"Attention! Present arms!"
The sergeant's scream pierces my ears like a rusty nail, but it doesn't move a single muscle in my soul. All around me is a fucking spectacle of cheap colors: mothers crying with pride, fathers puffing out their chests as if they had just won a war they never fought, and my comrades smiling like idiots because they're wearing a uniform that itches in the armpits and entitles them to three hot meals a day.
Pathetic. Right?
I know exactly what you're thinking, reader. You expected the national hero, the young patriot with his gaze lost in the horizon of the motherland. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there's none of that here. To me, this parade just means my feet are cooking inside these standard-issue Union Defence Force boots, and that the Pretoria sun in 1948 is a merciless son of a bitch.
Anything is better than sixty years rotting in Pretoria Central... or ending up with two holes in my chest in front of a firing squad. Believe me, I was one "yes" from the judge away from that happening.
I wasn't always this "pride of the nation." There was a time when my only homeland was the Sophiatown alley where my parents were killed for a fake gold watch and a handful of crumpled bills. Being an orphan teaches you two things real fast: how to run faster than the police, and how to have absolutely no scruples.
I graduated from the streets. Started out stealing bread, moved on to the wallets of white tourists, and ended up working for the Americans and the Gestapo—the local gangs of Sophiatown. People who didn't ask for names, only results. My first kill... wasn't like in the movies. It was loud, dirty, and left my hands shaking for three days. But the money came easy.
I fell like an ambitious rookie. My first "real" mission: moving a couple of kilos of merchandise and some old rifles to a local gang. Bad luck, the police already had them under surveillance. They caught me red-handed with enough metal in the trunk to start a small revolution. Life in prison. That was the official menu.
But the system, as always, has a shitty sense of humor. The governor needed bodies for his brand-new "Military Reintegration Project." They traded my cell for a barracks. Four years of screaming, beatings, marches under the sun, and a discipline that is nothing more than the art of obeying until it's your turn to command.
And here I am. Captain Balthazar "Bal" Kruger. Freshly graduated. Assigned to a shitty base in the middle of nowhere, a place so irrelevant that maps don't even bother to detail it.
"Dismissed!"
I take off my cap with theatrical slowness. Sweat runs down my forehead and glues my hair to the back of my neck. While the families run down to hug their perfect sons, I turn around and walk alone towards the slums. Today there's rancid stew in some seedy shebeen. It's not a king's banquet... but for a man who is already planning how to burn this country down and rebuild it in his image, it's a decent start.
You want to keep watching? Fine. But don't say I didn't warn you: this is not a story about heroes. It's mine. And I never give stars to the system... the system owes me all of them.
The parade grounds of Pretoria fade behind me, replaced by the suffocating, dusty embrace of the city's outskirts. It's funny how a few miles can change the entire color palette of a country. Back there, it was all crisp khaki, polished brass, and the porcelain-white smiles of Afrikaner mothers convinced their boys are the shield of civilization. Out here, the colors are bruised: rusty corrugated iron, the grey of unpaved roads, and the heavy, yellow tint of the afternoon smog hanging over the townships.
I unbutton the collar of my tunic. The Union Defence Force fabric is tough, designed to survive a bayonet thrust or a drunken brawl, but it traps the heat like an oven. I hate this uniform. I hate what it represents: submission, hierarchy, playing by someone else's rules. But I love what it does. I walk past a pair of local beat cops harassing a street vendor, and the moment they catch sight of the captain's insignia on my shoulders, they straighten up and tip their hats.
I nod back, offering a tight, empty smile. Look at them, I think. Monkeys in blue mimicking respect for a monkey in khaki. Power is just a shared hallucination, my friends. And right now, this scratchy piece of cloth makes me a ghost in the machine.
The political climate in South Africa right now is like a dry matchstick factory just waiting for a spark. It's 1948, and the air is thick with the scent of upcoming elections. Jan Smuts and his United Party are losing their grip, while the National Party is drumming up fear and promising a neat, segregated little world. You can feel the tension in the way people look at each other on the streets. The whites look over their shoulders; the blacks look at the ground, hiding the anger burning in their eyes.
