Homage to Peasant Number One!

Beloved Leader, bright Messiah,

Whose holy light outshines the sun’s;

Whose eyes are lakes of liquid fire —

Like rats his enemies succumb

And roast upon their funeral pyre.

When Jimfish asked who precisely was being honoured in this tribute, the soldiers explained it was the battle hymn of the Red Division, sung at sunrise, to honour either Kim Il-sung or the Great Leader of Zimbabwe. It did not matter which, since the two were interchangeable.

Before sunrise the next day, though grateful for his training, his food and his bed, Jimfish decided it was time to be on his way and left the camp quietly, not wanting to wake anyone. He had not gone far when a helicopter swooped low overhead, bullets peppered the red dust around him and he was arrested, manacled and flown back to the camp of the Red Division, where he was charged with desertion. Each day he was bound to a tree with barbed wire and whipped with electric flex until the flesh of his back ruptured. Then he was locked in one of the giant metal shipping containers that were used as classrooms or brothels or holding cells for suspected spies and dissident members of the Division.

Jimfish was dismayed by this treatment and knew he should be angry, but try as he might he could not feel revolutionary fury that was the rocket fuel of the lumpenproletariat. After some days, bruised, bleeding and close to dying of thirst, he asked his captors why he should be treated in this manner. They replied that he was lucky not to have been summarily shot. Instead, he was being reorientated, according to a method popular among the liberation movements of Southern Africa. If he survived re-education, he would join the ranks of the Red Division for their upcoming operation, dubbed ‘The Storm that Drives the Rats from the Maize Fields’. Then they locked Jimfish in the shipping container again and left him to stew in the heat, flies and his own filth, while the Red Division went off to destroy a variety of villages across Matabeleland, whose inhabitants had failed to show proper respect for the Great Leader, brighter than the sun.

When the soldiers arrived back at the camp, after a day of rape and hut-burning, Jimfish told them that, rather than face another minute in the shipping container, he preferred to be shot. This they agreed to do, though they accused him of rank ingratitude. Jimfish was blindfolded and made to kneel. The firing squad had levelled their rifles when there rode by, in his regimental jeep, an officer built like a mahogany sideboard, his chest covered in golden medals and rainbows of ribbons.

‘Who is this prisoner?’ he demanded.

‘A boy from south of the Limpopo,’ the soldiers explained. ‘He came in search of the sun itself, Kim Il-sung, of whom our Great Leader is the heavenly twin. But he failed to respond to reorientation.’

‘Anyone south of the Limpopo, who is a champion of our own Comrade Leader in Harare, shows far more good sense than we ever expect from people down that way,’ replied the officer. ‘Release the prisoner immediately.’

The soldiers leaped to obey and Jimfish was taken to his saviour’s ambulance, which followed him everywhere. There his wounds and abrasions were treated and, after many days of careful nursing, he recovered. His rescuer commended him for having the good sense to flee South Africa for the land of the free, and introduced himself.

‘I am called General Jesus. Because I have the power to redeem or reject. I save or I damn. I am a military Messiah.’

The power of General Jesus was clear to see because his troops began treating their former prisoner with the utmost deference, commissioning Jimfish as an officer in the Red Division, placing on his head the prized red beret, and assuring him that any pain he might have felt when they beat him and locked him in the shipping container would soon be forgotten in the glory of hunting dissenters, rebels and traitors throughout the province of Matabeleland and bringing them the gift of correct reorientation. When Jimfish asked if there were dissidents who declined the gift, the soldiers were mightily amused at his simple-mindedness. Under the leadership of General Jesus, who took his orders directly from the Comrade President, only two classes of citizen were found in Matabeleland: the correctly reorientated and the recently deceased.

CHAPTER 3

Led — or rather, overseen — by the fearsome General Jesus, whose jeep followed at a sensible tactical distance, the Red Division advanced on the terrified villagers of Matabeleland. Men were few, and women and children scattered like chickens at the first glimpse of a red beret. What a splendid sight it is to see a full division of seasoned soldiers, armed with AK-47s, bayonets at the ready, trained in the Democratic Republic of North Korea, whose beloved leader dazzles like the sun, attacking a village of mud and thatch huts, with mortars, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

When the soldiers tired of merely shooting people, they devised more recreational activities for passing the time. Jimfish watched as two pregnant girls were gunned down, soldiers slit open their bellies with bayonets and held up the still-living foetuses. Even though Jimfish pulled his beret over his eyes to block out the sight, nothing could muffle the screams of the dying girls.

Next, the survivors were interrogated and each was asked to list his grievances regarding the actions of the Red Division. In the interests of transparency, General Jesus ordered that prisoners who refused to answer must have their grievances beaten out of them. Jimfish listened to a catalogue of rape, torture and the murder of family members carried out by the Red Division. But then all who claimed to have suffered these crimes were immediately ordered to deny it publicly. Next, the prisoners were given the Anthem of the Sun and made to sing the words:

You are the One

Bright as the Sun;

And we are thine

From the start of time

Till kingdom come!

Who closes his eyes

And blots out Our Sun;

Deserves to die:

By my machine gun!

Once the interrogations and listing of grievances were done, the soldiers herded the prisoners into their huts, secured the doors and set fire to the thatch roofs. The screams of the burning men were such that Jimfish was again obliged to cover his ears as best he could with his red beret.

Being somewhat confused by what he saw, he approached General Jesus, who sat in his jeep watching the conflagration, and, apologizing for his ignorance, Jimfish asked: ‘Is this cruelty intended to propel these villagers to anger and then to rage, which is the rocket fuel of the lumpenproletariat? In order that they rise and expel white colonial imperialist settler forces from the country?’

General Jesus smiled at his question. ‘Those old bugbears were long ago booted out of Zimbabwe and we are free. Our leader in Harare is the choice of the people, and will be so until the last trumpet. But, alas, some in this province of Matabeleland refuse the hand of friendship and continue to harp on imaginary grievances. People here are tribalist, obstructionist and capitalist. Dissidents stalk the countryside. They must be firmly reoriented if they are to arrive on the right side of history.’