Pharmageddon Chapter 9

Johannesburg, Saturday 8 January

After we took off from Johannesburg’s Lanseria airport I found myself thinking about the irony of my situation. Instead of flying north on Swissair to Istanbul, celebrating a happy ending to this story, I was heading south on a chartered KingAir to the coastal city of East London to see for myself where it all went wrong. I’d decided to splurge Shan’s money on the charter so I could get back quickly if I scored an interview with minister of health Colin Makeba.

Weekends aren’t a good time to set up a meeting with South Africa’s top politicians. It’s not that they disappear, exactly – most of their endless round of consultations, celebrations and funerals take place on Saturdays and Sundays. The problem is that their gatekeepers are nowhere to be found, and your chance of getting to see the lion without being jumped on by his fleas is zero.

Bettina gave me all the parasites’ numbers, of course, but they weren’t answering. And when Bettina herself tried to set me up to meet him, she was told he was fully committed. In other words, he didn’t want to see me. We hit the same brick wall when I tried to schedule interviews with other politicians, all the way up to the president.

When I finally made contact with Makeba’s personal assistant, he said the best he could offer was a slot the following Friday at 7,30am. We both knew what that meant – hang around until His Lordship feels like seeing you. But my choices were limited so I took it. I thought of camping out in the minister’s waiting room but, frankly, I had better things to do, so I pleaded with the maggot to see if he could get me in earlier, and got on with my checklist.

Top of my list was to marshal our troops for a vox-pop – hundreds of stringers asking thousands of people for their thoughts on what South Africa was doing. Or rather, not doing. Our citizen journalists canvassed a huge range of opinion across the region and around the world, covering every conceivable demographic. Most of their interviews were on cellphone video, from which my researcher team snipped and clipped together a very snappy overview. If I had to sum it up those interviews in one word, it would be ‘incredulity’.

Of course this feature was only one dish on the pharmageddon smorgasbord. Our conspiracy forums were still the hot favorites, giving every kind of crank an opportunity to blow hot air out of every orifice, and every Mother Grundy a chance to spray their nauseating air-freshener back. For anyone looking for facts rather than fantasies, my team pulled together backgrounders on every aspect of the epidemic, the people involved and the events of the past week. And naturally I tried to guess where it was all going, in a spray of op-eds.

The pharmageddon feature broke every record we kept, including hit-rates, unique visitors, and web-feeds for those who didn’t want to miss a thing. In fact our coverage became a major news story in its own right. If CNN’s live coverage of the first Gulf War opened a real-time window into war, TWO turned a complex global crisis into an interactive game, with real victims and villains. And everyone wanted to play.

We weren’t surprised to get posts saying the South African government was looking for ways to restrict public access to our site but, if they did, they soon realized it’s a lot easier said than done – especially if you don’t want to bring the biggest economy in Africa to its knees.

Nor were we surprised to see a surge of newly registered stringers saying that South African hospitals were fully functional, ARVs were being dispensed, and those who said otherwise were trying to discredit the government. I could almost hear the whoops of joy from our regular stringers as they peppered these turkeys with video of deserted hospitals, worried medics and desperate patients.

If the issue hadn’t been so serious, it would have been fun. Hell, for a large slice of humanity it WAS fun. I could only imagine how Shan felt, watching his vision of truth for everyone take shape.

++++

‘I’m not happy about talking to you, Dr North, but it seems better than the alternative.’ Pieter Ferreira was the plant manager at NguniMed, South Africa’s ARV factory.

I’m old friends with the let’s-play-hard-to-get gambit, so I countered with my best disappointed-cute pout. It often works with intellectually arrested heterosexual men, but it didn’t seem to make much difference to Ferreira so I played it straight. ‘What do you mean about the alternative?’

He dragged his face into a humorless smile. ‘Having my staff acting like cops, sniffing around for clues and asking each other a lot of questions, just so they can get some of your frequent flier miles. It really... fucks with our operation, if you’ll excuse the French.’

I guessed Nerisha had been stirring up a hornet’s nest by offering double stringettes for this story. ‘I’m truly sorry you’ve had a problem with your ARVs, Mr Ferreira, but...’

‘But you can’t leave it alone. I know. The whole world wants to know what happened. That’s why I’m talking to you, and why I’ve told my staff that you’re here. So they can leave it alone, and get on with their jobs. In return I’d be grateful if you could arrange not to dish out your frequent flier miles on this story... to remove the incentive?’

