War Council
The kraal had been turned upside down. David had been to some wild parties. This one beat the lot. Most of the girls left when they saw the inkosi go. Some stayed and were joined by older women. Items of clothing lay around amongst fallen shields and sleeping bodies. Some were lost during the war dancing. Others were discarded by the exhausted warriors.
David had watched the festivities from the door. That was the only place where he could see what was going on and avoid the clouds of marihuana smoke sweeping through the building. Some of the men found female companions. The rest devoted their energy to war dances which soon developed into mock battles. They fought with sticks instead of spears. Massed warriors hurled themselves at one another. It wasn’t difficult to imagine what the British faced at Isandlwana.
The onslaught would have been overwhelming. The inkosi said the warriors were hyped up on drugs and one was related to marihuana. That didn’t help their coordination but it got them into a state of mind where they stopped worrying about pain and being killed. Their only concern was to wipe out the enemy.
David sat, cross-legged, amongst the debris and figured that he was the only person, in the entire kraal, who wasn’t suffering from a severe hangover. If they were suddenly attacked, he couldn’t expect much help from his Zulu hosts.
He picked up a spear and examined the blade. The inkosi said the Zulu blacksmiths smelted iron in small furnaces and beat out the blades with hammers. This one looked as if it had been made from scrap metal in the truck workshop. Otherwise, it appeared to be totally authentic and deadly.
He turned his attention to the shields. They were made of stiff cowhide. If the war dances were anything to go by, shields were used for pushing and shoving as well as deflecting blows.
The only effective armour was the front part of the kilt. It hung down like an apron and was made from coin-sized patches of leather sewn closely together. The rear was of much softer leather. Strings of cow tails were worn on the upper arms and below the knees. They gave the warriors their striking appearance.
David wondered how he would have fared as a Zulu warrior. Their way of fighting wasn’t much different from the martial arts he practiced. Like him, they had to get in close and deliver decisive blows. But there was one big difference. The Zulus fought as a team. He fought as a lone warrior.
Footsteps told him that someone with shoes was approaching. He looked up and saw Big John. He was dressed in his work clothes and holding a book.
‘David. I have a present for you.’
He sat down and held up the book.
‘The inkosi asked me to give you this. It is a history of KwaZulu. He wrote it when he was a professor in England.’
‘A professor?’
‘Yes. He came back ten years ago. That was after we had majority rule. The white government locked up Nelson Mandela and a lot of our other leaders. The inkosi escaped. So did President Mbeki. He went to a university in London.’
Big John handed the book to David.
‘It is one of those learned books,’ he smiled. ‘I don’t know why the inkosi wrote it like that. I have read Nelson Mandela’s book. It is far easier.’
‘It’s how university professors write,’ David said. ‘They don’t want to sound like other people. They want to sound important.’
Big John considered the point.
‘He wouldn’t have liked what happened last night.’
‘No,’ David nodded. ‘It’s a good thing you moved him on.’
‘Petra wouldn’t have liked it …’
‘That’s right. She has very strict ideas on how girls should behave. She thinks they should stay virgins until they marry.’
‘That’s what we think,’ Big John said.
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ David laughed.
‘No. We have strict rules.’
‘You could have fooled me.’ David rocked back on his haunches. ‘I saw what was going on last night. No one sent me off to spend the night somewhere else. I was here all the time. I saw what was happening and they weren’t just holding hands.’
Big John maintained a straight face.
‘Uku-hlobonga is allowed.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Sex without entry.’
‘There was more than that.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘They were doing it behind the fence.
‘Will you give evidence?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because, if entry happens, the man must give a bull to the girl’s family. If she becomes pregnant then more bulls are required.’
David wondered if that piece of Zulu cultural history was recorded in the inkosi’s learned book.
‘What happens with you?’ Big John asked.
That was a good question. David thought about how things worked in his own society. The nearest he could come to a young warriors’ initiation ceremony was schoolies week back home in Australia. Tens of thousands of young people flocked to tourist resorts to celebrate the end of their school years. A concerned older generation laid down rules of behaviour. One lot preached total abstinence. Another distributed free condoms and preached the virtues of safe sex.
He was about to answer Big Johns’ question when a flurry of activity caused him to look up. The inkosi was striding towards the kraal. He was wearing a tweed jacket and matching trousers and looked like a university professor who had got out of bed in a hurry and failed to do up all his buttons.
Petra and Sipho were with him. Their expressions were tense. David wondered if they had heard about the violation of Uku-hlobonga and were coming to express their profound displeasure at what had happened. It soon became apparent that something far more serious was at stake.
Petra took Sipho’s arm and hurried towards them.
‘David. We don’t know what to do.’
She pointed to a computer in Sipho’s hand.’
‘It’s awful … just so awful!’
Her face was distraught. Tears flowed down her cheeks. She shrieked incoherently and slumbering figures began to stir. Men, who had shown every sign of being stoned out of their minds, sat up and began to listen.
‘That poor little girl …’
Petra was in a state of hysteria. David stopped listening and turned to Sipho, hoping to get some sense out of him. Sipho struggled for words and the inkosi intervened.
‘Show him what is on your computer.’
Sipho sank to his knees and placed the computer on a shield. His hands trembled and he had difficulty turning it on and typing in the commands. Eventually, the screen came to life. David leant over and saw a woman’s face. He recognised Sipho’s wife and heard a child screaming. Sipho collapsed onto the ground and Petra tried to comfort him.
‘They are torturing the child,’ the inkosi said.
David looked at the screen. The images were nauseating. The lovely woman and her beautiful daughter were being treated like worthless trash. He had been with them only a few days earlier. His mind felt as if it was ready to explode. He steadied himself.
‘How did you get it?’
