Late in the summer of 2009, as the hadedas chastised the barren thunderclouds, and the pastoral folk of Zimbabwe licked the last sooty shreds of nourishment off the burnt-out shells of tortoises caught in bushfires, a helicopter touched down lightly on a rooftop in what had once been Harare.
A gunshot sounded not far away, and the pilot frantically hammered on his watch as the small party on the roof staggered into the wash of the blades and made for the open cargo door. It was slow going: Robert Mugabe was not a young man, and the flak-jacket his aide had insisted he wear weighed a ton. The gold bars in his underpants were not light either.
A skeleton in rags burst out on to the roof, and one of the soldiers tasked with carrying the First Lady’s furs cut it in half with a burst of rifle fire: spent cartridges cascaded, smoking and stinking, into the surprised little face of the fox that hung about the soldier’s shoulders; and three stoats and an ermine stared glassily at the gore. The door-gunner bellowed at the last of the party to get on, and then opened up on the mob as it burst out into the sunlight. The helicopter lurched, pitched forward, rocked back, and then strained a foot, two feet, three feet, into the shimmering sky. Half a brick clanged off the fuselage, and the door-gunner rode his weapon as it bucked and kicked.
”We’re too heavy!” yelled the pilot.
”You!” croaked Mugabe, pointing a claw at the South African emissary, sitting hunched and terrified behind his zebra-print briefcase. ”Go and mediate!” The man was still fumbling in his jacket pocket for his letter from the ministry when the gunner grabbed his tailored collar and threw him out on the roof. He disappeared under a wave of blows, the clubs rising and falling like ripe corn in a summer wind. Mugabe cleared his throat and readjusted his glasses. One had to be pragmatic. Quiet diplomacy had long ago turned to silent diplomacy, and silent diplomacy implied silent diplomats. He looked at the stain below. That particular diplomat would be distinctly silent from now on.
”More!” bellowed the pilot, and Mugabe turned to his beloved Grace, and kissed her cheek.
”Go fuck yourself, Robert!” she shrieked. ”I’m not getting out!”
”Not you, you counter-revolutionary cow!” he yelled as hammering hands drummed around them on the fuselage and the door-gunner poured water on his red-hot weapon. ”The smileys! Dump the smileys!”
Grace looked stricken, but Robert had his stern face on, the one he reserved for talk of homosexuals and whites, and she knew there would be no reprieve. She snapped her fingers, and her lady-in-waiting handed her the little velvet bag in which she kept her beloved Fabergé smileys, gorgeous miniatures of boiled sheep-heads, fashioned in diamonds and gold leaf. She ran her fingernails over their exquisite lines one last time, adoring the ruby eyes rolled back in their sockets, cherishing the platinum tongues that protruded through amber teeth. Then they were gone, tumbling into the mob, and she wept.
They were rising now, gaining momentum, and then the edge of the palace fell away and they were labouring over the treetops. Grace, blowing her nose raucously on the South African flag hanging in the cargo bay, peered dolefully out of the window at the ravaged city below.
Their decision to leave had presented them with such awful dilemmas. For instance, how could they leave their country at a time like this? By rail? Helicopter? In Thabo Mbeki’s private jet? Would they transfer the national fiscus into the Swiss account, or simply open a current account in South Africa? And what sort of honorary doctorates were South African universities handing out these days? She would simply die if she didn’t get one in the humanities …
It had been easy to set aside such questions in those last few months. Everything had been so … normal. The South Africans had been so supportive — inspirational, even: Mbeki’s decision, in 2007, to accuse whites of racism for being afraid of criminals had been a masterstroke, giving her Robert the ideological precedent he needed to brand all resistance to random beatings as racist, counter-revolutionary, and pretty damn gay.
Even the SABC, covering the crisis, had filled her with hope. True, the news crews had been ordered by Snuki Zikalala not to remove their lens-caps, and spent their days bumping into things; and most breaking news was shot on a Johannesburg soundstage, where Zikalala oversaw a team of screenwriters whose task it was to have the Mugabes solve an MDC- orchestrated murder every week while engaging in witty banter; but even so, the picture had been a hugely encouraging one.
Suddenly she screamed. ”There’s one hanging off the skid! Robert!” The great liberator peered out of the window, and nodded serenely. ”I would never bite the hands that have fed us for so long,” he said, ”but under these circumstances I think God will forgive me for stamping on them. Open the door.”
The helicopter whop-whop-whopped towards distant Pretoria …
To be continued next week