Cape Town, South Africa
1992–1993
Gabriel looked over the copy of the police report on his desk. He blocked out the sounds from the busy Cape Argus newspaper office outside his door, and concentrated on the papers that had been assigned to him when his editor Stephen casually tossed them on his desk.
‘More of your black voodoo going on,’ Stephen said.
‘Thanks, I’ll take a look at it,’ Gabe said, but his boss had already walked out and into the next office.
He opened the envelope. Another group of bodies had been found on the outskirts of District 6. As usual, there was to be no report in the paper about the ritual killings of the black children. There were so many kids who were killed for traditional muti. Most of them were chopped up. All the black children so far were unclaimed, as were many of those they found in a traditional ritual. Their parents too scared to come forward and claim those children who had been taken and mutilated.
He looked at the photographs of the bodies. A shallow grave had been dug and the bodies had been dumped into one mass grave, as if the parts that they didn’t need for their ritual had no value.
He grasped the edge of the table with both hands as he fought the anger that boiled inside and threatened to burst out.
They were just children.
Even after all these years, he still didn’t fully understand why these ritual killings still occurred in today’s society. What type of person still believed that human body parts would help to cure an ailment, or increase the potency of a cure? Or bring wealth to someone who wasn’t prepared to work hard to get it?
He looked at the pictures. The hands, tongues, lips, genitals and hearts, essential items to the muti trade, were often removed, and in some cases even the head was missing. That was a newer occurrence that was happening in South Africa, and it was a trend that was filtering downwards from Nigeria, as the people fled the genocide happening further north mingled with the accumulation of black people generally pushing south, and they brought with them their own versions of the muti trade. Human sacrifice was on the increase and it was a dangerous sign of the thriving muti trade that happened all over Africa.
Lately, he was seeing more and more of this style of killing cross his desk.
He dug in his drawer and pulled out another file.
The pictures were similar. The same parts removed. Only this time they had been performed in a more rural location, and the hyena had got into the grave. Only the fact that a game guard doing a patrol in the area had recognised some of the bones scattered around had led the police to that gruesome body cache.
He put the pictures side by side before pulling out his last file. It was a copy of an article taken from a microfiche in the archives, of an old ritual murder that he had stumbled across while working for the Bulawayo newspaper, and it had grabbed his attention. The case was from 1946. The sketch that had been done was an artist’s impression.
What had fascinated him were the decorations adorning the murder victims. The dried animals, the skins, and the carefully assembled arsenal of weapons. The headline had caught his eye: ‘Native Ritual Murder Hanging Tree Found’. Having majored in African Studies at university along with his journalism degree, his interest was immediate.
This was something that wasn’t well documented at all. The traditions of ritual human sacrifice were kept silent in Africa. The black people would never dare write down such a thing, in fear of their lives from the retribution of a sangoma, and the white people were so repulsed by the facts that they wouldn’t record them without a judgemental slant.
The writer of this article had gone into no detail about the ancient traditional ritual, and had focused instead on the missionary family who had reported the find.
He looked at the picture again and thought once more about how differently the lives of the black people and those of the white people were treated by the police. Second-class citizens back in 1948 and they still were treated as such in 1992.
In his eyes, the sangoma involved in this ritual should have been charged with murder. It was the brutality of the murders, and the traditions behind them that kept his attention. He laid the last file on his desk.
There was nothing in common between the newer murders and the older reports.
‘Hey, Gabe, nice piece on the aid money for the Cairo earthquake not flowing through to those who needed it,’ Andrew said as he flung himself into the visitor’s chair, then wheeled it closer to Gabe’s desk like a schoolboy would. ‘You know that you’re becoming the go-to journalist if you need anything in African affairs reported.’
‘I know,’ Gabe said. ‘Mushi hey!’
‘Mushi? After all these years here, you need to get it right, say baie lekker. Get with the times, your Zimbo terms are outdated, you live in South Africa now.’ Andrew laughed. ‘I’m heading to Durban this weekend to cover the cricket. India vs South Africa, the joys of being a sports reporter.’ He grinned.
