The War against Apartheid (PT, MT; CLOSED)

[Nui-ta]

[OOC:: Sorry about taking a while to type this up. But it's here now. So sorry...]

---

Nui-tan Ministry of External Affairs

FROM: The Ministry of External Affairs, Nui-ta

TO: The Government of Suidwes-Afrika

---

It has come to the attention of the Nui-tan Empire and of the Ministry of External Affairs that racial tensions in your country have resulted in something of an apartheid.

We have received a report from within your nation that blacks are being persecuted by whites in all manners possible, including enslavement, humiliation, torture, and murder. We have evidence that living conditions are absolutely horrible under the apartheid. We view this as a violation of basic human rights, and hereby condemn it.

While Nui-ta is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Humanitarian League, we do not send this communique and condemnation to represent them, but to represent the stance of our own nation, which has only recently gotten over civil war that resulted from a non-legislative apartheid of our own.

7 years ago, the government of Nui-ta was forced to take action against its own citizens after massive terrorists strikes across the country. The separatists and terrorists wanted an official apartheid done within the nation to prevent the mixing of the nobility, the common people, and colonial-born persons. This action and the rising strength of the terrorists prompted a war that lasted for nearly 4 years and has come to be known in Nui-ta as the Partition.

In the western areas of Nui-ta, there were two separate instances of mass racial injustice. Towards the north, commoners were being killed en masse by the majority colonist population, and in the south, it was the commoners that were enslaving and killing the colonial population. It is a stain upon our own Nui-tan pride and history that over 2 million people were killed in this 4-year long struggle.

Even to this day there is still prejudice, and I can tell you, not only as the Minister of External Affairs, but also as a commoner in the government, I should personally know.

However, the prejudices of a people do not make the actions of your government condonable. We wish to help resolve this matter diplomatically, including, if the government requests it, sending in troops to help alleviate this great injustice.

If we do not get a favorable response from you though, expect a trade embargo from our nation.

Please, I implore you, to do something.

COSETTE HIIVVIN
Ministry of External Affairs

[Suidwes-Afrika]

Republiek van Suidwes-Afrika

From the Offices of the Suidwes-Afrikan Foreign Affairs Ministry

To the Nui-tan Ministry of External Affairs

The Republic of Suidwes-Afrika must express its indignation and dismay at the formal threats conveyed to this nation by the Nui-Tan Empire. We wish to stress above all that the allegations regarding abuse of our people are absolutely unfounded, and considered a slander that our leadership shall take very seriously indeed.

Suidwes-Afrika makes no secret of understandably rigid racial practices. There can be no doubt about this and all citizens surely stand proud to know that apartheid is enshrined as a founding principle for the republic we have fashioned out of black Africa. It does not symbolise oppression, as misinformed foreigners may believe, but stands only for bringing unity, prosperity, and happiness to a multiracial society. Apartheid means recognising that there are differences between people. While these differences do exist and one must acknowledge them, at the same time persons can live together and aid one another. And this is best achieved under a separate development system implemented by Suidwes-Afrikans, for other Suidwes-Afrikans - as we currently observe.

I suggest that your government does not judge, Mej Hijuvin, lest you be judged yourselves. We are the victims of gross misintepretation by a world populated by wishy-washy liberals and evil Communists, the same world which has manipulated you into the dangerous water of sanctions. In the future, allow me to recommend that you keep yourselves occupied with your own nation's domestic policy, and do not attempt to meddle with internal proceedings regarding another.

Erik Pienaar, Chief Minister of Foreign Affairs
Windhoek, Suidwes-Afrika

[The Greater Aryan Race]

OOC: Suidwes, I'm terribly sorry for the post but your TG box is full and I am unable to send you a message. I've been very much interested in your apartheid thread. An excellent piece of work I must say. Anyway, while I know your thread is formally closed, I just wish to let you know that my nation is ready to join if you allow me to do so. It's based on Nazi Germany with Fascism instead of Nazism as the national ideology.

[Suidwes-Afrika]

Humpata Province, Republic of Suidwes-Afrika

Someone saw them coming, and ran to fetch Harry Gillingham from his sleep. He rushed to the mud walls of the village, buttoning his ragged shirt as he did so, his weather-beaten face still etched with sleep. The pair of binoculars he had did him well today, for it was now they were needed, and when the old missionary mounted the parapet, he stared out at the approaching cloud of dust through the lenses.

Land Rovers, painted a dark sand colour with flecks of jungle green, speeding down the rough track towards his kraal. A half-ton truck filled with men in khaki. He knew the signs, and had to bite his tongue to prevent a loud, steady, swearing. The territorial police, or the military this time. And instead of two constables, which was the norm, he was looking at several vehicles filled with white soldiers and policemen armed to the teeth, brandishing their guns and grenades. No good could possibly come of this.

"It appears that we have unexpected guests," Gillingham turned to his flock, which was gathered around him and listening quietly. "Let's try to make them feel welcome, shall we?"

He sincerely hoped nobody could detect the bitterness in his voice. The Humpata Province had only a tiny sprinkling of white residents, and the government's mandate ran only in the fringes of this region - in patches near the towns, along the border railway, and about the headwaters of the river where the Portuguese-owned mine was. In nine years Gillingham had never met a single colonial here, save for a very few officials who conducted themselves towards him as soldiers might be expected to treat alien civilians. He had never gotten along well with settlers, and much preferred the company of the 'savage'. The apartheid officialdom had plagued him with restrictions and inquistions when he arrived to bring the word of God to his Africans, while the average white treated him with the scorn and contempt which they showered upon meddling outsiders who intruded on their country. He hated that dour, snobbish, people, their bigotry, their laws, and their ideals.

Normally, the noisy village would have been thronged with chattering negroes and their chickens, eggs, and potbellied children - women in the gardens and men returning with their next meal. Now a deathly silence reigned as the people moved sullenly about their business - the white government reserved the right to enslave them at will for work on the plantations or mines, and word had spread even to this little outreach of the country....people were afraid. When Gillingham had first arrived in Suidwes-Afrika he had nearly been expelled due to his vehement protests against the brutal conscription of black labour, made on behalf of his early congregations.

Now, as the vehicles stopped just short of the ramparts, the missionary stood where he was, his people assembled behind him and the headman at his side.

Captain Gerhadt de Waal stepped from the lead Land Rover, settling his peaked field cap on his head as he did so. His khaki uniform was immaculate, his boots shined. Major Griesal, the hefty SWAPOL officer he had "borrowed" from Humpata town, trotted behind at a snail's pace. Theirs was an unpleasant job to get done, but he would be damned if they didn't at least get it done right.

The missionary was not entirely unexpected; de Waal had been informed there was a traveling priest in the area. He was obviously a white man, despite the deep tan. And, in a province where a white community could normally be numbered under ten, it was certainly quite a sight.

A tailgate came crashing down and boots slammed rhythmically in the dust. Disembarking soldiers formed into a sloppy line, their rifles pointed just far enough to avoid provoking an unnecessary threat.

"Meneer Gillingham, I presume?"

It was the captain who spoke first.

"Kaptein."

The missionary inclined his head politely.

"As you may or may not know, meneer, there are political subversives believed to be operating in this area."

"I know nothing of any subversives. Do these people look politically aware to you?"

"They are spending money on propaganda, trying to turn the populace against the government."

"Why are you here, sir?"

Gillingham was feeling uneasy. He dropped the rank annotation and spoke in a hard voice which conveyed discomfort.

"Do not worry."

De Waal patted the hood of his vehicle, as though that had helped him decide something important. "We will leave soon enough, if we do not find anything. But the homes here must be searched."

"Yes."

"So if you would please cooperate with us and nobody needs to get hurt, eh?"

The other man nodded, as though accepting the pretext as face value. He turned to the headman, whose eyes had been fixed on de Waal's for the entire conversation.

"Is there something wrong, Siba?"

"He has the eyes of a killer, my friend."

The bluntness was surprising.

"We have no choice, do we?"

"No, meneer, you do not," de Waal interrupted, taking a step closer. His voice had gone flat. "I suggest you get these people out of our way or we shall have no choice but to move them."

Suddenly, the soldiers seemed to look less friendly.

"Let's get out of the way, Siba," Gillingham shuffled back several feet, and the others copied in slow motion. Old women hurried to collect the children still wandering about. Dogs barked from the kraal's outskirts.

The captain remained standing in place as his men fanned out through the walled perimetre, weapons sweeping this way and that. Roofing was checked thoroughly, blankets overturned, and pots emptied. The floors were examined with cold precision.

"Are you happy?" Harry stared at de Waal. "Then go and leave us alone."

"I will not be satisfied until I can confirm several things," came the response. "Bring me all the men."

"What?"

"All the adult males. I want to see them, now."

"Why?"

"Why do you keep asking so many questions?" De Waal hoped his exasperation was showing. "Griesel!"

"Yes, sir?"

"Bring me all the kaffir men."

"It's done."

Several policemen roughly parted the crowd with their rifles, separating the ladies and children from those remaining. These, including Siba, were prodded forward to the front in a show of brisk, impersonal, efficiency. The headman remained composed, but some of the others began trading glances. Gillingham could see that their eyes were open with fright.

"Look for the signs, Griesal."

The major took several steps forward, his cold eyes searching every body posed in his vision. At one point he paused, studied the man's face carefully, and moved on. Gillingham noted the deviation and realised that he recognised him as Jacob, a migrant worker who had only just returned from the port city of Mossamedes.

After Griesal had gone up and down the line of men once more, he gave a nod to someone behind Jacob. A shotgun crashed into his skull, and the black stumbled forward. Gillingham recoiled in horror.

"Why did you hit him?" He approached the beefy officer, heedless of the danger. "What's going on here?"

"We shall see soon enough." De Waal remained utterly tranquil.

"Marks on this man's shoulders. He's been carrying a load of some sort. And look at his feet. They're softer than those of the others."

