Sometimes There Is a Void (27 page)

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Authors: Zakes Mda

BOOK: Sometimes There Is a Void
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That was why we were never uncomfortable drinking the nights away with those uniformed and armed gentlemen. Even those who were on patrol in their Land Rovers would occasionally pop in for a shot of brandy or a pint of beer and then dash out to protect the good people of Mafeteng from criminals. As a senior official I suppose Roll-Away worked only regular eight-thirty-to-four-thirty office hours. I came to this conclusion because he was at Mr Mahamo's shebeen from five on the dot and would sit on his chair imbibing spirits till midnight. He was a very generous man and would not hesitate to share his brandy with us. Mphahama, on the other hand, was always the butt of our jokes because of his fine features. We teased him that he was as beautiful as a girl and that if he were to work in the gold mines of Welkom – where most Basotho men worked for months on end without coming back to their families – he would be some miner's wife. Oh, yes, those days we delighted in homophobic jokes!
The jokes got worse when we heard that he was going through a hard time at home, with a fishwife for a wife who occasionally gave him a beating. None of these rumours were confirmed, but that didn't stop us from making snide remarks as soon as he entered and took a seat at our table. Roll-Away merely cast his fatherly eye over us and then paid more attention to his nip of brandy. I guess it would have been beneath him to make jokes about his subordinate.
One thing that everyone was excited about was the first post-independence elections. We rarely discussed politics at Mr Mahamo's shebeen since Mr Mahamo himself and most of his police patrons were all supporters of the ruling Basotho National Party, and of course Ntlabathi and I were Pan Africanists and therefore Basutoland Congress Party sympathisers. Nevertheless we were indeed looking forward to the change that we hoped would come with the elections. I had not
participated in the BCP campaigns as I had done in the first elections in 1965 because Chief Leabua Jonathan's government had been effective in silencing South African refugees. They could no longer participate in Lesotho politics, unless they wanted to be deported from the country. I have told you already how Potlako Leballo, the PAC leader, was deported – even though he was actually born in Mafeteng and should then have been a Lesotho citizen by birth. A few others of our people were forced out of the country in a similar manner. So now we could only be sympathisers of the BCP and not vocal supporters.
The habitués at Mr Mahamo's knew exactly who we were, but that didn't bother them at all because we never commented on political issues. We had been cowed into silence. At least at this particular shebeen. When some leaders of the Young Pioneers came and started snooping around I suggested that perhaps we should start patronising a different shebeen. After all, Mafeteng was a BCP town and in most shebeens we would regain our freedom of expression.
‘What can we do?' Ntlabathi said. ‘Mr Mahamo is our employer and we owe him a lot of money. We have no choice but to patronise his shebeen.'
The Young Pioneers were the youth wing of the BNP, inspired by the brutal Young Pioneers of Kamuzu Banda's Malawi Congress Party. Not only were they inspired by the Malawians, they were actually trained there. The cosy relationship between Leabua and Banda did not surprise anyone. They had both turned their countries into client-states of South Africa. Banda had gone further than Leabua; he was the only African leader who had diplomatic relations with apartheid South Africa.
The Young Pioneers leaders who had now taken to prying at Mr Mahamo's shebeen were recently arrived from Malawi and carried themselves about with a swagger that told everyone that they were a law unto themselves. We heard stories of how they were going around threatening people that if they did not vote for the BNP they would rue the day.
‘They have told you that your vote is your secret, but we have eyes everywhere,' they told prospective voters. ‘Our eyes can penetrate the secret ballot.'
After the elections we sat at the shebeen listening to the results on Radio Lesotho. The atmosphere was rather strange because our police companions were nowhere in sight. We took it that they were busy guarding polling stations and generally keeping good order.