‘Enjoy,’ Gabe said.
‘You got plans?’
‘Tara’s already working on her master’s thesis so I’ll be at home. Taking turns with Lucretia to keep Josha entertained and out of her hair while I try to work on Monday’s column.’
‘Your cousin’s so lucky to have you. When are you going to invite me around again so I can drool over her? She’s one hot babe!’
Gabe laughed. ‘Never. Last time you were there you proposed to her and then to my mother.’
‘I was drunk. Surely she’s forgiven me?’
‘No, she hasn’t. Besides, you know she won’t date anyone. Her focus is on Josha and on her studies. Having her help on some of the profiles is a godsend, not long now and she will be a fully fledged clinical psychologist.’
‘Best-looking widow I ever met, and brainy too. I’m begging you to take me home to spend some time with her,’ Andrew said.
‘Not going to happen any time soon,’ Gabe said, but he softened the blow to Andrew’s overinflated male ego a little by adding, ‘It’s not you, it’s everyone. She just doesn’t date.’
Andrew pushed up from the chair. ‘Seriously, if you weren’t such a moffie, I’d have to beat you up for living with her.’
‘Hey, it’s my house, she lives with me. Keep your mind out the gutter about my cousin! Or at least around me anyway,’ Gabe said, and then he frowned. ‘And who are you calling a moffie?’ He reached across his desk to grab at fresh air as Andrew jumped out the way of his muscular arm.
‘Yeah, you,’ he said. ‘See you on Monday.’
Gabe saluted his friend, and sat back down.
He tried to concentrate on the file on his desk. When he’d started at the Cape Town paper, he’d just been an intern, and it had taken two years to get his first real story, an exposé on the corruption of the supposed cleaning up of District 6. That first article had secured him a desk and a permanent telephone number on it. Luxuries any journo wanted. The assignments had continued to cross his desk and he wrote constantly. He had soon moved to a cubicle, then an office. Not that he needed an office much these days, it seemed that he was more often out on assignment than he was in it.
He’d just delivered his latest foreign report, having arrived home that week from a whirlwind two weeks in Cairo investigating how much of the foreign aid raised by the world for relief from the devastating earthquake was actually getting through to the 500,000 homeless there. Although he had seen a lot of the aid was getting to the people who needed it, he had heard rumours that a large portion was being diverted by corrupt officials, and that some of the aid was being intentionally delayed. People were sitting outside the rubble of their homes, waiting for the government to accept that they were destroyed before they got help. He had hated seeing those big brown eyes of the children, begging in the streets amongst the rubble that had once been their homes. He’d thought of Josha in Cape Town and been so thankful that he had been able to provide Tara and Josha a home to live in.
He smiled.
Well perhaps not him, but thanks to his mother’s support he’d been able to. She had gifted him a house when he went to university in Stellenbosch, which he’d sold in 1984 to buy a place in Camps Bay, the year he and Tara had moved to Cape Town together so that he was closer to the city and the paper’s offices, and Tara had a new start, for her and Josha.
He loved that kid, make no mistake about it.
He wasn’t Josha’s dad, but he knew that this was as close to his own child as he’d ever get. He carried his picture with him in his wallet, and had a picture of Tara and Josha on the corner of his desk. Those who knew him, knew who she was. His young widowed cousin, Tara Simon, who had married her childhood sweetheart who had then been killed in the SADF. So many men had died that their story had never been questioned. No one knew that she had taken Wayne’s middle name, and used that instead of her own.
But he knew the truth, and he still protected Tara’s secret for her, despite being unhappy with her for keeping Josha from his biological father.
He loved Tara as his own sister.
He could not remember a holiday that they hadn’t spent time together. He was the older cousin pandering to her every wish, but still ensuring that she didn’t get into trouble along the way. Until that fateful day when her father was murdered.
He should have been there. He should have been riding that day, not driving with Maggie in the bakkie.
That day had changed both their lives.
