Sometimes There Is a Void

by Zakes Mda

  In Ventersburg I stop for gas and I buy everyone burgers from Steers. The hitch-hikers opt for dagwoods with everything on them: bacon, eggs, steak, sausage patties, tomatoes, lettuce, the works. Debe orders a tiny tomato and cheese sandwich. We share a table and the hitch-hikers wolf their food like people who haven’t had anything to eat for days. The man keeps looking at us uncomfortably. He seems to make Debe a bit nervous. I am sorry that I have to subject her to this. The woman has her eyes fixed on one spot on the floor as if she is ashamed that they have been reduced to depend on the charity of strangers. Worse still, black strangers.

  Back on N1 we drive quietly for about two hours until we get to the Verkeerdevlei junction. We drop our hitch-hikers there because Debe and I are branching off on the R703 to the small town of Excelsior. We drive among vast farms of deep yellow sunflowers in full bloom. When we get into the town I first take Debe to the street where the Dutch Reformed Church is located and I point it out to her from some distance away.

  ‘That’s the church where my Afrikaners worship,’ I say.

  She knows that I am talking about the Afrikaners in my yet unpublished novel, The Madonna of Excelsior. She has read the manuscript and has given me wonderful feedback on it.

  She is quite excited to see small-town South Africa and is clicking away with her digital camera. It is quite different from Johannesburg or Cape Town where she has spent some time. I take her to the town hall where the town council meetings of both my fictional characters and of the real-life town councillors of Excelsior are held. She photographs the walls, the ceiling, the curtains and everything else that I describe in my fiction. She says my descriptions make her feel as though she has been here before. I then take her to Mahlatswetsa Location to the home of Senkey Mokhethi who is one of my important sources for the history of Excelsior. He lives in a solid four-roomed concrete block township house. He is one of the town councillors of Excelsior and part of my novel is based on his life story and that of members of his family. After a brief visit with him I take Debe to see Senkey’s mother. She lives in a corrugated iron shack and is lying on her bed. She is on this bed most times I visit her because she says her health is no longer what it used to be. We also meet her daughter, Tiisetso. She is called a Coloured in South Africa because she is of mixed race. Her father was an Afrikaner policeman for whom Senkey’s mother worked. I am surprised to find Tiisetso here because she is supposed to be at school in Bloemfontein. I pay for her tuition at a private college where she is studying office management. Senkey tells me that she is under the influence of her boyfriend who keeps taking her out of school. I threaten to stop paying her fees if she is not serious.

  Debe tells me that the whole scenario reminds her very much of her native Caribbean island. ‘She looks like some grandmothers I know,’ she says of Senkey’s mother.

  It was really a chance meeting that brought me to this family when I first came to this colourful little town in search of a story.

  I RECALLED A SCANDAL that broke out when I was in my final year at Peka High School. A group of Afrikaner men and black women appeared at the magistrate’s court in a small Orange Free State town called Excelsior charged with contravening the Immorality Act which prohibited sexual relations between blacks and whites. There were many such cases throughout South Africa, but what made this one different was that the men were pillars of the Afrikaner community and included pastors of the Dutch Reformed Church and leaders of the ruling National Party – the very political party that introduced a lot of the discriminatory and oppressive race-based legislation in the country, and actually coined the word apartheid. The miscegenation came to light when the police discovered a number of Coloured or mixed-race children in the town, and the culprits were rounded up and imprisoned. The case received so much publicity in the local and overseas media that it embarrassed the South African government. Percy Yutar, the attorney-general, was instructed to withdraw the case, and he did. That was supposed to be the end of it. Indeed, the people of Excelsior thought the past was dead and buried for ever.

  But not for me. One day, as I sat in my house in Weltevredenpark, I wondered what had happened to the people of Excelsior; the black women and their Coloured children, and of course the Afrikaner men – those who had not committed suicide because some of them did or had attempted it. What were they doing and how were they coping in the new South Africa? I got into my car and made the four-hour trip through the rich farmlands of the Free State to the small town of Excelsior.

  I discovered that the people of Excelsior did not want to talk about the past. They resented the fact that I was trying to open old wounds. The white people I asked pretended that they knew nothing about the scandal.

  The owner of the hotel where I had booked my accommodation told me: ‘We bought this hotel long after those events which you say happened in 1969 and 1970. We know nothing about them. Ask the man who runs the liquor off-sales outlet next door. He might know. He has lived here all his life.’

  At the off-sales outlet a group of black men were sitting on the low window sill drinking beer from quart bottles. They overheard my enquiry directed at the white man behind the counter and one of them stood up and said, ‘I know what you are talking about. One of those women was my mother.’

  That was Senkey Mokhethi. He was one of the town councillors of Excelsior and one of the men sitting drinking with him was actually the mayor of the town and was married to one of the Coloured children who had resulted from the scandal. Senkey took me to his home and introduced me to his family: his wife, his mother and his Coloured sister, Tiisetso. He also introduced me to a number of the townspeople who had had some involvement in the scandal, including the Afrikaner lawyer who defended the men, a black woman who was a town councillor for the National Party and personally knew some of the women and their Coloured children, and an old one-eyed Afrikaner farmer who was one of the accused who had attempted suicide. He had his missing eye to show for it.

