The Soldier who Said No (31 page)

She entered the number and read it back to Henderson. He confirmed it with a nod and they headed for the door a second time.

‘He’s fled, Sir,’ Kupenga said. ‘He’s done a runner. Now we know for sure.’

The commander spelled out the details of the operation with great care. They were on the northern shore of Lake Waikaremoana at Hopuruahine Landing.

‘You will be split into three platoons of eight with one rifle per platoon. You will take turns carrying the rifle, a day each. If you stumble upon some pig hunters, you pretend you’re on a pig hunt of your own. Only the man carrying the rifle on a particular day will be allowed to use it on the hunt.’

Behind the commander, the two intermediaries stood silent.

‘You will carry no food or water on this operation. You will have no cellphones or other means of communicating with the outside world. You’ll be in the bush for eight days and seven nights, if you read the signs correctly and make good time.’

There was a murmur of dissent in the ranks.

‘Do I hear a mutiny?’ the commander demanded.

The troops looked past him at their tribal elder, who had talked the commander into leading their training. The intermediary nodded and the troops held their collective tongue.

‘The whole idea,’ the commander explained, ‘is to ensure that you are fit enough, clever enough, and tough enough to evade capture for an extended period. If you can survive for eight days in the bush, you can survive indefinitely. Then no soldier in the regular army could capture or defeat you, not even with all their superior equipment. To track and defeat you, they’ll have to be better-trained and tougher than you. And we’ll see in the next eight days whether you have what it takes.’

He glanced at the elder. ‘I have it on good authority that your ancestors were able to live off the land without any trouble and without having rifles.’

‘What happens if we should get lost, Sir? Or if someone gets injured or falls ill?’

‘Good question. You’re beginning to think like a soldier, planning ahead for when things might go wrong. But don’t worry. We’ve thought of that. Each platoon will be accompanied by two instructors, one of my men and one of the trainee instructors who completed the course in the intake before you. The instructors will carry satellite navigation equipment and medical supplies. They will also carry cellphones so that they’ll be able to make contact with the command post in an emergency. But they won’t use them unless they are convinced that someone’s life is in danger.’

The recruits looked across at the instructors. They had got to know them well during the five-and-a-half months of training.

‘If necessary,’ the commander continued, ‘you’ll have to carry any member of your platoon who is injured or unfit or ill. We won’t send a rescue mission for one man. You have to arrive as you leave here, a full platoon of eight men. You may leave the instructors behind, if you have to, but I want all eight men of the platoon to arrive at the rendezvous together and on time, understood?’

The recruits responded as one, ‘Yes, Sir.’

‘That is your test. It is a test for each man as an individual and it is a test for your platoon as a unit.’

The commander waved towards his instructors. Two stepped forward. ‘These two instructors will accompany Platoons A and B respectively.’ He pointed at the three soldiers standing at ease on his left. ‘And these three instructors, who as you know completed the course last year, will go along, one with each platoon. I’ll be going with Platoon C. I won’t send you, or any of my instructors, on an operation which I’m not prepared to undertake myself.’

Another murmur went up amongst the recruits.

‘Your instructors will now hand out your kit. Each man will receive an identical backpack. They weigh fifty kilograms each, but you’ve been training with heavier packs. Each backpack contains a sleeping bag, a one-man tent, a waterproof tarpaulin to hang over your tent, thirty metres of rope, a cigarette lighter, three pairs of dry socks, thermal underwear, two water bottles, a military compass, a soldier’s knife and some cooking utensils.

‘Platoon A, you will go north from here to Tauwharemanuka. It should take you eight days, counting today. Platoon B, you will go north-east to Koranga. And Platoon C will come south-west with me to Tarawera. The distances are more or less equal, the terrain equally difficult in all directions. You’ll be picked up at your respective rendezvous and brought back here for a debriefing.

‘Those who successfully complete this exercise will be inducted into the Tuhoe Regiment. The best soldier in each platoon will be offered a paying job as an instructor in the next intake.

