Poetic Retribution From Mars

By Sylvester Abanteriba

The leadership of a country under an immense pressure from the world community to reform its atrocious political system, decided to send a spaceship loaded with world-renowned scientists to undertake a make believe research programme on the moon for a period of one year. This decoy did not go as planned and the spaceship, which was largely controlled by computers from Earth, could not land on the moon. Unfortunately, an attempt to bring it back to Earth failed when it bounced off the Earth’s atmosphere and proceeded to fly away at an ever-increasing speed. The marooned scientists developed various means of passing the time while they awaited the inevitable death. However, after nearly a year of wandering through the universe the spaceship landed on a planet, which turned out to be Mars but with conditions completely at variance with what is known on Earth about this planet. What the Martians learnt about the socio-political conditions on Earth displeased them enormously. They therefore sent the scientists back with an ultimatum for the world’s leadership, asking Earth to change its ways so that an acceptable interplanetary discourse could be established. The leadership of the world threw down the gauntlet and embarked upon a secret mission to bomb Mars out of existence. This was detected by the Martians and set the two planets on a collision course, with the winner of the encounter not much in doubt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781786936851

Sylvester Abanteriba

Sylvester Abanteriba was born in Ghana, was educated in Europe, and is now a professor of propulsion systems at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. Though a rocket scientist, his love for poetry and the literary arts has led to his evolution as an author of fiction. He is also the author of the science fiction novel Poetic Retribution from Mars.

Book preview

About the Author

Sylvester Abanteriba is a world citizen. He was born in Ghana, educated in Europe, and obtained his Doctor of Engineering Degree at the University of Hannover, Germany. After working in Germany for several years, he immigrated to Australia, where he is a Professor of Propulsion Systems at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne and conducts lectures and research in engines including aircraft engines and rocket technology. Professor Abanteriba and his Costa Rican wife, Dr. Betty Abanteriba, have two sons: Adama and Agomena. During the course of their undergraduate studies, they met, married, and gave birth to their two sons. The family communicates easily in a multitude of languages: English, German, Romanian, Spanish and Buli. Professor Abanteriba is a man of unusual talent, who is at home writing complex scientific papers or papers on political issues, as well as poetry.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my favourite and most inspirational women, each of whom occupies a special place in my heart: Mrs Akunuere Abanteriba, my mother; Dr. Betty Abanteriba, my wife; Ms Ariane Kynisca Awenle Abanteriba, Mi grani little daughter; Ms Grace Atikpale, my aunt.

Copyright Information ©

Sylvester Abanteriba 2022

The right of Sylvester Abanteriba to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781786936042 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398466920 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781786936851 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9781398466937 (Audiobook)

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First Published 2022

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Chapter 1

An Inconvenient Poet

The slight, unassuming man entered the room and gazed around as if adjusting his eyes to rather excessive light. He was black, lean, both hungry and angry looking, but the burly guards who stood two steps behind him were white. The room was quiet. The man stroked his beard. The beard was still largely black, but there was no doubt, long grey strands of hair were determinedly making their presence evident. This invasion was also apparent in his moustache, sideburns and the mop of hair on his head.

He squinted at the relative opulence of the room he had just entered. After having inspected his inanimate surroundings, he bestowed his attention upon the living. He started by gazing directly at the face to his right, but appeared to dismiss it as being either inconsequential or too white. Continuing to shift his gaze from face to face, he seemed disconcerted by the mixture of colours he was seeing. There were alternately black and white faces – all well fed too.

As his gaze reached the middle of the row his face froze, and then a broad smile invaded it, his lips drawing back to expose an immaculate set of white teeth. He raised a clenched fist and his voice boomed, Amaaaandla!

A tall, well-groomed man stepped forward, then rushed towards him, returning the greeting with his fist clenched. The white faces acquired varying degrees of uneasiness at the throaty chants. The two men hugged each other affectionately, stepped back at arms’ length, inspected each other from head to toe, embraced again, and laughed boisterously. The bearded man then continued, over the shoulder of the man he had just greeted, to complete his inspection of faces in the room. Finally, he turned with a questioning look to the man whose hands he still held.

You may leave us now, his companion ordered.

The black men in the group moved immediately towards the exit but the five white men hesitated as if they weren’t sure whether they should obey the order. But after looking towards a stocky, grey-haired white man who gave them a barely perceptible nod, they streamed from the room.

The unusual meeting that was in progress was between two very unusual men at a very unusual place. The place was a South African town that bore the name Freiburg – an unusually inappropriate name since it means Freetown, although its economy was entirely dependent on a network of high security prisons.

The bearded man was a poet by profession, and a revolutionary pen-freedom fighter by inclination. His name was Katunga. The full name was Katunga Katunga Katunga, or Katunga Cubed as his admirers affectionately called him. Katunga was the son of a man of complex heritage and a lady from the Xhosa tribe. His ability to weave words into very delicious form, no matter the language, or subject, was noticed by an Anglican priest, who was trying to introduce the Christian faith to Katunga’s village in Zululand. Katunga, who lost his father at an early age, was discovered at the ripe age of sixteen by the priest.

As to how he came to be called Katunga cubed, Katunga was ever ready to oblige anybody who’d listen with the story behind the name. When he came into this world, his father was determined to name him Lumumba, after a central African revolutionary. However, the early tragic and mysterious demise of Lumumba made Katunga’s mother, a highly superstitious woman, equally determined not to have her son named after a hero whose life ended so prematurely under very horrendous circumstances. A compromise had to be reached. Her husband had to settle for the name Katanga, which was the name of a province in Lumumba’s country. But as soon as the young Katanga could utter some words, he made it abundantly clear that he was not going to be a party to the compromise that had resulted in his name. Any time he was asked what his name was he would say, Katunga. His father, after many frustrating attempts, failed to convince the toddler, his name was Katanga, and finally gave up, muttering as he did so in a few incomprehensible words. In later years Katunga, whose father’s early death robbed him of the chance to find out what those words actually were, would swear by everything his illiterate father, who had neither heard of Shakespeare nor of Romeo, had said at the time, Then Katunga you shall be called. After all, what’s in a name?