"A guerilla, perhaps?" De Waal was looking at Gillingham now with a smug expression. "An insurgent, who attempts to vanish into the kraal by day and work on the veld? Pretending to be an innocent villager when he is really with a local cell of rebels?"

"Rebels? This is madness! Release him at once." The missionary could come up with no explanation for Jacob's features, but knew the man couldn't have been a killer. Nobody in his village was a killer - they simply lacked the martial qualities needed.

"I think not, meneer." Gillingham became dimly aware of a shotgun barrel behind his left ear. De Waal was still speaking. "I'm afraid that the presence of a suspect individual in your midst places yourself and everyone else in a most unpleasant situation. It calls everything you have done into question, yes?"

With that, he gave a nod. The weapon kicked back as a blast disintegrated the old man's head. The roar echoed over the kraal, seeming to echo into eternity. Siba, the headman, watched, unable to stop tears from erupting from his eyes as he stared at his friend, dead in a pool of his own blood. It was a scene mirrored across Suidwes-Afrika, a scene now commonly associated with total apartheid, military law, and Prime Minister Walbert Braun's hate-filled speeches.

Puffs of smoke signalled that the soldiers had turned their own guns on the crowd, and the line of men were slaughtered like sheep where they stood. Siba died with a look of shocked disbelief still plastered over his handsome face.

An hour later, the Land Rovers finally pulled away from the ashes of an African village, now no more. A few of the flimsy, petrol-soaked, huts had been set afire in the past few minutes and continued to burn, the screams of the women and children who had been sealed inside a terrible symbol of senseless tyranny.

[Suidwes-Afrika]

Koevoet Internment Camp, Republic of Suidwes-Afrika

Just as he had every evening for the past two weeks, the wretched Arab half-caste entered the camp's fenced grounds. Today, he stopped at the front gate momentarily, knowing full well what was planned.

The voices of two Koevoet guards drifted from the main office.

"There aren't even enough shackles for the prisoners, Ackermann!"

"What does that matter? I can't do anything about it - not when the police are bringing in more by the busload every ten minutes! Ag sies, man, it's too bad. There's so many blacks we don't know what to do with them. Mostly minor political offences. If I had my way about it, they would get a slap on the wrist and get sent home....and we'd have an easier job of trying to process them!"

"Stop."

"Oh God, it's the Commandant!"

"You two just do as you're told, you hear? Don't ask stupid questions. Cram them into the back of the truck, as many as will go in. As Ackermann said, Booysen - there's not enough manacles or shackles in the entire Koevoet inventory for all this prisoners, so why waste time on it? Just get them into the truck, and I'll take care of it from there. Is that quite clear?"

"Yessir."

The voices melted into the crisp evening air, and the Arab continued on his way, picking his path carefully through the rows of men and women sleeping this way and that on the ground. He knew which sector he was assigned to tonight.

He climbed atop a small stage, and the microphone was handed to him by a guard standing nearby. Shrill whistles and the sight of armed Koevoet officers dragging detainees from the tents nearby into the spotlight's harsh glare contented him. There were even more blacks who would hear his message tonight. When everybody was finally under some semblence of order, the Arab started to speak.

"Attention, ladies and gentlemen. You stand before me in a Koevoet internment camp, accused of crimes which amount to disobedience and subversion against your country and the state. You have not even seen a magistrate, but you will not have the opportunity to see me."

The civilian guest smiled when he saw the sea of confused, sleepy, stares.

"Ah yes, I may be your salvation tonight." His voice was soothing, reassuring. "I can arrange for your immediate release, provided you renounce disloyalty to Suidwes-Afrika. Does that sound easy enough? You may not get a chance like this one again. We are very concerned about our citizens, and want to know for a fact that you will not attempt treason against your own government again. This is acceptable, correct? All you must do is stand up now and confess to your crimes - this will earn you an immediate pardon."

"Why you do this for us?" A skeptical voice emerged from the crowd.

The Arab's tone became frank. "To be honest, we're in a bit of a mishap here. There are too many of you, far too many, to be held permanently in this camp and there are already overcrowding issues. We are willing to release as many prisoners as possible on the condition that they will promise not to commit offence again. The government is willing to be reasonable."

"Very well. I confess, then."

It belonged to the skeptical voice, a wiry black man who stood up next to the stage. "I am here because I participated in a strike. I do not want to fight the government. Can I go?"

"You may sit down again and we will come back to you after I am finished." The speaker gave a dismissive wave of his hand.

"That sounds reasonable enough, I suppose," said another voice aloud. Guard and detainee alike turned to see a young woman with long, dark, hair and a soft voice. Her light skin marked her out as a person of mixed ancestry. "I was in the student demonstrations at the Jamesfield Coloured University. I've been held here for two days with no food or water. I only want to see my family again. Please, I will do anything --"

"You have been noted." She was given the satisfaction of a warm grin. "Anyone else?"

There was only silence. Disappointing, but not surprising. Most of these were new arrivals. It would take another few days or so for them to break.

"Very well then. You have nobody but yourself to blame for your present predicament. Those who are unwilling to confess will please return to their quarters."

The guards shooed the other detainees away, leaving only the black and the coloured student. "You two, come with me." An heavy G3 battle rifle poked into their backs gave them little alternative.

"Go with Sergeant Kilian," the Arab gestured to the bearded white NCO, a man easily over six feet tall with a harrowing glare. "He will take you where you need to go."

With that, he turned on his heels and backtracked through the camp, unwilling to concern himself with the gruesome details.

As the Arab passed the front gate he heard the distinctive bap-bap-bap of a light machine gun, followed by a helpless shrieking. The canvas truckbed loaded with prisoners that he had heard about earlier was now riddled with bullet holes. Dark blood oozed like thick red oil onto the ground, while troopers toting RPD's and AK rifles jacked fresh magazines into their weapons. A young boy in a white shirt clambered out and attempted to run, but slipped on the puddle. He screamed in terror, clothes soaked through with the life of his family. The nearest guard seized the child, threw him to the ground, and put a Kalashnikov round through his head.

The screaming abrubtly stopped.

Giving a philosophical shrug at the corrupt ways of the world, the half-caste continued towards the hulking sentry waiting at the main gate. No surprises with the Commandant's solution for "taking care" of the overcrowding problem. Load all the unwanted ones into a truck and shoot them. Ackermann and Booysen needn't have worried.

"Two," he said to the sentry, and was immediately tossed a kalahar bill.

"Good work, Hazim."

"I work to please, dear fellow."

"Back again Tuesday?"

"I hope so."

"Thank you, then. Cheers, boet."

Killing Grounds

The man and the woman looked at each other as they joined the Koevoet sergeant in the grim procession leading out to the patch of empty wasteland. When they saw the bullet-riddled brick wall, they knew what was coming.

"All right, you two. Backs against the wall." As they did so, Kala began looking for a way out as he worked off the treachery of the regime spokesman. He saw the coloured girl get shoved into position to his left.

Sergeant Kilian faced them with his eyes locked behind the sights of his rifle. The other guards did the same, forming into a makeshift firing squad in that moment.

"Got any last words?"

"Please, please don't!" the girl was sobbing now, dangerously near hysterics. "I can't....my..."

"Fire!"

Kala felt her warm blood wash over him, as though to wash away all the humiliation. He hardly felt the blow which slammed him against the wall, deafened only by the gunfire. The bastards kept shooting for longer than necessary.

Then they came with the bayonets to finish him off.

His eyes wandering over the fields nearby, the dying man saw that it was strewn with corpses. Some white, some brown, mostly black - all races finally united in death. Many had become food for the rats, left to decompose under the African sun.

Kala felt the thrust of the blade as it pierced his chest, but never felt the shot fired by Kilian to free his weapon - he was already dead, staring sightlessly up at a beautiful starry sky.

[Suidwes-Afrika]

Rehoboth, Republic of Suidwes-Afrika

The town of Rehoboth lay nestled comfortably in hill country, home to a famous mixed-race community which had arrived in the Namib Desert from Cape Town over two centuries before. Rehebothers' plain, old-fashioned, houses reflected their poverty and the crowded little churches on Sundays indicated their devout Christian faith.

But today, darkness ruled over a once-vibrant atmosphere.

A dusk to dawn curfew had been imposed since the latest disturbances to hit the region some time earlier, brutally enforced by white security troops. Beatings and mysterious disappearances had become the norm here, and terror was the name of the game to be played. Rehoboth's bastaards were a people used to persecution, but little did they realise that then their problems were just beginning.

Corporal Sybrand Van der Meer wearily played his glance over the identification pass. He was too tired to care about the mundane details anymore, nerves wracked by too many long hours without proper rest. Already, sleep was starting to creep into his exhausted system, not that he would show it in front of his men or the people they were processing.

Negelected cattle and karakul sheep herds outside the residential areas wandered about freely, their owners and minders driven from houses at random to participate in the apartheid government's latest "clean up" operation.

Van der Meer couldn't understand his idiotic superiors, the ones who kept his battalion overworked arresting every single goddamned family within a thirty five kilometre radius. It was absolute insanity, an impossible task which stretched their resources to the limit and kept too many people awake late at night checking passes and locking up suspected subversives. Just the previous week a command had been issued by prime minister himself, ordering a massive search of native reserves and other troublesome spots for insurgents, communists, looters, people possessing weapons, anybody obstructing apartheid legislation or threatening law and order. Every single grown nonwhite between the ages of 18 and 50 was to immediately report to the nearest military screening centre, where they were locked up if they failed to produce adequate proof of their identity. Any individual with a past record of offences was seized. And any individual who refused to turn out for processing was dragged there against his will while his home was searched thoroughly.

In a week, thousands had already been processed in this manner, while the unfortunate ones joined the subversives and the criminals at concentration kraals or Koevoet internment zones.

