It was never meant to be like this. Sabotage, yes. Propaganda, yes. All of that and more – but not this. Not murder. This hideous mob violence was never part of the plan. In Johannesburg, the iconic Ponte City is on fire; here in Mpumalanga Province the homes of Mozambican migrant workers have been ransacked; and even in far away Western Cape a sixteen-year-old Somali girl is gang-raped and left bleeding by a drainage canal on the edge of the Khayelitsha squatter camp. Where did all this anger come from?

In his mind, he turns over every word he’s ever written since they – the Land Collective – started their clandestine campaign against land sales. Which phrase, which sentence, which exhortation could anyone have construed as licence to murder? He realises he’d never really thought about who was reading his statements or understood how they might be transmuted in the reading. He deals in ideals; it had never occurred to him that others might trade in vengeance. He imagines how, like a game of digital Chinese whispers, his messages might have been forwarded from reader to reader, each one adding their own meaning to those words he’d thought he’d composed with such care and purpose. He was never in control. He knows that now.

He keys in a series of passwords, following an encrypted path till he reaches his destination. His last entry is there. It was written late on the day of Lesedi Motlantshe’s murder. He rereads it.

Lesedi Motlantshe was a SON OF AFRICA, a child raised on the milk of freedom. He did not deserve to die. Our campaign is to PROTECT THE LAND, NOT KILL ITS PEOPLE. It was not Lesedi who wanted to sell the land to FOREIGNERS. It is the SYSTEM. The deals are being signed by big men sitting in Johannesburg, London, Dubai – not here in our BELOVED MPUMALANGA. Lesedi was born rich but that is not a crime. His life was the life many of our people have dreamed of. Whoever has killed him has not advanced our cause. This HEINOUS ACT will alienate us from many people who looked at Lesedi like their own child. WE ARE NOT THUGS, we are not tsotsis, we are ACTIVISTS. Those who have done this thing must go to the police. We must not let our cause be derailed. We must not let the blood of this innocent man stain our HISTORIC MISSION.

It’s a little after two in the morning. In a few hours’ time he would have to set off for work. To his other life.