Entr’acte. On the eve of the funeral, we are sitting with the widows, Jess and I, and they are wrapped in their blankets, guessing at what might have happened to their husbands, suspecting the police but not certain, carried along willy-nilly by the preparations for the burial – the visitors, the planning, the provision of food, the arrangements for public sanitation, the songs and marches, the secret emissaries from the Backlands moving like shadows between the small neat homes.
The women must nurse the children, too, the infants. Like Celiwe Nyati, sitting in her mother’s lap as we visit, bewildered, wide-eyed, unsure what all the fuss is about, asking when her father will come home to explain it all, to make it all right.
With the crowds assembling, the buses disgorging the comrades from the Transvaal and the far north, from Cape Town and Mpumalanga, we are all caught in the huge, powerful stream whose source sprang forth so long ago in these same lands in the Eastern Cape and is now broadening and widening, gathering power from tributaries and storms and waterfalls as it hurries onwards, ever onwards – a Nile, a Zambezi, a Congo – towards the white-crested ocean we know to be liberation, freedom.
But we cannot begin to imagine that, one day, after the moment of triumph, the enemies will be offered a chance to redeem themselves, to tell their stories truthfully and to convince the world that they acted as soldiers in a political struggle.
For this is what Theron is doing in these transcripts. He is fighting still to prove that he is a solider, a combatant, not a murderer. And the widows must hear it, sitting in the hearing room in Port Elizabeth, long years after their husbands died, the events reborn, conjured from the words of the man who killed them, who recruited other men to help him, who instructed them.
The first death. Nyati himself. Already dead.
Theron: “They all stabbed the corpse using knives. They then took petrol from my vehicle, it was in a petrol can, they poured it over the body and set it alight. From there we drove back to the point in the Crystal Sands area where Nieuwoudt and De Kock were waiting with the other three activists.
We were driving in that wooded area and we then got the second one to get out of the car. One of the black members then hit him with a rubber truncheon over the neck or on the neck or head and the two black members then stabbed him with knives whilst he was lying on the ground.”
Then this:
“We then left the corpse there and returned to where Mr Nieuwoudt and Mr De Kock were waiting with the other two activists. Sergeant De Kock and some of the black members then took one of the activists and they walked away from me with him. When De Kock came back he reported to me that he had knocked the activist unconscious and that the black members then stabbed him to death.”
And then:
“When Sergeant Faku took the petrol from me, they then told me that they could not get the cuffs off the body and that they had to remove his one hand to get the cuffs off. They then poured petrol over the body and in a short radio broadcast to Lieutenant Nieuwoudt I told Nieuwoudt that they should set alight the other corpses and they did that and we then left.”
“They had to remove his one hand.” I read the line again and shuddered. Something else struck me.
Faku. Nieuwoudt. Surely not uncommon names in those areas at that time, not uncommon for black and white men to work side by side against the anti-apartheid forces. And, perhaps these days, to oversee the airport immigration lines. “Conference Purposes Only.”
The bureaucratic loose ends:
And then I returned to the office where I arrived at about seven and I reported to Mr Du Plessis that the operation was concluded and Mr Du Plessis and I went to Colonel Snyman’s office and we reported to him that the operation was concluded.
I riffled through the transcript, skipping pages, to look for the final ruling on Kobus Theron’s application for amnesty.
“In the result we are not satisfied that the applicant has complied with the requirements of the Act. Consequently the application for amnesty in respect of the murders is REFUSED.”
So where was he now, this security branch policeman who was perhaps the only person who knew definitively about the informants, the moles, the Judas of the Old Deep set? He had admitted – in the most gruesome detail – a truly appalling suite of murders.
Yet there was no record of a trial. He was, as far as I could understand, a free man, one of those who would benefit from the proposed statute of limitations to avoid prosecution. He had lived and worked and – for all I knew – retired in the Eastern Cape, in these lands that stretched from the ocean to the arid interior.
But where?
I flicked again through the sheaf of testimony in case there was some record of a law company representing Theron, or even an address for him. Instead, two familiar names leaped from the jumble of confession and cross-examination, the long, labourious and exhaustive record of the proceedings.
It was a passage I had not noticed in my earlier perusal of the transcript and I went over it again to be sure I had understood what it said, that I had not misread it. The paragraph came in a lengthy exposition by state investigators of the broader political context of the Nyati killing and the factors taken into account by the security police as they weighed their decision to order his “permanent removal”.
Advocate: “I present as evidence a document that was drawn up by the security police on the basis of their surveillance at the time when the authorities were preoccupied with Mr Nyati, and wished to know the nature and identity of those consorting with him. In the period immediately before his death, his visitors included the following persons: Miss Jessica Chase, Mr Thomas Kinzer …”
Nineteen
I LEFT THE PAGES OF PRINTOUT AND legal pad jottings in a concertina folder of black cardboard, tucked away in an unlocked drawer in the antique dresser of my hotel suite. The only document I took with me was the article from Gilliomee’s book. Looking back, it is clear to me that I should have used the small safe in the closet, but hindsight is always the wisest counsellor.