The simple fact was that forcing a province's entire population to form into an orderly line which stretched for miles while soldiers interrogated them to identify and eliminate suspected anti-apartheid elements among the racially inferior was not possible. With SWAPOL and army units already busy suppressing riots in the larger cities or cracking skulls in black townships, it fell to national reservists and special Koevoet squads to take care of an operation which had already stalled in its infancy. And Corporal Van der Meer was one among many who raged silently against the burden thrust on their shoulders.

The Suidwes-Afrikan NCO cursed the day he was born as he glared impersonally at what felt like the two hundreth registration card that heated morning, feeling the sun burn his exposed skin to a bloody crisp. He hadn't wanted to believe his nation's leaders were serious about this until they actually attempted to carry it out.

A few feet away, two privates were questioning a softspoken coloured, his hair matted and spectacles draped loosely over his nose, jeering his obvious apprehension.

"And what is this, man?"

Jon Dassen held the pass upside down as he pretended to study it intently.

"Your papers are not in order."

His partner, on the other hand, Gerrit Kleinhans, had lost his patience a long time ago and his bloodshot eyes showed it.

"Enough! Get in there with the others, skepsel!"

The man's hands trembled like leaves.

"Oh, please, what is it that I have done?" His mouth betrayed his horror.

"Do it!" Kleinhans slammed his boot into the small of the other's back, knocking him to the ground. When he was prodded to his feet by Dassen's rifle, he looked down in dismay as the big Afrikaner steadied himself, crunching the prisoner's eyeglasses audibly underfoot.

His initial shock replaced by total despair, the clerk's shoulders slumped as he joined his friends and neighbours who had been singled out by their captors.

Van der Meer shook his head sadly, feeling genuinely for the man. Not a kaffir, or a bastaard, or a Boer like himself, merely another man. The Rehoboth Coloureds had many Dutch ancestors and perhaps the bespectacled captive had once shared a common forefather with Kleinhans.

The thought made him sick to his stomach as he closed his eyes. Black and mixed charges with glasses were considered educated, and therefore, deemed guilty of subversive activities. They would probably be taken out by the boatload at Luderitz to be shot. It brought back a nightmare to the corporal's mind, an incident which he hadn't thought of since his transfer to this place.

They were from Grootfontein, this boatload, Van der Meer had been informed. Civilians. None of them had fired a weapon in their lives or taken up arms against their country, but each and every one had been found in possession of a Liberation League propaganda brochure, contraband which all citizens were forbidden from keeping. It was reason enough to warrant a death sentence from the Koevoet commandant in Jamesfield.

At first, the guards had lulled them into a false sense of security, chatting freely with the prisoners. Some natives retained a stony exterior, but others swallowed it whole in spite of their grim circumstances. The more sadistic soldiers gave them hope. They were all Tswana.

His sergeant gave the order, and Van der Meer raised his assault rifle, catching someone in his sights. It wasn't the image of a demonised revolutionary he was facing, merely a boy in years, uncomfortably close to an age one could remember....not too long ago.

It was over in seconds. Kaffirs didn't stand a chance. One poor fool took eight 5.56mm slugs at least, but threw himself overboard in a futile attempt to escape. Van der Meer took pity on him and aimed for the head when he surfaced.

There was a moment of silence, uncomfortable, deathly, silence, before the men each took a body and hauled it over the side. A woman shouted out in agony. The sergeant drew his sidearm and finished her. She died attempting to protect the infant still clinging to her breast.

A dreadful splashing, and then nothing. But a corpse resurfaced, eyes bulging and face still contorted with hideous fear. Corporal Richter took a knife and slashed at it. "Too much air in the body," he muttered in muted German as Van der Meer bit his tongue to hold back the dry heaves.

Richter slit the belly open, and the galling image of the youth he had killed was burned into Sybrand's mind an instant before it sank beneath the gentle waves.

[Suidwes-Afrika]

Mutswa, Chiwembe Protectorate

The two elderly white men sat in silence, hands clasped around their heavy walking sticks as they watched the peak of Mutswa's rush hour. Theirs was a well-kept porch which complimented a handsome little cottage in the settlement's outlying districts.

One man had a pipe clenched between his teeth, an old straw hat propped above his face and dark eyes which longed for more rural settings. Even if it had been so many years since he had left the ranch, he always had the look of a farmer, and would carry that - if nothing else - to the grave.

His friend was a slightly built man, his junior in years, in a bush jacket, long stockings, and shorts. Both thought of each other as peers, though, over the cusp of sixty.

A battered radio on the board floor buzzed for a milisecond before crackling to life, spitting static. With a well-practised motion, Graham Fuller rapped it impatiently with the edge of his cane.

"....Earlier this week the Suidwes-Afrikan government continued to be accused of extensive human rights violations, including the torture of detainees. In the wake of protests over the jailing of suspected anti-apartheid leaders that left 200 people dead, police arrested thousands and ordered the formal execution of 98 individuals. On Friday a report commissioned by Amnesty Interregional asserted that security forces had deliberately murdered at least 4,000 unarmed civilians over a ten-month period. It is against this violent backdrop that the torn country has suffered increasingly from economic sanctions imposed by other nations and from disinvestment by foreign firms. Low world market prices for important minerals also hurt the economy. While Suidwes-Afrika has achieved a good infrastructure under white minority rule, it has also suffered from a 25% unemployment rate and a population growth rate of 3.5%...."

"It's getting bad, isn't it?" Fuller switched the devise off with an air of disgust. He turned towards Malcolm Purnell, who only offered a slight inclination of his head.

"It's been many a year since I left my tracts near Windhoek. I sincerely hope it's doing better."

"Who did you sell to?"

Purnell had told the story many times. "One of the bigger commercial interests, old boy. It was the Germans, I think. Always looking to expand business, you know."

"Oh?"

The other finally removed the pipe deftly from his mouth, and shrugged, as though he had stayed in the one position too long. "Now I know how to deal with the blacks - the Africans. Show them a strong hand, take no nonsense, keep them in their place; in short, show them who was baas."

Fuller chuckled, wondering how many unconscious racial beliefs Purnell may have inherited from white Suidwes-Afrika. If those idiots couldn't hit or kick their native servants, they thought they were being denied their basic rights. "And you believe that?"

"It wasn't anything to do with politics, you know. It was a fact of life. I went to Suidwes-Afrika because of the open air. It's a good place. Lived in Greater Ovamboland for twenty years, you know. Fertile soil there and the boys always brought in an astounding harvest."

"And what about the government?"

"What government? If you're a black living in a remote kraal somewhere with no higher authority under than your headman, there's really no need for a government. They think of democracy and parliament as being a Boer's invention."

"There's practically a war going on in the country now."

"Communists, old boy. The blacks haven't changed a bit."

Fuller had been to Windhoek himself on occasion, despite spending his entire adult life in Chiwembe. Suidwes-Afrika had experienced more than its share of bastardised Marxist and Africanist liberation theologies during the Cold War....which was why white people there still lived in the past. Anybody who challenged their authority was a "Communist", no matter what their political outlook.

"Malcolm, what do you think of....Communism?"

The other man let several minutes go by, in no hurry to make a response. He puffed away noisily before finally shrugging his shoulders.

"Everybody talks about Lenin, Marx, Mao. The Ovambos did it when they mutinied back in '67. What does it have to do with Africa, I ask you? Idealogy! What nonsense. All black agitators know is that they're fighting the white man. They don't need 'isms' and idealogy. You tell a peasant to go and shoot his baas for Karl Marx? He will think you have gone mad. The blacks have no education. They haven't read enough to know what Marx says in some book. What they know, they know by what they believe. If they believe they're being exploited, then they don't need Marx to tell them whites are their enemy."

"Isn't Suidwes-Afrika flawed, though? Aren't there problems? You hear about apartheid on this radio every day."

"Calling a white Suidwes-Afrikan pig-headed is taken as praise over there. Outside criticism merely bounces off, because they will simply say to each other, 'so what if the world is against us? What the hell does it matter? the world is full of evil Communists and wishy-washy liberals'. What can I say? No one country is perfect, friend."

"But whites do hold all the wealth, and blacks do not."

At this Purnell's eyes became slightly wider as he studied the horizon. Then he simply shook his head. "There is no point fighting to get a white elite out, just to have a black elite take over. Why should the blacks be fighting and dying to remove Braun, 'that white dictator', to put some black dictator in his place? That is why politics is important to them. If a man knows he is really fighting for a batter life he'll be prepared to die for it."

"I honestly can't blame them."

Fuller let a moment or two drift by before he knew for certain Purnell was listening.

"The prime minister may speak all the time of Christianity and peace, but the only thing most citizens see when they look around is hate, police who beat them up, rich whites, and blacks doing gutter jobs for nothing each month as servants to the whites. They're like dogs - they must obey and never bark at their masters."

"That's propaganda, Communist propaganda. People let themselves get brainwashed by it, and it besmirches colonialism in all forms as suppression and exploitation. Now the Communists wanted the whites out of Suidwes-Afrika during the uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s so that they could get in and spread their own Marxist-Leninist doctrine. In reality, colonialism was the spread of Western civilisation, with its commitment to education, economic advancement, justice, and healthcare, into darkest Africa. Before the German, the Afrikaner, and the Englishman arrived in Suidwes-Afrika those people had no written language, no medical facilities, and no currency. They hadn't even invented the wheel. So if white men were involved in the colonisation of that country, we ought not to be ashamed of our historical association with such forces that have brought light to a dark continent, allowing it to emerge into modern civilisation."

"So what do you think of the black Suidwes-Afrikan?"

"You know very well how I feel about it. Look at their lying, stealing, gluttony, polygamy, and debauchery. Look at their idolatry and their witchcraft. They're almost on a lower stage of human evolution, one which, I might add, is getting worse from generation to generation."

Fuller sat back in his chair and studied his timepiece. It was nearly dark, but the sun still seemed determined to get the best of him.

