Summer Of Eighty-Four

Summer of Eighty-Four

A Novel

By

Rebone Makgato

MOKOPANE

South Africa

Publised by Rebone Makgato

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Rebone Makgato

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Also By Rebone Makgato

Through Thick And Thin

Out Of Africa (A Collection Of Short Stories)

A Clean Job Of Murder

The Prostitutes Of Mokopane

A Woman Denied...

Sara

More Than Just Courage

Animal City

I Love You To Death

Change

Healing

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN I WOKE up this morning, it was with an elated spirit. It was a beautiful, clear Thursday morning in the last throes of spring. Summer was in the air, and with it will come long-missed clouds that would for several months transform the skyline. I was looking forward to summer, which is my favourite season. I love the commotion that takes place in the build-up to the first rains; and when it finally comes I love the sound of rain beating relentlessly on the roof. And I just love the sheets of raindrops that engage in a losing battle, beating against the windows of my house only to lose hope and their fierce spirit, and cascade down the terrace and into the gutter. I love rain, and I missed it.

I had planned to go to Polokwane City to book my Hyundai sedan in for service. There are no Hyundai dealerships and garages here in my hometown of Mokopane. Not that business minded people doesn’t see the gap for the market. But Mokopane is small, and one wouldn’t err to feel that it is bottling one in, and a bit backward. So a lot of people who wish to do serious shopping in top-end stores inevitably trek to Polokwane City. Once I dropped my car in at the garage, I’d wait for it to be worked over and done around three or four in the afternoon. During that period of waiting, I’d have a lot of time to kill. So I decided that I’d bag in three birds with one stone.

This is what I’d do. I’d spend a large chunk of the time visiting and old acquaintance of mine by the name of Solly Mzili ka Africa. Later I’d do some essential shopping at Red Square in the CBD, and Truworths at Savannah Mall. Solly ka Afrika is an investigative journalist with Limpopo’s flagship daily, Polokwane Monitor. Mzili is a ruthless, scrupulous investigator who puts his nose in the ground once he gets a lead on a story. Two years ago Solly had won a major prize in the print media awards ceremony. The awards were organized by a leading telecommunications company.

Solly had wanted me to be his date at the prize-giving ceremony, but at that time I had been hard pressed for time. I was finishing the last chapter of my latest novel, Across the Sky. Writing the novel had taken me a lot longer than I had anticipated, and I was punishing myself for my slovenliness, cooping myself indoors, not wanting to lose even an hour. Anyway, Solly felt that I had let him down in declining to be his date. So I thought that I’d make it up to him today.

My friendship with Mzili goes back a long way. I had first met him six or seven years ago in Johannesburg at a writers’ prize-giving ceremony for published works. There was a dinner at the Johannesburg Country Club where the ceremony was held. Solly was present at the do. Since he was the only other delegate from my province, I had stuck to him. Or rather he had stuck to me. My book – the entry that my publisher submitted for the category, didn’t win any prizes, of course. But that hasn’t stopped me from continuing to write. I get by, somehow. In between I had managed to write no less than twenty-four short stories that I contributed to various magazines.

My agent, Rajen Monosami, is doing a great job of finding me slots in various publications. She always called me with good offers, some of which I refused. My agent had recently sold a couple of shorties to a Gauteng weekly, and cash right now was not an impediment. I spoil myself with my favourite meals whenever I can, and relax knowing I have something tucked in there.

Polokwane City is expanding in a rapid rate. The boom is spiked by numerous government department clusters that had sprung up in the central business district. The provincial departments have invested heavily in real estate by building their own offices. Cruising to the north of the city one notices huge complexes – fenced villages for various government employees. Of course Polokwane City now boasts an upgraded international airport. Which explains why tourism and hotel businesses are thriving.

The Hyundai Service centre, once in the CBD, had been relocated to a new, exciting, complex surrounded by manicured, sloping greens to the south of the city. The establishment had sent me an e-mail to notify me of the change in address, and I knew where to look for it. The reception, ensconced in a ventilated area, had been adorned with gleaming chrome finish. Several attendants stood wild-eyed before computer screens. After my car had been signed in, and I had been given a summary of the job, I asked one of the attendants to drop me at The Monitor House, in the CBD, where Polokwane Monitor is premised.

After he had dropped me outside, I got in and took a lift to the seventh floor of the huge block where Solly’s office was situated. I paused outside the door. His door was marked SOLLY Ka AFRIKA and underneath: CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER. I silently wondered at the power and privilege that go with that kind of title. Without knocking I pushed open the door, entered and closed it behind me.

Solly’s desk was still littered with stacks of papers and bundles of documents. The in-and-out tray, which had always been full, had been removed. The desktop computer had been changed, too. In its place stood a huge flat-screen monitor with wireless mouse and keyboard. The last time I had been in this office, there was a disturbing whirr-burr-whirr-burr of a malfunctioning, ancient ventilator. Bursts of cold air now spew silently from the ceiling.

