VryGrond, Cape Town, November 2053
‘Halt!’ shouted a voice from the sky.
So, we stopped; all remaining sixty or so of us from our two thousand mile march from Lusaka south to here, down to the end of Africa.
Saartjie Baartman reined in her hover-frame and swivelled around to face those of us following behind, as she floated inches above the desolate sands of the Cape Flats.
Behind her, we could all see – and most of us could hear – the pounding surf of the great Southern Ocean. A wind rose off the sea, bringing with it a stench of kelp weed, sharp and pungent, stirring old memories of sand and play. In between us and the ocean lay a bright, but ominous looking, yellow building.
To our right, the irregular spine of Table Mountain loomed, hanging above the small white washed scatter of houses, where my parents had died. A place that was named after the Portuguese explorer, Da Gama.
Do not look that way.
Immediately in front of us, the big yellow building straddled the arid landscape, alongside a field of green vegetation, all securely surrounded by razor-wire.
Fola and I, standing just behind the hovering Saartjie, exchanged glances. The building looks heavily armed. It will not be easy to get inside. Initial resistance in Harare had cost us five lives. Saartjie had been distraught.
“Fellow Earth and Water Keepers, we are near the end of our mission, the cleansing of colonial Africa. Do not look up at the sky in fear, for the Gods do not speak English. Our enemies, as usual, are right here on our earth.”
Saartjie’s eyes were hidden behind sun-darkened smart specs, so she gestured at Fola, who leaned her long body on her knobkierie. Over the months and miles, we had both learned to read well, the old woman’s looks and gestures.
Fola nodded, stood up straight and spun her knobkierie around, so that the heavier bulbous side faced downwards. She slammed the head of the wooden shaft three times on the ground, raising dust.
Mechanical dragonflies poured from vents within the wooden shaft, funnelling upwards into the sky, in a colourful stream of whirring micro-drones.
All emitting electrical interference.
Those newer recruits who had joined us after Harare gasped in awe, as the seemingly vacant blue sky was infested with a dozen or so larger grey drones – marked FuelCorps on their undercarriages.
“The voice has come from camouflaged surveillance machines,” shouted Saartjie. “Nothing more, nothing less. Rest up here, while we Three confer.”
The Three. Saartjie, Fola and I, Graham.
Saartjie brought her hover-frame to earth, with some difficulty, on the small sandy rise on which Fola and I stood. Saartjie’s aged and wrinkled face was dripping – whether from the mental effort of steering the frame with her neural implant, or the gathering heat of the day, I couldn’t tell. Fola helped wrestle the anti-grav frame down safely, given the growing wind, which, as an early summer South Easter, I had known in younger years as the Cape Doctor. The wind’s clutches were cold, however, as if it carried ghosts, all the way up from Antarctica.
I don’t believe in ghosts. No, don’t look right!
Fola had twisted the head of her knobkierie, and her colourful drone-flies filed back into the nearby discarded shaft, as the FuelCorps crafts moved to hover en masse, directly overhead.
They spoke from above, again. “This is private property. You are loitering with intent. You have five minutes to disperse – or you will be shot. This is your last and fair warning.”
Nervous glances went upwards from many – including me – despite our selves. The Chinese drones in Harare had been unarmed; but we could not be sure, that the same held for FuelCorps.
FuelCorps – a Western multinational corporation, dealing in military grade biofuels and with deep coffers, sufficient to compensate states endlessly for any collateral corpses, in pursuit of their market gains.
Market gains, market stains. African slaves had been massive fodder for early colonial capitalism.
Now, these companies flaunted their green credentials.
And spoke from African skies.
I helped Saartjie step and stand, holding her arm as briefly as I could, while she tottered a moment. Saartjie’s solar H-F had been an expensive gift from the Afrixan Union, to assist her eighty-year-old body to cope with our mission from Lusaka south. But the journey had still extracted a heavy toll on her – and everyone.
Saartjie allowed her hover-frame to drop onto the sand, with an inner command from her neural Rig, Hottentotsgod.
“Right,” she said, wiping her brow-sweat away with a sleeve, “Let’s cut to the chase, we have very little time. Can you reconfirm that none of the biofuels they produce is for Africa, Graham?”
I did not need to consult my own Rig, Wormwood aka Cyril, to answer. “Not one ear of corn, Saartjie. All for the American-Sino War effort. And we have offered them more than the legal minimum compensation required, as decreed by the Land Reclamation Act of Afrixa, 2049.”