"Yet here you live in Chiwembe, a black country."

"I like Chiwembeans. They work well for a gruff old fellow like myself. Not like those lazy bloody munts in Suidwes-Afrika. Those buggers are getting more and more cheeky."

"Lazy?"

"The Native Affairs Commission had to stop giving them disability benefits, that's how bad it got. When they found they could draw free money so easily and find an excuse to skip work, the blacks started throwing themselves behind my car whenever I wanted to back out of a parking space."

In spite of himself, Fuller laughed.

"And they weren't worried about really getting injured?"

Ruffled by his acquaintance's apparent disbelief, Purnell turned to him for the first time. "They got crafty and started doing it before you'd picked up enough speed to seriously injure them. Your bumper would just barely touch their leg, and then they would go down to the nearest government office and demand money. The commission even gave them paperwork which excused them from their jobs. I can't tell you how much I hated it. Got a few close calls, too, but I got the better of them."

He went back to smoking his pipe. Fuller studied the sun as it finally began to dip.

"And what do you think of the whites there?"

"They've gone through a desperately difficult time. Their ancestors trekked through deserts and swamps, shaken by fevers and lost in the wilderness - not a task for faint-hearted men. If you weren't dedicated or inspired by the cause you were serving, you failed. Simple as that. Those early colonists had to be convinced that they were God-sent, or at least dispatched by Kaiser and country to spread civilisation. There is a feeling of duty to believe in a cause, to make a stand to support and defend it. So that's what they did. Now the descendants of such people still prefer the past. Most are not recent immigrants. They are cemented together by a myth-filled history of constant sacrifice, hardship, and heroism."

"And this new government, led by PM Walbert Braun?"

Purnell scowled. "I hardly consider myself a liberal by any standards, but I don't fancy Braun and his fanatics. Suidwes-Afrika's got enough problems already simmering without those ignorant, goose-stepping, trash running amok in Windhoek. But I've heard him speak - you really ought to hear him speak."

"Why?" Fuller could hardly disguise his idle curiosity.

"The man can be hypnotic when he wants to be. You can feel it when he speaks to his white people, I'll give him that much. The appeals to a common heritage of sacrifice and suffering. The instinctive response to form a united defence against overwhelming and alien forces. Against the blacks. Against the Communists. Against the meddling foreign powers and anybody else who gets in their way."

"Under his direction, Suidwes-Afrika's falling apart faster than anybody dreamed it possibly could. I mean, the population's now at war with itself. Between guerilla activity, urban insurrection, power struggles, and the brutal security crackdowns, hundreds are dying every week. On our doorstep, no less. All that bloodshed is going to hurt Chiwembe at some point or another."

Purnell looked up, as if noticing the growing darkness for the first time. "Whatever happens over there, china, you can be certain we'll find out soon."

[Suidwes-Afrika]

Lazard Province, Republic of Suidwes-Afrika

Mako Ileonda watched the strange lights in the darkening evening. They seemed enticing at times, like a beautiful but deadly viper a child might be tempted to play with. On other occasions they appeared to be gradually dimming, until the evening silently carted them away.

He had become gradually fascinated by the lights as they blinked in and out of existence in the dry river valley, for Ileonda had little to occupy his mind with while he drove the stubborn donkeys up the trail towards his kraal. They had recently been lost due to his mistake, and so it fell without saying that he ought to return them, make up for his error. Every twilight beforehand another two or so had returned, as if content only to come back as and when it pleased their animal sensibilities.

Ileonda sighed as the lights vanished again, like an old friend who could be briefly glimpsed from beyond the grave. He still had his donkeys to herd to his village. Everything was as it had always been.

"Mako!"

It was Emmanuel Kango, who liked to sit by the gates of the kraal with the weavers. A terrible sickness in his leg had always prevented Kango from going out with the other young men to hunt or leave their settlement, but he had a loud voice and big hands which could clap so.

"What is it, my friend?"

Mako had never seen Emmanuel so excited.

"The guerillas! They have come here to see the headman!"

Donkeys were nearly forgotten in the rush of blood which seemed to go to his head. This surely only happened once in a lifetime. He would get to meet the people who were fighting for the liberation of this country!

The men were big and strong, like Ileonda had so imagined. They were all Ovambos, with the high cheekbones and defined foreheads which were the pride of their people. Each had a neatly shaved skull, camouflage trousers, and ragged T-shirts. Some wore sandals or rubber boots.

One of the kraal hotheads was speaking. "Go away!" he shouted, voice hollow and half-hearted. "We don't need your shiny weapons -" he gestured at the gleaming new AK-47's and Lechter automatics, fixed with bayonets which had obviously been polished to the hilt. "- or your meddling help!"

Mako wondered where the freedom fighters had gotten their guns. Some looked fresh out of the plastic and it did seem somewhat theatrical.

"La - La, La- La," others chanted. He remembered the word 'Liberation League' as the banner they were supposed to be fighting under and repeated it to himself.

"We are representatives, representatives of the people!" The leader of the armed rebels was speaking, a figure of years with a short grey beard. "We are fighting to return your land, our land, to its rightful owners! Your kraal is now free!"

"But what does this have to do with our maize?"

Mako recognised his father speaking.

"As long as I can tend to my plot, I am happy. We don't need to be freed. I remember when other Ovambos also came here many years ago. They said many flattering things with their lips and one of them was 'you are free!' Now you have come to do the same thing. So many people have 'liberated' this 'free' kraal...who can say....?"

"But we are fighting for the people!" the grey-haired man shouted back. He looked very hurt by the other's comments. "If we do not have your support, how can we fight to overthrow the repressive government which has grown fat off your backs? Remember that we have come to do battle with the white man. We do not hate his kind, but remember the words of your ancestors: 'each day they shoot someone dead for no reason at all.' And they are still doing it even today! You have not heard that the police can come to this kraal and take you all away to do hard labour? That you can wake up one morning to find a farmer standing over you saying that this is now his land and you are his servant? They can do these things, my friend."

Murmurs of dissent spread through the people. Some started arguing furiously. Mako knew that it was not a good sign. His clan needed to stand together or they would lose everything.

"I have a brother who was taken to be killed by the Koevoet -"

"We don't want anything to do with them! Do you want to bring down the wrath of the German and the Boer on your heads?"

"We have never had any part of any war -"

"Come, friends. We are a proud people, and must take up arms for what is rightfully -"

"Stop."

His interruption would have surely been punished severely in a normal situation, but now was the time Mako knew what needed to be done.

"I don't know what to think of these men, but I trust them. I think we should all trust them. We do not need to be against each other. We are not our own enemies, and the guerillas have not shown themselves to be ours."

The entire village hushed as the elderly headman placed his calloused hands on Ileonda's soft shoulders.

"I -" Keeping his rifle slung, one fighter stepped forward. He did not want to see the boy punished for nothing. If the people wanted them to leave, they would leave. Maybe somebody else would be kind enough to take them in.

The headman smiled warmly, and at once both parties understood.

"Bless you, child."

Networking Office

"Ever been to the Dark Continent?"

That question had lodged like a pit in Patrick Clouston's mind the instant he had heard it.

"Not since the last assignment to Mozambique. Lots of bad things there. Poverty, disease, shit."

"Heard of Suidwes-Afrika?"

"White government ruling a black country? Man, when those fools get chased from power they'll be in jail forever."

"Not if they can have anything to say about it. Clouston, you are looking at no ordinary conflict. You are looking at a place on the brink of disaster, divided by unimaginable evil."

"Sounds like my kind of story."

"Take a look at this madman."

"Bad tie. No taste."

"That's Walbert Ingeborg Braun, 'prime minister' of the country. To the left is Lodewyk de Frederika, his deputy. They are both in fact dictators who tolerate no opposition and keep around nine million black Suidwes-Afrikans starved, without medical care, education, or even basic civil rights."

"That won't last for long."

"Astute as usual, Pat. Several months of Braun's misrule and there's already student riots, police shootings, a guerilla war spreading beyond control, and an economy buckling under the strain. Conscription's through the roof trying to get every able-bodied man into uniform to crack skulls, but manpower shortages are beginning to have serious effect in a land of just over two million whites - a figure shrinking daily as more flee the sinking ship."

"Civil insurrection, economic chaos, domestic instability, and the looming threat of race war."

"It's beyond that, I'm afraid. Take a look at this."

The pictures now flickering before Clouston's eyes on the video projector proved that much.

Scenes of carnage depicted artillerymen firing a field howitzer at scores of thatched huts. Glass shattered as mortar shells rained down into an office building. Jet fighters streaked across picturesque valleys to strafe suspected resistance points. Black civilians carried a wounded, screaming, child on a blood-soaked stretcher through debris-choked streets. Fleets of attack helicopters filled the sky like a thousand locusts, and placard-waving protestors defied a column of armoured personnel carriers.

"My God."

"Save your pity. It gets worse."

The slides depicted Walbert Braun shouting defiantly in German. He was flanked by whip-wielding constables and their anti-riot dogs, along with giant banners depicting the odd emblem of the Suidwes-Afrikan Conservative Front. Chanting, roaring, white faces filled the screen before a subsequent camera panned back to show their immaculate khaki uniforms and black-on-red armbands.

Clouston stared closely at the symbol which now represented total apartheid.

"Looks almost like a swastika. And what it is this, the Third Reich? Hitler and his brownshirts? I thought you were showing me something about Africa, for God's sake."

"I am."

A little black toddler was now running from the camera, while automatic weapons fire echoed audibly in the background. The projector froze on her anguished face an instant before cutting itself off.

"Satisfied, my man?"

Patrick was a little shaken. He couldn't get the graphic footage out of his head.

"Pat?"

"Curtis, I.....I leave next week."

[Suidwes-Afrika]

Aérospatiale Alouette flight over Lazard Province, Republic of Suidwes-Afrika

The winged satans attacked at dawn.

