Free Pale Horses by Jassy Mackenzie Page B

1880, when the first Anglo-Boer War had been fought.
    His mention of the Siyabonga community was ringing a bell, though, but for the time being she couldn’t think why.
    ‘Their claim was successful,’ he continued. ‘I got thrown off my own damned land. It was handed over to a bunch of ignorant savages, including a few of my ex-workers.’
    ‘When was that?’
    ‘Four, five years ago now. And what they did to it, you don’t want to know. Within two years it went from being a successful commercial maize farm to being little better than a desert. Overgrown, full of weeds, bugger all done in the way of maintenance, and completely unproductive, of course. The only agricultural activity that was happening there was that they had cattle busy overgrazing the land. And every time they needed anything from bricks to light fittings to plumbing equipment to window glass they’d ransack the old farmhouse. They trashed it – it’s just a shell now. Ignorant, useless savages,’ he spat out again.
    ‘You must have been paid out fair compensation for it, surely?’
    Van Schalkwyk looked down. ‘Farming’s all I knew, but I wasn’tgoing to go back to it. Didn’t want to end up getting robbed of everything I’d built up, all over again. I used the payout to start up some other projects but nothing worked out.’ He spread his hands in a helpless gesture that spoke of business ventures on the rocks, successive failures eroding his capital away. Jade wondered whether he realised that the anger he was directing at the new occupants of his old farm was probably done so he wouldn’t have to direct it at himself, for all the same reasons.
    ‘In any case, Doringplaas was special. Nothing could replace that land,’ Van Schalkwyk said. ‘It was part of our history. My great grandmother and grandfather were buried there, you know. I don’t know what’s happened to their graves. Probably sold their bloody headstones by now.’
    Doringplaas? Now Jade realised why the name of the tribal community had sounded familiar.
    ‘I’m sure I saw a recent photo of your farm at Williams Management, the company where Sonet was working when she died.’
    And it hadn’t looked like a desert, but more like a well-run, small-scale, commercial venture. Not that Jade was going to point that out to him.
    Van Schalkwyk offered Jade a hard and cynical smile.
    ‘Oh, yes. That was what put the lid on the coffin as far as our marriage was concerned. I couldn’t believe it when Sonet told me she’d nominated Doringplaas for one of her charity projects. That she was actually going to help the thieves who’d stolen my property.’
    ‘But weren’t you glad, at least for the sake of the land?’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘That it’s now being properly farmed again, well maintained, and looked after as it deserves to be.’
    Van Schalkwyk gave a twisted, mirthless smile.
    ‘Now what makes you think that?’ he asked.
    ‘I saw the photo in the Williams Management offices. It looked really good. I know it was taken in summer and that everything looks better when it’s green and lush, but still.’
    Van Schalkwyk laughed. The sound was as joyless as his smile had been.
    ‘Exactly. That all happened last year. I went to have a look. Sonetwas there for a few weeks, together with some other advis0rs. White people, who knew what they were doing. Everything was done up, clean and neat. Rows of prefab houses for the residents, a storage barn, even a little mill that they put up on the banks of the river – the farm has a spruit running through it that flows all year round. That was for them to grind their own flour and maize.’
    White advisors. And wasn’t that just great? Jade was beginning to find the pricks of Van Schalkwyk’s constant racist remarks as painfully annoying as having to walk with a devil-thorn in her shoe.
    At least she now knew the reason for the presence of the crimson ‘Boere Krisis Kommando’ pamphlet lying at her feet. What she