‘Nothing conclusive, I’m afraid,’ Dr Mabuse said, still looking at the skyline. ‘Body found in situ, but an animal – a dog most probably – got to her before she was discovered. Licked her fingers. Contaminated evidence.’

‘In situ … so you think she was killed in that bush?’ Spokes said.

‘All indications point to that conclusion.’

‘And yet,’ Spokes was back to being himself again, ‘it’s been reported that the body was dumped in the bush by two men … one white, the other black … driving an expensive car.’

Dr Mabuse continued looking at the smoky skyline and said nothing.

April 1980

APRIL 1980

Spokes

SPOKES

By the time Spokes arrived at White City Stadium, Silas Mthimkhulu had already cast his spell over the crowd. They were in an uproar, ululating, clapping their hands, stomping their feet, shouting, ‘I-DLA-ZO-NKE!’ or chanting his name – ‘Mthimkhulu! Mthimkhulu! Mthimkhulu!’ – at the end of every point he made.

Silas Mthimkhulu stood at the podium wearing, for him, a somewhat subdued and obviously tailored three-piece navy-blue suit. Gone were his maroon bell-bottomed trousers and wide-lapelled shirts. He looked exactly like the person he was: a middle-aged man who had long arrived in the world. He spoke into the microphone, and Spokes heard his voice come through the nearest loudspeaker.

Spokes watched as Silas Mthimkhulu smiled at the crowd as though he were a beneficent saviour. Like a god, he raised a hand to silence them, and they obeyed.

‘You know what they say about us in the press?’ Silas Mthimkhulu said. ‘They say we are Marxists. That we are intent on making you socialist slaves. That we want to take away your freedoms. They speak of freedom now as if they know what it is. Where has this noble idea of freedom been for the past one hundred years?’

‘I-DLA-ZO-NKE!’ the crowd shouted.

Silas Mthimkhulu milked the moment for all it was worth before stepping away from behind the podium and standing beside it. ‘Now tell me, good people,’ he said, turning his dapper-looking self around in a slowly rotating revolution. ‘Does this look like a Marxist to you?’

Laughter erupted from the crowd, and Spokes suspected that some of the laughter was uncertain because the truth was that many people did not actually know what a Marxist was – let alone what one looked like.

Satisfied with himself, Silas Mthimkhulu went to stand behind the podium again before leaning conspiratorially towards the crowd and speaking into the microphone in a softer voice: ‘Come now, good people. You know me.’

‘Mthimkhulu! Mthimkhulu! Mthimkhulu!’ the crowd chanted before he could finish his sentence.

Silas Mthimkhulu obviously had things well in hand. Those who could not easily grasp English, and therefore could not understand everything he was saying, were too carried away by the spirit of equality and camaraderie imbued in his performance to care for much else.

‘How many of you here shop at an Idlazonke store?’

The crowd’s enthusiastic applause made Spokes’s ears ring.