Eating Bitter by Michael Stanley

Shots are delighted to welcome back to the blog the two writers Michael Sears and Stan Trollip who write the Detective Kubu Mysteries collaboratively under the name Michael Stanley. The latest novel is A Death in the Family. 

One of the reasons we set our novels in Botswana is that it gives us the freedom to explore issues in southern Africa that are not driven by the aftermath of apartheid in South Africa.  Each of the books is set against a background that is significant to the people of the region and hopefully provides the impetus for an intriguing mystery.  For example, our previous book, Deadly Harvest, focussed on the use of human body parts for black magic and the witch doctors who murder to get them.  It was the Director of the Botswana CID who encouraged us to write about these so-called muti murders because, we believe, he was frustrated by the police’s lack of success in solving them.

Our new book, A Death in the Family, revolves around the growing Chinese presence in southern Africa and its impact on the region.  The idea for this mystery came in a different way.

Stanley was on a trip through northern Namibia and Botswana.  In Namibia, he noticed that even the smallest towns had a Chinese-owned shop.  He also saw several instances of local Namibians joking with the Chinese and receiving the cold shoulder in return.

When he crossed to north-west Botswana and drove between Katchikau and Goma Bridge—a road we’ve driven several times before—he found the road now paved, with no economic reason justifying the upgrade.  Then he saw a new, small village next to the road—a Chinese village—protected by a barbed-wire fence.

“Aha,” he thought.  “Here are all the ingredients for a murder mystery.  Chinese shops are competing with locally-owned ones; the Chinese are making no attempt to integrate with the locals and are isolating themselves behind barbed wire; and the natural friendliness of the locals is being rebuffed by the Chinese.”

This was a scenario ripe with possibilities for crime writers!

After that we spent a lot of time trying to understand what was actually going on.  It turns out that Botswana has had problems with the Chinese.  Big Chinese companies had won a variety of contracts for public works; some were successful and others not so much.  For example, the new airport terminal building contract was awarded to a Sinohydro, a Chinese, state-owned company specializing in hydro engineering.  The company ran out of money and asked for more.  The government refused, so the building wasn’t completed.  Eventually, in a bad storm, the nearly-completed terminal was flooded when parts of the roof blew off.  As the joke goes, at least most of the water didn’t leak out of the structure!  Eventually the government of Botswana cancelled the project, and shortly after Sinohydro pulled out of Botswana altogether.

There is a different aspect to the story that is interesting.  Chinese companies are certainly making a big play in Africa, often leveraging cheap government money and aid packages.  They use as little local labour as possible, preferring to bring in their own people.  Sometimes those people stay on, seeing Africa as a continent where they can prosper even if initially things don’t look encouraging and the locals are not overjoyed by their presence.

In his book China’s Second Continent: How a million migrants are building a new empire in Africa, Howard French describes a journey around sub-Saharan Africa speaking to Chinese people about their views and experiences.  He has the powerful advantage of speaking the languages from many years living in China reporting for the Washington Post.  He has also lived for many years in Africa.  The people he interviews range from a single man without much capital trying to farm in rural Mozambique to people working for big Chinese companies in Ghana.  What he finds is not the construction of a new empire in a political sense, but rather a wave of immigration to what the settlers see as a continent of opportunity in commerce and farming.  Like early European settlers to Africa, these are not people who expect instant wealth or luxury.  Quite the contrary: they have a long-term view.  In the meanwhile—as they tell French—Chinese people can ‘eat bitter’, that is they can make do with very little, seeing a better future for themselves and their families.  Surprisingly, some felt that the countries to which they’ve immigrated are much less corrupt than China.

What also comes through is that the new colonists want to preserve their culture and their

language with as few outside contacts as possible.  As Stanley observed in Namibia, this can’t make for good relations.  However hard the Chinese work and however bitter they eat, the locals can hardly avoid turning on them for their success, if nothing else.

In A Death in the Family, we place a Chinese-owned mine near the small, historic village of Shoshong.  The mine wants to expand, but the local people are suspicious.  They are also divided: the older ones wanting to maintain traditional ways; the younger wanting jobs. 

At the same time Detective Kubu is struggling with the death of his beloved father, who is fatally stabbed while walking one night.  The director of the CID warns Kubu to keep away from the investigation—anything he does may taint the case—but Kubu finds this impossible.  He tries to concentrate on another case involving the apparent suicide of a senior official at the Department of Mines.  The more he digs, the more he comes to believe there is corruption in the Department—with links to the mine in Shoshong.