A call had been issued as soon as the targets were identified and their status confirmed - Commandant Gert Broodryk at Grootfontein Air Base had immediately sent for two French Alouette III helicopters with extra fuel tanks for an extended operating range. They were only just now reporting that the kraal was nearly in sight.

On board the first aircraft, Captain Jacob Weinberg sat with a paratrooper's carbine between his legs as he yawned in the shaking and uncomfortable conditions. Weinberg closed his eyes, stroking the weapon with genuine affection as anticipation of the fight to come entered his head. The Brandis Lechter was a local copy of the HK G41 assault rifle, and chambered the same 5.56mm NATO rounds for the American M16 - Weinberg's unit had been the first to be issued them back when the ancient G3 battle rifles were finally phased out in 2002. They were legendarily reliable; a soldier could be expected to use one everywhere from the thick jungle of Greater Ovamboland to the Kalahari's barren dunes.

In an odd little way, the captain had lived out his military career by this rifle, and regarded it as the single most trusted partner he could ever have on the field.

"Weather doesn't look too good," said the helicopter's flight engineer, stating the obvious. "Turbulence."

"Another four minutes, and we're through. ETA nine minutes," said the pilot as he watched his radio.

"Roger, One."

Weinberg looked forward to the blood.

Target Village, Lazard Province

Adam Wakumbilwa watched and listened as the first rays of a new day strained valiantly to break the darkness. It was utterly still, and the old veteran regarded the desolate landscape before the little kraal with something like silent reflection in one eye. Suidwes-Afrika had always been a harsh country which did not readily forgive error. If you chose to dwell in her bosom you knew exactly what you were doing, or you died.

Perhaps she had been entirely rainforest one day, before the wars and the famine, before the Cape missionaries and Berlin's greedy imperialists, before the diamonds and the mines, before the factories and port cities, yes, even before the early Ovambo had migrated here from the Bantu north.

Had blood flowed as readily then as it did now?

Mother Africa gave life in abundance, but in this arid corner of her south west she offered only death. Black against black. African against African. White against black. The brutal colonial conquest and its apartheid predecessor.

Was there truly hope for this land? Whatever the future held, however, Wakumbilwa was certain of one thing: he would see it through.

The distant clattering sound reached his ears, tearing Adam with disturbing intensity back to the present. His eyes flicked over the horizon once, detecting on the fifth pass precisely what he was looking for. Two dark blips on the sunrise, weaving back and forth with a course bound north.

"That is not a routine security patrol....we're under attack!"

Then the animals were panicking as the black nannies hurried about to scoop up any stray children or chickens they could carry before retreating back into the huts.

"Get back inside!" Wakumbilwa shoved a woman towards her own dwelling. "Everybody get back inside!"

The other fighters were already setting up a perimeter as they had been so painfully trained, weapons shouldered. But then the dreaded military aircraft approached, skimming low. It was an intimidation tactic and it was working.

Mako Ileonda stood transfixed at the flying monsters, gaping with open-mouthed terror at the white men in their transparent bellies. He had been proud to be the guerillas' latest recruit the previous day, but next to a creature which certainly desired his soul, Mako remembered just how small he was. With a horrified shriek he dropped his AK-47 and ran.

Whup-whup-whup-whup.

The helicopters roared directly overhead, rotors blowing a choking stream of dust towards the men.

"Do not just stand there! Shoot! Bring it down!"

Then suddenly the world turned over several times and Adam Wakumbilwa found himself flat on his back, choking blindly in a cloud of smoke. His clothes were scorched.

"Get them! Make them pay!"

"Go, go, go, go!"

Humanoid demons emerged from the inky blackness, firing their rifles and light machine guns from the hip. Adam tried to scream out for his men, but no voice would come to his throat. He coughed and raised his folding-stock AKM.

A small, round, canister landed just beyond his reach. Wakumbilwa gasped.

"Grenad-"

He threw himself prone again. A muted explosion, then fragments were spinning over his head.

Enemy soldiers in full battledress continued to advance through the smoke, lunging forward with muzzles spitting death. There! One coming for him, hate-filled eyes and a greased face under a steel helmet. The man faded in and out of focus. Wakumbilwa opened up but was aware of a sickening pain in his left side.

Captain Weinberg watched with a hearty grin as the lone kaffir remained standing long enough to paw feebly at the wet, ragged, holes stitched across his punctured torso before sliding downwards into oblivion.

Twenty Minutes Later

"Any insignia on the bodies?"

"Just this." Sergeant Haasbroek held up the bold 'LL' pin with contempt. "We took it from the chest of the youngest one, probably a fresh recruit from this area."

The corpses nearby were stacked like cordwood. Some were now stripped naked, denied any dignity even in death. Most were women.

"They didn't put up a good fight."

"You sound almost disappointed, Captain."

"It's why blacks make good terrorists, not soldiers."

"Yes, sir."

"What I can't understand are the weapons. Look, it's an RPG launcher. Manufactured in Windhoek. Current SWADF issue. Bastards didn't even think of using it against our vulnerable choppers."

"All the firearms and ammunition are Suidwes-Afrikan in origin, sir. Brandis Arms in Windhoek produces Russian AK's in three different models. Every guerilla had one or another on his person."

Weinberg scratched his head as he studied a captured Lechter closely, cradling its scarred polymer stock.

"Rather new, I might add. Where the hell did they get these bloody things?"

"What do you think? Too many questions."

"Haasbroek, I don't think that Grootfontein is going to like this one bit."

[Suidwes-Afrika]

Skies over Jamesfield, Republic of Suidwes-Afrika

Patrick Clouston's eyelids began to droop as he scanned the fact sheet he had compiled, searching between the lines for any and everything. The flight had been long and harrowing, and he found himself nearly alone on board the Boeing 720 - nobody in their right mind wanted to visit a place which was in so much publicised turmoil.

Deep down, somewhere, he would ferret out and eventually publish the truth.

Clouston tried to keep an open mind. Things were not always what they seemed on the surface.

Republiek van Suidwes-Afrika (Afrikaans name official)
Also South West Africa (English)
And Südwestafrika (German)

Capital at Windhoek, largest city Jamesfield. Chief agricultural products include hides and skins, butter, corn, wheat. Exceptionally rich in minerals, especially diamonds, vanadium concentrates, lead, tin, tungsten, iron ore, and copper. Large gold deposits also suspected. These extensive resources account for much economic prosperity. The country in general is better suited to grazing than to the raising of crops, due to light rainfall. Karakul sheep industries tend to be well developed. Suidwes-Afrikans are predominantly of Bantu-Negro stock, although there are significant Hottentot and Bushman populations.

Suidwes-Afrika was discovered by Portuguese explorer Diaz in the late 15th century. At least half the country is part of the South African high plateau with a general elevation of 3,000 to 4,000 feet. It became a German colony in 1884, but was conquered by Allied forces during World War I, becoming a Union mandate by the Treaty of Versailles. South Africa's application for full annexation of the territory was rejected by the United Nations assembly on December 14, 1946, and the former was invited to prepare a trusteeship agreement instead.

Following national elections, Pretoria conceded in February 1949 to grant self-government to the South West under a new legislature. Under the statutes subsequently adopted, a parliament chaired jointly by South African nominees and local whites of predominantly German descent was formed in 1950. South Africa's leadership repeatedly rejected UN supervision in this exercise, claiming that they were "prepared" to negotiate Suidwes-Afrikan independence, but not with the principal black separatist groups - such as the Ovambo People's Congress (OPC) and the South West African National Union (SWANU).

Despite some international opposition, an interim government cemented on apartheid was organised, following proposals overwhelmingly endorsed by white voters. Full internal self-government was attained in 1954, and Cornelis Rademeyer, a popular economic visionary with an authoritarian streak, took the helm as prime minister. Installation of an independent Suidwes-Afrika ended South Africa's direct rule, but the latter retained an effective veto over the new administration's decisions along with responsibility for the territory's defence and foreign policies.

The electorate was to determine their political status at the end of four years, but just short of the allotted period Rademeyer and his parliament declared the country a republic, which, with the approval of South Africa, was officially adopted on January 1, 1956. According to the new constitution, prime ministers now reported nominally to a state president. Rademeyer was replaced by Willem Siedentopf on July 3.

Under her conservative white minority regime, Suidwes-Afrika quickly developed into one of the most economically powerful nations in the region. However, her apartheid policies also drew criticism from those who said the nation's prosperity was achieved at the expense of majority rights. Increasingly repressive measures affecting the black population in 1964 and 1965 led to widespread strikes and demonstrations. Further nationalist stirrings began in the late 1960s, and in 1969 the South West African People's Movement, made up of militants from the north, rebelled against the government. The insurrection lasted until 1971; in that year alone over 1,000 suspected insurgents were reported hanged or shot by security forces.

Throughout the 1970s more fighting took place between Suidwes-Afrikan troops and separatists from Greater Ovamboland, a heavily forested region that provides the country with access to Angola. A savage conflict followed, with indigenous guerillas backed by Angola's black majority government. Ovambos staging raids on military zones from Angolan territory drew punitive Suidwes-Afrikan raids and two large-scale incursions, in 1979 and again in 1983.

Increasing bloodshed weakened regime attempts to institute total apartheid, which Prime Minister Hendrikus Kappelhoff then decided to abandon by 1985. A cease-fire agreement, mediated by South Africa, was signed in November 1990 between Kappelhoff and insurgent commanders, ending 11 years of civil war.

