Short story for thursday,22nd Oct. 2009

DEMOCRAZY.


The thirteen boys were ready. Red-masked faces, overalls and gumboots, dazzling pangas in red-gloved hands. On your marks! It's about time and soon the order would be given. The operation? The usual. Disrupt a campaign rally. This sick man without a party was becoming a nuisance. How dare he challenge the all wise head, deliverer of the poor from autocratic bondage?

Madalitso, 16 and the youngest in the group, remained confused. He had never killed before and he was to begin it in such a heart-rending manner - hack somebody to death like a banana tree. But who had asked him to kill? He was only supposed to disrupt the rally. Many however, had died in similar operations and he knew it. After all, he remembered, you shed blood, you get more pecks.

‘Get set!’ a command was whispered. Everybody fumbled with themselves. The grip on the pangas tightened. Mada breathed hard. You’ll have to kill, somebody seemed to be telling him. Kill for your own survival. You don’t have a mother to look after you. Your father’s bones were buried last month after two long years of diarrhea, coughing and fever, and your granny is just a shadow of her old self.

‘Remember, whip them away, hack the stubborn!’ Wrong weapon in hand! Everybody fumbled for their sjamboks.

Hack the stubborn for a K200 note. What do you think you are eating tonight? You know how strained your father’s relationship with other people even his own relatives was. Who can accept to keep a child of a pompous father like yours? After all do you have a home, a village? Your father never took you to your people and called this town your home. Yes make it your home. The streets are your home. Mada hated this ‘person’ whispering in his head. He puffed hard at the cannabis cigar. He wished for something stronger that would quickly get into his blood. Cocaine or mandrax may be.

Meanwhile, drums roared in the still afternoon at Jamba rally grounds. Women sung and danced in the blazing October heat for their not-yet-arrived would-be president. The men, tired and hungry faces, discussed their dissatisfaction with the government. A decade ago they said enough with the autocratic rule. Ten years down the line, it was clear, oppression had replaced oppression. You have one shirt, you lose it to those with a suitcaseful; those with a single cob of maize were left with the cob without any grain on it.

Two VXs approached. Men moved closer. Women sang and danced wildly, wiggling their plumpy bottoms to the discomfort of their thin-like-grasshopper babies on their backs. Some of the babies burst into sudden wails - they wondered what suddenly went wrong with mama.

The VIPs went up the platform. Five decently dressed men and a lady. The would-be first lady, smiling and waving at the dancing troupe. Red lips, red finger nails and toes, red tight-fitting short skirt, a white thin tight-fitting blouse. Cute !

A kilometer away the gang braced up for departure.

‘Move!’ The two pickups sped off skidding and raising a cloud of dust around the crowd. What the hell could it be? Before anybody answered themselves, hell had already broken loose. Whips cracked, women wailed, children choked in the dust, cowards pissed in their pants not knowing what to do. Mada obeyed the order: whipped two away, the third was stubborn. Three times the whip cracked, she did not move. What a woman! Hack the stubborn! No scream. Only a stream of blood. He could not stand this. The blood frightened him. The cracking whips tore at his flesh. The wailing disheartened his soul and the dust chocked him. The platform was ablaze. Pangas and sjamboks still whistled in the air. He dropped his, unmasked himself and walked away slowly to nowhere. He had killed. Yes, you have done it, the voice came back. Go, get your pay.

Later that evening, at the house of the minister of youth, bank notes flashed, the young murderers smiled. Mada was not there. Nobody cared. He was at police station. From the battle field he had lingered about aimlessly in town and finally walked into the police station.

Two police women dozed on the counter. Earlier, they got reports. Thugs had attacked a rally. But they had no transport. Besides, they had not received any directive to act.

‘Can I help? one police woman asked.
‘Arrest me. I killed a woman at the rally. See this? Blood, human blood see.’

There was no blood on his clothes. The officers laughed. He was a mental case, they thought.

‘Get out and go home!’

Mada hastened out to go home, to nowhere, and told everybody he met - what was to be his story for life- he had killed a woman and police refused to arrest him. Whenever he saw any posh car he would shout “Mr Minister they haven’t arrested me up to now.” Mada roamed the streets until a few days ago when he was finally “arrested” to be detained at the mental asylum.