The Madonna of Excelsior

by Zakes Mda

  The reporters were not prepared to let Niki escape. Cameras flashed. She hid her face behind a newspaper that she rolled in conical Basotho-hat style. But the pests were not prepared to give up. They seemed to be more interested in her than in the other women. Perhaps because her partner had committed suicide as a result of the trial. She was more newsworthy. She ran for refuge to a toilet behind the courtroom. Surely no self-respecting reporter would pursue her into the female toilet—and a racially segregated toilet at that!

  RUMOURS OF WAR followed the discharge of the women. We heard of white people who were fighting amongst themselves in Cape Town. Hurling words of anger at one another in their Parliament. Scuttling around in damage control efforts at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. All because of the black women of little Excelsior, so far away. We bought newspapers every day. Die Volksblad. The Friend. We ravished every page that had anything to do with immorality and miscegenation. Each issue circulated from one homestead to the next. Until it was tattered. Until smokers used the pieces to roll their zols of tobacco or dagga.

  The sins of our mothers had caused wonderful upheavals in the land.

  The Friend, 3 February 1971:

  The Minister of Justice, Mr P.C. Pelser, said in the Assembly yesterday that as long as he was Minister of Justice and as long as the Nationalist Party governed the country, the Immorality Act would not be “scrapped”.

  He also said that the reason why the police had acted in the Free State town of Excelsior was because Whites and non-Whites had complained that there were too many half-caste children walking the streets.

  The consequences of the implementation of section 16 of the Act were actually as a result of the abhorrence which the people felt against miscegenation.

  Earlier yesterday Mr M.L. Mitchell (U.P. Durban North) had asked him during question time whether he had given any instructions in connection with the withdrawal of the case against the accused at Excelsior. His reply had been that he had definitely not done so.

  Before he had formally withdrawn the case, the Attorney-General, Dr Percy Yutar, had telephoned him and had informed him that he was not going to proceed with the case. Dr Yutar had done this to prevent him (the Minister) from first reading about the decision in the newspapers or hearing about it over the radio.

  The Friend, 10 February 1971:

  The Coloured population of the Free State village of Excelsior has more than doubled over the past 10 years.

  Excelsior received worldwide publicity because of a series of Immorality Act trials and because of the fact that the charges against 19 accused were withdrawn by the State at the last minute last month.

  Preliminary 1970 census statistics show that the 273 Coloureds enumerated in the 1960 census had increased to 580—299 women and 281 men—by 1970.

  The number of Whites, however, decreased from 2,800 to 2,470—a total of 1,322 men and 1,148 women—while the number of Africans increased from 19,898 to 23,594—10,908 men and 12,686 women.

  The Friend, 16 February 1971:

  The Minister of Justice, Mr P.C. Pelser, said in reply to a question in the Assembly yesterday by Mrs H. Suzman (P.P. Houghton) that the first indication that witnesses in the immorality case in Excelsior were unwilling to give evidence, came on 21 January.

  Asked by Mrs Suzman whether any of the police witnesses were found by the Attorney-General to be unwilling to give evidence, the Minister said: “No.”

  Asked whether any of the other witnesses were found by the Attorney-General to be unwilling to give evidence, the Minister replied: “Yes.”

  The Friend, 18 February 1971:

  The Friend was criticised in the Free State Provincial Council yesterday afternoon for publishing a report last week that the Coloured population in the Free State village of Excelsior had more than doubled over the past 10 years.

  “Why did The Friend specifically mention Excelsior only?” Mr P.W. Nel (Winburg) asked.

  “The newspaper could also have noted increases in the Coloured population of towns like Boshof, Jagersfontein, Harri-smith, Philippolis and Welkom.”

  The Friend, 28 February 1971:

  The Attorney-General of the Free State, Dr Percy Yutar, said yesterday that he was aware that prosecution witnesses in the Excelsior immorality trials could have been compelled to give evidence or face imprisonment.

