The Madonna of Excelsior

by Zakes Mda

  “What do you want?” Angela van der Walt had asked abruptly, without looking at her. She had continued to scribble something on a piece of paper.

  “I am looking for the meeting of the council,” Popi had responded.

  “It has not started yet,” Angela van der Walt had said. “You can wait outside. We do not allow members of the public into the gallery until the members of the council have arrived.”

  “I am a member of the council,” Popi had said.

  Angela van der Walt had raised her head for the first time. Her face had melted into a smile, as she looked the twenty-five-year-old girl over. Girl. Not woman. The custom was that Popi was a girl. So was Niki at forty-seven. So would Niki’s mother have been, if she had still been alive. Kitchen-girl. Nanny-girl. And now this girl in this hallowed hall? Council-girl? Council-girl wearing her mother’s curtains fashioned into a big turban. Light-complexioned council-girl with blue eyes. Beautiful tall slender council-girl in a red dress.

  Angela van der Walt had chuckled to herself and had led Popi back into the council chamber.

  “The members of the council sit at this table,” Angela van der Walt had explained. “You can sit anywhere you like except at the head of the table. Only the mayor, when you have elected one, sits at the head of the table.”

  Foolishly, Popi had chosen a place directly opposite the window. The invasive sun had not yet found its way through the opening. Angela van der Walt had returned to her office.

  A few minutes later, members of the council had begun to trickle in. Three members from the National Party. Among them Lizette de Vries. One member from the Freedom Front, in the formidable figure of Tjaart Cronje. The Freedom Front, an alliance of a number of those right-wing groupings who had decided to fight for the homeland of the Afrikaner within the system, had been a late entrant in the general elections the previous year. For the local elections this year, the Freedom Front had fielded a number of candidates. Only Tjaart Cronje had been successful.

  Popi had fidgeted uneasily while waiting for the five other members of the Movement she was representing to arrive. She was alone among the four Boers. They were talking among themselves, ignoring her. Discussing farm and farming matters that she knew nothing about. And weddings and christenings of people she had never heard of. This conversation was above party politics, for even Tjaart Cronje participated in it.

  Soon Popi’s comrades had arrived, including Viliki. The Movement was represented by six young councillors, none of them above the age of thirty. The Young Lions, as they called themselves. Popi revelled in being a Young Lion.

  Her entry into the world of politics had been an unexpected one. Soon after her body had healed from its beating, she had been sucked into the Movement. The Movement had become her lover. When Niki had shown concern, Popi had told her that the Movement filled a hole in her heart. She had started by attending the rallies of the Movement. Not only those held in Excelsior. She had chased them all over the eastern Free State. Right up to Qwa Qwa, two hundred and fifty kilometres away. Niki’s pleas had gone unheeded. The call of the wild had been too strong. The Movement had seduced her, and she had surrendered herself completely.

  Niki had even tried to marry her off. To no one in particular.

  “It’s high time you found yourself a good man, Popi,” Niki had said. “You will end up being a lefetwa.”

  Popi had laughed at the prospect of ending up an old maid. A lefetwa.

  “There are no good men out there, Niki,” she had responded.

  “They cannot all be bad. There’s bound to be a good man waiting for your love.”

  “Maybe when you are dead, Niki—God forbid—when you are dead, I’ll think of such things.”

  “So it is me who is holding you ransom?”

  “You are not holding me, Niki. I just want to look after you. I don’t need anyone else when you are there.”

  “Rubbish! You are the one who needs looking after.”

  Niki had contemplated this exchange for a while, and then she had suddenly blurted out, “It is the Movement, isn’t it? It is the Movement that is making you a lefetwa!”

  “It is not the Movement,” Popi had explained patiently. “Yes, I am dedicated to it. But it is not holding me from marriage. Even if I were to marry, that man would have to understand that I am dedicated to the Movement first and foremost. He would have to be a Movement man himself.”

