The Madonna of Excelsior

by Zakes Mda

  Niki sat on the bed in her shack and listened to her children moan about how things had turned out for them. She was happy that they had failed to take her children away. The nestlings—for they would remain nestlings for as long as she lived—had returned to the nest. She was happy that even though Viliki had his two RDP houses, and had the Seller of Songs, he still found time to visit the old shack, to sit around the fire with his sister, and to sing songs and tell stories.

  Profound nostalgia was not the preserve of the Pule Siblings. Tjaart Cronje wallowed in it. So did Johannes Smit. They sat in the bar of Excelsior Hotel, drowning their troubles in Castle Lager, and looking back with sad fondness to the glorious days when the Afrikaner had ruled supreme, and the “kaffir” had known his place. They felt that their people were alienated from what was fashionably called “the Rainbow Nation”. The Afrikaner was an Afrikaner, and could never be part of a rainbow anything. Deep feelings of resentment and anger swelled in them with each gulp of the beer. They blamed the generation of Adam de Vries for deceiving the Afrikaner.

  “Adam de Vries and his wife have melted quite comfortably into the new dispensation,” Johannes Smit lamented.

  “We fought wars on their behalf,” agreed Tjaart Cronje. “After they had taught us that the very people they are now fraternising with were the enemy. Today we are suffering the consequences of the past that their generation shaped. My career in the army was destroyed by affirmative action. I would have been a major-general by now.”

  “Now de Vries even has the gall to say that apartheid laws should never have been the laws of this country,” said Johannes Smit.

  “Hypocrite!”

  “Traitor!”

  “Soon they will mess this country up,” Tjaart Cronje consoled his mate. “The country will be in a shambles and the Afrikaner will be called back to rescue it. The Afrikaner will regain his power.”

  Johannes Smit nodded his agreement. Although he was self-employed as a farmer, affirmative action had taken its toll on him as well. He was no longer getting easy loans from the Land Bank, for which he had previously qualified solely by virtue of being an Afrikaner farmer. Land Bank loans were now open to everyone, even to peasants in the villages, and like everyone else, he had to wait his turn for his applications to be approved. He now had to motivate before he could get a loan, and account for it after getting it. And the people he was motivating and accounting to were the very affirmative action people who had taken over everything. Even such sacred institutions as the Land Bank.

  These were tough times for the Afrikaner. Especially for the boer—the farmer. Johannes Smit had had to change to a tougher breed of cattle that could withstand the rigours and hardships to which the Afrikaner was being subjected. He had sold all his Brahmins and had bought Gelbviehs, a breed of cattle that could thrive under tough conditions with minimum attention and expenditure.

  Tough times called for tough measures.

  BETRAYAL BY THE ELDERS

  IN THE STARK CLARITY of the Free State, a sleepy-eyed woman follows a sleepy-eyed man. Their purple faces are delicate, shaped by the music that is ringing in their heads. Their yellow ochre hats cover their ears so that the song of the wind cannot interfere with the song in their heads. He is in a purple jump suit and purple boots. She is in a purple coat, black shirt and red shoes. Over their shoulders they each carry a heavy bag. They choose their path carefully among giant yellow sunflowers. The wide-open skies are bright with purpleness.

  Viliki took to the world with the Seller of Songs. They traversed the Free State, from one farm village to another, selling their songs at people’s feasts and parties. Word had spread that these two itinerant musicians, a delicately carved man and his delicately carved woman, were endowed with the power to turn the dullest of parties into torrid revelries of dance and laughter. Without the backing of the usual drums, his accordion breathed notes that set the carousers ablaze. Her flute wailed wantonly, weaving its way among the notes of the accordion. It was a combination we had never heard before, which meant that Viliki and the Seller of Songs were in greater demand than any other itinerant musicians. We invited them to play at our weddings and at the feasts honouring the ancestors. They travelled through all the districts of the eastern Free State. They spent their days walking in the fields among sunflowers, trekking to the next village, and their nights in sweaty hovels making people dance. They even crossed the Mo-hokare River into Lesotho, where they played at the all-night famo dance parties.