The man he kept on a pedestal as his mentor, who he most wanted to be like, had been murdered, and a cataclysmic ripple of effects had occurred because of it. He’d had his best friend ripped from his life, taken away to another country, and he had been powerless to do anything about it as Tara’s place was with her mother and sister, and he had university to finish.
Soon after that day, his drunken father had raised his hand to his mother, and she hit back. His parents had at last divorced after all their years of bickering, and his mother had moved to Cape Town to be near him.
That day had also put Tara on a path so different to what she’d have been on if she had remained in Zimbabwe. Gabe knew she was studying clinical psychology so that she could understand her father’s killer, and what had motivated him to kill the brothers. Her focus was on what made a killer tick. She was still wanting to go back to Zimbabwe one day, and find the murderer of her family, but she was going to do it with a full clip of ammunition, not rush in there half prepared.
Gabe knew that when she was younger, she had wanted to be a veterinarian, and help horses and other animals. She had such a soft heart, wanting to heal everything.
So much had changed that day for both of them.
December 10, 1993, and Gabe had never been more proud as he watched Tara graduate from Cape Town University. Standing in her black gown and cap with her sash telling the world that she now had an MA in Psychology. She glowed more than he had ever seen her before.
She was such a focused person.
She’d earned some income by tutoring other students at varsity who needed help in their social science classes. She always said that one day she’d pay Gabe back for all his help and for believing in her, and not letting her down. He always said that there was no need. She believed differently. It was a stand off. So Tara had started helping him research his articles. What had started as a way of paying him back with free labour had become a route to a profession.
Soon she had become an intern at the paper, and that had changed to employee status when they recognised that with Tara as a full-time clinical psychologist on their personal staff, they could ensure that their staff were looked after, evaluated and got the help needed to not burn out from some of the horrors they witnessed in their violent country on a daily basis.
The fact that she was good at research and could help on many of the stories was a big advantage too. If someone needed to talk to her about the angle they were targeting, she had an open-door policy.
She’d been the best intern he’d ever had, and it wasn’t because they lived in the same house, it was more. They worked well together, she seemed to understand the angle he was looking at for his stories, and the human connection he needed. She still focused mainly on Gabe’s stories, but she had also begun consulting more and more for the other reporters.
Yet she managed to always put Josha first, before her work.
Josha was a great kid. He had started school, and was doing well. He had got into his first fist fight with another boy about equality and treating people decently, so at seven years old, Josha was already a hero in training. Just like Tara described his dad.
Only last night Gabe had decided it was time to tackle her on the issue, after she had told Josha a story about how she met Wayne.
‘Yes, it’s almost as if he’s so busy during the day that at night he’s exhausted and falls into a dead sleep.’
‘I remember you doing that. I used to watch you sleep and wonder how it was that when you woke up you would have just as much energy as always, and yet when you slept you were a dead weight.’
Tara smiled.
‘You talk to him of Wayne all the time. When are you going to contact him? Give Josha a chance at having a real father in his life, not a dead hero.’
‘You know that’s not going to happen.’
‘You’re being stubborn, like a donkey. Ee-oor.’ He watched as she smiled, and nodded.
‘I used to dream that one day he’d drive up to our home in his bakkie and declare his love for me. Tell me how wrong he was, that he should have chosen me. That he was ready to marry me—but now I dream that he’ll never find me. That Josha and I are safe from the barbed claws of his demented mother and his father who only wanted to pay me off to get rid of me from his life.’
‘Are you sure that’s all he did? Don’t you remember telling me you thought you saw an old man in the park and he looked familiar? You thought it was Wayne’s dad.’
‘If it was him, surely he’d have come and introduced himself again, made contact, not sat there like a paedophile watching us from the bench. Perhaps I was mistaken. I so wanted it to be him, checking on his grandchild, wanted to think that Josha was more in his life than just a trust fund and a lump-sum payment to me to keep out of Hluhluwe, and away from Wayne. He can justify it by saying it was all to keep me away from his wife’s influence, who by the way was trying to have me kill my son. But we all know it was a payment to get out of Wayne’s life.’
