Xolelwa Azania's Interview

ROBBEN ISLAND, CAPE TOWN PROVINCE, UNITED STATES OF SOUTHERN AFRICA

[Xolelwa Azania greets me at his writing desk, inviting me to switch
places with him so I can enjoy the cool ocean breeze from his window. He
 apologizes for the “mess” and insists on clearing the notes off his
desk before we continue. Mister Azania is halfway through his third
volume of Rainbow Fist: South Africa at War. This volume happens to be
about the subject we are discussing, the turning point against the
living dead, the moment when his country pulled itself back from the
brink.]

Dispassionate, a rather mundane word to describe one of history’s most
controversial figures. Some revere him as a savior, some revile him as a
 monster, but if you ever met Paul Redeker, ever discussed his views of
the world and the problems, or more importantly, the solutions to the
problems that plague the world, probably the one word that would always
cling to your impression of the man is dispassionate.

Paul always believed, well, perhaps not always, but at least in his
adult life, that humanity’s one fundamental flaw was emotion. He used to
 say that the heart should only exist to pump blood to the brain, that
anything else was a waste of time and energy. His papers from
university, all dealing with alternate “solutions” to historical,
societal quandaries, were what first brought him to the attention of the
 apartheid government. Many psychobiographers have tried to label him a
racist, but, in his own words, “racism is a regrettable by-product of
irrational emotion.” Others have argued that, in order for a racist to
hate one group, he must at least love another. Redeker believed both
love and hate to be irrelevant. To him, they were “impediments of the
human condition,” and, in his words again, “imagine what could be
accomplished if the human race would only shed its humanity.” Evil? Most
 would call it that, while others, particularly that small cadre in the
center of Pretoria’s power, believed it to be “an invaluable source of
liberated intellect.”

It was the early 1980s, a critical time for the apartheid government.
The country was resting on a bed of nails. You had the ANC, you had the
Inkatha Freedom Party, you even had extremist, right-wing elements of
the Afrikaner population that would have liked nothing better than open
revolt in order to bring about a complete racial showdown. On her
border, South Africa faced nothing but hostile nations, and, in the case
 of Angola, a Soviet-backed, Cuban-spearheaded civil war. Add to this
mixture a growing isolation from the Western democracies (which included
 a critical arms embargo) and it was no surprise that a last-ditch fight
 for survival was never far from Pretoria’s mind.

This is why they enlisted the aid of Mister Redeker to revise the
government’s ultrasecret “Plan Orange.” “Orange” had been in existence
since the apartheid government first came to power in 1948. It was the
doomsday scenario for the country’s white minority, the plan to deal
with an all-out uprising of its indigenous African population. Over the
years it had been updated with the changing strategic outlook of the
region. Every decade that situation grew more and more grim. With
multiplying independence of her neighbor states, and multiplying voices
for freedom from the majority of her own people, those in Pretoria
realized that a full-blown confrontation might not just mean the end for
 the Afrikaner government, but the Afrikaners themselves.

This is where Redeker stepped in. His revised Plan Orange,
appropriately completed in 1984, was the ultimate survival strategy for
the Afrikaner people. No variable was ignored. Population figures,
terrain, resources, logistics…Redeker not only updated the plan to
include both Cuba’s chemical weapons and his own country’s nuclear
option, but also, and this is what made “Orange Eighty-Four” so
historic, the determination of which Afrikaners would be saved and which
 had to be sacrificed.

Sacrificed?

Redeker believed that to try to protect everyone would stretch the
government’s resources to the breaking point, thus dooming the entire
population. He compared it to survivors from a sinking ship capsizing a
lifeboat that simply did not have room for them all. Redeker had even
gone so far as to calculate who should be “brought aboard.” He included
income, IQ, fertility, an entire checklist of “desirable qualities,”
including the subject’s location to a potential crisis zone. “The first
casualty of the conflict must be our own sentimentality” was the closing
 statement for his proposal, “for its survival will mean our
destruction.”