  I wrote a story about my Excelsior experience for the Mail & Guardian, and decided that it would also be the basis of my new novel, The Madonna of Excelsior.

  It was about this time that we had our second elections in South Africa. I became a voter for only the second time in my life. The first time, you’ll remember, I cast my vote at the Ukrainian Center in Montreal, Canada. This time I was doing it in my country. Unlike the first time, when I split my vote between two parties in honour of my father, this time I voted for the ANC. Even though I was not satisfied with the corruption and nepotism that I wrote about to Mandela, I felt it was the most progressive and most inclusive of all the parties. I liked its foreign policies – this was before the Zimbabwe debacle – especially because the ANC leaders refused to be dictated to by Western powers and stubbornly maintained strong relations with heads of state the Western world did not like but who had supported us in our struggle when the West was propping up the apartheid regime. I liked their insistence on human rights for everyone, including homosexuals, transgender and intersex people. I also liked their pro-choice position in matters of reproductive rights and their abolition of the death penalty. These were human rights issues I felt very strongly about. I did not like the economic policies of the ANC, particularly the party’s fiscal conservatism – which was a big surprise to me because the ANC had communists in its midst. But at least it was slightly more to the left of the two major opposition parties – the predominantly Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party and the predominantly white Democratic Party. The PAC, on the other hand, had become more of a conservative party than the pan-Africanist and progressive one of the glorious days of Mangaliso Sobukwe. Its Africanism meant the conservation of values of a romantic Africa of some imagined past. Some of these values were chauvinistic, patriarchal and homophobic.

  The ANC won the elections with an increased majority and Thabo Mbeki, the party’s president, became the new president of the Republic of South Africa. For his inauguration, a famed Italian composer and conductor, Carlo F
ranci, was commissioned to compose some kind of opera using orchestra, singers and dancers to tell the story of the African Renaissance. I was commissioned to write the libretto in the form of poetry. The performance on the evening of June 16, 1999, at the State Theatre in Pretoria was attended by a number of heads of state who had been at the inauguration during the day. In the audience I could see Yasser Arafat, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Kofi Annan and Fidel Castro relishing my words brought to life by Franci’s music as the revered South African actor Sello Maake kaNcube performed a particular poem of mine titled ‘Birth of a People’.

  I attended the day’s events and the evening performance with Adele and she was overcome with emotion when she met and shook the hand of Winnie Mandela. She had always been a fan. She once told me that some of her friends said she looked like her.

  After the performance I saw the doyen of South African television and movie producers, Mfundi Vundla, and the musician Caiphus Semenya, who is also regarded as an elder statesman of the arts and culture in South Africa. They were outraged that a composer was imported from Italy to create an opera for the inauguration of an African president when South Africa was replete with world-class composers of all types of music. These artists were right. I felt like a traitor for having collaborated with this betrayal of South African composers.

  At the inauguration I met Thabo Moerane again after many years since we parted at Peka High School and introduced him to Adele. He was Thabo Mbeki’s cousin, the son of the maestro Michael Mosoeu Moerane who had been such a great influence in my life. He told me he was now based in Geneva where he worked for some UN agency and played the piano at some of the jazz venues there.

  I was sad that Jama Mbeki, my late Peka High School friend, was not there to see his own brother become the president of a free, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa.

  Another person that I was always sorry never got to see the new South Africa because he died only a year before its birth, was my father. I know he would have been very critical of some aspects of the country, particularly the so-called Black Economic Empowerment which did nothing to empower the ordinary black people but was aimed at creating a new capitalist class among the hand-picked ruling party ‘deployees’. But still it would have been interesting to get his always insightful analysis of the situation. I wished I had paid more attention to him when he was still alive. I should have relished the round-table family meetings instead of being disdainful about them because they took me away from friends and play. I would have learnt a lot and would have become a better human being.

  These were the thoughts that preoccupied me when Adele and I drove to Mafeteng for the unveiling of his tombstone. The event was held at Zwelakhe’s house. He had always been the pillar of the family. Not only was he there when my father died – I was away in America and couldn’t even attend his funeral – but he was the one who looked after our mother, helped financially of course by me and by the old age pension from the South African government and the lump-sum Special Pension for former refugees and freedom fighters. I was grateful to him and I expressed my gratitude in the dedication of my novel She Plays with the Darkness. He had read the novel and loved it; he could identify some of the people and events I was writing about.

  We booked in at Hotel Mafeteng and went to Zwelakhe’s house to assist with the preparation for the event the next day. Adele was busy helping the women who were cooking when my sister-in-law Johanna came and told me that Zwelakhe sent her to tell me that Adele should go away since he had made it clear in his letter to me when we were still in America that she should never set her foot in his house or come close to my mother. I was taken aback that Zwelakhe could hold a grudge for so many years. I was also offended that he hadn’t discussed the matter with me personally but had sent Johanna instead.

