Fiction
The Land of Plenty / Emelda N. Gwitimah
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The last droplets had trickled down the copper taps in the last week of November. Far too long ago.
More recently the dry February winds had intensified, sweeping across the arid terrain in scathing sheets that almost cooked the tin shacks on the adjacent property where the miners had stayed. They’d moved on too.
Tshuma looked across his dry field and sighed. The collage of orange and brown and tan was stark against the cloudless sky. Two crows screeched above the dead maize stalks, which stood sentry over cracked soil. He was done.
This was the fifth drought he’d had to endure. Unlike previous bouts, he’d gone it alone. Camilla had taken the children back to Bulawayo. It wasn’t much different there—the desert from the southwest was still creeping into that province, sucking the soul out of every damn, reservoir, and well.
“At least we’ll be close to family,” she’d remarked, slamming the metal door on her way out. Tshuma had murmured “So what am I?” and slumped defeated onto the sofa, raising a whisper of dust as he did. Even with no people, there was always dust.
*
Buying Raintree Farm was the thing that would do it. It would change their lives. He’d been encouraged by Comrade Moyo—whose real name was actually Comrade and who called everyone else “comrade”—to approach Van Rensburg for purchase. With the local Party’s support (and of course, a light dousing of intimidation) he’d managed to push the old man and his family out for a pittance. Never mind the paperwork; everyone celebrated the lowly tailor’s land ownership in a night of joyous foolishness at Mphoengs Bottle Store.
The first year in Warmley the pumps still worked beautifully, and the rain fell enough to keep the garden flourishing. So what if the tomatoes were bitter—he’d still managed to sell crates of them at the border market.
“Ten hectares of land. You could do more veggies. We can keep the goats and maybe add sheep,” he’d gushed to Camilla.
“But we’re in region five,” she’d stated, not raising her eyes from the ironing board.
He’d frowned and looked up at her. It was times like these when their height difference became conspicuous.
“That’s just the propaganda the white men taught us to keep us from prospering. With the right hands we’ll be exporting in no time. Plus we have on-site water.”
He’d been so sure.
So was Comrade Moyo, who’d assured, “You can grow anything comrade! This is the land of our forefathers. We need to turn it into real money!”
Tshuma had nodded enthusiastically and noted how the glistening white paste at the corners of Moyo’s mouth made him seem like he was drooling over the thought. When he spoke, Moyo would quickly become covered in sweat, rivulets streaming from the crease between his head and torso, where his neck was hidden beneath rolls of dark flesh.
“Give it time. And get rid of the staff here. They’re still pining over Van Rensburg. They don’t have our vision, so they cannot be part of our dream,” he’d suggested.
So Tshuma had fired the lot. To replace the manpower, Moyo brought in a truckload of his own family members. They were a mismatch of people from Mberengwa, Zvishavane, and Gweru who spoke a hybrid language and whose customs Tshuma was unsure of. Still. They came highly recommended by a Party official who happened to be their relative, and his most trusted friend.
Charlie was the new Farm Manager. A tall man, he was a father of six who chewed his tongue constantly when he wasn’t firing sketchy, stuttery answers about soil quality or tractor models. It was Charlie who’d suggested parcelling up the farm into cash crops and reserving a space for cattle.
“C-c-cotton. Have you been to G-G-Gokwe? M-m-money Boss!”
Tshuma was sure the climate there was different to that in Warmley, but since Charlie had allegedly graduated from the National Agricultural College, he fully agreed. They sectioned the land into maize, cotton, soya, and, to everyone’s bewilderment on that calcic land, wheat.
Charlie’d also said that goats didn’t bring much money and sold those two, taking for himself the proceeds. With the rest he bought two heifers and a bull calf he claimed was a Thuli stud. Camilla had been the first to ask, “Is there even enough space for cattle? Can you not concentrate on one thing?”
The heat had stuck her blouse onto her back and left dark patches under her arms. Tshuma’s nostrils had flared, sending sweat trickling into his mouth.
