Desiderata (Something To Strive For) - A Poem By Max Ehrmann

"Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story" - Max Ehrman.

"If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him. An investment in education always pays the best interest" - Benjamin Franklin.

Desiderata - Max Ehrmann (1927)

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others,

even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter,

for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;

many persons strive for high ideals,

and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.

And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life,

keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

My Reading Of Don Quixote: The Ingenious Gentleman Of La Mancha

“Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny horse and a greyhound for racing” - Opening Passage to Don Quixote: The Ingenious Gentleman Of La Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes.

Don Quixote on his horse, Rocinante, accompanied by his squire, Sancho Panza on his donkey, Dapple. Together they set out looking to right wrongs and root evil out of the world, with hilarious effects.

At long last I have finally managed to finish reading Miguel de Cervantes’s masterpiece, and it has enlarged my mind. I started reading this book in September 2015 and only have managed to finish it this week - 24 April/30 April. It is a thick volume book and I had other reading and writing demands competing for my attention. I had initially thought that on finishing this book, I would write a long treatise on its timeless lessons, but I am in the middle of writing a political treatise of my own so will not be able to do that after all. Instead, I found this short passage, on the Miguel de Cervantes Facebook Page, it captures the essence of Don Quixote and how he is a mirror reflection of every human being; 

Our ceaseless human quest for something larger than ourselves has never been represented with more insight and love than in this story of Don Quixote – pursuing his vision of glory in a mercantile age – and his shrewd, skeptical man servant, Sancho Panza. As they set out to right the world’s wrongs in knightly combat, the narrative moves from philosophical speculation to broad comedy, taking in pastoral, farce, and fantasy on the way. The first and still the greatest of all European novels, Don Quixote has been as important for the modern world as the poems of Homer were for the ancients. 

Don Quixote is a great book and should be read by everyone. I have now read all the great books from antiquity with the exception of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which I have deliberately set aside. I will read that book in the original when my learning of the Russian language permits it.

Don Quixote on his horse, Rocinante, accompanied by his squire, Sancho Panza on his donkey, Dapple. Together they set out looking to right wrongs and root evil out of the world, with hilarious effects.

My Favourite Author Of Recent Antiquity (circa AD 1962)

I learned from the best.

One of the authors who influenced my world view and general thought patterns (question everything) is Alistair MaClean. The first book of his I read was Night Without End, but the book that had me choosing to read more into military sciences was The Satan Bug. The passage below is what the men and women of letters would call hyperbole, but to me it is the only way you can grab your audience’s undivided attention. 

The story so far, there has been a break-in at a biological warfare complex in Britain, no one knows what has been stolen. The main investigator now gets to find out the truly awful nature of the biological weapons being perfected here. Now read on:  

The Satan Bug 

"I have no such fears of a nuclear Armageddon and I sleep well at nights. Such war will never come. I listen to the Russians rattling their rockets, and I smile. I listen to the Americans rattling theirs, and I smile again. For I know that all the time the two giant powers are shaking their sabres in their scabbards, while threatening each other with so many hundreds of megaton carrying missiles, they are not really thinking about their missiles at all. They are thinking, gentlemen, of Mordon, for we - the British, I should say - have made it our business to ensure the great nations understand exactly what is going on behind the fences of Mordon."

He tapped the brickwork beside him. "Behind this very wall here. The ultimate weapon. The world's one certain guarantee of peace. The term 'ultimate weapon' has been used too freely, has come almost to lose its meaning. But the term, in this case, is precise and exact. If by 'ultimate' one means total annihilation."

He smiled, a little self-consciously.

"I'm being melodramatic, a little? Perhaps. My Latin blood shall we say? But listen carefully, gentlemen, and try to understand the full significance of what I'm going to say. Not the General and Colonel, of course, they already know: but you Superintendent, and you, Mr Cavell."

"We have developed in Mordon here over forty different types of plague germs. I will confine myself to two. One of them is a derivative of the botulinus toxin - which we had developed in World War II. As a point of interest, a quarter of a million troops in England were inoculated against this toxin just before D - Day and I doubt whether any of them know to this day what they were inoculated against."

