
mielie pap
onto the plates around the table. Evelyn, his oldest daughter, followed her, placing a lamb chop and a fat piece of
wors
beside each portion of
pap
. Finally, Sabina, his youngest daughter, poured a thick tomato-and-onion sauce on top of the food. His stomach rumbled and his mouth watered.
He broke off a lump of the
pap
and dipped it into the sauce. It was almost to his lips when Jacob, the oldest of his five grandchildren and nearly a man, looked at him with his eager eyes.
“Tell us about your training, Tata,” Jacob said.
“Don’t interrupt your grandfather when he’s eating.” Evelyn swatted at Jacob’s right shoulder, the nearest body part she could reach from her seat on the other side of the dining table.
“It’s all right,” the old man said. He put the
pap
into his mouth, savoring the rich flavor of the sauce, and then swallowed. “Jacob will go for initiation soon; it is good for him to know what a man goes through in the bush.
“I was a young man, not much older than you, when I went to Mozambique. I went to stay with the Mandawe tribe there. Some of their men had lived in our village in KwaZulu when they came to South Africa to work when the gold mines were first built. I’d tended their graves in the village. I spent time invoking the spirits of their ancestors and communicating with them.
“They came to me in a dream and told me I must go to Mozambique and learn from their descendants.
“I saved all my money and, when I had enough, I went to do
ukuthwasa
rites with a
sangoma
in their village. I learned quickly. It only took one year for them to teach me everything they knew about being a
sangoma
.”
“Do you think I could be a
sangoma
?” Jacob asked.
The old man looked at him. He was a strong child, tall with a good amount of muscle on him, but he was also smart, smarter than any of the other grandchildren.
“Yes,” the old man said. “I think that if the ancestors called you, you would be a very powerful
sangoma
.”
“Baba!” Thandeka chided the old man. “Don’t put ideas in the boy’s head. He must go to university and study to be a doctor.”
The old man nodded and took another bite of his
pap
.
“Being a doctor is noble,” the old man said. “It is always good to give back to your community by helping people. That’s what I do. I keep the luck of the world in balance.”
“I want to do that,” Jacob said. “And I want to earn lots of money so that I can have a big house like this one.”
“Doctors make a lot of money,” Thandeka said.
“But you have to study for so long to be a doctor,” Jacob said. “If I’m good, I can be a
sangoma
in a year. Will you teach me, Tata?”
The old man’s heart swelled with pride. A lump stuck in his throat and he drank cold Coke from the glass in front of him to clear it.
“I would be honored to teach you, my child.”
- Testimony of survivor, Mozambique, 2009
#
Shortly after Koos left, Johan said he needed a drink. He said he’d be back with something for me too, but I hadn’t seen him in almost two hours.
Two hours alone in a field of dry grass, with nothing but the birds and insects for company. And the evidence of my daughter’s disappearance at my feet.
My sleeves were soggy with tears and snot. Dust and diesel fumes clogged my sinuses and squeezed my brain. A little pile of
stompies
lay at my feet; a cairn marking the spot where my daughter’s trail went cold.
When Nyala and Brits showed up, I’d bitten all my nails as far down as I could, and I’d smoked an entire box of cigarettes. I narrowed my eyes at Nyala when he made his way through the bush to my side. My accusation was clear.
“We got here as soon as we could,” Detective Nyala said, his hands raised at his sides as if he was surrendering.
“Three hours is soon for the SAPS then is it?”
“It is when you have a hundred and fifteen other missing persons’ cases open at the same time,” Nyala said.
“We had four other cases to attend to before yours.” Detective Brits took a pack of smokes out of his jacket pocket, the box as rumpled as his jacket, and shoved a cigarette between his lips.
The detectives shared a look, one of simultaneous exhaustion and despair.
“So, what have you got for us?” Brits lit the cigarette and took a long drag.
“It’s her school bag.” I showed them the dusty bag, still lying in the dirt with the books leaking from it like blood from a wound.
“You’re sure it’s hers?” Detective Nyala crouched next to the bag, careful to keep the bottoms of his crisp black trousers out of the dust.
“I’m certain,” I said. “I recognize the bunnies. They’re the same as the ones she painted on her nails.”
“That’s good,” Brits said. “It makes our job a little easier.”
Detective Brits pulled a small camera out of his pocket and started taking photos of the bag. He snapped away, the little flash strobing as he focused on one aspect of the scene or another. After a few minutes, he stood up and pocketed the camera.
“You done?” Detective Nyala asked.
“Yep, I’ve got it all,” Brits replied.
“How did you find this?” Nyala asked me as he got a pen and notepad ready to take notes.
I explained about Koos and the dogs. As the words poured from my mouth, I realized that I had, technically, interfered in their investigation.
“We didn’t mean to go around you,” I said. “But Johan and Koos thought it was a good idea.”
“Is that Koos Bekker?” Brits asked, a curious look on his face.
“Yes.” I nodded. “He’s a friend of Johan’s.”
“Ja,” Brits said. “I know Koos. He’s a good guy. Did he find anything else?”
“No, nothing but the bag.”
“All right.” Nyala snapped his notebook shut. “I think we’ve got everything.”
Brits scooped the books into the bag, lifted it by the handle on top and held it out to me.
“Wait, what about forensics and stuff? Shouldn’t someone take fingerprints or something?”
The detectives laughed and Brits looked at me with pity in his brown eyes. “Canvas doesn’t hold fingerprints. There might be hairs and stuff, but you’re not Oscar Pistorius. If we send this to forensics, it’ll take five years to get processed and they wouldn’t get anything from it.”
“So, what do we do now?” I started shivering. The meager sunlight couldn’t do anything to fend off the chill that crept up inside my body.
“There’s not much we can do.” Detective Brits stubbed out his cigarette in the dirt. “This doesn’t tell us whether she was abducted or just ran away.”
“What?” Bile burned at my throat, pushing the cold fear from my stomach. “How can you say that? Can’t you see how she struggled, the strap pulled out, the books fell out…” I trailed off as I saw the two detectives’ glazed expressions.
“The only thing we see here is a school bag in the dirt,” Nyala said. “It doesn’t really tell us anything.”
“Look,” Brits said, the bag still hanging between us. “It’s great that you found this, and we’ll add it to the file and do whatever we can. But you must understand that this really doesn’t give us much. I’m sorry.”
“We’ll be in touch if anything changes,” Nyala said before turning around and picking his way back towards the road.
“You got a ride home?” Brits asked.
I nodded and took Lindsey’s bag from his outstretched hand.