  The best moments for Viliki were among the sunflower fields, where he and the Seller of Songs had the freedom to immerse themselves in each other to their hearts’ content. The two of them alone under the big sky. Away from the petty world of Excelsior, and particularly of Mahlatswetsa Location. Away from the politics and the power struggles. He was free at last and didn’t have any obligations to anyone. He had never thought it would be possible to enjoy so much freedom, without any cares in the world.

  The local elections had come and gone. Against Popi’s advice, Viliki had stood as an independent candidate. He had lost. The Movement had regained its majority in the council in a landslide victory. Sekatle, as the branch chairperson, had become the new mayor of Excelsior. Viliki had taken to the road with the Seller of Songs. Losing the election was a blessing for which he thanked his ancestors.

  While Viliki and the Seller of Songs sold songs, Popi sold her sweat. She had not stood for election, and was therefore no longer the councillor in charge of libraries. She no longer had any income from the council, and had to go out and look for something to do. Not only to put food on the table, but to resume the building of her house.

  Whenever we passed Niki’s shack and saw the concrete-block house that had stopped at waist height, we remarked that Popi had been foolish. She should have taken the opportunity to allocate herself an RDP house while she was a councillor. As all the other councillors had done. Viliki had allocated himself two houses, one of which he was renting out. Other councillors had allocated houses to their mistresses, girlfriends and grandmothers. But she had become a goody-goody and had decided to build her own house from her earnings. Look where that had taken her. She and her mother were shack-dwellers when everyone else in Mahlatswetsa Location lived in a proper house.

  Popi had to earn a living somehow. She could not rely on the bees, as Niki gave away most of the honey without expecting any payment for it.

  When the cherry harvest season came in October and November, she went to Clocolan to join the thousands of workers who scurried around the orchards picking cherries. The air was filled with their fruity aroma. She embraced the trees, some of which she was told were more than a hundred years old. She immersed herself deeply in them, as if they were her lovers. Thanks to ample rains, the crop was large and bountiful. The winter had also been a very cold one, which was good for the cherries. Warm winters resulted in late budding, which presented a problem for farmers.

  Popi took to harvesting with a passion. She hoped that hard labour would fill the hole in her heart. Since her anger had dissipated, she had been left with an emptiness that she needed to fill.

  She did not like to harvest yellow cherries because picking them was easier, as they were picked without stems. She preferred red cherries, as they were picked with stems, and harvesting them was therefore more time-consuming. After each day’s harvest, the workers spread plastic covers over the hail netting in the orchards to protect the crop in case it rained. Rain at harvest time caused the cherries to burst open, reducing their shelf life.

  At dawn, the workers woke up and removed the plastic covers. Once more the harvest resumed in earnest. Popi buried herself in the work and forgot about the world of Excelsior. Until one afternoon, the world of Excelsior came to her in the form of Johannes Smit. He was visiting the farmer who owned the orchard. Popi was picking her way between yellow cherries that were planted together with red cherries. She was wondering why they were always mixed like that.

  “Wouldn�
�t it make more sense to plant red and yellow cherries separately?” she asked the worker next to her.

  “It would not make sense at all. It is for the purpose of cross-pollination. Red cherries need yellow cherries because yellow cherries are the best pollinators.”

  The voice that gave the explanation did not come from the worker next to her. It came from Johannes Smit, and he was standing right behind her. Popi turned to look at him.

  “I know you,” said Johannes Smit. “You are from Excelsior.”

  “We met at the tractor show,” replied Popi, turning back to the tree and resuming picking.

  “You are Niki’s girl. How is she?”

  “She is well.”

  “I want to see her. Please tell her that I need to see her.”

