Reparations...or maybe not

 Michael - Thursday

This week Germany and Namibia announced a deal whereby Germany would pay around $1.5 billion dollars in reparations to Namibia for the genocide that they executed there at the beginning of the twentieth century. It sounds like a lot of money, and it would seem to bring to a close a shameful chapter in Germany’s colonial history. Except that it really doesn’t.

Let’s start at the beginning.

At the end of the 19^th century, the scramble for Africa was in full swing and Germany was settling the area now known as Namibia – then Deutsch-Südwestafrika (German South West Africa). The area they chose was currently occupied by the Herero and Nama peoples. Initially, fraudulent deals were made to buy stretches of land, but soon the German authorities grabbed the Herero’s land, forced them to work, and stole their cattle. The cattle probably angered the people the most. Cattle are central to Herero life and culture. (The Herero language doesn’t have a huge vocabulary, but there are over a thousand words for the colours, shapes, and designs of markings on cattle.) To cut a long and very painful story short, when the German forces went south to deal with trouble there, the Hereros rebelled and killed 100 German settlers (but spared the women and children). Later the Namas followed suit. Fourteen thousand troops were sent from Germany, and at the Battle of Waterberg, the Hereros were defeated - killed, captured, or driven into the desert.

After that, the Germans implemented a deliberate policy to exterminate the Herero and the Nama. Any caught were enslaved or executed. Women and children were driven into the desert without food or water. Upwards of 100,000 people died. Corpses were taken to German for “race science” experiments. The first genocide of the twentieth century was the direct precursor of Hitler’s “final solution.”

The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism by Casper Erichsen and David Olusoga  is a powerful history of that time and those events. They are also movingly woven into Tony Park’s partly historical and partly modern day thriller Ghosts of the Past.

So why has Germany’s 1.1 billion euro offer been controversial?

In the first place, while Germany has apologised, it has not accepted that the money is reparations. It’s described as a gesture of reconciliation to put the past behind the two nations. Their argument is that the international treaty on reparations wasn’t in place in the early 1900s. (No one thought anything of killing indigenous populations at the time; everyone was doing it!)

Secondly, the money is to be used for infrastructure projects that will be implemented by Germany in areas where many of the affected populations currently live over 30 years. That’s a long time. And the proponents of reparations point out that reparations can’t have strings attached. It’s like saying that you will repay a debt to someone provided they use the money to build a house and let you build it for them. (It’s understandable that Germany wants to be in control of spending the money. They don’t want it to just go into government coffers and disappear without trace.)

The most powerful argument against the settlement comes from leaders of the Herero and Nama populations themselves, minorities in Namibia. They claim that their role in the negotiations has been only consultative and that they don’t support this agreement, which they call an insult. They refer to the settlements Germany reached with Jewish peoples after the Second World War, pointing out that they didn’t only negotiate with Israel, but with surviving families and the diaspora. They reject the settlement, and are currently pursuing a case against Germany in New York.

Battle of the Waterberg

I have a lot of sympathy with the reaction of the Herero and Nama peoples. After all, they were the ones whose forefathers (and mothers) were killed in awful ways. It’s a precedent that needs to be set. And let’s not kid ourselves that this is a German issue. Every colonial power was responsible for something similar. And what about the Native Americans, the Aborigines of Australia, and black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved? There needs to be something more than apologies and shoving statues out of sight. Is it really supposed to be a coincidence that all the modern decedents of these groups remain disadvantaged?

On the other hand, where does it stop? When do we say: that’s too far back, we have to be sorry about history and move on? Take the Herero people themselves for example. They invaded Namibia in the middle of the 18^th century, seized the best grazing lands for their cattle, and killed and enslaved the local inhabitants – the Khoisan and San (Bushman) peoples. Over time, the rest were driven out into the desert to live or die. So how much of that billion euros do the Bushmen deserve???

On a more cheerful note, please join us for a celebration of the launch of Facets of Death in the UK and South Africa. The wonderful Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Queen of Icelandic Crime, will be grilling us. It should be great fun!

