"Something tells me it's going to be a long, hard time," said Craig, "and not the most attractive place to pass it." They were all active and restlessly intelligent people, and the confinement began to irk almost immediately.
Tacitly they divided the cavern, a communal area around either end for each couple.
the hearth and a private area at The seepage of water down the rock face when collected in a clay pot was sufficient for all their needs, including ablutions, and there was a vertical pothole shaft in one of the passages which served as a natural latrine. But there was nothing to read and a lack that Craig felt keenly no writing material. To alleviate the boredom, Sarah began teaching Sally-Anne Sindebele, and her progress was so rapid that she could soon follow ordinary conversation and respond to it fairly fluently.
Tungata recovered rapidly during those days of enforced inactivity. His gaunt frame filled out, the scabs on his face and body healed rapidly, and he regained his vitality. It was often Tungata who led the long rambling discussions at the fireside, and that irrepressible sense of humour that Craig remembered so well from the old days began to break through the sombre moods that had at first overwhelmed him.
When Sally-Anne made a disparaging remark about the neighbouring South African state and its apartheid polities, Tungata contradicted her with mock severity.
"No, no, Pendula-" Tungata had given her the Matabele name of "the one who always answers back" no, Pendula, rather than condemning them, we black Africans should give thanks for them every time we pray! For they can bring a hundred tribes together with a single rallying cry. It is only necessary for one of us to stand up and shout, "Racist Apartheid Boers!" and all the others stop beating each other over the head and for a moment we become a band of brothers." Sally-Anne clapped her hands. "I'd love to hear you make that speech at the next meeting of the Organization for African Unity!" Tungata chuckled at her, they were becoming good friends. "Another thing we have to be grateful for-" he went on.
"Tell me more, "she incited him.
"Those tribes down there are some of the fight ingest niggers in Africa," Tungata obeyed. "Zulus and Xhosas and Tswanas. We have got our hands full with the Shana.
Imagine if that lot were turned loose on us also. No, from now on my motto is going to be "Kiss an Afrikaner every day'T "Don't encourage him," Sarah pleaded with Sally-Anne.
"One day he is going to talk like this in front of people who will take him seriously." At other times Tungata relapsed back into those intense and dark moods. "It is like Northern Ireland or Palestine, only a hundred times bigger and more complex. This conflict between ourselves and the Shana is a microcosm of the entire problem of Africa."
"Do you see a solution?" Sally-Anne demanded.
"Only a radical and difficult one," he told her. "You see, the European powers in their nineteenth-century scramble for Africa divided the continent up amongst themselves with no thought for tribal boundaries, and it is an entrenched article of the Organization for African Unity that these boundaries are sacrosanct. One possible solution would be to overturn the article and repartition the continent along tribal b(*;ndaries, but after the terrible experience of partitior*ig India and Pakistan, no rational person would support that view. The only other solution seems to me to be a form of federal government, based loosely on the American system, with the state divided into tribal provinces possessing autonomy in their own affairs." Their talk ranged across time, and for the entertainment and instruction of the two girls, both Craig and Tungata related the history of this land between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers, with each of them concentrating on the role played by their own nations and families in the discovery and occupation and the strife that had torn it.
Twice on successive days their talk at the hearth was interrupted by sounds from the world outside the cavern the unmistakable whistling, clattering roar of a helicopter rotor hammering through the air in coarse pitch setting, and they fell silent and looked up at the roof of stone above them until the sound faded. Then the talk would turn to their chances of escape from the forces that pursued and hunted them so relentlessly.
Every second day the women came from Vusamanzi's village, travelling in the darkness of predawn to elude the es in the sky above them. They brought food and news.
ey The Third Brigade troopers had come to the village, surrounding it first and then storming in and ransacking the huts. They had cuffed one of the young girls and they had shouted threats and badgered the old man, but Vusamanzi had faced them down with dignity and in the end his formidable reputation for magic had protected them.
The soldiers had left without stealing much of value, without burning a single hut or killing more than a few chickens but they had promised to return.
However, a massive manhunt was still in progress over the entire area. On foot and from the helicopters the Shana scoured the forest and hills during the hours of daylight and hundreds of the escapees from the camp had already been recaptured. "The girls had seen them being transp reported in heavy trucks, naked and chained together.
As far as vusamanzi knew, the Shana had not yet discovered the wrecked Cessna, but it was still extremely dangerous, and Vusamanzi had ordered the girls to impress upon them they must remain in the cavern. He would come to them in person when he judged it safe to do so.
This news depressed them all and it took all Craig's best storytelling and clowning to lighten the mood in the cavern. He turned their attention back to their perennially favourite topic, the tomb of Lobengula and the vast fortune they liked to believe it contained. They had already discussed in detail the equipment that would be needed to enable a team of divers to open the tomb and reach the burial area, and now Sally-Anne asked Tungata, "Tell us, Sam, if there were a treasure, and if you could reach it, and if it were as rich as we hope, how would you use it?" 11 think it would have to be treated as belonging to the Matabele people. It would have to be placed in trust and used for their benefit, firstly to procure for them a better political dispensation. To be pragmatic, a negotiator with that sort of financial clout behind him would find it easier to get the attention of the British Foreign Office and the American State Department. He could prevail upon them to intervene. The government in Harare would have to take them seriously, options which are at present closed to us would become accessible."
"After that, it would finance all sorts of social programmes education, health, the forwarding of women's rights," Sarah said, for the moment her timidity put aside.
"You would use it to make land-purchases to add to the existing tribal trust lands Craig added, "financial assistance to the peasant farmers, aid for tractors and machinery, blood, stock improvement programmes."
"Craig," Sally-Anne laid her hand on his good leg, "isn't there any way at all to Ach the burial chamber? Couldn't YOU try another dive?"O "My precious girl, for the hundredth time, let me explain that I could probably move a single rock with each dive, and twenty dives would kill me." oh God, it's so frustrating!" Sally-Anne jumped up and began pacing up and down between them and the fire. "I feel so helpless. If we don't do something, I'm going to go mad. I feel as though I am suffocating I need a good breath of oxygen. Can't we just go outside for a few minutes?" And then immediately, she answered herself.