The director thinks Kubu is meddling in his father’s case and sends him off to New York to deliver a paper at Interpol, but mainly to get him out of the way.  But even there the trail is not cold.

Eventually the trail involves the CIA, one of the local Shoshong leaders, and, of course, the Chinese.

You can find more information about the authors and their work on their website.  You can also follow them on Twitter @detectivekubu and you can also find them on Facebook.

Deadly Harvest and Muti Murders

Today's guest blog is by Michael Stanley (the writing team of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip) who are the authors of the Detective Kubu series set in Botswanna.  The most recent book is Deadly Harvest.

The premise of Deadly Harvest is murder, often of young women, to supply witch doctors with body parts for black magic. The reader may suspect that this is an ingenious (if ghoulish) invention, but the story is based on a real murder that took place in Mochudi, a small town just north of Ganorone.  In 1994, a 14-year-old girl named Segametsi Mogomotsi and her friend Monnye decided to sell oranges to raise money for a church trip to Francistown.  The girls separated near the house of a man called Mokgalo.  Segametsi was never seen alive again.  Her body was found several weeks later with fatal chest wounds and a variety of body parts removed, possibly done while she was still alive.  Clearly she’d been murdered to harvest these organs for muti - medicine made from human flesh.

Nothing was obvious about the case.  Circumstantial evidence pointed to Mokgalo, and he was held briefly, partly for his own protection from the angry villagers.  But soon he was released.  Monnye then came up with a story that Mokgalo previously had made advances on Segametsi.  Mokgalo was held again.  Then in an almost unbelievable turn of events, the girl’s father made a confession that he’d accepted a promise of 1,200 pula (about ₤300 at the time) to help with his daughter’s abduction.  This time, Mokgalo was held for two months. 

During that time the police became suspicious of the stories they’d been told, and the father was sent for mental examination.  Both the father and Monnye eventually withdrew their stories, and the suspects were released.  This led to rioting in Mochudi and Gaborone, and the focus moved from the murder to public order.  The police and soldiers reacted violently and many people were injured.  One protester was killed by a policeman.

The government was under tremendous pressure and eventually asked Scotland Yard to

send a team to independently investigate both the murder and the police conduct of the case. 

The policeman who killed the rioter was sentenced for manslaughter, and the government paid the victim’s family substantial compensation.  Mokgalo won a case for wrongful arrest, but described himself as a broken man who is still treated with suspicion.  The Scotland Yard report has never been made public, and no one has been arrested for the murder of Segametsi. 

Unfortunately, very few muti murders are solved.  This puzzled us, but it soon became obvious why. 

First, in most murder cases, there’s usually some connection between the perpetrator and the victim – spouse, relative, friend, or acquaintance.  However, in muti murders there’s usually no connection.  The witch doctor selects a person, any person, who meets his or her needs – a young girl for body parts to make muti to enhance a woman’s fertility, a young man to improve a man’s virility, an old man to make someone wise, or an albino to give various types of power.  So an investigation of people the victim knew usually yields no suspects.

Second, the people who buy the muti are usually those with power or money or both.  Therefore, the police, in their own self-interest, are reluctant to make progress, reluctant to discover who the witch doctor’s clients are.  

Third, even in a modern police force, traditional beliefs persist and the police are scared that if they get too close to identifying the murderer, the witch doctor may put a spell on them.

And finally, for the most part, the police force is male, which results in crimes against women often being put on the back burner.

In Deadly Harvest, we decided it was time to shake up the chauvinistic Criminal Investigation Department, so we introduced a rookie female detective, Samantha Khama.  In our story, she comes from Mochudi and was a good friend of Segametsi.  She hates the way the police handled her friend’s case, and vows to do better for female victims.   She arrives at the CID with a feisty attitude and, despite many suggestions and hints to take things slowly, pushes the department into doing more about muti murders and crimes against women in general.  She and Kubu track a notorious witch doctor who is behind multiple muti murders, and it’s her persistence that eventually leads them to him, with not altogether expected results.

Murders for muti remain widespread in sub Saharan Africa.  Albinism is more common in Tanzania and many have fled to escape the witch doctors, but where do you run? One would hope that modern people would dismiss these traditional beliefs in magic, but they persist in tandem with recognised religions.  And while that’s the case, some people will never be safe from these organised serial killers.

For more information about Michael Stanley and Detective Kubu can be found on the website.

You can follow him on Twitter @detectivekubu. You can find him on Facebook.