Do I care? Morally? Please. If you're looking for a champion of human rights, close this book and go read a pamphlet. To me, a divided society isn't a tragedy; it's a business opportunity. Chaos is a ladder, and segregation is just a really inefficient way of managing resources. If you know where the lines are drawn, you know exactly where to smuggle the scissors to cut them.
I step off the main road and slip into a narrow alleyway that smells strongly of stale urine and roasting meat. This is my kind of territory. I navigate the labyrinth of tin shacks until I find what I'm looking for: an unmarked wooden door with a heavy padlock hanging uselessly from the hasp. I push it open and step into the dim, smoke-filled belly of a local shebeen.
The noise hits me first. A chaotic mix of tsotsitaal—the street slang of the gangsters—laughter, and a crackling radio playing a tinny jazz tune. The smell is a potent cocktail of cheap, home-brewed sorghum beer, raw tobacco, and the savory grease of a braai sizzling in the back courtyard.
The moment I step inside, the music doesn't stop, but the atmosphere thickens. Eyes lock onto my uniform. A white military captain walking alone into an illegal drinking hole in the slums is either incredibly stupid, incredibly lost, or there to collect a bribe. I casually stroll to the makeshift bar, a plank of wood resting on two empty oil drums.
"A beer," I say, tossing a few coins onto the sticky wood. "And whatever's burning on that grill that isn't completely charred."
The bartender, a large man with a scar running through his eyebrow, looks at the coins, then at my rank pins, and finally at my face. He doesn't see a polished soldier. He sees the dead, unblinking eyes of a Sophiatown rat who just happens to be wearing nicer clothes. He slides a dented tin cup filled with frothy, cloudy liquid toward me without a word.
I take a sip. It tastes like copper, yeast, and desperation. Perfect.
I lean against the bar, facing the room, letting them see me. Letting them get used to the predator in the room. I pull a crumpled, sweat-stained envelope from my breast pocket. My deployment orders. I haven't even opened them yet, because I already know what they say. When you're a "reintegrated" criminal, they don't send you to the prestigious garrisons in Cape Town or the strategic command in Pretoria. They send you to the ass-end of the earth.
I tear the envelope open with my thumb. Camp 4. Northern Border. A glorified dirt patch where the Union dumps its alcoholics, its incompetents, and its liabilities. A place so remote the only things to shoot at are scorpions and your own shadow.
They think they are punishing me. They think they are burying Captain Balthazar Kruger alive in the red dust.
I let out a low chuckle, taking another drag of the terrible beer. Fools. Are you paying attention, reader? This is the fundamental mistake people make when dealing with me. They assume I want to be in the spotlight. They think I want to be the decorated general shaking hands with politicians in front of the cameras. Bullshit. The spotlight blinds you. It makes you a target.
Camp 4 isn't a graveyard; it's a blind spot. It's a place with zero oversight, minimal communication with High Command, and a porous border just begging to be exploited. Give me a year in the middle of nowhere, and I won't just run that base—I'll own the supply lines, the local contraband routes, and the loyalty of every miserable bastard stationed there. They are handing me my very own kingdom of dirt, completely off the grid.
I finish the beer, the gritty dregs coating my teeth. I toss the empty tin cup back onto the oil drum. The bartender is still watching me, trying to figure out what kind of threat I am.
"Keep the change," I tell him in fluent tsotsitaal, my accent thick with the streets of Johannesburg. His eyes widen just a fraction—a micro-expression of surprise that I file away for later. It's always good to remind people that the uniform is just a costume.
I step back out into the blistering afternoon sun. The heat hits me like a physical blow, but I don't mind it anymore. I look down at the official deployment paper in my hand, with its fancy government seals and arrogant signatures of men who think they control my destiny.
I strike a match against the brick wall of the alley, light a cheap cigarette, and then touch the flame to the corner of the envelope. I watch the paper curl and blacken, the official seal melting into ash, before dropping it into a muddy puddle at my feet.
They sent me to the bottom of the barrel, hoping I would drown. But they forgot that I was born in the dark.
I take a deep drag of the cigarette, the harsh smoke filling my lungs, and look straight ahead—past the slums, past the city, past the confines of this pathetic, bureaucratic reality. I look right at you.
Zero stars on my review of the system... and now, I'm going to be the one rating everyone.
[End Chapter 1]