‘There will be a passing-out parade when we complete this operation and you’ll receive a posting to a unit. You will thereafter report for duty every weekend and will be given duties to perform in your community. Those will include the identification of potential recruits for subsequent intakes. Are you still with me?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘On passing out, each man will receive a weapon. It is to be buried in a place known only to you and is to be guarded with your life. Understood?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Now on my order, gather around your instructors for final instructions. Remember what I told you at the outset. Your instructors will be following you to observe. They will not lead and they will not help you. If you go in the wrong direction, they will follow you. And they will not participate in the hunt for boar or deer, nor will they fish or gather edible plants. Each platoon will have to gather sufficient food and water to feed the two instructors accompanying the platoon. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ the voices rang out.

‘Fall out.’

The recruits stepped out of their parade ground formation and quickly assembled around their platoon instructors in military fashion, all facing inward with one knee on the ground.

Platoon C gathered around the commander and he handed the map – Infomap 262-5 issued by the Department of Survey and Land Information
East Cape 1:250 000
– to the platoon leader.

‘There’s your map. It’s over to you. You have to get us to Tarawera in eight days.’

The passing-out parade was held a week after the completion of the operation. In the intake of twenty-four, every man had passed, four with distinction. An injured recruit attended on crutches. His ankle had been broken and he had had to be taken to hospital for the ankle to be set in plaster of Paris. As promised, every soldier was issued with a rifle and a full magazine,
AK
47s, the weapon of choice of all guerrilla forces.

‘You arrived here as raw recruits, willing but not able, but today you leave as soldiers. Well done, men. I’m proud of you and your iwi has every reason to be proud of you.’ The captain raised his hand to his cap. ‘I salute you.’

The Tuhoe Regiment now had seventy-two well-trained men under arms. Of those, twelve were of instructor rank, able to take the programme forward, if need be, without the help of the captain from 32 Battalion or his men.

De Villiers found the first clue to !Xau’s whereabouts in
Voices of the San.
Having been inducted into the
SADF
and having fought alongside the white soldiers of 31 Battalion and other units against
SWAPO
, the political settlement which saw Namibia gain its independence under a
SWAPO
government left the !Xun and Khwe Bushmen at the mercy of their erstwhile enemies. In Africa, taking the side of the loser is never forgiven. The result was predictable: under the guise of operations against
UNITA
, the Namibian Defence Force raided and pillaged the !Xun and Khwe settlements within Namibia to the point where the Bushmen had to flee. Their homes had been destroyed, their women raped while they were forced to watch, their pay packets from the
SADF
had dried up, and their movement in their traditional hunting grounds had been restricted, the latter in the name of conservation and tourism. The
SADF
was morally obliged to look after those who had fought in its wars, and large numbers of Bushmen from these two tribes were resettled in the Northern Cape at a place called Schmidtsdrift. It was shown as part of a vast area under the control of the South African military. The problem was that the current South African military had been
SWAPO
’s allies in the bush war.

But it was on the internet that Liesl found what she wanted.

‘Pierre,’ she had called over her shoulder. ‘Come and look here.’

They were in Johann Weber’s study. Liesl pointed at the computer screen. ‘Look here,’ she said, her voice high with excitement.

De Villiers looked closely at the screen. There was a long list of names and addresses.

‘Look at the heading,’ she commanded. ‘Then look at the names.’

De Villiers leaned closer to the screen. The heading read:
SANDF War Pensions
. He looked at the names. The bulk of the names were rendered in Afrikaans, but there were some Bushman names. Many of the soldiers had been given Afrikaans names from the Bible and some of the spellings were rendered in phonetic Afrikaans or English.

Abram
Alfons
Anneries
Dawid
Grootoog
Kapilolo
Karango
Klaas
Tieties
Kristoffel
Kwoksokso
Petros
Vaalbooi
Regopstaan
Riemvasmaak
Stefans
Tanago
Yiceu

Together they scanned through pages of names until De Villiers asked, ‘Do you think his name is on this list?’

