Reasonable Doubt

By Fisha Nekongo

The novel Reasonable Doubt begins with a boy born to two odd couplesa male teacher and his female underage student. The teacher had statutorily raped his student, and she conceived a male child. The couple died without seeing their son. This boy, to the amazement of the people who saw him, was born without a shadow, but his shadow appeared when he turned two years old. The boy was raised by his half-atheist, maternal grandfather, who was a war veteran, and other Christian family members. The boy grew up to be a genius who, like his grandfather, started questioning popular societal beliefs on politics and religion. He later opts to become a medical doctor. As a medical intern in another town, he and his cousin, who turned out to be a corrupt police officer, robbed a corrupt politician. The politician was ultimately killed by the doctor due to the latters ideology and the formers way of life. The young doctor justifies his action of killing the doctor with reasons. After killing the politician, he saves his stubborn landlady who almost died from appendicitis by operating on her at a state hospital where he works on his off shift. Later, he meets the landladys daughter who falls in love with him, and they eventually become a couple at the end of the story. The doctor had also met mystical beings Jesus and Satan in his flat on the day of the murder and debates with them about their existence. The young man, although he had killed another human being, strongly believe it was necessary. To him, there is no actual right or wrong, but those beliefs are all man-made. And although he had killed someone, he was never apprehended by the law because he and his corrupt police cousin defeated the cause of justice by tampering the evidence. This doctor had later helped a poor family with some of the money that they robbed from the dead politician. The title of the novel is based on the doubts that the young doctor developed because of how he was raised.

The short stories are self-explanatory as they are not very long. National Natives is about the political illusions that most voters believe and not question thoroughly. A Man with No Soul deals with the question of the existence of a soul; that its religious definition makes less sense if examined. Rosas New Song is about a young woman who grew up in the city, and when she visited the village as an adult, she experiences a cultural clash. Not A common Human Being is about journalists whose work is not really about protecting people from danger, but simply to report matters which sometimes do not work to the interest the victim before them. With Snow White deals with the fact that some African people aspire to live like European people at a cost that is unnatural; thus making a fool out of themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524563851

Fisha Nekongo

My name is Nekongo Nekongo, Fisha is my childhood name. I was born on the thirteenth of September 1983 in Luderitz, a small coastal town south of Namibia on the African continent. My father was a baker, but is now a subsistence farmer, and my mother was unemployed. They married before I was born and divorced when I was about seven years old. I’m the first born of my parents and have two younger brothers and three sisters. I grew up mostly with my father in Luderitz. My mother, who I don’t really know well, was mostly at the village. She succumbed to breast cancer in 2014. I knew very little about my mother. Everything I have learned I owe to my father who, although an uneducated man in the classroom due to lack of opportunity in his youthful years, is naturally a wise man who believes in the need to educate people. I studied and completed my high school in Luderitz and went further to study at a college in another town. Due to financial constraints, I couldn’t go to the University of Namibia in the capital city where I was accepted after I had finished grade twelve when my father’s job closed down. Growing up I always wanted to be a professional football player or a rapper. I was influenced by Tupac and Nas (American rappers) as a child. I was fascinated at how they rapped about real-life situations, and therefore my stories are all about real life situations mixed with fiction. I was a good midfield player and had won numerous medals in the Diamond soccer league at Luderitz where I played for a club called Diamond City Football Club ever since I was about twelve years old. I, however, stopped playing when I was twenty years old as I found Namibian soccer not competent enough to make a career out of it. I started writing short stories when I was twelve years old, but only as an occasional hobby for English classes, for creative writing, or as assignments. I stopped writing when I was in eighth grade. On second of September 2014, I accidentally started writing my first novel “Reasonable Doubt” on a laptop that I wasn’t really comfortable to write with. I simply felt bored on that day and decided to write something, so Reasonable Doubt came up. I finished writing the novel in three months’ time, then followed by several short stories that I wrote using my smart phone. It was more comfortable, so I usually finish in a week or in a few days. Some of the short stories I wrote were lost when my phone got lost before saving the short stories in my email (risky part). I never thought writing stories was something I could make a career out of, but I always knew I am capable of writing stories. I do not believe in talents. I believe people work hard to get things right, and writing is about working hard to study life and then put that experience into a story. The stories I write are especially dedicated to a close friend of mine named Frans Awene, a very brilliant human being whom I had never ceased to learn from. We have always been fans of knowledge. For now, in brief, I am an aspiring author and a businessman. (Will send my picture separately A.S.A.P, plus three more short stories: With Snow white, National Natives and Rosa’s New Song) NB: the original title of With Snow White was ‘Burned Cakes’.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Fisha Nekongo.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016919531