"We have refined this toxin into a fantastic and shocking weapon compared to which even the mightiest hydrogen bomb is a child's toy. Six ounces of this toxin, gentlemen, distributed fairly evenly throughout the world would destroy every man, woman and child alive on this planet today. No flight of fancy." His voice was weighted with heavy emphasis, his face still and sombre. "This is simple fact. Give me an airplane and let me fly over London on a windless summer afternoon with no more than a gramme of botulinus to scatter and by evening seven million Londoners would be dead. A thimbleful in its water reservoirs and London would become one vast charnel house. If God does not strike me down for using the term 'ideal' in this connection, then this is the ideal form of germ warfare. The botulinus toxin oxidises after twelve hours exposure and becomes harmless. Twelve hours after country A releases a few grammes of botulinus over country B it can send its soldiers in without any fear of attack by either the toxin or the defending soldiers. For the defending soldiers would all be dead. And the civilians, the men, the women, the children. They would all be dead. All dead."

Gregori fumbled in his pocket for another cigarette. His hands were shaking and he made no attempt to conceal the fact. He was probably unaware of it....

"Is it possible?" Hardanger's tone was dry but his face was set. "A deadlier poison than this damn botulinus? Seems superfluous to me."

"Botulinus has its drawbacks," Gregori said quietly. "From a military viewpoint that is. Botulinus you must breathe or swallow to become infected. It is not contagious. Also, we suspect a few countries may have produced a form of vaccine against even the refined type of drug we have developed here. But there is no vaccine on earth to counteract the newest virus we have produced - and it's as contagious as a bush-fire"

"This other virus is a derivative of the polio virus - infantile paralysis, if you will - but a virus the potency of which has been increased a million times by - well, the methods don't matter and you wouldn't understand. What does matter is this: unlike botulinus, this new polio virus is indestructible - extremes of heat and cold, oxidisation and poison have no effect upon it and its life span appears to be indefinite, although we believe it impossible - we hope it impossible - that any virus could live for more than a month in an environment completely hostile to growth and development: unlike botulinus it is highly contagious, as well as being fatal if swallowed or breathed; and, most terrible of all, we have been unable to discover a vaccine for it. I myself am convinced that we can never discover a vaccine against it"

He smiled without humour. "To this virus we have given a highly unscientific name, but one that describes it perfectly - the Satan Bug. It is the most terrible and terrifying weapon mankind has ever known or will ever know."***

***Maclean, Alistair (1962) The Satan Bug. London: William Collins Sons & Co.

The Zimbabwean Identity: National Identity In The Internet Age

"Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life" - Joseph Conrad.

I know from my National Identity Number that I am Zimbabwean, but is that enough?

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

Having deliberately skirted the subject for the longest time, my next big project finally sees me discussing Zimbabwe in explicit terms. Though I have not engaged in any public debates about Zimbabwe thus far, I have always been well aware of all the discussions making the rounds in both the academic and social circles. The one thing I have noticed which the academic and pub discussions of Zimbabwe hold in common, is an abysmal ignorance of the Zimbabwean processes. 

If only these people had been born and lived there like I did, then they wouldn't be so ignorant of what is happening and why. If only they knew the motivations, the personality, the national identity, and the mentality of the quintessential Zimbabwean, then they would not be so mistaken in their discussions. On reflection, by thinking in these terms, I was actually being very conceited myself, because who really knows what a "quintessential Zimbabwean" (or for that matter a quintessential American, Frenchman, or Motswana) is anymore?

My conceit has not been idle either because I have had, since 2010, a blog where I write about every topical issue under the sun. On this blog I have (subtly) suggested that I am in possession of the knowledge of what the quintessential Zimbabwean looks like: I have, as my header, a banner of me engaging in various activities which I think Zimbabweans surely positively identify with. Beneath this banner is the legend by Virgil: "behold a nation in a man compris'd."

The banner in question.

"Behold a nation in a man compris'd?"

This, surely, would be the high watermark of conceit if it wasn't tempered by the fact that I have realised, on my own, that it is not possible for one person or group of persons to claim to know what the national identity ought to be. We can only hope that at least fifty plus one per cent of the population identify with the image of national identity we possess in our minds. This realisation has made me ask myself the question: "what then is the Zimbabwean national identity?" Today's blog entry does not answer this question, instead I am just going to tell you how I intend to approach that question: through seeking out what is Zimbabwe's foundational story. 

A nation's literature is the repository of its identity.

