Blood Safari (44 page)

I faced a man the colour of dusk. He was deep in his sixties, hair snowy white, but the scar that stretched from the corner of his mouth to his ear was just as clear as when I had met him for the first time ten years earlier. His eyes were still vacant, as though the person behind them had died inside. He was a man who no longer cared about feeling pain and who felt a certain pressure to dish it out.

I slid the DVD case across the desk towards him.

‘You will need an interpreter,’ I said.

‘For which language?’ His accent was strong.

‘Afrikaans.’

‘You can translate for me.’

‘I think we would both prefer an objective translation.’

‘I see.’ He reached for the holder and opened it. The disc gleamed, silver and new. ‘May I ask you why you are doing this?’

‘I would like to say it is because I believe in justice, but that wouldn’t be true. It’s because I believe in revenge.’

He nodded slowly and closed the case.

‘I know,’ he said, and put out his hand. ‘We are like family.’

As I walked out into the oppressive heat of Maputo, capital of Mozambique, at noon, my cell phone beeped above the hiss of the Indian Ocean. I took it out of my pocket and beckoned a taxi. I checked the message.

Three words only:
EMMA IS AWAKE.

I must confess that I had expectations about the moment I would walk into Emma’s hospital room.

Not unreasonable expectations, such as Emma opening her arms and embracing me, whispering her gratitude and love in my ear. More along the lines of me sitting on the bed and she taking my hand and saying, ‘Thank you, Lemmer.’ That would have been good enough for me, a start, and a prelude to future possibilities.

But Jack Phatudi deprived me of that.

On Friday, 4 January he sent Black and White, the pair who had followed Emma and me a lifetime ago, to arrest me. The white one’s swelling around the nose and eyes was not totally gone yet. They arrested me with great ceremony at the Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport for ‘murder, attempted murder and defeating the ends of justice’. They allowed me to make one telephone call before locking me in the unbearable heat of the Nelspruit police cells, among a selection of colourful and antagonistic men.

B. J. Fikter came round on Saturday afternoon for what he called ‘cell visitation’. After getting in a few wisecracks about my dilemma, he told me that Emma was being flown to Cape Town on Saturday on a SouthMed Health Care plane. Also that Jeanette said not to worry, she was working on ‘my circumstances’.

By Monday morning there were threats about an additional charge of assaulting a fellow detainee, but I knew they would have difficulty finding credible witnesses. Then Black and White came to fetch me, cuffed my hands and feet, and took me to the magistrates’ court for a bail hearing. They were unnecessarily rough when they shoved me into the back of their Astra.

The holding cells were below the courtroom, in the basement. A young white lawyer with a fat gold ring came to introduce himself as Naas du Plessis. He would be representing me at the request of Jeanette Louw. ‘I will do what I can, but you have a former conviction,’ he said gloomily.

I was the last one to be called, but the two uniforms didn’t take me to a courtroom. They pushed me, shuffling to accommodate the chains and with my hands cuffed behind my back, into a tiny office where Jack Phatudi waited. They shut the door before leaving.

There were a couple of chairs, a table and a steel filing cabinet. I sat down. Silently, Phatudi directed a scowl of hatred at me. Then he punched a deep dent into the filing cabinet. The windows rattled. He came and stood in front of me holding his sore knuckles. His face was only centimetres from mine. For the first time I saw him sweat. The drops trickled down his dark skin, down the tree trunk of a neck into the snow-white collar of his shirt. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he would love to repeat the blow, this time against my head.

‘You …’ he said, but could not go on. He seemed to choke on the words massing behind his tongue. He turned around and kicked the cabinet. Another dent. He came back and grabbed my face with his right hand, fingers over my jaw and cheeks, and he squeezed with frightening force while he stared into my eyes. Then he shoved me backwards, making the chair topple over and my head hit the floor hard.

He made a sound of frustration and rage and said, ‘Let me tell you just one thing. Just one thing.’ He plucked me upright by my clothes and held me in front of him and said, ‘They couldn’t buy me.’ We stood like that, Jack Phatudi and I, and I knew Wernich and his people had made Phatudi an offer which he had refused. And I knew nothing I could say would make any difference.