ISBN:   Hardcover         978-1-5245-6387-5

              Softcover          978-1-5245-6386-8

              eBook               978-1-5245-6385-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/30/2016

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

748491

For Inaa Katjivikua

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Special thanks to a special lady Sarah Gibson, senior consultant at Xlibris publishing USA for being highly professional and kind to me, for without her unlimited encouragement my projects wouldn’t have been published by Xlibris publishing. For her I will continue to write stories.

I would like to further express my gratitude to a great friend Frans Awene without limit. Many more thanks to: Thomas Nikodemus aka Dollar Six, Lazarus Nikodemus, Henry Van Taak aka Manjaro, Lazarus Shiimi aka Gazza, Neville Basson and to all the Xlibris publishing house staff in Bloomington, USA. All the above mentioned people have equally and directly contributed to the successful completion of this book in one way or the other, perhaps without realising how grateful and indebted I feel toward them for allowing me to start a great journey with limited resources.

CONTENTS

Not A Common Human Being

Man with No Soul

REASONable Doubt

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

-National Natives-

-Rosa’s New Song-

-With Snow White-

About The Author

Not A Common Human Being

An African short story

Kabelo Haiduwa was a man of education! But not just that—that educated man was cruel too and not just cruel, but he was a cruel man of the highest orders. The best thing about his cruelty though is that it was not known to the world. Or maybe the world just didn’t give a damn about that kind of cruelty! The narrator had to mention the cruel part or else this short story will not make sense to the reader from the onset!

Kabelo was just five years old when his parents were killed in an armed robbery in South Africa. One could easily guess the kind of people who had killed his parents given the circumstances of the status quo. In Africa, most criminals are black young males and their victims are black people too, and you know what else? The super rich are white folks. That’s not even being racist! It’s just a fact! Some blame the predominant crime rate on the past, that due to inequality, most black people have resorted to crime.

Having been born in Namibia but raised in South Africa, Kabelo returned to Namibia when he was just twenty-two years old. That was in 2014, by the way!

He settled in Windhoek, the capital city, where he worked for the 061 Vulture newspaper as a journalist. He loved his job and executed it just well! The newspaper was well known locally and abroad as it covered all sorts of stories that were of interest to the world.

No, sir … err … It’s not like that … okay, we have the facts, sir, and we don’t report on hearsays, sir … I know my rights too, sir, just like you. I’m not going to be intimidated by your provocation, sir, said Kabelo over the telephone, then he suddenly hung up the telephone. He was talking to someone who had called him in his office that morning. The call was from a businessman he knew very well. This businessman who was also a well-connected politician who was recently exposed in their newspaper for corruption. He had called to threaten Kabelo, who had reported his story, with a court case, apparently for defamation of character!

Idiot! Who does he think he is to threaten me like that. He can go to the police! Who cares? I have my lawyer too. Idiot! Kabelo was thinking when one of his colleagues entered his office with a brown envelope. It was the beautiful Meagan Jones! She was a young white lady in her early twenties who came from America to work as a freelance journalist apparently to gain more experience in the field of journalism. She was to return to the States after a year or two. It all depended on her and her employers.

You look angry. What’s wrong, sir? asked Miss Jones in a friendly manner. She had noticed that Kabelo was not his normal self. Of course, she knew him very well by now, as they say, like the palm of her hand.

She gave him the letter she brought. He took the letter and unwrapped it from its envelope without reading it right away. Then he sat down.