All nations have a foundational story from whence their chief characteristics are drawn. The older nations can rely on fictional accounts such as that of Greece and its 10 year siege of Troy story (and the derivative accounts of Brutus who found Britain and built New Troy - now London - after vanquishing the nation of giants who lived there and; as well, Aeneas who found the Latin civilisation at Rome et cetera). The newer nations can only but rely on true accounts for events that unite them. Modern people have so many tools at their disposal to question fantastic stories such as those told by Homer in The Iliad. 

If you take for example the context from which I extracted that quote, "behold a nation in a man compris'd," you will understand my angle in arguing that a foundational story is the repository of a nation's identity. My first degree was in English Literature so my point of view with regards how we can know a nation's identity may be overly influenced by the tenets of that guild. Still, I think literature can explain how identities are formed from a nation's myths and how other factors cross-pollinate and impact local identities (this has always been the case even way before the invention of the internet age). 

Case in point: the quote "behold a nation in a man compris'd" comes from the Roman/Italian poet Virgil's epic poem; The Aeneid, itself a 'spin-off' from the Greek poet Homer's epic poem; The Iliad. I have already written elsewhere about this phenomenon - intertextuality - so will only make the point here that this borrowing from each other's stories in antiquity is the proof of the cross-pollination in foundational stories I mentioned above. 

Homer was the pre-eminent poet of antiquity and his poem, The Iliad, is the earliest literature book in existence, it tells the story of Greek heroes fighting a 10 year war at Troy. The siege at Troy ended when the Greeks devised an ingenious plan - the Trojan Horse plan. In The Iliad, Homer mentions the Trojan Horse plan in passing, it is Virgil who picks up this story in earnest and further expounds what really transpired - keep in mind that none of this actually happened. In Virgil's account, the only reason why the subterfuge of the Trojan Horse succeeded was because one Greek allowed himself to be captured by the Trojans so as to tell them the false story that the horse was a symbol of the Greeks' supplication to the might of the Trojan gods: 

Meantime, with shouts, the Trojan shepherds bring 

A captive Greek, in bands, before the king; 

Taken to take; who made himself their prey, 

T' impose on their belief, and Troy betray; 

Fix'd on his aim, and obstinately bent 

To die undaunted, or to circumvent. 

About the captive, tides of Trojans flow; 

All press to see, and some insult the foe. 

Now hear how well the Greeks their wiles disguis'd; 
Behold a nation in a man compris'd. 
Trembling the miscreant stood, unarm'd and bound; 

He star'd, and roll'd his haggard eyes around, 

Then said: 'Alas! what earth remains, what sea 

Is open to receive unhappy me? 

What fate a wretched fugitive attends, 

Scorn'd by my foes, abandon'd by my friends?' 

In this regard, Virgil tells us that Greeks, to a man, are purveyors of deceit. That their chief characteristic is deceit and subterfuge. Of course, he would say this because his poem represents the point of view of those who survived the Greek siege at Troy. What I took from this passage however, was the inkling that it is possible to assign to a nation, its characteristics: a national identity. This can be done by looking for the nation's foundational stories and what positive self image they project of themselves. While not everyone will be able to live up to this self image, it represents what the collective strives for, and whoever approximates that image will be held in high esteem by their nation. 

Now, the foundational story for the Roman (now Italy) civilisation is The Aeneid, while that for the Greek civilisation is The Iliad. From these stories the elites and those who are held in high esteem in these countries have learnt their conduct. Why, even though these stories did not happen, Plato and Aristotle, in their teachings often dipped into these accounts to put a point across. 

Plato tells us in Apology that: "Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad. Whereas, upon your view, the heroes who fell at Troy were not good for much, and the son of Thetis above all, who altogether despised danger in comparison with disgrace; and when he was so eager to slay Hector, his goddess mother said to him, that if he avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he would die himself." While Aristotle is reputed to have taught Alexander the Great to emulate Achilles.

All I have said above is in support of one point and one point only: a nation's identity can be found in its literature. The nation's identity is also not static, it borrows from and is influenced by other nations' cultures and identities on point of contact. This is my entry point into the discussion of what constitutes the Zimbabwean identity in the Internet Age. I will look to Zimbabwe's literature and foundational stories and how they relate to other competing narratives. As Zimbabwe is only 35 years old, I think the main foundational story to rival the Greeks' The Iliad is that of Chimurenga II. It would seem that this is not much to go on but, fortunately, my English literature taught me to read road signs, monuments, dances, cultural ceremonies and so on the way one would read a book. 

