The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu (34 page)

He drove through Plumtree, Marula, and Figtree. Names of lush
fruits for wilting towns, living on custom from visitors from
Botswana. When he reached Bulawayo, he checked into the Holiday Inn
and had lunch. He found the food good and cheap provided you were
paying in foreign currency at the hotel’s special rate. After
lunch, he drove through the town, noting lots of activity but
unsure what all the people were doing around the poorly stocked
shops and gas stations devoid of fuel. Yet the people were neatly
dressed and did not look hungry. Zimbabwe’s economy was a puzzle.
No doubt he would discover worse in the rural areas.

From Bulawayo, he headed northwest for about an hour on a
single-lane, paved road to reach the small town of Nyamandhlovu. He
stopped to consult his map and ask directions, but carefully so
that there was no real clue as to whom he wanted to find. He drove
past a run-down building that was a hospital, according to a sign
faded almost to illegibility. Perhaps people don’t get sick here
anymore, he thought grimly. And so he came to the home of Paulus
Mbedi.

∨
The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu
∧

W
hen Kubu arrived at
the house, Mbedi was hoeing in his garden. His hoe consisted of a
straight branch with the bark scraped off, side twigs removed and
the knots smoothed out, and a rusty metal head tied on tightly with
wire. He was working in a patch of stunted
mielies
, chopping
out weeds and breaking the earth. But the ground was hard and dry,
and he worked without high expectation. Other vegetables grew in
the rest of the small patch of land. Flowers and attractive shrubs
are luxuries for people who aren’t hungry.

When he saw Kubu battling the gate’s rusty hinges, he tensed.
The hoe moved to his right hand, and he held it by the middle, off
the ground. It had become a defensive weapon. Kubu closed the gate
with care although there seemed nothing to be kept in, and it was
useless to keep things out. Kubu took in the vegetable garden with
the drunken fence around it, the little house, neat but in need of
paint, the chassis of a bicycle with no wheels leaning against a
wall.

“I’m Superintendent David Bengu,” he offered in English. “Are
you Paulus Mbedi?” He saw the flash of fear in Mbedi’s face and the
stiffening of his body, and added quickly, “I’m with the Botswana
Police, not from Zimbabwe. Everyone calls me Kubu, which means
hippo in my language, because of my shape.” Mbedi relaxed slightly,
but did not smile or accept Kubu’s offered hand.

“I am Paulus Mbedi. What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you about Goodluck. Goodluck Tinubu.”

Paulus hesitated for just a moment. “I don’t know anyone with
that name. Goodluck is a very strange name for a man.”

“I didn’t say it was a man.”

Paulus shrugged. “I don’t know anyone called Goodluck,” he
repeated.

“Paulus, I’m very sorry to tell you this, but Goodluck is dead.
He was murdered three weeks ago in Botswana. I want to find out who
killed him and why, and make sure the murderer is brought to
justice. I need you to help me. You helped Goodluck before, didn’t
you? He needs your help again.”

Paulus stood in silence. Death was a regular in this part of the
world, and Paulus expected to bump into him from time to time. But
this meeting left a taste of bile, and the fight went out of him.
“You’d better come inside,” he said, putting down the hoe.

They sat at a wooden table in the kitchen, and Paulus gave Kubu
tea. It was in a kettle on the wood stove, and he simply added
extra water and reboiled it. The taste was bitter from stewing but
cut by the sugar Paulus added without asking. He measured two
spoons each and stirred it in well. There was not much sugar
left.

“How did you find me?”

“The money from Goodluck.”

“There won’t be any more?”

“At least not for a while. Perhaps in the will…” Kubu wished he
had checked. Remembering the cigarettes and chocolates, he reached
into his jacket and passed them to Paulus. He should have brought
some real food instead. But Paulus accepted the gifts politely with
both hands and his thanks. Then they disappeared into a drawer in
the small kitchen unit by the stove. Barter was the real currency
of Zimbabwe these days, and cigarettes and chocolates would fetch a
good exchange.

Kubu was not in a hurry. They talked about the late rains and
the bad crops, and drank their tea in peace. When the cups were
both empty, Paulus asked Kubu how Goodluck had died, and Kubu told
him what had happened. He concluded by saying that Goodluck had
been loved and respected in his adopted home and had built up a
very successful school. Paulus nodded, knowing this.

