25

TOUR OF INSPECTION

THE DELEGATION FROM PRETORIA ARRIVED AT TWELVE, an hour late, having been delayed by a multiple taxi pile-up on the highway. When the silver-grey Mercedes drew up outside the police station, Captain Ngobese, watching out for it from the window of his office, straightened his tie and went to warn the briefing committee before going out to greet the visitors.

The Deputy Director General of Redevelopment was everything he had feared, but with an unnerving difference: Meneer Hendrik Ossewa was not only a Pretoria fat cat, he was sharp. Little would escape this veteran official who had spent decades working towards the front lines of power and top jobs, only to see them usurped by the formerly disenfranchised.

Midday heat radiated off the raked blue gravel in front of the police station steps as his polished lace-ups emerged from the air-conditioned interior to land with a double crunch. Before saying a word, he stood up with one hand on the car door and did a comprehensive 360-degree sweep round Crocodile Flats with alert frog’s eyes. Then turning to thrust his hand at the waiting captain, he barked, ‘Ossewa. Apologies for the unavoidable delay. It means we’ve only got two hours, including lunch, so make it snappy, eh?’

‘Ngobese.’ The handshake was a no-nonsense military clasp. ‘Welcome. This way to the briefing room, meneer.’ Careful with this mlungu, he told himself. He’ll notice everything. And by the sound of that ‘lunch’, he won’t be satisfied with the sandwiches and cooldrinks we’ve laid on.

As soon as the Deputy Director General and his underlings were seated with cups of coffee and a plate of fresh vanilla cupcakes in front of the wall map of Crocodile Flats, having its tangle of communities explained by a long-serving sergeant who knew the place well, Captain Ngobese made for his office and phoned the hotel.

Benjamin picked up the phone in the bar. ‘Outspan.’

‘This is Ngobese from the police station.’

Immediate panic. Is it about serving drinks to Eddie last night? He’ll close me down. This is the end. He stammered, ‘I-I’m honestly—’

‘I need a big favour, Mr Feinbaum.’

Relief opened the floodgates. ‘It’s Benjamin or Ben, Captain. No one calls me Mr Feinbaum. Sometimes Benny, which I hate, but—’

‘Ben. Listen, it’s urgent. Could you do lunch for me and three guys from Pretoria?’

‘Sorry, no.’ There was true regret in his voice. ‘I had to close down the dining room and let the chef go last May. It was costing too much to keep him on for the few guests who—’

‘Please? Nothing fancy, just good and filling. Big steaks, baked potatoes, maybe a salad? Followed by coffee. There won’t be time for anything else.’

‘But—’

‘I’m desperate, man. You know these old-regime officials: if you don’t look after their stomachs, they turn in negative reports.’

‘I wish I could help but it’s impossible. Sorry.’

‘Please? This is an emergency. Important for Crocodile Flats. I’d be grateful as hell if you’d help me out.’

It was a long time since anyone had asked Benjamin to do anything of importance. ‘I really wish I could help you, Captain,’ he wavered.

Captain Ngobese was skilled at persuading the reluctant, an essential attribute of good policing. He said, ‘You’re our only hope. And I know you could do it. Crises bring out the best in all of us.’

Of course Benjamin was flattered. But even then he surprised himself by blurting, ‘Okay. What time? Steaks for how many?’

‘Around one-thirty. There’ll be just the four of us plus my second-in-command, but you’d better prepare for six in case the driver turns up his nose at our sandwiches. Thanks. I’ll pay. And I owe you one, Ben.’ The phone banged down as the captain hurried back to the briefing.

An hour and a half to countdown. Benjamin appointed a trusted regular to mind the bar and asked Obadiah, his sole remaining employee, to dust and sweep the dining room. Then he began to make phone calls. First to the butchery (they had farm butter and rump steak), then to Tex in the café (he had potatoes, onions, tomatoes and fresh rolls – sorry, no lettuce), then to Philomena Moloi, who was known to be an excellent cook.

She wasn’t at the house behind the trading store, however. Khanya answered the phone and explained, ‘She’s gone up to the nuns to ask Sister Dineo to come. Mr Eddie’s very sick.’

Benjamin moaned, ‘What’ll I do? I need her.’

‘Why?’ Khanya made a face at Jo, who had looked up from the accounts ledger she was going through with increasing dread.

‘What’s wrong, Khanya?’

With his hand over the receiver, he said, ‘It’s Benjamin from the Outspan. Says he needs Ma Philo’s assistance.’

‘The guy who always looks embarrassed when he passes you?’

Khanya nodded. ‘He’s also having a hard time. Everybody struggles now. The village is dying.’

Jo said, ‘Let me talk to him. Maybe I can help.’