There was a tall, thin lady of Indian extraction who had taken the concept of dieting a bit too far. The name-plate facing me told me that her name was Miss Shireen Naidoo. To my surprise, Solly ka Afrika was no longer working at the paper.

Shireen, having come in only two weeks ago, didn’t really know Solly. She had no idea where Mzili worked. Disappointed, I took a trip back to the reception to see if anybody could give me information about Solly. After asking several people, I established that no one at Polokwane Monitor knew where Solly worked, or where he could be found. No one was prepared to tell me why he had left his job. I was met with shrugged shoulders and raised eyebrows. Solly had some time ago changed his cellphone number, and I cursed myself for not storing his new one. Expectantly, no one at Polokwane Monitor knew his cellphone number.

So to spite my disappointment, I decided that the most probable place to find him would be his favourite watering hole that I’d heard him frequently talk about. I am a modest lady who holds herself highly and never frequent dingy bars, but if I wanted to see Solly, I had to forego the principle. I have a deep aversion of bling, so I glanced at the time on my cellphone. It was nine o’clock. With lots of time to pass away before Solly’s watering hole opened at eleven o’clock, I went to Whimpy in the Mid-City centre. I’d order breakfast while waiting for the bar to open.

From where I was, near the Pick ‘n Pay store in Mid-City, Back of the Moon was a short distance away. I finished my breakfast and went out of the ventilated mall into the hot sun. As I strolled headed to Back of the Moon, my mind silently profiled Solly ka Afrika.

Solly "Mzili’ ka Afrika, as I knew him for the past seven or so years, had been a respected and feared investigative reporter. Solly had an extraordinary nose for sniffing bad, rotten stories out of large companies and parastatals; he unearthed some of the nasty, intricate shams involving powerful directors of companies. He laid bare whatever he discovered in Gauteng’s Independent Voice, the largest weekly paper in the land, for all to see. Mention Solly ka Africa where white collar crime is suspected, and untouchable company directors went week on the knees.

I remember that there was this popular mantra that white collar crime suspects feared Solly more than they feared forensic auditors and detectives. It is a well-recorded fact that in some instances suspects had requested to see detectives and perhaps confess rather than be cornered and skinned by Solly. Solly investigated cash heists, bank smashes, ivory poaching, bling-bling grabs and precious stone steal jobs up to the finish. He was dangerous. His investigative methods had landed a lot of fat, rich cats with their paws in too many juicy pies into the frying pan.

But his speciality was, and would remain, government ministers and civil servants who could not resist kickbacks. These fat pigs, Solly saw to it, fried in their own fat. Truly speaking, Solly should’ve been a cop. He was born with the natural instincts of a detective. Several times he had been asked to sign up with the investigators that he had beaten hands down in a case, but he refused. He even declined to set up an office and provide consulting services to the department. He refused simply because he was not a cop. I doubted too if he’d make a better cop. But Solly had some years ago enrolled for a crash course in basic detective work. He said the only reason was that he wanted to gain wider knowledge of how police investigators functioned. But, one of the detectives on the course with a Tshwane branch told me, Solly ended up lecturing the whole flabbergasted class. The whole class passed with distinction. He didn’t. He dropped out simply because he knew too much and there was no thrill for him excelling.

In my view, Solly had made it. At forty-three, he had been up there, hardworking, successful, and a no nonsense reporter. He was of average height and spotted a trimmed moustache. Back then when I met him in Johannesburg, he was staying at a flat in the city. He had recently relocated to Polokwane from Gauteng to take up the chief investigative reporter post for the Independent Voice subsidiary, Polokwane Monitor. Solly was once married. His wife had divorced him in 2002. She cited irreconcilable differences as her ground for divorce.

As I approached the building, the burly, dark, unsmiling security guard planted outside Back of the Moon softened. He saw me approach the door and drew his lips back to expose fluoride-deficient, chocolate brown teeth. He stepped up to push the swinging double doors for me. He muttered, ‘Good Morning, Ma’m.’ I guess he expected a flashing smile in return: which I didn’t give. I am economical with smiles to strangers, and this goes for the security guard too.

I entered the bar. In front there were bare, neatly laid tables with matching chairs. Two straight rows led from the circular bar in front to the back of the hall. There were two men propped up on the tall stools at the bar. A few patrons sat idly on the tables. There was a deafening ‘Doo Bee Doo" from the group Freshly Ground blasting from the speakers that were fastened on the walls.

