The Fall of a Despot

By Temba Munsaka

Dan is an enigma and a survivor. Dan is the best, a killer by instinct both with and without guns. He was trained by the best in the field, the masters of terrorism. His peers loathe him, and his enemies run for dear life when his name is mentioned. He leads a group of soldiers who were wronged by the abusive dictator unto a revenge mission. The crimes against them are unforgiveable. They employ the same tactics they used against the enemies of the state to deal with the regime, a taste of their own medicine. They elude the security apparatus against them and strike right at the heart of the infamous dictators security cordon. Its a field day for the international press as the dictator is handed over to the International Criminal Court for prosecution, for crimes against humanity. The generals take over a country torn by mismanagement, and they get entrenched, the country moves to a civil war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Apr 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482809589

Temba Munsaka

Temba Munsaka is an avid reader and a PhD candidate. He has published several academic papers writes frequently for newspapers on project management and other areas of interest. He lives in Harare, Zimbabwe, with his beautiful wife, Nokuthula. He is inspired by all African writers, especially those brave enough to write about the abuse and intimidation of the great continent’s people by those mandated to protect them. He believes that tyrants are cowards who deserve to be cast into the pit. He has already started working on the sequel to this book as Dan continues his exploits!

Book preview

PROLOGUE

D an could not tell whether it was day or night. All he could feel was the heavy darkness, the loud silence. It was humid, and he was sure he was underground, buried alive maybe? Half dead for certain and on the verge of insanity. He could not decide if he was hungry or not, he was a man beaten from all angles. Sometimes he thought of hell. He was sure this was it. Though his past life warranted him a ticket to hell in the afterlife, he did not understand why the hell had to come looking for him. Maybe he was dead after all. The pain he went through was not the kind that let you survive to tell the tale.

He had these crazy dreams, an abomination, the total annihilation of his life, the destruction of his respect and mortality. Lucid moments would come like a visitor and he would be able to think rationally about past events. However, such clearer moments stayed only for a short period. He would feel his head clearing and he could remember every detail with amazing clarity.

He could remember the year was 2008. Then he remembered the beating, the endless beating: for as long as he remembered it seemed he had been beaten. They used cowhides, twisted together, meshed with barbed wire and dipped in water mixed with salt and hot chillies. What must his body look like after all the beating, the filth and starvation? What an irony vanity was to visit him at such a time. They used food as a carrot and stick tactic to get him to talk, but he had managed to maintain his silence even when they were abusing him with such brutality that he wondered why he was still alive.

Above all, he remembered the abominable deeds, the defiling acts. His chest heaved with anger and it only infused his mind, soul and body with renewed life, a life born again.

The lucid moments passed quickly, however, only to bring the devils back with a vengeance. Moreover, the demons would not go as much as he willed them too. As he tried desperately to pull free, the chains that tied him to the iron poles dug deeper into his fragile skin. He moaned in pain, and froth dripped from his mouth, for all like a poisoned rat. The animal-like sound from deep in his throat did little to extinguish the pain, that excruciating and merciless pain that would stop at nothing to torment his feverish life.

Dan was denied any medical treatment, it was to be his punishment for not speaking. He had no idea where he was being kept, though he was certain he had not been taken out of the country.

The five guards outside Dan’s dungeon could take the tortuous screams no longer and they covered their ears to ease the strain on their eardrums. Yet the animal anguish permeated the concrete and brick reinforced underground prison. The intelligence officers cum security guards, remnants of the dreaded and notorious North Korean trained killer thugs, rotated every four hours, changing so that no same guard was used again. Morning and evening, officers from the Intelligence Organization visited the prisoners, carrying two large suitcases containing their specialized gadgets and equipment. The noise, the screams and the dying from the bunker was magnified on such visits. Dan knew that he was not the only one being held, and he made mental calculations based on the number and the pitch of the screams that sieved through to his cell. He estimated at least ten other people:, he was sure that three of them were women. Their screams were lighter and they quickly fell silent.

