Africa addio Page #6

and we're with them.

But this time,

there's no one to await us.

We got to know them one at a time.

They are the white mercenaries

ofTshombe's army.

They're the last surviving

soldiers of fortune from another century.

They're former citizens of a world

that kicked them out

or that they're running from.

Dead and survivors,

all of them are or were ex-something.

From a restless past,

an uncomfortable present,

a ruined adventure, lost faith.

They're ex-"Pieds Noirs" from Algeria,

ex-English commandos,

ex-German engineers,

ex-farmers from Kenya,

ex-residents expelled from Sudan, Egypt,

Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanganyika,

ex-veterans of Katanga,

ex-professional hunters,

ex-students from

South Africa and Rhodesia,

come to pursue

with a macabre academic spirit

the idea of glory and adventure.

Two days ago, 15 of them

plucked 400 rebels from Kisala.

Tomorrow, 40 of them

will attempt an endeavor

that 93,000 UN soldiers could not manage:

The conquest of Boende.

The attack plan for Boende calls for

the use of massive aerial forces.

The "massive" aerial forces are

these two 20-year-old P6s

held together as well as possible

with bolts and wire.

They're the personal property

ofTom O'Keefe and Somerset Wilson

former Rhodesian pilots whose families

were massacred by rebels from Angola.

They've hired out themselves

and the planes for $500 a month

which no one has paid for six months

and a life insurance policy

that up to now

no insurance company has underwritten.

This time, as always, before leaving

they've filled out the forms

at the airport in the usual manner.

Destination:
Hell.

Reason for flight: Personal matters.

The Simba fled without having time

to slaughter the missionaries

who've lived for three months

under the daily nightmare of the massacre.

Propaganda teaches the Simba to strike

the white man especially at his God,

a white-skinned God responsible for the

centuries-long arrogance of his faithful.

Along the path to Boende,

the skeletons of the Simba

are rotting in the puddles

without glory and without burial.

They advanced unprotected,

dazed by drugs,

intoning the "Mai Mulele,"

the magic spell that was supposed to

transform the lead of bullets into water.

They fell, incredulous and amazed.

They died for nothing and for no one.

Africa has no fallen soldiers

on either side.

It has only corpses.

Boende has fallen.

The last Simba come out of the forest

with their hands up.

Today it's their turn,

but tomorrow

when the mercenaries leave the city

headed toward other objectives,

they'll be on the other side of the gun.

It's an absurd and tragic ballad

that's been going on for five years now.

Whites against blacks

and blacks against whites.

They take turns killing and dying,

like a cruel children's game.

No one wins and no one loses,

once and for all.

No condition is definitive

except for white and black deaths

that together infect the ruins

and dissolve, amidst the buzz of flies,

into absolute biological equality.

The ethics of the Congolese guerrilla

are that to the victor belong the spoils.

The mercenaries have aimed right at

the safe of the revolutionary government

and have blown it open with a bazooka.

Inside was 50 million Congolese francs.

These were the funds destined for

the famous "OK Plan"

according to which General Olenga,

at the head of his 3000 Mulelist warriors

was to invade the United States.

America has been saved.

In the streets,

the soldiers divide up the small change.

The ambitious "OK Plan" has been

postponed for centuries,

just like all of their

naive delusions of grandeur.

Meanwhile, they go into raptures

over a victory as squalid and useless

as their raid,

sharing in a miserable little celebration

from which they get only the crumbs.

For centuries they were poor

out of necessity.

But now that they're rich to excess,

they load themselves up,

even if they will never

be able to carry it away.

Bent under the weight of useless trinkets,

they pursue an ideal of wealth,

robbing only their own misery

from themselves.

The right to plunder

is valid only for 24 hours.

Time ran out 10 minutes ago.

But why could you steal

up to 10 minutes ago, and now you can't?

A good Congolese soldier who fought

for the homeland will never understand.

Nor will he ever understand

why the whites make such a fuss

to find out who ate

this peasant's liver.

Or why there has to be a trial

to condemn to death this Mulelist

who burned 27 children alive.

Or why they're arresting the soldiers

who raped those Mulelist b*tch

prisoners in jail.

And why you need so many guns to kill

one single little disarmed Mulelist.

While to kill a bigger and stronger one,

you only need one shot.

But despite everything,

Africa continues to be

an uncontainable sea of life.

Here in South Africa,

for every baby born with white skin,

five come into the world

with black skin.

Racial separation,

which is called "apartheid" here

is a short-lived, provisional dam.

It is the hysterical reaction

to the hysterical situation

that threatens to darken the smile

of the new generations into hatred.

Soweto is one of the largest

black cities in South Africa.

The apartheid laws

prohibit whites from entering.

If it's a prison,

then it's a strange prison

where the doors lock on the inside

and open out.

On the other side of these lines,

there's another big prison...

that of the whites.

It's called Johannesburg.

Apartheid prohibits blacks

from entering.

This is another strange prison

where the doors lock on the inside

and open out.

Apartheid has locked up two races

in two different prisons

whose locks work the wrong way.

Two gilded cages

in the richest country in the world.

The Boers discovered gold

a hundred years ago

when they had been working this land

as farmers for hundreds of years.

There's no question that the Boers

also have a right to this wealth

because the Boers are Africans, too,

even if they're white Africans.

But it's also true that to extract

just one of these gold bars

requires one day of labor

from 1000 black Africans

and the technical assistance

of 100 white Africans.

Because this is a country

of 3 million white Africans

and 11 million black Africans.

And although each needs the other,

they live in suspicion

of the numerical disproportion

and in the misunderstanding

of certain slogans arriving from Europe:

"Whoever is white is not African,"

a racist affirmation.

"Only those who are black are Africans,"

another racist affirmation.

So day after day,

the gilded prisons continue to close

and open to the wail of the sirens

that call white Africans

and black Africans to work together.

As long as it was a poor land,

it was an uninhabited land.

Then, when the Boers

opened the mines

the Bantu came down from the mountains

in search of work.

They spread the word and new crowds

crossed the uncontrollable borders.

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