Shaka II

7.

Five months later, when Robert threatened to go to war with Namibia over water rights, they surrendered without a shot being fired. He politely suggested that they might like to become a protectorate, or better still, a province, and they agreed.

Botswana saw what was happening, and they knew that they were the treasure of Southern Africa, because they sat on the largest diamond pipes, larger and more productive than South Africa in its heyday. They were the only African nation besides our own that could truly be said to have a thriving economy.

And they knew how to use that economy. I was in the Presidential Palace when the first word came through: our crack sixth division had been turned back at the Botswana border, with better than fifty percent casualties.

We knew it couldn’t be the Botswana army, because Botswana didn’t have an army. It was eighty percent Kalahari Desert, and another ten percent Okavango Swamp. Even in the 25th Century the population hadn’t reached three million. Almost all of them lived along the Limpopo River, and they had not gone to war with anyone in their entire history.

It didn’t take long to find out what had happened. The rest of the continent—indeed, the world—was not unaware of what was happening down at the southern tip of Africa, and Botswana had used some of its wealth to hire an army of mercenaries, led by an American veteran of the Battle of Io, a Colonel McBride. They had the latest weapons, the latest technology, and an employer that was willing to supply them with whatever they needed to preserve its territorial integrity.

Robert, who usually dined at the finest restaurants in Pretoria, chose to have dinner in his expansive office. He invited three of us—two political advisors, whose advice he never listened to, and myself—to join him in the huge, carpeted room that was dominated by two paintings of Robert himself, one staring down at his desk, the other looking out over the balcony at the extensive, exquisitely-manicured grounds.

“You look troubled,” I said when I entered the office, the last to arrive.

“They are fucking up my timetable!” he growled.

“Perhaps we should just leave them be,” said an advisor. “After all, they are a useful trading partner.”

“And back down in the eyes of the world?” snapped Robert. “Never!” He turned to me. “You are my brother. My blood runs in your veins. What would you do?”

I stared at him blankly. “Send more troops?” I said at last.

“Then they will buy more mercenaries, and our soldiers will kill their mercenaries and their mercenaries will kill our soldiers. We will win in the long run, because our population is larger than their diamond mines, but I do not want Botswana if it is impoverished and destroyed by the war. So what would you do?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Blood may be thicker than water,” he said contemptuously. “It is clearly not more intelligent.” He looked around the room. “Can no one else see the way?”

Silence.

“I wonder why I pay you at all,” he muttered.

The food arrived and we moved to an imported mahogany table that four soldiers carried into the office and set up for us.

“Let me do the honors,” said Robert. He took a pitcher of cold water in his hand, and we passed him our glasses. A tiny smile played around the corners of his mouth, and he slowly poured the contents of the pitcher onto the plush carpet. “Now does anyone see the way?”

We were all silent.

“Fools!” he snapped. “Botswana is a desert. It is fed only by three rivers — the Limpopo, the Okavango, and the Chobe. The Okavango and the Chobe originate in Namibia, which we now own, and the Limpopo originates very near Pretoria and flows into it from South Africa.”

“You are going to cut off their water?” asked an advisor.

“We will begin diverting or damming all three rivers tomorrow. They cannot mine for diamonds without massive amounts of water. Given a choice, they will save the water for their people. Hopefully the mercenaries will see that their source of income is literally drying up, and will go where the money is and fight in some other war.”

“And if not?”

“If not, they will be so weakened from thirst by the time we confront them again that they will prove very easy to subdue.”

“How long will you wait?” I asked.

“As long as it takes. At least a year. The Okavango Delta will not dry up before then. And we’ll see if their government wants to keep paying a mercenary army when it is not under attack.”

“And the tens of thousands of women and children who will die of thirst?” I asked angrily.

“They would have died of something sooner or later,” he said with no show of concern. “And those who do not die will be so thrilled to have the rivers unblocked again that they will strew flowers in our path.”

I thought it was cruel beyond belief. These weren’t soldiers or mercenaries we were talking about, but citizens whom he would coldly condemn to a terrible death. The problem was that I couldn’t see any way it could fail.

Within a week work had begun on all three rivers, and within two months they had been dammed or diverted. Robert was prepared to wait two years, perhaps three, to bring Botswana to its knees—

—But Botswana wasn’t willing to wait. They had a mercenary army, they couldn’t afford to keep them (or supply them with water) indefinitely, and they decided not to wait. News of the first incursion over our northern border reached us on a Sunday. By Tuesday, before Robert could mobilize our near-dormant air force, Colonel McBride’s men had progressed as far as Pilanesburg, and citizens in both the political capital of Pretoria and the economic capital of Johannesburg were getting nervous.

Three members of the Parliament called for Robert’s resignation. They did not show up the next day, or ever again, but there was still serious unrest in the government.