“I know what I’m doing!”
It was far too hot to argue. This was the first drought, but he knew they’d pull through. He’d had dry spells as a tailor, especially after Weaver (Pvt) Ltd. had closed. Moving from a supervisory position at the textile firm to sewing school uniforms in a cramped room in an old colonial building downtown had been hard, but they’d made it. Plus, they’d had Camilla’s nurse’s aide salary to help. On the farm her desire to help was scarce. Especially when the police came.
“Two women were caught in some thorn bushes last night trying to jump the border fence near the Shashe bank. They said that they are from here. Olivia and Prudence Moyo?”
The police constable neither asked nor made a statement. His words hung in the humid air as the small flies buzzed around Camilla’s braided head.
“I don’t know them,” she’d declared, nonplussed.
Tshuma had been driving in as the police drove out. She’d explained lazily how Charlie’s sisters had been caught border jumping.
Tshuma was livid.
“These are our workers! You should have said something to bring them safely home!”
“I don’t know what that has to do with us. We barely have enough to pay the ones we have here. Two less people is a good thing. Besides, how much work were they actually doing, besides stealing chickens?”
He’d stormed off.
When he’d informed Charlie, the only reaction he received was a grunt and a shrug. Frustrated Tshuma’d walked to the workers’ compound to plead for transparency and for a change in behaviour. Yes, they were close to the border but there was no need to stir up the interest of the border police.
*
Year three brought intermittent showers that briefly stirred the ephemeral river close by. By then the wheat project had been shelved. The cotton had been unsuccessful too. Only the soya beans had shown some promise. One heifer had dropped dead under mysterious circumstances, leaving a sickly calf that cost more to keep than was budgeted for.
The water pump had started to splutter at times, bringing rusty sludge up to the surface. That didn’t stop the Moyo clan from leaving the hosepipe running, watering their family garden, which the Tshumas enjoyed no access to.
Charlie had become more morose, and his mysterious absences from the farm, more frequent.
“I’m d-d-doing deals. Getting seeds. More b-b-buyers for us,” he said when questioned.
Camilla would snort with contempt listening to her husband’s conversations with the man. She’d been getting antsy with the drought, tired of the cracked heels from walking on soil, tired of arguing with the house help, tired of not seeing the magical maize harvest they had been promised. What type of land was this? It had no mercy for person or beast.
She looked at her husband with pity—khaki slacks covered in blackjack, patches of caked soil, loose brown shirt hanging sharply from his once broad shoulders. Thank goodness the children were in boarding school in Plumtree and only saw their father briefly during school breaks. They hated the farm too.
“When are Charlie’s buyers coming?” she asked, half expecting Tshuma to snap.
He ignored her instead, which was ultimately more painful. She shook her head and pulled an itchy thistle from the hem of her skirt. Her admiration for her husband’s resilience had faded. She knew he was not a farmer, but having ploughed their savings into Raintree she’d have to tough out by his side. Marriage should’ve meant more.
Their conversation was cut short by a loud bang from the shed behind the pen. Tshuma’s heart sank. He knew even before Charlie stammered:
“The p-p-pump boss. G-g-gone!”
The young boy, Cain—nicknamed Sugar—whose duty it was to look over machinery, had not switched it off in the evening. The generator was dry and the poorly oiled pump had rolled to a stop. There came no apology. There was no acknowledgement. There was just movement out of the compound in the evening following the event as the Moyos concluded that without water, life on the farm would get much harder.
And it did.
By year four, part of the paddock was baked crust. White patches revealed where water had been sucked out of the soil—evaporating out of the chalky layers into the unforgiving air. The soya crop had not done well at all. The vegetable garden was overrun by blackjack and thorny brambles. The yard around the farmhouse was dotted with stubby shams shrubs—bare, stubborn and resolute. Instead of beautifying the home they just made it sadder, standing stuck, bearing nothing but giving everything. Only two of the Moyos remained at Raintree; Charlie and Sugar. The cattle were gone, but somehow they’d procured a solitary goat. They were no more chickens, the last of the flock having scurried and pecked their way to neighbouring properties, or been eaten by the feral cats that occasionally slunk in from the surrounding wild.
