The Burning Land Read online

  Also by George Alagiah

  A Home from Home: From Immigrant Boy to English Man

  A Passage to Africa

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  canongate.co.uk

  This digital edition first published in 2019 by Canongate Books

  Copyright © George Alagiah, 2019

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication-Data

  A catalogue record for the book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 78689 792 3

  Export ISBN 978 1 78689 793 0

  eISBN 978 1 78689 795 4

  For Frances

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  PROLOGUE

  The old woman, her face etched with the lines of experience and hardship, retied the cloth around her head. She’d just used it to wipe the sweat from her neck and arms. It was a blisteringly hot day in South Africa’s Mpumalanga Province on the distant eastern fringe of the country. There was no shade, not on this side of the fence.

  She looked back at the compound and could see the shape of the marula tree about five hundred metres away. It had been there long before they’d put up the fence, a landmark to aim for at the end of the day. The way her eyes were troubling her, these days, she could no longer see the huts beyond the tree, but she knew they were there – just as they had been in her father’s time and his father’s before that.

  So it had come to this. Her family had survived the amabhunu, the Afrikaners, who had claimed the land for themselves. It was the ‘law’, they’d said. The umlungu, the white man, had told her father he could stay on the land, and his children as well, but he must work for his keep. Tch! How they worked!

  Then Mandela and his people had come and said the land would be given back to its rightful owners.

  ‘Ah! But this is a good day,’ her father had said.

  Next, a government man from Nelspruit came, and he told all the workers they must get together, form a co-op-something and the government would help them buy some land. So the men did this thing, and signed a paper.

  ‘Ah! But this is a good day,’ her father had said.

  They worked hard but the money was little. They went to see the bank man, but he said the signed piece of paper was no good; he would not borrow her father and the other men any money. And then another government man came from Nelspruit. He told the men the land was not productive or what-what, and now a new owner was coming. He was from another country.

  Then a machine came with some men from outside who built the fence. They said everyone must move to a new village.

  That was why she was standing in front of her family’s furniture. She wiped the dust from a chair, her father’s chair, the one he’d sat on when he drank his traditional beer, and eased herself down. She was waiting for her son to come back. He had taken the children and their mother to the new location.

  She had just shut her eyes when there was a huge noise, a percussive wave that seemed to get inside her head. She had never heard anything like that before. Then she saw the smoke. It was coming from the other side of the compound, from the place where the baas used to live. She heard some of the men there shouting. There was a big commotion. Was this really the place she was born? she wondered. What happened to that world?

  That day, in a room in Hillbrow, central Johannesburg, four people – three men and one woman – crowd round a laptop. They are streaming the evening news on SABC, the state-run broadcaster, once the mouthpiece of apartheid and now performing much the same function for the country’s new rulers.

  The item they are waiting for is not in the headlines. Halfway through the bulletin the newscaster says there’s been an accident on a farm in Mpumalanga. The pictures show the charred ruins of various farm buildings and vehicles. The reporter says investigators have been sent to the farm but early reports suggest an electrical fault caused a fire.

  ‘Bullshit!’ says the woman. But one of the others, a man in his thirties, wearing glasses, says, ‘This is good. They’re running scared. They are doing what the old regime used to do.’ They look at each other, the four of them, and smile. Their work has begun.

  Just a couple of hours later anyone searching for more details of the incident would discover a link to an unadorned website carrying this anonymous entry:

  Today a new struggle has begun. Just over a hundred years ago, in 1913, the Boers passed a law to ROB US OF OUR LAND. Now we must fight for it again. In Mpumalanga Province a MESSAGE HAS BEEN DELIVERED. We did not win our freedom to see the LAND TAKEN AWAY FROM US AGAIN. We, the people of South Africa, will not sit and watch our precious inheritance SOLD TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER. Today in Mpumalanga we fired the first shot in our fight against the NEW COLONIALISM. Let them be warned, those who will SELL OUR LAND TO FOREIGNERS, the people of South Africa are ready to RISE UP AGAIN.

  It was signed off, at the bottom of the page, simply as ‘The Land Collective’.

  In rooms elsewhere in the country, others saw the statement and recognised it for the call to arms they had been waiting for. A fuse had been lit, setting in motion a chain reaction that none of them, least of all the group in Hillbrow, could predict or control.

  1

  Lesedi Motlantshe’s murder was one of those pivotal moments that seemed destined to change the course of a country’s trajectory. There are some events – a law passed, a speech delivered, a transgression exposed – which are deemed significant only in retrospect, like looking back on a life and realising the point at which things had taken a turn for the better, or worse. This was different. As news of the murder spread across South Africa, its people knew there could be no going back to business as usual. Lesedi Motlantshe was more than a man: he was an idea, a symbol, and with his death that idea had been tarnished.

  Lesedi had been one of freedom’s children. Born in the eighties, his life mirrored the changes in South Africa as apartheid’s pernicious laws were expunged from the statutes. A quick and confident boy, he’d once been interviewed by a TV crew doing a piece on the role schools were playing in changing attitudes to race. The reporter had asked the class of teenagers to define racism. In a flash, Lesedi had stuck up his hand. He’d pointed to one of only three white children in the class and said: ‘Racism is like, you know, if I’m unkind to Darren and call him names – “Whitey” and so on.’