  Dr Yutar was commenting on the widespread puzzlement at the reasons for withdrawing the charges against the 19 people, five White men and 14 African women, who were accused of contravening the Immorality Act.

  It was announced that charges were withdrawn because prosecution witnesses were not willing to give evidence.

  In an interview yesterday, Dr Yutar said that he was “aware of section 212 of the Criminal Procedures Act” which empowers magistrates and judges to imprison witnesses who refuse to give evidence.

  “I am well aware that we were not powerless and we discussed using section 212,” he said. “But we felt that in this case it would not have resolved our difficulties.”

  The days that followed saw Niki walking about in a daze. She was oblivious to the fact that her activities in the barn, in the yellow fields, and in Madam Cornelia’s bedroom had caused such a stir nationally and internationally. She was not aware that a whole government was under threat because of her body parts. That a whole nation was shaken to its foundations by her orgiastic moans. She did not follow the national debate generated by the heat of her body. She did not read The Friend, which we so enthusiastically awaited every morning. Many of us who had never cared for newspapers, because they only carried news about white people, had now become avid readers of The Friend.

  Her daze began with her first night of freedom. She had left her toilet refuge at dusk, and had slowly walked to Mahlatswetsa Location. She had opened her shack door, struck a match, lit a candle on the table and just stood there open-mouthed. Her shack had been ransacked. All her clothes were gone. Everything that Pule had bought her. Plunderers had taken the trunk that she kept under her bed. And everything in it. They had pillaged the blankets from her bed. And the duvets. They had even raided the kitchen part of her shack. They had stolen her blue and white porcelain dinner set. And her plastic table covers. And her pressure-cooker. They had left only the wobbly pan.

  She had just stood there, numb for a while. Then she had walked dazedly to Mmampe’s home. Mmampe’s mother had welcomed her with her resonant laughter. There was a treat waiting for her, she had said. But Niki did not show any excitement. Her eyes were tiredly searching the room for Viliki.

  “Viliki likes to play in the street until it is too late in the night,” Mmampe had said. “Night-time is a good time for hide-and-seek. He comes home only to sleep.”

  Mmampe’s mother had given her dumplings and chunks of meat that swam in rich brown gravy. She had gone through the motions of eating, without really tasting the food. Without feeling anything. She had vaguely heard Mmampe’s mother say: “This is goose-meat, Niki. Have you ever tasted goose-meat?”

  The voice had sounded as if it was coming from a distance. Mmampe’s mother had been bubbling all over the place. She had announced proudly that she had cooked the goose-meat to welcome her daughters back after their resounding victory.

  “Even though you are not of my womb,” she had said to Niki, “here in the location a child is every woman’s child.”

  She had explained how she got such succulent meat. A man in a brown suit and yellow miner’s helmet had come selling dead geese. She had said to herself: “I must buy one of these fat birds. I must give my children a treat, especially Niki who has spent all this time in the cold jail of Winburg while my daughter enjoyed her bail outside.”

  The mention of her incarceration and of Mmampe’s bail had made Niki fidget with uneasiness. She could not hide her discomfort around Mmampe. If it was at all true that she was the woman who had sold them out, then it would be very difficult to forgive her. Especially after Niki had lost all her valuable property.

/>   Mmampe had laughingly accused her mother of buying stolen meat.

  She had said to her mother: “The goose-man must be one of the naughty people who steal birds from the farmers’ homesteads in order to sell them to the location people. They shoot geese and ducks with pellet guns, as if they are game birds, instead of shooting guinea fowls in the veld.”

  But Mmampe’s mother had said a stolen goose tasted as well as any goose.

  “When a man comes selling meat, do you ask where he got it?” Mmampe’s mother had asked, not expecting an answer. “When you buy fish and chips from the Greek café, do you ask the Greek-man where he caught the fish and who dug out the potatoes?”