  “It is easy to find her. She sits with the bees near the road that leads to town.”

  “The Bee Woman? Is that Niki? I see the Bee Woman every time I drive past. I didn’t imagine she was Niki.”

  The Bee Woman. We all called Niki the Bee Woman. It was her new name. She was more like the queen bee, as bees surrounded her throughout the day. Buzzing all around her. Sometimes sitting on her cracked face without stinging her.

  Every dawn she put the white plastic chair on her head and walked to the bees. At dusk when they had all gone to sleep, she put her plastic chair on her head once more and walked back to her shack. Usually she found Popi waiting for her at home with an enamel bowl of hot bean soup. But during cherry harvest season the shack would be empty, as Popi was spending all her days in Clocolan working in the orchards or in the packing rooms, where red cherries were packed into plastic containers and then into boxes for export to Europe and the Middle East. Or working in the warehouses, where they preserved yellow cherries in plastic drums in a solution that turned them white for future glazing. Niki would then cook herself hard maize porridge that she ate with honey.

  Sometimes her old friends Mmampe and Maria would visit her. They would boast about their jobs at the town council. Once Sekatle had become the mayor, he had employed his sister as a clerk at the registry. It did not really matter that she was barely literate and that the old Afrikaner lady who had been working at the registry for decades, and was now just waiting for retirement, did all the work for her. As soon as Maria had become a clerk, she had “organised” a job for Mmampe as a tea-lady.

  Niki would just listen to them prattling on about their wonderful experiences at the Stadsaal and the important people they brushed shoulders with. These included some leading lights who had been participants in the great events of the Excelsior 19, either as magistrates, accused, police officers or prosecutors. Niki never said much during these visits. She just sat there and listened to them talk to each other. Before they left, Niki would give them each a billycan of honey.

  “Please do return my containers,” she would say.

  Sometimes these would be the only words she uttered all evening. Except, of course, for the greetings.

  “You know, Niki, Maria can also organise you a job at the Stadsaal if you want one,” Mmampe once offered on behalf of her friend. “She is a very powerful person there now her brother is the mayor.”

  “I don’t think she wants a job,” Maria said. “Otherwise her son would have organised one for her when he was the mayor. And talking of Viliki, when does he think he will pay cattle for my daughter he is now eating free of charge?”

  Mmampe and Maria laughed and left Niki sitting there, her face hard and blank.

  Those of us who did not have charitable hearts observed that the only reason Mmampe and Maria visited Niki was for the free honey.

  Niki had another visitor in the form of Adam de Vries. He occasionally called at her apiary to try to persuade her to convert her bee-keeping activities into a viable business by joining the newly formed Excelsior Development Trust. Adam de Vries was on the board of this trust, established by black and white citizens of Excelsior to spearhead developmental projects in the town. His Worship the Mayor of Excelsior, Mr Sekatle Sekatle, was the chair of the organisation. But Niki showed no interest in bee-keeping for profit. The bees themselves, for their own sake, were fulfilment enough for her.

  “If you don’t use these bees profitably,” Adam de Vries had once said, “thieves will come in the night and steal all your honey and sell it.”

  But Niki did not respond. She did not seem to be worried. Perhaps she knew that none of us would ever be brave enough to go near her bees. Even those of us who had gained great expertise in harvesting wild honey in the veld and in the sunflower fields wouldn’t have dared steal from her apiary. We believed that she had a way of talking with the bees, and that she had the power to make them sting unwelcome intruders to death. Even though we knew that bees normally became dazed and foolish in the darkness of the night, the Bee Woman’s bees had powers that were beyond the understanding of any human, save the Bee Woman herself.

  “You don’t have to sit here looking after bees all day long,” Adam de Vries said. “Bees can look after themselves. That’s the beauty of bee-keeping. You let them be and they create honey for you.”

  “I do not look after the bees,” Niki replied. “They look after me.”