  Niki had given up on her with the final mutter that they were trying to take her children away, without really elaborating on the identity of they. They were pillaging her heart for the last nestling that had taken refuge in its corners. Ripping it out without mercy. Leaving only emptiness.

  Popi had continued with her campaigns for the Movement.

  We had witnessed Popi’s emergence from the battering of two years before without a dent on her willowy body. We had watched her blossom into a woman of exceptional poise, with the dimples of Niki’s maidenhood. Her beauty had even erased the thoughts that used to nag us about her being a boesman. Well, not quite erased them. They had just shifted to the back of our minds. And we did not recall them every time we saw her. Perhaps our eyes were getting used to her. As they were getting used to others like her. Many others. Walking the streets of Excelsior, as the late and lamented Minister of Justice, the Honourable Mr P.C. Pelser, had once put it when he was explaining to his colleagues in Parliament why the police had had to act against the Excelsior 19.

  Whenever we saw Popi, we praised her beauty and forgot our old gibes that she was a boesman. We lamented the fact that we never saw her smile. That a permanent frown marred her otherwise beautiful face. That her dimples were wasted without a smile. Perhaps we had forgotten that we had stolen her smiles.

  It was sad that she could not see any beauty in herself.

  “If only she would take off that turban she always wears like a white Winnie Mandela,” some of us said.

  “She will be a model one day. If only she could go to the city. Even to Bloemfontein.”

  “You can’t be a model in Bloemfontein. She would have to go to Johannesburg or Cape Town to be a model.”

  “Model? Never! Haven’t you seen in the magazines? They don’t have light-skinned African models. You have to be pitch black to be an African model.”

  This, of course, was idle talk on our part. Popi had no intention of becoming a model. She had every intention of becoming a politician. Before the general elections the previous year, she had trudged the farmlands on foot, canvassing farm workers to vote for the Movement. She had told the farmers to go to hell when they fired their workers for being cheeky. She had staged fiery confrontations with those farm owners who had sent their workers packing with the message: “Go ask Mandela to give you a job,” or “Go ask Mandela for a raise.” Although the workers had enjoyed these confrontations, their problems were never solved. Until Viliki was called. He would negotiate with the farmers. He would tell them that it was in their interests to maintain good relations with their labour force. Sometimes he would be successful and get the workers their jobs back. But Popi would be the one they would sing songs about.

  The workers loved her precisely because she was a hothead. They would exclaim in admiration, “Hey, that boesman gives the Boers hell!” They had become her ardent followers. And therefore ardent followers of the Movement.

  Others had even tried their hand at propositioning her. The gift that was her body was a waste if it didn’t have sinewy muscles rubbing against it. Her skills at organising were of no use if she could not organise the warmth of the hearth and of the blankets for the father of her future children.

  But these men were crying in a void. She had no plans to become someone’s wife. Or someone’s anything. Her innocence was bliss. At the church gatherings, when other women of her age talked of carnal experiences, she pretended she knew what they were talking about. And proceeded to recruit them to vote for the Movement.

  South Africa’s first democratic general ele
ctions had come and gone. The Movement had won an overwhelming majority in Parliament and in most of the provinces. In the Free State province, some of the outstanding victories were in the districts where Popi and Viliki had campaigned.

  When the local elections were held the following year, the Excelsior branch of the Movement had put both Popi and Viliki’s names on the candidates’ list. There had been murmurs of nepotism from some members. But the view that Popi had earned a place on the candidates’ list in her own right prevailed. She had established a big following among the farm workers, who had voted for the Movement. She had worked very hard, and deserved the honour of representing a ward in Mahlatswetsa Location. Just like the Sisulu family in the National Parliament in Cape Town, one sage observed. The matriarch, Albertina, was a Member of Parliament. So was her daughter, Lindiwe, and also her son, Max. Her husband, Walter, would have been one too if he had chosen to stand. He had paid enough dues even to be President of the country. All of these family members were in Parliament in their own right as leaders who had worked for the Movement over the years, both in exile and inside the country. If there was no nepotism in the case of the Sisulus, then there was no nepotism in the case of Viliki and Popi.