He left it hanging. I didn’t feel like stroking this prick so I just gave a non-committal smile and shrug as if to say, whatever you want. ‘So tell me what happened?’

‘Well, you may not believe this, but we’ve never had a case of contamination, in nearly ten years of production.’

‘Could it have happened during the delivery process? Between here and the hospitals?’

He gave another humorless grin. I wished he wouldn’t – it didn’t suit his face. ‘I really hope it did. We’d be off the hook.’

‘If you were a terrorist, and you wanted to do this, how would you go about it?’

The grin changed. The new one had a touch of reality about it. ‘Funny, I was expecting the police to ask me that, but they haven’t. At least not yet.’

‘Well, how would you?’

‘Ag, the simplest way would be to doctor a few blister-packs of tablets ahead of time, and then swap them for the originals while they’re being shipped...’

‘But then the batch numbers wouldn’t match, would they?’

‘No, you’re right. But they do match... so the terrorists either have some very fancy equipment or they somehow got their contaminants in here.’ He waved his hand towards the deserted factory floor, visible through a large window in his office. While he was escorting me to his office he’d explained that production had stopped while they were investigating the contamination.

‘Would it be difficult?’

‘If you’re inside, and if you know what you’re doing, no. Dead easy. A handful of chemicals chucked into a bin of one of the inert ingredients...’

‘Have you tested the bins?’

He nodded. ‘Waiting for the results. But they may not show anything. Most of the bins were sterilized after the last batch of ARVs. But we’ve sent samples of this batch of ARVs to Europe for analysis – they may be able to tell us how it was done.’

‘But not by whom?’

‘Ja, that’s the question, isn’t it? I read what happened in those other countries, and I think ours could have been done by the same people. Or at least in the same way – by planting someone in our security company.’

Now that Ferreira had played out his little game, he was much more animated.

‘We were also closed over Christmas and New Year, just like the other guys, so our guards had the place to themselves. Our CCTV tapes seem to be okay, but they could’ve been changed. The cops are analyzing them to see if they were actually recorded at the time they were supposed to be.’

‘Obviously you’ve spoken to your security company...?’

‘Oh ja, of course. They didn’t tell me much, but I know the cops are focusing on them. I asked if there were any guards on duty who were new to the company, and they said they were all regular staff...’ He caught himself.

‘But you thought they were lying?’

His eyes answered. ‘No, I can’t say. It’s for the police to find out.’

Time for a different tack. Or rather, attack. ‘How much active ingredient do you have, Mr Ferreira?’ I saw his pupils contract. ‘How many doses of your ARVs can you make before you run out?’ Bull’s-eye!

He looked at me for a moment, then lurched forward on his tilting office chair and reached for a folder on his desk. He opened it, found the page he wanted and stared at it, but I could tell he was thinking, not reading. He knew that I knew that he knew!

‘We have very limited stores of active ingredient, unfortunately. Maybe enough for another ten days of consumption by the public health services. But of course we can’t use it until we know it’s free of contaminants.’

I would have liked to ask who owned his factory, but I was pretty sure that would raise the alarm bells. So I got some background on the company’s history and their plans for the future, turned down Ferreira’s offer of tea and a tour, and headed back to the airport.

In the taxi I tried to pull it together. Even though Bettina was convinced there was no secret stash of API, Ferreira’s eyes had betrayed him. Did this mean the minister had managed to fool Bettina, or that the minister was himself being fooled by Ferreira? Or was I mis-reading the plant manager’s reaction? Maybe there was something else going on?

+++

My thoughts were going round in circles until I boarded the KingAir. We’d just got airborne when Shan called.

‘I wanted to give you some news,’ he said after we’d got through the courtesies.

‘I’m sorry Dr Gupta – if you want coverage from TWO you’ll have to get your jet to fly me to Delhi, and a chopper to Shimla, and then a great meal...’

He gave his trademark laugh. ‘When you hear this news you’ll be begging to come back to Shimla...’ 

‘I don’t need to hear your news – I’m begging anyway. Can I bring my skis this time?’

‘Well, maybe you should hear the news first...’

I gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Oh, okay then. I suppose I can give you a few minutes.’

‘We’re investigating the possibility of converting our research lab here in Shimla into a production facility. I thought you may be interested?’