‘Sipho used my computer to access his email,’ the inkosi said. ‘It was the first time he had been able. That is the last one.’
‘The last what?’
‘The last email. They are sending one a day. Each time they do more terrible things to the child. They are threatening to kill her.’
‘Who is sending the emails?’
‘The people who captured them.’
‘Yes. I guessed that. What do they want?’
‘You! David!’
‘Me?’
‘They want to know where you are. They say they will release Sipho’s wife and child when he tells them.’
‘Then they will kill them,’ David peered at the screen.
‘What do you mean?’
‘When they get what they want, Sipho’s family will be no more use to them. They will kill them and they will kill Sipho if they find him. That’s what these people do. They don’t take chances. They kill everyone who gets in their way. They killed Richard de Villiers and they killed his brother. They will kill Petra if they think she is a risk.’
David ran out of words. His audience had stopped listening to him. They were listening to Sipho’s wife as she sobbed. She spoke in English. The men knew enough to know what was happening and it made them very angry.
A giant of a man stepped forward. David recognised him from the night before. Big John called him the umnumzana. David figured that meant commander or something similar.
‘We free them, brother.’
He placed a hand on Sipho’s shoulder.
‘That place.’ He pointed to the screen. ‘You know it?’
‘It is my aunt’s house.’
‘Where that?’
‘In the Eastern Cape.’
‘We go there. We make plan.’
The umnumzana turned to the inkosi and spoke in Zulu. David heard his name and guessed that the old man wanted him as a member of a war council. The two men seemed to argue. Big John intervened and a compromise seemed to have been reached.
They left the main building and went to one of the small basket-shaped huts in the kraal. The inkosi called them his beehives. David guessed he was referring to the old-fashioned sort made of straw.
A shield was produced for the inkosi to sit on. Another was handed to David and a third to Big John. The umnumzana sat on the forth. The inkosi led the proceedings. Big John produced a leopard-skin headband for him to wear. He put it on but it did little to change his appearance. He still looked like an aged university professor who was hopelessly out of his depth in what he was doing.
He struggled to hold the meeting together. Big John had to come to his aid to prevent the umnumzana from leaving. He didn’t like the use of English and resented David’s presence. The big man sat on his shield, grunting, as the inkosi explained that David had been assigned to look after Petra and could tell them about the people who were holding Sipho’s family captive.’
David nodded respectfully and turned to the umnumzana, hoping to win his confidence.’
‘They don’t speak Xhosa,’ he said.
‘Why you say that?’
‘Because they forced Sipho’s wife to speak to him in English. They wanted to know what she was saying. That tells us that none of them are Xhosa or speak any language like it.’
‘Where you think they from?’
‘Anywhere that provides hired killers ...’
The umnumzana listened intently as David told him about the sort of people employed by the Cabal and how they were likely to fight. Big John had to translate the odd word but most went across smoothly. Then the inkosi asked what should be done.
David launched forth, unaware of the fury building up beside him. The umnumzana was happy to be briefed on the opposing force. He didn’t expect to be told what came next. His breathing quickened as David ticked off points on his fingers.
‘One, we should send an elite force against them. Two, it should be armed with automatic weapons and arrive before nightfall. Three, it should be divided into two units. Four, one of these units will be assigned to the rescue of the mother and child. The other will …’
A roar from the umnumzana stopped him in his tracks.
‘We have a saying in Zulu. I tell you what it is.’
The big man reached towards him.
‘Don’t teach your grandfather how to fart!’
‘I see you last night. You look at girls and I think you like little boy who want girls but not had one. What you know about fighting?’
David returned his stare.
‘As much as I know about girls.’
The umnumzana smiled and changed his stance. David knew what would follow. He had seen the move the night before. It was a playful way of starting a wrestling match. The big man’s palm touched his arm and David delivered the counter stroke. His reactions were much faster than the older man. The umnumzana lost balance and David’s hand hovered over him, ready to strike a deadly blow.
‘Okay. Okay, David …’
He had made his point. No more was required. The situation was the reverse of the one in the Flamingo bar. Dino was out to humiliate him. The umnumzana wanted to test him. David had no doubt that he had passed the test.
‘You good fighter, David.’
The umnumzana shook his hand and grinned at him.
‘Do you want me to tell you what I would do?’ David asked. ‘It’s just my ideas. I gave them because the inkosi asked. He is your chief. I did it out of respect.’
He glanced at the old man. The inkosi sat on his shield and wore the leopard-skin headband of a chief. But he still looked like a retired university professor. David guessed he had chaired a few faculty meetings that got a bit out of hand. He was prepared to bet that none involved anything as rough as this.
University people talked about culture shock. David had met the term all over the world. It was what happened when people from one culture met people from another. He had suffered culture shock when he went to university. He couldn’t hack it and got out. The people there called him a dropout. For them, he was one of the fallen. They couldn’t understand that he didn’t drop out … he bailed out.
The inkosi belonged to the same culture as Petra and Sipho. David belonged to the same culture as Big John and the umnumzana. They understood one another. It wasn’t necessary to speak the same language. They knew from the way the others behaved that they were warriors like themselves.
Big John tapped his arm.
‘That second unit …’
‘Which one?’
‘You want us to divide our force.’
‘That’s just an idea …’
This time the discussion got off to a much better start. Big John translated for the umnumzana. They sat on their shields and worked out how many men would be needed and what weapons they should carry. David was amazed by the variety available.
Southern Africa was awash with firearms after the struggle against colonial rule and the civil wars that followed. The Americans and Russians poured in arms to bolster their allies. More were supplied by mining companies and others. David guessed that the Cabal was amongst them. The thought of fighting the Cabal with its own weapons was appealing.