As a part-time hunter for absconding fathers, debt defaulters and summons dodgers, some hopeful souls obviously thought I might be able to do something. Anything. Especially since I had once known the supposed victim at the heart of the suspected crime. So I got the phone call and a large, cash-filled fast-mail envelope from nowhere in particular (it had been posted at the main Johannesburg post office). The voice on the phone had given me the name of a contact in Mafikeng, the provincial seat of the North West Province. It was the name of a high-ranking official in the province’s Department of Education. This contact was not to be involved except as a go-between, the voice on the phone had stressed. This was transparent nonsense of course. Sooner or later everybody gets involved, including not-so-innocent bystanders.
My partners, whose business flies under the radar as Ditoro and Thekiso: Security Consultants and Private Investigators, had nodded their bald heads gloomily as I had given them the bare bones of my new assignment earlier that morning.
I had been at high school with Thekiso before he left the country in the aftermath of the winter of 1976. He had been two years ahead of me, and in high school that meant we were a universe and a mile apart. He had not even remembered Mamorena when I sketched my new assignment for them, but had mumbled something about old flames being the warmest, whatever that meant.
I had promised to keep in touch and as usual they blessed me with the grim smiles they always produce at the beginning of every freelance job.
Four hours later I had arrived in Mafikeng in one of the Johannesburg-Mafikeng minibus taxis to be met by Tiro. It had been four hours of uproarious slander, scandal, sport, religion and, inevitably, politics as the ten other passengers battled it out between them, the driver acting as a stern referee. Tiro was no match for that revved-up, scrapping crowd in that busy green taxi, I thought, as I looked across at him, but nonetheless I was grateful that he had decided to hold his tongue for the time being.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
“We are here,” the R. E. D. said.
We were there indeed. I took my first look at the place that was not shown on any of the maps I had consulted in my hurried preliminary research. A sad cluster of prefabricated sheds with badly-fitted windows made up the school.
“We are here,” R. E. D. Tiro said again. His voice had gone deep underground. He looked angry.
Two young men came out of different doors and stopped, looking at each other warily, as if uncertain which one of them would be the first to approach us.
“What are you standing there for?” R. E. D. Tiro asked fiercely, climbing out of the car. “I am the regional director! Come and meet your new colleague!”
He was very angry. I don’t know why. Perhaps he was not used to acting in an underhand manner and was embarrassed. He was, after all, putting his whole career on the line by subverting the rules of his own department. I suppose he was entitled to a little anger. But just a little, I thought, as I also climbed out of the car.
“Where is the acting Principal?” he shouted. Someone else might have left out the “acting” bit, but not J. B. M. Tiro
A short, stout, balding man emerged from the door of the only stand-alone structure and approached us with short, brisk steps, frowning disapprovingly until he recognised the R. E. D. He could have been the R. E. D.’s twin brother except that his spectacles were cloudy and his suit a wrinkled relic of a bygone age.
The R. E. D. glowered at him menacingly, and turned towards the three classrooms from which a most horrid howling could be heard.
The Principal bowed his head as if trying to identify individual voices within the uproar. “It is just the change of lessons,” he said as if trying to soothe the R. E. D. “You know . . . teachers going from one class to the next . . .”
The two teachers looked both defiant and abashed. Not an easy thing to achieve, so I gave them a bright smile. But the R. E. D. was now, suddenly, in a hurry, pushing all the little annoyances aside with a sweep of his short arm, and the two delinquents, sensing a storm building up from a different direction, scuttled off. The introductions were postponed.
“This is the temporary teacher I told you about. His name is Thabang Maje. Remember, he is only TEM-PO-RA-RY! Probably for less than three months until we can get you a PER-MA-NENT replacement. So there are no official forms to fill out. Everything has been done at head office.”
As he said this, I once again wondered about R. E. D. Tiro. What did the people who had brought us together have on him that was so damaging that he was prepared to break the rules with such suicidal abandon?
He was getting hot and angry again, his brow shiny with beads of sweat under the heatless winter sun. He looked at me scornfully, accusing me with his small eyes for the fabrications he was forced to utter.
The Principal coughed and glanced doubtfully at me. “Of course, sir. I hope he is qualified to . . .”
“Very qualified to teach anything you want him to,” Tiro said crushingly. “He is one of the all-rounders. He is sent to where there is a need. To fill the gaps as they arise. So make the most of him while you still have him here. He . . .” He stopped and barked out a short laugh. “Just listen to us,” he began again in a more conciliatory tone. “Just listen to us. We have not even exchanged names properly yet!” It was his show, but he was spreading the blame.
J. B. M. Tiro drew himself up and straightened his tie. We did the same. Three African men standing in the cold in a barren school yard on the edge of the new South Africa, trying to look dignified. Two short, stout, middle-aged men and a tall, slim, younger one, who could barely understand one another’s worlds. Three Batswana men alienated from one another by education, status, background, age, history and a language that was not their own.
The R. E. D. began to speak in his high diplomat voice. The voice I had found so soporific during the journey out to the school. He was listing the Principal’s virtues, interests and concerns in a bristling staccato: “Long career . . . dedicated service . . . the rural African woman and child . . . hard work . . . forgotten people . . . dying cultural values . . . UNESCO . . . no good land . . . Zimbabwe . . . restitution . . . AIDS . . . World Cup . . . hope and stability. Meet Mr T. B. Mokoka.”
The transition from smooth oration to exasperated introduction was so abrupt that neither I nor Mokoka moved or said anything for a few seconds. Personally, I had expected more – I had heard much more of the same on the drive out here – but J. B. M. Tiro had obviously reached and passed his daily quota of homilies.
The R. E. D. fixed his eyes on T. B. Mokoka’s anxious face, and I stumbled forward to shake his hand. He was, after all, the PRIN-CI-PAL of Marakong-a-Badimo Primary School, Molomo District, North-West Province, Republic of South Africa. Another grand old-timer who faced the world with only his initials as his spear and shield, I thought, as he shook my hand limply.
* * *
An hour later I found myself in the Principal’s office. I had expected a messy, gloomy cave, but it was a model of organisation and order. Even my two battered suitcases had been neatly placed beside one of the steel cabinets stationed against the right-hand wall. The wall opposite them was used as a bulletin board, and for maps, scientific data, mathematical formulae and stern Biblical exhortations. Two tables had been pushed against the lower half of the map wall and these had a neat row of children’s exercise books on top of them.
I was seated in a plastic chair facing the Principal’s polished desk and its neat piles of papers. Behind the desk a large window overlooked a scraggly vegetable patch. There was a tired, muddy stream a few hundred metres beyond that, and still further away I could see what could only be the outskirts of the village of Marakong-a-Badimo.
Sometime after the RED’s departure we had begun speaking in a hybrid of Setswana and English. This had seemed to lift Mokoka’s spirits somewhat. He had asked me about all the Maje’s he had