The Ghost of Samuel Cetswayo

Winston was now propped up just behind the front door almost out of hearing distance of Mama’s snoring.  Tito slept opposite Petrus with his head upon his folded arms on the table.  Apart from the radio, the comforting crackling sounds from the burner and mama’s snoring, the room was silent.  Petrus lifted his head and cocked his ear as he heard a heavy vehicle make it’s way along the dirt road … he could hear the distinctive ‘bump-bump-bump’ sound of the vehicle’s suspension as it’s wheels ploughed across the high spots of the dirt road corrugations.  He could hear the drone of the diesel engine.  The vehicle was getting closer.    Petrus stood up and peered through the flimsy nylon net curtain, but there was no sign of headlights from either direction.  Then it fell silent.  Petrus stood at the window for about a minute, maybe two.  He heard nothing.  He then turned, and as he passed his sleeping comrade, he very gently pushed Tito’s jacket to the side to expose his gold pocket watch that was hanging from its chain.  It was almost 1.05am. Petrus briefly thought back to the presentation evening some two years earlier.  He sighed, and then leaned over to pick up the magazine from the table.

The front door burst open with such force that pieces of its wood panelling crashed against the pots and pans standing on the kitchen shelves on the opposite wall … causing many of them to crash to the floor.

‘Moenie beweeg nie … moenie beweeg nie!’ the white man screamed as he burst into the room.  Winston was finding it hard to get to his feet … he had been hit hard as the door flew open.  Samuel jumped wide-eyed to his feet and instinctively grabbed one of the larger pots that had almost killed him only a split second ago.  Mama jumped to her feet and screamed for Africa.  Petrus hurtled himself across the table, as he did so, he grabbed his .38 revolver.  He slid off the other side of the table taking its entire contents with him and landed hard on the floor.  So hard, it winded him.  Before he could upright himself he received a hard blow to the head.

   The man standing in the middle of the room was holding a shotgun.  He constantly waved the long barrel of the gun from side to side.  The room filled with more men … eight … maybe a dozen, many of them were only teenagers!  The room was flooded with the artificial beams of light from their powerful flashlights.  Winston still didn’t know what was happening as two of the men pinned him to the floor.  Mama’s screams were silenced as one of the men hit her across the cheek with the butt of his rifle.  Samuel sunk to his knees as the low kicking blow probably destroyed any chance of him fathering a child.