"Perhaps I will return here one day with the special machines that are necestry to reach the king's resting place."
"Perhaps," Vusamanz'iagreed. "I will make sacrifice and consult the spirits, They might condescend to show me the way." At the entrance of the cave he paused and saluted them. "When it is safe, I shall return. Stay in peace, my children." And then he was gone.
"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.