Between 1998 and 2000, parliament eased several apartheid laws regarding public places. On December 8, 2001, an air force recruitment office was bombed by terrorists, killing fourteen. Neo-fascist extremist groups claimed responsibility, but government statements charged that subversive elements in the African population were responsible. Six years later, controversial MP Walbert Braun, who had previously held a prominent position in the ruling German League of Suidwes-Afrika (Deutscher Bund in Südwestafrika), walked out to form his own party. Following a brief stint as an independent, he chaired a conference of extreme rightist-oriented political parties with the goal of forming a cohesive front to oppose the DBSWA. This conference was attended by representatives of United National Party (Suidwes Party), the German Southwest Union, the Unity Front (Eenheidsfront), BLANKSWA, and the White Resistance Movement (Wit Weerstandsbeweging). The Conservative Front Suidwes-Afrika emerged from this. It made little initial impact, coming third place in the 2004 elections with 9% of the vote. However, the concept of a broad-based opposition movement crossing the traditional ethnic/linguistic lines of the country's strong Afrikaans and German-speaking communities in Suidwes-Afrika's white minority was born.

The publication was already seven years old. At the most recent election, Walbert Braun had finally swept his Conservative Front to victory. Subsequently strong showings of the CF at elections since their 2004 debut had only heightened prospects of a popular white upsurge against the traditional leadership. Putting business before apartheid, the DBSWA was seemingly poised to make radical changes to established racial structures by removing limits on black entrepreneurship, ending the reservation of skilled trades for whites, and forcing businesses to open their doors to all ethnic groups. They had done so to reverse the economic stagnation caused by the existing monopoly, but in doing so had lost the support of blue-collar voters who feared losing their jobs en masse to the "kaffirs".

Now, the people had Little Boy Nazi for prime minister, and a pack of fanatical thugs for a government. Braun's election had prompted the Liberation League of South West Africa (LL), a formerly defunct black nationalist group, to reemerge as a viable political force. The result? Everybody should have seen it coming. Braun, an old school diehard, tried to reverse the liberal trend of recent years by taking apartheid to its limits. The Liberation League was determined to stop him with massed strikes, protests, and armed struggle. Both sides were now sailing for a head-on collision. A collision that could very well destroy Suidwes-Afrika, or even destabilise the entire subcontinent.

Clouston took some additional notes.

Braun's repressive rule has led to foreign sanctions against Suidwes-Afrika. He is now viewed as an authoritarian responsible for egregious human rights abuses and for skyrocketing racial violence. Since his election inflation rates have risen sharply, infrastructure has been disrupted, and the country faces severe shortages under a "state of emergency". Nationwide strikes were held beginning in earnest last year; brutal crackdowns have since continued.

Was there any hope for a land which already this far over the edge?

[Suidwes-Afrika]

Windhoek, Republic of Suidwes-Afrika

The water supply, electrical power, and other basic utilities to predominantly black shantytowns which had formed around the outskirts of Windhoek had been cut long ago. As darkness fell, the few surviving structures slated for demolition become shadowy, impressionist, masses in the growing night - unlit but from the glow of fires and an occasional police flare.

Her bare feet were covered with blisters and boils - the product of walking for hours through smoldering ashes - while buzzing insects, attracted by rotting corpses, had stung her mercilessly. She was tired. She was beyond tired.

The woman moved in a silent thread, her torn dress stirred by the breeze. Blood matted her face and hair, where Koevoet troops had bashed her mercilessly with their long sticks. She knew she would go cold, tonight - but so would thousands of other urban residents. After weeks of harsh action by the security forces, Windhoek's most notorious slums, ghettos, and townships had disappeared almost overnight. Buckshot and Koevoet's willingness to slaughter anybody who attempted to stand in their way seemed to have finally broken the warm communal spirit which had once characterised these humble but happy neighbourhoods.

It was true, Dimakatso reflected, that some of these places were as bad as the whites had said. Many people were under eighteen and unemployed. Since there was no work but the brutal conscript labour that many young blacks had made the epitome of their hatred, people joined gangs to survive. The gangs stole, attacked cars, and killed people. In their attempts to suppress the gangs, the police retaliated by destroying property and killing more people. Poor township residents, who ironically made up most of this criminal class, suffered from it in equal measure.

But at least they had homes. At least they were free to do as they pleased. Life was hard, but the people were determined to make it succeed. Everybody had hopes, dreams, and families.

It had come crashing to a halt not so very long ago, when the government brought fire and the sword.

Dimakatso shook her had sadly. She would go cold and hungry tonight, but what did it matter? Her life was over now, the last of it draining away in the lifeless bundle she clutched with both arms.

The last thing she had in the world was the toddler, Anna's child. Had it been only yesterday when this beautiful boy was born - the pride of his parents? Had it been only yesterday when she was named his godmother?

Dimakatso had been adopted into Anna's family for a long time. She had loved both this boy and his mother more than anything else in this cruel, heartless, world. Now Molefi was gone, buried under the collapsing rubble in the home which he had built with his own two hands and had refused to vacate to the end. Anna, too, was dead - her last sensation being the cold steel of a 9mm Mamba pistol against her forehead as she screamed her husband's name.

It was where Dimakatso had found little Ismael, bawling in the pool of the young woman she had come to adore as a sister.

She knew it was too much for him. Already his breathing was weak. Somehow, though he had not been injured, she knew he would die if she did not get him to safety.

Woman and boy had traveled this far, nearly to the edge of the townships, before the former had finally given out, her weak old legs failing her as she tried to break her fall.

"Ismael....Ismael."

He was crying softly, seemingly heedless of her voice. Dimakatso tried to respond, tried to reassure him as she imagined Anna would have done, but she was drowned out by a low rumble which quickly developed into a muted roar.

Headlights bathed the pitiful scene in an eerie glow, and gravel crunched as two, no three, pairs of boots made their way towards her.

Dimakatso, still clutching Ismael to her chest, looked up into unsympathetic white faces.

"Please....please....asseblief..."

She knew what was coming, but felt at peace both inside and out. But the child had to be protected, of course. O mighty Ismael, that he would grow to be a strong warrior one day, that from him seed would spring which would produce more sons and daughters for the nation. That one day they could live without the reality of today.

"Looks like a kaffir woman got left out for too long," a low voice snickered.

"Well, do you have any identification papers on you, black bitch? A passbook, perhaps?"

"Let's take this one. She might be worth something in good light."

"Fook off, Eerste. You're always thinking with your prick."

"Get her up. She obviously can't crawl another metre. We'll throw her in the back with the rest."

At this, Dimakatso felt a fury building in her blood. She would not yield. Ismael needed her.

Strong arms forced her to rise. She tried to scream, but no sound would come to her throat.

"No, no, please!"

The stock of her rifle was jammed against her skull as another arm locked around her throat.

"Don't try it. Nobody can hear you, nobody cares."

Dimakatso shook her head madly. She attempted to wrestle free, but the soldiers effortlessly propelled towards the waiting armoured personnel carrier.

Seconds later, the hapless woman was flung atop a seething mass of humanity inside. There was no air, no place to breathe, only bodies - some living, some already dead. Blood stained the steel floor. Dimakatso heard a sickening crunch as her head slammed against a metal surface, then felt and saw nothing.

The vehicle drove off in a flurry of dust, and Ismael lay motionless where he had fallen from his guardian's bosom, twice dead - and long gone.

[Suidwes-Afrika]

Keetmanshoop, Republic of Suidwes-Afrika

"This country - I don't know what it would be like - had it been left to them solely and wholly. It would have been barren; there would be nothing here. They have a great deal to be thankful for. But - at the same time - I still admit, they should be given a fairer deal."

"Of course I think the rule of the whites will last forever....make no mistake, my friend, we will die for it."

"So what? If we're going to be swamped by the kaffirs, anyway, then by God - at least we'll go down fighting."

"Let me tell you what - everything I've built up over thirty years of living in this country is at stake. My farm, my family, and my stock. And if the government collapses, at least I will have my guns to fall back on. There will be others, like me, who will fight street by street, house by house, corner by corner to save everything we've got here. The blacks will never succeed in creating one of their Congos in Suid Wes."

Two faces looked back across different tables as Patrick Clouston separately related these discussions with individuals who were, in their own way, alike as they were different.

Nicolas Riemann, once a prominent member of the banned Liberal Party, who quietly stroked his large red beard during the reporter's solemn narration.

Lieutenant Augustin Krischker, an army officer in the territorial reserves who - by contrast - appeared monumentally bored by his present appointment, communicating impatience by alternating glances between the watch on his wrist and the tiles on the ceiling.

"It is not surprising." Riemann had showed the most immediate reaction to Clouston, who occupied a seat in his spacious office. "That is the way that many feel in this country."

"You think anything about that can change?"

"What an interesting question. But first permit me the impudence of asking one of my own."

Though his English was faultless, Riemann still spoke with a noticeable Afrikaans strain that reminded his guest of Holland.

"Why did you come to me? I am nothing now, my party is disbanded. Many of our members are disgraced or under police surveillance. We are effectively silenced, are we not?"

"Exactly why I am sitting before you today," replied Clouston carefully. "I want to understand, to know."

"To know and to understand are two entirely different things."

"Then give me the benefit of both."

Riemann turned to face the window. "We have bantered long enough, Meneer Clouston. Ask again."

"Do you believe that this system, this society, can change?"

"Colonial and racist societies always change. It is only a matter of time."

"And...?"

So began a two hour discussion.

"We were allowed to work within the system to achieve change," Riemann shook his head sadly. "We were making progress. But then the Conservative Front victory happened. It was a nasty shock for everybody."

"Why?"

"It was a mistake, an emotional vote made by an emotional electorate. Walbert Braun branded my party a 'communist organisation' and broken up by force. We have been intimidated by CF bully-boys, common thugs, and the Koevoet ever since."

"If Braun had not won the election...."

"If Braun had not won the election, we might even be seeing the destruction of apartheid this very day. We were making progress, I tell you. Not progress as we would have wished, mind you - bringing in all races as they were qualified to accept responsibility, but the petty, senseless, machine that all Suidwes-Afrikans slave under today - we would have made significant gains in tearing in down."

"You think apartheid is sustainable?"