Hendrik listened to the briefing with the official report on his lap, checking its figures and maps against what was said. At the end he fired questions, most of which had to do with the lack of infrastructure and deteriorating conditions. The last one to Captain Ngobese was: ‘What’s your assessment of the mood of the shack people?’

‘Quite excited today, meneer. There’s talk going round that one of the Catholic girls has had a vision and—’

‘Not today, man, in general. Do they want to be moved to better housing, or are the usual agitators stirring them up about ancestors’ graves and so forth?’

‘What do you mean, stirring them up about ancestors’ graves?’ Mlungus who disparaged his people’s beliefs made the captain see red.

‘Ag, you know what I mean. People refusing to move because they can’t take remains with them. Or they don’t want to leave sacred places. Tribal stuff.’

He kept his expression under maximum control. ‘I wouldn’t say there was much what you call tribal stuff here, meneer. The shack people are mostly newcomers. Some have jobs in town but too many are unemployed.’

‘What about Chief Mohlalipula’s people, the amaPula? They’re tribal. He’s been in and out of the local redevelopment office, making a helluva stink. Says they won’t move unless they get paid out plenty – all of it to go into a trust controlled by him.’ The frog eyes narrowed to slits. ‘That’s one of the reasons I’ve come down here: to assess the chief.’

‘Shall I ask him to lunch?’ It was one of Captain Ngobese’s tests: to see how mlungus reacted to mixed social situations.

‘That won’t be necessary. I want you to take me right now to his Great Place. It’s the only way with these bolshie old traditional chiefs who resist everything: make them understand face to face that they can’t stand in the way of progress. They’re just in it for the main chance, I’m telling you.’

Personally, Captain Ngobese agreed that the chief was an old has-been with his fingers in the community kitty, but he wasn’t going to say so. Instead he said, ‘Let’s go then, meneer. Our patrol vehicle is ready and waiting,’ and in a Zulu aside to his second-in-command, ‘Get word to the old goat quick.’

Hendrik demanded, ‘What did you say there?’

‘Just to clear away the plates and coffee cups.’

The captain ushered him, the personal assistant and the note-taking minion towards a landmine-protected riot wagon that had been taken out of mothballs and cleaned up for the tour of inspection.

At the sight of it, Hendrik erupted, ‘I’m not going in that thing! We’re supposed to be incognito.’ The windows were armoured-glass slits through which he would be able to see virtually nothing.

‘You will be incognito.’ Captain Ngobese was at his most correct. ‘It’s safety regulations, meneer. We may not transport non-police personnel into shack areas without protection. There are gangsters in Crocodile Flats who carry illegal firearms.’

The personal assistant and the minion blanched. Hendrik growled, ‘This is a farce,’ but had no alternative to climbing the short ladder into the bowels of the beast.

When they reached the Great Place – the only house in the settlement built with bricks and indoor plumbing – after jouncing along interminable bumpy tracks, sweltering because the slit windows didn’t open, the chief wasn’t there. His wife, Sis’ Diliza, came to the gate and said she was sorry, he’d gone into town that morning. Would they like to leave a message?

Hendrik was sweating and in a foul mood on their return to the tarmac after a much-shortened tour of inspection. When Captain Ngobese announced that they’d be stopping at the hotel for lunch, he barked, ‘No need. I’ve seen enough. We’re driving back to Pretoria. The minister will be informed.’

‘Straight away, meneer?’ The personal assistant was starving.

‘Straight away. This is the worst black spot I’ve ever seen. The sooner it’s flattened, the better. Call our driver and let’s go.’

Festive meals are not meant to be wasted. When he heard that the Deputy Director General had declined lunch, Benjamin invited Captain Ngobese, Sister Dineo, Philomena and Rod to the Outspan Hotel dining room to enjoy the sizzling rump steaks, fried onion rings, baked potatoes and tomato salad, joined as soon as she had served them by Jo, the volunteer cook.

They talked of the brown Madonna and the imminent arrival of Mother Esmé and someone from the diocese office – both of whom would need to be put up in the hotel for lack of suitable rooms in the nuns’ former garage. Benjamin would hire two women to help Obadiah prepare for and look after the distinguished guests, and Philomena agreed to help with the cooking.

Rod kept his miniature tape recorder running right through lunch, concealed in one of his combat waistcoat pockets. With the Landy disabled, he’d arranged to hire Benjamin’s elderly Beetle to run about in; he had plenty of rolls of high-quality transparency film and a satellite hook-up for his copy (a clumsy early model, but it worked okay most days).

Even better, there wasn’t another journalist in sight. He hadn’t felt so pleased with himself since the time he’d been the only witness to a light plane that flew into an Eskom pylon.

It would be another seven hours before he learnt that even venerable Land Rovers can be raped.