A national flag is actually a thick-volume-book-length text

Knowledge Cannot Be Solicited From The Gods

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The author at the RUSI Library of Military History in London.

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

I, myself, am not the proverbial man of rare intellect. Instead, I was lucky enough to meet someone of rare intellect who selected for me these books which she herself had read. My course director for the Classics programme at Goldsmiths College (University of London), selected for me the books I have listed below. 

This is what is called the Western Canon, and it raises some controversy among post-colonial critics who feel it excludes the literature and cultures of the former colonies. They see this as a perpetuation of the dominant colonialist discourse. Fortunately for me, these are sentimentalities and sensibilities which do not concern me in the least. I am only concerned with taking what I need, wherever I may find it.

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

"Lugansk was a sea of flames when we drove through in the tanks...."



"The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.” 

“Men's indignation, it seems, is more exited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior.”

“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”

"Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination."

“What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own transgressions which bring them suffering that was not their destiny.”

"They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.” 

“Bene disserer est finis logices (The end of logic is to dispute well.)” 

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” 

What Use Intertextuality for Strategy?

"Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular" - Aristotle. 

I travelled to Greece to acquaint myself with the culture that has informed strategic thought.

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

I was walking in the City of London with a brilliant mathematician friend who is employed in the top end of the banking sector. The reason why I mention his profession and disposition is to place a contrast between him - a man trained in the exact sciences - and myself; someone trained in the expansive, indeterminate and indeterminable field of strategy. We were talking about Homer's epic poem: The Iliad. My mathematician friend, brilliant as he is, assumed that The Iliad was an actual account of actual events that took place in antiquity. Therefore, he did not take it well when I told him that it was all a fiction. 

For my training in Classics, we had to look beyond the text to context, intertextuality, intention, and the question of authorship so as to have a deeper understanding of the texts we were handling. To take just one aspect as example, intertextuality; this refers to how different texts can refer to each other as part of their story telling. Indeed it was on this count of intertextuality that I inadvertently disappointed my mathematician friend with the revelation that Homer's works are fiction.

On the route to Delphi to see some of the places the literature says events took place.

Homer recounts the tales of heroes who fought a 10 year battle at Troy over a beautiful woman, Helen, who had been seduced by the Trojan Prince, Paris. At the end of this battle, the heroes return home to different fates. Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus has the famous passage on Helen which opens with the iconic words "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships..." Another great author of antiquity, Virgil, uses the ending of the Iliad as a starting point for his work, The Aeneid. He took the story in the Iliad to be true and then invented his own hero, who survived the siege by Greek heroes and escaped to start the Latin civilization. This is one aspect of how intertextuality works, but this is not the aspect I discussed with my friend on our walk in the City of London.

At Delphi. The centre of the Classical world.

Because after my study of the Classics, I was made to turn to international relations as an enhancement of my grasp of strategy in the contemporary world, I had yet come across another form of intertextuality. This type of intertextuality does not take a written text as gospel truth but contends against the other author's assertions. When I turned to international relations, my bedside book was by another great Greek author, Thucydides, and the book is The History of the Peloponnesian War. It was in this book that I first heard Homer contradicted and it surprised me. Homer wrote that the reason why King Agamemnon, the brother-in-law to Helen, managed to raise a great army to pursue the Trojans when they ran away with Helen, was because there was a pact made by every suitor for Helen that even though they had failed to win her hand in marriage; they would come to the aid of whoever became her husband should the need ever arise. An iron clad pledge to defend the honour of Greece's most beautiful woman. Thucydides objects to this, he openly says Homer was wrong to think that the reason why all those thousands of men joined Agamemnon was because of this pledge, instead Thucydides avers that it was because of Agamemnon's power that they followed him. Thucydides is thereby arguing that men were not moved to confront danger because of some high minded pledge, but by fear of the consequences of refusing to aid the most powerful King in Greece at the time.

After 3 years studying the Classics, I was forced to study IR to remain relevant to contemporary strategy.