Saartjie cued her smart specs translucent again. “There’s just one person inside that building, but they have enough armament, to hold off a regular army.”
“We can still fight!” Fola picked up her knobkierie and lifted it high above her head, flexing her biceps under her grey T-shirt.
“Four minutes!” boomed the drones.
Saartjie shook her head as she looked behind us, to the residue of our ‘Keeper army’, broken by the arduous journey of clearing African land and water. “It looks like we will all need fucking hover-frames, if we want to move again. I will pray for reinforcements. I will call on some Real Big Fuckers for help.”
Her swearing had become louder and longer, with the gathering miles.
Saartjie closed her eyes and clutched at the ostrich shell necklace around her neck; her long grey locks hanging over her shoulders. She muttered a string of clicks, low, under her breath.
/Xam San. I have no idea what she is whispering. So few people know the old languages anymore. But what good is a prayer, in the face of a fucking bullet? Is she losing it?
I kept my face straight, though, although my own feet were rough and raw in brown battered boots. I had at times opted for private taxis along the way. But I am getting on too, after all.
Fola joined the rest of the brigade, as if trying to rally the troops, gesticulating furiously. Now, we were mostly women, many seated with backs against small and sparse supply sacks; just a few in solar-powered wheelchairs. A tired and frenzied hum of conversation grew louder, in languages both colonial and indigenous, from the disappeared states of the Congo, Burundi, Kenya, and Zambia, amongst others.
“Three minutes!”
The Keepers stirred anxiously, and many started getting back to their feet.
Saartjie opened her eyes and sighed deeply, again, “This land was stolen from we, the /Xam San and First People, by the invading Dutch, more than four hundred years ago. Now is the time for The Great Reclamation. I want to take this building without bloodshed. Do you want to try and negotiate a rapid online deal with FuelCorps one last time, Diplomat?”
That’s me, for what I’m worth.
I shook my head, fear rising sharply inside. No blood? Is she crazy? We are exposed here. I don’t want to die now. “No! They’re based in Texas and have a White Brotherhood leadership structure. They’ve seen me on video and said ’No!’ even more loudly. One official even called me a – a – fucking race traitor.”
Saartjie tossed her head back to laugh, a hearty guffaw that shook her broad shoulders and belly, ruffling her green and grey camouflage shirt and coat. “Because you’re white? Race, the enduring lie.”
“Two minutes!”
How can she laugh, as time runs out on us? Has she truly gone mad? Sudden onset dementia? We need to get out of here.
Fola strode back to where we stood; on a small rise of detritus that smelt of stale shit and buzzed with flies. An old waste midden, no doubt left by the VryGrond squatters who had been forcibly evicted by FuelCorps.
Fola swatted a fly, homing in on the sweat around her lips. “Shall we attack, Saartjie?”
Saartjie laughed again, just a short bark this time, as she looked up at the tall woman. “We are clearly outgunned here, Fola. The threat of violence from our stun sticks and taser bolts does not deter them at all. Look.”
She pointed.
The yellow building had titanium buffers at the base, anchored with a slab of finality. The high surrounding fences crackled with deadly electricity, and steel turrets on the four main post heads glinted with swivelling smart-guns.
The fenced field of green had a small metal container near the gate, festooned with anchored robots, all with rough ground tracks and gun pivots.
“We are no match for mobile warbots. No one is even bothering to come out to try and mollify us.” She swiped a fly away from her own brow. “To them, we are just fucking flies.”
“One minute!” The drones overhead began to hum loudly, as if rising towards a deadly crescendo.
“What else can we do? No time left!” said Fola, tersely.
We can run – or surrender and retreat? I didn’t sign up for death.
“We do what we’ve always done with our enemies,” Saartjie said, “we talk… and in this new age, we make sure we don’t fucking pay for it later!”
“But their bosses have said no,” I said, battling to stop myself from running.
“Graham, for a sixty-year-old man, you can be so fucking naïve. Let’s go talk to the one person they’ve left on the ground, to oversee their weaponised garden…Let’s go talk to their gardener.”
And she stepped backwards onto her reactivated hover-frame and waved me to follow, pivoting to glide towards the building. She raised her arms and palms high in the air, in passive supplication and surrender. “Don’t shoot. We two are unarmed. We would talk, that’s all.”
Gun turrets spun, to track her approach.
“You have ten minutes to talk.” One of the drones peeled away to track her.