  ‘I am not going to tell Adele to leave,’ I said. ‘If you people don’t want her here you’d better tell her yourselves.’

  Johanna finally did give her Zwelakhe’s message, but Adele refused to leave. She sat there and continued to help the women. I knew she was daring him to make a scene in public and physically kick her out. He did not take the challenge. Instead he became very angry with me, without confronting me personally. Johanna became his emissary, and through her I got to know that I was a persona non grata at his house even though my mother lived there as well. All because I was supporting my wife. My mother was saddened by this episode and assured me she had no part in it and would like Adele to be around. She had long forgotten and forgiven the conflicts of the past.

  The next day the unveiling ceremony went without a hitch. Both Adele and I were at the graveside as speeches were made by various members of the community, including leaders of the PAC and the ANC, about my father’s contribution to the liberation struggle and how those who were in power today thought they could wipe him off the pages of history. After the ceremony we went into the house to greet my mother and then left without participating in the feasting that followed.

  There was a bitter taste in my mouth as we drove back to Johannesburg.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I FEEL THAT MY visits to my Aunt Ella bring me closer to my father, who I miss very much. Her face is a replica of my father’s. She is one of his two surviving siblings. The other is Nontombi, the last born in the family, but we have not seen her since she left Qoboshane more than fifty years ago and never returned. We only hear of her from those who have seen her. They tell us she lives somewhere in Orange Farm, one of the former informal settlements of Johannesburg. She is the mother of Cousin Bernard, the village madman I told you about earlier.

  Gugu and I are coming from Mofolo where we have paid a brief visit to her sister, Sis’ Pat Mphuthi. Even if Aunt Ella’s house was not on our way we would have branched off to see her and imbibe more of her A P Mda aura. She waddles from her bedroom where she now spends most of her life, just like my mother, and joins us in her living room.

  She is a political animal and she complains that the government of Thabo Mbeki is no different from that of Nelson Mandela in marginalising Soweto. The cost of electricity is very high and the government is not subsidising the poor people enough. Some have to go without the necessary utilities.

  Then she wants to know about ‘my’ bees.

  ‘You got your knack for beekeeping from my father,’ she says.

  I am surprised to hear this because I never associated my grandfather with beekeeping. Even when we were kids staying with my grandparents we never saw or heard of his bees.

  ‘At that time my father was already old and had given up on beekeeping,’ says my aunt.

  But before that, when Aunt Ella was a girl attending Qoboshane Bantu Community School and being taught by Mr Nyanginstimbi who also taught me many years later, my grandfather was a beekeeper at the very spot where my present-day Bee People keep their bees. That would have been in the late 1920s – two decades before I was born. My aunt is surprised to hear that I didn’t know of my grandfather’s beekeeping. She had assumed that I had established the apiary on Dyarhom Mountain knowingly following in my grandfather’s footsteps.

  ‘Were you not doing it because he had done it before?’ she asks. ‘Was it not under his influence?’

  ‘Not at all. It’s a great coincidence. I had no idea that my grandfather was a beekeeper, let alone that he kept them at the very spot where I later became a beekeeper.’

  ‘There is nothing like a coincidence. You were led there by the ancestors.’

  She tells me that my grandfather used to harvest many buckets of honey. Mr Mather of Mather and Sons used to drive from Sterkspruit to purchase all the honey which he resold at his store. I tell her that the present-day Bee People sell some of their honey to the descendants of Mr Mather at Mather and Sons.

  THE BEEKEEPING PROJECT STARTED from a quest for a story. One day I was sitting in my house in Weltevredenpark when Phyllis Klotz of Sabikwa Theatre arrived with two guys from a Netherlands theatre company called De Nieuw Amsterdam Theater
groep – DNA. They wanted to commission me to write a play set in South Africa and the Netherlands about a subject or theme of my choice. They suggested that I might write about slavery in the early Dutch colonial days at the Cape. But a historical subject didn’t interest me. I wanted to write on a more contemporary theme.

  As part of this commission I went to stay in Amsterdam for a couple of months observing the work of the DNA Theatergroep and getting to know some of the actors and directors. But since I was going to set my play in that country and I had never been there before I needed to learn more about the people, the food, the rituals and other aspects of the culture – sort of put the natives under a microscope. Besides spending a lot of time being mesmerised by Dutch masters and modern artists at the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk, I paid a number of visits to a great South African scholar who had settled in Holland, Vernon February. He told me stories of South Africans who were exiled in the Netherlands during apartheid and how life used to be those days. I learnt of a particular woman he knew who originally came from the Eastern Cape. She had a very difficult time in Holland and I thought I would write a play based on some of her experiences. But I would have to find her first; she had since returned to South Africa.

  Aram Adriaanse and Gerrit Wijnhoud of the DNA Theatergroep took me to the city of Amersfoort where I saw the college where some of our Afrikaner theologians of the Dutch Reformed Church had done their higher degrees. I also saw Long John, the famous bell reputed to be located at the centre of Holland.