The old African man cocked his head slightly scratching his scalp through greying woolly hair, his eyes screwed up in a slant in a dark wrinkled face - as a man does when his sight begins to fade with old age - staring out across the countryside that was so familiar to him in every line and contour; stretching away into the distance until obscured by the entangled African bush, where no white man had cause to make his way.

From where he stood the ground fell away from him in a gentle slope and the tall yellow grass now dry and brittle from the lack of rain stood motionless beneath the scorching sun dotted here and there with the red heaped piles of earth of the anthills. And the little spruit that made its meandering way down from the hills had been dry for so long that the thirsty soil was cracked in long and wide fissures gaping like parched mouths in silence pleading to the unheeding heavens.

The old African lifted his head sniffing the air, hopefully, but there was no smell of rain only the faint scent of a few out-of-season blossoms drifting languidly in the still evening air mingled with the various odours of the vegetation and the very earth itself.

To his right and standing out against the evening sky like rigid soldiers silently waiting for the cry of battle were the long even lines of the Blue-Gum trees, and before them, but a half mile away lay Bristlewood, the large white-washed farm house with its multiple angled roof and wide stoep that seemed to shrink away into the shadows of the trees grateful for their protection from the blistering summer heat.

Soon the sun would bow its head behind those tall blue gantries, taking with it its light and heat to the far distant lands to the west, but still the humidity would remain, lingering on late into the night, adding to the discomfort of the young white child he called, My Son.

The African shook his old head in a sorrowful manner, and sighed deep and long, for many times he had witnessed the brutal beatings; the rise and fall of the dried horse-hide strap that cracked and whistled with every devastating lash; driven with such force and fury, without control, or mind, for the pitiful cries of the naked child that rolled and crawled through the dirt.

The hand of the father was unrelenting, and as the young white child rolled, through his back, shielding the punctured and swollen welts across his lower back and buttocks, the broad horse-hide strap would crack down into his lower belly, striking the soft sensitive skin of his small white penis, and instantly he would lose all control; the fluid of his body spouting into the air like the twisting funnels of a water sprinkler, drenching himself, so as he rolled the loose grit and dirt would cling to his flesh in dark brown distorted patches. And to those cries the old African man would close his eyes and hide his face in the palms of his hands, but the shrieks and yelps of pain and terror were brutal; painful to the old man’s ears, penetrating the skull, and they seemed to numb and crush his brain.

Only when the arm grew tired did the beatings stop, and the strap thrown to the ground at the side of the child.

“Go clean yourself, you disgusting child,” his father would bellow, and the small boy would climb, stumbling painfully back to his feet - the horse-hide strap hanging limp from his hand - and at the water-well he would wash it clean of his blood and urine, and there he would discover, that at a time unknown to himself, his bowel had opened and the waste of his body, mixed with the soil of the earth, clung to the back and inner thighs of his thin legs like that of the red-brown clay of the mighty Zambezi river.

With much difficulty the young child would take the strain against the rope that looped the large steel pulley-wheel, drawing from the well the water he needed to wash and wipe himself, but only with the strength of a child half his age, for his skin burnt like that of a thousand hot needles, and the swollen flesh of his lower belly ached and cramped his groin, drawing his tender little body forward in a deviant and abnormal manor. Then he would bundle his clothing in his arms, pressed tightly against his chest, and stagger naked like a newly born calf - yet to find the strength of its tiny legs - across the open courtyard to the farmhouse; entering through the kitchen where the native staff would turn away in silence, hiding the tears that flowed freely from their large dark and swollen eyes.


He stopped only once, the following morning, at the top of the ridge to look back at the old white farm house that was once a place of joy and laughter, and he could not hold back the tears that rolled freely down his cheeks.

“If only you had not left us,” he sobbed. “Why, why did you have to go away?” Then kneeling down beside the large tombstone he gently caressed the stony grave with the palms of his hands – for there were no bright and colourful flowers to leave – and in a soft whispered breath, he made a solemn promise. “I’ll be back some day, Mom. I promise I will.”