Change of Direction
During the latter part of 1976, Rhodesia became the target of Washington’s ‘shuttle diplomacy’, with President Gerald Ford considering that an American-driven solution in Rhodesia would aid his presidential re-election campaign by gaining him additional support from the ethnic minorities. It was his diplomatic troubleshooter, Henry Kissinger, who managed to persuade South Africa’s President, John Vorster, to cut supplies of fuel and munitions in the hope of bringing Ian Smith nearer to a negotiated settlement with his African opponents.
In order to encourage the insurgents to arrive at a peaceful solution, Kissinger visited Tanzania and Zambia to assure Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda that Ian Smith would concede his authority and power after a short but phased transfer period. After Nyerere and Kaunda had sanctioned the plan, Smith was summoned to Pretoria to discuss the agreement with Kissinger and John Vorster. Although Kissinger told Ian Smith that he fully recognised how desperately he wanted the best for his people, and understood why he was fearful of black majority rule, he was emphatic in his belief that the deal on the table would be the best he could expect to receive.
Soon after Ian Smith broadcast details of the Kissinger Agreement to the nation, any hopes that had been mustered from the deal were dashed. Some members of his RF party thought it represented the ‘death rites’ of the country. Such future negotiations had to be abandoned, for five of the Frontline African leaders had rejected the proposals outright. Due to the collapse of the Kissinger Agreement, Vorster decided to continue with the deliveries of war materials from South Africa, as he was well aware that its failure had been no fault of Ian Smith’s government. It was also confirmed that the South African loan of $20 million to Rhodesia’s Ministry of Defence, which was previously held back, had now been made available.
Due to the ramifications of this international political debacle, Ian Smith came to recognise that whatever future internal agreements could be arrived at between his government and ZANU/PF and ZAPU, there could be no finality without the approval of the OAU. A final settlement might even have to be sanctioned by their communist supporters in China and Russia.
So, after Mathew had read as much as possible about the political stalemate which had resulted in the majority of Rhodesians, black and white, having to suffer its implications, he was thankful that he was at least able to redirect his mind from the political tragedies that surrounded him to the continuation of his observations on the complex social interactions of monkeys.
When Simon and Anna Vaughan-Jones arrived at the Leopard Rock Hotel with the equipment that Simon had arranged for the museum to supply, Mathew could see that the taxidermist had done an excellent job in making the caracal lynx as lifelike as possible. The lynx looked very much as if it was in the process of stalking its prey. It had been mounted and fixed onto a small trolley, so that it could be pulled out in front of the monkeys as they scampered through the long grass. The 2-metre African python was mounted and prepared in a similar lifelike fashion so that when it was put before the monkeys, it would be sure to cause the maximum amount of alarm, the expression of which Anna had come to record.
During their five-day stay at the hotel, the Vaughan-Joneses visited Castle Beacon each day, arriving at the camp soon after the strong rays of the rising sun started to evaporate the early morning dampness of the foliage. After Simon had helped Anna to position the caracal and the python and set up her three high-frequency tape-recorders, they waited for the monkeys to descend from the trees before pulling one of the ‘predators’ into their midst. The caracal was the first to come out, which succeeded in creating instant pandemonium among the group. There was a crescendo of alarm calls, ideal for Anna’s recording. Similarly, when the python was introduced to a group of vervet monkeys, she managed to capture the sound as they screamed their specific alarm calls to warn the remainder of their troop of the presence of a predator.
The vervets appeared to be far more vociferous with their alarm calls than the more reserved and sedate Stairs’ monkeys. As soon as one of them spotted either the caracal or the python, it would stand up on its hind legs, bob to and fro and screech its alarm calls, which would be immediately taken up by the rest of the group as they made a rapid escape from the long grass of the clearing and returned to the security of the trees. However, by the final day of Anna and Mathew’s observations, although the monkeys still showed various degrees of suspicion at the mounted specimens they continued to run through the tall grass of the clearing to the forest below instead of returning to the safety of the trees. They just hoped that should a live predator put in an appearance, the monkeys would stop this complacency and head for the forest.
(The experiment was a success. Listening to the tapes in her office in Salisbury, Anna could detect the difference between the vervet’s alarm calls when confronted by the caracal and the python. At this time, very little observational material on the reaction of primates to predators had been recorded or published.)
Simon and Anna invited Mathew to have a farewell dinner at the Leopard Rock Hotel, to thank him for all the help he had given them during their time at his Castle Beacon camp. As he usually led a relatively solitary life, Mathew was thoroughly enjoying the company of friends who shared the same interests as him.