Orange Eighty-Four was a brilliant plan. It was clear, logical,
efficient, and it made Paul Redeker one of the most hated men in South
Africa. His first enemies were some of the more radical, fundamentalist
Afrikaners, the racial ideologues and the ultrareligious. Later, after
the fall of apartheid, his name began circulating among the general
population. Of course he was invited to appear before the “Truth and
Reconciliation” hearings, and, of course, he refused. “I won’t pretend
to have a heart simply to save my skin,” he stated publicly, adding, “No
 matter what I do, I’m sure they will come for me anyway.”

And they did, although it probably was not in the manner Redeker could
have expected. It was during our Great Panic, which began several weeks
before yours. Redeker was holed up in the Drakensberg cabin he had
bought with the accumulated profits of a business consultant. He liked
business, you know. “One goal, no soul,” he used to say. He wasn’t
surprised when the door blew off its hinges and agents of the National
Intelligence Agency rushed in. They confirmed his name, his identity,
his past actions. They asked him point-blank if he had been the author
of Orange Eighty-Four. He answered without emotion, naturally. He
suspected, and accepted, this intrusion as a last-minute revenge
killing; the world was going to hell anyway, why not take a few
“apartheid devils” down first. What he could have never predicted was
the sudden lowering of their firearms, and the removal of the gas masks
of the NIA agents. They were of all colors: black, Asian, colored, and
even a white man, a tall Afrikaner who stepped forward, and without
giving his name or rank, asked abruptly…“You’ve got a plan for this,
man. Don’t you?”

Redeker had, indeed, been working on his own solution to the undead
epidemic. What else could he do in this isolated hideaway? It had been
an intellectual exercise; he never believed anyone would be left to read
 it. It had no name, as explained later “because names only exist to
distinguish one from others,” and, until that moment, there had been no
other plan like his. Once again, Redeker had taken everything into
account, not only the strategic situation of the country, but also the
physiology, behavior, and “combat doctrine” of the living dead. While
you can research the details of the “Redeker Plan” in any public library
 around the world, here are some of the fundamental keys:

First of all, there was no way to save everyone. The outbreak was too
far gone. The armed forces had already been too badly weakened to
effectively isolate the threat, and, spread so thinly throughout the
country, they could only grow weaker with each passing day. Our forces
had to be consolidated, withdrawn to a special “safe zone,” which,
hopefully, would be aided by some natural obstacle such as mountains,
rivers, or even an offshore island. Once concentrated within this zone,
the armed forces could eradicate the infestation within its borders,
then use what resources were available to defend it against further
onslaughts of the living dead. That was the first part of the plan and
it made as much sense as any conventional military retreat.

The second part of the plan dealt with the evacuation of civilians, and
 this could not have been envisioned by anyone else but Redeker. In his
mind, only a small fraction of the civilian population could be
evacuated to the safe zone. These people would be saved not only to
provide a labor pool for the eventual wartime economic restoration, but
also to preserve the legitimacy and stability of the government, to
prove to those already within the zone that their leaders were “looking
out for them.”

There was another reason for this partial evacuation, an eminently
logical and insidiously dark reason that, many believe, will forever
ensure Redeker the tallest pedestal in the pantheon of hell. Those who
were left behind were to be herded into special isolated zones. They
were to be “human bait,” distracting the undead from following the
retreating army to their safe zone. Redeker argued that these isolated,
uninfected refugees must be kept alive, well defended and even
resupplied, if possible, so as to keep the undead hordes firmly rooted
to the spot. You see the genius, the sickness? Keeping people as
prisoners because “every zombie besieging those survivors will be one
less zombie throwing itself against our defenses.” That was the moment
when the Afrikaner agent looked up at Redeker, crossed himself, and
said, “God help you, man.” Another one said, “God help us all.” That was
 the black one who appeared to be in charge of the operation. “Now let’s
 get him out of here.”

