Michael Dun - 11. Chapter 11

Gordon walked to the edge of the Kimberley hole, a gigantic, man made yawn in the earth. Ropes and pulleys, platforms and stairways, men crawling like ants in search of elusive diamonds. The matrix of cables and gears stretched from bottom to top, crisscrossing like strands in a spider’s silken web. Kimberley was a town of fortune seekers and millionaires who had plundered the earth for her diamonds. In an eighteen eighty report, the town had produced diamonds to the value of a $100,000 a week. Kimberley was a town to reckon with: you either struck a pipe, or be struck off the list. Now was the time for Gordon to be strong of character, proper, and wise.

*

Michael and Charlie purchased spades and forks, hammers and ammunition, for their rifles when a small voice hissed from behind.

Michael turned and saw a black boy staring at him. He reached for an apple in the wagon and threw it to the boy. The boy caught it and put it in his pocket then came forward.

“I go with you.”

Michael looked at Charlie and then at the boy, a pug-nosed, bald, tarnished brown lad of the Xhosa tribe. The young boy was nervous, Michael could sense it, unsure of the response he would get.

“Can you look after six oxen and a wagon?”

“I will show master.”

Michael thought for a moment, scratching his chin complacently. Then asked, “Can you cook?”

“This I do, master.”

“You speak English?”

“Ewe. Yes , English.”

“That certainly is a feather in your cap young boy. “ Michael circled the boy. “Where is your father? Mother?”

“With the ancestors, enKozi, thank you.”

“I take that to mean they are dead?” Michael said.

“Ewe” The young boy said. Yes

“Your name – what is your name, boy.”

“Ewe.” Yes

“Name. What is your name – I am Michael. Michael.”

The boy pointed a brown, grubby finger at Michael, “Wena Michael.” You are Michael

In turn Michael pointed at the black boy, and did not say anything.

“Mina Thokoza.”

“Mina Thokoza?” Michael did not understand the word Mina

Charlie explained, “I think he means I am Dackosa

“Oh, I see. Well, Dackoza is it? Come them, come, come! We are about to leave...Dakoza.”

Thokoza smiled proudly, he had taught a white man his name! He made a dash around the corner and returned moments later carrying a brown sack with a few belongings stashed inside. He threw the sack onto the wagon and ran to the first bull, took the straps, began to shout, and goaded the bull forward.

Michael took the reigns and said, “People fascinate me. Every colour, culture and root. What’d this world be like if these things did not exist?”

“Well, I s’ppose we’d be one huge world without borders, sharing one language and one nationality.” Charlie answered.

The question of race and separatism had never troubled Michael. He was safe in his little cocoon away from the problems deep inside the colonies. Dalton Peters was not White, nor was he Black. He was of a race created by white and black. The authorities labeled this new race as Coloured, and allowed them few rights in the colonies where the white man was the Supreme Being. Thokoza was darker than Dalton Peters and Michael saw him as a human being with freedom of choice given by the Almighty. Michael did not hate anyone, much to contrary belief. He did not hate Peter Sheffield. He just did not want to be a part of this business proposal of his. Hate was an emotion as foreign to him as Boer pap and Zulu nyama .

Michael suddenly remembered having asked Lord Granville, at the Colonial Offices, whether he knew everything about him. Lord Granville had answered “Yes”. If he had known of Michael’s preference for men, would he have employed him? If he had known that Michael was not a Colonialist but a liberated Englishman, would he have employed him? Michael doubted it. He felt pity for totalitarian despots and dictators like Napoleon. Africa was a continent where expansion and discovery was coming to an end and the different peoples of this magnificent land were seeking independence from Britain, who held over them like a vice. The Republic of the Transvaal was testimony to this.

Thokoza was a product of British Colonialism. He knew a little English, and Michael and Charlie found out that his father had passed it onto him. His father worked for a hunter and both had disappeared some months before. The young man was a wonderer, but not useless. He made dinner and breakfast and started the wagon rolling after every stop. The mountains were rugged and hard and the hills were steep and frustrating. He shaved Michael and Charlie every fifth day, and watched, like a curious meerkat, as the two men interacted. He was, at first, bemused by their physical contact and swimming naked in streams and rivers. The land was flat with wild grass and low scrub and clumps of thorn tree and each day brought a new view of this charming African bush-land. And every day brought Thokoza a new view of Michael and Charlie. At night, just before sunset, he watched them dance amongst the wild flowers. Thokoza was as always fascinated by the way they moved their hands and legs. Soon he picked up the vibrations of their souls, then he began to dance until he too felt the exhilaration and the freedom of a new spiritual awareness.