  We continued to call Dukakis’ old café the Greek café even though he had long since left Excelsior. The café was now owned by a brave Portuguese family, whose children were daughters and would therefore not be at risk of necking with Jacomina, the Reverend François Bornman’s daughter, who had now grown into what Scope magazine would have called a blonde bombshell.

  After the goose and dumplings, Niki had walked back to her shack with an excited Viliki jumping behind her. Viliki, who had been expecting “nice things” from Lesotho, but who did not seem to care that they were nowhere to be seen. All he had cared about was that he had been reunited with his mother.

  Niki had huddled up with her two children on a bare mattress on the bed.

  The days that followed saw her daze being gradually replaced by self-pity. Then by anger. A silent rage. She was angry with Pule for deserting her. Angry with Mmampe for selling her out. Angry with Madam Cornelia for weighing her on the scale. Angry with Johannes Smit for raping her. Angry with Tjaart Cronje for seeing her naked. And for his horsey-horsey game. Angry with the people of Excelsior for pointing fingers at her. Angry with Stephanus Cronje for dying. Angry with everyone else but herself. Angry at the barns and the yellow fields and the distant sandstone hills and the open skies.

  Her greatest anger was directed at those who had duped her. People had made promises. Messages had been sent to her cell in Winburg. Things had been whispered in her ear at Excelsior Magistrate’s Court. Do not give evidence against the white men, Niki. They will look after you and your child. They will engage the services of a good lawyer for you. They will pay for the support of your child. Persistent whispers. Promises of lucre. Of freedom. Coming mostly through prison warders. And through policewomen, who were emphatic that they were merely the messengers. That they would deny everything if she were to reveal their messenger role to anyone. And the consequences would be very bitter for her. Messages from a faceless source. No point in sending people to jail when you can all be free. Do not give evidence against the white men. Do not give evidence against the white men. Do not give evidence against the white men. She had believed the promises. And had agreed with the other accused-women that she would not turn state witness.

  The promises were not being fulfilled. They would never be fulfilled.

  She was free. And hungry.

  THE BLUE MADONNA

  THE BLUE MADONNA IS different from the other madonnas. No cosmos blooms surround her. She is not sitting in a brown field of wheat. No sunflowers flourish in her shadow. Yet she exudes tenderness like all the others. She is drenched in a blue light. Blue and white strokes of icy innocence. Her breasts are not hanging out. She is not naked, but wears a blue robe. A modest madonna. A madonna with blue flowing locks that reach her breasts. Her features are delicate. Her face is round and her pursed lips are small. Smaller than each of the slanting eyes. A face of brown, yellow and white impasto. She holds a naked baby in her hands. The well-fed baby wears only white booties. She holds the baby in front of her breasts like an offering.

  That was the only madonna the trinity was going to paint that day. Niki got up from the stool on which she had been posing, and put Popi on the floor. Popi jumped onto a brown corduroy sofa and sat there with her legs tightly closed. At five she was already conscious of nakedness. A good girl never sat carelessly, her mother had drummed into her head. During these moments of anger, Popi’s obedience to her mother’s little commandments was a reflex action. She sat motionless on the sofa and sulked.

  Today’s session had been different from the other modelling sessions. Niki was at ease and was not self-conscious. There was no need to cover her pubes with her hands. She was fully clothed in a white caftan that the trinity had given her, after telling her to take off her brown seshweshwe Basotho dress. And her grass conical hat and plastic sandals. She looked like a prophet of the Zionist Church in the flowing robes.

  Niki walked to the canvas and took a hard look at it. This madonna was radiant. And serene. Though Niki had been the model, she did not look anything like her. This was not strange. Previous mother-and-child creations had borne no resemblance to Popi-and-Niki of the flesh, even though Popi-and-Niki of the flesh had been the models. What was unusual about this madonna was that she had Popi’s features. The Popi who was supposed to have posed for the child and not for the mother. But both the madonna and the child looked like Popi. The madonna had Popi’s flowing locks. Except for the fact that they were blue. Her face was Popi’s. Not the five-year-old Popi. The way Popi would look when she was older.

