First light. The road to Chirau Tribal Trustland.
The trip in a hired Suburu sedan on the 20km dirt road to Chief Chirau's
traditional home gave new meaning to the term, 'Sunday drive'.
A pragmatic and peaceful man, the ZUPO leader was considered a 'sellout' by
militant blacks and had received a number of death threats. The possibility
that ZANLA or ZIPRA guerrillas had salted the narrow bush road the night
before with 'biscuit tins' (Russian-made landmines) was all too real (five
of Chirau's followers had been murdered recently in the area).
But for the car-load of journalists who wanted to visit the chief on his
home ground there was to be no official help from the government, hurriedly
distancing itself from claims that Senator Chirau was its 'paid lackey'. And
if we wanted to witness the chief presiding over his weekend tribal court,
we had to be there early, precluding the common-sense tactic of waiting
until the road had been well-travelled.
So we waited on the main Sinoia road for a truck to turn our way and tucked
ourselves in its slipstream, our driver keeping us in its broad tracks.
We were still congratulating ourselves when ten or so kilometres in, the
truck turned off on a farm road.
Braking to a halt, we stared bleakly at the 'virgin' dirt strip ahead,
looking for signs of recent disturbance that might signal a planted mine.
Not a fool-proof plan as the cadre often tunnelled under the roads to
secrete their deadly explosives.
What to do? To go back meant returning on similarly untravelled ground or
sticking, snail-like, to our own tracks. That also meant negotiating hairpin
bends on the wrong side of the road!
We sat and smoked and hoped a second truck would come along or, better yet,
a 'Pookie' (an army mine-clearing vehicle). No such luck. Time was, as they
say, marching on. One way or the other it was time to 'boldly go' or, as the
Matabele warriors would say, 'Go forward you die, go backward you die,
better to go forward' (this was no time to recall that the Ndebele
(Matabele) were the ZIPRA contingent of the Patriotic Front).
Had I been driving I might have elected to turn around. Having just spent a
fortune on vitamin supplements to 'tone' the bod I had little desire to
leave it scattered over the veld in tiny healthy pieces. But our driver
(whose name I can't recall) was one of those bearded, denim-clad pros who'd
recently finished a stint covering the troubles in the Horn of Africa. He
wanted to press on.
Then someone remarked brightly that, 'God looks after children, drunks and
journalists.'
Emboldened by our mutual agreement that we were all former children and
loosely fitted the second and third of that criteria, we drove on.
To this day, some 19 years later, I'll never forget the hypnotic terror of
staring at a blur of red-brown Africa slipping relentlessly under the
Suburu's front passenger wheel. Any second, I thought, any second - oblivion!
Well, I tried to tell myself, dry-mouthed, I'm 35, a bachelor, and I've had
a full life so far.
Yeah, right!
By the time we reached the senator's home I think we'd all lost a few kilos
in sweat, but I won't be recommending the plan to Jenny Craig any time