A breeze, softening the heat, carried the sounds of surf and ocean. Men and women, families and children, strolled past the hotel towards the beach, ignoring the signs that warned them to beware.
The TRC transcripts had embedded a procession of images in my mind – truncheon on bone, knives slicing into flesh, drawing a sluggish flow of venous crimson or spurt of arterial scarlet, evidence of what outsiders like to depict as Africa’s atavistic violence.
But was this place so much worse than others? Were its battles all the more bloody for being black on white, white on black? In numbers, wars fought by Europeans and Americans and Japanese far exceeded Africa’s tallies, including the worst genocides of the Great Lakes.
Twenty million Soviets! Six million Jews! Whole cities razed with remote technological precision; epic battles of artillery and air-power. The World Wars, 1914–1918 and 1939–45 – so enormous that we comprehend them only by reference to heroes and symbols: plucky British Spitfire pilots over southern England, Soviet snipers at Stalingrad, GI Joe pushing doughtily across Europe and Asia, raising the Stars and Stripes at Iwo Jima, just as Comrade Sergei lofted the Red Banner over the ruined Reichstag in Berlin. But our heroes cannot explain to us the emaciated victims of Dachau and Auschwitz, the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, the ash of Dresden, the rash of brutal camps stretching from the Kwai River to the Soviet Gulag.
Then, take these African wars in faraway places, in thatched villages without phone lines or electric power or pumped water where the soldiers are always the first to arrive and the last to die.
The white security officers like Theron and De Kock who had flooded the Eastern Cape in the mid-1980s had merely moved on, transferring their war to a newer theatre among factories, highways, airports, fastfood outlets. So who could be surprised at its outcome?
I drove my re-shod rental car, as arranged, around the corner from the Plettenberg Hotel to Zoë Joubert’s villa with its creaking deck and grand, s
weeping view over the bay. As I ran up the steps to the front door, she was already leaving the house, dressed this time in white linen slacks and a tailored yellow top that showed off her sleek, tanned lines but hid the scar on her shoulder.
For the first time since our first meeting in Cape Town, I noticed jewellery, a thick gold chain and pearl earrings, and make-up on her eyelashes and lips. No rings, though. Her hair was held back in a lacquered, oriental clasp, stressing the haughty rise of her forehead and high cheekbones. Her eyes sparkled and she offered me a kiss on both cheeks as we met. There was no sign of her daughter.
My own marriage had been without children. Various physicians had examined us both, finding no particular biological hindrance. Yet conception had eluded us. And when our sacred vows crumbled in Paris, when the futility of questing for compatibility overwhelmed us both, it had been a relief to exclude issues such as custody and weekend visiting rights from the attentions of the lawyers.
But childlessness breeds its own primness. When friends came to visit with their boisterous broods, it must have been obvious that I had placed cherished ornaments far from view. They caught my quick glances as a child wobbled, holding a glass of cola like baptismal fluid over a pale carpet, or experimented in re-organising the elaborate jade solitaire I had acquired by long haggling in a Cairene souk. Children seemed drawn to delicate china, sharp Yemeni daggers, square-cornered, glass coffee tables that collided with toddlers’ delicate heads. They left open refrigerator doors and tripped on antique kilims. They jammed videos in video players and re-entered the house from the garden having dipped their sneakered feet into the only un-scooped canine deposit in miles.
In Washington, I had begun to live like a monk, or a prisoner, obsessed with the neatness of his cell. A monk with a navy blue Jaguar Roadster gathering dust, and no one to invite for a spin.
I had little preparation, thus, for the demands and duties of the rambunctious extended families I confronted in Plettenberg Bay: the kids need a ride to/from the disco/the waterslide/the monkey park/the tennis courts/the white-water rafting place/the bungee-jumping station on the Storms River canyon; the kids have gotten lost at the beach party or been stung by jellyfish or want to dig holes and build castles in the sand. The kids – how I hated that word with its reminder of goats – were out getting pizza. The kids had gotten drunk/stoned. Again!
I did not see myself as a potential soccer pop, giving up my free time to ferry young teenagers from appointment to appointment, from sports field, to debating society to sleepover to party. I could barely imagine myself in the role of the fretful, 3:00 am parent, reaching for the phone to inquire as to a child’s whereabouts, haunted by the recurring nightmares of doom and disaster that stalk the custodians of the young. Was it too late to change, or was I thinking way too far ahead?
Without any attempt at persuasion from Zoë Joubert, I had begun to toy with a different way of looking at the relationship that might be within my grasp. Instead of seeing a child in terms of self-sacrifice, should I not be thinking that a surrogate daughter would enrich my life, bring pride and love, force open the trap door of my hermit cell to let in a little sunlight, a little life?
“Is your daughter not joining us? I hope it’s not because of me.”
“I know you find Mills a bit a difficult. She has grown up with me, you see. I guess you would call her territorial. Most of the time, it’s not an issue. When it’s just the two of us, or we are with old friends, there is no hassle. Newcomers are something else.”
I nodded my acknowledgement. She was saying: I come with conditions attached: they are not negotiable.
