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They’re getting way too arrogant. Pride comes before a fall. They’re
     flooding this place with Shonas to neutralize the Ndebeles. You can trust a Ndebele; the Shonas now, as slippery as hell.”
    I think of the soldiers on the platform. They seemed very young and their uniforms looked as if they had just been taken out
     from packages. Those soldiers didn’t look like killers. They looked like boys pretending to be soldiers. Even the street girls
     who hang around by the station were not intimidated by them. They were calling out to the soldiers, “Come, boys, come; good
     times here, come.” Maybe they were just beginning their training. Maybe when they went back to Harare, they would be real
     soldiers. They would know all about killing. No one would call them boys. It’s funny but I don’t even remember if they had
     guns.
    “The thing with the Shonas is that they have to learn that they didn’t win the war; it was a negotiated settlement. They were
     backed into a corner; it was a no-win situation. They had to accept whatever the Handbag and her windie, Lord Carry on Selling
     the White Man Down the Drain, was prepared to give. Now I think of it, who knows if the Shonas are running about all over
     the place because they’re so blimming ashamed. Could be something in that: trying to convince themselves that they actually
won
the war, that it wasn’t a Surrender. If they can’t take out the white man, they’re going to give it a go with the Ndebeles,
     for old-time’s sake.”
    We’re in his car at Khumalo. He has come to check out an old buddy of his, but I think he’s having second thoughts. He keeps
     twirling the car window handle. We’ve been sitting in the car talking and being quiet and waiting.
    And then he looks at me and smiles. “Yah, well, all that’s straight from the horse’s mouth, the Rhodesians running to South
     Africa. You should hear that lot yakking on. Sad. They don’t know what’s hit them. And the Afrikaners and the Brits can’t
     stand them. At least my old man stuck it out. Eeesh man, what’s so fricking funny?”
    I don’t tell him it was the “Lord Carry on Selling the White Man Down the Drain” bit. I know he meant Lord Carrington and
     I know that white people are really angry about the whole Lancaster thing and how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe—how Smith sold
     them out after he had promised them that not in a thousand years would blacks ever rule Rhodesia.
    “Yah, smile now, wait till they come tshaying you. And anyway, if they want to see real racialism, they should take a trip
     across the border. That’s Hardcore racialism. There an Aff even looks at an Afrikaner the wrong way, he’s had it my boy. The
     Afrikaners have a cruel, mean streak. As hard as diamonds that tribe. They should think themselves lucky this lot.”
    I want to ask him about his life in South Africa—if he went to school, if he lived with his mother, if he has brothers or
     sisters.
    “Jeez,” he says. “I wished I smoked or something. The old man smoked like a chimney; smelt of bloody smoke big time.”
    He hits the steering wheel with his hands; I jump a bit on my seat.
    “Sorry. Jeez, I’m jittery today. Shit, let’s get out of here.”
    But it’s too late. There’s someone by the gate, and a dog barking. He gets out of the car.
    The dog is a Ridgeback. He’s baring his teeth and gnashing at the gate. He looks like he hasn’t been fed in days.
    “Hamba Zulu! Foosake man!” shouts the man, giving the dog a kick in its hind leg. “Heh, Ian, is that you man, howzit?”
    “Howzit, John, long time no see, heh?”
    They give each other a high-five over the gate, and then they stand there looking at one another.
    “So, I thought I’d come and check you out.”
    “Bad timing, man. I’m on my way out. Got to hop over to the garage, some munt having a kadenze about overcharging; you won’t
     believe what ideas they’re getting these days.”
    His buddy shakes his keys. “Tell