But the saga of the name Katunga did not end there. When he was about twelve years old a group of white South African soldiers strayed into his village and he happened to be the unfortunate person they had first encountered, or the first person that cared to talk to them. Through their interpreter they had asked for his name, which he gave them in a quivering voice. Then they had asked for his family name. What family name? he had wondered. So he gave them the same name. As if they had nothing else to do, they then asked for his Christian name. What Christian name? he wondered again. He however gave them the same name again. They had looked at each other and then at him, visibly annoyed. One of them muttered incredulously: Katunga Katunga Katunga? They had walked away without asking him any further questions, leaving him enthralled he could irritate them in this way. He had also liked the triple sound of his name, and decided, whenever it was necessary to give more than one name, which was stupid in itself, he would always give the Katunga cubed. John, which had been appended to his name when he was baptised in the boarding school, was simply allowed to fade away.

In the room in Freiburg, Katunga gestured towards the receding backs of the white men.

What do they also want here? he asked.

That was the commissioner of prisons, said the other man, together with some of his boys.

But is he still the commissioner? asked Katunga, bewildered.

Yes, comrade. I need to talk to you about a number of things that may tax your patience. But I hope you will bear with me while I explain. The visitor spoke hesitantly but his voice had a firm edge to it.

First of all, the chief sends his best wishes; in fact, he wanted to come here personally but some pressing business which cropped up just this morning made it impossible.

The well-groomed speaker was no one less than Jonathan Miambo, the minister of the interior of the new South African government of National Unity. He was just beginning to learn the ropes of his new role and how to be diplomatic about issues, but it wasn’t easy. Not long ago, he had been a fiery-tempered divisional commander of the military wing of the African National Congress, known as the Spear of the Nation. In his former position he had brooked neither contradiction nor insubordination, but now, as a politician, he had to put up with idiotic arguments and exercise superhuman efforts to control his temper. The new position required him to suffer fools gladly.

But in any case, he could never lose his temper with Katunga; he admired the small man too much to even contemplate being aggravated by him. Of course there was no denying he could sometimes be irritatingly stubborn. This was why the minister found his present mission so disconcerting.

Although Katunga had never carried a weapon, or made fiery public speeches against the apartheid system in South Africa, he was himself one of the most dreadful weapons used against that heinous system. He was a very complex man. He appeared a peaceable figure, his exterior fitting the calling for which he had been initially groomed – a disseminator of the word of God.

However, to the discomfort of the apartheid government in South Africa, he had chosen to disseminate messages that had nothing to do with turning one’s second cheek to be slapped after the first had been violated. He wrote very beautiful poetry, which was acclaimed all over the world. Initially, his poetry had been about non-controversial subjects, conferring upon plants, animals and landscapes beauty that their creator had forgotten to bestow, or grudgingly withheld from them. His poems about love made everyone feel like going out and falling in love, even with the most odious looking, foul smelling creature of the opposite sex.

Through his well-sculpted language, he had won the acclaim of even the apartheid government and many of his poems had been translated into Afrikaans. However, unwilling to accept that a black man could actually produce such distinguished literary work, a rumour was set loose in Afrikanerdom. Katunga’s grandfather was purported to have come into being as the result of a prank that had been played by an Afrikaner housewife. Her heavy-drinking husband loved to have sex in an alcoholic stupor and, as the Afrikaner legend goes, one night when the man was in a horny, drunken state the wife slipped a black housemaid into his bed. The man, murmuring endearments and his wife’s name, made love to the maid. That one-off interracial encounter, so they said, resulted in Katunga’s grandfather. But in order to explain Katunga’s very dark skin, the desperate makers of Afrikaner folklore had to call upon science. In disgust of the foul trick played by the wife on her husband, ran the tale, the white genes abdicated their right to participate in determining any of the physical features of the creature that was not supposed to be. The only concession the white genes made was to completely reside in the brain, hence it came to pass that here was a black man with a white man’s brain. This initial protest was then passed down from generation to generation.

Incredible as this rumour was, it found ready acceptance in Afrikanerdom. However, as Katunga’s work turned to themes that were an anathema to the Afrikaner core beliefs, his detractors were quick to claim, with some justification, that the non-controversial ingenuity displayed in his initial work was an insidious plot to gain fame, after which he had launched his later nefarious work. That later writing they decried as the work of infamy. On the other hand, his admirers, and there were multitudes of them, anointed him the poet of social justice, the poet of the ordinary man, the knight of poetry – in fact enough accolades were poured on him to drown out the vicious names being hurled in his direction by his detractors.

What landed Katunga in prison was what had been considered, by some, as the best of his work. In his poems, in a very vivid way, he’d been able to depict what he believed to be the evils of the apartheid system, and his work brought home, in no uncertain terms, exactly what that system was doing to the fabric of South African society. This so alarmed the apartheid government, it had moved swiftly to put him under house arrest, at the same time confiscating anything he might write with and on.

