Chapter 38

February 2020

Sandile Ndaba fell back against the cushions of the mustard-coloured couch in the second sitting room of his residence, slamming shut Masilela’s black folder on his lap. He closed his eyes, right hand to his forehead, and let the breath out of his lungs with a hiss like the sound of the steam trains that had passed the village of his youth.

He hadn’t expected this. Any of it. This was beyond expectation, beyond suspicion, beyond comprehension. This cleaved the very roots of the tree of friendship, comradeship, trust, loyalty that spread its branches to all the open spaces of the forest that was his life, his world, his country, his organisation.

The report was clear. This was, at last, the unearthing of the tendrils that had reached into South Africa’s underbelly from the darkness of apartheid into the modern years of peace – of relative peace – of justice, democracy, freedom, decay and recent resuscitation. This was the making translucent of the grey mists that had swirled beneath the seemingly obvious, the assumptions, the easy causal tracks. This was not one of those intelligence reports of earlier years, his predecessors’ years, of insinuations and allegations and pandering to fears and concerns to fight factional battles, to take sides, to ruin reputations, to serve self.

But what was he to do with this? What possible outcome could come out of this? Where was he to place his trust? The line of accountability had been severed. With whom could he share this information? Who was not infected by the disease of decades-long treachery? How do you report treachery to the treacherous? And with the knowledge now revealed to him, the possibilities of the extent of the treachery were theoretically infinite.

He rose from the couch and, in spite of the earliness of the day, for the first time since his appointment as minister for intelligence, he walked over to the well-stocked entertainment cabinet and poured himself a double whiskey. But he would never taste it. The blast that shattered his sitting-room window took away the glass, together with the hand that was holding it and much of the rest of him.