The Death of the Mantis (6 page)

He filled a thermos with water and ice, collected several cans
of ginger beer, packing it all in a cooler, and took his luggage to
the police pool car. He’d tested the air-conditioner the day
before, so he was confident he’d have a comfortable journey.

Preparations finished, he went inside to say goodbye to Joy and
Tumi.

“I have to go, dear,” he said brightly.

Joy turned round, tears running down her face.

“Darling, what’s wrong?” Kubu sat down next to her and put his
arm around her shoulders. Tumi sucked contentedly at her nipple.
Joy just shook her head.

Kubu pulled her closer, but she resisted.

“You’ve got to go,” she mumbled. “I’ll be all right.”

“I’ll phone you every evening, and I’ll be back in no time at
all.”

He leant over to kiss her, but she turned her head. Kubu was
gripped with uncertainty. He’d never felt so isolated from Joy. Not
once since he’d met her.

“Go!” she said. “Drive carefully.”

Kubu turned and walked out to the veranda, down the steps and to
the car. Out of character, Ilia didn’t dash around barking loudly.
She lay on the cool veranda floor, head between her paws, and
watched Kubu leave, moving only her eyes.

♦

When he’d told Khumanego that he would be visiting Tsabong after
all, Kubu was surprised – and not entirely pleased – that the
Bushman asked to come along. With some misgivings, Kubu agreed.
Khumanego could be his translator, and it was a chance to clear the
air over the reporter. It meant a detour to pick him up in Lobatse,
but it wasn’t far out of the way.

As he drove, Kubu mulled what was happening to his marriage. He
had to keep working and be on top of his job, but he loved Joy and
Tumi with all his heart. He’d been ecstatic when Tumi was born, but
ill-prepared for what he perceived as Joy’s distancing herself from
him. All his life he’d yearned for a family. Now he felt his dream
was slipping from him. He was glad to reach Lobatse and find
Khumanego waiting for him.

However, the trip began in a tense atmosphere, aggravated by the
usual traffic problems around Lobatse and Kubu’s worry about Joy.
Khumanego admitted that he’d contacted the reporter. He had met her
previously to help with her research and had phoned her when Kubu
had said he wouldn’t help. Kubu corrected that to ‘couldn’t’, but
the Bushman just shrugged. The effect was the same. Perhaps he had
overstated the case, Khumanego admitted, but what was he to do? It
was the last card he had to play.

“You don’t have any idea how we react when a Bushman is
imprisoned for murder,” Khumanego said quietly. “You know about the
Maauwe and Motswetla case, but it is only the Bushmen who really
feel it. You know the story. Several men including Maauwe and
Motswetla were desperate for food in the midst of a drought in
1995. They saw a stray ox and killed it. The next day the owner
challenged them and was killed. How did he die? Who was
responsible? We don’t know. It’s what happened afterwards that’s
important.

“Maauwe and Motswetla were Bushmen. The police arrested them,
beat them, and forced them to sign confessions written in a
language they didn’t understand. They only spoke a Bushman dialect,
not Setswana. And they were illiterate. Then they went to trial.
They had no money, no education, nothing. How could they understand
what was going on?”

Khumanego gazed out of the passenger window into the distance.
Kubu let the silence be.

“So the government appointed lawyers for them. It was a sham.
They never consulted the accused, never spoke to anyone about the
case, and then they let the confessions stand. Maauwe and Motswetla
never spoke in their own defence. Of course they were found
guilty.” Khumanego paused. “Then came the clemency hearings. Nobody
was asked to vouch for them, and a letter they sent, asking for
better lawyers, was never put in their files. It was hidden away.
So the court found no grounds to be merciful and sentenced Maauwe
and Motswetla to be hanged. But no one knew when, not even their
families. It was all secret. Then in January ‘99 – almost two years
later – by luck someone saw a little notice in a newspaper that the
execution was going to take place the following day.” Suddenly
Khumanego swung round to Kubu, agitated. “Nobody was told, David!
Nobody. Not their wives, parents, friends. Nobody.