‘I remember a paper that was presented at a symposium called “Captive Propagation and Conservation of Primates”,’ said Mathew. ‘Quite fascinating. A Dutch field worker studying chimpanzees in West Africa had filmed a scene in which he pulled a mounted stuffed leopard into their midst. While they all jumped up and down and screamed hysterically at their number one enemy, an alpha male broke off a sturdy branch from a nearby tree, then appeared to use it as a weapon, beating it repeatedly on the ground in front of the predator. As far as I know, chimpanzees have been recorded using tools, such as twigs to poke into the holes of trees to extract termites, but they’ve never been seen selecting something to protect themselves with. I think that’s the first time an anthropoid ape has been seen using an implement for either defence or attack.’
‘I’ve heard about that piece of footage . . . Oh, Mathew – I’ve just remembered something. I’m so sorry not to have given it to you before,’ Anna said rather sheepishly. ‘It sounds awful but to tell you the truth, I’d quite forgotten about it. I just came across it while repacking my equipment! Here, Jan asked me to pass this on.’ Anna handed him an envelope.
Mathew was relieved that he was in a dimly lit environment as he felt himself blushing slightly. He just hoped that neither Simon nor Anna noticed his reaction as he tucked the letter into his pocket to read when he was back at his camp.
After the friends had said their farewells and Mathew was driving the short distance back to Castle Beacon, he reflected that in all probability Simon had reminded Anna about the note and insisted that Anna should pass it on to him. On one occasion, while Simon and he had been walking by themselves on one of the mountain paths above the hotel, he had said, ‘To tell you the truth Mathew, I can’t stand the way Paddy Bushney treats Jan much of the time. It’s almost as if he merely regards her as some type of trophy, the consequence of a successful military campaign; one which provided him with the possession of such an obedient, faithful and beautiful young wife. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but on one of Jan’s visits to the museum she told me how very much she hopes that when you next visit Salisbury, she will have the opportunity to meet you again. She told me that she not only very much enjoys your company but would love to have you as a close friend, a confidante. In fact, she almost made me promise to arrange a reunion with you.’
When Mathew opened the envelope, under the light of his hissing paraffin lamp, he found attached to the two-page neatly written letter a colour photograph of Jan with her arms around the neck of a sub-adult cheetah. She was wearing a powder-blue cotton dress that hung loosely over her shapely body and, impulsively, Mathew could not prevent himself from kissing the photograph. The beaming smile on her face seemed to mirror her very happiness in being in the company of such an endearing creature, and she had written on the back of the photograph that while she had her arms around the cheetah and gently stroked and caressed him, he had maintained a continuous purr as if in appreciation of her attention.
Dearest Mathew,
This photograph was taken at the Imire Wildlife Reserve, which I recently visited with my sister, Mariette. It’s around 150 km to the east of Salisbury, at Marandellas. Mariette lives nearby with her husband, Willie Smoelke, on a farm that he manages at Macheke. It was thanks to an introduction that Simon and Anna had given me to Norman Travers, the founder of Imire, that I was given the privilege of being introduced to one of his many pets, this young male cheetah that he calls Peter. I mentioned that I am a friend of the British primatologist carrying out post-doctorate studies on the Stairs’ monkeys in the Vumba, and Travers told me how very much he would like to be introduced to you. He said that although he had listened to your lecture at the university last year, he was yet to meet you in person.
As Marandellas is on your way up to Salisbury, and my sister’s home is in Macheke, I could quite easily revisit Imire to meet up with you again. I would love to have the opportunity to introduce you to Norman Travers.
Mathew, I must admit I’m becoming very concerned about the isolated location that you have chosen to carry out your field studies. I recently overheard my husband speaking to some of his fellow officers about how Manicaland is becoming a terrorist hub, and that as a response to their successful Nyadzonya/Pungwe raid, the security forces are expecting an increased level of ZANLA insurgency and terrorist attacks from across the Mozambique border.
[She had written the next paragraph in red ink:] For all of your friends’ sakes, including mine, I implore you to move to a safer location to carry out your work with primates. I would simply hate any harm to come to you. How I so wish to have the opportunity to meet up with you again.
Please, please take heed of what I say, I implore you.
With greatest affection,
Jan xxx
Mathew found that the photograph of such a happy-looking Jan, and the sentiments expressed in her letter, had an unsettling effect on him rather than a feeling of contentment that she should be so concerned about his welfare. At the same time, he realised from what Anna and Simon had told him about the unhappiness of Jan’s marriage, how potentially emotionally explosive it would be if he were to become intimately involved with her in the future. However, in spite of such forebodings, there was no denying that he had experienced ‘love at first sight’ when he met her. To get to know her was one of his main ambitions; to see if the feelings were mutual and to what degree she would respond to his courtship. In the isolation of the hut that Edgar and Joshua had recently constructed for him, looking once more at Jan’s photograph, he could not imagine anything more desirable in the world than to gain her lifetime love and affection.
