A Sailor's Honour (21 page)

It was Weber's idea that the money they had to pay De Villiers should be paid into his personal bank account in Hamburg. ‘You never know when you might need it,' he said.

The major sat silent throughout the course of the negotiations. When Johann Weber extended his hand to shake on the agreement, the major folded his arms. ‘I have a message for you,' he said. ‘Both of you. Gentlemen don't get angry. They get even.'

Weber had frowned. He had heard those words before.

Less than a month later, Johann Weber spoke at the funeral of his sister and her children. Pierre de Villiers was still in a coma in 1 Military Hospital at Voortrekkerhoogte.

Operation Virus quickly generated its own momentum and required no further attention from the Third Force. But as the momentum increased, the forces resisting the virus and its spread increased too.

Annual funding at one institute alone exceeded $3 billion. All the large multinational drug companies were in a race to find a cure, knowing that whoever found a cure would be able to rake in billions in profits each year, with the Nobel Prize in Medicine certain to be awarded to the individual scientists involved. By 2009, there were already more than thirty licensed anti-
HIV
drugs available to the health departments of governments around the globe. While not yet a cure, these drugs were making a difference. Where previously the life expectancy of an infected person was measured in months, not years, a twenty-year-old diagnosed in 2009 could expect to live a further fifty years, provided he or she religiously followed the course of the prescribed medication. And transmission of the virus from mother to unborn child had virtually been halted.

Since governments are known to be slow to react to creeping disasters, volunteers sprang into action everywhere. In Durban, Liesl Weber took up a post as a volunteer at the Aids clinic from which she would later be abducted. Meanwhile, Johann Weber was roped in to try to save a sixty-year-old transport company from going under.

The company had started as a one-man concern in 1960. The owner had bought a motorbike with a delivery box on the back and had started making deliveries in and around Johannesburg. In time his business grew until he was able to acquire trucks and trailers. On the advice of his accountant, he then converted the business into a company. The business grew until it had a fleet of more than five hundred trucks. Then things started going wrong.

In his affidavit, the managing director explained the firm's decline into insolvency as follows: ‘Our drivers – we have six hundred on the payroll at any given time – are dying at the rate of sixteen to twenty a month. About fifty are off sick at any time, and of those who turn up for work, many are too weak to climb up into the trucks they have to drive. We've lost credibility with our customers because the trucks carrying their cargo are often stranded at the roadside because our drivers are too sick to continue. When our turnover fell, the banks stepped in and repossessed some of our assets.

‘All we need is time to negotiate with the union to allow us to employ more white drivers. There are many white drivers out of work. They don't carry the virus.'

He pointed out that in 1990, the life expectancy of the average South African had been actuarially calculated to be seventy-two. By 2010, it was estimated, it would be forty-nine, and it would continue to fall steadily.

‘Mr Weber, I don't see how this has anything to do with the case before me,' the judge said when the witness took a sip from the glass of water on the witness stand.

‘If M' Lord pleases,' Weber said. ‘I'll ask the witness to explain.'

‘Our workforce, M' Lord,' the witness said, ‘has been decimated by this virus, and it has done so in less than a lifetime. All we need is a few weeks to negotiate with the unions so that we can employ drivers who are free of the virus. But as things are now, we are not allowed to ask about an applicant's
HIV
status when we interview prospective employees. We simply can't afford to go on in this way. Otherwise we will lose the company and everyone will lose their jobs, including me.'

The judge postponed the matter for six months to allow the company to reach an agreement with the union.

The Third Force sat back and let Operation Virus run its course. It had found allies in unexpected places. A state president who turned a blind eye and refused to acknowledge the existence of the pandemic. A deputy president who believed that a shower would prevent the spread of the virus after unprotected sex. A minister of health who advocated the use of garlic and beetroot for prevention and refused to implement a concerted programme of containment. Drug dealers who stole
ARVS
to mix with their drugs. Together these were as deadly a combination as the mix of rat poison, heroin or cocaine and the stolen
ARVS
the drug dealers sold on the streets and in the clubs.

The government was killing its own people, and it was doing so publicly and without shame.

The government's dereliction of duty first led to indignation, then ridicule, and finally concerted action. Non-governmental organisations sprang up everywhere and joined with the men and women of the health profession to combat the virus. They employed lawyers to take their case to court and finally, after a number of appeals, the government was ordered to roll out a state funded
ARV
programme. The infection rate soon dropped by 25%, and the transmission of the virus from mother to child dipped below 10%. The life expectancy of a person diagnosed with
HIV
also rose from a handful of years to thirty or forty. There was a glimmer of hope for the first time.

But the cost was immense. It was estimated that by 2015 it would cost
R
30 billion a year to battle the virus and cope with the devastation it left in its wake.

The successes of the
ARV
programmes had unintended consequences. People no longer feared the virus as they had done ten or twenty years earlier. Then it had been a death sentence. Now it was merely an inconvenience; the inconvenience of collecting the medicines from the clinic once a month and of taking the prescribed dosages every day. A culture of sex with multiple partners diminished the success of the schemes employed to combat the virus.

For some, sex had become the currency of social mobility.

Xolisile was early and took a table near the front where her friends would find her. She sent the waiter away and opened her handbag. Small and silver, matching her shoes and her cellphone. She saw the small dispensary container with her details on the pharmacist's label and called the waiter back. ‘Some water, please.' She caught the waiter looking down the front of her blouse.