‘For sure,’ Liesl said, ‘but I expected you to see it immediately.’

‘Where?’ De Villiers asked. ‘Where do you see it?’

Liesl tapped on the screen with a fingernail. ‘Yiceu.’

De Villiers took a closer look.
Yiceu.
There was no surname attached to it. Could that be !Xau? ‘Do you think that could be him?’ De Villiers asked. ‘Do you really think that could be him?’

Liesl nodded. ‘There’s only one way of finding out.’

‘And that is?’

‘We’re going to have to go to Schmidtsdrift to ask him.’

De Villiers smiled. It would have to be a blitz visit because he couldn’t interrupt the treatment.

Liesl had more for him. She pulled a sheet from the printer. ‘Show this to those clever people at the oncology centre.’

De Villiers scanned the page. It was an article from a Canadian medical journal. It said that one of the effects of radiation therapy, the desired effect in fact, is that dividing cancer cells, and even dividing healthy cells, die, and when they die, they give off uric acid. And uric acid build-up in the body causes gout.

‘I’m not just a pretty face, you know,’ Liesl said when he looked up.

There was some good news in the gout after all. The cancer cells were dying.

They planned the trip to Schmidtsdrift during their walks along the beachfront at Umhlanga Rocks. Eskom did its bit by turning off the power. The radiation machine broke down as a result and De Villiers was given a week’s reprieve from his treatment. Through an old friend of Johann Weber, an attorney in Cape Town who came from the farming community near Eshowe, De Villiers and Liesl managed to do some research. Johann had told them, during one of their enforced candlelit dinners, about Albertyn, who used to deal with labour-law matters in Durban before he moved to Cape Town. Albertyn had been involved in litigation on two fronts on behalf of the San people. One case had been a class action for the intellectual property rights of the San people in the medicinal plants they had been using for centuries. In the other case he had made land claims on their behalf. The Batswana people had made a land claim to Schmidtsdrift and the government had given it to them. The San were landless again.

Weber had referred to the Bushmen as San people, but De Villiers could clearly remember !Xau referring to his people as !Xun Bushmen. On hearing that the Bushmen had been displaced yet again, De Villiers and Liesl exchanged a disappointed look. That meant their search for !Xau would be so much more difficult.

Yet their luck turned when Albertyn told them that most members of the San community at Schmidtsdrift had not yet been removed from the area and were staying pending the outcome of their own land claim. New houses had been built for them at Platfontein, houses with running water and electricity, but the Bushmen had refused to move. Not even the luxuries provided in a house in town with all the usual amenities could tempt the Bushmen from the Kalahari. ‘It was my advice too,’ Albertyn had said over the phone, ‘that they should stay in Schmidtsdrift until their land claim had been finalised. What other leverage do you think these poor people have?’

‘Mr Albertyn,’ Liesl had pleaded, ‘you don’t by any chance have a list of the plaintiffs on whose behalf you are making the land claim?’

‘But of course I do,’ Albertyn said. ‘How else could I issue court papers in their names?’

After a further five minutes of discussion, most of which consisted of contorted explanations by Liesl which did not disclose their true mission, Liesl’s call was transferred to Albertyn’s secretary, who quickly confirmed that, yes, one of the plaintiffs was an old Bushman by the name of Yiceu, but there was no address for him except Care of Post Office, Schmidtsdrift, Northern Cape Province.

‘So how can we get in touch with him?’ Liesl asked.

‘Through the Post Office. They go to the Post Office to collect their pensions every month.’

Liesl was profuse in her thanks and put the phone down.

A week later they had not yet heard from the postmaster. No one answered the telephone and there had been no response to a telegram.

‘Be careful,’ Johann Weber had said when he stopped at the Departures drop-off zone. ‘Others may take an interest in your enquiries.’ It was a working day and Johann Weber had to look after a client’s affairs while Liesl and De Villiers went on their expedition without him.

Weber’s comment stayed with De Villiers as he sat with Liesl Weber in the business class lounge waiting for their flight to be called.