Within minutes they were on a helicopter for Kimberley, the very
underground base where Redeker had first written Orange Eighty-Four. He
was ushered into a meeting of the president’s surviving cabinet, where
his report was read aloud to the room. You should have heard the uproar,
 with no voice louder than the defense minister’s. He was a Zulu, a
ferocious man who’d rather be fighting in the streets than cowering in a
 bunker.

The vice president was more concerned about public relations. He didn’t
 want to imagine what his backside would be worth if news of this plan
ever leaked to the population.

The president looked almost personally insulted by Redeker. He
physically grabbed the lapels of the safety and security minister and
demanded why in hell he brought him this demented apartheid war
criminal.

The minister stammered that he didn’t understand why the president was
so upset, especially when it was he who gave the order to find Redeker.

The president threw his hands in the air and shouted that he never gave
 such an order, and then, from somewhere in the room, a faint voice
said, “I did.”

He had been sitting against the back wall; now he stood, hunched over
by age, and supported by canes, but with a spirit as strong and vital as
 it had ever been. The elder statesman, the father of our new democracy,
 the man whose birth name had been Rolihlahla, which some have
translated simply into “Troublemaker.” As he stood, all others sat, all
others except Paul Redeker. The old man locked eyes on him, smiled with
that warm squint so famous the world over, and said, “Molo, mhlobo wam.”
 “Greetings, person of my region.” He walked slowly over to Paul, turned
 to the governing body of South Africa, then lifted the pages from the
Afrikaner’s hand and said in a suddenly loud and youthful voice, “This
plan will save our people.” Then, gesturing to Paul, he said, “This man
will save our people.” And then came that moment, the one that
historians will probably debate until the subject fades from memory. He
embraced the white Afrikaner. To anyone else this was simply his
signature bear hug, but to Paul Redeker…I know that the majority of
psychobiographers continue to paint this man without a soul. That is the
 generally accepted notion. Paul Redeker: no feelings, no compassion, no
 heart. However, one of our most revered authors, Biko’s old friend and
biographer, postulates that Redeker was actually a deeply sensitive man,
 too sensitive, in fact, for life in apartheid South Africa. He insists
that Redeker’s lifelong jihad against emotion was the only way to
protect his sanity from the hatred and brutality he witnessed on a daily
 basis. Not much is known about Redeker’s childhood, whether he even had
 parents, or was raised by the state, whether he had friends or was ever
 loved in any way. Those who knew him from work were hard-pressed to
remember witnessing any social interaction or even any physical act of
warmth. The embrace by our nation’s father, this genuine emotion
piercing his impenetrable shell…

[Azania smiles sheepishly.]

Perhaps this is all too sentimental. For all we know he was a heartless
 monster, and the old man’s embrace had absolutely no impact. But I can
tell you that that was the last day anyone ever saw Paul Redeker. Even
now, no one knows what really happened to him. That is when I stepped
in, in those chaotic weeks when the Redeker Plan was implemented
throughout the country. It took some convincing to say the least, but
once I’d convinced them that I’d worked for many years with Paul
Redeker, and, more importantly, I understood his way of thinking better
than anyone left alive in South Africa, how could they refuse? I worked
on the retreat, then afterward, during the consolidation months, and
right up until the end of the war. At least they were appreciative of my
 services, why else would they grant me such luxurious accommodations?
[Smiles.] Paul Redeker, an angel and a devil. Some hate him, some
worship him. Me, I just pity him. If he still exists, somewhere out
there, I sincerely hope he’s found his peace.

[After a parting embrace from my guest, I am driven back to my ferry
for the mainland. Security is tight as I sign out my entrance badge. The
 tall Afrikaner guard photographs me again. “Can’t be too careful, man,”
 he says, handing me the pen. “Lot of people out there want to send him
to hell.” I sign next to my name, under the heading of Robben Island
Psychiatric Institution. NAME OF PATIENT YOU ARE VISITING: PAUL
REDEKER.]