So I just asked, ‘What do you mean, Jack?’

He let me go, so that I lost my balance and staggered backwards against the wall.

He turned his back on me. ‘They came with money. They said I should drop all charges. Against the one you shot. Against Cobie
de Villiers. I refused. They said my people would win their land claim, and they would give money. How much did I want? I said no. So they just went over my head. They bought someone else up the chain of command, I don’t know who. But let me tell you now, I won’t leave it here. I will get you. And de Villiers and Kappies. I’ll get you.’

He turned on his heel and stalked past me without looking at me again. He opened the door and went out, barking some order down the passage in sePedi. The two uniforms came and unlocked the shackles and told me to go; the case against me had been withdrawn.

Emma had a room with a view of Table Mountain. When I arrived the door was open and the room was filled with people gathering around her, Jacobus le Roux, Carel the Rich and some of his children, Stoffel the Advocate, others I did not know. Peace-loving, attractive, successful people. The space was filled with friendship and joy. I stopped in my tracks before they saw me and stole one look at Emma in profile. Her face was thinner, but the lines were so unmistakably beautiful when she smiled, and I turned away and scribbled a note that I left with the flowers at the nurses’ station.

I had to fetch my Isuzu from Hermanus. And then go to Stodels for the herb seedlings.

She phoned me the following day.

‘Thank you for the flowers,’ she said.

‘It’s a pleasure.’

‘You should have come in, Lemmer.’

‘There were so many people.’

‘How can I ever thank you?’

‘I was just doing my job.’

‘Ai, Lemmer, you’re back in your shell again. Where are you?’

‘In Loxton.’

‘What’s the weather like?’

‘Hot.’

‘The wind is blowing here in Cape Town.’

‘I’m glad you’re better, Emma.’

‘I have you to thank for that.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘I’ll come and visit you. When I’m well again.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘Thanks, Lemmer. For everything.’

‘It’s a pleasure.’

Then we said goodbye, awkwardly, and I knew that the odds were ten to one that I would never see her again.

It was raining when I read about the deaths of Quintus Wernich and Christo Loock.

It was 14 February and I was sitting at my table reading the paper with thunder rumbling outside above the drum of fat raindrops on the corrugated-iron roof. The front-page article in
Die Burger
told the story of the suspected carjacking at Stellenbosch and a renewed outcry against the atrocious levels of crime.

I read it twice and then sat staring out of the kitchen window at the bright pools forming in my herb garden and thought about the man with the scarred cheek. Raul Armando de Sousa.

I saw him in 1997, just once, during government talks in Maputo. He called all the bodyguards together in a conference hall to discuss the procedures for the banquet on the final evening. By his eyes I recognised him as a brother-in-violence, but there was more to his dusk-coloured façade – a burden, an invisible weight he carried on his shoulders.

I asked about him circumspectly. They told me that he had been the man who guarded Samora Machel. He had been in the Tupolev 134A when it flew into the side of the Lebombo mountains. He was one of the ten they took out of the wreckage alive. I understood then. I wondered what it must feel like to wait your whole life to be defined, only to find when the crucial moment arrived that there was nothing you could do. Was it not preferable to remain invisible and incomplete?

It was of him that I had thought when Jacobus le Roux told me his story under a tree on Heuningklip. By then I knew how Raul Armando de Sousa must feel. And that sometimes there is a way out.

That was how I knew with total certainty that he had been there the previous night in Stellenbosch. De Sousa had pulled the trigger.

I read the rest of the paper without concentration. Until I spotted the small report on an inner page, a single column beside a Pick ’n Pay advertisement. Conservation groups have expressed their concern about the manner and extent of the settlement of the Sibashwa tribe’s land claim in the Kruger National Park.

When I had finished, I took a walk around the garden to savour the divine smell of a wet Karoo. I thought about Jack Phatudi, son of a Sibashwa chief.