‘I’m interested!’

‘We found several de-commissioned chemical reactors. Equipment that we mothballed a couple of years ago when we decided to focus our research on bio-engineered molecules. I didn’t know we still had them.’

‘Which means you can make active ingredients for ARVs?’

‘Indeed it does!’

‘How much?’

‘Probably 20 percent of what we were making in Chandigarh – maybe 30 percent when we reach full capacity.’ 

'And how soon?’

‘We’re hoping to start production within two weeks.’

‘Jesus – that’s wonderful, Shan. I assume you’ll be producing the same API as before, NRTIs?’

‘Yes, but...’ There was a pause on the line. I wished we had a video link, so I could see his expression, but my monitor was blank. ‘We’ve had Dr Kershaw here from UNAIDS, talking through our options. Now that we know there’ll be a treatment interruption in South Africa, they want to use our NRTIs as a base for protease-inhibitor based ARVs. Second-line drugs.’

I was surprised to feel the lurch in my stomach. The treatment interruption wasn’t a figment of my imagination! But the good news was that Nikki and Shan had already come up with some answers.

‘Where will you get the PIs from?’

‘Dr Kershaw tells me the originators can increase production – build up sufficient reserves for a recovery campaign in southern Africa in six to eight weeks. And they’ve ordered molecules from the Chinese as well.’

‘Oh Jesus...’ I don’t know what I was expecting to hear. From a medical point of view, this sounded fine, but practically speaking the idea of kissing it better after a couple of months seemed ludicrous. I think Shan took my reaction as a prayer of thanks, rather than a profane expression of doubt.

We talked for another half hour. It was obvious Shan was on top of the international recovery plan following Nikki’s visit, and it was equally obvious that she was doing a wonderful job in getting all the global ducks in a row.

Of course it was hardly surprising that they were scrambling to save the day at the bottom of Africa. Of the nine million people depending on ARVs, two million were right here. Dreadful as it sounded, the interruption of first-line treatment at the epicenter meant there might be enough first line drugs for the rest of the world. But it also meant this region was flying without a safety net. If they didn’t have second-line ARVs within a couple of months, and get them to everyone who needed them, people would start dying.

Shimla, Sunday 9 January

His first thought when he opened the door to the dimly lit security control room was that there was no place for him to stand. The small room was usually occupied by a couple of men watching the bank of CCTV monitors on the left, and a supervisor at a desk against the wall on the right. Now, however, the desk had been dragged to the middle of the room and six large men stood around it, studying a map illuminated by a desk-lamp.

As Shan Gupta appeared at the door the men instantly straightened up, stepping aside to make space. His security officers snapped to attention and saluted, while two men in Indian army uniform braced up in the British Army style. Colonel Arthur Baldwin of the US Army simply smiled and stepped forward to shake Gupta’s hand.

Gupta had already been introduced to the army men – a major and a captain from India’s elite counter- terrorism force the National Security Guards, better known as the Black Cats after their preferred operational garb of black nomex coveralls and balaclavas. He greeted them in Hindi, switching immediately to English as a courtesy to Baldwin.

‘Gentlemen, I popped in to check whether you have everything you need?’ He glanced at the Maurya security chief, who gave a small nod of affirmation.

‘We’re all delighted by the RISAT images,’ Baldwin said, gesturing to a large plasma monitor on the rear wall, currently split into two images. He didn’t say that the major had just been confiding his amazement at the speed with which Baldwin, with Gupta’s backing, had been able to cut through India’s Byzantine bureaucracy to mobilize the Black Cats and get the satellite imagery needed for the trap they were laying.

Gupta moved past the men to take a closer look at the monitor, showing two magnifications of an infra-red image from India’s Radar Imaging Satellite, one covering an area of 50 square miles while the other covered the immediate environs of the Maurya headquarters.

Most of the small-scale image was made up of a featureless dark blue, reflecting the uniform icy cold of snow-covered forests and pastures, interrupted by an occasional speck of yellow or orange as the high- resolution camera 350 miles above them registered a warmer building or vehicle. Near the lower edge of the screen was a large irregular splodge of yellow, sprinkled with spots of orange and red – the city of Shimla, clinging to the slopes of the Himalayan foothills.