In seclusion and deprived of the means of putting his thoughts to paper, he sat in the well-guarded house conjuring up images of cataclysmic upheavals. In his mind he constructed battles between the Spear of the Nation and the South African defence force in which the South African forces did not simply lose but exhibited an unprecedentedly ignominious level of cowardice. He prophesised in his mind the coming end, an end that would be preceded by rivers of blood flowing through the streets of Johannesburg and all the other major centres of the Republic. His seclusion gave him the time to sculpt all these raging thoughts into poetry, poetry so beautiful that the apocalyptic nature of the predictions was lost on those who were later to hear them.

Under very strong protest, from both friendly and everything-but-friendly countries, the South African government was forced to lift the house arrest on Katunga, while restricting him to his village. The second concession the apartheid government was forced to make was something that it regretted immediately. Katunga was allowed access to writing material.

It was then that the floodgates had been thrown opened. All the poems that Katunga had constructed in his mind came pouring out in a continuous, inexorable stream. He would sit throughout the nights producing copious volumes of poetry in which he tore the apartheid system to pieces, and eulogised ANC heroes both real and imaginary. The end that he depicted was enough to send fear down the spine of even the most confident, supremacist, racist Afrikaner. As time passed a disturbing phenomenon, from the point of view of the South African government, began to emerge. Copies of Katunga’s most virulent poems were found on the bodies of soldiers of the Spear of the Nation who were killed in battle or some who were, from time to time, captured alive. It appeared that the poetry was energising the resistance movement and that its members were prepared to undertake the most risky and daring forms of sabotage. Some of the poems, though proscribed, were beginning to appear in schools and were even being read and appreciated in some sections of the white liberal intellectual society.

The apartheid establishment weighed the consequences of silencing Katunga again, and decided the rest of the world, which they considered was inclined to play the sanctimonious game any time it dealt with South Africa, could go to hell. A government had to do what it had to do to protect the way of life of its people – its real people. Katunga was therefore apprehended and jailed for an indefinite period, with the specific instructions, he should never come within arm’s reach of pencils, pens, or paper. He was not allowed to mix with other prisoners on the grounds he might recite to them his explosive poems. He was not allowed any item of news. His only access to current affairs was limited to setbacks suffered by the ANC, spitefully bestowed upon him by petty-minded prison guards. He was therefore unaware of the lifting of the ban on the ANC and the release of Mandela from prison until only a few weeks before the visit of the new minister of the interior.

It is great to see you again, the minister said hesitantly.

It seems you have kept yourself well in spite of the circumstances.

It is a relief, said Katunga, to see a friendly face again after all these years. I suppose the face is still friendly, isn’t it Jonathan? Katunga’s face appeared to hold a thousand questions.

Of course, answered the minister, ever most friendly. There are a number of things I have come to discuss with you and they will require all the patience you can command, he was unable to completely conceal his discomfort.

Jonathan, said Katunga, patience is all I have left. Go ahead, he dropped into an armchair and motioned the minister into the sofa opposite him. He was beginning to be disconcerted by the man’s shifting demeanour.

You probably know by now, said the minister, that the ban on the ANC has been lifted, and that the chief and practically all ANC political activists were released from jail some time ago, he dwelt a bit on the phrase ‘practically all political activists’.

If I hadn’t heard the word ‘practically’ I would have been worried, said Katunga with an uneasy laugh.

The minister joined in with a laugh devoid of any traces of mirth. He dreaded what he had to say next but knew he must get it over and done with.

You may also have heard that, as an interim measure, we have formed a government of National Unity to run the country for a period of five years. In fact, the chief wanted to be here to explain things to you, but as I indicated earlier, he has not been feeling well lately; those years on the rock seem to have taken a great toll on him. The minister uttered the first part of the sentence rather hurriedly, but dawdled on the last bit.

Katunga just sat there as if he had not heard a word that the brand-new minister of the interior had said. Hadn’t he been told just a while ago that the chief had to attend to some urgent business, hence his failure to show up? Why had the story changed now? Katunga’s thoughts were suspicious but he was determined to look passive.

Since he’s in a state of shock I’d better unload everything on him now, muttered the minister under his breadth then, clearing his throat, he continued in a loud and firm voice.

The National Party, the Nkata movement, and the ANC will have to work together in this new government for the next five years. After that, each organisation will be on its own. It’s a transitional thing. As a result of this arrangement our hands are tied in many ways. With regards to the release of prisoners, the three components of the government have come to the agreement that all political prisoners should be released by the middle of next month, that is in three weeks’ time. In cases where there is supposed to be a criminal element involved, time is required for an investigation to clarify the circumstances before a recommendation regarding any release can be made. The minister’s voice trailed off.

Katunga cleared his throat.

So in which category am I supposed to be? he asked, without even looking at the minister.

Well, eh… you know one of the charges against you is as an accessory to murder, the minister said hesitantly.

And I suppose you are aware of the grounds on which the charges were made? asked Katunga looking the minister in the eye.

Yes, said the minister, a mentally-disturbed young white man read one of your poems to a group of white men in a café in Johannesburg and then blew away three of them with a submachine gun.

"Oh yes, my poem; it was an innocuous poem, it was meant to make the oppressors reflect. It said:

'White man, White man, make up your mind

You want me dead, so that I cannot share the wealth of the land with you

You want me alive so that I can do your dirty backbreaking chores

White man, White man, make up your mind

You claim that I am an animal to deprive me of my birth-right

You created a religion and called upon your maker to back your claim

Yet in the darkness of the night you crawl into my bed and share the most intimate moments with me.

White man, White man; make up your mind.

You claim that I am stupid

Yet you entrust to me the care of your offspring

You claim that I am dirty

Yet I prepare your nourishment and wait upon you at your table

White man, White man; make up your mind.

