Excerpt
1961
Now that was a bad year.
Actually, that was an esabeka year, a year so bad it gave him nightmares still.
The year opened gently, with no hint of the tremors and traumas to come. But there were rumblings up North and – although he was growing comfortable in his Native Affairs job as a clerk in kwaMashu, near Durban – he finally decided that with great power, comes at least some small accountability.
There was a good man – an important man – in trouble, and he needed help.
Gatsha Mchunu – as he called himself then – did not want to lose his job, so he took leave and headed north. He moved rapidly, partly hanging on the backs of trains, other parts leaping across borders at night with great strides that took him hundreds of feet into the air.
His face was masked; his body encased in a plain black body-suit for night time camouflage.
Power, he thought, I shall call myself Power.
He looked down at his body and thought again, Black Power.
And so, at last, Black Power arrived in Katanga province of the newly independent Congolese Republic.
Elizabethville, generally a quiet and sleepy copper town he'd heard, was humming with activity and military convoys moving in and out. He saw some white faces, overheard some South African accents and knew there were mercenaries and probably South African military, as well as Katangese secessionist forces about.
By this time he was dressed in a poor, ill-fitting jacket and trousers, scuffed shoes and hat crammed down on his broad head. Masks would only attract unnecessary attention.
He was given wary directions to the airport by a few locals, who appeared to mistrust both his accent and his size.
The airport was cordoned off, so he waited for night in nearby bushes. Wet from a sudden furious burst of late afternoon warm rain, he changed out of his sodden suit.
Masked, suited and booted, he waited.
A few distant flashes of lightning lit up the dull runway.
The gods must be about.
It was then that he saw a plane had already landed.
There was no more time to wait.
He hurtled over the fence, bounded once on the tarmac and smashed through the back door of the plane.
It was a small plane, but he could smell blood on board.
Only one man stood facing him, looking startled and bemused. A white man, dressed in pilot overalls, who spoke in French.
"What do you want?" The man looked wan and tired, as if he had been ill recently.
"Where is he?"
The pilot shrugged, "They have taken him somewhere, I don't know…"
Black Power looked outside, his gaze scanning the horizon for movement. There was a flicker in the distance, a jeep heading off road.
Night fell fast in this area of the world.
He stepped outside, crouched and leapt – and in one furious bound, he was soaring over the perimeter fence.
A few troops below opened fire on him, bullets whistling past in the deepening gloom.
As he soared through the air, he watched.
The jeep was parked by a ramshackle house, roof crumbling in disrepair.
He was coming back to Earth.
Gunshots.
Within the house.
He crashed through the roof and landed, boots buckling wooden floorboards beneath him.
He could smell death.
Warm and recent death.
Patrice Lumumba lay, broken by boots and bullets, crumpled on his back and bayonetted too, just for good measure.
The other men in the room recoiled as dust and roof debris continued to cascade down.
Black Power took in the scene, with a cool and gathering rage.
The group were Belgians and Katangese, although they also had the background stench of the CIA hovering about them. Two other men lay dead nearby. The man holding the bloodied bayonet was a Katangese government official he vaguely knew.
With one step forward, he snapped the man's neck with a flick of the fingers on his right hand.
He caught the dropped rifle and with one smooth motion slung the bayonet in and through the torso of a Belgian official, one who had looked the most senior, perhaps even in charge.
The man coughed bright and bubbling blood.
No one moved, stunned and frozen in disbelief.
Without a word, Black Power stooped and cradled the dead President Patrice Lumumba in his arms.
With a scream of fury he crashed through the roof again, hurtling skywards, wishing he could fly away, far away, from this chaotic, damaged Earth.