There was a message on her cellphone. It was from her number-two lover. Actually, he was number three, but she could not tell him that. Men are sensitive about such things. They can stand being number two, but not number three, or worse, number four. While she had only three lovers, she had a few friends and acquaintances who had four or more. Those girls were known as ubufebu: loose women, women of low moral standards who are available for casual sex. Xolisile thought that sex was too valuable to be given away for nothing, and didn't count herself amongst the ubufebu. She was married to the inkosi, the chief, who had been appointed for her tribe by the Member of the Executive responsible for Traditional Affairs. She was the inkosi's fourth wife, but she didn't mind, because he took good care of her. He received a good salary from the government, and distributed that equally between his wives and his own lovers. He was her number-one lover, her istraight, which entitled him to have sex with her without using a condom. Her second lover was an ishende, a secret lover, as was her third. Her position as the fourth wife of an inkosi required a certain amount of discretion about these things.

The message on Xolisile's cellphone was from her isidikiselo, her second lover (or so he thought). While her istraight was responsible for her conventional support like food and the roof over her head, the isidikiselo was responsible for the luxuries of life to which she had become accustomed from as early as her sixteenth year. Bus fares, cellphone contract, hairdresser. Since she had two isidikiselo, she enjoyed a high standard of living and had even flown on an aeroplane to Johannesburg once to spend a weekend with the other isidikiselo, the one who was really number two.
Are you free tonight?
the message read. He was generous.
For sure
, she replied by
SMS
. She knew that by morning, he would insist on sex without a condom. That wasn't really an isidikiselo's privilege, but he was generous
.
She knew she was going to leave with cash in hand. And the condom didn't really matter either, she knew, but she wasn't going to tell him that.

Xolisile's friends arrived and parked in front of the restaurant. She was envious of Kgomotso for having a car. It was a brand-new Hyundai Atos. Her sugar daddy had given it to her when she matriculated. He was paying all her university fees and expenses. It had been the price for Kgomotso's virginity, but, Xolisile reasoned, it was worth it. Kgomotso's sugar daddy was a deputy minister in the government and had promised her a job in his office when she graduated. But Kgomotso had to be at his beck and call whenever he came to the province. It was the price of the minister's patronage, and until a more powerful man came along, she would have to satisfy his whims.

The girls talked and had no secrets from each other. The men they serviced would have been shocked to hear the foul language falling from the lips they kissed in secret.

Xolisile watched her friends approaching. She stood up and hugged the others, kissing twice on the cheeks, French style.

The three girls carried on as if they were the only people in the restaurant. But when they got to the serious business, they dropped their voices.

‘What was he like?' Xolisile asked.

Jabu frowned and bit her lip and Kgomotso had to answer. ‘It wasn't good.'

‘What?' Xolisile asked. ‘Didn't he like you? Didn't he give you anything?'

‘No,' Jabu said. ‘It wasn't like that.'

‘What then?' Xolisile asked.

Kgomotso started to giggle, but seeing the look on Jabu's face, put her hand over her mouth and said, ‘Sorry. You tell her.'

Jabu was a virgin and only sixteen, but with sufficient make-up she looked eighteen. They had worked on her fingernails and Xolisile had lent her a good pair of shoes for the liaison the previous evening. Now, without the make-up, Jabu looked sixteen again.

‘What happened?' Xolisile asked again. ‘We thought he would pay a lot of money for your virginity and stay on as your sponsor. But what happened, my baby? It couldn't have been that bad, could it?'

Jabu sniffed once or twice, and then told her story. ‘We had dinner in the hotel. The food was terrible, no spice. Then we went to the room. I gave him the condom, just like you said, and I said he must put it on while I go to the bathroom.' Jabu stopped talking. The other two leaned forward to hear.

‘When I came back into the room, he was naked and he was putting the condom on. I got scared and I ran away.'

‘What?' Xolisile asked. ‘Right out of the hotel?'

Kgomotso nodded and put her hand on Jabu's arm.

Xolisile couldn't help herself. She started laughing. Kgomotso followed suit. The other diners looked on in amusement. That was a happy table. ‘At least he couldn't chase you like that!' Xolisile said. ‘Imagine that, him chasing you through the foyer of the hotel wearing nothing except the condom!'

Even Jabu had to smile.

‘But it's a tragedy,' Xolisile said at last. ‘You missed a big opportunity there.'

‘Maybe not,' Kgomotso said. ‘I've known him for a long time. He's a loose man, isoka lamanyala. He fucks around indiscriminately. He's not a long-term proposition. Maybe you should count yourself lucky.'

Jabu started crying softly. ‘But he said he was going to give me a job at his office. What am I going to do now?'

The white man at the table next to theirs put some money on the bill and stood up. ‘You girls,' he said in fluent Zulu. ‘You girls should remember that in this district, we all speak Zulu.' He led his wife towards the door.

They waited for him to get to the door. ‘He thinks they still own the country,' Kgomotso said. ‘But they are on the way out, all of them.'

The retired Third Force man turned at the door and held it open for his wife. ‘They are fucking themselves into oblivion,' he said to her. ‘Just as we predicted thirty years ago.'

Operation Virus was still going strong, and it would continue to do so for years to come. But the Third Force never rested on their laurels. They had adopted a mantra from the Struggle.
A luta continua
. The struggle continues.

It was still too early to put the meat on the fire. The hard leadwood had to burn down to coals first, and that would take an hour or more. The man in the wheelchair decided to call the meeting to order and to get the business of the day out of the way.

The general tapped his pen against the side of his glass. The seven men specially invited to the meeting deep in the bush turned to face their leader. They formed a semicircle in front of the wheelchair and stood in the at-rest position, holding their drinking glasses steady in front of them, ready for a toast. Behind the general's wheelchair, his hands on the handlebars, stood the ever-present major, a man whose name they didn't know, but who always stood with the general.

‘Gentlemen,' the general started, ‘let's get down to business before the Klipdrift befuddles your thinking too much.'