I’m okay, my dear friend. It’s just that Mr. Fabian—whose corruption allegation we printed again last week—he called me just now. Apparently he will sue me for what I wrote about him, said Kabelo with sadness in his voice.

Again? What a nuisance, said Miss Jones, who was already familiar with the case.

Fabian ya Ndalyanawa was a millionaire, but he was not an honest man by nature as many people will testify on the streets in general. He was in his late forties, a well-built African man with light skin. One would think he was Latino, but really he was just an Oshiwambo man but of mixed blood, with a Herero, to be precise. So he was not some South American negro. The money must have changed his looks as people sometimes spoke of him. He had embezzled state funds through numerous fraudulent activities, including money laundering and drug trafficking. It is known for a fact that one of his houses where he was not living was used as a drug house. He has people selling his drugs for him in the capital city. The drugs were imported from Colombia and Mexico, respectively. They were cooked at his house and sold in tiny blocks at N$200.00 each. The junkees or users will then smoke these little blocks they had locally named eat some more until they get carried away by the addictive pleasure. That addictive feeling of pleasure they called high. They loved being high and will do anything to be high. Some of the girls will sell their bodies for sex by men, just to get that fixed dose.

Thanks to Mr. Fabian once again!

But of course, he was exposed by the media on several occasions already and was never prosecuted. People like Fabian ya Ndalyanawa, like the legendary drug lord Pablo Escobar, are untouchable in most cases. One has to have a very good lawyer or cop to catch them and lock them up for good! But even that was not enough. The judge too had to be an honest man, or else he will be bribed or even threatened with death by the untouchable criminal who has a list of hitmen and all he has to do is press a little button on his cell phone and one would be ready to pull the trigger.

It might sound like an easy job for a judge in the courtroom, but it isn’t always an easy thing!

Yeah again, said Kabelo after a pause.

Looks like he won’t stop now.

I know.

So, please read your letter from the editor in chief. Forget about that lunatic for a while now. Mrs. Katjivikua wants you to fly to South Africa this afternoon, if possible. See it as an emergency, sir, said Miss Jones who was already briefed by Madam Katjivikua, as she was called, their editor in chief. In fact, they spoke over the phone shortly before she brought the letter to Kabelo. They were good friends altogether, and they were a good team too.

Kabelo read the letter once, with much understanding, of course.

But why me? said Kabelo, abruptly after reading the letter. He crushed the letter into a ball with his right hand and then threw it in the small dustbin next to his feet. He could sense by instinct that an e-mail must have been sent to him already about the same matter. He happened not to have checked his e-mail though.

The thing is that we only need to send out one reporter, at least, to cover those xenophobic attacks in South Africa. The stories are running like wildfire, sir. Because of your background in South Africa, Mrs. Katjivikua had personally appointed you to cover the stories there. We all agreed last week that you must go there. sir, said Miss Jones with much encouragement. Kabelo was not in the meeting that day when the journalists from his crew met to choose who was to go to South Africa to cover the breaking news of xenophobia. Black foreigners in South Africa were being physically attacked by black South Africans. Particularly men! Some South African blacks claimed that the black foreigners were taking over their jobs and their women, so that sparked the xenophobia attacks. As ignorant as it sounds, it was a reality!

It was a sad moment in African history. Ignorant black people attacking their fellow poor people. What could be more stupid than that? If the attacks were directed to the super rich people, then that would have made sense. But when it is directed toward the poor, struggling individuals, then that is ignorance of the most stupid mind.

You guys are hard on me. So I had to go there because I speak Xhosa and Zulu fluently? What if they kill me there? said Kabelo, looking much better on his face but almost producing a new fear inside of him. He had now forgotten the threats of Fabian.

Correct! Be positive, sir. They will not kill you. All you have to do is act like one of them to cover the stories for our audience and you’ll be safe. We have organized a cameraman from South Africa to assist you once you get there, said Miss Jones, who was now sitting on one of the office chairs in Kabelo’s office. Whenever the editor in chief was not around, she acted on her behalf. She had mastered that position so well. In fact everyone, including Kabelo, had encouraged her to become an editor when she returned to New York City, to work for the New York Times. She had a promising future, her colleagues agreed. Going to cover those brutal stories was a risk for foreign reporters too, but they had no way to chicken out. It is a career they had chosen to do.