The large-scale image was similar, but the shape of the Maurya complex was clearly visible in pale gold in the center, with red plumes marking the exhausts from its oil-fired boilers and diesel generators. A much smaller square some distance away showed the position of the guard-post at the entrance to the Maurya compound.

As Gupta watched an approaching vehicle stopped at the guard-house, its engine compartment glowing red while the rest of the car varied from orange to green. Three orange oblongs emerged from the guardhouse and moved around the vehicle, like white blood cells attacking an invader on a microscope slide. In this case, however, the invader obviously passed their test because it was allowed to continue towards the main buildings.

‘What d’you suppose that is?’ The men all turned to look where Gupta pointed. Some distance from the building – perhaps a mile to the north east – a pale golden oval was moving slowly through the midnight blue of the forest.

The Black Cats major leaned across to a console and adjusted a setting, and the balance of colors shifted on both monitors. The ghostly oval was now orange, and more clearly defined, while the featureless inky blue of the forest became more detailed – a Rorschach pattern of pale blue and turquoise.

‘It’s an animal, sir. You can tell from its size and the speed. It’s probably a stray cow or horse – wild animals like musk deer or tahrs are better insulated, so you don’t see them at the default setting. It’s very cold out for domestic animals – I don’t think its chances of survival are very good...’ The major was staring intently at the monitor, as if looking for something.

‘Ah yes... see here, these shapes are probably predators.’ He pointed at faint outlines in pale green against the pale blue. He adjusted the contrast again, and the shapes changed color to gold, and became more distinct. As the men watched, they moved toward the larger animal, now showing in a flame red. ‘They’re most likely snow leopards, given the size of their prey. Their coats are better suited to the conditions, so they show up as being cooler. I think we’re about to see a kill.’

The major muttered a few low words in Hindi to his fellow officer, who in turn gestured to the Maurya security personnel, and they moved away leaving Baldwin, Gupta and the major to watch as nature took its course, silently observed from space.

Baldwin saw that the two Maurya guards were carefully scanning the CCTV monitors while their supervisor was checking in with the guard-posts. The Black Cat captain was watching the Maurya guards at work. He was impressed at their professionalism – they’d obviously realized that a moment of distraction meant their defenses were down.

If Gupta noticed their actions he gave no indication, but when the hunt was over, and the large animal lay cooling in the forest while ghostly yellow predators gnawed at it, he called the group back to the table.

‘I thought you should know that our intention to resume production of active ingredient in the laboratory here is now in the public domain – I told Gipsy North all about it, just a few minutes ago.’

There was a moment of silence in the room as each man thought in his own way about the fact that they had just painted a huge bulls-eye on this location, and sent an invitation to the unknown terrorists to try to stop them.

‘Cry havoc.’ Baldwin mumbled, under his breath.

Shan Gupta glanced at him. ‘Well, we’ve already watched the dogs of war at work.’

+++

Sunday night...

I was sitting on the lawn in front of a university building talking to a charming and beautiful professor about a discovery her team had made, which was going to revolutionize the world’s supply of energy. Her extraordinary amber eyes shone as she described their breakthrough. It all seemed terribly obvious, even to a scientific midget like me, and I found myself whooping along with her at the thought of an unending supply of clean, cheap power for the world.

The professor was starting to answer my question about how they planned to implement their new technology when a bell started ringing. She stopped talking, waiting for me to do something. There was something about the bell... it wasn’t really a bell at all. It was a phone. It was my phone. I could swear the professor gave me a look of genuine regret as I realized she was a figment of my dream world, and opened my eyes.

‘Dr North?’ It was woman’s voice that I didn’t recognize. The pitch of her voice was exactly like my dream professor’s, but her accent was African.

‘We’d like to meet with you, Dr North. We want to talk to you – to tell you what’s really happening with these ARVs. We must meet right away. We can pick you up at your hotel.’

She said her name was Thandi, but wouldn’t put a name to the ‘we’. I had to go immediately because ‘we’ had just finished a meeting, and they wanted to talk to me. In a couple of hours they would’ve disbursed, and the opportunity would be gone. They were not far away – no more than 20 minutes. I was free to do an audio-recording of the interview, but no video.

Normally I would have told her to go to hell, and gone back to the golden-eyed professor with the British version of the same voice, but we badly needed to open up pharmageddon. The clincher was when she said I could follow her in my own car.