"As I've stated before, absolutely not."

"Why is that?"

"The present white regime only clings to power by force of the gun. This is by no means a permanent solution - they're running desperately low on time and don't even know it. You see, it is literally impossible to take a unitary state like this one, and build it on a foundation of division by race alone. That is a foundation of sand. And as the sand shifts, the state must inevitably shift with it, pushing Suidwes-Afrika ever closer to the abyss until she collapses like a house of cards."

"I see your logic...but can you define apartheid?"

"In my country, it is simply a broad term which is used to define philosophy that declares that white people are first-class citizens and blacks are fourth-class citizens. This is doomed to failure. Not only would it be impossible for the great majority of the world to support a country which endorses such hate, but it would also cause bitterness between peoples which could have, hereunto, resolved their differences in peace."

"How would you define the white Suidwes-Afrikan?"

Reimann looked thoughtful. "In the last century, whites here have started thinking of themselves as Africans rather than Europeans. Though we are a people of many strands, the descendants of the territory's German colonists in particular began to see Suidwes-Afrika as their home. Why, they even named themselves after it - Südwester. We have become, for all intents and purposes, a white tribe in a black country."

"A tribe?"

"Certainly. White attitudes are indeed tribal. For example, there are some ethnic communities who frown upon marriage outside said communities, remarkably similar to what goes on with the Africans. The problem is that white people in general are convinced that the barbarian, the savage, the 'kaffir' as it were - needs perpetual European supervision. They see blacks as being centuries behind themselves, such logic being equated with the primitive kraals they see on the veld. Because these humans are still living in huts, some reason, they can never be accorded political or social equality with whites."

"I've certainly seen something of a tough, go-it-alone attitude among white Suidwes-Afrikans in general."

"Really?" Riemann chuckled, perhaps flattered. "We've never been monolithic in our views or spirit - although I must say that in general the white man here is a tough personality that will not retreat easily, especially on such sensitive issues as race. But underneath the calloused exterior is fear. They feel to need to subject and oppress because they are the ones who are outnumbered. They are the ones who will have to answer for apartheid one day. And as day after day goes on and the violence skyrockets - most, unfortunately, ignore the most pressing issue: how much longer will the majority accept what they've been handing them?"

"Do you think there is some truth to the views about blacks being tribal primitives?"

"That isn't all true, of course. For those who live in rural areas this is undoubtedly the case. But you're overlooking the huge urban population, which comprises every imaginable shade in the colour spectrum. A growing number of youths in this category have radicalised - they want sweeping change. This is character which has characterised the Liberation League; the unrest you're seeing now, the protests, even the guerrilla war - it's all fueled by young anger which has been bottled up with nowhere to go. They wear LL insignia and T-shirts, give 'black power' salutes, stone police cars. For a great number there is no compromising with the regime. When members of the security forces respond with beatings, killings, rapings, and torture, this only heightens their rage. You cannot brew this mixture for very long without an explosion."

Clouston almost grinned. This was the moment he'd been waiting for.

"Would it go so far as mass insurrection or civil war, perhaps?"

"The black population has existed under apartheid for years without a truly popular revolution. But you've undoubtedly seen the headlines. State terrorism on a grand scale? Indiscriminate police massacres? Armoured cars driving down unarmed people in the streets? Our current leadership is made up of loose cannons. Civil war could break out tomorrow, and it will be no different from today. There's no guarantee that anybody will win, but whites dominate both the military and police. That's 85,000 troops at full mobilisation, backed by hundreds of tanks, fighter aircraft, and helicopters. If the full security reserves are mustered, perhaps the figure could even be stretched further - I've read accounts which suggest that the High Command could even put 100,000 men in uniform given two weeks."

Clouston stopped to ponder that figure momentarily. White Suidwes-Afrikans were a small minority in the country of their birth, by one reckoning, only about 2.4 million out of over 11,000,000 people, the great majority of whom were black. They were hopelessly outnumbered by the indigenous population, having for decades fought to prevent the rise of majority rule. As maintaining the status quo had been the only objective, it must have been impossible to understand what they truly believed in, what they were resisting. A few, like Prime Minister Braun, had gone completely off the deep end, twisting reality into an unsustainable lie.

He wondered if Lieutenant Krischker would prove any different.

"On the contrary, those two million whites are taxpayers, who subsidize the eleven million blacks. Our African people pay practically no income tax. We subsidize their housing, medical care, transport, and education."

Krischker was obviously not very well-educated on the topic of discussion. He paused to blow a smoke ring in the air, with the manner of a casual civilian passing himself off as a soldier. Clouston had next inquired about the war.

"What war?" The lieutenant feigned interest, then revealed his disdain by propping up a single booted foot on his desk. "The last war we fought was settled in '91. The debacle over Ovamboland. What we're seeing now is a police action, nothing more."

"And you think that the action is sustainable?"

Krischker shrugged. "We are effectively united. Our troops are very well equipped and trained. We've got the best of everything, I tell you, and if the conflict as it stands should escalate, can go quite a way to protect our interests."

"Do you honestly believe that?"

"Why not? It's the size of your gun that counts, man. We have an air force which gives the army both mobility and striking power. The average kaffirs on the ground will have a few rifles. It seems quite obvious to me that this is nothing we can't handle - or haven't seen before."

"You're a reservist, yourself. Forgive my ignorance in such matters, but were you called up recently?"

"Oh, ja, ja. Most of the men are into insurance or sales or something in the city. I've got a farm in Outjo."

"You seem a longer ways from home than you'd like to be."

Krischker did not seem to appreciate the question. "When the army sends you somewhere, you haven't got much of a choice, now, have you?"

Clouston studied the metal bar which had been pinned to the man's shirt. He registered with disgust the swastika-esque icon of the Suidwes-Afrikan Conservative Front - he'd been talking to a political hack all this time.

"Well, I won't keep you much longer."

"Good." Krischker did not bother to hide his relief. He dropped his cigarette into the nearest ashtray and stood up. "A pleasure making your acquaintance, Herr Clouston."

"Thank you for your time." Patrick did not offer his hand.

As he turned to leave, however, an interesting sight just outside the barred office window caught his eye. Eight white soldiers were sitting around a tank, its long 105mm barrel extended ominously towards passing motorists on the road.

Suddenly, they were no longer faceless wraiths - simply part of apartheid's mailed fist - they were lawyers and doctors, fathers and brothers, sons who looked barely old enough to be leaving school. They looked homesick as one, an astounding baritone with a guitar in hand, strummed a sad melody from atop the tank's jutting turret. He began to whistle, then to sing, and his companion followed suit.

Other voices intertwined, joining the chorus, gaining meaning and emotion. Some were wistful, others seemingly resigned, and still others charged with enthusiastic fire. The combination which resulted gained meaning, emotion, a longing which Clouston found hard to ignore. The married man who was thinking of his children, no doubt, and the kid who had left his girl and parents behind. The city dweller who had been a tradesman in another life - now far from him - and the modest farm boy who still dreamed about tending to his cattle.

They no longer sang without haste, but with a rhythm that beat with Africa's heart. The evening seemed to stand still under the stars, allowing the quiver trees and the arid ground to receive a beautiful song.

"What is it?" He asked, attentive if uncomprehending to the German.

Krischker responded curtly, "Whatever happens, this is our land, our nation, Herr Clouston. It is the time for every man to be a hero and fight for his birthright. Suidwes-Afrikans we are, and Suidwes-Afrikans we shall always be. I'll see you out now."

[Suidwes-Afrika]

Wyneham, Republic of Suidwes-Afrika

Raising one hand to his face to ward off the sun, Gideon Uusshona looked proudly across the expanse of the entire stadium - watching as more men and women arrived, more people ready to see what the bodies of freedom fighters slain for their cause. It was the first time many had seen Liberation League agents in the flesh, he knew - even if their lives had been taken from them.

It was several weeks after the young men had been gunned down at a military checkpoint not far from the sleepy Erongo town. The police and security forces were not totally immune to public pressure, it seemed, for the rage which Uusshona had experienced when he first saw the shocking murders on live television was one which everybody absorbed with equal vigour. Wyneham was angry. The people were angry, demanding when all else failed that these brave individuals at least be given the decency of a traditional burial. There were agents of the revolution they knew would soon come parading openly in the streets, in such numbers that no white man dared to defy them. And as they preached their sweet message, it was received readily by a community so long reserved from politics. As for Uusshona, this gospel reached out to his very soul. He knew in his heart, that a God somewhere had given this cause holy blessing, that it was a noble one for him. Like the good Christian disciple he was, the day had come for him to take up his cross and follow. He was touched by the sea of black faces. This football arena seemed to be swaying underneath the people's weight, a demonstration of their spiritual prowess. Now at last everybody could come together as one.

Drums throbbed in the distance, sending a friendly message across the harsh, empty, landscape beyond Wyneham's houses, hostels, and walls. Somewhere out there the battle without quarter was being waged, soldiers fighting Africa's warriors to keep this land under the heavy yoke of oppression - a land which their ancestors had only subjected with the sword, a land where they didn't belong, a land which they could never understand. It was from the land - the empty deserts, the lush forests, even the expansive savanna that Uusshona drew his strength.

A massive banner sewn with two crude green 'L's unfurled across the stadium. This was Gideon's proudest moment. He had planned this gathering from the very beginning, had designed the flag with his own two hands. Let the world see that Suidwes-Afrika belonged to her children, not to the European invader. Here white settlers were an affront against nature, an affront against the nation where they had come to pillage and to rape.

Before the flag his sons carried two gleaming ebony coffins in full view of their audience, which was swaying as though to some unheard music. Then as always in times of distress, the singing began. Usshona started off, his fellow activists joined in, and gradually, almost cautiously, the others picked it up. There were many voices - blending into a single touching cry, like the desperate wail of a caged animal pounding bloody paws uselessly against an iron cage which had so cruelly imprisoned it. There was something different about the melody the traditional song carried, a significance Usshona had never before sought. It touched a harmony deep in his soul, so he sang with a clarity that rose high above the voices of the others.