It began to look like McBride might reach Pretoria in another seven to ten days. Then a small private plane crashed very near the main body of McBride’s troops, and within a day almost seventy percent of them were dead.

“What the hell happened?” asked an advisor when Robert summoned us to tell us that the war was as good as over and that we had won.

“If I were to guess,” said Robert, “I would guess that a plane loaded with a particularly virulent form of mutated visceral leishmaniasis lost control and crashed in the middle of Colonel McBride’s forces.”

“Are you crazy?” demanded the advisor. “Germ warfare has been outlawed for centuries!”

“I was defending my country,” said Robert calmly. “How will the Western nations, with whom I have signed no agreement or treaty, punish us—by sending bigger germs?”

“But this will kill our own people too!”

“They are not our people,” replied Robert. “They are Xhosa and Matabele. We are Zulu.”

“They are South Africans, and you are their President!”

“Then they will have died for their country, and their families will honor their memories.”

“I just want it on record that I strongly disapprove,” said the advisor.

Robert shrugged. “You have that right.”

The advisor left the room. No one ever saw him again.

Soon the reports began coming in. Nothing was alive within twenty-five miles of the crash—and ninety percent of McBride’s forces had been that close to it. None of the local residents had survived either.

A few stray mercenaries, far out on the flanks, or advance scouts, were alive but grievously ill. Robert refused to allow them access to our medical facilities, and they were airlifted to Gaborone, where I am told most of them died within a week.

“It’s just as well,” said Robert a few days later. “It could have taken as much as three years to starve them out. This saved a lot of time and effort.”

“But not lives,” I noted bitterly.

“I’m alive,” he shot back. “You’re alive. We have a new province almost the size of Spain, and almost none of the population died in the conflict. What more could you want?”

I couldn’t think of any response that would alter his perceptions, so I remained silent.

“Anyway,” he continued, “since McBride is dead and there is no one left of any rank to surrender to me here, I suppose I shall have to fly to Gaborone and allow them to surrender to me there.”

“Don’t we have an ambassador there?” I asked.

“Presidents do not surrender to ambassadors or underlings,” said Robert. “I will go myself.”

And so he did. But first he got our finest calligrapher to draw up a list of his demands, and write them in beautiful script on an actual piece of parchment. Then, armed with that, he traveled to Gaborone, accompanied only by myself, an advisor, and a small handful of bodyguards.

A huge crowd gathered as he climbed the steps of the Presidential mansion. The Botswanan President, a withered, elderly man who looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, greeted him at the top of the stairs, and the two of them went into his office. They emerged half an hour later, and Robert walked through the ornate entry hall to the top of the steps, holding the signed parchment aloft.

“Citizens!” he cried. “I bring glad tidings! Beginning this week, the rivers shall flow again.” A huge cheer. “Beginning this week, you will never have to rely on a hired military that owes no allegiance to you, for you will be protected against all external threats by the army of South Africa.” Another cheer. “And beginning right now you will never again be led by a weakling such as this man standing next to me.” And before anyone realized what was happening, Robert had pulled a pistol out of his pocket, placed it against the President’s head, and pulled the trigger.

The explosion brought a shocked gasp from the crowd, as the withered man collapsed in a heap. I thought they were going to race up the stairs and attack Robert, but he held up a hand. It didn’t mean anything, but it was a dramatic gesture, and it got their attention.

“All he brought you was thirst and defeat. Now things will be different. To begin with, I am declaring a two-week paid holiday for every worker in Botswana. And if any employer doesn’t honor that promise,” he added sternly, “I want to know about it.” I saw the members of the crowd looking at each other, puzzled expressions on their faces. “Furthermore, to welcome you into the nation of South Africa, I am also declaring a one-year moratorium on all taxes.”

This time a cheer arose, and Robert shot me a “Did you really think they’d attack me?” smile.

“Finally,” he continued, “all political prisoners will be freed tomorrow morning, and their prison records expunged.”

I wasn’t aware of any political prisoners in Botswana, and I was sure Robert wasn’t either, but it brought an exuberant round of applause, and I could see the faces in the crowd, each seeming to say “This isn’t the disaster we’d feared,” and then “This was a blessing in disguise!”

A woman suddenly shouted out: “Hallelujah!”

Then a gravel-voiced man climbed the first couple of stairs, turned to his compatriots, and yelled, “Three cheers for Buthelezi!”

The crowd was about to accommodate him when Robert held up his hand again.

“Thank you,” he said, stepping over the dead body of the President and walking a few steps closer to them, “but Buthelezi was an insignificant flyspeck on the dungheap of humanity. I reject that name.”

“What shall we call you then?” asked another man.

He drew himself up to his full height and looked out at the crowd.

“Tchaka,” he answered.