Of course Thucydides would say this, he is known as the foremost forbearer of realist thought in international relations - realist thought in international relations assumes that power is the only force that all humans respond to. So, I was saying to my friend that "how conceited can you be, that someone wrote his work of fiction from scratch and it became a classic, then you come, some 4 centuries later and claim that that someone was wrong in saying why such and such a thing happened? But sir, you were not there and furthermore, this story is fiction, so however the author said it happened is exactly how it happened!" I thought my friend would commend me for being hawk-eyed and picking up on this, but instead he censured me for ruining what had all along been, for him, a beautiful tale of heroism in ancient Greece. I am now closer to the point I want to make in this paper.

The broader question I should have asked is what use a knowledge of Classics for Strategy? A knowledge of history, economics, mathematics, biology, agriculture, law and warfare? What use all these branches of knowledge for the strategist? The answer to that can be revealed if we take intertextuality to be a metaphor of the inevitable interconnection of everything. Nothing in this world is free standing, if you think something is unconnected to anything else that is only because you have not thought long enough about the interconnection. All those branches of knowledge I enumerated above intersect in interesting ways at the point that the strategist is standing. The more branches he is acquainted with, the more choices at the strategist's disposal. Let me make my answer emphatic by returning to the subject of my article; intertextuality. 

"The term Intertextuality, popularized especially by Julia Kristeva, is used to signify the multiple ways in which any one literary is in fact made up of other texts, by means of its open or covert citations and allusions, its repetitions and transformations of the formal and substantive features of earlier texts, or simply its unavoidable participation in the common stock of linguistic and literary conventions and procedures that are 'always-ready' in place and constitute the discourses into which we are born. In Kristeva's formulation, accordingly, any text is in fact an 'intertext' - the site of an intersection of numberless other texts, and existing only through its relations to other texts."* 

A man trained to understand that even the texts we think are very original are not original if you take a closer look; trained to understand that there are structures already in place which the text either follows or attempts to subvert; trained to know that if you look wide enough you will see how everything intersects, is a man forearmed to excel in strategy. In any case, silo-thinking has been largely discarded in the 21st Century. So, What Use Intertextuality For Strategy? 

I will tell you. Knowing that everything is interconnected makes one seek the interconnection. Seeking the interconnections increases one's stock of knowledge while at the same time giving him a knowledge of how problems of the past have been solved. Machiavelli captures the essence of what I am attempting to say. He said "Everyone who wants to know what will happen ought to examine what has happened: everything in this world in any epoch has their replicas in antiquity." The strategist in the contemporary world who knows the interconnection of all things must, in turn, be formidable. 

 Notes

 *M.H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms, (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009), p. 364.

A Question Of Loyalty

This story was first published in The Horizon Magazine in Zimbabwe, as I was very young when I wrote the story, I really can’t take all the credit. Forthwith, I acknowledge the help I got from Mr Peter Birkett, the British Airways Chief Security Officer who “taught me how to hijack planes.” Thanks also to Andrew Moyse, the Horizon Editor, for leaving out some of the laughable conversations I had included in the original script. Other than that, this is a story of my creation. The Zimbabwe Defence Forces also took a flirting interest in the story when it was published but it was all very cordial, very amicable. Read here therefore, the most beautiful story I have ever written. I closely followed the pattern of the master – Alistair Maclean – “no romance, it just slows down the action!”

This is the South African Airways Airbus A300 where the story narrated below may or may not have happened.

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

The trip should have carried no drama at all. The flight to Johannesburg would be slightly under two hours and every time I had done the Jo’burg run, which is a relatively short hop and over land too, I was confident my safety was guaranteed, not that air safety was a major concern. As a high-ranking air force officer, I had seen so much combat action from military planes to the effect that civilian flight did not even stir my blood. I had no way of knowing that this particular trip would reshape my entire philosophy and forever change my laissez-faire attitude towards life.

As the big Airbus A300 aircraft swept off the runway into the night sky, my mind focused on the problems we were facing at home: nationwide workers’ strikes, university students’ demonstrations and a weak economy. It just wasn’t healthy. It was not my area of concern, but as I sized it up I conceded that disloyalty seemed to be taking over. Now, loyalty meant living to me. Those without loyalty left me cold and sad. I could not understand why one skilled at his work would do his country a disservice and go to serve abroad. University students and the workers’ strikes and the denunciation of government were cases of rebellion fit for animals, and wild animals at that. I believed everyone had a duty to the country, to the president and to God. I had taken the vow as a mere Red Cross youth member, as a Boy Scout, then again when I joined the air force and most recently when I took office within the defence forces. I therefore strongly felt everyone had to be loyal to the country and submit to government decisions and control. According to the bible, a leader of a country is installed by God and to despise his authority is blasphemy and a punishable sin.