According to Radio Lesotho, the BNP and the BCP were running neck-and-neck. Every time they announced a constituency won by the BCP they would announce a constituency won by the BNP. And it dragged on like that, until the announcements stopped. They were replaced by a bouncy song by a South African
mbaqanga
band:
Leabua ke mmuso ngoan'aka
. Whether you like it or not Leabua is
the
government, the group sang in the popular idiom of South African dance music. As soon as we heard the song we knew something was wrong. Not that the song had been scarce on the airwaves before. It was a staple and was played after every news bulletin. But now it was playing over and over again for hours on end. There was some defiance about it. In the Sesotho idiom, it was as if someone wanted to rub something into someone else's face.
Later in the day listeners were warned to await an important announcement. This was followed by martial music. Then Leabua himself spoke. He was declaring a State of Emergency and was suspending the Constitution. He advised the populace to remain calm. There would be a 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. curfew throughout the country until further notice.
It became clear to us that he had lost the elections but was refusing to hand over power to Ntsu Mokhehle's BCP. This was a coup and it was happening right here in Lesotho – a country famous for its greeting
khotso
, which means ‘peace'. A country whose motto was
Khotso, Pula, Nala
– Peace, Rain, Prosperity.
We had heard of coups in other African countries; we were still reeling from the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah, our Pan Africanist leader in Ghana. But we never thought we would actually see one happening right here where we lived. It was a coup of a special kind; the party that lost the elections was refusing to hand over power. Nothing like it had been seen in Africa.
The BNP nullified the elections and refused to release the official
results. But we did finally get all the figures based on declarations at polling stations: out of the sixty seats of the National Assembly the BCP had obtained thirty-six, the BNP twenty-three and the MFP only one.
Despite the curfew, Ntlabathi and I continued to teach at the night school. But the numbers of students were dwindling. We got reports that the police had beaten some of them for breaking the curfew. We did not believe these reports. The police in Lesotho were not thugs who beat up people. They would arrest wrongdoers rather than beat them up.
We continued to patronise Mr Mahamo's shebeen and stayed until the early hours of the morning as if nothing had changed. But things certainly were different. All of a sudden our police friends were wearing camouflage uniforms instead of the well-pressed khaki. They were carrying machine guns instead of their World War I 303s. There was the roly-poly figure of Roll-Away hovering over us boasting of his brand new Uzi submachine gun.
‘See how this baby shines,' he was saying. ‘Direct from Israel.'
He was like a little boy with a new toy.
Even Mphahama showed some braggadocio. When I tried one of our old jokes about his beauty he glared at me cheekily. He had a submachine gun of his own and was showing us how he could dismantle it and put it together again with his eyes closed. The habitués cheered and laughed at his antics, but I was getting quite uneasy. Guns generally make me nervous, perhaps from my early experience when I went out to assassinate Marake Makhetha. What if something went wrong? One couldn't trust these guys with these new Israeli machines. I didn't think they had even had adequate training to use them.
‘You're going to shoot yourself in the foot, Mphahama,' I said, half-jokingly.
Another change was that now instead of these guys buying us liquor as before, Mr Mahamo and the other civilian patrons were falling over themselves giving them shots of brandy. And when they were drunk they boasted that Leabua Jonathan's government was here to stay. We learnt for the first time that Leabua himself wanted to hand over power to Ntsu Mokhehle in keeping with how democracies should function, but Fred Roach stopped all that nonsense. Fred Roach was the commander
of the paramilitary Police Mobile Unit (Lesotho didn't have an army at the time). He was, in fact, the instigator of the coup.
I was not surprised to hear this from Roll-Away. I knew Fred Roach from my Peka High School days. At that time he was the police commissioner in charge of the Leribe district and he once invaded our high school when the students were on strike. He had surrounded the campus with his troops and had addressed us with a megaphone from the top of one of the police Land Rovers. We had responded with our own song, milling around defiantly, and calling him a British dog born in New Zealand and sent to Lesotho to oppress Basotho children. His men aimed their guns at us and we had to retreat. He successfully suppressed our little rebellion, and later that night his convoy of Land Rovers drove back to Hlotse, the district capital, in triumph. There he was, Her Majesty's subject, subverting democracy in Her Majesty's former colony of Lesotho when the prime minister was keen to hand over power.