  The clip had made it onto the evening news. This reversal of the conventional definition of racism – that white people could be the victims – from the lips of a black child seemed to speak volumes for the miraculous journey South Africa was making.

  From that day on, Lesedi had become something of a celebrity, not so much teacher’s pet as the nation’s pet. His words were spliced into countless promotional videos produced by the government. He would be dragged out of the classroom to meet visiting dignitaries from China or Europe. A local TV station had adopted him for its ‘Children of the Future’ series, which meant he featured in an annual film tracing his every success (of which there were many) and failure (of which there were none). His progress in school, his three years at the University of Cape Town – all of it was chronicled. In short, Lesedi had become a nation
al mascot – the embodiment of South Africa’s new beginning.

  Now he was dead.

  Even in a country inured to violent crime, and a murder rate that saw it perpetually leading the wrong kind of international league table, the notion that Lesedi Motlantshe would one day become a victim – another notch on the grim statistics board – was unthinkable. There wasn’t a person in the country, whether they spent their time in a township shebeen or in a gated mansion, who did not know who Lesedi Motlantshe was and what he represented.

  So who in their right mind would want him dead?

  2

  On the day Lesedi Motlantshe was murdered, his father had flown into Dubai, arriving early after an overnight flight.

  Despite his immense bulk and thigh-chafing gait, there was an unmistakable swagger to the way Josiah Motlantshe approached the entrance to the hotel. He looked as if he owned the place, the proprietorial confidence enhanced by the familiarity with which the uniformed doorman greeted him. Motlantshe burst out of a pale, lightweight suit, like one of his country’s famous meaty boerewors oozing out of its skin. The crotch, the knees, the elbows, even the armpits – at every junction of his stupendous body the fabric signalled its stress with a collection of starburst creases.

  Josiah was a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle who’d turned his hand – and influence – to business. He was one of the so-called Black Diamonds, that exclusive club of black millionaires, no, billionaires, thrown up by empowerment schemes established by post-apartheid governments.

  He’d been met off the private charter from Johannesburg by one of a fleet of Bentleys the hotel owned. It was just one of the many perks offered by a place that attracted a clientele rich enough to afford such luxury and spoiled enough to feel they deserved it. Its marketing brochure boasted that every wish would be granted and every desire fulfilled. The South African politician-turned-billionaire could certainly attest to that, having had his every desire – including one or two that were not on the official list of services – met with alacrity and, where appropriate, the necessary discretion.

  Josiah Motlantshe’s personal ‘butler’, a service assigned to those who stayed in the penthouse suites (and Motlantshe never stayed in anything else), started unpacking the obligatory Louis Vuitton cases, breaking off every now and then to pick up the various items of clothing that were being thrown onto the floor as Motlantshe undressed.

  In a vest and a pair of briefs that were barely visible under an overflowing belly, Motlantshe eased himself onto the armchair, its leather upholstery sticking to his moist, hairless skin as he shifted this way and that till he was comfortable. With his pudgy hand he made one final adjustment of his balls, which nestled in the stretched cotton of his briefs, like a pair of oranges in a sling, and he was, at last, ready to make his first call – only to realise he’d left his mobile phone in the sitting room.

  ‘Hello! Whassname! Bring me the phone,’ he shouted.

  The butler, a slight and professionally obsequious servant of South Asian origin, who had been busy laying out a fresh set of clothes in the dressing room, scurried in and picked up a handset from the bedside table.

  ‘No, no, not that one. I want my own phone. It’s there.’ Motlantshe pointed to the lounge. ‘And put this TV on – I want BBC.’ He sat there, every obese inch of him exuding an air of entitlement. He’d come a long way from the time when he was so thin, so bony, that sitting on the wooden benches on Robben Island for more than a few minutes at a time was agony.

  So, who to call first? The wife or the mistress? On this occasion duty prevailed. One of his three children answered.

  ‘And how’s my Thandi today? … It’s who? Oh! My little princess. It’s a bad line. Daddy is far away in Dubai. You sounded like your sister. So you have not gone to school yet? You are going to be late.’

  ‘I’m not going today.’

  ‘Is my little princess not well?’

  ‘I’m fine, but Mummy talked to the teacher and she said some bad men were outside our school.’

  ‘Bad men? What kind of men? Where is your mother? Bring her to the phone.’

  ‘She’s in the garden.’

  ‘Go and fetch her. Hurry up.’

  Motlantshe was irritated. He wished he’d phoned the other woman now. He imagined her at the flat he’d bought for her in Sandton. What time was it in Jo’burg? Still early. She was probably in bed. Motlantshe realised he was ever so slightly aroused. He heard the phone being picked up.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he barked. ‘Why is this girl talking about bad men at the school?’

