“...letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land...”
There are things that stick with you for the rest of your life, things that seem ordinary considering the history of the world and what it is prone to, but which still shock you. Some things fuse into your memory like it a hot iron branding it. Those lines of a speech are some that have been tattooed into my brain and that itched the skin of my heart. They are the basis of my most infuriating recollections and the source of my frighteningly real nightmares.
I remember it all so clearly: I tuned out of the propagandistic crap as it infiltrated each and every head in the crowd, filling them like a sewerage system. I had heard that line before. Years and years ago, when it was disguised as consolation, but they never really were and they were definitely not consoling today. I observed the convinced faces around me, a feeling of revulsion in my stomach and a contemptible taste on my tongue. How could they all be falling for this? How could they all be so naive?
Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa stood on a platform, preaching the path laid out for the country. I should not have been surprised at the turn it had taken; South Africa wasn’t exactly known for its political stability, then or in the past. The words lingered in my mind despite my attempts to block them out. I knew what they meant the last time they were spoken, and the meaning was just as true this time. It meant communism, it meant death, it meant martyrdom. It meant all the things that it meant from last time. It meant a repeat of Vietnam and everything that entailed. It meant suffering.
I remember pinning up posters around Pretoria, trying to find someone else who could see what I could. “Stop the second Vietnam war!” and “a hundred flowers mean a hundred bullets!” did nothing to sway the nation. I felt useless, defeated. I remember being dragged, days later, into a cell. It was hot in the summer, day and night. I sweated more than I cried, and I prayed more than I screamed. I remember sitting next to the US Ambassador to Eric Bost on the flight back to America, too exhausted to ask simple question, but more curious than ever.
We walked off the plain and into a hotel. I slept for a day and a half in recovery as Bost waited. When finally and fully awake he spoke to me. “Mr Jackson, as you are aware, the South African government has decided to become a communist nation. Zuma has changed his mind about the direction of his country and is overthrowing government as we speak. You and all other visitors with working Visas were declared to be illegally staying in the country, as the old visas don’t adhere to communist regulations. We evacuated as many as possible, but we couldn’t get to everyone. Some have been executed as criminals. We were quite lucky to get to you, actually, in another day we would have lost you too.” His voice was stoic, unchanging, unemotional, but I could sense tension and concern, though the concern was not for me, but for the future of the world. I shared the same concern, wondering could it survive another war, what with the ‘war on terror’ still raging in the middle east and civil war in Egypt?
“How bad is it?”
“Worse now that most of Southern Africa has joined Zuma. I assume they fear opposing him - he now makes all the economic and military decisions.”
“What are we doing?”
“America is putting up a figurative wall, trying to stop the spread of this violent type of communism, - see, it’s not quite like last time, and the rules are conditional. The military are paid more than the rest of the nation, which is making a whole lot of people suddenly want to join the army. It’s caused chaos for all of us, the whole world’s in an uproar. China is standing alone refusing to join South Africa, so we’re trying to set up an alliance with them before they change their mind.”
“What do you need me for?”
“Well, Mr Jackson, you are an expert on the South African geography. Wasn’t that why you were over in South Africa in the first place? Working on the underground maps?” I nodded in cautious agreement. “We need you to redraw those maps for us. We’re going to use them to access the country via an internet and shut down the computer system. We have the experts and are waiting for your agree- ”
“No.”
“Mr Jackson, you’re the only-”
“I won’t do it. I don’t want any part in this thing. Do you know what he said to that crowd? Do you even know what it means?” My voice cracked as I spoke, but I continued. “ It means that everyone connected to an uproar, anyone who helps the resistance... they’ll die.”
“I know. But you’re our only hope. We won’t make you do this. I’ll be next door if you change your mind.” Bost left the room quietly, shutting the door behind him.
I remember sitting in my hotel room, making a PRO-CON list. I remember feeling foolish, placing hero and brave and save the world on the PRO side and might die on the CON list. I kept thinking of the things that should stop me from doing it, but none of those reasons made it to the paper. Twenty minutes later I stormed into the next room and arrogantly declared “Fine!”
“Thank you, Mr Jackson. You’re a good man.”
Then I said to myself, “Humph. We’ll see about that won’t we?”
I remember drawing dark pencil lines over the existing maps. I wrote tiny figures next to the lines, indicating depth. I worked for three days straight. I know that inside I was hurrying to make it feel like I would become less of what was happening to the world, but on the outside I convinced the people around me that I was hurrying for their sake, like my work would save them from a job that had one pay rate, no matter what you did. In their minds I was saving them from the reality of life imprisonment for noncooperation, from the idea of never seeing their wives and children again by being dragged into the army. I was their hope. I just wanted to sink into the shadows. Looking back on it now, I was probably being a coward, but cowardice is forgiven when you push through it to do the one thing you really don’t want to do.
In this case, it meant giving the world’s largest nation and current superpower the keys to bringing down a whole lot of innocent people. Maybe the innocent would feel better about dying if they knew they were saving the other several billion people in the world from extreme oppression.
I remember returning home after giving the access instructions, feeling like a used toy. I remember dreaming of Zuma’s face. It screamed at me and glared into my brain. This was my first nightmare. He came again, and with friends. It reminds me of a song I was listening to before this all happened, called Death And All His Friends. There are lines, some I would always remember:
“No, I don’t want to battle from beginning to end,
I don’t want to cycle or
recycle revenge,
No, I don’t want to follow Death and all of his friends...”
These were the lines that echoed through my mind at night. These are the lines that disturb me still. It seems as