  And the gown the madonna wore was blue, even though the caftan Niki had been wearing when she sat for the trinity was white. The trinity, by a few strokes of wizardry, had planted Popi’s face onto Niki’s body. White was blue. Niki wondered what gave the trinity the right to change things at the dictates of his whims. To invent his own truths. From where did he get all that power, to re-create what had already been created?

  “Popi, come and see,” said Niki sweetly, hiding her disapproval of the trinity’s distortions of reality. “The Father has painted you twice. You are now your own mother.”

  But Popi did not respond. She sharply turned her head the other way, making it clear to everyone that she was not on speaking terms with her mother. She was sulking.

  She had been sulking the whole day. Since early in the morning. Since her mother had slapped her bottom very hard for farting in bed before they woke up. Early, at dawn, when both their heads were covered with the blankets. She had cried. And she rarely cried. She never cried, for instance, when her mother slapped her for stealing her condensed milk and sucking it from the hole in the tin. Then she knew that she had been naughty and deserved to be punished. She was never bothered by Niki’s shouting at her, because that’s how Niki was. Even at five she had accepted that her mother communicated with her and Viliki by shouting at them. Even when she was happy, she shouted and talked to them in stern tones. To the extent that the children were finding it increasingly difficult to tell when she was really scolding them for some wrongdoing or when she was just talking to them normally or even happily. But the slap this morning had made Popi cry so much that Viliki had woken up from his bedding on the floor, climbed onto the bed and held his sister in his arms.

  Popi’s deep hurt was due to the fact that she did not understand what wrong she had done. After all, Niki herself farted all the time. And said nothing about it. Not even a “sorry.” And no one complained. Popi had therefore never considered farting a crime.

  Popi had sulked all the way from Mahlatswetsa Location to Thaba Nchu. On the rickety bus that took them the bumpy forty-three kilometres to the trinity’s mission station, fellow passengers had tried to be “nice” to her. Coochi . . . coochi . . . coooo! They had commented on the beauty of the blue-eyed child with flowing locks. She was a white man’s child, they had said. “Her mother must be one of the Excelsior 19,” one woman had observed. “Or perhaps those who came afterwards,” another one had said. “It happens every day.” They didn’t seem to care whether Niki could hear them or not.

  Niki was used to such remarks and had learnt to ignore them. They did not come from any malice on the part of the passengers, but from insensitivity. One could not crucify people for being insensitive.

  An old lady had tried to give Popi a suc
ker. But she had sharply turned her head and looked the other way.

  “Popi, how can you be rude to this grandmother who is trying to be nice?” Niki had asked.

  But Popi had not responded. Instead, she had filled her mouth with air until her cheeks bulged like a balloon. She had not invited anyone to be “nice” to her. She was not used to niceness.

  “This child has an ugly heart,” Niki had said to herself, as she walked from the Thaba Nchu bus rank to the Roman Catholic Mission. “She is only five, yet she can hold a grudge for the whole day. What kind of an unforgiving child is this?”

  Perhaps Niki had forgotten that even a child could not forgive someone who had not asked to be forgiven. Who had shown no remorse.

  The trinity brayed like a donkey. Popi was determined to be strong. The trinity brayed and brayed. He was bent on coaxing her out of her anger. Popi’s face began to melt a little. But just before she could break into a smile, she remembered that she was supposed to be sulking, and became stone-faced again. The trinity jumped up and down around her, braying even louder. She couldn’t help but smile. Then she laughed. She laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Niki joined in the laughter. She had never heard Popi laugh so much. It was good to hear Popi laugh. Just as she rarely cried, she rarely laughed. Very few things made her laugh. Yet she was the source of other people’s laughter. When other children saw her in the street, they shouted, “Boesman! Boesman!” And then they ran away laughing. At first she used to cry. Then she decided that she would not go to play in the street again. She would play alone in her mother’s yard. She was only good for her mother’s ashy yard. She did not deserve to play with other children in the street.