Tuesday 8th June, 7pm in the UK, 8pm in SA and Europe, 2pm EDT.

Contact Cole at orenda Books for the Zoom link.

cole@orendabooks.co.uk

Why we went backwards

Stanley - Thursday

Two days ago, our seventh Detective Kubu mystery hit the bookshelves in North America. It is called Facets of Death. What sets it apart from the other six is that it is a prequel.

The first Kubu novel was A Carrion Death which was set contemporaneously with its publication in 2008. Each successive book followed the same pattern. After our detour to the stand-alone thriller Dead of Night outside North America (Shoot the Bastards in North America), we wanted to return to Kubu and decided to return to his professional roots.

When we started writing A Carrion Death, we didn’t plan that Kubu would be the protagonist. As novice novelists, we heeded the the advice of the experts, who said we should write about what we knew. So, as academics ourselves, we planned that a brilliant young ecologist would discover a body that had been left in the desert for hyenas to devour and go on to solve the mystery. 

However, it was obvious to our young professor that it was no accident that the body was lying naked on the Kalahari sands. It was a case of murder, so the police had to be called in. So, with much amusement, we sent a detective, David Bengu, from the CID headquarters in Gaborone into the Kalahari in his Land Rover. Let's make him big, we said. Very big! So David Bengu became David 'Kubu' Bengu. His nickname means hippopotamus in the Setswana language. Ho ho ho, we laughed and had another glass of wine.

It's a long drive in unfavourable condition from Gaborone to where the body had been found in the middle of the Kalahari Desert, so we had to find things for Kubu to do.

First, he provisioned himself with sandwiches and something to drink (non-alcoholic because he was driving and on duty). After all, big people have to eat a lot. Then, he brought along some cassette tapes of some of his favourite operas. Ho ho ho! A Botswana detective who loves opera! Giggle! And then he sang along with them - in his only-sing-along-when-no-one-is-around baritone. Clink! Another toast.

We were really enjoying this character we were developing.

He also had time to muse about how a Bushman school friend had shown him how to see clues of things hidden in the desert, such as the stone-like Lithops plants and the trapdoor spiders. Aha, we said. That was the spark that made Kubu want to become a detective. He would train himself to look beyond the obvious.

It can be really difficult to find Lithops.

Trapdoor spiders build their homes in the ground.

Trapdoor spider

 By the time this larger-than-life character had visited the scene of the crime and interviewed the men who had found the body, he made it clear to us that he had to be the main character. That came as a complete surprise. We thought we were in charge of the story.

Fortunately for us, it turned out that Kubu was a major attraction for readers. Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times summed up the matter succinctly in her review of the book: “Readers may be lured to Africa by the landscape, but it takes a great character like Kubu to win our loyalty.” 

We were delighted that Kubu won readers’ loyalty, but the fact remained that he was unplanned. 

How well did we actually know him? 

He was smart and good at solving problems. Unlike many detectives in police procedurals, he was happily married and sober almost all of the time. Of course, during the series his character developed, his relationships with his wife, parents, and colleagues deepened, and he became more solid, more three-dimensional. There were clues about his childhood in the books—things that had come up as we went along. 

We knew he had loving, traditional, but Christian parents, and that their minister had arranged a scholarship for him at an excellent private school in Gaborone. We knew of his Bushman friend. We knew he loved to do puzzles with his father. We knew where he’d met his wife. But there was nothing that explained how he’d gone from school to being the star detective in the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department. It was not just a hole in his background, but, in a way, a gap in his character.

Diamonds have always been one of Botswana’s most important exports and allowed the newly independent country to flourish. The two richest diamond mines in the world are there, owned by a joint venture between the government and the diamond giant De Beers. The fact that the country was almost totally reliant on diamonds for its success made us wonder about the impact of a massive heist. Could it shake the country’s financial foundation?

Second largest uncut diamond ever was found in Botswana a few years ago.
It is 1109 carats and named Lesedi La Rona (Our Light). 

