Gunship Over Angola

As our impending departure for South Africa drew closer, Dad got grumpier and grumpier. He ranted and raged about the Rhodesian Wildlife Authority’s ‘downright rudeness and arrogance’, with their failure to confirm his Lake Kariba appointment central to his chagrin. Preparations for the move progressed at an alarming rate with Mom’s knowing, but mostly concealed, smile a constant source of friction between them.

Suddenly, the morning of departure dawned and it was time to go. Our Peugeot 404 station wagon, bought new for the occasion by trading in the Opel and the Land Rover, was jam-packed with all manner of household goods and three little wide-eyed kids aged eight (Debbie), five (me) and four (Mark), respectively. The roof rack was piled high with an assortment of chests and trunks covered with a green canvas tarpaulin.

Peter, dressed in his uniform of short white trousers and white shirt, stood barefooted next to the car. In his hand was the tiniest little suitcase you have ever seen.

‘Where do I sit?’ he asked Dad.

‘You can’t go with us, Peter,’ my father responded.

‘Why not?’ asked Peter.

‘Because the family is moving to South Africa, Peter,’ replied my dad firmly.

‘But I am family!’ he pleaded.

‘But this is your home, Peter. South Africa is not,’ my mom tried to reason with him.

‘My home is with my children and my family,’ shouted Peter, ‘and you are they!’

For a full ten minutes the exchange raged on, by the second becoming more charged with emotion. Peter couldn’t accept that he was not coming with us. The sound of his voice, beseeching first my mom, then my dad, to allow him to sit on the roof for the duration of the 3 000-kilometre journey to South Africa, remains with me to this day.

Finally, with tears flowing freely, and too choked up to say another word, my parents bundled our loudly wailing family into the Peugeot, with Peter standing resolute alongside, tears coursing down his cheeks. We drove off slowly down the road.

I was one of those three little faces staring out of the rear window watching the ever-diminishing image of Peter, tiny suitcase in hand, trotting down the dusty road after us.

He finally disappeared in the cloud of dust kicked up by our car.

*

We entered South Africa on Dingane’s Day, 16 December 1963. My paternal grandparents lived on a farm just north of Pretoria, and we joined them there and lived on the farm for a few months.

During this time, I started attending Loreto Convent in Gezina, Pretoria. When Mom picked me up after my first day and asked whether I had enjoyed myself, I let her know quite firmly that ‘I didn’t mind it but I don’t think I need to go back there any more.’

Each day when I got back from school I’d ask Lettie, the housekeeper, whether Peter Chibemba had arrived that morning. When she replied, as she always did, that he hadn’t, I would go to the start of the long driveway, which ran down the boundary fence of the farm all the way to the Great North Road a few kilometres away, and stare down it for hours.

I told anyone who asked that I was waiting.

Waiting for Peter to appear.

*

Before too long, my folks bought a house in the suburb of Valhalla, in the southwestern part of Pretoria. Valhalla was where many of the serving military personnel of the South African Defence Force (SADF) lived, due to its close proximity to the vast military complex of Voortrekkerhoogte and the airfields of Air Force Base (AFB) Swartkop and AFB Waterkloof.

Dad went on to forge a successful business career, adjusting surprisingly well to corporate life, but ultimately his desire to be in his own business prevailed and he formed and ran a short-haul construction company right until he died in 2003. My mom was a specialist in state-of-the-art printing techniques and soon joined the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), where she was still employed at the time she passed away so tragically.

From the time we moved to Valhalla in April 1964, Debbie and I would catch the school bus to and from General Andries Brink Primary School in Voortrekkerhoogte, the only primary school in the area that taught in English. I do not remember the exact details of what happened one Friday afternoon in October 1964 while we were on the homeward-bound school bus, but I think it started with our driver failing to heed a stop sign at a T-junction in Valhalla. He turned a corner directly into the path of a large truck carrying a load of enormous cement sewage pipes.

In the carnage that followed the collision between the bus and the truck, thirteen children lost their lives, including the two who were sitting on either side of me. I was pulled from the mangled wreckage by rescuers. I had suffered quite severe head injuries. An ambulance rushed me to Pretoria General Hospital, where I teetered between life and death for a few weeks before ultimately making a full recovery.