Rotten Row Read online

  ‘That is what probably killed him,’ I added.

  ‘Now, now, Officer Mafa,’ Ngabi said as he took a gulp of whatever it was he was drinking. ‘Officer Mafa. Let’s see, Mafa, Mafa, Mafa, I know that name. Are you one of the Mafas who come from Mberengwa? Was your father a headmaster?’

  ‘I am a Mafa from Shurugwi,’ I said.

  ‘Mberengwa, Shurugwi, same same fananas,’ Ngabi said. ‘Now then, Officer Mafa from Shurugwi, all these things you are telling me about this Clever …’

  ‘Wonder,’ I said.

  ‘… all these defensive wounds and so on and so forth, who here is the pathologist precisely? Is it you, Officer Mafa of Shurugwi and not Mberengwa, or myself, Dr Ngabi?’

  ‘Will you send a car to pick up the body?’ I asked. ‘Or will you come down yourself? We have no transport and we are not likely to have any for a while as we do not have enough cars or fuel to get him to Gweru.’

  ‘That is not at all necessary,’ he said. ‘Your description of the body is detailed enough for me to go on.’

  ‘Are you certain you can reach any sort of conclusion without actually examining the body?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes, yes,’ he said as he chewed, ‘the rest is just detail, and so on and so forth.’

  He then spent the rest of the conversation not talking about Wonder at all but trying to establish whether I knew every Mafa who had ever crossed his path.

  Ngabi duly issued his report. Wonder, he found, had died from self-inflicted wounds. The burial could go ahead with no inquest. Indeed, confirmed Harare, there was no foul play. Now, I won’t lie to you, I have participated in a cover-up or two in my time, but even I thought this was going a bit far. At a minimum, there should have been even the most basic kind of inquest to record a verdict of foul play by a person or persons unknown, if only to give the semblance of, well, a bit of integrity to the whole thing.

  Speaking of foul play reminds me of one of my first trials as a police offer. There was this particular interpreter who became a little confused when the prosecutor asked if a witness had suspected foul play. The poor chap obviously confused foul with fowl, because he translated it as makafungira here, changamire, kuti kungangova nekutambatamba kwehuku, upon which the irate magistrate said, what playing chickens are you on about now. You really see a lot in the courts, I tell you.

  But back to Wonder. I informed one of his uncles that the body could now be released for burial. When no one had come to collect him by the end of that day, I again sent word that they should come and pick him up. The answer was a short and uncompromising no. So I ordered my men into a truck and drove to his family homestead.

  We arrived just after 3 p.m. As usual in these villages, word of our intentions had preceded our arrival. We found a group of Wonder’s relatives. In their ragged clothing, they radiated hostility. The women among them immediately started keening and wailing. I waited a bit until the worst of it was done, but just when I thought I could finally speak came a keening so sharp it was like an animal in pain.

  Supported by two young women, his mother emerged from her hut and was led to where we stood. There is that saying, isn’t there, that a grieving person is not one you look full in the face. I averted my eyes. To be honest with you, I would have done so anyway, even if she had not been grieving. I have never been able to look a blind person in the face, there is something not quite right about being looked at by a blind person, okay, I know it is not a look exactly, but you know what I mean, there is something unsettling about knowing that the person looking at you cannot see you but you can see them. There is a sort of nakedness in looking at eyes like that, eyes that look at you without seeing you.

  Her voice, when she spoke, was heavy with surrender. ‘These tears on my cheeks,’ she said. ‘My eyes have not cried tears for the ten years that I have been blind, but every evening I weep for my son and the tears run down like rivers.’

  I was touched, I have to say, I would have to have been made of stone not to be moved, but my path was clear. They were to bury the body, I said. If he was not buried by the next day, I would arrest them all for the crime of refusing to dispose of a dead body in an appropriate manner. I quoted the relevant section of the Criminal Codification Act. I drove back to Gokwe with my men.