Tshuma had stopped praying for rain. His faith had dried up like the water tanks at his home. Only one remained, fed by what Charlie claimed was an underground tributary off the Zambezi. It was 300 km away, even farther than the Limpopo, but Tshuma had stopped arguing with Charlie a long time ago.
They’d been so lucky that Zulu on the next farm would allow them to draw water once a week. Zulu—Comrade Moyo’s apparent new best friend—was a businessman whose sprawling property occasionally saw visits by dignitaries looking to hunt wildlife that strayed onto its northern edges. It was Zulu who’d suggested bringing miners in to have a look at alluvial deposits in the riverbed. It was Zulu who built their shelters and later chased them away as soon as a few specks of gold were discovered. Zulu spoke of the land and all its promise in a way that inspired Tshuma, even though his own reality was so bleak. That’s why he couldn’t leave. If his fellow man, a younger man even, could harness expertise for a dam, so could he. Eventually.
“When?” asked Camilla. Her voice had betrayed her cool all exterior.
“Soon,” he replied looking dejectedly at the sky.
By then she’d moved into the spare room, taking all their shared comforts with her. All the holey duvets and flattened foam pillows. Vusi and Sisa were the only comfort that they had outside of possessions, but the children were now teenagers whose own desire for escape burned deep.
She’d even taken the bedroom curtains, leaving Tshuma to use half a bed sheet to shield the window. It was this window that shattered first.
He’d woken with a start. The lightning streaked across his view, with an electric fork that struck a dry tree and crisped it to a cinder in minutes. The stones furiously pelted the old asbestos roof. A freak hail storm. Camilla banged on his door shrieking in panic.
“Sa Vusi! Sa Vusi! Vula! Open the door!”
He swung it open and she fell in, shaking in a heap into his bony arms.
“We can’t die here! No! Not here God! Not on this farm!”
They staggered into the dark passage and cowered in the corner, under a spot they both knew to have double roofing. It was the point where the house had been extended. The hail cracked on for an hour, banging on doors, smashing windows and relentlessly hammering the roof.
He’d tried to soothe her but the storm muffled the words he spoke into her stocking-covered afro. The questions came like a flood in his mind.
What had gone wrong? He had his farm. His animals. His workers. They even had a tractor—why had it all gone to waste?
And now this. An act of God.
Someone like Zulu had insurance but he, Leeroy Tshuma, had nothing. He knew the truck would be pockmarked by the time the storm stopped. The hail would leave irreparable holes on the sky blue chassis. How would he collect the children from school?
The children.
What had he done to the children?
“Sa Vusi?”
Camilla’s voice was eerily calm but clear in the dying noise.
“Yes?”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
*
“I can’t do this anymore, Tshuma.”
Comrade Moyo stood with his hands in his pocket leaning against his bakkie, looking behind, not at, the person he was talking to. The good comrade could simply no longer give him money or food or supply him with water. He’d come to take back the generator he’d so kindly donated after the previous year’s hailstorm.
That storm that had opened up the heavens to two days of intermittent flash floods. Because the soil was no longer permeable, the ground had been submerged. Luckily, the house was built high, so water didn’t affect their property. One of the wells had been uncovered and water had rushed into it: a blessing, but yet another example of Sugar’s forgetfulness. Thankfully it had been enough to plan to plant the last of the maize seeds in the hopes of a harvest.
But of course anyone who lived in semi-desert conditions knew this was just a cruel trick of nature. The ground would be quenched briefly before the sun refuelled itself, burning proudly over the land. Charlie took a weird pride in enjoying explaining this.
‘Pride,’ Tshuma thought, ‘I used to be proud of myself.’