“There’s a human rights group in Gaborone, Ditshwanelo. They
applied for an urgent injunction to delay the execution, and
amazingly they succeeded. Eventually, thanks to the efforts of many
people around the world, a mis-trial was declared. The government
appealed and won the right to retry. That was at the end of 1999,
nearly five years after the initial incident. The government kept
dragging its feet, and six years later nothing had happened. But
Maauwe and Motswetla were still in jail. They’d been there for ten
years! The government tried everything to make it difficult for
them. At first Ditshwanelo lawyers weren’t even allowed to see the
two. When the courts forced the government to allow visits, there
were always warders within earshot, so there was an atmosphere of
intimidation.”

Khumanego looked away and continued more calmly. “That’s our
wonderful government, David, the model of democracy in Africa!
Protector of all its citizens. It’s a farce. It despises
the
Bushmen and will do anything to get rid of us, to get rid of our
culture. The only good news is that the courts eventually said
enough was enough and freed Maauwe and Motswetla, never to be tried
again. What you would call a victory. But the two men are lost
souls. Bewildered by ten years in jail and a system that failed
them. That’s why I’m going to Tsabong, David. This smells of
another case of injustice. Another effort to get rid of my
people.”

Kubu thought for a moment, then said, “I know that happened,
Khumanego. But things have changed – for the better. The government
is concerned about the Bushmen now. Perhaps because of the outside
pressure or perhaps because of changes in the ministers. And the
police have new leadership. That couldn’t happen again.”

“We’ll see.”

Kubu found he had nothing more to say. The affair
had
been a disaster, and Botswana had lost face in the eyes of the
world.

They drove in silence for some time until they came to Jwaneng,
bypassing the town on the left and the brooding diamond mine dump
on the right.

“And how much of
that
wealth did my people see?”
Khumanego asked, coming to life once again and pointing at the huge
pile of tailings. Kubu just shrugged; Khumanego obviously didn’t
expect an answer.

As they reached the verges of the Kalahari desert, Khumanego’s
mood improved. As more red crept into the grey sand, he spoke
enthusiastically of life in the area, the edible and medicinal
plants he spotted, and how once this land had plenty of game if you
knew how to find it. At one point he asked Kubu to stop so that he
could speak to a small group of Bushmen, who eked out a living by
being a tourist attraction in a camp near the main road. The
Bushmen squatted on their haunches and talked. The conversation was
prolonged, and Kubu was hot and hungry by the time it was over. But
when he asked Khumanego what it was all about, he merely shrugged
and said, “They see things. They watch things. The tourists laugh
at them. But they are all right.”

Near noon, they stopped at a roadside café and bought some more
sandwiches. The sun glared down at them, and they cowered in the
stuffy café. Kubu grumbled that the bread was stale and the meat
tough, but Khumanego ate without complaint. At least they had cold
drinks from the cooler in the car.

When they returned to the Land Rover, it was boiling. Although
Kubu had forced it as far as he could under the branches of an
acacia tree, the back window remained in the sun, and heat streamed
from the open front windows.

Once they were under way again, Khumanego suddenly became
talkative. “David, you have to understand about my people. People
don’t understand. Even good, smart people like you. You think we
want too much, that we should be happy to join with everyone else,
to be the same. Some of us want that. Some want to be the same. But
others want to be as we were, to have what we had, not more, not
less. Is that unreasonable?”

Kubu thought about it. “It depends what it means, Khumanego.
This is one country after all, and the laws must apply to everyone.
But the laws must be fair. Fair to your people, in particular. I
know that hasn’t always been the case.”

Khumanego shook his head. “More than that. We had land before.
Land that wasn’t ours, but it wasn’t
not
ours. Do you
understand? It’s not about ownership – that is an alien concept for
us; Bushmen don’t own anything. It’s about the right to use. We
believe that nobody owns the earth. The earth is there to be
shared. Not hoarded. Or claimed. Or fenced. We must use the earth
so it can sustain all that lives on it. That is why we never kill
more than we can eat, or harvest so much that the next person will
find nothing and starve. That is what we must fight for today – the
right to use as we have always used. We are at a point where we
must stand up for ourselves, or just be swept away like sand.”