I thought the coup would not last, but it did. Ntsu Mokhehle was arrested and King Moshoeshoe II was placed under house arrest. The various radio stations of the South African Broadcasting Corporation came out in support of the coup. Commentators commended Leabua for saving Lesotho and the whole subcontinent from the Peking-supported Ntsu Mokhehle and his Communist cronies. Hennie Serfontein, an Afrikaner journalist who had become Leabua's adviser wrote extensive articles in the Johannesburg newspaper, the
Sunday Times
, in support of the coup.
After classes as we sat at Mr Mahamo's shebeen we often heard women screaming and we knew exactly what was happening. There were stories that the police, the paramilitary guys and the Young Pioneers had gone on the rampage, invading homes without any provocation, beating up the men and raping the women and children. The Young Pioneers particularly were quite merciless. We decided that it was too risky to spend our evenings at the shebeen, so when we finished our classes at the night school, which was at about eight or so, we went straight home. Mr Mahamo got us permits from Roll-Away that allowed us to break the curfew. But still on occasion we had to
run for dear life from the Young Pioneers. One day, just after walking out of the school yard, there was a glare of headlights. It was too late to escape and armed uniformed men jumped out of a Land Rover and charged at us.
‘Hey, Mphahama, it's us, man,' I said when I recognised one of the men as our dear friend.
‘Hey, Mphahama, it's us, man,' he said, mimicking me in a mocking voice. ‘You think that because you are educated little fools you can just break the law?'
Then he lashed out at me with a whip. The three men with him took the cue and began to lash out at us as well. Ntlabathi and I took to our heels in different directions. I jumped the school fence back into the yard. I hid among the dustbins at the back. They didn't come after me, nor did they chase Ntlabathi, who had disappeared past the hedge that fenced in the cemetery that used to be reserved for white colonists back in the day. I could hear the cops laughing as they jumped back into their vehicle and drove away.
Oh, yes, the beautiful Mphahama had become so vengefully brutal that from that day on we gave him the widest berth possible.
A few months later Roll-Away was recalled to Maseru because Commander Fred Roach thought he was too soft in a notoriously BCP town like Mafeteng. He was too grandfatherly, so Roach replaced him with a dark stubby man called Potiane who led the raids with a sadistic sneer. Under Potiane's regime we were afraid to walk in the street even during the day. We gave up going to school altogether and Mr Mahamo had to close it. He was quite a buffoon, Potiane, and would march up and down the streets of Mafeteng in full camouflage gear and a bandolier, brandishing an AK47 and an Uzi at the same time. Children would shout: ‘
Thunya
Potiane!
Batho ba u shebile!
' Shoot, Potiane! People are watching you! This meant that they were spectators waiting for the rat-a-tat-tat thrills. He would smile and wave at them.
To the children he was just entertainment. But to BCP members in the district of Mafeteng he was no joke. He led raids into their homes and commanded his subordinates to shove pokers into their anuses or tie their testicles with wire and tighten the wire with pliers. The
soldiers – now the Police Mobile Unit guys called themselves soldiers – boasted in the shebeens how they invaded the home of a prominent BCP-supporting businessman, Mr Malahleha, and forced him to watch as they raped his wife and two daughters. I must add that the elder of these daughters was a very close friend of mine – someone I would have dated had I not been so cowardly in propositioning girls. After ten or more soldiers had had their fun discharging their filth into the women they raped them further with the barrels of their guns, now and then threatening to discharge the bullets. After that they drenched the man's beard with petrol and then set it on fire.
The fearless newspaper of the Lesotho Evangelical Church,
Leselinyana
, reported on this event and many others throughout the country. Later its editor, Edgar Motuba, was murdered.

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