The last drops came out of the taps as Comrade Moyo bundled his generator and drove to the adjacent farm for “consultation”. It was then, too, that Camilla had bundled the children up for a better life in the city. When she left, Camilla had assured him that what she no longer wanted was the farm life and that she was still very much his wife. But she added that she saw neither destination nor future in following a parked car.
Tshuma was exhausted. By December, Sugar had left, taking his little skills and potential to the other side of the border fence. Tshuma asked Charlie why he remained.
“B-b-better days are coming,” was the response.
Tshuma was in awe of his resilience, but saddened by it. He saw himself. He’d started contemplating selling Raintree and told Charlie so.
“Can you find me a buyer, Charlie?”
Charlie gave a thumbs up, said “Sharp, Boss” and walked out.
A fortnight passed with nothing but termites and the occasional roach and for company. Tshuma woke to the sound of crunching gravel as a truck idled up the driveway. He pulled on his flannel shirt and rushed outside.
Charlie stood the bottom of the stoep, dressed very smartly though the blue pants left his ankles exposed.
“Boss,” he said with a nod.
“Charlie,” Tshuma nodded as he skipped downstairs.
To his left stood Comrade Moyo next to a truck. Six young men in green T-shirts and overalls sat on the brim of the truck’s pan, chatting animatedly, paying no mind to the owner of the farm who’d just come out of the house.
“Comrade, you have an hour to leave the farm.”
“What?”
Tshuma was taken aback by the tone his friend used.
“Take your things and get out!”
Tshuma shifted uncomfortably and shouted, “But this is my farm!”
“Where are your papers?”
Papers?
“You gave it to me! When I got it you were there, I—the Party gave it to me!”
“And what have you given the party? Remember. I said you were to make money.”
Tshuma was stunned. They’d shook hands over Lion Lager, beside all their fellow friends and comrades. Now this.
“Moyo, please——”
“Right boys! Quickly help Mr Tshuma pack his things! Comrade Zulu needs to see the place before ten.”
The squad of young men jumped enthusiastically off the truck and trampled past Tshuma into the house. His house.
Charlie followed, hands buried within his pockets. A friend indeed. As he did, Tshuma threw his arms up in a rage, and jumped up behind him.
“It’s…my…house!” he managed, pulling Charlie back in an attempt to drop him. Instead, Tshuma’s legs were flailing as he dangled off Charlie’s long back. The boys in the house peered out of the window at the scuffle, whistled and jeered. Tshuma heard Comrade Moyo cackle behind him as he put all his weight into trying to fell his once trusted adversary.
Charlie, never one to be underestimated, reached around and began poking Tshuma in the ribs. The jabs landed as intended—where mounds of flesh should have protected him, pain instead seared through his bony frame. Finally after an awkward three minutes of hissing and tussling, Charlie shrugged him off.
“Sathane!” shouted Tshuma, as he landed on his back. For a moment he was dazed and closed his eyes. He then opened to the expanse of blue sky, for a moment overcome by the colour. Then the kicks came. Then the punches. Then the belt.
“You…let…my sisters…get…beaten! Bloody…bastard!”
Charlie put his entire weight into the blows, setting his legs astride to steady himself as he let his anger flow.
Tshuma curled himself into a ball and covered his face, hoping his whimpers were less audible than the scratching of moving furniture in the house.
“At ease!”
Charlie halted as Comrade Moyo instructed.
“Swine!” He pressed his lips together and trudged to the truck.
The boys were done removing Tshuma’s few belongings in minutes. The only thing of value was his sewing machine, which though untouched for years would fetch a pretty price.
Tshuma lay huddled in the front yard, the ever faithful sun beating down on his bald head. He hurt all over. He opened his left eye as they started the truck. The boys were laughing. Charlie and Moyo were in the front, deep in conversation as if what had happened was just a mere disturbance to their greater plans.
When the car was a little way off, Comrade Moyo warned, “Comrade, be gone in two hours!”
The cackling in the back increased as the truck rolled off in a cloud of copper dust. Tshuma shut his eyes. There was always dust.