Rainbow to Valhalla

When eight post-graduate students from all over South Africa and abroad arrive at the GSB Breakwater Prison campus to do one-year master of business administration degree, the MBA, little do they realize that they are being thrown together in a boiling pot of deep-rooted ancestral irreconcilability and political intolerance. The castellated Breakwater Prison where inhumanity and cruelty was custom is located on the Cape Town V&A Waterfront, and is the most unique business school campus in the world.
Sitting side by side in class are the blue-eyed blonde Lizelle Liebenberg who grew up in a Protestant Afrikaans home where the bigoted and outspoken racist father dominates his family like a tribal chief, and the black Nobosuthu Mhangawani (Nobbie), a champion of the right of self-empowerment, a situation that lays the foundation for conflict. Thrown together in another class are six other students: Susan Douglas, English-speaking crown-princess of one of the leading companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange; Jan Smit, Afrikaans-speaking and an ultra-conservative yuppie; Deon Malherbe, Afrikaans-speaking and a more liberal wine farmer; Chelton Arendse, Afrikaans-speaking man of colour with a political chip on his shoulder; Emile de Chérisey, a French socialist who abhors capitalism; and Lady Caroline Chelmsford, British aristocrat who looks down on the proletariat and all colonists.
This is one of only a few business schools in the world where the MBA is crammed into a one-year programme and when such a dynamic and opinionated group of business people whose ages range from 26 to 33 are thrown together conflict and outbursts are more frequent than co-operation and consensus.
And while Lizelle and Nobbie have a racial barrier to cross, the lustful Jan sows his seeds, Emile his dissension, Caroline her airs, Chelton his resentment, Deon his dullness, and Susan her wisdom.
Then out of the thick walls the ghosts rise to claim another victim.
Cause of death is not immediately evident, but police suspect murder, for Chelton left notes incriminating each of the others. Prime suspects are Lizelle, fearful of a racist father’s reaction when he hears of her relationship with blacks; Nobbie because Lizelle dropped him for Chelton; Emile, because Chelton scoffed at his dream of a socialist-communalistic order for South Africa; Deon, who was sleeping with the beautiful Lazania who works in a boutique and who, as everyone is shocked to hear was Chelton’s former fiancé; and Lazania, out for revenge because Chelton forsook her when he decided to come to this élite school.
In order to try and establish what really happened, Susan, Deon, Jan, Emile, and Caroline stay behind after the other students leave for the June two-week break. They come across a poem written by Chelton and it dawns on them they had let conflict, strife and polarisation derail them from the purpose of them coming here ― to find his or her own Rainbow to Valhalla ― in their minds the bridge to the highest rung of Fortune’s ladder ― which was what the MBA course had been aiming to impress on them from day one. Guilt makes one and all look deep into their own souls. Yet questions, both asked and unasked, would only come later.
The Breakwater Prison
‘Yesteryear,
Natives lost their souls
When they were locked up within these walls;
This year,
Natives sell their souls
When they come here to learn in these halls;
And now that a ghost,
Domiciled in the third worst prison
Communicates with a manic-depressive mind,
It has become a host,
Intensely private of the worst persuasion
Filled with rancour of a manic-decisive kind.
And now I hear these voices,
Oh so many do I hear,
Telling me what I should do;
It leaves me but no choices,
No matter what I fear,
To do what I know I have to do.’
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(In Scandinavian mythology the Rainbow to Valhalla, or Bifrost, was the bridge from Earth to Asgard, the fabulous kingdom of the Norse gods.)