The Heart of Redness: A Novel

by Mda, Zakes

  The singing has stopped. A man is declaiming about the wickedness of the city, which has stolen this brother in his prime.

  “This brother was gifted,” shouts the man. “His hands could create wonders. His fingers were nimble, and could mold enchanted worlds. Yet this city swallowed him, and spewed him out a shriveled corpse. This ungrateful city decided that he could survive only if he created ugly things that distorted life as we knew it. He refused, for he was attached to beautiful things. He waned away as a result, until he was a bag of bones. . .”

  The man goes on. The old ones respond with “amens” and “hallelujahs.”

  But only the image of the makoti lingers in Camagu’s mind. He becomes breathless when he thinks of her. He is ashamed that the pangs of his famous lust are attacking him on such a solemn occasion. But quickly he decides it is not lust. Otherwise parts of his body would be running amok. No, he does not think of her in those terms. She is more like a spirit that can comfort him and heal his pain. A mothering spirit. And this alarms him, for he has never thought of any woman like that before. After all, she is a stranger with whom he has not exchanged a single word.

  His unquenchable desire for the flesh is well known. A shame he has to live with. Flesh. Any flesh. He cannot hold himself. He has done things with his maid—a frumpy country woman who has come to the city of gold to pick up a few pennies by cleaning up after disenchanted bachelors—that he would be ashamed to tell anyone. Yet he did these things with the humble servant again and again.

  There is something about servitude that seems to set the crotches of men of Camagu’s ilk on fire. It must have been the same urge that drove the slave master, normally a levelheaded, loving family man with a rosy-cheeked wife and bouncing babies, from his mansion to a night of wild passion with the slave girl in the slave quarters or in the fields. Of course it was wild passion only on his side. To the slave girl, consent was through coercion. It was rape.

  In Camagu’s case it was not rape, or so he comforted himself when shame confronted him, for the servant encouraged it. She saw it as a chance of making more money from the master.

  The makoti starts another hymn. Camagu rushes back to the tent. The dagga smokers are making the place livelier by clapping hands and dancing what looks like the toyi-toyi—the freedom dance that the youth used to dance when people were fighting for liberation. Its political fervor has been replaced by a religious one. Camagu joins them. His steps are rather awkward.

  He never learned the freedom dance. He was already in exile when it was invented. While it became fashionable at political rallies, he was completing a doctoral degree and working in the communications department of an international development agency in New York. He regrets now that he acquired so much knowledge in the fields of communication and economic development but never learned the freedom dance.

  He remembers how in 1994 he took leave from his job and came back to South Africa to vote, after an absence of almost thirty years. He was in his mid-forties, and was a stranger in his own country. He was swept up by the euphoria of the time, and decided that he would not return to New York. He would stay and contribute to the development of his country.

  At his first job interview he heard them comment, “Who is he? We didn’t see him when we were dancing the freedom dance.”

  That was when Camagu realized the importance of the dance. He had tried to explain about his skills in the area of development communication, how he had worked for international agencies, how as an international expert he had done consulting work for UNESCO in Paris and for the Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome, and how the International Telecommunications Union had often sought his advice on matters of international broadcasting. The interviewers were impressed. They commended his achievements. He had done his oppressed people proud in foreign lands. And now, the freedom dance? Alas! His steps faltered.

  Another interview. They wanted a director of communications in a government department that dealt with land and agricultural matters. This was up his street, and he was confident that he would get the job. They listened patiently and heard about his vast learning and experience. They smiled, gave him coffee with assorted biscuits, and shook his hand. Then they sang the lamentations. “What a pity,” a kindly voice whispered. “Unfortunately he is overqualified.”

  He was being penalized for too much learning.

  “Overqualified? I can do the job, can’t I?” he asked. “And I find your salary range acceptable. How can I be overqualified?”

  “Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing,” he thought he heard one of them mutter.

  Things would be all right, he told himself. He became an avid reader of the appointments pages in newspapers, and applied for all the jobs for which he was qualified. The broadcasting corporation did not respond, the Department of Health merely acknowledged his application and forever held its peace, the government information service called him for an interview and then forgot his existence. He was gradually losing his enthusiasm for this new democratic society.

  The twentieth interview. The big men of the government said to him, “You have been out of the country for many years. What makes you think you can do this job? How familiar are you with South Africa and its problems?”

  “How familiar are our rulers, presidents, ministers, and lawmakers—who have either been in prison or in exile for thirty years—with South Africa and its problems?” Camagu asked, not bothering to hide his contempt for the questioner.

  He did not get that job.

  “You can serve your country in the private sector,” the voice of wisdom whispered in his ear. “Why not try the private sector and the parastatals?”

  He tried them. He discovered that the corporate world did not want qualified blacks. They preferred the inexperienced ones who were only too happy to be placed in some glass affirmative-action office where they were displayed as paragons of empowerment. No one cared if they ever got to grips with their jobs or not. All the better for the old guard if they did not. That safeguarded the old guard’s position. The mentor would always be hovering around as a consultant—for even bigger rewards. The problem with bureaucrats of Camagu’s ilk was that they efficiently did the job themselves, depriving consultants of their livelihood.

