The Leopard Hunts in Darkness by Wilbur Smith

people.’ Like all barely literate
Africans, he had an almost superstitious awe of the printed word, and reverence for the grey hairs of age.
    ‘A one-legged book-writer,’ Dollar scoffed, and Peking giggled and picked up his rifle. He placed it across his lap and giggled again. The mood had changed once more. ‘If he
lies about this book, then perhaps he lies about his friendship with Comrade Tungata,’ Dollar suggested with relish.
    Craig had prepared for this also. He took a large manila envelope from the flap of his pack and shook from it a thick sheaf of newspaper cuttings. He shuffled through them slowly, letting their
disbelieving mockery change to interest, then he selected one and handed it to Lookout. The serial of the book had been shown on Zimbabwe television two years previously, before these guerrillas
had returned to the bush, and it had enjoyed an avid following throughout its run.
    ‘Hau!’ Lookout exclaimed. ‘It is the old king, Mzilikazi!’
    The photograph at the head of the article showed Craig on the set with members of the cast of the production. The guerrillas immediately recognized the black American actor who had taken the
part of the old Matabele king. He was in a costume of leopard-skin and heron-feathers.
    ‘And that is you – with the king.’ They had not been as impressed, even by the photograph of Tungata.
    There was another cutting, a photo taken in Double-day’s bookstore on Fifth Avenue, of Craig standing beside a huge pyramid of the book, with a blow-up of his portrait from the back cover
riding atop the pyramid.
    ‘That is you!’ They were truly stunned now. ‘Did you write that book?’
    ‘Now do you believe?’ Craig demanded, but Lookout studied the evidence carefully before committing himself.
    His lips moved as he read slowly through the text of the articles, and when he handed them back to Craig, he said, seriously, ‘Kuphela, despite your youth, you are indeed an important
book-writer.’
    Now they were almost pathetically eager to pour out their grievances to him, like petitioners at a tribal indaba where cases were heard and judgement handed down by the elders of the
tribe. While they talked, the sun rose up across a sky as blue and unblemished as a heron’s egg, and reached its noon and started its stately descent towards its bloody death in the
sunset.
    What they related was the tragedy of Africa, the barriers that divided this mighty continent and which contained all the seeds of violence and disaster, the single incurable disease that
infected them all – tribalism.
    Here it was Matabele against Mashona.
    ‘The dirt-eaters,’ Lookout called them, ‘the lurkers in caves, the fugitives on the fortified hilltops, the jackals who will only bite when your back is turned to
them.’
    It was the scorn of the warrior for the merchant, of the man of direct action for the wily negotiator and politician.
    ‘Since great Mzilikazi first crossed the river Limpopo, the Mashona have been our dogs – amaholi , slaves and sons of slaves.’
    This history of displacement and domination of one group by another was not confined to Zimbabwe, but over the centuries had taken place across the entire continent. Further north, the lordly
Masai had raided and terrorized the Kikuyu who lacked their warlike culture; the giant Watutsi, who considered any man under six foot six to be a dwarf, had taken the gentle Hutu as slaves –
and in every case, the slaves had made up for their lack of ferocity with political astuteness, and, as soon as the white colonialists’ protection was withdrawn, had either massacred their
tormentors, as the Hutu had the Watutsi, or had bastardized the doctrine of Westminster government by discarding the checks and balances that make the system equitable, and had used their superior
numbers to place their erstwhile masters into a position of political subjugation, as the Kikuyu had the Masai.
    Exactly the same process was at work here in