 We decided to address both the issue of Kubu’s early role in the CID and a robbery at the height of the diamond boom by writing a prequel to the series—a Kubu mystery that starts the day he joins the CID as a new detective straight out of university without ever having to be a constable on the beat. 

Immediately things started to take shape. Kubu’s first case is a minor matter concerning a few suitcases going missing at Gaborone airport. Yet it’s a challenging puzzle, and he loves it. However, the other detectives, who have come up in the CID the hard way, have no time for him. He has to struggle to find a place for himself. Sometimes his new boss, Assistant Superintendent Mabaku (who will later become director of the CID), seems disappointed in him. Then, a massive diamond robbery takes place and suddenly everything changes. Everyone is thrown into the case, even the raw detective in his first week on the job.

As we wrote the prequel, we were delighted to watch Kubu develop, having insights, but also making the mistakes that only experience can avoid. He earns respect, but also opprobrium. And as Mabaku comes to appreciate his talents, Kubu becomes more and more central to the case. Eventually, they deduce who the mastermind behind the robbery actually is, but they have no strong evidence. Now they have to find some way to catch him, and Kubu and Mabaku both find their careers on the line—in Kubu’s case, before his career has even begun. 

By the end of the book, Kubu has learned a lot about being in the CID and how to interact with his colleagues and his superiors. He has also fallen in love with a wonderful women, and sees some hope that his feelings are reciprocated. 

Writing Facets of Death was a journey of exploration for us. We learnt a lot about how Kubu became the CID’s best detective and about who he is as a person. We know him better now. 

It was fifteen years between putting fingers to keys for A Carrion Death and for Facets of Death. We enjoyed writing the prequel just as much as the debut - perhaps with just a little less wine. We hope readers will enjoy the young Kubu’s journey also.

Facets of Death - Diamonds are forever ... or are they?

Michael and Stanley - Publication Day!

The new Detective Kubu mystery out today
"...easily one of the best heist novels I’ve read since Gerald Browne’s classic 11 Harrowhouse"
Bookpage starred review

Gaborone in the early days

When Botswana became independent in 1966, it was a sparsely populated, poor country the size of France, mostly covered by the Kalahari Desert. Before that, Britain had governed it as the Bechuanaland Protectorate, not even bothering to set up a capital inside the country. It was administered from Mafikeng in South Africa. Gaborone was an insignificant town, and the country was basically a subsistence farming economy.

Kalahari landscape

What changed all that was the discovery of diamonds. There are stories that De Beers knew about the huge resource in Botswana before independence and kept it quiet, but that may be apocryphal. What is true is that the development fifteen years later of Jwaneng, the world’s richest diamond mine,  completely changed Botswana’s economy and its future.

Jwaneng is a huge open pit mine about an hour's drive west of Gaborone. It produces more than 10 million carats of raw diamonds a year. If all those diamonds ended up as jewellery, they would retail for about $150 billion! As a 50% partner in the Debswana joint venture, Botswana earns huge revenue.

The open pit mine at Jwaneng

But much could have gone wrong. Political instability would have turned off investors. Nationalisation might have led to the industry’s collapse (as it did with the copper mines in Zambia). Or security issues might have destroyed the country’s credibility. And that brings us to the new Detective Kubu novel, Facets of Death, out in North America today.

Huge rock moving vehicles

There are big differences between Facets of Death and the previous Kubu novels. It’s a prequel set about twenty years ago (ten years before A Carrion Death), and it starts with Kubu’s first day at the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department—trying to learn the job and build a role for himself. He’s given the job of discovering why suitcases are disappearing from Gaborone Airport—something minor to cut his teeth on. But almost immediately, there’s a huge heist of 100,000 carats of raw diamonds being transported from the Jwaneng diamond mine to Gaborone. Even as raw gems that's at least $10 million worth.