  The beautiful men and women in glass displays did not like the Camagus of this world. They were a threat to their luxury German sedans, housing allowances, and expense accounts.

  His joints are not what they used to be. He cannot keep up with the dancers. He decides to stand on the side for a while, making sure that he has an unobstructed view of the beautiful one. He wonders how the old ones manage to be so relentless in their rhythmic movement. And some of them are going to work in the morning. They’ll be standing up all day, eking out a meager living as maids, washerwomen, and street vendors. Fortunately he is not going to work. Not tomorrow. Not ever in this country.

  Four years have passed, and Camagu is still not employed in what he was trained for. He teaches part-time at a trade school in the central business district of Johannesburg. Well, he was teaching there until yesterday, when he decided to quit.

  He had toyed with the idea of taking the advice of an interviewer who once asked him, “With all your education, why don’t you start your own consultancy?”

  Even as a consultant, he discovered, one needed to dance the freedom dance in order to get contracts. Or at least to know some prominent dancers. And tipplers at Giggles who were in the booming consultancy trade always complained that the government had more faith in those consultants who had crossed at least one ocean to get to these shores. In any case, one needed money to start a viable consultancy.

  The best option for him is to go back to exile.

  A woman is declaiming on how the wrath of God will send great flames to incinerate Hillbrow. The vigil responds with “amens” and “hallelujahs.”

  A man declares that the Lord is always so wonderful. He has blessed this wake with a beautiful young stranger wh
o sings like an angel. Surely the path of the deceased has been cleared by this wonderful voice and he will be welcomed in the house with many mansions. Once more there are “amens” and “hallelujahs.”

  “Indeed she was sent here by the Lord to accompany her homeboy with her beautiful voice,” shouts an old woman. “She is a good child from my village. And she brought us bottles of sea water. She knows that we inland people love to drink the sea because it cures all sorts of diseases. Praise the Lord!”

  “Amen!”

  “Hallelujah!”

  Camagu goes out for a little fresh air and a smoke.

  It is dawn.

  “Everything now . . . the fruits of liberation . . . are enjoyed only by those from exile or from Robben Island,” he overhears a man from the group of dagga smokers complain. “Yet we were the ones who bore the brunt of the bullets. We threw stones and danced the freedom dance.”

  “Yes, while they were having a good time overseas we were dying here. We were the cannon fodder for those who are eating softly now,” adds another one.

  Whining and whingeing is the pastime of this new democratic society, thinks Camagu, not recognizing the fact that he was doing exactly the same thing for the greater part of the wake.

  “You don’t network,” Camagu remembers a fellow exile who is now a big man in the government telling him. “You don’t lobby.”

  “Why should I network and lobby when I have the right qualifications and experience?” he asked proudly.

  It is pride that has killed Camagu.

  The big man from the government laughed. “Do not be stupid,” he said. “Come to my office tomorrow. We are going to lobby for you. There is an important post in my department.”

  “I will not allow anyone to lobby for me to get a job. Are we not all South Africans who should be allowed to serve our country on merit?”

  Deadly pride.

  Camagu discovered that networking and lobbying were a crucial part of South African life. He was completely inadequate in that regard. All along he had operated under the misguided notion that things happened for you because you deserved them, not because you had the most influential lobbyists.

  He had not known that jobs were advertised only as a formality, to meet the requirements of the law. When a job was advertised there was someone already earmarked for it. Not necessarily the best candidate, but someone who had lobbied or had powerful people lobbying on his or her behalf. It helped if the candidate lived vividly in the memory of decision-makers as the best dancer of the freedom dance.

  One of Camagu’s problems, he discovered, was that he was not a member of the cocktail circuit.

  “Join the Aristocrats of the Revolution,” advised another big man from the government who had his interests at heart. “I am sure if you try hard enough you can qualify. Of course at first you will belong to the Club of the Sycophants of the Aristocrats of the Revolution. But all in good time, when you have paid your dues, you will be a proper Aristocrat of the Revolution yourself.”

  Only then did Camagu understand the full implications of life in this new democratic society. He did not qualify for any important position because he was not a member of the Aristocrats of the Revolution, an exclusive club that is composed of the ruling elites, their families, and close friends. Some of them were indeed leaders of the freedom struggle, while others had used their status and wealth to snake their way into the very heart of the organization.

  The jobs he had been applying for had all gone to people whose only qualification was that they were sons and daughters of the Aristocrats of the Revolution.

  Camagu could easily have benefited from this system if he had played his cards right from the beginning. He knew a lot of people in exile, many of whom were prominent members of the Aristocrats of the Revolution. He had even gone to school with some of them. He had been involved in antiapartheid demonstrations in various capitals of the world with a number of them. It would have been easy to attach himself to them, or even buy a membership card. But he chose to remain independent, and to speak out against what he called patronage. Now that he is unemployed he regrets his indiscretions.

  But pride still kills him.