‘For five years. He stipulated five years, that doesn’t say don’t come back, it says, come back when Josha is older and Wayne is over twenty-one.’
‘Whatever. I did what had to be done. I have Josha, and I have you, I don’t need Wayne.’
‘Wayne’ll be almost twenty-five years old now. He should have a relationship with his son,’ Gabe said. ‘At least give him the chance. The choice he didn’t have when you were younger.’
‘Why is this so important to you? Wayne is nothing in your life, just the sperm donor for Josha. He threw us away years ago. He has no rights. Josha is my son. He never wanted us, he chose his mother and father over me. He didn’t stand up to his mother, he didn’t tell her to back off, or that she was demented for wanting me to have an abortion, he never chose me and Josha. Remember, he asked me to leave, to go away. He never even gave us a chance.’
‘I guess it’s important because I see so much in Josha. You are doing a fantastic job, but he has a father. A real father. And I remember you with your dad. He was a good man, not a son-of-a-bitch like mine. I remember that special relationship you had with him, and I know that Josha would benefit from having that with his own dad.’
‘But you are basically like his dad, Gabe. You are the special male in his life.’
‘No, that is his dead dad. The man he hero-worships. The man who is still alive, but you are keeping him from knowing. Tara, Josha is going to hate you when he finds out you kept this from him. Think on that.’
‘I have. And it’s a chance I’m willing to take. If Wayne came back into our lives, he would try and take Josha away from me.’
‘No, maybe he would share him, but the court would never allow him to be taken from you. You are a good mother. He could never prove you unfit. You might have needed help all those years ago when we made this plan to come to Cape Town and live here together, but you have proved yourself time and time again since then. You have matured, and are no longer that scared sixteen-year-old who gave birth to Josha.’
‘I don’t want to share Josha. Wayne hurt me, Gabe. I remember that hurt.’ She crossed her arms over and hugged herself, in a protective stance.
‘Ridiculous! It’s not what you need, but what Josha needs. Josha needs to know his father is alive.’
‘How am I going to tell a seven-year-old that his mother is a big fat liar?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know, you’re the psychologist. I’m just the journalist. You work out what you’re doing to your son in the long run, what harm you are doing to him.’
‘Gee, thanks, I needed to have that rubbed in my face. I can’t, Gabe, I just can’t break Josha’s trust now. I never thought it through far enough when I told everyone that Wayne was dead, that Josha would also be told that story. By the time I realised, it was too late. I can’t tell him now, he’s too young. Maybe when he’s older, maybe he’ll understand why I lied to him.’
‘And maybe pigs will fly. Come on, Tara, it’s not that you can’t tell him, it’s that you won’t because you don’t want to share Josha.’
‘I share Josha heaps, with you and your mum, and Lucretia. And my mum and Dela when they visit. He even likes Aunty Marie-Ann, and has her wrapped around his little finger.’
‘But not with Wayne. Wayne, who you still hold a torch for.’
‘I do not.’
‘Yes, you do! If you didn’t, you would date.’
‘What, like your friend Andrew? That boy dressed in men’s clothing. He’s immature, unreasonable and rude!’
Gabe laughed. ‘No, not like any of my work colleagues. Someone else.’
‘No, I’m not free to date. I have Josha to think of, and you, and—’
‘And plenty of excuses. But I’m not really with you, in that way, the whole kissing cousin thing, yuck …’
She pulled a face. ‘That was not what I meant.’
‘I know, but don’t let your experience with Wayne spoil every other man out there for you.’
‘But I don’t want any other man!’ Tara said.
‘Ahh, got you!’ Gabe said, and wagged his finger.
She frowned at him.
‘Just give it some thought, maybe not now, or in a few days’ time, but sometime, you’re going to have to let Wayne back in. You created a child. Perhaps you can create a new life for you three.’
Tara laughed. ‘You’re such a romantic, Gabe!’
‘I like to think so,’ Gabe said, but while he didn’t understand Tara’s reasoning at all he planned to keep pushing her. He planned to wear her down, because what she was doing was unfair and cruel to Josha.