Less than two weeks after Simon and Anna returned to Salisbury, there was a spate of insurgency attacks on rural communities. Jim Prior told Mathew that the BSAP had found an increased incidence of young collaborators (known locally as mujibas) passing information on to ZANLA about troop movements – in some cases also conveying weapons for the insurgents or carrying out small instances of sabotage. Jim had added that at the beginning of the Bush War, local people were only too willing to report insurgents coming across the border. But now these reports had stopped altogether. This could either be down to ZANU/PF’s ‘reign of terror’ on the local tribal communities, or the increased numbers of their fellow Africans being killed by Rhodesia’s security forces during their counter-insurgency raids into Mozambique.
Just a few days before Christmas, the press reported that a large group of workers at the Honde Tea Estates in the Eastern Highlands had been brutally bayoneted in front of their families. The terrorists were purported to have told the onlookers that the killings had taken place as a punishment to all people working for the white man, and had given the reason that as their wages were so low, they were better off dead. After the slaughter, the insurgents quickly disappeared and returned across the border to their terrorist camps in Mozambique. Rhodesia’s European community, as well as some of the peace-loving Africans, had been greatly shocked, with the Minister of Defence, P.K. van der Byl, stating that it was ‘an act of unspeakable brutality’. The UN voted overwhelmingly to tighten sanctions on Rhodesia, and Britain decided to increase its humanitarian aid to Mozambique.
Soon after his return from another enjoyable Christmas and New Year spent with the Kinlochs, Mathew had what turned out to be his last meeting with Edgar and Joshua at his Castle Beacon camp. He found them both very different from the jovial young men he was accustomed to; their broad smiles had been replaced by expressions of solemnity and dejection.
Due to the increased level of intimidation in the villages dotted around the Vumba by the ZANU/PF political activists, and the growing level of insurgency within the Vumba region, the National Parks Department had directed David Montgomery to close down the botanical gardens, board up its buildings, pay off his staff and return to Salisbury at the earliest opportunity. As so many Europeans had already decided to leave the region for their own safety, bringing unemployment upon a large number of Africans, ZANU/PF intimidation within the community had become quite a common occurrence.
‘Edgar, what on earth happened to you?’ asked Mathew, shocked by the prominent scar over his right eye. Edgar was initially reluctant to tell him, but after a couple of Mathew’s lagers he spoke more freely. ‘I will agree to tell you, as long as it goes no further. I know I can trust you. It was an activist from ZANU/PF – he attacked me on the way to work and took me to their camp in the forest. First of all, a few of them interrogated me about my friendship with you, the “white-man” living at Castle Beacon. They tried to force me to sign a document stating that “Dr Mathew Duncan is using his time studying the monkeys in the forest just as a front, and is stationed in the Vumba to act as an informer to the security forces”. I said I wouldn’t sign it – nor would I move the weapons that they asked me to. So they beat me with a truncheon, kicked me and left me in the forest.’
‘It distresses me greatly to think that they targeted you because of me. I’m so sorry, Edgar, that our friendship led to you being hurt like this.’
‘The leader told me that when I returned to the village, I was to carry a warning to my father. He said that Robert Mugabe expected all members of the Manyika tribe to support the ZANLA freedom fighters in their efforts to overthrow the racist government of Ian Smith. He wanted the Manyika tribesmen to help the insurgents cause as many problems as possible for the Rhodesian security forces while they carry out cross-border raids on their camps in Mozambique. He said we should help because these raids have already accounted for the deaths of so many of our fellow tribesmen.’
Mathew could not have been more thankful to Edgar and Joshua for their help and friendship over the last eighteen months. When it was time for them to leave, speaking in the Manyika dialect that they had taught him in happier times, he promised to make contact with them through Chief Chidzikwee as soon as the political and racial problems in the country could be successfully resolved. As he grasped their hands and patted them both affectionately on their backs, gestures of a sad farewell, he gave each of them an envelope containing some Bank of Rhodesia currency to add to the small retention wage that they would receive from the National Parks Department, to help them to maintain themselves during this uncertain period of unemployment, distrust between races and conflict.
Prior to them leaving Castle Beacon, Edgar took the opportunity to speak to Mathew out of earshot of Joshua. ‘When they attacked me, I heard the names of three of them. Here – I’ve written them down.’ He passed a scrap of paper to Mathew. ‘Two of them work locally, so you must keep out of their way at all costs. Be careful.’ Mathew noticed that while his friends were trying to smile as they said goodbye, their eyes were welling with tears. They left his camp to retrace their tracks down the mountain to the botanical gardens, to help David Montgomery close it down for an indefinite period, then to return to their respective ‘protected’ villages in the TTLs.
Mathew wished that he was in a position to employ Edgar on a regular basis and perhaps take him along to Inyanga. Although, bearing in mind the misery and uncertainty among the African communities that had resulted from the massacre on the Honde Tea Estate, this might have been a very dangerous course of action.
