Willemse had reminded his audience that the wealth of the city they were in – Johannesburg – had been built on what was in the land: gold. ‘That was fine for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,’ he said, ‘but here, now, in the twenty-first century the land itself is precious. Land is the new gold! And we are blessed with more than we need. To be worried about little bits of paper that transfer small parcels of land from a white man to a black woman, or from the rich to the poor, is yesterday’s politics. You don’t create wealth by passing the land between ourselves. Imagine if we had dug the gold up and just shared it out among us. No, you create wealth by realising its full potential – and that means getting in foreign investment.’

He’d come close to committing sacrilege when he’d derided those politicians who went back to their rural home, put on traditional garb, joined in ceremonial dances and delivered a speech about the pleasures of a bucolic life. He didn’t mention any names but everyone knew who he was talking about – a former president who still wielded considerable influence.

‘It’s all right for them. They get into their air-conditioned limos and head back to the city. And when they get there do you think they sit down to a plate of pap and meat, like their friends and relatives in the rural areas?’ He’d left the question hanging, the rhetorical device more telling than anything else he might have said.

The speech had elicited a standing ovation. Overnight Willemse had become a darling of the international lecture circuit, that group of men and women who move from the sanitised first-class cabin of a plane to the carpeted splendour of a five-star luxury hotel without really having to touch the ground. Here was a man who was willing to think the unthinkable, to speak out against tired old dogmas. Within days, the director of the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland had been in touch to offer him an open-ended invitation to deliver a speech at a future meeting. Jake Willemse, it seemed, could do no wrong.

Lindi let him walk out of earshot. ‘What an unspeakable little shit he is!’

‘Oh! He’s that, all right. He’s also one of the most powerful men in the country with some even more powerful friends.’

‘And what was he trying to imply? I mean about Lesedi being killed right after you saw him.’

‘It’s rubbish. He thinks he can frighten me.’

‘Frighten you, how?’

‘They’re trying to pin this thing on somebody.’ Kagiso waved his hand towards the church. ‘Anybody.’

‘But you? Hang on, let me get this straight. From what Maude said you work for a charity, right?’

‘Right.’

‘I looked it up, Soil of Africa. It campaigns for land reform.’

‘Right,’ he replied abruptly.

‘Christ! Kagiso! I’m not reading out a checklist.’