It did not take long to noticed Solly. His jacket hung dispiritedly on the headrest of a chair. His tie was loosely done, and he was sulking demurely on a sofa bench next to the corner of the back wall. From this distance he looked bleak and crashed. I advanced to the back, my eyes focused on Solly’s deep, thinking face. The back wall failed to make him cheerful. The whole width was painted with a mural of a dark sky with a half-moon rising. Painted above the half-moon, in a semi-circular pattern, was ‘Back of the Moon.’ Patrons were swirling beer at the Back of the Moon.

The way he was craggy and dishevelled, Solly looked like he had been spit by a python which found him too distasteful to swallow. His red eyes told me that he might be in deep trouble. But ever so cheerful, he jumped up when he saw me and cried, ‘Oh Cherie!’ It was just like Solly the way I knew him. Solly had never called me by my proper name. To him, I was always a joyous ‘Cherie.’ Anywhere, any time. Cherie this, Cherie that. He had not changed, and I doubt that he would ever change.

Solly’s appearance was less than presentable. He had missed a button on his shirt, certainly not out of hurry, but because of sustained confusion. As a result his crumpled, soiled shirt hung loosely lopsided on his shoulders. He got up to give me a bear-hug. I must admit that I had never known Solly in this condition. Immediately I asked him what had eaten him up.

Solly sat back and relaxed. He pursed his lips in a resigned gesture, and fished a cigarette case out of his back pocket. He carefully selected one as though there were several brands in the case, inspected it and set fire to it. Then he inhaled deeply like his whole life depended on it, letting the poison fill up his lungs. Then he released the smoke slowly through his massive, sniffing tool.

Solly looked at me and shook his brains:

‘Cherie,’ he said, ‘I was sacked from my job last month.’

CHAPTER TWO

I COULD FEEL the blood rush to my cheeks. He hit me with a hard, unexpected one. Solly sacked! No way! Who in their right mind would want to sack Solly? I found my mind reeling, asking in disbelief if what I heard was a bad joke. Solly is the meanest, most merciless investigative reporter in the land. He was like a police dog. Who could get rid of his unmatched services just like that? What bad could Solly have done to be punished like this?

And then amid my denial, it dawned on me that I had not seen him for eight, nine months. Eight months is a long stretch, and during that long sabbatical, a lot of dance could’ve happened.

When my shock abated, which was rather slow, Solly asked me if I wanted a drink. I politely said no, and reminded him that I did not drink. Drink rattled my emotions, and I had abandoned that stuff more than a decade ago. Solly said he could do with one, considering the jam that he was in. Upon my quizzing, he admits that he had been drinking steadily since he was given the sack.

Solly raised his hand and signalled for the bartender. Back of the Moon knows how to take care of its clients. Service at this bar is fast. They don’t like the idea of keeping patrons thirsty for long. Immediately a sturdily built, dark, ugly woman of about twenty-two or twenty-three came over. She had one hand in the hip pocket of his loose slacks and walked in a lurch, with long strides. She had on a checkered, long sleeve shirt and a Converse cap pulled low over her brow. On her feet she spotted red Dickies sneakers. She wore no earrings, and no fancy rings on her fingers. She propped herself in front of our table and routinely scratched her chin.

‘What’s up, Sol!’ she said in a rasping, rapping rhythm. Her voice was thick as velvet but not necessarily baritone. She set her eyes on me. ‘You’ve brought me a friend?’

The girl was straight out of Ricki Lake.

‘Gladness,’ Solly took her hand. ‘Meet Samantha. She’s my writer friend I’ve told you about. Samantha, this is Gladness.’ This was the first time I’ve ever head Solly mention my name. I hope he kept it up. Gladness, on the other hand, didn’t hide the fact that she liked me. Or liked any woman for that matter.

She rapped, ‘Yo! You want some company, doll?’

I looked at her. Before I could spill my bile about, Solly explained, to my benefit: ‘Gladness is a lesbian. That’s why she chooses to be a barman. Not barmaid. To feel accounted for.’

So Solly had liberally talked with this woman about me. I bet he had already sold me out. But if he’d ever thought I’d click with Gladness, just because I’d never married and at thirty-five still lived alone, then he held his cards upside down. He had a tough game.

Solly told me he had known Gladness for four years and she’s the eyes and the ears of the city. In his own words, she has her ears glued to the ground. Solly said nothing happened in this bustling city and its suburbs that Gladness didn’t know about. Invariably, if he wanted to screen the latest gossip, Back of the Moon is where he headed to see Gladness. She loved gossiping, and more often than not what she trades about would be true.

I told Solly that I had no problem with Gladness being a lesbian. ‘In my writing profession,’ I told him, I meet and make friends with a lot of people different from me. And I’ve kept them all.’

Solly nodded while Gladness produced a pack of her own cigarettes. She lit up with Solly’s smouldering piece.

‘What do I get you to drink, doll?’ Gladness asked, looking at me.

I told her I didn’t drink. She replied by telling me she did not drink as well. She only loved the smoke.