  The next day, I came late to the station. The coffin was still there. It remained there for another two weeks. All this time, the opposition people were crying to anyone who had a microphone or notebook, and orders were being barked to me from Gweru and Harare. It is obviously not the business of the police to bury bodies, but that was the order that came from Harare. We were to bury him at the first opportunity that presented itself, preferably at night. I ordered a fearful Phiniel to go with three other men to the hospital.

  ‘He will not like to be buried, like this, by strangers and not his own people, Mwendamberi,’ Phiniel said. ‘This is why this country is cursed. All those boys who died in the independence war, lying like wild animals in Mozambique and other places, buried by strange hands, all away from home. Wonder will not like it.’

  ‘Wonder’, I said, ‘will just have to lump it.’

  I went off to get my lunch.

  It was a baking afternoon with not a single cloud above, in other words, a true Gokwe day. By the time I got inside my house, I was sweating from the heat and boiling with rage. I would arrest all the male members of the family, I swore. They needed to know who was the law. But I had to face the reality that if they chose to riot, I did not have enough men to arrest all of them. I was contemplating whether it was worth it to request back-up from Gweru, or even to get some army reserves called in when Phiniel ran up. His eyes were wide and fearful.

  ‘It won’t move,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘The coffin, Mwendamberi, it just won’t move.’

  He was right. The coffin would not move. It was as though the wood had joined with the steel of the mortuary cabinet. I ordered them to pull it out. Then I tried it myself but I too had to give up. It was at this point that doubts began to enter my mind, but I clung to the possibility that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. Perhaps there was something that caused the wood to stick.

  After that, none of my men would go near the coffin. I eventually had to tell Harare that if they wanted Wonder buried, they just had to come to Gokwe to do it themselves. I would hear from them what the next steps in the matter would be, I was told. But there were no next steps. The coffin remained in the mortuary for almost a year.

  In that year, the talk in Gokwe was that Wonder was haunting Gokwe, and that he was being seen everywhere but in the one place that I most wished him to be, six feet under with grass growing over him, as far away from my jurisdiction as it was possible to be.

  *

  He was first seen outside the mortuary. ‘Anga akatobhara four zvake Wonder, Mwendamberi,’ said Phiniel. ‘Cool as anything he looked, sitting there cross-legged and all, like it was the most normal thing in the world to be sitting there all cross-legged, Mwenda mberi, when he was actually dead.’

  He was then spotted on a moonless night, outside the Member of Parliament’s kraal, counting the Member’s herd and repeating the names of all the cows. Then he was seen outside the bottle store owned by the Member. A teacher at the school claimed that Wonder had stopped her to tell her he was tired. A bus driver claimed he almost had an accident because Wonder stood in the middle of the road.

  Then came the animal deaths. Three of the governor’s cows died in calf. A goat belonging to the Member drowned in shallow water. A dog at the homestead of the parents of the two brothers went mad and killed six chickens. It was at this point that Phiniel, who, until now, had been content to recount the things that others had told him they had seen, gave himself a starring role in the drama. He claimed that one of his she-goats had given birth to a creature with a humanoid form, something no one could verify as he and his brother had burned it before anyone could see it. He had touched the coffin
, he said, and this was the result. He asked for leave to consult a woman in Chipinge who could intercede for him with Wonder. When he came back, he told me that he would sooner be fired than touch that coffin again.

  Then followed a series of car accidents. There was even a car accident in the family of Wonder’s murderer’s brother in England. I was sceptical that Wonder’s reach was extraterritorial. At this point, you will understand, I was becoming more and more uncertain, but I still scoffed at all the strange happenings.

  Then I received the phone call from my wife. She had taken one look at Gokwe and turned her heel. She had chosen to stay in our house in Harare. She was one of the reasons I so frequently left the area. There had been an accident at school. My son is one of those township boys who took to cricket like a duck to water. His room is papered with cuttings and posters of Hamilton Masakadza, Tatenda Taibu and Chris Gayle and with the Manica land Mountaineers and Mashonaland Eagles. Now, my wife informed me, he had been hit in the head by a cricket ball. He had turned his head at just the wrong time and the ball had felled him to the ground. It was a freak accident, but now he was in a coma.