  ‘Is that what she said?’ Priscilla Motlantshe sounded amused, which only added to her husband’s irritation. ‘No, today was meant to be a visit to Newtown. They were going to Museum Africa, but it’s been cancelled because of the protest.’

  ‘What protest?’

  ‘You know! These land people. You were talking to Mkobi about it yesterday! Have you forgotten already?’

  He knew why he had a mistress. His wife could make everything sound like an accusation. He had, indeed, called the president’s office the day before in a last-ditch attempt to have the march stopped or postponed on some legal technicality – at least until after this meeting in Dubai. That reminded him: he needed to get that little shit Mkobi sacked. How the prissy bastard had made it into the president’s office he didn’t know. Mkobi hadn’t put his call through. ‘The president is a bit tied up just now,’ he’d said, as if he were addressing some junior minister. Motlantshe could have called the president on his direct line, or on his private mobile phone, but that wasn’t the point. Who the hell was Mkobi to decide whether or not he could speak to the president?

  His temper had not been improved by the fact that Mkobi, the presidential chief of staff, had been right: it was too late to do anything about the march, but Motlantshe liked to reach these conclusions for himself and not have some jumped-up bureaucrat treat him like he was a novice. After all, he’d done time in jail for ungrateful bastards like Mkobi. Besides, judging by that voice of his, he was probably one of those homos or something.

  ‘No, I remember, I’m just tired after the flight.’

  ‘Didn’t you sleep on the plane?’

  There it was again: the accusatory tone. The needling suggestion that the reason he was tired was because he had failed to sleep, that it was his fault. Had it been the other woman, she would have whispered sweet nothings into his ear and told him she would wipe away all his tiredness just as soon as he was back in her arms.

  ‘Okay, I have to go,’ he said. ‘I’ll call after I meet these fellows from London.’

  ‘And don’t forget it’s Lesedi’s birthday this week,’ she threw in, for good measure. Lesedi was their only son, born in the days of struggle.

  ‘Of course I remember,’ he snapped back.

  ‘By the way, Jo, that minister, the Coloured fellow …’ Priscilla continued to use the old apartheid lexicon for ‘mixed race’.

  ‘You mean Jake, Jake Willemse?’

  ‘That’s him, yes. He called here.’

  ‘What’s he doing calling you?’

  ‘He said he couldn’t get hold of you. He was angry. He wants to know what Lesedi is doing in Mpumalanga. He says Lesedi is interfering. He says if you can’t stop him, he’ll deal with Lesedi himself.’

  ‘Who told Lesedi to go to Mpumalanga? What’s the boy doing over there?’

  ‘He says he wants to see things for himself, talk to local people to find out why they are so upset by this land thing. And, Jo, you have to stop calling him a boy. He’s a man now.’

  ‘Why should he be talking to these stupid people? They are being led by extremists. If he wants to be treated like a man, he needs to start thinking like one instead of all this foolishness he talks about.’

  ‘I can remember when you used to talk like that.’

  There was wistfulness in her voice, which Motlantshe both recognised and loathed. He knew that everything else that was wron
g in their marriage had grown out of this one central accusation – that he had forgotten where they had both started out.

  They had met in the seventies. Josiah Motlantshe was the most prominent in a new generation of activists that was emerging inside South Africa, carrying the mantle of leadership while the likes of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Joe Slovo were either jailed or in exile. He was an extrovert, a fiery orator. Priscilla was the opposite, but what she lacked in public presence she more than made up for with a quiet determination. When Motlantshe and some others were jailed it was said that, of all the women who were left behind, Priscilla would cope best.

  And so she did, raising the son who barely knew his father. Lesedi Motlantshe was brought up on heroic tales of what his father was like and what he would do, come freedom day. But when he had emerged from Robben Island, it had turned out that Motlantshe was a far better businessman than politician, and he believed Priscilla had never forgiven him for that. Instead, she had brainwashed the boy, tried to turn him into a version of the man she wanted her husband to be. At least, that was how he’d put it in the days when he could be bothered to argue with her.

  ‘I haven’t got time for that nonsense,’ he shot back. ‘If he wants to be treated like a man he should be here, by my side, talking to these London people.’

  ‘But you know he doesn’t like what you are doing. He thinks the land should be going to our people.’

  ‘It is you who has put this rubbish in his head. The land is not going anywhere. It is staying in South Africa. It is going to make money for the people of South Africa.’

  ‘You mean make money for you.’

  ‘Just call him and tell him to get back to Jo’burg.’ Motlantshe flung the phone onto the bed. He could still hear his wife’s disembodied voice. He stared at the phone, waiting for her to shut up.

  Motlantshe looked up at the TV screen and realised he was seeing downtown Johannesburg. He put the sound up. It was the last thing he needed. There they were, hundreds of men and women doing the toyi-toyi, the rolling protest dance so reminiscent of the heyday of the anti-apartheid era. Except this was today, and Motlantshe was about to sit down with the latest land-hungry investors to tell them South Africa was a safe and stable place to park their millions. He thought about calling the executive director of the SABC but decided it was too early. Since their days as activists he’d known the man didn’t get going till mid-morning.