‘They would have been obliged to kill you’

Perceptions of countries, nations, often go awry. You build up impressions until they become a house of cards and, when one card turns up false, the whole house may come tumbling down.

Perceptions of Africa, this most enigmatic of all places, are particularly friable.

Take the case of Lesotho and Botswana which gained independence in the same week way back in 1966. Conventional wisdom (in that awful phrase) had no doubt which of the former British protectorates was most likely to succeed.

Lesotho, formerly Basutoland, had the highest literary rate of all Africa. Tribally, it was monolithic. Thus, freedom and democracy should have sprouted like weeds.

On the other hand Botswana, formerly Bechuanaland, was among the 20 poorest countries in the world. Much animosity existed among its far-flung tribes. There was bound to be conflict.

While Botswana has become one of three African states rated genuinely democratic, the Basotho people had to live through 26 years of oppressive one-party or military domination.

Other failed truisms lie in ruins elsewhere, such as one which said the Zambians would never overthrow their patriarch, Kenneth Kaunda. Another claimed Zaireans were too volatile to tolerate for long a money-grabbing tyrant like Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu reigned for 32 years before prostate cancer brought him down.

The other evening, the talk turned to Malawi. Several of our number had been there. They reminisced about “the warm heart of Africa”, as the brochures call it, and spoke about the courtesy of the people, of benign attitudes and eagerness to serve, of – well, just the mood of relaxation and absolute lack of tension.

An expatriate from Central Africa, who lived for a long time in Zambia and could remember Malawi when it was Nyasaland, said it was accepted when he was a civil servant that the Nyasas made the best “houseboys” of all. He didn’t mean that to sound patronising. But they were diligent and, well, just nice  people. Uncomplicated.

Listening, I recalled – but did not recount – an experience some years before.

I had spent some days on Lake Malawi. It is, by any standards, a marvellous place to be. But the next day I was due to catch a flight from Lilongwe, the capital.

Driving out of Monkey Bay, I missed the turnoff to Dedza. I stopped an old fisherman with a basket of carp. He said he knew a road I could take – over the escarpment. It so happened, he said, that his home was on the same route.

When I dropped him off, the fisherman pointed vaguely towards a rough track ahead. “There’s Lilongwe,” he said.

Very soon, I was enveloped in forest. People came fleetingly into view. It was a Saturday afternoon. Many squatted around cases of the local bottled beer the Malawians call “greens”.

The track got worse, and higher; the forest thicker. The atmosphere was like one of those early Ingmar Bergman films shot in the wilds of Finland.

On the brow of a hill, I came upon a crowd, their attention on something up ahead. But they were listening rather than watching.

Several hundred metres further on, the hill became a plateau with a few mud huts. In the foreground were two figures dressed in masks, like the abakweta initiates of the Transkei, and traditional skirts. They seemed to be simulating a spear dance.

One of my cameras, with a long lens, was on the front seat. I stopped, got out and picked it up. Even as I began to focus, the two figures turned in my direction and started to run at me.

Cautiously, I climbed back into the car and drove off. Slowly, then faster, as the two continued their pursuit. One threw a spear.

Many kilometres on, the track joined a trunk road to Lilongwe. I arrived after nightfall and booked into my hotel.

That evening, in the restaurant, I asked the head waiter what the encounter was all about. He couldn’t say because he wasn’t from the mountain area but called one of his staff who was.

The younger waiter said there must have been a recent death in that village. The two men were probably siblings of the deceased and, in tribal tradition, were feigning a spear dance in his honour. Nobody else, by tradition, was supposed to see them – which accounted for the crowd just over the hill, out of sight but not sound.

That was also why they had chased me.

“And if they had caught me?” I asked. “If my car had stalled?”

“Then,” said the young waiter, “they would have been obliged to kill you.”

From One Man’s Africa.