At five o’clock I went jogging on the Bokpoort road at a speed calculated to get me home in time to watch
7de Loan
on television.

There is a spot on this route, a rise beyond the last stock gate at Jakhalsdans, where millions of years of geological forces have piled massive rocks on top of one another like beacons. On either side the Karoo lies open, and I go and stand there to gain perspective of our place in the universe. We are all small, insignificant, invisible if you draw back, away from the earth, the solar system, the Milky Way.

But jogging back through town, sparkling and clean after the rain, people greeted me: Conrad at the Repair Shop, De Wit locking up at the Co-op, Antjie Barnard from her veranda, Oom Joe van Wyk pulling weeds in the garden.

‘Afternoon, Lemmer. Nice rain, hey?’

Far down the street, right on the edge of town, was my house. I saw a green Renault Mégane, a cabriolet, parked in front of it, and I began to run faster.

Authors are often asked, ‘What inspired you to write this book?’

My standard answer is that inspiration doesn’t feature much. For me, perspiration is the name of the game – every story is like a house, and I have to build it brick by brick.

Blood Safan
is an exception, however, to a certain extent.

As luck would have it, I visited the Moholoholo Animal Rehabilitation Centre below the Mariepskop mountain peak in Limpopo Province three times within twelve months while writing
Devil’s Peak
a few years ago. Two of these visits were during motorcycle trips, and not intended as writer’s research at all. But every time I listened to the presentations by Brian Jones and his personnel, I was inspired by their dedication, passion and sacrifice, especially the incredible work they do with vultures.

For this, and the fact that their struggle became the first brick of a new story house, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude. And may I urge the reader to both visit their website at
www.moholoholo.co.za
, and visit the Rehab Centre in person. Or even better, support them financially to help save our African vultures.

Which also means I can’t deny the fact that the fictional Mogale Centre in the book is based on the geography, spirit and structure of the very real Moholoholo. But that is where the similarity ends. All characters in
Blood Safan
are fictitious, and definitely not based on any living human being – including the good people of Moholoholo.

I am also indebted to the following people: Tom Dreyer, for permission to quote from his excellent novel
Equatoria
, Keith and Colleen Begg, the world-renowned wildlife researchers, for permission to quote from their honey badger article in
Africa Geographie
(February 2005), Sarah Bordiert, editor of
Africa Geographic
(definitely one of my favourite magazines), the archive staff of the daily newspaper
Die Burger
, Captain Elmarie Engelbrecht of the South African Police Services Psychological Investigation Unit in Pretoria, my agent Isobel Dixon and her colleagues at Blake Friedmann in London, my wife Anita, our children, Lida, Liam, Johan and Konstanz, and the ATKV for financial support of my research for the novel.

I would also like to acknowledge the following sources:

The Long Summer
, Brian Fagan, Granta Books, 2004

Guns, Germs and Steel
, Jared Diamond, Vintage, 2005

The Weather Makers
, Tim Flannery, Penguin, 2005

Birds of Prey
, Peter Steyn, David Philip, 1989

Roberts Birds of Southern Africa
, 7th edn, Hockey, Dean and Ryan, Trustees of the John Voelcker Bird Book Fund, 2005

Slange en Slangbyte in Suider-Afrika
, Johan Marais, Struik, 1999

Field Guide to Snakes and Other Reptiles of Southern Africa
, Bill Branch, Struik, 1998

Sappi Tree Spotting: Lowveld
, Rina Grant and Val Thomas, Jacana

Stormwind en Droogtes
, Freek Swart, Litera, 2002

Skukuza
, David Tattersall, Tafelberg, 1972

The Game Rangers
, Jan Roderigues, 1992

Mahlangeni
, Kobie Krüger, Penguin, 2004

Mashesha
, Tony Pooley, Southern, 1992

http://www.contrast.org/truth/html/samora_machel.html

http://moholoholo.co.za

www.koerantargiewe.media24.com

http://www.geocities/lepulana2002/index.html

www.braininjury.com