  “Why don’t you talk with the minister?” asked yet another big man from the government, mentioning a powerful cabinet minister. “I can arrange an appointment for you. If I remember well, you two had a thing going back in the States.”

  Indeed he had had a few adventures with the honorable minister, many years before anyone ever knew that one day there would be freedom and she would be a member of the cabinet. She was an ordinary poet who composed bad verses and was an aspirant performer of them.

  And what breathless adventures! Camagu is quite smug about the fact that he once made the most powerful woman in the country, the woman before whom powerful men tremble, scream for mercy. While he screamed for his mother.

  Fatal pride.

  Maybe things would come right, he thought. In a year or two, doors would open.

  A gravel-voiced man smashes his thoughts with “Noyana, noyana, phezulu” He is slapping his Bible to the rhythm of the bouncy hymn that demands to know whether those congregated here will enter the portals of heaven. The old ones dance around him in a solemn circle. Then the man breaks into a bout of preaching.

  “He was in pain before he died, this our brother,” he shouts. “It was the pain of the spirit that was being denied the right to soar in its creativity. It was the pain of a suppressed mind. The pain ended up attacking his body. It ravaged his insides. The beauty of death is that it separates us from the pain that racks our bodies.”

  Camagu’s hopes that things would come right were crushed by a strike at the school where he was teaching. The students kidnapped the principal. They demanded that their trade school be transferred from the Department of Labour to the Department of Education. They summoned a cabinet minister, who went cap in hand to negotiate with them.

  “We are a liberal and caring government,” said the cabinet minister. “The students have genuine grievances. We are now negotiating with them to release the principal.”

  After many days of negotiations the students released the principal. The minister, a man of the people to the last, was seen on the country’s television screens dancing the freedom dance with the triumphant learners.

  That incident made up Camagu’s mind for him. The minister was doing a jig of victory with people who had committed criminal offenses. In the course of the jubilation the rights of the principal who lost his freedom for a whole week were not considered at all. His children counted for nothing. The message was clear: to get your way with the government you must break the law . . . kidnap somebody . . . burn a building . . . block the roads . . . thrash South Africa!

  Yesterday Camagu resigned from the school. His suitcase is packed, and tomorrow he is flying away.

  Inside the tent they are praying the final prayers of the wake.

  “I’ll fly! I’ll soar!” shouts Camagu to the indifferent dawn. “Let me soar to the sky like the creations of the dead man!”

  The mourners hear him, for now they are streaming out of the tent. The vigil is over. It is time to prepare for the funeral. They laugh and say madness sets in when people begin to talk alone.

  They are all going down the mountain. Abseiling the steep rock faces. Camagu misses a step and almost falls when he finds himself next to the makoti.

  “Be careful,” says the beautiful one.

  “You sang those hymns beautifully,” says the exile.

  “Thank you.”

  “What is your name?”

  “NomaRussia.”

  “You are not from Hillbrow. You do not look like people from Hillbrow.”

  “No one is from Hillbrow. Everyone here comes from somewhere else. I am from Qolorha.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Qolorha. Qolorha-by-Sea. Haven’t you heard of Nongqawuse?”

  Of course, Nongqawuse. He has vague memories of history les
sons where he was told about a young girl who deceived the amaXhosa nation into mass suicide. But he never associated her with any real place.

  The hearthly one tells him that she came to the city to visit her “homeboy,” only to find that he was dead. She is going back to the land of Nongqawuse this very morning. She is saddened by the fact that she won’t be able to attend the funeral, for her bus to the Eastern Cape leaves very early in the morning. She is pleased, though, that she was at her homeboy’s wake, and was able to sing him a loving farewell.

  An old woman drags her away and admonishes her for talking to strangers.

  Camagu used to see himself as a pedlar of dreams. That was when he could make things happen. Now he has lost his touch. He needs a pedlar of dreams himself, with a bagful of dreams waiting to be dreamt. A whole storage full of dreams.

  3

  While the Unbelievers lament the sufferings of the Middle Generations, Zim celebrates the end of those sufferings. Although both he and Bhonco, son of Ximiya, patriarch of the Unbelievers, are descendants of the headless ancestor, they never see any issue with the same eye.

  Zim, the leading light of the Believers, owes his existence and his belief to his great-grandfather, Twin, and Twin’s yellow-colored wife, Qukezwa. That is why he named his first-born son Twin, even though he was not a twin, and his yellow-colored daughter Qukezwa.

  Zim himself is a yellow-colored stocky man with the high cheekbones of the Khoikhoi. He has taken more from his great-grandmother’s people. So have his children. Their Khoikhoi features were enhanced by their mother. NoEngland, who was from the amaGqunukhwebe, the clan that came into existence from the intermarriages of the amaXhosa and the Khoikhoi people even before the days of Nongqawuse.

  NoEngland died a year ago, and Zim hasn’t stopped mourning her death. Even today as he sits under the gigantic wild fig tree in front of his hexagon, he is wondering how life would have been had the ancestors not decided to call NoEngland so early in her life. And it was indeed early, for she was only forty-four—eighteen years younger than her husband.