They always asked him the same question, over and over. A question he was not at liberty to respond to. He would rather die for the cause than be a turncoat. It was a cause worth dying for, one he cherished.

It had all begun on the 1st of May 2008 when a truck came to his house in the early hours of the morning. Dan had been dragged out of bed naked by fifteen men armed with the dreaded AK47 assault rifles. They were in army camouflage, full war regalia, their faces menacing, their attitudes arrogant, brutal yet disciplined. No word was uttered, no Miranda rights were read. They just crashed through the door and dragged him out. His girlfriend screamed, and she was carelessly smashed to the floor with the butt of a rifle. A man who appeared to be the leader pointed the rifle at her and she closed her mouth in terror.

CHAPTER 1

A lmost thirty eight years ago, Dan Muleya was born to Tonga parents, in a district called Simulonga in the northern region of Azambezia, a politically remote area in the Zambezi Province. By virtue of both politics and tribalism the area had been left at the fringes of economic growth despite the fact that the area was in a prime but undeveloped tourism sector. The district stretched for hundreds of kilometers along the mighty Zambezi River, a name derived from the Tonga, Kasambabezi, the river where only the locals can bath, as the lake is infested by hordes of crocodiles and hippos. Many foreigners fell prey to the man-eaters.

His family had always been political. During a period of volatile dissension, they had been forced to migrate to another area some sixty kilometers to the south in search of peace and comfort.

The Boy, as Dan was known to his family, had walked the whole nine yards, and his feet were swollen and blistered by the time they arrived at their destination some forty hours later. He was tall for his age, a gangly, shy but intelligent teen, who was yet to attend formal school despite his years, as his father had always been involved in the struggle with the freedom fighters against the notorious colonial regime.

The nickname The Boy stuck. Dan always had a youthful appearance, making it impossible to guess his real age and at thirty, you would think that he was still twenty. A lot of people, especially younger women, had been fooled, mistaking him for a guy of their own age.

The white head of state Ian Smith had vowed that no black rule would come in a thousand years, but the people of Azambezia were committed to the struggle. No amount of resistance by the colonial regime could deter the fighting spirit amongst the soldiers and the people. Everyone clearly understood what the liberation struggle stood for; access to self-governance, access to resources, access to freedom and above all access to respect and self-esteem. The colonial regime stood for everything that the black Azambezian hated.

The year now was 1981, and The Boy started his formal education. He joined the uniformed forces as a sniper. It would only end in 1993.

CHAPTER 2

A tt…en…shun! The Commanding Officer is coming! bellowed the lithe Warrant officer slamming his foot into the ground as he slapped to attention and called for order. With a practiced and immaculate clicking of the right foot in unison, three hundred officer cadets came to attention.

Seven detachments of Officers Course number 35, standing in open order, ready for your inspection, Sir!

Number 35 Course, presee-e-e-e-nt arms!

With a fluid and practiced motion, Fabrique Nationale Assault Rifles were snapped up artistically to shoulder level as right feet were offset at about forty five degrees to the left foot. The movement was perfectly rehearsed, fluid, and hypnotic. Like a (machine), with a perfect synchronized movement rifles slapped to the fore of the body in a single movement.

Still! shouted the Warrant Officer, the parade adjutant.

All movement ceased as the highest rank in the land inspected the recruits who had made it through to the end. The recruits stood still as statues, their faces shining with pride. They were at the top of their physical prowess, masters of a discipline that could only be achieved by dedicated and highly patriotic cadres.

They were the cream of the defense force, having gone through a grueling one year training course in every discipline. They felt that they now were part of what would be an ideal world.