Although Mathew had yet to decide whether he should remain in the Vumba, he had almost completed his field observations on the Stairs’ monkeys and the comparative work he had more recently carried out with the vervets. Therefore, if terrorist attacks were to occur in the area (members of the security forces had already warned him that it was very likely to happen), this could well be an appropriate time to close down his camp and leave what could easily become the next hub of insurgency.
During his recent stay with the Kinlochs, the Group Captain had tried to persuade him to transfer his camp to the much safer environment of his orchard estate. He had already offered his home as a future base for Mathew’s field studies when Mathew mentioned his interest in carrying out some comparative observations on the social life of the ubiquitous chacma baboons, Papio ursinus, which occurred in quite sizeable numbers in the Inyanga National Park. Apart from Addie’s regular weekend visits, he lived on his own for the majority of the time and he had said how very much he would enjoy having Mathew as company. ‘But if you decide to come to stay with me,’ he had told Mathew emphatically, ‘I want no more of this Group Captain nonsense – I insist you call me Miles.’
Just over a fortnight after David Montgomery closed the Vumba Botanical Gardens to the public and returned to Salisbury to take up the appointment as senior botanist at the National Parks headquarters, the Leopard Rock Hotel received a direct hit from a terrorist mortar attack. This was successful in setting fire to and destroying the hotel’s southernmost wing. The attack had taken place in the early hours of a Sunday morning, and luckily, as it was in the middle of the winter months, few visitors had ventured up into the cold mountain mists of the Vumba. The Osborne-Smiths were away and there were no guests at the hotel at the time of the fire. The assistant manager and his staff were reported to have done an excellent job in managing to contain the fire to the rubble of the southern wing, preventing it from spreading to the heart of the magnificent baronial building. Security personnel had flooded the Vumba by early the following morning. By midday, Mathew received a visit from Jim Prior, accompanied by an RLI major and a BSAP superintendent.
‘As D.O. for the Vumba region, I have to request that you vacate the camp and the Vumba Mountains at the earliest opportunity. Due to the increased number of reports of terrorists at large in the area, this should be within the next twenty-four hours. I’m sorry that I have to do this Mathew, but all the other residents of the Vumba have been told to board up, leave their properties and to go to Umtali by tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Don’t worry, Jim, I know you’re only doing your job. I was already thinking that it was time to move on.’
‘For the time being, Dr Duncan,’ said the major, ‘the security of the Vumba Mountain region of Manicaland is to come under my jurisdiction. It is therefore to be considered a military zone. The Leopard Rock Hotel has been closed down, to be protected by a contingent of the RLI and, in future, only civilians who are granted prior permission directly from myself will be allowed to return to the Vumba, should they wish to check on their properties.’
The mortar attack on the Leopard Rock Hotel effectively made Mathew’s decision for him. He was able to make contact with Miles (as he must now get used to calling him) through a radio connection in the major’s jeep, and gladly accepted his offer of accommodation. ‘As long as everything goes according to plan,’ he told his new host, ‘I should arrive at the estate some time tomorrow afternoon. Would you be kind enough to make contact with Sir Roger Willock and the Vaughan-Joneses on my behalf? I should let them know that I’m moving on.’
Mathew was saddened to have to leave the Vumba Mountains at such short notice. It had proved to be an ideal environment for him to have lived in and been a part of for so many months, as well as having been such a productive place to carry out his primate research. Although, as far as his study groups of monkeys were concerned, he was at least relieved to know that unlike those in West Africa where some tribes hunted monkeys for bushmeat, his precious families of Stairs’ and vervets were safe from human predation. Primates in this region of Africa had never become a delicacy or found their way into the villagers’ ‘stew pot’, so had not suffered the detrimental effects of the unsustainable West African trade in bushmeat.
Later on in the day, while Mathew was in the process of packing up his few belongings in readiness for his departure the following morning, he received a further visit from the BSAP superintendent. After Mathew organised a mug of tea for them both and they were seated on the two remaining canvas camp chairs, the policeman’s attitude suddenly shifted a gear. He had begun in quite a relaxed manner, going over some of the security measures that had just come into force in the Vumba. Then he became quite aggressive and practically interrogated Mathew about his long-standing friendships with Edgar Chidzikwee and Joshua Dombo, as well about his reputed connection with Chief Chidzikwee. He demanded that Mathew told him as much about his relationships with them as possible.
‘Now, I’ve been told that you recently had quite a lengthy meeting with Edgar Chidzikwee and Joshua Dombo at your camp, and that Edgar had a visible wound on his forehead. As the security forces have received a number of reports about small groups of Africans being seen travelling in this region of the Vumba, especially after dark, I want to know exactly what you were told by your two African friends. I want to know whether you consider either of them was either directly or indirectly connected with the terrorist activities of ZANU/PF, or with ZANLA’s insurgency, or with the conveyance of military equipment from across the border. We know that you recently had talks with Chief Chidzikwee – did he give any clue as to whether he’s sympathetic to the objectives of ZANLA’s freedom fighters?’