In the end Kabelo agreed to go and cover the story in Alexandra, Gauteng province. When he reached there, he slept in a hotel and the next morning on April 19, 2015, he found himself surrounded by many strange people beating up a black man. They must have been thirty altogether, Kabelo estimated. These South African men were very angry, judging from their faces and the words they uttered as they shouted at the black man. Several women and children stood nearby, watching from a distance.

Kabelo learned that the man who was beaten was a businessman from another African country. His shop was looted and destroyed by the very people who assaulted him. His family and friends fled, so he was on his own. The police was nowhere to be seen at this moment.

Kwerekwere! Kwerekwere! shouted the attackers as they beat their victim.

Kabelo and his cameraman had to watch this without doing anything.

Kabelo understood the angry crowd’s derogatory words: foreigner.

The man was being beaten by basically everyone with anything, from fists to kicks and sticks and stones. He lay on the ground, bleeding from his head and mouth. A human being!

Help me, pleaded the victim, looking at the reporters who were apparently just doing their job—showing the truth to the world.

The angry mob later poured petrol on the poor man, who lay helplessly on the ground so that his whole body was wet with petrol fuel. Then one young man, probably in his early thirties, lit his cigarette. The young man smiled at Kabelo as he smoked his piece of cigarette. Smoke came from his nose and mouth altogether. This gave him pleasure. His smile was, however, not friendly, noted Kabelo.

Jy is mos nie van hier nie man, said one fat colored lady with very small eyes. She really looked like a snake, a python perhaps. She was talking to Kabelo. Nee, Ek is van hier, said Kabelo as he held the microphone he was using to report. The microphone was not on at this point.

Van waar is jy? said the fat lady with deadly curiosity.

Ek is van die Kaap mevrou. Die Cape flats man. Ek het daar groot geraak, said Kabelo, defending himself successfully.

Ooh, said the woman in satisfaction with the Afrikaans accent that came from Kabelo.

She really almost drew a crowd to Kabelo.

Lucky bastard!

Make sure you put this on YouTube! said the smoking guy in Zulu, who was looking at Kabelo who nodded with fear, as he covered his face with a black ski mask.

Kabelo wanted to say stop, but he was afraid of the repercussions and therefore changed his mind. Of course, the mob would turn against him and kill him if he tried to stop them. The young man who was smoking threw his lighter at the kwerekwere man (as he was called) on the ground and it set him on fire immediately. The victim tried to run into the crowd, which dispersed as soon as he was on fire. He must have been looking for water to ease his pain!

After a few unsuccessful runs, the victim of xenophobia collapsed and died. His body was ultimately charred.

His suffering was covered on camera by people who were trained not to be biased. The story of the burnt man was put on television and the world watched the news with horror. Governments and their people condemned the attack with words.

But sadly, not much was done to the attackers. Some of the attackers were freed and some received lenient sentences ranging between six months to five years’ imprisonment!

Journalists have a code of ethics that allows them to be unbiased. Even if they see a man murdering another man, they are to capture the story without hurting the real perpetrator at that very moment. For them to show bad to the world is more important than to save the world from bad. At times, journalists interview drug dealers in disguise. Just yesterday there was one interview on the National Geographic channel about a Baltimore drug cartel in the United States of America. They (journalists) showed how the cartel operated. All the drug users’ identities were protected during the entire interview. But are they not criminals who deserve punishment? And are journalists not just human beings with abilities to condemn all sorts of ills in societies?

This is what the world won’t teach a young child of school-going age until they become journalists.

Kabelo Haiduwa was a cruel man for that matter. And that cruel man was a journalist, not a common human being, per se!