But not for me. I was the one to stand up and be counted for my country. Fanatical loyalty was my daily bread, in my heart I believed that I was an integral part of government and therefore knew “government employee” would be my name until death. It was my view that the acute unemployment in the country existed only because school leavers were too choosy and afraid of hard work, so they stayed home and played havoc with the statistics. I had heard of innocent people wrongly sent to jail, but of course I had never heard of anyone who admitted to being guilty.

With that line of thought everything was cosy between the leadership of the country and me. I wished everybody would find solace in hard work and the spirit of aspiring to achieve a better status or go to jail to regain some manners relative to loyalty. The government always acted in the best interests of its citizens. Fantasy. I might as well have believed that the Devil took good care of his people.

Thirty minutes into the night flight I turned my attention to my fellow passengers. There were the two teenagers wearing hippy clothing and indecent haircuts. I grieved for the past. Further on, without having to strain my neck, there was the nervous couple in seats 23A and B. But it was behind them, in seats 24A, B and C, that my eyes rested. There was a mother and her two children – sweet twins aged about six. I gave them ten out of ten. A sense of peace and kindness descended upon me just watching the kids’ kitten like antics, 13 000 above planet Earth and they were so carefree.

I was about to turn to the newspaper the air hostess had handed me, when the pilot announced flatly that we had been hijacked by a lone gunman who was yet to make his demands known. Paralysis gripped me. First to go was the notion of air safety. How had the heavily armed gunman sneaked through airport security? A thousand years later, which I suppose was 15 minutes, the gunman made known his demands. He was a member of a commando unit and wanted two South African commandos, captured as cross – border saboteurs during the apartheid era, to be released and put onto a plane. These men were to be given weapons and flown by a civilian crew into South African air space and then para – dropped.

A time limit was given: in the 40 minutes we still had to touchdown in Johannesburg, a plane was to be refuelled and made to stand by. The South African authorities would make ‘phone call one’ – high priority phone call for exactly five minutes to the authorities of my country, where these commandos were being held. My country would then authorise the release of the prisoners, drive them to the airport and allow them to make sure there no security personnel masquerading as crew or hiding somewhere on board. After the airliner had taken off, the government of my country would only have lost two hours fuel and would have saved the 176 lives on board our aircraft. The operation was to take 40 minutes flat and anyone who slipped up on the deadline would be held responsible by the world for the 176 lives that would surely perish if the deadline was not met.

If the deadline was met, the lone gunman would receive a secret message, the first would come in 20 minutes to show that positive action was taking place and the second message after the plane had taken off with the prisoners on board. This meant there were many accomplices on the ground, who would phone Johannesburg’s control tower then get the passwords relayed to our aircraft. This was clearly a military operation. During my military service I had undergone anti – hijack training. I knew all about staying calm, assessing the situation, calculating the risk and taking appropriate action, but despite that my fear was all consuming and was reflected all around me by my fellow passengers. Returning to earth, out of control and at bullet-speed is never part of the bargain when we take to the sky. Also, the fact that the hijacker had not misdirected his energy running up and down aisles threatening every passenger in sight credited him as a highly trained and focused soldier, and identified him as a formidable foe.

But what really was there to my fear? My government knew that I and other passengers were on board. The terrorist’s demands would be met on the double and all 176 passengers would disembark at Jan Smuts Airport, shaken but with big smiles and a tale each for their folks. It was easy really, the two commandos, weak from the long stay in jail would bash their heads against rocks during the para – drop and foil their own escape.

I was deadly wrong. My trip was now a frightful flight with a big banner that said “governments do not make decisions under pressure from terrorists.” I could not believe it; my own government would actually make us go through such an ordeal just for the sake of a twisted political standpoint. It was said that terrorism should be discouraged in its infancy; if terrorists won a small victory they would insist on bigger things. Of course who ever said this was conveniently not on board the same plane as me. Looking across at the twins I was overwhelmed by helpless anger. They were worth a thousand terrorists’ political demands and yet my government had authorised “whatever measures might be necessary to free the hostages”!