Solly said he’d die for one. ‘The usual,’ he said.

Gladness crunched her half-finished cigarette in the Cobra-lid ashtray, killing it. Then she stuck her hand back in the pocket where it belonged, and bumped and dipped towards the bar. She was an awesome sight to watch. Back at the bar she poured two fingers of scotch and carefully measured soda water. She sauntered back and brought the drink to our table. She deposited the glass on the table in front of Solly, and dragged the chair next to mine. She was going to sit down when Solly asked her to excuse us.

Gladness obviously didn’t like the idea. She thought Solly was being rude. She looked at me in disdain before sulking away.

After she had left, I fired impatiently,

‘What happened?’

Solly lifted his glass, inspected the mixture inside, and swallowed a mouthful. He praised the mixture and Gladness’ skills before setting the glass down, and said Back of the Moon should never fire her. His money went wherever Gladness went. And then Solly settled down to narrate to me the problem that had seen him get the sack from his job.

I listened attentively.

Bower & Gilman is a huge construction company based in Limpopo. Everyone knows B&G. It has been in business for over forty years. The company designed and built major architectural works, including bridges and stadiums. The large, four-lane bridge on the Polokwane-Tzaneen road had been constructed by B&G, both under budget and under estimated time. The company had last year won a multi-million rand tender to upgrade Gateway, the city’s airport. It had to build a two and a half kilometre runway and add a state of the art four-level wing in the international arrivals section.

Now Bowman & Gilman had the best infrastructure and suitable financial resources for the job. That’s one of the reasons it clinched the tender. But the one thing that the company didn’t have, which was the main requirement for the tender, was twenty-five per cent Black Economic Empowerment. Solly tells me that during the first round of the tender process, B&G Construction was already making heat in the news. It is alleged that several employees came forward and cited dissatisfaction with the way the company’s Black Economic Empowerment component was quickly set up.

Well, these people said they suspected that there was no BEE at B&G Construction at all. Of course the company’s management disregarded the rumours. In their press release, B&G directors said that these people making unfounded allegations were actually a few disgruntled employees bent on discrediting the good name of the company. The directors said that these people wanted to tarnish the name of the company. But the company and its dealings were above board.

A circular of B&G Construction’s press release landed on Solly’s desk one morning. Solly says that when he heard the news, he suspected that there might be a dead rat under B&G’s carpets. There was lots of serious bread involved in the matter, and where serious bread is involved, carpets hold the scariest spooks. Solly went with the idea of investigating this crap to his editor. The task was commissioned, and Solly started to dig.

It so happened that an anonymous whistleblower telephoned Solly at Polokwane Monitor. Solly say that he too suspected at first that the caller was a dissatisfied Black partner in the deal. The caller told him that Bowman & Gilman Construction’s Black Economic Empowerment was a front. A major front.

Look, Mr ka Afrika, the caller had said. I’m serious. This job is in shambles, and I have the low-down on it. I have the evidence.

The way I know Solly, this fronting racket was just up his alley. Sniffing around dark alleys didn’t bother him.

Solly gulped the last drop of his drink and sat back.

‘B&G nearly succeeded,’ Solly continued. ‘Their biggest mistake was to take two unknown quantities, well-fed men who ran an ailing sanitation business and register them in their company’s books as small time constructors. It was so obvious,’ Solly went on. ‘I got to the bottom of this racket. I found out that one of the sanitation managers was previously a bus driver at the managing director’s tour business. The other, can you believe it, Cherie, was the financial director’s former guard. Simple as that.’

I didn’t see any simple part in this. But I shook my head at Solly’s ingenuity.

‘This small Black construction company,’ I said, ‘– What about its registration, documents and stuff like that’

‘Bogus. They were all bogus. The company never existed.’ Solly is an ace. I respected his sense of judgement. But he went on to explain further.

The directors of the company naturally got wind that Solly was in on the dig, investigating this rap. He was on their tail. This kind of news, of the investigation was unexpected. At least not with Solly Mzili ka Afrika. It unsettled them. They knew who they were dealing with. If this fronting rap was uncovered and exposed in the media, they’d be finished. The scandal was huge. If Solly succeeded they’d be skinned alive.

So the directors sat back at a hotel and their lips went dry as they thought of the two hundred million from the project disappearing down the drain.

‘You know what happens to directors with more money than brains,’ Solly said. ‘They’d have to take risks. So they contacted me. They requested a private meeting with me.’

Solly says now he regrets agreeing to the meeting. He should’ve refused. In the meeting the directors said all kinds of sweets things to him. They promised to give him a job in one of their companies, but Solly couldn’t be swayed. It was what Solly wrote in his column the following morning that would be the beginning of what would change his life forever. He wrote that B&G directors had a meeting with him and tried to bribe him to drop the investigations. This article that Solly wrote