Although Mathew was anxious to help the policeman, he objected to the way he was being questioned and was determined to keep the long-standing relationship that he had nurtured with his African friends as confidential as possible. ‘I can assure you that in no way is either Edgar or Joshua involved with those African insurgents currently carrying out terrorist attacks.’ He refrained from telling the superintendent about Edgar’s experience at the hands of the ZANU/PF gang. ‘As far as I’m concerned, I’m as anxious as my two friends are that having just lost their employment, the present political imbroglio between the races is resolved as quickly and as peacefully as possible.’
‘Thank you, Dr Duncan, for giving me your assurance that your friends are not in any way involved with the insurgency. Your cooperation is appreciated.’ Mathew could not help feeling that the policeman was well aware that he had only been provided with a fraction of the information he was seeking, which no doubt his report on this interview would reflect.
Prior to turning in for his last night at Castle Beacon, Mathew took his time to drink the remains of a bottle of Scotch and to dwell on his time in the Vumba. Eventually, he climbed into the folds of his old faithful double-sized hammock under the canopy of a faded and much repaired mosquito-net, both of which he had purchased with Lucienne in Bukavu.
After turning off the paraffin Primus lamp, Mathew spoke aloud against the background of a nocturnal chorus of amphibians and the continuous sonorous singing of a multiplicity of invertebrates, and prayed that a peaceful and satisfactory settlement for both the European and African citizens of Rhodesia could be arrived at as soon as possible. Since he had arrived in the country in 1974, he had witnessed the escalation of the Bush War and was very much aware of the great suffering that had been experienced on both sides of the political divide between Rhodesia’s black and white citizens. He could only hope for a successful future for this priceless gem of what used to be Central Southern Africa’s ‘bread basket’. Rhodesia was a country that he had come to love.
The following morning, Mathew drove his fully loaded Land Rover down from the Vumba. His journey was interrupted on several occasions by security road blocks. On his arrival in Umtali, he stopped briefly at the veterinary pathology laboratory to collect the last results from the faecal samples he had recently sent, and to thank the assistants for having provided him with so much invaluable information. He then drove to the Umtali Sports Club to have a farewell lunch with Jim Prior. Once he had passed through a police checkpoint at the front gate and entered the club house, he found that the majority of those present were in uniform. It resembled a well-guarded military base rather than a centre for recreation.
During their lunch, Jim updated him on the increased number of terrorist attacks, now coming from different locations across the border. ‘The local Africans have had a complete change of attitude. They’re not willing to pass on information about the movement of unfamiliar people travelling through their villages, which they used to do readily. As some of my European staff are at present serving their obligatory time with the army’s Territorials, all of this has placed untold pressure on the D.O.’s headquarters. I just hope it’s resolved soon.’
On their parting, Jim mentioned to Mathew that the BSAP superintendent who had visited his camp on the previous evening had enjoyed talking to him, although he had felt that Mathew did not confide in him as well as he had hoped he might. ‘He did say that his talk with you had been at least of some use, as after you gave your opinion that your two African friends were not involved in any way with the ZANLA operatives, you exonerated them from suspicion. In other words, you prevented either of them from been taken into police custody or subsequently facing detention.’
‘I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear that,’ said Mathew. ‘It would have been awful if they’d been arrested as a result of the mere suspicion of a policeman, subjected to a terrible miscarriage of justice.’
‘Yes, it’s extremely lucky that you were able to vouch for them and that the superintendent took you on your word, or who knows what would have happened. Well, I’m sorry to see you go, old chap – as soon as things are more settled, which I pray will be soon, how about I come to visit you at your new base in Inyanga? Keep in touch, won’t you.’ The two men bade their farewells, saddened by this enforced severing of their friendship.
On the outskirts of the city, Mathew called in at Umtali’s recently reconstructed museum in order to thank the staff, in particular the botanists, for all the plant and invertebrate identifications they had done on his behalf. He promised to send them reprints of any of his published scientific papers that referred to their findings. After leaving the now-garrisoned city and passing through two further police checkpoints, Mathew stopped at the top of Christmas Pass to have what could possibly be his last sight for quite some time of the wide exposure of Umtali and the breathtaking view of the mountains surrounding it. The view included his much-loved Vumba, and the monkeys that the mountains held so securely within their embrace.
Mathew stood once more by the memorial of the benefactor Kingsley Fairbridge, at the age of twelve, with his African friend Jack and his little dog, Vixen. Here, he reflected on Rhodesia’s sad evolution since the statue was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother in 1953: how such a progressive country, which had so greatly helped the advancement of both the African and European communities, had now descended (seemingly so irretrievably) into the abyss of political unrest and killings.