Things were happening all at once, the gunman had instructed the pilot to dump almost all fuel as a negotiating tactic, our engines would clank shut any moment, and without thrust our aircraft was as impressive as a mouthful of dust. If our government intervened we would just make it to landing. I had lived my last and all my loyalty and confidence in government suddenly waned. I cursed the vulgarity of politics and with it our expendability; we were just pawns on a very big chessboard.

Promptly the gunman emerged in the aisle. He was a white man in his thirties and he wore a black combat outfit and his face was painted black. A handgun was stuck in his belt within easy reach and a sub – machine gun was slung casually over his shoulder, his ammunition belt was well supplied. However, he was not shooting. He had high explosive charges which he place randomly around the plane. One mistake and we would all be blown to smithereens. I visualized little pieces of metal and human flesh raining down on the slumbering city of Jo’burg. As he carried out his operation, his eyes were ever watchful and his reflexes fully alert. I knew a surprise attack would only end with the incapacitation of the perpetrator, and so to keep my mind off it I looked out of the window. I saw a fighter plane performing a steep climb with the blue blow – torch after burner flame trailing behind. Fancy dramatics I thought bitterly. When I looked back, the air pirate was standing, looking down at the twins. Their mother was clutching the twins desperately, protecting them from the menacing gaze. 

The gunman was a terrorist and would stop at nothing. I thought, he would now begin the killing and it seemed he had chosen the twins to be the first. God, how I wished I had stayed on the anti – hijack team. Now would have been my day. However, I still knew a thing or two, my hands were starting to grasp the metal head of my seat belt when the hijacker moved off, heading swiftly to the cockpit. I sat at ease.

Our descent was sharp but I hardly noticed. When we levelled off I could see the Jo’burg lights. Then the plane banked sharply and we began heading west, away from the airport, shortly after, all our lights were extinguished, even the anti – collision lights went off, at first I imagined the aircraft’s systems had gone down, but the steady hum of the engines told me we were still in circulation. I later learned that the commando had said he was a soldier and did not kill children. So the lights off procedure was to facilitate a parachute jump under the cover of darkness. After about a minute of total darkness the lights came back on again. The hijacker had spared our lives but had severed our communications equipment. His jump meant that we were lower than 3 300 metres but still nowhere closer to the airport.

The aircraft banked sharply again and the engines screamed as we regained altitude and increased speed. After a few minutes of climbing sharply the two powerful engines fell silent. But the pilot had anticipated that, for he levelled off the big metal bird. We were now gliding on our own momentum and still in danger of crashing. When we were again above Johannesburg, the plane nose-dived sharply but noiselessly and we had neither radio clearance for landing nor the ability to regain altitude. The aircraft wavered as if to nose dive to our deaths and with both hands on the armrests I resolved that if I came out of this alive, I would never be a government yes – man again and my loyalty would be based on reason. I despised ‘disloyal’ people because I had not yet climbed the hill they had climbed in life. But now I knew the state can be an unfeeling monster.

As if this revelation was the magic moment that accessed our landing, our big airbus appeared directly above Jan Smuts Airport like a ghost, a little lower and the airport building’s roof would have been shaved off by our fully extended landing gear. The pilot wing – tipped the runway and the airbus silently touched down but without thrust reversers, we hurtled on towards the end of the runway on a collision course with a fully laden Boeing 747 – 400 aircraft preparing to take off. The pilot locked on the brakes and with less than 20 metres to spare we shuddered to a halt. The two aircraft sat facing each other peacefully till our peace was shattered some minutes later by black – clad anti – hijack men who, violently blew off our doors and entered with smoke – screens and such fanfare. 

The last I saw of the anti – hijack men our pilot was screaming his head off at their commander for being dramatic for nothing and terrorising the passengers with the violence of their entry. I could have walked off with a big smile if the pilot was hollering at the president of my country. I knew then my loyalty was dead. To the end of my days I will never who is the worse, terrorists who threaten public lives, or politicians who sometimes have the power to avert disaster but sacrifice innocent lives just for the sake of a political stand point.

A copy of the original publication.