Rutherford sobered up as he realised that if one man’s hero could be another man’s villain, then the converse was also true: one man’s villain could be another man’s hero.

Rutherford found himself wondering who Joseth’s heroes were. Did they share the same heroes? Were their reasons for setting up Golide Gumede the same? Did it matter?

THE VILLAGERS

As soon as the two men left, the villagers congregated at Chief Cele Mkhize’s homestead for an impromptu meeting. Those two cannot be trusted, they said. Did you see how the black one never looked anyone in the eye? A man like that has too much to hide. And what was going on with the white one? Why was his hand always fluttering over his chest like that? Some kind of nervous tic, probably. Nervous men were not to be trusted. And what business did a white man have being nervous? Besides, they were not policemen, they were intelligence boys. You could tell this not only by the fact that they did not wear uniforms, but also by the fact that they did not introduce themselves or provide their names at any point. They always demanded everything and gave nothing, those intelligence boys.

The wireless said, every hour of every day, that there had been an end to hostilities; that there was currently a ceasefire after an agreement had been reached at Lancaster House in London; and that there would most likely be majority rule and independence in the very near future. The voices on the wireless sounded optimistic and almost certain about the future, but they would, wouldn’t they, given that radio stations were owned by the government?

The battle-battered and war-weary villagers found it difficult to share in the hope for a better future. They had heard it all before. How many talks and agreements had there been over the years? Earlier in the year, those of them deemed eligible had been corralled and forced to vote for the country’s first black president. He would, they had been informed, by his mere presence, bring an end to the war. He would work well with the whites and ensure that, for the first time in the country’s history, things would run fairly and smoothly between the races. The villagers had obediently voted for the man they had been told to vote for, and he had indeed been elected as the country’s first-ever black president. But then the boys in the bush had refused to recognise him as such and had chosen instead to call him a puppet of the white minority regime. The international community, in seeming agreement with the boys in the bush, had refused to recognise the legitimacy of the new president, and the war had raged on.

When the boys from the bush arrived after the elections, they punished the villagers for having been so gullible as to vote for an obvious buffoon. They made all the men who had voted lower their trousers, lie on their bellies and place their hands above their heads. They made the rest of the villagers form a circle around the men. The boys from the bush then whipped the naked buttocks of the men as they lay there in front of their wives and children. They whipped them with sjamboks until their behinds were not only patterned with welts but also raw with broken skin and oozing with blood. The boys from the bush punished every man who had voted, including Chief Cele Mkhize. And they wanted to be the ones to inherit the earth, these boys who had no respect for authority … or their elders … or their traditions … or their own people? Afterwards, without a hint of irony, these very same boys who had beaten the men asked the women to show their support for the liberation struggle by cooking for them, which the women did. After eating, the boys from the bush built a huge fire and forced the hurt men, the harassed women, and the hungry children to dance around it and sing songs of liberation – songs of freedom.