“How can I help you? It was very long ago.”

“I need to know who Goodluck was and what happened before he
came to Botswana. Then, perhaps, I can understand why he was
murdered.”

Paulus thought where to start. This was a story he had told no
one before, and one he had expected never to tell. But now there
could be no harm in it, if this policeman was telling the truth.
And Paulus believed that he was.

“My wife and I worked at the hospital at Nyamandhlovu,” he
began.

“Your wife?” asked Kubu.

“Mary is dead,” replied Paulus, firmly closing that topic. “She
was a nurse-aid, and I cleaned the equipment and the rooms.” He
paused. “I don’t work there anymore. The money is worth so little,
and I don’t have transport.” Kubu thought of the remains of the
bicycle.

“It was the terrible time,” he continued. “There was the war,
and you didn’t trust the whites and couldn’t know who to trust
among the blacks. We thought we were poor, but that was before…” He
shrugged not wanting to mention the president’s name aloud.
“Anyway, it was bad. There were terrorists and freedom fighters and
police and army. Most people wanted to live in peace. We didn’t
understand about politics. We still don’t.” He wanted to offer more
tea but was afraid of running out of sugar. So he continued. “My
friend Msimang had a
bakkie
. He used it for fetching and
delivering electrical appliances like fridges when they needed
fixing.”

He looked at his own fridge, now a cupboard. He could not afford
to get it fixed, and Msimang was long gone. “He drove here at ten
one night and woke us up. We were soundly sleeping because there
was work the next day. Perhaps I had drunk a beer or two because it
was Sunday. He said he had found a man collapsed by the road. At
first he thought the man was drunk, but then he saw all the blood.
Msimang thought he’d been shot by the army or the police or
vigilantes. He looked around but no one else was there, so he
lifted the man and dragged him up onto the metal floor of the
bakkie
like a slaughtered pig. We thought he was dead. He
should’ve been dead. But he was alive. So Msimang and I took him
into the house and put him on the spare bed despite all the blood.
Mary was a very fussy housewife but she made no complaint.

“I asked Msimang if he wanted some tea, or even brandy, while
Mary looked after the man, but he said no. He was keen to go. He
didn’t want anyone to know he’d been out late at night, and he
certainly didn’t want anyone to know he’d found this man who might
be a freedom fighter. That was why he came to us. He knew the
hospital would hand the man over to the army and that he would die.
I thought he’d die that night anyway. We wondered what we would do
with his body in the morning. Mary said he had three bullets in his
back. She bandaged up the wounds, but she said he’d die. We looked
through his pockets to see if we could find his name, but there was
nothing. So we prayed together for the soul of this young man whose
name we didn’t know. But God knew his name.”

He seemed to be finished, but his mind was searching through the
thirty-year-old scene.

“The next day he was actually conscious but in great pain. I
wanted to take him to the hospital, but Mary said we couldn’t move
him again, and we would get into a lot of trouble. So I stayed with
him while Mary went to the hospital. She told them I’d hurt myself
and wouldn’t come in to the hospital because I’d seen people die
there. She was good at making up stories.” For the first time he
smiled, and his face was changed. Kubu could see that this man had
once been happy.

“She came back with what she could get – pain pills, a scalpel
and forceps, which she stole, lots more bandages, penicillin,
antiseptic. We had no anesthetic though, so I gave the man some
brandy and put a stick with a cloth around it in his mouth so he
wouldn’t bite his tongue.”

“Did you learn that at the hospital?” asked Kubu,
incredulous.

Paulus gave a wry twist to his mouth. “Actually I saw it in an
American cowboy movie. But it didn’t matter. He passed out
immediately, and Mary dug out the bullets. I made boiling water and
cleaned up. It was as though she was the doctor – a surgeon! – and
I was the nurse-aid,” he concluded with pride.

“And he survived?”

Paulus nodded. “It was touch and go for several days. He was
delirious, screaming, then passing out. I stayed with him. Mary
went to the hospital and got drugs. She said he was amazingly lucky
that not one of the bullets had hit a vital organ or cut a major
blood vessel. Amazingly good luck.”

“And that’s how he got the name?”