  Adam de Vries did not know what she meant by this. But he did not give up. Every other week he went to the lone figure sitting on a white chair to talk about the Excelsior Development Trust. Sometimes he talked about Viliki. He was sad that Viliki was not part of the great movement for the development of the town. That he had chosen to walk the road with a coloured woman, idling at beer parties and leading a life of wantonness. It was very unlike Viliki, Adam de Vries said to Niki. And it was a very disappointing thing. Viliki used to be a dedicated community builder. But Niki did not respond to all this. She just smiled vaguely, as if she knew something that the rest of the world did not know.

  Sometimes the itinerant musicians’ feet led them to Excelsior, where they would play in the street in front of Viliki’s RDP house. Word would be passed around and in no time the street would be dancing. Even the varkoore lilies and the weeds that had grown among them would sway to the sounds that filled the air. A hat would be passed around and soon it would be full of coins that would be offered to the creators of such merriment.

  In the evening the Seller of Songs and Viliki would sweep out the dust that had piled up in their house during their weeks of absence. Although Viliki asked the neighbours to “put an eye” on his house, no one cleaned it.

  The following day Viliki would visit Adam de Vries, who would express his regret that Niki and her children had taken a wayward path instead of working for the development of their town and their fellow Africans.

  “Now all of a sudden you are a spokesman for the Africans, Meneer,” Viliki remarked mockingly. “It is good that now you people finally see yourselves as Africans.”

  “I have always been an African,” said Adam de Vries passionately. “Long before anyone else called themselves Africans, my people called themselves Afrikaners. Africans. Unlike the English-speaking South African, the Afrikaner does not look to England or any European country as the mother country. His only point of reference is South Africa. He does not see South Africa as a colonial outpost. He is deeply rooted in the soil of South Africa. How dare you question my Africanness?”

  Viliki laughed and remarked that Adam de Vries was the kind of African who viewed himself as superior to other Africans. Otherwise why had he perpetuated discrimination based on race?

  “It was for the good of everyone,” screamed Adam de Vries. “Things just went wrong. But there was never any intention to hurt anyone. All we wanted to do was to guide the black man to civilisation.”

  “Which is what you continue to do today, hey?” said Viliki sarcastically. “With your Excelsior Development Trust. Guide the natives to civilisation.”

  “One can never win with you, Viliki,” said an exasperated Adam de Vries. “If we fold our arms and do nothing, you still blame us. You must admit it, Viliki. Yo
u need us. A black man’s way of thinking is that he cannot create a job for himself. He wants the white man to guide him. Or even create a job for him.”

  Such debates always ended in deadlock. Viliki would walk away from Adam de Vries’s office fuming and vowing that he would never visit the stubborn old codger again. But of course the next time he was in Excelsior, he would go to Adam de Vries’s office again.

  On the road with the Seller of Songs, Viliki admitted something he would never admit in the presence of Adam de Vries or any white man of Excelsior, lest it reinforce their I-told-you-so attitude. He told the Seller of Songs—who had very little recollection of the days of apartheid because she had been too young then—that those had been very bad days because people were oppressed.

  “But at least Excelsior was clean,” he added. “Mahlatswetsa was clean. Gardens were neat. The town council even gave a prize for the best garden.”

  We had heard this gripe about the lack of cleanliness before. It used to be Viliki’s daily song even before he took to the road with the Seller of Songs: that we didn’t care about beautiful gardens any more.

  “Today people don’t care,” he lamented. “They are now free. Tall grass grows in front of their houses. They expect the government to come and clean their gardens for them. Why else did they fight for freedom if the government they elected will not remove the grass in front of their houses? People are free. They must enjoy their freedom. They must sit on their stoops all day long and the government must feed them. During the days of apartheid, they used to go out and look for work. Now they are free. The government must feed them. If Mahlatswetsa Location is filthy, it is the fault of the government. The government must clean Mahlatswetsa Location. Is that what freedom means to us?”