You create your wealth out of my sweat

Yet you begrudge me even the by-products of that wealth

You enjoy the sounds I make

Yet you crave for my invisibility

White man, White man; make up your mind

Your attitude is at variance with your claims

Your aims are at variance with your desire

Your beliefs are at variance with your conscience

White man, White man; make up your mind.’"

I know the poem very well, said the minister reflectively.

In fact, we used to recite it in the bush around the camp fire in the evenings.

You do agree with me; it was a harmless poem, said Katunga.

The fact that this white young man blew away three of his own kind, and may they rest in peace, really does not in any way overshadow the fact that this was a poem that actually begged the conscience of the oppressor. It asked him to look at what was happening in reality, it was meant to jostle his conscience. To suggest, there is criminal intent in this poem requires an acceptance of the mind-twisting logic that the apartheid system has been able to exercise over the people of this country for generations. You are certainly aware, I presume, that the young man was hung in spite of the fact that he was proven clinically insane.

The minister nodded.

There is no doubt among any of the comrades that great injustice has been done to you. We are in the process of rectifying that, and you will have your deserved place in the ANC government as soon as things are cleared up. But at the moment, the minister said, with a hint of firmness in his voice, our hands are tied and we have to play according to the rules set up by the Government of National Unity.

Meaning? Katunga looked at him squarely in the eye but the minister did not venture a statement. Both men understood what he would say.

By the way, whose idea was this nonsense of a Government of National Unity? asked Katunga. When the minister did not give him an answer he went on.

How do we explain this infamous cohabitation with the architects and supporters of apartheid, with these murderers, to the mothers and the fathers of the murdered children? What do we tell the children whose parents have been tortured and killed? How do you explain this inglorious agreement to the wife and family of the glorious son of Africa – Steve Biko? What do you tell such people when they see you sitting next to these murderers in parliament? How do you expect the black people of South Africa, when their security is threatened, to call upon the police for help when they are aware that in the past these same police butchered their brethren in the streets in broad daylight, and under the cover of darkness in their homes? Katunga, his face now a mask of anger and anguish, looked questioningly at the minister.

There had to be a compromise, came the answer, otherwise our streets would have been overflowing with blood – that of both white and black. The economy would have ground to a standstill. There would have been no foreign investment. I know the compromise we’ve made stinks to high heaven but the alternative would have been catastrophic. Consider what we’ve done now as a strategic step backwards – to consolidate our gains and build a viable nation. Even at the moment, as you are aware, there is a vast disagreement amongst us. Nkata considers us to be probably worse than the white supremacists. We, the black community, need time to come to a consensus amongst ourselves about the future of this nation, Jonathan said pleadingly.

Have we liberated Azania? Are we in power?

Katunga’s voice sounded very strange to the minister.

Yes comrade, he said, Azania is now free, but for the mean time we are sharing power.

But Katunga was not listening to his words; he was beside himself with anger.

This is not how it was supposed to end! he suddenly screamed, This is not the end that was deemed to be. This is not a victory! It is a sell-out. I want a victory! I want a victory! This is not how it was supposed to end! There has to be a poetic justice. There has to be a poetic victory. Unimaginable crimes have been committed, and the perpetrators will have to pay! This is not how it was supposed to end!

Springing to his feet, he ran straight towards the wall opposite him. The minister rose up, alarmed, but uncertain of what to do.

Stop! The word was barely out of his mouth when he heard a sickening thud, and Katunga slumped to the floor. He had hit his head against the wall with full force.

Oh my God, help! Help! Help! the minister shouted, rushing towards the figure on the floor.

Two burly white figures ran into the room, their pistols drawn.

Put the bloody guns away, and get me the doctor! the minister screamed at them.

The doctor was in the room within minutes, as if he had expected to be called for this kind of emergency.

Oh my God, he muttered, that is a terrible gash on his forehead. What happened? The minister described what had occurred, the anxiety in his voice profound.

His pulse is a bit weak, said the doctor, but I don’t think it’s critical. Let’s move him to the clinic to scan his head. Two men raised Katunga’s apparently lifeless body, placed it on a stretcher and rushed it from the room. The minister looked distraught.

I am sure he will be alright, said the doctor.

I’ll do everything that is humanly possible.

I will be here. Let me know as soon as he comes around and I’m taking him out of this goddamn place, swore the minister furiously.

Bloody damn Government of National Unity, he muttered again and again.

What did you say, sir? asked one of the burly white guards, but was waved away.

Please leave me, I want to be alone.

Infamous cohabitation with murderers, the minister reflected, That poetic son-of-a-gun surely has a way with words. What have we done, he wondered, what choice did we really have?

Yes, Katunga was right; he too had not expected it to end this way. It had been whispered that this was the best deal they could get. It had been said again and again that suddenly there was a new breed of political leaders in the white community who were ashamed of the past and filled with a sense of expiation. The minister recollected the events after the collapse of the apartheid regime.

But who are the new leaders? he muttered, thinking out loud.

You look everywhere and who do you see? The new enlightened leaders are actually the old leaders whose hands are dripping with blood. We were told that these leaders should be congratulated for their metamorphosis and voluntary abdication. But like us what choice did they have?

The minister sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands.

Could this country really have continued to be a fortress of white supremacists in black Africa? After all of the colonialists and the apologists for white supremacy were forced to make an ignominious exit from the rest of the continent, could the heinous system of apartheid have survived? Nobody had had much choice. It had not been a change of heart in the white community but a change of strategy – a change to survive, a change to avoid what Katunga had predicted in his poems. But Katunga, like many in the ANC, would say we did, and do, have a choice.