I phoned the office and told my editorial coordinator on duty, Jaynee, that I needed real-time monitoring and backup. South Africa was one of a dozen countries where we kept a private security service on retainer. Tracking and panic alerts were built into every piece of equipment we carried. Once alerted, I was assured the cavalry would be only minutes away if I needed them.

All the same, my pulse was racing as I sat in my rented Lexus outside the Michelangelo, with the engine idling. After a couple of minutes a dark-blue BMW pulled up next to me and the tinted window scrolled down to reveal the smiling face of a middle-aged woman, leaning across an empty passenger seat.

‘Dr North? I’m Thandi. Please follow me.’ I did, reading her license plate number over to Jaynee, who in turn watched my progress on her monitor. She sounded a lot less worried than I felt, and was delighted when I told her so.

‘Nothing’s going to happen to you Gipseee,’ she said in her gorgeous Indonesian accent. ‘You are heading south on Rivonia and you’re about to cross Grayston Drive – if you look to your left you’ll see a white Land Cruiser parked two cars back from the corner. That’s one of three which have been assigned to follow you, but they will provide more vehicles if you go to a high-risk area.’

Instead of crossing Grayston we turned east, so I drove right past the white Cruiser, incongruous in an area littered with up-market SUVs. ‘Thanks Jaynee, I see it.’

The Lexus’ GPS was now showing Alexandra Township a couple of miles ahead. ‘What happens if we go into a shanty town? A car like that will stick out like a sore thumb.’ I didn’t really want to know, but I liked having a friendly voice in my ear.

‘One minute Gipseee.’ I could hear Jaynee’s fingers rattling on her keyboard. There was a pause, then a light giggle. ‘Oh, they say they use different vehicles, depending on where you go, but they also say you’d be surprised at the kind of cars you find in squatter camps!’

Sure enough we made a right then a left, directly toward the township, one of the city’s most famous ghettos. Nelson Mandela lived there when he first arrived in Johannesburg, and this was also the place where xenophobic pogroms broke out in 2008, triggering a national refugee crisis.

As we drove down 9th Road Thandi’s BMW pulled into a bus stop and she climbed out, as I stopped behind her. I could see she was a woman of substance – in several senses – as she waddled up to my window.

‘Dr North, do you know where we are?’

‘Yeah, my GPS tells me this is Alexandra Township?’

‘That’s right. I thought you might be worried about coming here in the middle of the night, particularly as a white woman. In fact you should be worried!’ She smiled broadly. ‘But we are going to a church which is right next to the entrance to the township – I wanted to tell you so you don’t worry.’

‘Thanks, Thandi. And please call me Gipsy.’

She reached into the car and shook my hand as a man would. ‘It’s a pleasure. Please follow me – we’re nearly there.’

As we pulled away I checked with Jaynee that she had overheard everything. ‘Yes, Gipseee. And we have video of the woman.’

‘Well done, Jaynee! That’s impressive.’ I looked around but the streets seemed to be empty.

Within a minute I was parked outside a small red-brick church, alongside a few other cars. An old man with a stick signaled that he would look after my car. I handed him a coin, even though I knew anyone who tried to break into it would get the surprise of their life, with god-knows how many real guards watching us.

I followed Thandi into the church, which was deserted and lit by only a single light near the door. We walked into our shadows until we reached the altar, where my large companion bobbed and crossed herself, then opened the door to what I imagined was the sacristy. It was, and it was crowded with people, sitting and standing in a circle, in total silence. My impression was of a mixed crowd of men and women, young and old, reasonably well dressed, all black. As someone closed the door behind me a short man in his forties stepped forward and offered his hand.

‘Dr North, I am Eric Ngubane and these...’ he gestured to the group, ‘are the committee of our local IFP branch.’

I knew the Inkatha Freedom Party was a conservative political party with strong ties to the hereditary leaders of South Africa’s largest tribe, the Zulu. Most of their supporters lived in the province of KwaZulu-Natal – or KZN – but they also had a following in Johannesburg, where millions of Zulus lived and worked.

Like the IFP, the ruling African National Congress denied any tribal affiliations, but everyone knew they were dominated by members of the second-largest tribe, the Xhosa, which produced such luminaries as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu. But all that changed in 2008 when the ANC elected Josias Shezi – a Zulu traditionalist – to replace the outgoing Xhosa leader, Thabo Mbeki.