  This argument had won the day and Popi’s name had stayed on the list.

  Popi revelled in being a Young Lion who breathed fire. But in the council chambers on this first day, she sat timidly. Urine continued to build up pressure in her bladder while Angela van der Walt spoke endlessly about procedure.

  The first business of the day was the election of the mayor. Angela van der Walt presided over the election. The National Party nominated Lizette de Vries. The Movement nominated Viliki Pule. The three members of the National Party voted for Lizette de Vries. The six members of the Movement voted for Viliki Pule. Tjaart Cronje abstained. Viliki Pule became the first black mayor of Excelsior.

  “Now, Your Worship,” said Angela van der Walt, with a tinge of sarcasm in her voice, “you have to take over the chair.”

  She vacated the head of the table, and left the council chamber. Popi jumped up and followed her. In the corridor, she asked the town clerk to show her the toilet.

  Chairing meetings was nothing strange to Viliki. He had experience in chairing the branch meetings of the Movement. But the council, as the town clerk had explained, had its own rules and regulations. It had its own procedure, of which Viliki knew very little. Although, of course, the town clerk’s littie lecture had been of great help.

  Viliki called the councillors to order, and thanked them for placing this great trust in him. He promised to serve them diligently and faithfully. A member of the Movement moved that the honourable members of the council should discuss the swearing-in ceremony and a big feast for all the people of Excelsior to welcome their new mayor.

  “Is there a budget for a feast?” asked Lizette de Vries.

  “The first thing they think about is a feast,” said Tjaart Cronje. “Not the roads, not the water, not the sewerage and rubbish removal. But a feast! That’s the problem with these affirmative actiorl people.”

  “You can’t call a fellow member an affirmative action person, Mr Cronje,” said Viliki. “You will have to withdraw that remark.”

  “Withdraw?” asked Tjaart Cronje, with a scoffing chuckle. “Have I spoken a lie? Are you not here because of affirmative action? Aren’t you people everywhere because of affirmative action? Didn’t I leave the army because it was absorbing terrorists into its ranks? The very people I had been taught were the enemy of the Afrikaner race?”

  “That has nothing to do with this council,” said one of the National Party members.

  “It has everything to do with this council!” shouted Tjaart Cronje, foaming at the mouth. “I worked hard in that army. I deserved a promotion. But did I get it? No! Instead a black terrorist was promoted. I couldn’t stay in an affirmative action army and salute an affirmative action general. I resigned and came back to Excelsior to run my mother’s butchery.”

  During these rantings, Popi had sneaked back into her seat where she sat quietly.

  “Mr Cronje will have to apologise for insulting fellow members of the council,” insisted the mayor.

  “Well, Tjaart, you know you can’t run away from these affirmative action people, as you call them,” said Lizette de Vries, obviously amused. “They are everywhere in South Africa. Where are you going to go now?”

  “That is why my party wants a separate homeland for the Afrikaners,” screamed Tjaart Cronje.

  The whole council laughed. Some members of the Movement heckled that he would not have a homeland in Excelsior.

  “Questions of the homeland are discussed in Parliament,” said Lizette de Vries. “Here we are only concerned with how best we can run this town.”

  “Don’t even speak, Tant Lizette,” cried Tjaart Cronje in great anguish. “It is people like you who have sold this country down the drain. You and your Broederbond. The founders of the Broeder-bond must be turning in their graves. When they established the organisation in 1918, its aim was to fight against the hypocrisy of the English who were discriminating against the Afrikaner in the civil service and in business. But soon the Broederbond began to discriminate against those Afrikaners who were not members. And now the Broederbond has handed this country over to the communists on a silver platter.”

  The members of the council applauded mockingly.

  “We are not interested in your internal Afrikaner politics and your broedertwis,” said a member of the Movement, laughing.