The tainted institutions in the country could have been torn apart and everything rebuilt from scratch. An opportunity had been missed to cleanse this country, purify it, and re-establish a moral basis for the existence of its society. France had grown to be one of the greatest democracies in Europe because its revolution was complete. Even though there were excesses, justice was done and what was associated with the past was put to rest.

But were the pressures on France the same as the pressures visited upon this nation by powerful external forces – forces that had actually served as apologists in the past for the apartheid system? It had been whispered insistently that revenge or real justice would be counterproductive. The whispered threats, supposed to be treated as friendly advice, had been unambiguous – investment would dry up and access to development funds would be out of reach if the guilty were made to pay for their crimes. A significant part of the ANC leadership had opted for justice at all costs but the pragmatists, led by the chief, had won. He had made it clear that he did not want a Pyrrhic victory; his goal was nation building.

This continent has had more than its share of humiliation and abuse. Tearing ourselves apart doesn’t help anything. We need all the resources of this country to serve as the engine that will pull this continent out of its morass. If the price to pay for this is to allow some criminals to go scotch free, so be it. that had been an emphatic indication of the course he wished to follow, and all strong views to the contrary were gradually reduced to mumblings of benign discontent.

Can we get you something sir? the minister’s thoughts were interrupted by the booming voice of the commissioner of prisons.

No, thank you, he said, shaking his head.

The doctor examined Katunga’s head as the man lay, stripped to the waist, on the operating table.

He is still bleeding profusely, he said.

We have to stop the bleeding before any further examination can take place.

His pulse is dropping, said the nurse with alarm.

Quick, inject him with that, and give him oxygen, said a younger doctor, feeling Katunga’s pulse.

We will have to aid his breathing.

His vitals are being monitored now, said the elderly doctor.

Let’s find out what the son of a bitch did to himself.

There doesn’t appear to be too much damage, said the young man, examining the three-dimensional image of Katunga’s skull on the large computer screen.

Look at that hair line crack across the front part of the skull, said the older doctor.

It’s surprising there’s nothing worse than that.

Yet he seems not to be coming around, said the pink-faced nurse.

The elderly doctor examined the printout of his vitals.

I don’t think he’ll be coming around soon, he said, a puzzled look evident on his face.

We have got ourselves a coma patient.

A what patient? everybody was startled by the hoarse voice of the minister of the interior, who hadn’t been able to keep away any longer and had come to the operating theatre with the commissioner of prisons.

Well, yes sir, it seems he has slipped into coma. It may be just for a few hours, or it may be for a much longer period. I think the heavy blow exerted a tremendous shock on his brain. We will do more detailed tests to establish the severity of the damage, concluded the doctor, with a trace of apology in his voice, but for now he is in a coma.

The minister held his huge head in his hands as he walked closer to peer at the lifeless body of Katunga.

My friend, what have we done to you? he whispered.

Chapter 2

Very Distinguished Scientists

There was nothing to worry about; everything onboard the space ship was working fine. The contact with the ground crew at the Pelindaba space centre was marvellous. All the crew onboard had to do now was to relax for forty-five more minutes and then fire the rockets, which would sprint them out of the Earth’s gravitational field. After that the computers would take over everything up to the time of their arrival at the planned destination.

Flight commander Capt. Willem Kruger looked at the mass of equipment, and the battery of blinking buttons on the auxiliary command module. He went on meticulously checking everything in the command centre, just to make sure there was no deviation from the normal functioning of any of the systems. Capt. Kruger disliked half measures; he believed, if there was something to be done that was really worth doing, then it should be done with the utmost dedication. He believed once a man had undertaken to do something, he should pursue it to perfection or else convince himself, he was incapable of doing it.

The thought of trying to convince himself that he was incapable of carrying out a task brought a painful smile to his handsome brown face. A face that had been carefully tanned by the African sun. He shook his head, which was capped with a mop of blond hair that had begun to recede from the front.

Once he’d finished checking the equipment in the command quarters, he headed straight for the sanitary compartment. He washed his hands and his face, then as he reached for some paper towelling, noticed his frame in the mirror. He looked carefully at it and liked what he saw. At the age of thirty-two he still looked as handsome as he had when he’d turned twenty. He stood well over two metres tall with a very broad chest that was the envy of many a man and the admiration of those bespectacled women at the space centre.

Many of his friends attributed his stubbornness to his cleft chin. His girlfriend Jane, now his wife, adored it, and he remembered how she’d begged him not to grow a beard, making it a point to buy him a packet of razor blades every week. Poor Jane – she needn’t have put herself to such trouble because his father, an archconservative type of man, insisted that he should be well groomed at all times. Any sign of a scruffy beard or of a three-inch long hair on a man’s head was immediately decried by his father as an indication of liberalism, which in his limited political vocabulary meant communism.

And a liberal or a communist, according to his father’s definition, was a totally deranged person who wished to bring the white man down to the level of the black man. In short, he believed these were atheists who wanted to undo what God himself had ordained – that the black man would only ever be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water.

The sad thing is, he had often lamented, that most of the religious denominations today cannot even interpret the bible. Most of them are even communist supporters, he made one exception only – the Dutch Reform Church, he maintained, had seen the real light and stuck to it.

There were many things over which the captain and his old man had never seen eye to eye. But on the question of race they were fully agreed. Those savages must be kept in their place and not allowed to tamper with the civilisation that the white man had so assiduously built over the generations.

Now let’s face it, what has the black man done to advance the cause of science or art? pondered Capt. Kruger.

These days he can listen to his drums on electronic sound components; he even talks on the telephone and uses modern weapons to kill white people. None of these things he helped to develop. Yet there are white men, muttered the captain, who even supply those bastards with the means to destroy their own kind. Capt. Kruger agreed with his father that that kind of white man must truly be mentally deranged.