“Shit!” I said, and followed, with stiff and reluctant legs.
Saartjie Baartman was that sort of person. We’d followed her into so many predicaments before… and we had survived and overcome.
But what if she’s now suddenly and completely dementing?
Still, I followed, with my bladder and bowels clenched.
Thankfully, the grey drones had all become silent again, as if their imminent death threat was held in abeyance.
The wind wafted in off the sea, chilling the bake of the sun on our skins. A dark shadow was growing on the horizon – not rain, surely, in this parched land?
It’s as if I am walking back in time.
I remembered, from younger years living here, that this was called a black South Easter.
Again, I shivered.
Was it the guns blinking down on us from the sharp, buzzing fence?
Or a sense that Something Big was coming.
A storm?
Another shiver – no, surely, surely not ghosts.
I really don’t believe in ghosts.
But those dark clouds were coming, fast.
***
A short stone path led to the front door of the building, which, on closer inspection, was a drab bureaucratic brown. Large signpost on the wall in red: FuelCorps. Private Property. Friendly Fuel for Families. Approach, On Pain of Death.
“Any sign of a doorbell?” Saartjie gave me a wry smile, gesturing at the buzzing electrified gate, with its massive electric lock and two steel cameras at the top swivelled in our direction.
I shrugged – and then jumped, as the brown metal door cranked open, with a grinding scrape.
A smooth-shaven middle-aged man stepped out, clumsily, encased as he was in a combat straitjacket, riddled with weaponry. Even his legs were stiffened, inside Kevlar strappings.
My heart sank.
Not at his weaponry, which was intimidating, but at his tanned whiteness.
“What do you want?”
English, not Afrikaans speaking.
Saartjie bowed, a slight, subtle bend – respect, but only so much. The rest had to be earned. “I am Saartjie Baartman of the San, First People. This is our land and I claim the right to occupy this building. May I ask: who are you, and where are you from?”
The man could not bow in return, locked rigid in his suit-weapon. Instead, he opened his empty palms. “I am Colin van Deventer, caretaker of this property, owned legally by FuelCorps. I come from here, born and bred. I’m afraid I cannot let you in – my employers will not agree. Take it up with them.”
“We have,” I said, “They were not reasonable. We hope you will be more so.” Shit. My legs below my shorts stung, from wind building to a sand blaster, and raising dust devils.
The man clattered closer, peering at us through the bars of the gate. “Howzit, my china. Who the fuck are you, broer, and where are you from?”
“I’m Graham Mason, and I’m not your brother. I’m here to help you consider letting us in.”
“Bottom line is, you know what we want,” Saartjie smiled, “Our journey, and those of our northern Earth and Water Keeper brothers and sisters, is well known. We want our land back, which was first ours and then stolen from us. This land is us.”
Colin shook his head, protecting his face from a burst of sand, with a raised and armoured right fist. “I have important crops to protect, for which I am well paid.”
“Blood corn. Join us and we will look after you well – we are building a new system together, where money has no meaning, as we share and protect all, with each other and the Earth.”
The man laughed, struggling to get his metalled right arm up to his face, in an apparent attempt to hide his laughter too. “Sweet words, gogo, but will they feed and clothe me and my family right now, up until I die? Can you guarantee me that?”
Saartjie sighed and looked at me, “I may be old, but I’m no grandmother, my boy. But no, there are no guarantees for anything. Things happen beyond our control, many times. But plans for a UBI are well advanced now. You will no longer be a wage slave.”
“And what about the Chinese? Don’t tell me you have been able to throw them out of Africa completely?”
“No,” I said, “But we have forced them to renegotiate terms and agree rentals not ownership, all of which favours Africans now: Afrixa is owned by no one – and everyone. Your bosses have not been open to any reasonable or fair negotiations.”
“Fair is funny, coming from another white man… you haven’t been here for a long time, though, have you? Tell me, where comfortably else are you from – Britain, Australia, New Zealand? You’re nothing but a fucking soutie.”
Ha – respect is not due to me, I guess, but I haven’t been called that in a long time. Derogatory Afrikaans term for a white male English settler – short for soutpiel, or salty penis. One foot in Africa, the other in Britain – with your penis dangling in the Atlantic Ocean in-between.
I did not get angry. I’ve learned not to rise to the bait, in sensitive negotiations. I was uneasy, though. Sun gone. Dark? Clouds racing above us, as sand blisters us.