After turning off the Salisbury road at Rusape, he was stopped by yet another police checkpoint manned by four African BSAP constables. Mathew’s visitor’s permit and passport were studied with an exaggerated degree of attention. When they asked him where he was heading for in Inyanga and he told them that he was to be the guest of Group Captain Miles Kinloch, their rather hostile expressions blossomed into smiles. Before a constable raised the boom across the road, they all insisted on shaking him warmly by the hand and wishing him the most enjoyable of visits. (Miles later told Mathew that whenever he was stopped at that particular police checkpoint, he always gave them some money for their families and a sizeable bag of apples to share.)
As Mathew drove up the winding earthen drive to the Kinlochs’ homestead, he was met by Huggins and Welensky as they ran around his Land Rover, which they recognised immediately and loudly barked their greetings to him. On hearing the commotion, Miles descended the steps from his front door and before Mathew was allowed to start unloading any of his kit, he was led into the house to share an earlier than usual sundowner with his host. Miles particularly wanted to be told as much as possible about Mathew’s recent experiences in the Vumba, in the aftermath of the terrorist mortar attack on the Leopard Rock Hotel.
During dinner later that evening, Mathew’s host had to remind him of one important point. ‘As this is to become your future base, I want your stay with me to be as pleasant and as informal as possible – so I insist you call me by my Christian name.’ Initially, due to Mathew’s very conservative upbringing in the UK and the fact that he always had an inherent respect for a gentleman from a previous generation, he had found it difficult to call Addie’s father ‘Miles’, but as his host clearly wasn’t going to have it any other way, he soon relaxed into the informality of the situation.
Mathew spent the following day unpacking his kit and arranging some of it in a small outhouse that Miles had given him to use as an office. Here, he was able to place his small library of reference books and diaries, his tape-recorder, camera, binoculars, and other items of equipment that could well be useful if his intended observations on the local troops of chacma baboons proved to be a viable research programme.
‘I’m sure you’ve made the right decision,’ said Miles while Mathew took a brief pause from his labours. ‘I must say Addie was hugely relieved, it should be so much safer for you here than in the Vumba. Both Sir Roger and Simon Vaughan-Jones called after they heard about the mortar attack on the Leopard Rock Hotel to say how glad they were that you’re relocating to Inyanga. The mortar attack got a great deal of coverage in the media, you know. They both said that they will be sending letters to you via Addie – she’s due to visit next weekend.’
Mathew spent much of the week before Addie’s visit reading as much as possible about the chacma baboons that inhabited the Inyanga area. It was interesting for him to note in the eighth volume of Osman Hill’s primate monograph that the chacma was one of the earlier elements of the South African fauna to attract the attention of travellers. In the mid-seventeenth century, van Riedbeck had frequently recorded the presence of chacma baboons in his diaries; they were also mentioned by subsequent travellers in the region during the eighteenth century. Hill described eight sub-species of chacma baboons, of which the Rhodesian sub-species of chacma, Papio ursinus griseipes, was first described by R.I. Pocock in 1911 as being distributed to the north of the Limpopo, extending northwards through Rhodesia into southern Zambia.
As troops of chacma baboons were quite a common sight among the rocky kopjes of Inyanga, Mathew knew that he would have few problems in locating their favourite daily foraging sights, or the places that they chose to sleep at night. However, what concerned him more than anything else was whether he would be able to habituate a family group to his presence as easily as he had done with his Stairs’ and vervet monkeys. The chacmas in this region were frequently shot on sight whenever they entered people’s properties or were seen feeding in fruit orchards, so were, on the whole, apprehensive of humans and frequently beat a hasty retreat whenever they came into contact with them. Mathew saw a series of dramatic magazine photographs showing a large, powerful, male baboon defending itself from an attack by two Norfolk terriers, both of which were bleeding quite profusely from the encounter. The pictures well illustrated the length of the baboons’ long canines and the ferocity of their characters. This was a species that Mathew could see would require a great deal of time and patience to acclimatise to his presence.
Since the Kinlochs and Mathew had first met Angus Whitton on New Year’s Eve, just over a year ago, Angus (who had by now received his majority and was gazetted as a major), had become a good friend of Miles and was quite a regular visitor to the Kinlochs’ homestead. Angus was able to keep him up-to-date with security matters, in particular news about any insurgency attacks from across the border. One evening when he joined Mathew and Miles for dinner, he described an incident that at first had appeared to be the consequence of a terrorist attack on the Chavhanga Missionary School. By coincidence, Angus was with a unit of his Rhodesian Signals accompanying a large scale counter-insurgency operation in the area in the early hours of the morning, when they saw flames and clouds of smoke coming from the direction of the school. As the military feared that it had been subjected to another terrorist attack and massacre similar to that which had taken place at the Elim Mission in June 1978, a detachment of RLI and Angus’s unit had immediately gone to investigate.
