The Ministry for the Future

65

We were slaves in that mine. Of course they told us we could leave if we wanted, but we were in the desert backside of Namibia and no way to get away, nowhere to go. We would have had to walk hundreds of kilometers without food or even hats to cover our heads. On the other hand if we stayed we got fed. Two meals a day, ten-hour work day, Sundays off. Hurt bad enough and you could go to the clinic and nurse would look at you, maybe a doctor if it bad enough. Broken bones were set. Dysentery pilled and IVed.

There were about five hundred of us. All men except for some of the nurses and cooks in the mess hall. Most from Namibia, some from Angola and Mozambique and SA and Zimbabwe. Most of us operated machinery or worked on it, but there was some digging too. Digging out machinery after collapses. Bodies too sometimes.

It was a pit mine. Open hole in the earth. Made in the shape of an oval that widened a valley that might have been there before. Roads spiraling down toward hell. Red rock of iron ore, and there were some yellow and greenish patches we were supposed to look for and dig out into separate trucks. We didn’t even know what was in those colored rocks. Gold? Uranium? Rare earth, some called it. Not so rare there, but mostly it was red rock. Iron ore, common as dirt, and yet we were slaves to its taking.

Then a bad time came in the kitchens. Less food every week, and the water tasted of iron and made people sick. Finally one of the dorms got up one morning and sat down outside the kitchens. Feed us right or we won’t work, they chanted together in a chant. Looking at them sitting there you could see they were desperate. They were scared men. We all saw it and one by one we went and sat down beside them, until every single miner in that mine was sitting there in the morning sun, expecting to get killed. Drones buzzing overhead like flies. It could have just as easy been these flies killed us as anything. The guards with their machine guns just watched us, like we were all waiting for something. Which we were, be it death or whatever. No matter what it was it couldn’t be worse than what we were living. So it felt good to sit there that morning in the sun, scared and sweating. We were brothers in that moment in a way we had never been while working.

Finally a man came out with a bullhorn. We knew he was just the voice for a higher power. The mine was owned by Boers from SA, or China or somewhere far away, we heard all kinds of thing. This voice was speaking for them, whoever they were. It said, Get back to work and we’ll feed you.

We sat there. Someone yelled, Feed us and we’ll get back to work!

So there it stood. We weren’t going to budge unless they fed us. They weren’t going to feed us unless we budged. We talked it over with the men near us. Everyone agreed; might as well die now and get it over with. We encouraged each other to stick to that. It was that bad. We were scared.

Meanwhile the cloud of drones had been growing overhead, like vultures flocking over some dead body on the veldt. There were more drones up there than there were people on the ground. They hung there more like mosquitoes than vultures, with the same sort of whine as mosquitoes, but bigger. Most about as big as dinner plates, some bigger. Their whine cut at your head and itched in your belly.

Then all the drones or almost all came swooping down fast like hawks and we rose to our feet shouting our dismay and throwing our arms overhead and ducking down and the like. But the drones all went at the guards. They surrounded them dozens to each man, packed around them like coffins made of stacked black buzzing plates. One guard shot his gun and his cloud of drones collapsed on him and felled him to the ground somehow, we couldn’t see what they did to him, but he didn’t move, and the other guards saw that and no more shooting.

Then the drones spoke together, first in Oshiwambo, then Afrikaans, Swahili, English, Chinese, other languages I couldn’t name.

“We are from the African Union Peace and Security Council. This mine has been nationalized by the new Namibian government, and will be protected from now on by AFRIPOL security forces. All countries of the African Union are now united in support of the Africa for Africans program. Representatives from the Namibian government and the AU will arrive shortly to help you with this transition. Please stay seated, or feel free to move into the dining halls or dormitories while the armed personnel here are escorted off the premises.”

Which we were happy to do. The guards left on foot down the road. We cheered, we hugged our brothers, we cried for joy. The cooks broke into the pantries and freezers and made us a proper meal, trusting that more food would come in time to make up for the shortage they were creating. Which eventually it did. Troops from the AU arrived that night and declared us liberated. Nationalized, they said. Told us that now we were worker-owners of the mine, if we wanted to stay. If not, free to get on buses and ride away.

Some of us left as soon as the buses showed. Most of us stayed. We figured we could leave later if we wanted. But being an owner of the mine sounded interesting. We wanted to know what that meant. Like sweat equity, some said. Sweat equity! Hell, we had blood equity in that mine.