Chapter 2

October 1979

S’bu Dlamini untucked the soiled shirt from his trousers and pulled the hem up to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He leaned the shovel against a tree and shifted his weight from his shorter leg. He looked down. The hole was wide and deep enough. The bag of hand grenades and AK ammunition was properly sealed, as he’d been taught, duct-taped thoroughly, so no air or soil could render the contents unusable or dangerous for whoever came to pick them up.

He took in the forest of sparse trees, the intermittent boulders poking their heads out of the soil as if coming up for air, the struggling grass. A hundred metres away was the winding dirt road that led to the village where his mother still lived. To his right, it led to the tarred road that unwound in one direction to the nearby town and in the other – eventually – to the big cities, to Pretoria and Johannesburg. He had selected this place wisely, he thought, scratching at the back of his thick neck where the sweat tickled and then kneading a muscle that had tightened.

Yes, he had chosen this place carefully. Far away from Nelspruit where he worked in the small factory, prising plastic crockery from the mould of the hissing, clanking, white man’s machine that gave a thunderous rhythm to his long days and a disturbing echo to his nights in bed next to Lizzy as he tried to summon sleep in their back room in KaNyamazane. Also, hopefully, too far away, if his buried treasure was discovered, to be linked to him. Perhaps too close to his home village, but in this he had no choice. While the factory was on strike, he had come home to the village to spend some time with his mother and – although he should, perhaps, have stayed back in Nelspruit to wave placards outside the factory gates with his comrades – to attend to this other, more secret, duty. Being in his village with no transport other than the rattling black bicycle borrowed from his cousin, he had no choice but this place, his short, uneven, thick legs pedalling arrhythmically, with the rucksack of grenades and bullets bouncing against his back and the shovel strapped with rough rope to the bicycle crossbar. He had chosen this burial site not too far from the dirt road to make it easier for a quick pick-up by whoever came to retrieve the revolutionary treasure. He would have to pace the distance to the road from this spot and place his signs.

He smelled the dust before he heard the sound of tyres on gravel followed by the whine of the engine as the car struggled its way up the gradient some distance away. He snatched at the shovel and stood with it sideways behind the tree, listening for the clatter of the car cresting the incline. Then, through the gap in the foliage, he dared a peek around the tree towards the road just where it flattened out and descended on its way past his spot. A white car. Looked like a Toyota, the big one – what’s it called? With a C ... Yes, Cressida. It came closer. Not from around here. TP – Pretoria number plates. White man at the wheel! He pulled his head back behind the tree.

Now he dared not wipe the sweat trickling down his nose, the taste of salt on his lips. He closed his eyes and exhaled. The car sped on, then slowed and appeared to stop perhaps seven hundred paces down the road. He heard a door open and then slam shut, the sound reverberating through his skin, and then another metallic, creaking sound he could not interpret.

What now? If he was found with open hole, shovel and duct-taped bag it was over; he’d be dragged to a police station, beaten until he named names, became impimpi. And, if he survived, perhaps the rest of his life on Robben Island. His mother would never forgive him.

No! He could not be found with the evidence. He listened. No sound other than the gasping of the wind through the undergrowth. He knelt down, dropped the bag into the hole and swept the dirt over it – the sound, startling, of the first fall of sand on the hard plastic, like the first soil dropped onto a lowered coffin.

At last the hole was filled. Still on his knees, he placed the tufts of grass dug out earlier on top, along with twigs and leaves. He stilled himself for a moment, drew his forearm across his brow and listened. Nothing. Without daring to move from his kneeling position, he stretched out for the marked boulder and placed it where the hole had been. He grasped the shovel and crawled away until he found a small bush and pushed the shovel inside.

Still on hands and knees, he crawled until he felt it safe to stand and brush the soil and twigs from his knees. He wiped his face, kneaded the back of his neck. He walked parallel to the road, the slight unevenness of his gait long a mannerism rather than a disability. He moved in the direction from which the invasive car from Pretoria had come, towards the spot where he had hidden the bicycle. He would have to come back when it was safe, to do his pacing of distance from road to buried bag, put the agreed mark alongside the road and retrieve the shovel.

And then he heard the second car, from the same direction. He stopped behind a tree, but this time lay flat on the ground, facing the road, eyes fixed through the clearing to the crest of the incline. The sound of this car was deeper, more muscular. White again. Bakkie. Number plates? Hey! His uncle, William ‘Baba’ Dlamini’s pick-up. What was he doing here on a school day, so far from the school where he was headmaster? He caught a glimpse of his uncle’s face as the vehicle passed. Stern, as always. Focused. Determined. Perhaps on his way back home to the village. A family errand, perhaps.

He heard the bakkie slow and stop. Strange ... He rose and limped quickly to the road, found a tree from behind which he could see the road. All was clear so he crossed and dropped into the shallow donga on the other side, deep enough to allow him to move half-bent parallel to the road to where he guessed the cars had stopped.

The sound of voices told him he was almost there. He crept out of the donga and into the forest, found a large boulder, settled behind it and raised his head. His uncle and the white man were standing just off the road on the other side, talking. The bonnet of the boer’s car was propped open. Perhaps he had had a breakdown and Uncle had stopped to help him. But why weren’t they standing over the exposed engine? Instead, they stood some distance away, between the two parked cars, on the far side of the road, in conversation too deep for car-repair advice.

Then he saw the exchange of envelopes between them.