Rough diamonds

Not only are the diamonds stolen, but the driver and a guard on the security vehicle are cold-bloodedly executed. The police are initially confident of catching the perpetrators before they leave the country, but that gives way to despondency as time passes. It’s exactly the sort of security breach that could lead to a collapse of confidence in the vibrant new Botswana economy. So the stakes couldn't be higher, and the powers that be want the case solved and the culprits brought to justice very quickly, or heads are going to roll. The commissioner of police, government ministers, and even the chairman of Debswana are looking over the CID’s shoulder.

Cash in transit vehicle after a heist in South Africa

Kubu is thrown into this maelstrom before he’s even settled into his office, let alone settled into his job. His new boss, Assistant Superintendent Jacob Mabaku (later the director of the CID) identifies him as having special talents and pulls him onto the case. But even as Mabaku and his team make progress, the robbers seem to be one step ahead. Everyone who knew the mine's security plan is a possible suspect, including the director of the CID and the owners of the mine. And Mabaku and Kubu can't even trust the South African police. 

We had great fun writing the prequel and playing with this “what if” scenario. As far as we know, Debswana has never had a serious heist of this nature, but then again they are very secretive. Maybe it happened, but they kept it dead quiet…

Stream of subconsciousness

Michael - Thursday

I've wondered for many years just how creativity is generated. I imagined that experts know a lot about this topic and others connected with the purpose and MO of the subconscious, but it's not really the case. There is a lot of speculation and many experiments, but I don't think many experts would claim to understand what is really going on.

When - in another life - I did research in mathematics, I had several occasions when I woke in the morning with a new approach that I hadn't considered before. It would make a good story to say that these were always successful. They were not. But they were always new and reasonable. Sometimes they did work and sometimes they could be worked into something else that worked. On the other hand, sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night with a solution to a problem. I would hastily write it down before I went back to sleep, scared that in the morning it would be gone and my breakthrough would be lost forever. In the morning I would check the details and always find an error or a missing and unfillable gap. I believe these analyses were left overs of the thought processes from my conscious mind that had been reincarnated as dream-mathematics.

On the other hand, I once woke with the kernel of a short story in my head. It was definitely a dream and one that I remembered very vividly. During the next couple of days, I wrote the story the way my conscious mind structured it, Stan gave input, and it was eventually published in Crimespree magazine as Parlour Game. It's the only story that we've written that was not set in Africa.

Stan and I both believe in brainstorming and that, I guess, is one way one tries to get the conscious mind to be creative. Last week Stan wrote about our dilemma with Facets of Death. If a criminal is careful, savvy, and works through other people, then he's very difficult for the police to catch. (Most criminals are none of these three.) The police need to play more or less by the rules; the criminals do not. We attacked the problem two ways. We would "sleep on it", leaving our subconscious minds free to do whatever it is that they do. Then we would "brainstorm" it, throwing out ideas no matter how way out and seeing where they went. This seems to be rather like trying to make two conscious minds behave like one subconscious one.

In the case of our problem, the discussion on Saturday night went something like this:

'What about the...'
'Hmm. Interesting...'
'But he's dead!'
'But does the bad guy know that?'
'Maybe not. The police don't even know who the dead man is, do they?'
'Maybe he could pretend to have the diamonds. Could he persuade the bad guy to...'
'Remember your character? Kubu's friend?'
'Yes! He could do it! That would be good. He seemed important when we wrote him but then he didn't go anywhere...'

Stan woke on Sunday morning with a plan for how this idea could be implemented, and I wrote it. By Sunday night the book was finished. We'd tried lots of other ideas before that one, and while they might have worked, they lacked plausibility or coherence with the story up to that point. They weren't satisfying.

The question I'm puzzling about now, is that character - Kubu's acquaintance - who seemed important but didn't really go anywhere. Was he just a lucky coincidence? Was he really supposed to be part of another story? Or was Michael Stanley's "subconscious" already somehow thinking ahead?

I'd be really interested to hear of other writers experiences. Do they brainstorm by themselves? Do plotters resolve it all in a linear sequential away? Or is it all a mixture - a sort of alphabet soup of ideas that somehow crystallise into a good story?