Yes, I have always felt in-between. I guess that’s why Saartjie picked me as Chief Negotiator in those heady Lusakan days, when I was newly off the volunteer plane from Aotearoa, carrying a ton of experience in organisational conflict management – having sorted out an agreement on water rights between FreeFlow and Maori activists.
“Aotearoa,” I said, “It’s not called New Zealand anymore.”
“Whatever you want to fucking call it. It’s still a bolt hole, on your rabbit run from here.”
Ouch.
“For fuck’s sake, both of you!” Saartjie looked furious, her wrinkled brow crumpled with rage. “Enough of your white male shit! Why do you think we’re here in the first place? Do either of you know which one factor has mitigated the climate catastrophe the most, within our world?”
“Of course, I do, it’s the education and empowerment of females,” snapped Colin.
“No it’s not,” I said, “It’s the wealth curbs, taxes and redistributions, to decrease global inequalities.”
“You’re both wrong!” Saartjie rose into the air, but rocking, as the wind howled and buffeted her frame. “It’s many countries following the United Nations Directive for the world to respect and learn, from the colonised First Peoples. Colin van Deventer, as an Elder of the First People of this land, I command you to open up this facility.”
“No!” The man spat, and the gate sizzled with his spittle.
Saartjie rose over the fence.
Colin shrugged his arms and pencil thin casings in his battle corset – and along his wrists – locked and loaded small, but no doubt deadly projectiles, with a series of clicking hisses.
“Remember Marikana,” Colin said, “Remember Harare. This bloodbath is your doing, not mine.”
Oh, shit…
“No!” Saartjie shouted, pointing at the darkened sky above. “Who is this, riding in on the Wind-Storm? !ke e: /xarra //ke…” The rest of her ancient words blew away in the wind, as the old woman bobbed and tilted, battling the brutal storm bursts.
Saartjie has indeed fucking lost it.
“Alert. Invasion imminent. Aggressive defences activated.” The drone overhead began its loud hum again.
<Incoming,> warned Wormwood, in my ear.
Oh shit.
Fola was leading an advancing pincer of people – but they were bent and struggling, against the rapidly rising, almost gale like wind. But they’re not sixty anymore…there’s now at least six hundred, or so?
“Foreigners! Foreigners!” blared the sky-drone; hum ratcheting up to an electronic scream.
Warbots crawled off the base of the wall, whirring tracks whining their menace. Small exit hatches creaked open along the fence.
<Not foreigners – Local volunteers, just arrived, from nearby shacks. Evictees from here. We’ve got lots more casualties coming then…>
Wormwood can be so fucking dispassionate! It’s all going to hell, fast as fuck…
I ran away.
The sky split open with a lightning flash, a peal of thunder, and a burst of rain.
The cold rain made me gasp and stopped my staggering run. Something’s shifted.
I turned and stared at the FuelCorps building, through a dizzying hail of rain. ‘Magnify optics, Cyril.’
Colin had fallen to his knees, head tilted back as he blinked into the storm above him, screaming repeatedly: “Nongqawuse! Nongqawuse! Nonggawuse!”
I knew that name from school. The fifteen-year-old umXhosa prophetess who led the Cattle Killing Rebellion against British settlers in the mid-eighteen hundred.
The dead will arise – and decolonise Africa.
Instead, the amaXhosa nation paid their price in sacrificed cattle – and mass starvation.
So, I looked up too, into the heart of the storm.
Racing grey-black clouds, sheet lightning flash – a boiling cloud at the storm’s epi-centre – was that a human, for the barest of moments; swirling into focus, then gone, as rain sleeted down from her belly?
FuelCorps drones dropped like stunned flies from the sky.
Warbots pouring through exit holes stopped in their tracks.
Dead.
Slowly, the building gate clanked open, its’ lock disarmed.
Rain poured, like drops of cold lead, as Colin stood and staggered to the gate, waving us in with a drenched and defeated air.
The storm thundered its way north.
<Hottentotsgod sent me a message. Two words: No blood.>
I had not trusted Saartjie. Instead, I had broken – and run.
I stepped aside to let Fola lead the others in, to embrace Saartjie, who had landed safely on reclaimed Afrixan soil.
***
Saartjie dropped to the wet sand and wiggled her bum into a small sunken spot, digging her palms with obvious delight into the sand, to let the damp grains trickle messily between her splayed fingers.
She gave a little squeal of delight and patted the ground next to her.
“Sit, Mister Mason.”
I sat down carefully next to her, cross-legged, but with slow and stiff difficulty.
