Vortex

“Jonas, listen. Find everyone you can and get out of Namibia any way you can. South Africa’s armies are on the move, and we have to abandon all our camps.”

“But comrade, without them our organization will fall apart! Our supplies, our communications-“

“Will have to be rebuilt,” Luthuli interrupted.

“We must save what we can and start over. Headquarters does not think the South Africans will go beyond Namibia’s borders. If you can make it to Angola, or Botswana, you should be safe.”

“But we will lose so much! Shouldn’t we strike at the enemy?”

Inwardly, Luthuli smiled. So there was a little fire in him after all.

“We are, comrade, but that is not your task. You must organize the evacuation, and quickly. We must live to fight on. I must go now. Good luck.”

As he hung up, the colonel heard the voice protesting, asking for instructions. He shrugged. How much direction did a man need to run?

He hoped there would be friendly faces for his men in Botswana and

Angola. Ever since Broken Covenant, foreign support for the ANC had dried up. Money from America and Europe, even weapons from socialist supporters, had stopped

completely. The Namibian training camps had become mere holding pens as they searched for resources. You can indoctrinate a man with words, but they needed more than that to fight the South Africans.

Luthuli felt bad about lying to him, as well. There had been no attempt to strike back at the advancing Boer armies. Umkhonto we Sizwe was a political army, a resistance group. The typical guerrilla cell was armed with a few pistols and rifles and usually had no more than five men. Heavy weapons, such as machine guns and rocket launchers, had limited ammunition and were saved for important targets. When his men moved, they used borrowed civilian transport, or they walked.

Scattered in small groups all over South Africa, the guerrilla cells spent more time dodging Vorster’s security forces than they did planning and executing guerrilla attacks. And those attacks were always carefully scouted, with planning and practicing that normally took days. Umkhonto could no more hurt the massive South African war machine than a small child could fight with a heavyweight boxer. All of his guerrillas, scattered across the country, probably had no more combined fighting power than a battalion of South African troops.

Luthuli looked at the map in his office, at the documents on his desk. The only men he had left were the survivors of the crackdown that had followed

Vorster’s takeover, the result of Broken Covenant. The “reforms” under

Haymans had proceeded just far enough for the ANC to move into the light, for its members to expose themselves. He had argued against it, fought tooth and nail to keep Umkhonto secret and powerful. Now it lay in shards, most of their leaders and half of their fighters rotting in prison.

Luthuli had not given up. He was a realist, though. Umkhonto’s violence was always aimed at political targets, designed to influence leaders at home and world opinion abroad. Mortaring a military base, bombing a railway station, even a careful assassination, were all designed to show the willingness of the African people to struggle, to answer the Boer’s violence with their own.

None of this mattered in wartime. Five people killed by a bomb on a bus could not compare to the casualty lists coming from the front. Any attack his people made now would simply cause them to be lumped in with the other military enemies. The ANC had been overtaken by events.

Even before the Namibian invasion, Luthuli had faced rebuilding a shattered organization, lacking the money or weapons to even maintain it.

He also lacked political support, since the ANC was viewed by many states as the cause of all the troubles. And even if he could rebuild his forces, they would have to be trained and equipped to fight a much more conventional war. Now he had lost the base camps.

It was time to ask for help, to appeal for more than just supplies and cash. He knew that there would be a price to pay, but if Umkhonto did not receive massive assistance soon, it would cease to exist, and the struggle would die with it.

There was only one country he could turn to for support. They had stayed true to their Marxist beginnings. Even though they weren’t as rich as the

Russians, the fires of revolution still burned in Havana.

He picked up the phone.

AUGUST 19-20TH CAPE RIFLES, ON MOTOR ROUTE 1, FIFTY KILOMETERS SOUTH

OF

KEETMANSHOOP

Smoke from the burning village eddied over the highway, adding an acrid tang to air already stained by diesel fumes and the sickly sweet smell of high explosives. Bodies and pieces of bodies were scattered haphazardly through a tangle of collapsed houses and fire-blackened huts. Some of the corpses were in Namibian uniforms but most were not. A few dazed survivors squatted beside the village well, their faces set in rigid masks of mingled horror and grief.

A futile show of resistance by Namibian police had given Maj. Daan