Shezi was a controversial figure – a man with limited education and an undisclosed number of wives, who had been found innocent of charges of rape three years earlier but, in the process, admitted to having unprotected sex with a young woman he knew to be HIV-positive – and then taking a shower to reduce his risk of infection!

Until a year earlier Shezi had not only served the nation as deputy president, but also chair of their AIDS council and a moral regeneration movement! However, he was sacked when his financial adviser was found guilty of corruption, implicating Shezi in the process. In time similar charges were brought against Shezi, too, but they were dropped by the state prosecutors shortly before he led the ruling party into the national elections of 2009.

Shezi’s court appearances and campaign rallies drew huge crowds, many wearing t-shirts or carrying banners proclaiming him to be ‘100 percent Zulu boy’. This meant the IFP was opposing a ruling party which, while not exactly Zulu dominated, was clearly no longer indifferent to Zulu interests, and the IFP was all but wiped out in the 2009 poll.

Ngubane handed me a business card, one hand cradling the other in the traditional sign of respect. It identified him as Pastor E E Ngubane, chairperson of the Alexandra branch of the IFP.

‘You are safe with us, doctor. I hope your bodyguards are able to get some sleep.’

This was so unexpected that I guffawed. ‘Hey, the next sound you hear will be a dozen guards committing seppuku!’

His face creased. ‘Sepoo...?’

‘Oh, sorry, it’s Japanese ritual suicide. When their warriors are dishonored, they kill themselves by sticking a sword into their stomachs. Very painful.’

The silent group erupted into a mixture of wails of horror and laughter, deafening in the confines of the small sacristy. Ngubane mimicked plunging a blade in his round belly and bent backwards, roaring with laughter.

‘Oh no, doctor. They mustn’t kill themselves. We didn’t see them – but we know how it is with foreigners when they come to dangerous Alexandra. So we assume that you are being tracked.’

‘So it isn’t dangerous here?’

He became serious. ‘Oh, it can be. The tsotsis like to take your car, and your phone, and you – but you are with us, so you are safe.’

‘No worries, Mr Ngubane...’

‘But you would rather be sleeping. I understand. We are grateful to you for donating your dreams to us, and we will make a long story short.’

He gestured to an empty chair in the crowded circle. I was interested to note that women received no special consideration in the allocation of seats, nor did the older members of the group. Thandi squeezed into the circle of standers while Ngubane sat down opposite me.

‘Doctor, in our culture we should tell you all about ourselves, and ask about your life and your family. But, considering the time, it may be better if we forget our manners.’

I wanted to make a joke about Australian ‘culture’ but I doubted they had any beer and it wouldn’t be much fun without it, so I let it slide and just smiled back.

‘When we heard you were here in Johannesburg we wanted to speak to you because you... you have spoken to us, since the beginning of this thing. We look for your name on our cellphones so we can understand what is happening.’

‘Thank you. That’s good to hear.’

‘You are not afraid to speak the truth, so we want to tell you the truth. So you can tell others.’ 

‘That’s why I’m here.’

He looked around, maybe to see if there were any last minute dissenters, but there were none.

‘We are all Zulus here. The IFP is a home for Zulus who believe in traditional values. We welcome other ethnic groups, and we still have a few white and Indian members, but the other tribes do not feel comfortable among us.’

As Ngubane spoke, the group murmured and clicked their tongues. After a while I was waiting for the hallelujahs.

‘Unfortunately the Zulu people are suffering with this four letters.’

‘Four letters?’

‘Oh yes, H-I-V-AIDS. We are told that half of our people have this disease, even if they feel fine.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ Dunno why I said that, it just seemed right at the time. He acknowledged my sympathy by closing his eyes for a moment.

‘We have been told that these four letters affect Zulus much more than the Xhosa, or the Sotho, the Tswana, or anyone else.’

He seemed to be waiting for me to say something.

‘I read somewhere that KZN is the worst-affected province.’

There was a kind of collective sigh from the audience, then Ngubane spoke again.

‘Doctor, we think that the Xhosas are trying to kill us.’

I heard the words, but they made no sense. I looked around the group to see if they were suppressing laughter, but every face was serious.

‘Oh?’

‘They have stopped these ARVs to kill us, because we are the ones with the four letters.’

‘But... I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’

He looked disappointed.