The thought of his father and what he stood for made the captain clench his fist. The piece of sharp metal he held in his hand cut deep into his palm, but he neither saw the blood dripping to the floor nor felt the pain. He was remembering the day his father had driven him back to the University of Transvaal after a weekend at home. The older Kruger had expressed satisfaction at his son’s academic performance and extracurricular activities, for the young Kruger, apart from being an A student, was the captain of the University of Transvaal’s rugby team, and had led his team that year to victory in the National University Rugby League. He was a hero to almost every rugby-loving South African.

His father had surprised him by saying that engineering in general was a very difficult discipline to pursue. He went on to say that after hearing from a friend, an agricultural engineer, that aeronautical engineering was the most difficult of the engineering sciences, he’d felt very proud of his son. He called him ‘a real Kruger’.

At the time the young Kruger had smiled. He knew that nobody had told his father such a thing, but he knew that the old man would like to believe that his son was pursuing the most strenuous discipline in the world. His father had gone on to talk about his ranch and his plans to expand it, but he had also expressed his deep-seated worry that the blacks were beginning to get restless.

They are now talking about their rights and thinking that everything down here belongs to them. My boy, we will soon have to take some drastic steps, otherwise things around here will change for the worse. This country has served me very well and I want it to serve you even better when I am gone. Those bastards must be kept in their proper place forever. To this end the Broederbond has dedicated itself, he had said this with firm determination.

The older Kruger had dropped his son off at the campus grounds, promising to come back the following weekend to take him home for his sister’s birthday. That was the last time Capt. Kruger ever saw his father.

The day after the drive to the university his father, his mother Anne and his sisters Marianne and Elizabeth, accompanied by the family dog Bob, left for Salisbury. They planned to meet a man called Ian Smile, an old family friend who was thinking of migrating to Australia. The blacks in Rhodesia had started making life quite impossible for the whites, but his father was determined to convince his old friend that running away wasn’t the solution.

The African solution, he believed, was to keep the black bastards hemmed up in little parcels of unwanted land called homelands, while allowing just a few thousands of them into the urban areas to do mean jobs that were below the dignity of the white man. The older Kruger was determined to make his friend see this point of view, but being a practical man, he had also brought along money to buy some of the things his friend could not carry with him if he really insisted on leaving Africa. For this reason, he drove the family picnic mini-bus instead of the Benz car he loved to show off.

It was in this mini-bus that the family was killed.

They were blown to pieces a few miles outside Rhodesia by a mine planted by those thick-headed black idiots who called themselves freedom fighters. So the barbarians managed to get rid of a noble and courageous man and his family in the most cowardly way imaginable. He never had a chance to defend himself and his loved ones.

That was ten years ago now, and the only evidence that they had ever existed could be seen in a few photographs of a jovial family, and the tombstone indicating the mass grave in which the fragments of their bodies had been laid to rest. On it the epitaph reads:

Here lies the Kruger family.

Their murder makes us ever more determined to preserve our civilisation

and defend it against barbarians:

Jaap Kruger 1915 – 1970

Anne Kruger 1920 – 1970

Marianne Kruger 1950 – 1970

Elizabeth Kruger 1955 – 1970

May they rest in peace.

Jaap Kruger’s colleagues from the Broederbond decided that this was a fitting epitaph and a clear warning. Most of them wept openly at the funeral. They made it plain; they were declaring war on all nigger troublemakers and all Kaffirboethies.

Capt. Kruger’s thoughts were suddenly disturbed as a hand was placed on his shoulder.

Captain, your hand is bleeding. What happened? asked Richard Duke. Kruger looked at his bleeding palm and then at Duke, straight in the eye. The man recoiled. The captain had such a murderous look in his eyes that it frightened him. He recovered quickly, saying: Captain let’s do something about that hand before we join the rest of the crew. Dr Stone is already in the auxiliary command quarters but Dr Rabinovich is still relaxing in the recreation centre. He says he’s feeling some kind of numbness in his knees.

While he was talking, Capt. Kruger had washed out his cut. Richard Duke took out a bottle containing spirit from a plastic bag above the mirror. He splashed the contents on the wound and Capt. Kruger winced. After covering the wound with surgical tape, they both made their way to the auxiliary command centre.

Dr Rabinovich was already there with Dr Stone.

We have twenty more minutes before firing the rockets, said Dr Stone, glancing up.

The boys at Pelindaba have asked us to stand by, he added, looking in the captain’s direction.

How are we doing now? asked Richard Duke, with a nod towards the command module.

So far every facility is functioning as predetermined. This is going to be a hell of a successful mission, Capt. Kruger said confidently. Richard Duke looked at his friend; he had always admired him. He was a great guy to work with; he had about him an aura that inspired confidence in those around him.

He had known Capt. Kruger for quite some time, long before the six months training programme at Pelindaba space centre. But though he had caught him in a pensive, moody state of mind many a time, he had never asked him any personal questions. He himself disliked probing questions. He couldn’t stand those motherfuckers who were always asking him why he had left the United States of America to settle in a trouble spot like the Republic of South Africa. He saw no necessity to discuss his past life with frivolous, inquisitive people, but if it ever became necessary, there were a hell of a lot of things about himself and his family that he could sincerely boast about. According to his own reckoning he was from a family with a glorious history.

Richard Duke was the only son of a wealthy Mississippi oilman. His ancestors came from Ireland. They came to America, as his grandfather had often told him, when his own great grandfather was a child, to escape the arrogance of the English. To his ancestors and many other Irish men who left the old country, life in the wilderness of the Americas was more acceptable than a life of degradation in civilised Europe. What Duke’s grandfather failed to tell him was that the majority of these men who claimed they had fled degradation and oppression had no qualms about the degradation and oppression they’d heaped upon the indigenous Americans they met.