Angus told Mathew and Miles that as they approached the burning school with the utmost caution, with their weapons at the ready, they were all stunned by what they saw. ‘Honestly, it was like something out of The Sound of Music. Instead of coming across a bunch of terrified, sobbing youngsters, and perhaps some dead bodies, there was a line of girls clad in their dressing gowns and slippers walking in an orderly crocodile fashion around the school’s blazing kitchen outhouse, under the supervision of a few determined-looking nuns. They were all enthusiastically singing “Onward Christian Soldiers marching into war; With the cross of Jesus going on before . . .” It was like something straight out of the pages of the Old Testament – it did great credit to the missionaries who founded the school in the first place!’
‘So if it wasn’t a terrorist attack,’ Miles asked, ‘what caused the fire?’
‘Well, they later established that a cauldron of cooking fat had caught alight after having been left on the kitchen’s log-burning stove. Unfortunately, it wasn’t seen until it was too late for the cauldron to be removed and the fire to be extinguished. When some burning fat overflowed on the stove, it set the entire kitchen block ablaze, but fortunately none of the girls or the missionary staff was harmed. It makes a pleasant change when things turn out to be nowhere near as bad as you’re expecting . . . they’re usually far worse.’
Another evening when Miles and Mathew were dining alone, Miles was explaining to Mathew how much the annual income of most Rhodesians had plummeted since the tightening-up of the UN trade sanctions and how the Rhodesian pound continued to be devalued by international currency markets. ‘Before the sanctions, over two thirds of the apples grown on this estate were exported to Europe, with the majority ending up on the English market. Not any more. Although I still get a small pension from my days in the RAF service and I have shares in a property in Salisbury, I no longer benefit from some of the luxuries that I used to enjoy – the annual holiday in the Cape, a trip back to see the few relations left in the UK – although I still have a very comfortable life.’
‘I must admit I was very fortunate in that my grandfather, Sir Reginald Duncan, set up a trust fund for my brother and I so that once we reached our twenty-second birthdays, we would get an annual grant.’ Mathew was reluctant to say too much about his own financial situation, but wanted to be open with his host. ‘Having the guaranteed income has given me the financial security and the freedom to carry out my post-doctorate primate field studies wherever I wished to do so. As for my brother Sebastian, it’s enabled him to be an officer in the Household Brigade and to serve in the Life Guards.’
‘You’re a fortunate man, Mathew,’ said Miles. ‘Being free from financial pressures has allowed you to follow your own path. Not many of us can hope for that, although I can’t complain, I loved every minute of my time in the RAF, and have never regretted the decision to set up home here in Rhodesia. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.’
Mathew’s first encounter with a family group of chacma baboons took place only three days after his arrival in Inyanga. He first spotted a troop of about thirty individuals made up of adults, juveniles and infants, the latter either riding like jockeys on their mothers’ backs, or hanging like hammocks under their bellies, as the troop ambled across one of the national park’s minor earthen tracks. This was in an area particularly renowned for the clusters of impressive dome-like kopjes in which large boulders balanced precariously on top of one another, and small trees, shrubs and long grasses gave shade and security to passing animal life. When two of the large, powerful-looking alpha male baboons saw Mathew’s Land Rover slowly making its way towards them, they remained behind the rest of the troop as if to act as security guards for their family.
Once Mathew had stopped his vehicle and wound down the window to study the two sentinels through his powerful binoculars, they both uttered a series of short warning barks, which caused the rest of their troop to scatter quickly to the security of the kopjes. Mathew had read that baboons have quite a varied vocabulary spanning from short warning coughs, grunting sounds, frenzied screams and squeals when alarmed, to soft, chattering noises of pleasure. They were recognised to be extremely powerful members of the monkey kingdom, and with their long, somewhat square-jawed, dog-like muzzle, were known to be frequently quick-tempered, chastising very freely any younger member of their troop that had the misfortune of getting in their way.
While Mathew continued to make notes on the grizzly, olive-yellowish colour of the body of the male he was viewing through his binoculars, without a hint of any warning it rushed at his drivers’ side door, screaming as it did so. Mathew was fortunate to have reacted as quickly as he did, managing to wind up his window in time to avoid being bitten. When the irate baboon failed in its surprise attack, it jumped onto the Land Rover’s bonnet bark-coughing loudly, and after being joined by an accomplice, managed to tear off one of the vehicle’s windscreen wipers.
Mathew’s reaction to this hostile reception was to immediately ‘rev up’ the Land Rover’s engine and, with his hand on the horn, to accelerate as quickly as possible away from the scene. This resulted in the baboons sliding off the bonnet onto the ground, although when Mathew looked into his rear-view mirror to see what had happened to them, he couldn’t help being amused to see the two large males squabbling over the windscreen wiper trophy that had been so unceremoniously wrenched from his vehicle. His plan to habituate the group and make a study of them wasn’t going to happen overnight.