  I rushed to Harare, but there was nothing to be done. We had only to sit and wait. I have vivid memories of that day. We managed to get him into the Avenues, thank heavens for my wife’s health insurance. In the next bed a group of people sang over a small child. I will always remember that song. From the lugubrious melody of the song, I could tell they were members of my mother’s church, a church she continued to call Dutch Reformed long after it dropped that name. The words of the song were a familiar tune. ‘Makakomborera vamwe, musandipfuure.’

  As I sat and watched my son’s still face, I found myself saying the words of the song: ‘You, who have brought blessings into the lives of others, don’t pass over me.’ I even found myself praying. I hedged my bets and addressed both God and my son’s ancestors on both sides. And I bargained with Wonder.

  I did not stay in Harare long because I was called back to Gokwe. Things were boiling over. Harare was thinking of sending out a riot squad.

  The governor’s daughter had died in a car accident in South Africa. All Gokwe was now whispering with the news that all of us who had been afflicted with misfortune had stood in the way of justice for Wonder. Everyone wondered who would be next. As it turned out, it was the path ologist. Reports came from Gweru that he had been struck mad, and was eating from bins. He could not stop chewing, even when he was not eating, his jaws moved up and down in momentary spasms.

  When the two accomplices heard this news, they attempted to flee the jurisdiction. They left Gokwe without anyone knowing where they were going. The next we heard of them was that both cousin brothers had perished in the Beitbridge Bus Disaster. You must surely remember that one, it was the bus disaster of the year. Two buses racing each other on the Masvingo Road collided with a haulage truck and half the passengers in each perished. The brothers were in the bus that was going to South Africa.

  Two days after the bus accident, Phiniel came running to my office. He is confessing, he said without preamble. And indeed, Takura sat in the Charge Office, his father and mother on either side of him, all three looking drawn and desperately ill.

  This was one case we did not need to torture out the confession. I did not need to set Phiniel on them for the full Boko Haram treatment. Takura was clearly more afraid of what Wonder could do to him than anything Phiniel could have done. I really should not say poor Takura, because of course he killed Wonder. But I think of him as poor Takura because, as I said earlier, he developed an eye infection in Hwahwa Prison and went blind. He is still in prison, the death sentence spared only because he made a full and remorseful confession.

  That was the beginning of the end of the matter. On the day after Takura was sentenced, the Member and his senior relatives went to Wonder’s homestead. Phiniel and I accompanied him, to keep a watching brief. The Member took off his shoes and approached the homestead on his stomach, while his elders clapped their cupped hands as they rested on their knees. Wonder’s mother came keening from her kitchen hut. She felt her way to him, raised him, and the two, the mother of the murdered and the father of his murderer, embraced and keened and staggered in supportive sorrow.

  *

  The negotiations followed. The Member pledged to give a hundred head of cattle. The families held a ceremony to the spirits of Wonder’s ancestors to beg them to intercede with Wonder and soften his heart. Things became a little tense when they began to talk about a bride for Wonder. The tradition, of course, is that the family of the deceased has to pledge a young girl to the family of the victim, to bear sons to replace the dead.

  Every man has his sticking point, and this was mine. I can overlook a lot but crimes against children will see me move heaven and earth to effect an arrest. I have never accepted a bribe in any crime against a child. Ngozi or not, I said, there would be no girl exchanged. Cows and cloths were all well and good and they could trade those to their hearts’ content, but, even with all that I had seen, I felt it had to stop somewhere. What justice was there in using a young girl to appease a crime she had nothing to do with, thus blighting every chance of a better life of her own?

  ‘The minute any young girl is sent from your homestead to this one,’ I told an emissary of the Member, ‘I will arrest your Chef for facilitating a kidnapping.’

