Shaka II Read Online Free PDF Page B

Africa, I am also declaring a one-year moratorium on all taxes.”
        This time a cheer arose, and Robert shot me a “Did you really think they’d attack me?” smile.
        “Finally,” he continued, “all political prisoners will be freed tomorrow morning, and their prison records expunged.”
        I wasn’t aware of any political prisoners in Botswana, and I was sure Robert wasn’t either, but it brought an exuberant round of applause, and I could see the faces in the crowd, each seeming to say “This isn’t the disaster we’d feared,” and then “This was a blessing in disguise!”
        A woman suddenly shouted out: “Hallelujah!”
        Then a gravel-voiced man climbed the first couple of stairs, turned to his compatriots, and yelled, “Three cheers for Buthelezi!”
        The crowd was about to accommodate him when Robert held up his hand again.
        “Thank you,” he said, stepping over the dead body of the President and walking a few steps closer to them, “but Buthelezi was an insignificant flyspeck on the dungheap of humanity. I reject that name.”
        “What shall we call you then?” asked another man.
        He drew himself up to his full height and looked out at the crowd.
        “Tchaka,” he answered.
        

8.
        
        I thought when word got out the people would be outraged. After all, Shaka was the father of the Zulu people, the reason we ruled the world-well, our world-for almost a century, the reason even men in the farthest reaches of Europe, Asia and America knew that the Zulus were the fiercest, mightiest warriors. And here was my brother, not much over thirty, of obscure birth, a stranger to morality, taking that name for himself.
        And to my surprise, the citizens were thrilled beyond belief-and when I looked at it from their point of view, it suddenly made sense. He was the first Zulu to preside over South Africa since our humiliating defeats just before the turn of the 20th Century. He had doubled our land with the addition of Mozambique, Namibia and Botswana. Other African nations were racing to form alliances with the Europeans and Americans, with the Chinese and Indians and Australians, all because they knew that this Zulu leader would soon be looking north. It was the second coming of Shaka, and their joy and pride knew no bounds.
        Something else that knew no bounds was my brother’s ambition.
        His first step was to dissolve the Parliament. None of our African neighbors said a word-they were too busy preparing to defend their borders-but the rest of the world reacted with outrage. They demanded that Parliament be restored. Tchaka responded by announcing that he was resigning from the Presidency. The world breathed a sigh of relief. It lasted three days-until his coronation as king.
        “They will never stand for this,” I said when the ceremony was over. We were in his office, and he had removed the ceremonial crown and robes, and sat at his desk, relaxed in a tunic and slacks.
        “Of course they will,” he replied easily. “If they stood for my annexing Botswana and Mozambique, they will stand for my wearing a crown, for nothing else has changed.”
        “You have gone too far,” I said.
        “I have barely begun,” he replied, and suddenly I knew that when he looked to the north, he looked beyond Zimbabwe, beyond the Congo, beyond Egypt, that he looked north to Polaris and the stars beyond it. “They are civilized men,” he said, his face contorting in a sneer at the word, “and they will behave in a civilized manner. They will talk, and talk some more, and threaten, and entreat, and eventually they will bribe, and finally they will shrug and learn to live with the situation. Mark my words: you will never see a single European or American or Asian soldier enter our land with hostile intent.”
        And somehow I knew he was right.
        The international