Kubu could see that his friend was struggling to explain, trying
to control the intensity of his feelings.

“We have to fight to keep the government from taking our
culture, from making us empty of who we are. Making us
nothing.”

They drove in silence for a while, each with his thoughts. At
last Kubu spoke quietly. “Your people are lucky to have you arguing
for them, Khumanego. Don’t give up.”

♦

Tsabong was a helter-skelter of houses seemingly randomly
scattered over the flat sands. They clustered around a dry pan,
which would occasionally flood the nearest ones after heavy rain.
But the pan meant that water was accessible below the surface.

As Kubu drove down the main street, recently tarred, he spotted
a petrol station and pulled in to fill up. The attendant shook her
head. There was no petrol today. Perhaps down the road. Perhaps
not.

Kubu thanked her and drove on. At the next station they were in
luck. There was a buzz of activity as cars fuelled while supplies
lasted. After Kubu paid, the attendant gave him directions to the
Mokha Lodge, the usual lodging for government employees, and they
wove between the houses until they reached it. When they turned
into the sandy car park, Kubu didn’t know whether to be aghast or
delighted. The entire outside of the hotel was painted a bright
burnt orange – a bold statement in the desert sands. Then he
spotted the window air-conditioning units, and decided the hotel
would be quite satisfactory.

♦

Khumanego settled for a modest single room. He liked small
rooms, perhaps surprisingly after the openness of the desert. But
he felt that he fitted a small room. For once, things were the
right size. He unpacked his overnight bag, thinking how much more
he carried now for a few days than he would have had living full
time in the desert. He wondered how long he would have to stay in
Tsabong this time, and whether Kubu could save his friends from
jail. He ground his teeth, trying to keep feelings of worry and
anger at bay. Then he washed his face and headed to the Sand Dune
bar to meet Kubu for a quick cold drink. They would visit Lerako
next. Kubu would just introduce him as his interpreter, and he was
to keep his mouth firmly shut. The Bushman role, he thought
bitterly.

Khumanego found the bar, opening on to the heat of the veranda.
Behind the counter was a small two-door refrigerator containing
beer, soft drinks and a few botdes of inexpensive South African
wine. The counter was decorated with a small vase of purple plastic
flowers, which partly obscured a large dispenser of free condoms
mounted on the wall. Khumanego shook his head in disbelief.

A black woman was sitting on one of the bar stools, drinking
what appeared to be soda water. Her hair hung in braids around a
long face. Oakley dark glasses clasped her ears and balanced on the
top of her head. She was wearing blue running shorts and an orange
tank-top stretched over broad shoulders and generous breasts.
Strong legs descended to running shoes and white socks. Khumanego
was amazed to see her, and embarrassed. But there was nothing he
could do. She was bound to recognise him. He walked up to her and
held out his hand.

“Cindy, what a surprise.”

For a moment she looked down at him quizzically, and Khumanego
realised that she might not have recognised him after all. The
invisible Bushman. All look the same. “Khumanego!” She
mispronounced his name using a hard K. “Great to see you! What are
you doing here?” The two sentences revealed her southern US
accent.

Khumanego didn’t answer her question, but indicated Kubu, who
was sitting at a table watching this exchange. “This is
Superintendent David Bengu of the Botswana CID. He’s come to help
us.” He glanced at Kubu’s surprised face. “David, this is Cindy
Robinson. She’s a freelance journalist from the US.”

Cindy offered Kubu a smile, then walked over and firmly took his
hand as he struggled to stand. “So you’ve come to sort out this
mess with the Bushman suspects, Superintendent? Something to do
with my call to the director of the CID, perhaps?”

“
Assistant
Superintendent. I’m here in case the local CID
people need extra help.”

“And do they need extra help, do you think?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t comment on the case at this point. Our
investigations are continuing.”

Cindy laughed, a loud, attractive laugh. “You’ve been watching
American TV, Mr Bengu! Don’t worry, I won’t quiz you about the
case. But we’re the only guests here tonight. Shall we have dinner
together? Here, or somewhere else if you like. It’s not much fun
being alone in Tsabong.”