Winds that Blow Before the Rains

Michael Anthony

Description

An African freedom fighter, a Special Forces soldier and the woman who loved them both. It is the summer of 1972 and Zimbabwe is at war. Amid the violence, Sengamo is framed for the rape of a white girl. He is forced toflee his village kraal for the killing fields of Mozambique, where an enemy soldier spares his life in a chance encounter that has far reaching consequences. Isabella lives a quiet life, alone on a remote farm in the hills of Nyanga. But her peaceful world is threatened when Mugabe'shenchmen set up camp in the valley, waiting for their chance to strike and reclaim the land. Despite the danger, she refuses to abandon the home she loves and the ghosts that inhabit it. One day a stranger arrives at the farm. It is the start of a love affair that will change Isabella s world forever and bring Sengamo closer to his destiny. Out of the brutality of Zimbabwe emerges a hauntingly beautiful love story; an unforgettable tale of a tragic country, whereextraordinary allegiances triumph over segregation.

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781780887159
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Winds that Blow Before the Rains
The Winds that Blow Before the Rains
Michael Anthony
Copyright 2013 Michael Anthony
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador
9 Priory Business Park,
Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,
Leicestershire. LE8 0RX
Tel: ( 44) 116 279 2299
Fax: ( 44) 116 279 2277
Email: [e-mail]
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 978 1780887 159
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover design: Terry Compton
Front cover illustration: Neeltje Luyendyk
Cover artwork and back cover illustration: Jane Leadham
Typeset by Troubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall
This book is for Angie, who believed in the story and helped me bring it to life.
And to all Zimbabweans, who believed there was a tomorrow.
And finally to my mother, who called me Michael Anthony because she believed I would be a writer.
Belief: the feeling that something is real and true - trust. Oxford English Dictionary
Contents
Author s Note
Preface
A People s Struggle For Independence
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
AUTHOR S NOTE
This novel is an unbiased account of a people I once knew and a place I loved. It does not intend to practise or preach but rather to show the reader how it once was.
Although it is a work of fiction, it charts lives and places that are real but to identify with them would be folly because unambiguous characters or places are not necessarily based on real people or events. Neither is there any aim to make concessions in fiction on the actions of any living person.
PREFACE
This novel is Zimbabwe come to life, an unforgettable story told not by a scholar of Africa looking from the outside in, but by an ex-soldier who was there at the beginning of the troubles. I was one of only three young men, from an intake of sixty volunteers, to be selected for the SAS and given the honour of wearing the winged dagger . As such, I have a unique perspective of this country: a white man living in Rhodesia during some of its most turbulent changes. Like Sengamo, the African tracker in the book, I lived through that chaotic period in history and I came to know the hidden paths through the mountains, and to recognise the animals and their nightly calls. I witnessed the Africans way of life and the terrible suffering they endured at the hands of aggressors from both sides of the divide.
And the fight for freedom continues, with the waves of revolution threatening to wipe out oppressive governments all over the world. Yet almost thirty years since Robert Mugabe came to power, he remains one of the last dictators standing. However, age is one enemy he cannot defeat, and his death will signal an uncertain future for Zimbabwe, leaving a power vacuum that has the potential to instigate a renewed level of violence that may plunge the country into war once more. As such, this book is more vital than ever in its telling of the experience of Africans in this tumultuous region.
While this story does not shy away from the violence that characterises Zimbabwe s history, it also tells of a beautiful love affair, a chance to start anew and a friendship that survives and flourishes against all odds. My inspiration for writing this novel is Mandela, who showed me that we are all one people. If my book can impart this simple fact to those who read it, then I have achieved what I set out to do.
Michael Anthony 2012
A PEOPLE S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE
For nearly a hundred years the territory known as Rhodesia , an unrecognised landlocked country in Southern Africa, was under the sway of the British Empire. In 1888 Cecil John Rhodes and his British South Africa Company had negotiated a territorial treaty with the Ndebele king, Lobengula, which led to Rhodes acquiring the land from the Matabele tribe. By 1923, the territory had become a self-governing British colony.
But all was not as it seemed.