Man with No Soul

An African short story

No one can deny that seventeen-year-old Patrick Ndemulungila was the most talented boy in our debate classes. Whether you asked us, the students, or our teachers, everyone will agree that he was indeed the best we had during our school years. I first came to know him during our first orientation, in the class of 1995, at the Luderitz Secondary School in our hometown Luderitzbucht in Namibia. A female teacher had mentioned to us that Patrick, who was in tenth grade at the time, was later that year to fly out of the country to participate in an international debate in the United States of America. So we were introduced to him as a new student in the class of grade 8. Everyone was excited for him to the core and especially the girls! I think our teachers were overly proud of the boy, because each time they were angry with us, they always mentioned his name as a symbol of exemplary. Be like Patrick. Learn from him! our teachers used to bark at us.

Well, two years fast forward in 1997, I was a 15-year-old black foreign boy back then, originally from Angola to be precise, and had only been in the country for that one reason most modern human beings aspire in life, namely, better education. Not that good education is not in Angola, but that my Namibian adoptive parents felt I should study in Namibia, and Luderitz just happened to be the right school for me. I must admit, from the onset, that I am actually not a foreigner anymore as my adoptive parents sorted out all the paperwork for me to acquire Namibian citizenship, legally, of course! I must say I remember very little about my birth country Angola. I used to stay in Luanda, where I was born, but during the war when I was little, I was taken to Oshakati and then finally to Luderitz.

In Luderitz, we were staying at a school hostel for boys, a German hostel, for that matter. We used to call our hostel the German hostel. I don’t know where that hostel derived its name nor was I interested to do further research on that topic, but I guess the hostel was originally built by the Germans or by their workers many years ago, judging by its structural design and thus we called it by that name. That was just a guess, I have said! The hostel, which was later renovated, was only meant for boys in grade 8 to 12, mostly for those who opted to live there for various reasons. Our girls had no hostel. Apparently, our government had not enough funds to build one for them, or so we were told by the school board! One hostel at a time, the other will follow suit soon, our school principal used to say.

My white adoptive parents, who I learned migrated a lot in the past, were now in Windhoek, the capital city, where they made a living and I only saw them occasionally, mostly during the school holidays. They were photographers! They had no other children besides me and their support was always great. I do not know my biological parents or siblings or any relatives and wish them well.

Patrick was in twelfth grade that time and I was in tenth grade. He was born and bred in Luderitz. We both stayed at the hostel though, with some other boys, of course. The hostel life was not that bad, but it was bad. It’s just that it was not that bad, if you know what I mean. What I hated mostly about the hostel was the bullying by the older boys, especially when I was in eighth grade. I was only bullied for a week when I came to school for the first time at high school and the worst thing is that it happened in front of the girls. Now you can imagine the cruelty that came with such traumatizing events. Schoolchildren are really cruel creatures, I can testify that. I hated seeing other kids get bullied, but I did little to protect them. I was as weak as them, by the way.

Now I’m a big boy, of course, and have earned respect among the top cats of the school. What I loved at school was the sports, but not just any sport. I loved soccer! I loved soccer more than the school work, but I was of course not the dumbest learner in our class. I must state without much pride that in our class, I was average in my school work. We were always excited when it was school break, because then we would kick some ball!

I remember the first time I was picked to play on the same side as Patrick during one break. Well, he was not a well-seasoned soccer player, but that day I, being a top midfielder, created a lot of chances for him to score goals. He liked the striking position.

At school we used to play our soccer with a tennis ball on a basketball court as nobody played basketball at our school and our school had no soccer fields. Not even one! Wait, maybe there was one, but it had no grass and the goal poles had no nets around them. At first we would play on that ground soccer field—that was too horrible though, and so we neglected the ground soccer field and it turned into a white elephant. We often played with five players a side on the basketball court that we improvised with small goal poles made with bricks and the poles on either side of the court. A single goal was the only means to eliminate an opponent team. The team that scored first won. We were a lot of boys so we took chances to create new teams of five, unlimited, of course. Any team that I was on always won the most games! I think I was simply one of the best in the game. Everyone at school believed I was the best on the court, and that is how I earned great respect from the big boys and became one of them. Except I never bullied others and have advocated for the abolition of bullying at our school. In the end, the bullying stopped completely. But we, the boys, were still naughty in many things, I must admit! I, in particular, used to vandalize our school buildings and smoke at school. I was at times