Paulus nodded. “When he started to improve, and we could talk to
him, he would only shake his head if we asked him his name. At
first we thought it’d gone with the shock, that he’d lost his
memory. But I began to realize that he was scared. That there were
people who had wanted him dead, and that it was best for him to
stay dead. So we called him Goodluck. And he liked that. He seemed
to find it appropriate and funny at the same time.”

Paulus went on, detailing Goodluck’s recuperation and how they
had pretended he was a family member who’d had an accident and was
staying with them to be near the hospital for check-ups. He related
how Goodluck started to think of the house as his home, and Paulus
and Mary as the uncle and aunt they pretended to be.

“When did you find out what happened the night he was shot?”
Kubu asked, sorry to end Paulus’s happier memories.

Paulus shook his head. “We never spoke of it. It was better that
we didn’t know some things.”

“Well, when did you learn his real name?”

Again Paulus shook his head. “He never told us that either.
Tinubu isn’t his real name. Perhaps you know that?”

At once Kubu was intrigued. He asked Paulus why he thought that.
Paulus stared at Kubu wondering if this was a test of some sort.
Then he shrugged and looked down at his empty cup.

“When he became a little stronger, Goodluck said he had a good
friend, a comrade, whose name was George Tinubu. He was very
concerned about him. He asked me to find out if the police were
looking for this man, if they knew where he was. I didn’t want to
do that. It wasn’t safe to attract attention in those days. But he
said it was very important, that he owed this man a great deal and
had to have news of him. Eventually I agreed.

“So I went to the police station, not the one here in
Nyamand-hlovu but the main one in Bulawayo. And I spoke to a man
there, told him that George Tinubu was missing, and asked if he’d
been arrested or if the police knew anything of him. The constable
on duty wasn’t busy. Perhaps he was bored. He could’ve told me to
go away. Who was I to ask after this person? But he was an Ndebele
like me and instead he decided to help. Many people vanished in
those days, and their relatives never found out about them. He
asked me when the man had disappeared, and I told him the Sunday
when Msimang found Goodluck.

“He went away for a while to check records. When he came back he
said that Tinubu was dead. He was sorry for my loss. I asked him
what had happened, but then a white sergeant came past and asked
the constable what was going on. The sergeant looked angry, and he
told me Tinubu was a terrorist, that he’d been killed after a raid
on a white farm where the people had been murdered and raped. I was
very scared of this man, because I could see he thought that I was
also a terrorist, or at least a sympathizer. So I said I was very
shocked, that I only knew him slightly, that I was looking for him
because he owed me money. But there was hatred in this white man,
although I’d done nothing to him. He shouted that Tinubu was in
hell, where he belonged, and that his body was rotting in the bush,
food for dogs and jackals.

He wanted to see my identity document but I pretended I had left
it at home. I knew I was going to be in trouble with this man I
didn’t know, who hated me. I was shaking. But then someone called
him to take a telephone call. He told me to wait. I didn’t know
what to do, but the constable indicated with his head that I should
go, and he pretended to read some papers. So I left quickly, and
when I was outside the station, I ran as fast as I could until I
was far away. Then I found a bus to Nyamandhlovu and walked home.”
He pursed his lips, the memory still degrading after thirty
years.

“What did Goodluck say when you told him?”

“He was shocked, of course. He asked for all the details, but I
could only tell him the little I had found out. Then he said
something very strange that I still remember after all this time.
He said, ‘They must have found the wallet.’ That’s what he said. I
didn’t understand. Then he started to cry. He was still very weak,
and he had lost his friend, so it was not unmanly to do so.”

Kubu waited. After a few minutes of silence, Paulus said, “I
will make some more tea.” He added water and put the kettle back on
the hot plate. After a moment’s consideration, he added another
spoon of tea leaves.

“The next day Goodluck told us that Tinubu had been a good man,
a schoolteacher who loved learning and helping people to learn. But
the school had been closed and the children sent away, and some of
the teachers had left and gone to Zambia to join the ZAPU freedom
movement. His friend had been one of those. Then he said that it
was better that people didn’t look for him, that it would be better
to be a dead person. So he would take his friend’s name, since he
no longer needed it. But in our honor, so that every day he would
remember our kindness to him, he would keep the first name
Goodluck. That is how he became Goodluck Tinubu.”