Thirty years later, there was growing opposition to the occupation of African lands, and Britain s colonies began to fall like dominoes. In 1965, the white-minority Rhodesian government, led by Ian Smith, joined the fray when it signed the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). The document - which the UK government considered to be illegal - put an end to any suggestion that Rhodesia should become a multi-racial democracy, effectively isolating the black man from involvement in the government of his own country.
Incensed, the majority black population formed the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) to overthrow republican rule in Rhodesia. Supported by the Chinese and operating from bases in Mozambique, ZANLA adopted the Maoist guerrilla tactics that had proved so successful for FRELIMO freedom fighters in that same country.
The white Rhodesians would come to call the conflict the Bush War . To the guerrilla supporters it was the Second Chimurenga , a direct descendant of the First Chimurenga, or the First War of Independence against British rule, which had taken place in 1896.
The war was nothing short of brutal. It saw thousands of casualties on both sides, brought large-scale destruction to the land and the country s innocent tribespeople, and came to define a generation of Rhodesians - both black and white.
Following the Bush War s culmination in 1980, there was a transition to black majority rule and the country finally gained the independence it had sought for nearly a century. Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, and Robert Mugabe its notorious leader.
But history books can never tell the whole story.
PROLOGUE
Last night I had a dream.
I am sitting alone beside a campfire.
Standing on the edge of the darkness are five men, but I am unable to recognise their faces in the faint glow of the embers.
There is no wood to revive the fire and the figures remain anonymous. And when the last of the flames die, the dream is obliterated.
It is the summer of 1982: a part of the bleak years, the days of drought and hardship. Shadows have fallen over the valleys and the mountains of Nyanga.
The Shona people call it the winds that blow before the rains . And until the rains of equality come, Zimbabwe - my beloved country - will continue to suffer.
Isabella
1
In the stillness of the day the silence was mythical. The tracker lay in the long grass and watched the enemy slowly approaching from the west, a string of soldiers snaking along the narrow path that stretched through the bush. High above him a solitary vulture drifted lazily on a thermal. The makhote was bad luck. It was waiting for death.
Glancing to his right, he could just make out the shadow of his platoon leader, Nyati, crouched behind a low rock. Scattered to the east of the path were seven of his fellow guerrillas, which left just the madala , the old man of the troop, on the opposite side of the track. He had little chance of escape from that position. But then he was cursed with the sickness and, as such, had volunteered to sacrifice himself in order for his comrades to make their escape.
The tracker s eyes returned to the advancing foe and its lead soldier, a mzungu , the only white man amongst a regiment of African traitors. As the officer passed the old baobab tree he turned his sun-burnt face towards where the tracker lay concealed and for just a moment the young freedom fighter thought his cover had been compromised. He pressed his body further into the softness of the earth; his mouth was dry and tiny beads of perspiration covered his forehead. Although they aggravated him, he remained completely motionless, his right eye glued to the cross-sight of the Draginov rifle, which was centred on the chest of the first African in the enemy line. Waiting for Nyati s signal to attack, he watched the soldier apprehensively, like a lion targeting a wildebeest.
Still nothing happened.
Relax man, he said to himself, easing his finger slightly off the trigger. The patrol was so close now that he could see, magnified in the sights of the Draginov, a button missing on the pocket of the African s jacket.
Suddenly the mzungu stopped, like a gazelle when it senses a predator, and he raised his left hand high above his head, signalling for the patrol to halt.
In the brief interlude the young tracker could feel his heart beating wildly.
Then the blast of Nyati s AK-47 shattered the silence and the mzungu , his arm still clutching the air, collapsed to the ground. Instinctively, the tracker squeezed the trigger of his sniper rifle and the bullet found its mark on his target s pocket, just below the missing button.
The deafening sound of gunfire from both sides of the divide thickened the air as the enemy went to ground. In the aftermath of the initial contact, acrid smoke drifted slowly across the veld , occasionally fuelled by a burst of fire when a soldier broke cover.
The tracker inched his way forward. Six feet to his right he could see the shape of his friend Jiwe, the boy he had trained with in the mountains. His adolescent body hugged the earth. Jiwe, Jiwe - are you