Ten recruits had died during the course of the training in the mountains in Kaliba, Some had simply died of exhaustion, and two had fallen to their deaths as they failed to properly connect up their climbing hooks during the cliff climbing. The crocodiles in the crocodile and hippo-infested lake had eaten four as they swam the one and half kilometer stretch from the island of death to the mainland. Their colleagues had watched in horror as their comrades were torn to shreds by the huge men-eaters as they fought for the chunks of human flesh. Their screams propelled the others to swim harder, with renewed strength and energy while those at the rear, the sluggish ones, became prey. Seeing your friend being torn to pieces was motivation enough to push on as stealthily as possible; the best technique was to swim as silently as the fish or better yet, as still as the croc itself. Stealth was the name of the game.

An ordinary day for a recruit began at 03h00 and ended at 01h00 the following morning. Rest was permitted only when the chief instructor was in a good mood. This was rare and usually motivated only by cash bribes. This was also a rare occurrence, as none of the recruits had any cash whatsoever and were unlikely to get any as visits from family members were not allowed.

The day started with a run that took two hours. They then exercised in the parade square. The physical instructor was a woman called Chido Mlilo, a woman with a lithe, sexy (not attractive) body that was every man’s dream. All male recruits and instructors yearned to touch her, but could not have her. She had a volatile temper. Rumor had it that she had been abused by her stepfather as a child.

The 03h00 wakeup call was a jet of ice-cold water at high pressure. When hit by needlepoints of water at that pressure, the body would swell up for days. It became the norm for all recruits to be up and dressed in their training gear by 03h00 so they were not naked when the jets of water hit them. They jogged twenty kilometers every day, carrying a heavy load, five standard bricks in a knapsack, holding their FN riffle at port arms, and trotted at a painstakingly slow pace of 10km per hour. Singing revolutionary songs, their concentration revealed their zeal for their assignment and how completely they had embraced the ideals for which they trained for. You could hear their voices from kilometers away, bellowing in unison with the stamping of their feet as they hit the ground purposefully. The songs they sang were reminiscent of the yesteryear wars of liberation, a deliberate move to indoctrinate the young men with revolutionary ethics. The youngest was just a week shy of his seventeenth birthday and the oldest was barely a month above twenty-three. Dan was twenty. Parents and guardians of those who were under the legal majority of eighteen had to sign on behalf of their charges.

The first three weeks of the military training were the toughest. Military discipline was at its worst, and the initial kind of response from those who had just been civilians was harshly and brutally dealt with. Many wondered if they had made the right decision and many gave up at this stage.

CHAPTER 3

A call for you sir, on your private line, intoned his beautiful secretary as she deliberately swung her hips in retreat. The Dealer smiled slightly as his mind came back to the present.

Your parcel has been posted, the voice on the other end of the line said before going dead. It was bland and unrecognizable, a result of the voice distortion device installed in order to conceal the identity of the owner.

The Dealer sat quietly for a quarter of an hour, thinking.

Then he picked up his carry bag, put on his jacket and left the office on the 10th floor of the Jointa Centre, a new, modern, beautiful building whose opening had marked the return of the Azambezian property market to the world scene. To a casual onlooker, he was just one of the new breed of entrepreneurs who had been propelled to quick riches through the affirmative empowerment regulations that the government had promulgated. Chitongo city, the political and administrative capital of the land was blessed with such get-rich-quick business people. They thrived on corruption and intimidation. He reflected uneasily on how it had become common practice for scrupulous and corrupt individuals to invoke the name of the ruling party to get access to resources.

He represented a new breed of people, the new agenda in town. They were the masters of the underworld, the dominators of classes and abusers of the system. They were the skilled, the eagles and the kings of the jungle, sheepish looking by day and predatory at night in the accomplishment of their trade.

The two voices who regularly called him knew him only as The Dealer, with an international number that changed very often. He often marveled at the amount of planning and resourcefulness that was involved with the commission of what was now his trade. The planning effort alone exhausted him, as he did everything by himself. No one had ever set eyes on The Dealer or knew his location or nationality; he was known by reputation only. He could be everywhere or anywhere at any given time, but the SADC countries were his niche although indeed the world was his market. His motive was not money as many thought, but something far deeper and more sinister, something tied to