“I suppose part of it is my fault. We are very close. I have always tried to bring out her brightness. Nurture her. Make sure she goes to the best schools, excels. She plays the cello in the orchestra and is school tennis champion. At 13, dammit. But I seem to have paid less attention to preparing her for sharing me.”
I pulled up outside the De Veres’ vacation home.
“Been here before?” Zoë Joubert asked.
“No. Why?”
“I just wondered how you knew the address.”
“Tradecraft?” I laughed.
I realised I had left Jessica de Vere’s gold lighter at the hotel. I could hardly turn back, still less explain why I might need to.
In a garage I thought I saw the outlines of a silver sports car and a darker, larger vehicle, an SUV or some such. The big double door where I had last seen Jessica de Vere was ajar. Zoë Joubert led the way with the ease of familiarity.
“Be prepared for House & Garden meets Conde Nast Traveller.” She squeezed my hand then went on ahead as if we were not much more than strangers.
The house was in a different league from Zoë’s rented villa. The reference to glossy magazines was an understatement. The place was immaculate, as if in a permanent state of readiness to welcome the most demanding of guests. You could not imagine a newspaper left to flap in the breeze or a rogue tennis shoe left to peek from beneath a sun-lounger. I was aware of tiled steps and walls of white offset with blue shutters.
The house had nine bedrooms and an equal number of en suite bathrooms, their proportions disguised by the same architectural cleverness you see in those labyrinthine rock dwellings in Yemen or Turkey.
An inner courtyard had been designed around a small pool with its mandatory Kreepy Krauly cleaning device. Beside the pool, to the right, a long table had been set for 10 people close to a huge hatch leading into a kitchen where an indeterminate number of people busied themselves around hobs and surfaces of polished steel. Whoever had designed the house had done so with perfect taste.
Zoë Joubert led the way to an arched, indoor seating area that gave way through wide-open, glass doors to a shaded veranda with white, cane furniture covered in pastel-blue cushions. Beyond, a triangle of emerald kikuyu grass jutted over the fynbos like the prow of some mighty ocean-going vessel: on its tripod, a powerful telescope pointed seaward.
I could understand why Jessica de Vere might not want any of it jeopardised.
Christian – Chris – de Vere leaped up from his guests and embraced Zoë. His wife approached me with an outstretched hand.
“Chris. Did you meet Ambassador Kinzer?”
“I gather you spent some time here a few years back.” Chris de Vere had one of those practised, personal trainer handshakes designed to break bones. “Can’t say I recall meeting you.”
“Different circles,” I said. “I remember your wife, though.”
Jess shot me a quick look of refrigerated caution.
“We used to read her articles at the embassy to find out what was really going on.” I offered the remark with a flatterer’s easy smile.
“Well, Ambassador. It was all a while back. Different times. Different country. We’re the rainbow nation now. And a great relief it is, too.”
He introduced me to our fellow lunch guests – a South African entrepreneur who had survived the liberation struggle as a downtrodden labour leader, and a titled couple from an indistinct European royal house, immaculately groomed and coiffed – he in a summer-weight double-breasted blazer in navy blue with white, Sulka shirt and a silk cravat, and she in a two-piece hound’s tooth suit whose skirt stretched over thighs of pneumatic plumpness.
There was no suggestion in the lines of their attire of anything so crass as a wallet or cell phone. The true sign of wealth, some people say, is never to be seen carrying cash or chattels. The gift of royalty is the unshakeable belief that someone else will always pay.
Another couple I vaguely recognised from the gossip sheets came from the entertainment world – a woman who had starred in movies that once drew crowds but whose name now floated on the soft-focus fringes of memory; a man who had staged award-winning shows on Broadway and in London’s West End.
She was dressed – labelled might be a better word – in a cascade of Escada and Dior that offset tanned skin and determinedly blonde hair. He wore a matching shirt and sla
cks in pastel blue, Cartier sunglasses and white loafers from Fratelli Rossetti. The softness of his handshake reminded me of a pale glove in fine Italian leather, adorned with a golden ring that would not have looked out of place among Tutankhamun’s funeral offerings. His watch was one of those Piaget objects designed to resemble a sovereign but costing so much more than any simple coin or timepiece. Their conversational references presumed a certain familiarity with yachts and mansions.
Was this where the wild and cynical Jess Chase now belonged as Jessica de Vere? She glanced in my direction and I fancied she knew exactly what I was thinking.
Clad in a green golfing shirt and broadly checked trousers, Dube, the entrepreneur, had a look of sleek well-being. In his earlier days, on the barricades, he had been a lean, revolutionary figure, his head shaven and his rhetoric powerful. Even now, there was barely a hint of spread around the waist. And the watchfulness around his eyes had not left him.
The royal couple had recently made the headlines when they were allowed to return to their Slavic homeland for the first time since the communists turfed out their family after the Second World War. With her reporter’s instincts, Jessica asked them how well they had been received on their first visit – an event that had been chronicled in the news magazines with much attention to the vast crowds lining the streets and the general enthusiasm and the cavalcade entering the royal palace.
“Then at the end of it,” the prince said, “when all the courtiers had retired and everyone had gone for the day, we were alone together in the royal palace for the first time anyone from our family had been there in 50 years.”
Permanent Removal Page 16