She gave me a faintly disapproving look. “Come on Graham, take your battered boots off for God’s sake and feel the sand between your toes.”
So I did.
My toes were bruised blue, with blood crusted from a heel blister on my left foot. The sand soothed them, as I shuffled them deeper into the soil.
And then I cried.
And cried.
And cried.
“…Sorry,” I managed eventually.
She patted my knee. “You’ve been on this beach before, haven’t you?”
Dumbly, I nodded. Walking the dogs, with mom and dad, every Sunday, for many years, growing up here. Then they died, while I was away earning foreign wealth, unable to come home to bury them, in the Pandemic of ’43.
“So have I,” she said. “Well, my ancestors actually, for thousands of years, before the Dutch arrived and hunted us. They called us the Strandlopers, the Beach Walkers, as if that were all we did.”
“A journey full circle,” I said.
She smiled – seemingly a little slowly and sadly? – as she played with the sand between her fingers again. “I see both of your feet are firmly planted here and where they belong, soutie.”
I laughed, but the laughter racked my chest painfully.
Some of the Keepers frolicked happily in the shallows. The tide was coming in and I caught a bracing stench of fresh seaweed.
“Do you know why I accepted you for this mission?”
“I think so,” I said. “I’m mostly a decent conflict negotiator – when I’m not thinking of running away.”
“No,” she smiled, “Your ex-wife Lizzie recommended you to me. She told me you’re rough around the edges, but still willing to learn and help. You know what she spent years learning, of course, so that she could speak with so many more of us?”
I nodded, “isiZulu.” It had looked too hard, so I had let Lizette get on with it, alone, alongside her online class.
“Yebo. If you cannot understand our languages, you cannot hear us… What is that mountain over there?”
“Table Mountain,” I said, without thinking.
She shook her head. “The Hoerikwaggo. The Mountains of the Sea. As for me, I am tired of swearing and shouting, just to be heard by others. Now, I would just speak the language of my birth, quietly, with my family.”
She gave a hand signal and Fola stood next to us, her knobkierie trailing in the sand.
I am dismissed.
Saartjie kicked the nearby hover-frame gently, with her left foot.
“This machine has carried me far, but it has killed me too. I am too old to manage such a thing, for so long, with my brain-friend, Hottentotsgod. I have nothing left in me. My work is done. I sit where I will be buried, for this is the beach I would walk — soon, along with my ancestors and with much lighter legs, at last.”
Saartjie kissed her fingers and touched my forehead.
“Goodbye Mister Mason. Keep learning. You’re still a young man.”
Stunned, I staggered up to standing, battered boots in hand.
Saartjie signalled Fola to sit, whilst still fanning sand between her fingers.
This time, my tears were quiet.
I bowed and left.
***
So they buried Saartjie Baartman on Muizenberg Beach.
Here, in time, she will walk.
Saartjie Baartman: the so-called Hottentot Venus.
Saartjie Baartman: Earth-Keeper, Afrixan Warrior.
Saartjie Baartman: Beach Walker.
As for me, I began the walk northwards towards the Marina da Gama. Wet bandages flapped loose above my boots and the grit of sand against my heel and soul grated painfully, but I walked on.
I am alive, even though I’m rough and ready. Trust Lizzie.
In my right pocket, I caressed seeds Saartjie had given me, when she found me waiting alone, outside the FuelCorps gate. My mission now? I will plant these seeds near the house I grew up in, and talk to whomever might be there, even if they are ghosts.
The sun disappeared westward, behind the Hoerikwaggo spine to my left, while the south-easter dropped to a cool whisper through the trees.
‘Saar…kie…Saar…kie…’’
Of course. What else would the wind say?
Baartman.
Here, Africa begins.
What was that phrase Lizzie, my ex-wife had mentioned, while learning isiZulu, which many traditional storytellers had apparently used, down through the ages?
Ah yes, cosi cosi iyaphela.
A small white e-car stopped next to me and hooted, window opening. Colin van Deventer sat in the passenger seat of the self-driving car and thumb gestured to me that there was space behind him. “Hey boet, you want a lift?”
I opened the door and got in.
We are indeed all brothers and sisters, on this fragile Earth.
VryGrond, Camissa, November 2053.
Ends
Representing Sara Baartman in the New Millennium – Zoë Wicomb and Desiree Lewis (2021) in Surfacing: On Being Black & Feminist in South Africa, Wits University Press.