All Richard Duke knew then, or cared to know, was that his ancestors were tough frontiersmen who battled with heathen Indians for the land. They were among the pioneers who were responsible for the greatness that America aspired to, and eventually attained. The high proportion of his family dead in America’s wars strongly bore witness to that family’s commitment to the country. Four had been killed in the American War of Independence, three perished in action in the Civil War, two each died in the First and Second World Wars, one in the Korean War, and lately two were still missing in action in Vietnam. Richard Duke’s grandfather had told him that his own uncle was one of the greatest Confederate colonels.

His grandfather had also told him his own version of the American Civil War. He said there were many southerners like his own uncle who were very disappointed when the South surrendered to the North. According to him, after the surrender, life became almost unbearable for the southerners. The Negroes were released from the plantations and told that they were free people. The bloody sons of bitches just went crazy. They took their freedom to mean they had licence to get naughty with white women and lick their former masters in the bargain. Every northerner was suddenly aware of how terribly the Negroes had been mistreated and were quite sympathetic to their desire for revenge. The vanquished southerners believed that this show of sympathy for the Negroes was sheer hypocrisy. They knew that the Union soldiers were bristling over their heavy losses in the war and itching to avenge the death of their colleagues but, being aware that any open acts of revenge on their part would be contradictory to the official policy of reconciliation, were therefore using the Negroes as their instrument of revenge.

It never seemed to have occurred to Richard Duke’s grandfather that the Negroes, who had been treated more or less like animals by their former masters, might have been harbouring their own sentiments of revenge for quite a long time.

The young Duke continued to receive his first lessons in American history as his grandfather explained that, to counteract the excesses of the niggers, a group of patriotic, God-fearing citizens had come together to form a very noble organisation. They named this organisation the Ku Klux Klan. One of its main aims was to impress upon the niggers that nothing had really changed, and to eliminate those who had allowed the ‘freedom nonsense’ to go to their heads and were being unpleasant to whites.

At the age of eighteen, Richard Duke had decided to join the Klan. But one thing troubled him. From his earlier indoctrination he understood why the Ku Klux Klan was against the blacks. He believed fully in their inferiority. He couldn’t understand how these guys who were bought and brought to America as slaves could now claim equal rights with their masters. They came here in chains and in chains they ought to remain, he reasoned. His own ancestors had come here of their own free will to build themselves and their descendants a new way of life. Only a crazy man would expect these noble adventurers to share equal rights with niggers who through their natural evolution were inferior. On the basis of this logic Duke had no reservations about his desire to be a member of the Klan – an organisation that did not apologise for its defence of white supremacy and honour. But what he could not understand was the virulent hatred the Klan had for the Jews. A few days prior to his joining the Klan, he had started reading Klan literature to acquaint himself fully with its guiding principles, and had found in the pamphlets as much diatribe against the Jews as the blacks.

He had therefore decided to ask his local Klan chieftain, Donald M’cloud, for clarification. M’cloud was a beefy truck driver who was known for his no-nonsense attitude towards blacks. He owed his position in the Klan not to his intelligence, for this he sorely lacked, but to the brutal force he was known to use against black kids. He had been on trial twice for bursting the heads of black youths, but in both cases claimed he did it in self-defence and got away with it.

On another occasion he had been acquitted after killing an elderly black man with his truck, by claiming that the old man had suddenly dashed in front of him from the pavement. But out of court, he told his Klan colleagues a different story. He said that when he’d seen the old man waiting on the pavement for a chance to cross the street, he’d stopped and motioned him to cross.

When the fucking nigger was in the middle of the street, I ran him down, he told his admirers who roared with laughter.

I think the biggest mistake we made as far as the blacks are concerned, M’cloud said one day at a gathering of the Klan, is that we whites gave them the chance to theoretically reach the same level of humanity. This statement elicited questioning looks from his peers, so M’cloud carried on: If we had used them as meat the first time we came into contact with them, no one would be entertaining the idea of considering them as human. They would simply be considered as a source of protein, and beasts of burden, he concluded, looking very pleased that such an inspirational idea should have dawned on him, and only him. His audience looked momentarily shocked, then everybody burst out laughing.

You really mean our ancestors should have started eating nigger steaks? asked a short, thickset man with a Hitler-like moustache.

Yes! That would have eliminated the problem of this equality nonsense that we’re having today, because you cannot consider your food to be equal to yourself, said M’cloud firmly. His colleagues realised that he was not joking.

But they say you are what you eat! shouted a young man with a look of disgust.

That, young man, is simply a figure of speech, said a wary looking man with nicotine-coated teeth, I think there’s a lot of sense in what he said. Maybe we could’ve been using them today as cat and dog food.

Such were the ideas, and actions, that had improved M’cloud’s stature in the Klan, even though all of his peers knew, he was stupid. But he had the brutal force of a bull, which was of more importance to the Klan than his brains.

Richard Duke had found Donald M’cloud in the local Klan’s office. He was sitting on a chair with his legs up on the table, chewing a piece of gum mindlessly.

Come in my boy, he said as he saw the young man at the door.

Sir, said Duke as he entered, I want to ask you about something which is puzzling me.

Fire ahead my boy. That’s what I’m here for, he grinned.

I know why we are against the niggers, said Duke, but I don’t understand what we have against the Jews. They are just as white as we are and I know several of them in my school. It is even written in the bible that they are the chosen people of God.

M’cloud brought his feet down to the floor with a crash.