Unnoticed in their lofty lookout perch high above the crowd, two plainclothes operatives of the Suidwes-Afrikan Special Branch listened intently to a police radio.

Sergeant Christiaan Strocklin checked his watch.

What was it with communist riots and sports venues?

The scheduled time for the funeral had nearly passed, and the agent shot a worried glance at Gideon Usshona through his powerful binoculars. Strocklin could do nothing until he received necessary orders, but by God it would be a pleasure to take the kaffir bastard out where he stood.

A group of youngsters jogged around the stadium, chanting.

"The future is ours! This land is ours! We are the people. We are strong. Let the people arise!"

Usshona took to the little stage, which was now lit like a pyre. He was ready to speak.

Strocklin reached for his weapon.

"Not yet."

His partner, Victor Latz, was still by the radio. Silence.

Both men peered into the stadium, where Usshona had initiated his angry sermon.

"Christ, I can feel it from here."

Strocklin was obviously in considerable agitation, but Latz said nothing for several minutes.

"Patience. Our time will come."

[Suidwes-Afrika]

Wyneham, Republic of Suidwes-Afrika

Captain Detlev Hessenthal crouched in the shade offered by a Shorland armoured car, mopping his brow as he eavesdropped on a local radio net. The situation was far worse than even he had initially suspected - it seemed as if a third of Wyneham's black population had turned up for the funeral proceedings. Of course, the police had been left with little alternative but to contain the impending violence as completely as possible. Everybody knew that where there were Africans in an emotional atmosphere, blood was certain to flow.

It was the one lesson Hessenthal had learned to take to heart after nearly twenty years with his country's law enforcement.

Wyneham was a scenic town, built on a craggy bluff which overlooked a dry, rocky, plain. Here, spacious offices and homes rose out of the barren ground like a modern utopia flourishing deep in some uncivilised land, measuring no more than a suburb in size. It was inhabited by no more than 4,968 whites, who lived predominantly on outlying farms. The great bulk of Wyneham's other inhabitants - nearly 11,000 in all - were black men working the mines that kept this region alive, as well as their extended families.

The soccer field where even now Gideon Usshona was delivering his rousing speech couldn't possibly seat any more than 900, but Hessenthal could tell without looking that there were several times that number filling it to overflowing.

Behind him, policemen in filthy, sweat-stained, uniforms checked their Owen guns nervously.

Inside the stadium

Gideon Usshona opened the well-worn Bible, impatiently flicking its yellowed pages with his calloused fingers. A hush descended on his people as they awaited his words.

"When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and he shall save the humble person. He shall deliver the island of the innocent; and it is delivered by the pureness of thine hands. The book of Job."

In the holy ecstasy of that moment every dark hand was raised in a clenched fist salute. Usshona lifted both of his arms as he continued.

" - seeing times not hidden from the Almighty, do they that know him not see his days?"

Special Branch sergeant Christiaan Strocklin recoiled in horror as this blasphemy reached his ears. Satan himself was speaking! This was nothing short of Christian liberation theology! He shuddered as though his worst fears had come to light while Victor Latz chuckled at this amusing display of antique Afrikaner piety.

"Some remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof. They drive away the ass of the fatherless, they take the widow's ox for a pledge."

Images flashed across Usshona's mind as he spoke. The ancestral lands of his Herero ancestors were now home to white-owned ranches, where prosperous commercial farmers openly flaunted the cattle and flocks their people had unashamedly seized under an imperialist banner over a hundred years ago.

"They turn the needy out of the way; the poor of the earth hide themselves together."

Usshona remembered the senseless attacks on black urban dwellers everywhere from Mossamedes to Sandfontein. People driven from their shabby homes at gunpoint, men shot and clubbed to death in the streets, white constables beating and raping women and children as their terrified families looked on. He remembered the anguish which had gripped everybody as a whole. He remembered entire communities, decades of history and culture, being bulldozed for more prime real estate - their former residents banished forever or rotting in unmarked graves.

"Behold, as wild asses in the desert, go they forth to their work; rising betimes for a prey: the wilderness yieldeth food for them and for their children. They reap every one his corn in the field: and they gather the vintage of the wicked."

He envisaged the day that the Herero, the Damara, the tribes of Owambo and the Himba woke up in their kraals one morning to find a white man standing over them with a gun, telling them that they were now on his farm and had to work as slaves in their own fields.

"They cause the naked to lodge without clothing, that they have no covering in the cold. They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for want of a shelter. They pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor."

Not too long ago, in a shantytown where many nonwhites had fled to escape the regime's oppression, helicopter-borne security troops had attacked, driving many refugees into the mountains. A baby cried out somewhere as he was hurled against a rock. His savaged mother was shot as she grasped the legs of the towering machine-gunner, pleading for mercy before he blew out her brains.

"They cause him to go naked without clothing, and take away the sheaf from the hungry. Which make oil within their walls, and tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst."

Although Suidwes-Afrika was surely the richest nation in her region, so much of her wealth was plundered that its rightful owners, the men who had toiled on white mining projects, plantations, and ports absorbed under 5% of revenue. More blacks starved here every day than in any other country within a thousand kilometres. Usshona recalled the slums where many such people had been forced to live, bones jutting horribly from their skin and rags to cover their shame.

"Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded crieth out: yet God layeth not folly to them."

A single tear curled around the edge of Usshona's eye, falling on the next verse as he continued to read in a faltering voice, "They are of those that rebel against the light; they know not the ways thereof, nor abide in the paths thereof."

His temporary sadness was soon replaced with blind fury. With righteous anger the old man straightened suddenly and spoke with audible harshness. "The murderer rising with the light killeth the poor and the needy, and in the night is as a thief. The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me: and disguise his face. In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves in the daytime: they know not the light. For the morning is to them even as the shadow of death: if one know them, they are in the terrors of the shadow of death."

The sun seemed to shine more brightly behind Usshona, creating a halo of light over his body. The crowd looked on, transfixed. Every eye was directed at his face.

Strocklin glanced at his partner. Latz had picked up the radio's microphone. Both agents knew what was coming.

"We need backup. Quickly."

"Drought and heat consume the snow waters: so doth the grave those which have sinned. The womb shall forget him; the worm shall feed sweetly on him; he shall be no more remembered, and his wickedness shall be broken as a treee. He evil entreateth the barren that beareth not: and doeth not good to the widow. He draweth also the mighty with his power: he riseth up, and no man is sure of life. Though it be given him to be in safety, whereon he resteth; yet his eyes are upon their ways."

Gideon's fists opened as he raised both hands to the sky, closed his eyes, and recited the remaining verses from memory.

"They are exalted for a little while, but are gone and brought low, they are taken out of the way as all other, and cut off as the tops of the ears of corn."

The stadium had gone utterly silent.

"Under white rule, an individual does not matter, did not matter, and will not matter as long as long as the whites remain in power. An African is regarded as a thing rather than a human being, and his place in society is tied to the work for which he gives his labour as a commodity."

"Very quickly," Latz added, his voice low.

"The Liberation League is a national movement rallying together, on the basis of free and voluntary association, all freedom-inspired sons and daughters of the South West African people. It is the organised political vanguard of the oppressed and exploited people. We must organise, unite, orientate, and lead the broad masses in the struggle for national and social liberation. It is thus the expression and embodiment of national unity, of a whole people united and organised against apartheid."

Usshona opened his arms.

"Our beloved country is passing through a difficult stage of history, and to participate in the struggle has become a must for every citizen. It is we, and only we in our own country who can fight for our own liberation, our own independence, and our own future. We may not always be successful. Some have been martyred for their beliefs. But through our hard work and determination to be free, victory will surely be on the side of justice. We have nothing to lose, except our chains! Long live the people!"

It was as if his words had electrified the thousands of blacks present. As they pumped their fists they echoed his words defiantly: "Long live the people! We are the future! The future is ours! We are the people!"

"Long live the Liberation League, the glorious vanguard of our revolution!"

"Long live the guerrillas, and the commanders!"

"Long live the people of Africa!"

"The people of Africa!"

"Down with imperialism, down with neocolonialism, and down with Walbert Braun!"

"Down with the Boer! Down with the Germans! Down!"

"Ever onwards to victory!"

"Victory!"

It was a roar which shook the stadium to its very foundations, a roar made by thousands of men, women, and children all in unison, fists raised in salute. A roar that seemed to echo from sea to sea, river to river, desert to desert. A roar that echoed over the gunfire, the screams, and the suffering of the masses. A roar that reached the iron heart of apartheid itself, a cry from the soul of an imprisoned nation.

"My God."

It was the first time any police officer had seen Captain Detlev Hessenthal tremble. His eyes were those of an animal, roving from the ground to the sky, then back to the ground again, in panic. His men wafted backwards, as though buffeted by some unseen wave. They were there to deal with militants, a riot, a demonstration, anything but what was confronting them.

"Sir, Kommandant Shortt is on the line. He demands to know what is happening!"

Hessenthal stared, his eyes agog and mouth agape.

"Sir!"

The comms operator was seated atop the Shorland. In one hand, he was clutching a field telephone.

"Tell him whatever the hell you want," Hessenthal shot back. "We're standing down."

"What?"

Shortt was not particularly known for his sympathy.

"Good heavens, man - look for yourself!"

Before the line of the twenty-six white policemen armed with submachine guns and whips, beyond the makeshift barrier of Land Rovers and Shorland patrol vehicles, the crowds were emerging from the stadium exits, bearing the ebony coffins with them. Gideon Usshona was at their head, fist raised.

With their black faces lost in the gathering twilight, the demonstrators had abandoned all vestige of human appearance, presenting the image of a menacing machine preparing to crush all that stood in its way.