  I repeated the same message to Wonder’s family.

  ‘It is up to Wonder,’ they said.

  ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘this one is up to me.’

  Wonder or no Wonder, I was not going to let some child miss out on an education just so that she could be married off to God knows which of Wonder’s many unwashed male relatives. On this point, I am pleased to say, they listened to me.

  They finally buried Wonder a year after his death. When his brothers lifted his coffin from the mortuary, it moved lightly to their shoulders. They buried him on the churu where his grandfathers also lay. Throughout the night of his long wake, Gandavaroyi rang with drums and rattles. The air trembled with the sharp keening and ululating of women. And after that, Gokwe saw Wonder no more.

  Now, I don’t expect you to believe me, people outside the area rarely do. After all, animals die all over the place. The number of road accidents is no surprise given the potholed roads and the decrepit cars that are driven by drivers in possession of bought licences. And can it really be that Wonder killed a whole busload of people just to get at the two brothers? Perhaps Ngabi would have turned mad anyway. Perhaps my son just had concussion, as the doctors said. And prison conditions are bad enough to throw up all sorts of illnesses, including eye infections. Perhaps the sightings of Wonder were some species of mass hysteria, a manifestation of collective guilt.

  But I still remember the cold panic when my wife called me about our son. And I remember my bargain with Wonder. If my son became well, I had vowed, the arrest of the man who killed him would be the last thing I did in the force. I would never take another bribe; a vow that I could keep only if I left the force.

  It has been hard but I have kept my word. There are no more road traffic fines for me, no more conveniently misplaced dockets. My wife and I set up an auto-parts company on Rotten Row. We travel to Zambia and Botswana to buy parts to sell. The house in Mainway Meadows is still not finished. But my son is in the First Eleven at school, they get beaten more than they win. It is enough to see the joy on his face. We struggle and we get by. It is a life.

  I had just one thing to do before I left Gokwe. I took the two thousand from the governor and gave half of it to Phiniel. A nobler-minded man would probably have given the money back to the governor, but I have never claimed to be such a man. Money is money, after all. Wonder, I figured, would surely not begrudge the man a new donkey, and maybe an extra cow or two. Phiniel’s overwhelmed smile cracked his face in two as he took the money with both hands. I gave the rest to the family of the deceased brothers, to put headstones on their graves. Every man deserves some
dignity in death.

  I said earlier that three facts are undisputed, the pathologist’s madness, the two brothers’ deaths, and the killer’s blindness. Here is a fourth one. Since the death of Wonder, there has not been a political killing in Gokwe. No young man has ever again killed another in the name of politics. And I am willing to stake my life on it that none ever will. You could say that this was Wonder’s gift to Gokwe. In the terror of his death, he taught us all a new respect for life, for all our lives.

  The Old Familiar Faces

  Execute true judgement, and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother: And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor.

  – The Book of Zechariah –

  Ruramisirai kwazo pakutonga, mumne nomumne aiitire hama yake vunyoro netsitsi.

  – Buku yaMuprofita Zekaria –

  The Old Familiar Faces are unhappily gathered at a once-elegant four-star golf resort and conference centre to which tourists no longer come. In the reception area and in their workshop room, the Jacaranda room on the second floor, banners proclaim the theme of their workshop: ‘Assessing, Analysing and Evaluating the Impact of Political Violence on the Coming Election: Problems and Perspectives from a Problematic Past.’

  The banners are emblazoned with the Vision Statement of Umbrella, the organisation that has convened this workshop. ‘Our mission is to passionately partner human rights organisations in Zimbabwe in improving their competitive performance by professionally supporting and actively encouraging a professional and active human rights environment in Zimbabwe underpinned by a record of achievement, professionalism and excellency.’

  The Vision Statement was developed painstakingly by Um brella’s senior staff at a four-day Strategic Planning workshop in Victoria Falls, with the assistance of a highly paid motivational speaker slash pastor and a donor-provided management consultant.