‘This problem in our hospitals, and with the United Nations. It is all done by those Xhosas. They have taken the ARVs so they can look after themselves. And so that we will die.’

It occurred to me that I had no idea to which tribe the minister of health, Colin Makeba, belonged. Nor my good friend Bettina Shabangu.

‘Why, Mr Ngubane? Why would they do that?’

‘Because we are the biggest tribe. And we are the strongest. They want to make us small and weak.’

‘Mr Ngubane, your president is a Zulu...’

‘Yes, but... when they sing, he dances. They chose him because he is weak. His only job is to be a Zulu. To take votes away from us. The true leaders are hiding behind him. And they are Xhosa.’

For the second time since this saga began I wondered whether I was, in fact, still dreaming. This was just too far off the wall. Mind you, the Nazis tried to recruit King George, who wasn’t the brightest light on the Christmas tree. And everyone believed that George W Bush was merely a bumbling front-man for the troika of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft.

We talked it out, and after what seemed like a few minutes I saw sunlight outside and heard the sounds of cars and people. I noticed that the group had also thinned down to a dozen or so, all seated now. At some point a cup of lukewarm sweet milky tea was pressed into my hand – it was about the last drink on earth I would have asked for but it tasted wonderful, as did the slab of white bread covered with thick butter and jam that came with it.

At the end I had to admit to myself that the facts fit, even if the evidence was purely circumstantial. This little group certainly had the facts at their fingertips. Zulus made up almost a quarter of the nation of fifty million. The next biggest tribe, the Xhosa, numbered close to nine million, but none of the remaining tribes reached half that number.

Official data did not separate HIV prevalence – or AIDS deaths – into ethnic groups, but they gave numbers for each province. A young man in the group, who said he was a university lecturer, produced a map which showed how closely ethnic distribution coincided with provincial boundaries. Another map showed that HIV prevalence in the Eastern Cape – the ‘homeland’ of the Xhosa – was around half that in KZN. There was no doubting that, unless ARV treatment was restored, it would be catastrophic for the Zulu people.

The young man’s voice carried the imprint of expensive schooling. ‘The boers kept the tribes separate, each tribe in their so-called homeland. I am too young to remember that time but as you can see we are still a nation of separation, not integration.’

‘I thought the ANC tried to do away with... all that.’ This drew a round of hissing and tongue-clicking from the remnants of the group, who continued to hang on every word.

‘No, Dr North,’ Ngubane said. ‘The history of South Africa has always been about ethnicity, and it still is. The ANC just manages to fool most of the people.’

‘So you believe your government planted bombs in India, Sweden and Iceland... to kill Zulus?’

Ngubane shrugged. ‘Who else could it be?’

‘But... they’re risking so many lives around the world...’

‘Yes, but they’re all fine now, aren’t they? The only countries that are not fine are South Africa and our neighbors, because our governments HAVE CHOSEN not to comply with UN demands.’

A woman murmured something to the political pastor, and he turned back to me. ‘Yes, and our government HAS CHOSEN not to control the police, who stole the ARVs from our hospitals. These are the actions of our government, which is controlled by members of all the tribes except the Zulu, who are worst affected by these four letters.’

Ngubane said something about Mbeki’s attempts to stall the introduction of ARVs, and I zoned out for a moment, thinking through the research I’d need to do before going to print. Most of the information – such as the tribes to which the most powerful politicians belonged – was readily available. The historical perspective was already in our archives. I wondered who to approach in government for their side of the...

‘Mr Ngubane, is there someone in government who you believe masterminded this plan?’

For the first time he looked unsettled. ‘No, I cannot say for sure. We do not think it was any of the party structures, because it is too hard to keep secrets there. But the fact that government has not acted to stop this behavior shows that it involves many top people.’

‘Some kind of inner circle?’

‘Yes, something like that.’

‘And what are you hoping will happen when your views are made public?’

‘We want them to stop! We want these drugs back in our hospitals. We want our people to speak up, to say they will not accept this kind of behavior. And we want the international community to say the same.’

‘What makes you think they will stop? Reverse their actions?’

He looked surprised. ‘But... their plan can only work if it looks like we are helpless, as a nation. Victims of international terrorism. If you show that it started here... if this plot is exposed... it cannot possibly succeed. Millions of lives depend on this, Dr North.’

Oh fuck, doncha hate it when the survival of millions depends on you?

+++