  “You grew up with this man, Viliki . . . er . . . Your Worship,” said another member. “You should know how to calm him down.”

  “He was not like this when we were growing up,” said Viliki, not bothering to hide his exasperation. A chairperson who lost control of the proceedings would clearly lose the respect of the members.

  WE HAD HEARD the news even before he arrived in Mahlatswetsa Location. We welcomed him into the township with ululations. We lifted him shoulder-high and toyi-toyied with him. Chanting slogans of his prowess. On the spot we composed a song: Ruler of all. Ruler of even the mightiest and the richest of Excelsior. He who holds sway over Adam de Vries, Captain Klein-Jan Lombard, Tjaart Cronje, Johannes Smit, Gys Uys, François Bornman and the rest of the genteel people of Excelsior. We sang until we arrived in front of his mother’s shack. We called out to Niki to come and savour the victory of her loins.

  But Niki did not venture out. She lay on the bed and mumbled that they wanted to take all her children away. That not only did they want to take these children away, they were actually doing it. Taking them away one by one. And there was nothing she could do about it.

  The days that followed saw Niki’s shack gaining fame countrywide. It was because of the photograph of Viliki Pule, Mayor of Excelsior, barefoot, sitting on a chair outside the shack, wearing the mayoral chain. It graced the front pages of major national newspapers.

  EVERYBODY IS A HERO

  AT ONE TIME AND

  A VILLAIN AT ANOTHER TIME

  SHE is a dreamer. A raw sienna mother with splashes of crimson. And she spends her red days lying naked on the red soil between two peach trees with blue trunks. She gave birth to the trees so that they could provide her with shade. But there is hardly any shade because the trees do not bear leaves. Only pink blossoms. Born and reborn all year round. Without bearing fruit.

  We were able to read Viliki’s and Popi’s lives in the void of their rebirth. Born again, not into some charismatic religious faith, although Popi continued to sing for the Methodists and for the dead at funerals. Born again into the suaveness of local government politics.

  We called them the Pule Siblings. The people of the Movement called them the Pule Comrades. And we talked of them as though we were talking of one person. Viliki-and-Popi. A united front against retrogressive forces in the council chamber. For two years, the voice that came from their mouths was one voice. Same tone. Same timbre.

  At the time
, we did not know that the united front was just that—a front. That when they got home, they fought raging bat-des in which the brother tried to contain the tempestuousness of the sister. To the extent that a chasm was developing between them.

  When Viliki visited Niki’s shack, Niki would notice the tension between her children. She would mumble that they had finally succeeded in taking her children away. When Popi visited Viliki’s house, they did nothing but argue. Her visits were becoming less frequent.

  Viliki’s house itself had been a source of argument. It was an RDP house, of the Reconstruction and Development Programme. Four tiny rooms. Two bedrooms, one lounge and one kitchen. A small concrete stoep at the front door. Grey walls of slightly roughcast cement blocks. Corrugated-iron roof. Big burglar-proofed windows on both sides of the varnished pine door. A small garden in front and a small garden at the back. Four strands of loose barbed wire on three sides of the yard, separating the RDP house from other RDP houses. No fence in the front.

  Viliki’s house had a well-tended lawn in front, and a number of the arums that are known as varkoore because of their flowers that are shaped like the ear of a pig. The arums were in bloom with white and black flowers for most of the year. Passers-by stopped to take a closer look, for they had never seen black flowers before.

  The back garden had a water tap and a small patch of cabbages, tomatoes and spinach. A pit latrine in one corner.

  RDP houses were the pride of Viliki’s town council. A number of them had been built since it assumed power two years ago. More people had been housed than at any time in the history of Excelsior. In two years, Mahlatswetsa had become a sprawling township of grey houses and some red brick houses.

  Very few shacks could be seen in the location. And those that did remain were in yards that had clear signs that construction of a more meaningful magnitude was about to begin. Or had begun. It was the objective of the council to eliminate shacks altogether. Every citizen of Excelsior deserved to live in a proper house.