Roots of Outrage. John Davis Gordon
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out of the window.
Justin was waiting. ‘I have a witch doctor here.’
Luke’s knocking heart sank. Not Lisa … ? And, oh, he didn’t want medicine from any witch doctor. ‘But I have no money.’
‘You can pay me tomorrow. He is a very good witch doctor, from my area; he is staying in my room tonight.’
Justin led the way down through the vegetable garden towards the servants’ quarters. Outside the row of rooms a cooking fire was glowing under a big black tripod pot. Round it squatted the cookboy, and gardenboy and their wives. And dominating them all, the witch doctor.
He was an old man. Around his neck hung the accoutrements of his office: the cloak of civet skin and monkey hide, the pig’s bladder, the necklace of baboon’s teeth, the pendants of bones and claws and fruit-pips, the bracelets of animal hair, the leggings. He looked up at Luke, without rising, and softly clapped his hands. ‘I see you.’
Luke clapped his hands. ‘I see you, nganga.’ He squatted down on his haunches. The servants looked on, wide eyes white in black faces. Luke wished they were not there to hear his troubles.
The witch doctor crouched, staring at the ground for a long minute, his white head down. Luke waited, and despite himself he was in the age-old grip, in the awe of the medicine-man, the priest, the medium to the supernatural. Then suddenly the witch doctor gave a shriek, and everybody jerked, he flung out his hands, and bones scattered on the ground.
They all stared at them. The witch doctor looked at the bones intently, motionlessly: then he pointed. To one, then another, then another: then he began to chant softly. He chanted over the bones for a minute; then scooped them up and threw them again. He threw them a third time. Then he rocked back on his heels, eyes closed. For a minute he was still: then he spoke softly: ‘Beware the land of twenty-one
Mahoney’s heart was knocking. Beware the land … A hundred and twenty-five years ago his great great grandfather had written in his journal, Woe unto the land whose borders lie in shadow … And that prophecy had turned out to be true. The murder of Piet Retief. Blaukrans, Weenen … It gave Luke gooseflesh. But the land of twenty-one?
‘Beware the woman with the red forehead.’
The red forehead … ?
‘Beware the woman who talks of pigs …’
Who talks of pigs?
Then the witch doctor said: ‘Stay in the land of the evening sun, or you will weep in the land that lies in shadows.’
Luke had gooseflesh. The land that lies in shadows … He wanted to ask, Where is this land? Justin touched his knee and shook his head, No. Then the witch doctor opened his eyes. He got up and disappeared into the nearest room.
Justin stood up. He beckoned to Luke. They walked back through the vegetable garden towards the house. Luke said in English: ‘Please ask him where the land of twenty-one is. And about the women. Come to the window and tell me.’
‘He only knows what the spirits have spoken.’ Justin stopped. ‘Maybe one day we will see each other again, in Johannesburg. I will pray for you.’
Luke’s eyes were burning. He held out his hand.
GHANA AND NIGERIA GRANTED INDEPENDENCE
BELGIAN CONGO TO GET INDEPENDENCE
HAROLD MACMILLAN MAKES WIND OF CHANGE SPEECH
SHARPEVILLE MASSACRE
In Kenya the bloody Mau Mau rebellion had finally been stamped out and, as Lisa Rousseau would have pointed out, referring to the Boer War, history repeated itself: having finally crushed the rebellion, Britain promptly gave independence to the blacks, and Jomo Kenyatta, the pro-capitalist but Russian-helped revolutionary, became the prime minister of Kenya and immediately instituted a one-party state. Ghana had been granted its independence, and Kwame Nkrumah had thrown his opposition into jail. The British had promised Nigeria its independence and fierce tribal fighting for dominance had broken out. In the vast Congo there were also demands for independence, the Belgian government panicked and agreed to grant it soon: there was fierce tribal fighting and looting in anticipation, and the whites were fleeing back to Europe. It was a bloody time in Africa and it was set to get bloodier.
Luke Mahoney started writing up his family’s journals in the Antarctic, on the whaling ships: there was nothing else to do when you came plodding off shift through the gore. He did not enjoy whaling but the pay was good, and you had nothing to spend it on down at the Ice. For four months you waded through gore, but you had enough money to last the next eight months. Most of those months Mahoney spent doing his compulsory military training. Then he returned to the whalers and plodded through more blood. And for the next three years he also plodded through blood as a crime reporter for Drum at the same time as he kept his promise to his father to study for a law degree through the University of London.
Drum was a glossy English-language magazine for blacks, about black issues, black society, black fashions, black music, black beauties, black sports; black news, black views, black politics, black crime, and black gore. Drum was a good magazine and the publisher wanted his black readership to be mindful of the blood they shed: the blood of faction fights, witchcraft murders and the blood of political rivalry. For junior reporters like Luke Mahoney it meant the stuff of police stations, courtrooms, photographs of pathologists’ tables with every glistening wound for the judge to see, the probes inserted to show the depth, the bones exposed, the gaping stomach, the severed limb, the shattered skull, and the weapons that caused it, the knives, the knobkerries, the axes, spears, screwdrivers, guns, all neatly labelled. And if there was not enough of the right gore, Luke Mahoney went to the black townships to look for it.
Soweto was the best place for that. Soweto, the vast black township beyond the Johannesburg horizon with its desolate rows of concrete boxes in tiny dusty yards, sprawling slumlands of shacks made of flattened tin and cardboard, the sprawling compound which supplied the labour needs of the Golden City, the grim place whites never saw where their serfs lived, the city of tsotsis who robbed and killed for a living, the city of shebeens and witch doctors and warlords and tribal fighting and just plain murder. Soweto had the highest murder-rate in the world. Usually the police telephoned the crime reporters if something worthwhile had happened because, firstly, they wanted the public to know what they were up against, and, secondly, the press were regarded as left-wing, anti-government, and the police wanted to rub their noses in the barbarity of Africa.
‘Thought you might like to see some of these photographs, Mahoney …’
The scene-of-crime photographs, the mortuary photographs. The charred body, the flesh still smoking.
‘We’ve got the body in the morgue right now. Like to see it?’
‘Who was he?’
‘Who knows? His face is burnt off. Probably somebody your ANC pals didn’t like. I hope you print that. And this one,’ the sergeant said, flipping the photograph, ‘we’ve got her in the morgue here, too, you must see her …’
The inside of a squatter’s shack: on the floor, in a mush of blood, the torso of a naked black girl of five, her stomach slashed open and her liver hacked out, her arms hacked off, her genitals removed.
‘Muti,’ the sergeant said. ‘He needed her liver and arms to make medicine to win the next fight.’
‘Who is “he”?’
‘Her father, Mr Mahoney. Her father cut her arms off while she screamed for mercy. Her mother saw everything. She’s here now, you