Mathew was very much looking forward to the following afternoon, when Addie was due to arrive for the weekend. Not only would it be good to see his close friend and confidante again, for they hadn’t had the chance to meet for some time, but she had said on the phone that she would be bringing with her a number of letters, including those from the Willocks and the Vaughan-Joneses. She also mentioned that Anna had given her a sizeable package of correspondence that she had just collected from his personal Causeway post office box number in Salisbury. Early on in his friendship with the Vaughan-Joneses, Mathew had given Anna the authority to collect this post office box mail on his behalf. During the last two years, whenever Mathew was unable to get up to Salisbury at regular intervals, Anna kindly collected any correspondence that she found in his post office box and sent it to him in a registered package, care of the Osborne-Smiths at the Leopard Rock Hotel.
As soon as Huggins and Welensky saw Addie’s car pulling up in front of the homestead, there was the usual frenzy of excitable barks. After she had patted and hugged them both, she greeted her father with a similar degree of affection. Seeing Mathew walking towards her from the shade of a large mop-head acacia, she warmly kissed him on both cheeks. After the houseboy, Moses, had carried her suitcase to her room and she had taken a shower to freshen up, Addie returned to the fly-screened veranda in time for a sundowner. She gave Mathew the letters and the package.
Mathew was reluctant to open any of his mail while enjoying his whisky and soda, being brought up-to-date about how everything was going in Salisbury and whether the escalation of the Bush War was causing any additional problems in the capital. His reluctance had to be put aside after Addie mentioned that when Simon had come round to her office to give her his letter, he told her that it contained, as far as he was concerned, a most important and exciting offer which required a response at the earliest opportunity. Mathew had no alternative but to open the envelope in front of his hosts; after scanning through its three pages quickly, and then returning to read one part of it more carefully, he stood up to make an announcement. ‘Well, it seems that the University of Rhodesia have offered me a position as a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the university’s Department of Zoology. I think I may have to accept!’ The sundowner glasses were quickly refilled and clinked together, and father and daughter proposed their individual toasts of congratulations to their guest.
After the most convivial of evenings, Mathew recognised that through the excitement of the university offer, he had drunk too much. But when he returned to his room carrying the rest of his as yet unopened mail, he was determined to have a cursory look through before turning in for the night. The letter from Sir Roger and Devra Willock said how very pleased they were to have learnt from Addie that he had now transferred his base from the Vumba to her father’s orchard estate in Inyanga. Also, as Sir Roger had heard that the terrorist attack on the Leopard Rock Hotel had been covered in the UK press, he had already cabled Mathew’s parents to let them know that their son was safe and sound and had now moved to another much safer location. The Willocks had ended their joint letter by saying how very much they looked forward to Mathew’s next visit to Salisbury, when they hoped that he would take the opportunity to stay with them once again. They were both very keen to hear about his recent experiences in the Vumba Mountains.
The package of letters that Anna had collected from his post office box, some of which had been there for some time, comprised of a good cross-section of correspondence from his parents and brother, from Antonia Clinton-Kemp, from some of his old school friends in England, a few from his university friends in Atlanta, and a long letter from Osman and Yvonne Hill. But it was an envelope with a postal cancellation stamp from Washington DC, written in Lucienne’s elaborate hand, which gave him the greatest surprise. Although he knew that her letter was in response to the one he had posted to her just over a year ago, mailed as she had requested to her old Atlanta address, he had not expected to receive any response from her.
Dearest Mathew,
I hope this letter finds you well. I’m writing to give you the exciting news that Daniel has just been promoted, and later on in the year is to take up the appointment as Cultural Secretary to the US Embassy in Lusaka. I’m hoping to join him as soon as the US State Department’s administrative authorities consider Zambia to be safe enough for me, our baby daughter Polly and adopted son, Marcus.
I very much hope that once we are settled there, we can arrange to meet. That is, of course, if Ian Smith’s illegal regime will allow you to travel to Lusaka across Rhodesia’s war-torn border with Zambia. Daniel recently told me that what he calls the freedom fighters’ Bush War has effectively come to the border of Zambia and Rhodesia, so the conflict now extends some 600 miles from the Zambezi River in the north to the Limpopo River in the south. I hope you’re being careful to keep out of danger.
I’ll contact you once we arrive in Zambia so that we can make arrangements. It goes without saying that I can’t wait to see you again, and I so look forward to introducing you to Daniel and the children.
Until then, dear Mathew, take care.
Lucienne xxx
Lucienne and Daniel had often thought about what the most appropriate age would be to inform Marcus that she was indeed his real mother, but Daniel was not his father, although he had adopted him as his son prior to Polly’s birth.
Lucienne also often weighed up the pros and cons of letting Mathew know that back in 1973, the abortion had not after all been carried out and that Marcus, whom she considered would undoubtedly develop into a fine, handsome young man, was the product of their own very first intense love affair. As such, he was a love-child whose life would always have to be both celebrated and cherished.