My boy, listen to me! he shouted, No God chose them, the only choosing they ever had was when Adolf Hitler did it, and as we know they weren’t enthusiastic about it. As to why we don’t like them, let me tell you this, they are very sneaky back-stabbers who will do you in as soon as you let down your guard. If we say the blacks have got no brains, these have too much of that grey matter and for the wrong purpose. What is more, they killed the Lord, didn’t they?

Richard Duke looked perplexed at the man’s logic and his vehemence, but he nodded. Yet the lord was one of them, wasn’t he? He wanted to put this thought into words, but was frightened by the look of intense hatred on M’cloud’s face.

A few days later the young Duke had taken the Klan oath and become a full member. He became so enthusiastic about his Klan duties that he rose rapidly through the ranks to become a Klan chieftain while he was still a university student.

In 1973 he graduated in astronomy at the top of his class at the University of Mississippi. The Klan was very proud of him. But by this time life was getting tough for the Klan in the United States. Organisations like the Black Power movement were flourishing and growing in popularity, while increasing numbers of Americans were beginning to consider the Klan as an evil organisation and a source of embarrassment to their great nation.

The Vietnam War and the subsequent bitterness it caused had greatly helped the cause of the liberals and the civil rights movement. The painful part of the situation for the hard-core Klan members was that the majority of southern Americans were beginning to wonder loudly whether Christian values could really be reconciled with the Klan doctrine.

Richard Duke’s father had hoped that one day his son would play an active role in American politics. But, to his disappointment, he realised his brand of conservatism was rapidly losing its lustre. Therefore, when his son told him in 1974 that he was contemplating immigrating to South Africa the old man did not try to stop him.

Son, he said, I understand how you feel about this country now. If I weren’t so old, I would also leave this place for good. People say America is great, she is rich, but where do these riches come from? This continent is not the richest on the planet in natural resources. It is the American people who make this country rich. Take the continent of Africa for example, it is loaded with natural resources and yet its people are starving. But the people who have made this country the richest and most powerful nation on Earth have now lost their sense of direction. I give you my blessing, son; go to the only country in the world today where the white man can really feel at home. Be assured you will never be in want of anything that money can buy for, thank God, we are still one of the wealthiest families in the world.

When Richard Duke had applied to immigrate to South Africa, the authorities there had granted his request within three months. This period was enough for the South African security apparatus to check and countercheck his background. They came to the conclusion that he was the best immigrant they had had for years. In their recommendation they wrote that he was a very intelligent and a resourceful man, and that his ideas on race were in full concordance with the official South African policy.

With his financial position completely assured by his father, Richard Duke settled down to enjoy his new life. He took a master’s degree course in astronomy at the University of South Africa. After he graduated, again at the top of his class, he was offered a job at the National Meteorological Department. It was here that he’d first met Willem Kruger, who had been sent there for a short course by the air force.

In the cabin, Dr John Stone looked at his watch and said: But why have they asked us to stand by? We still have fifteen minutes to go.

Probably they wanted to verify something, Capt. Kruger reasoned.

Another possibility could be that they thought we would fall asleep on the job.

Dr Stone laughed, but stopped suddenly when he realised that no one else was laughing. His companions had their eyes fixed on the auxiliary command module. He turned towards the captain and Richard Duke.

You two look as if you’ve just returned from a friend’s funeral, he said.

Don’t tell me you’re scared.

Capt. Kruger looked irritated but forced a smile.

No, Dr Stone, he replied.

Maybe this altitude makes me feel moody.

Capt. Kruger knew that Dr Stone was only teasing them, but all the same he felt annoyed at the suggestion that he could be afraid. He had always tried to like the barrel-chested Englishman, but the man’s jokes never failed to irritate him.

Dr Stone, at forty years old, was the oldest of the crew. But his pale face, which years of the African sun had miserably failed to tan, was capped with a shock of unruly red hair that gave him a very boyish look. His behaviour in general, coupled with his juvenile looks, could easily allow him to pass for a much, much younger man. In spite of this he was one of the world’s leading geophysicists.

Intellectuals really come in all sorts of shades, Capt. Kruger muttered to himself as he looked at Dr John Stone.

The two men were at the opposite ends of the human spectrum when their attitudes towards life were considered. While Capt. Kruger was a well-disciplined ascetic professional who didn’t care about most of life’s pleasures, Dr Stone, on the other hand, was what he himself termed a swinger. He believed that a man had only one life and therefore owed it to himself and his creator to enjoy it as much as he could while he had the chance. He liked fat Cuban cigars, enjoyed French wines and good food. His specialty was African foods laced with hot peppers, but though this particular specialty was all right with the South African authorities, there was another kind that bothered them.

Dr Stone had a raving sexual appetite for black women. Black women, he claimed, were hot dishes. In fact, he nicknamed them ‘black peppers’. He had developed this desire for them while working with the Lonrho mining conglomerate as a geologist on the Mineral Coast. He was quite young then and did not earn as much money as now, but those were, he considered, the best days of his life. He would always remember them with relish.

In those days he would wake up late on Saturday, and walk into his spacious dining room. There, on the dining table, would be a large bowl containing two huge, steaming balls of kenkey, a local dish that was his favourite. On the table beside this would be the usual plate of fried fish and a smaller plate containing pepper, fried black. After he had devoured his meal he would move to his balcony, where he would relax with a glass of palm wine (a delicately sweet liquid obtained from the sap of the palm tree) in his hand while watching the birds hopping about his garden. The garden, his pride and joy, was well kept by his gardener. The gardener of course was paid by the mining company, which also paid for a lot of the other expenses he incurred. He had free club and health facilities.

But the most interesting thing the