Zakes Mda - The Madonna of Excelsior

Popi was still too small to be toilet-trained. She did everything on the single nappy she had been wearing when she and Niki were arrested. Niki washed it once, in the morning, with the same water she had used for washing herself in a metal basin. While it dried on the high barred window, she wrapped Popi in her petticoat. And held her close to her bosom. Rubbing her chin gently on Popi’s head. Hair was beginning to grow. Not kinky. Not frizzy. Straight hair lying flat on her scalp. Brain throbbing under the skin of the head where the bones of the skull had not yet closed ranks. Bubbling in a slow rhythm like porridge under a low flame.

WHEN THE MAIN ACTORS of the unfolding drama began to arrive, we were already crowding outside the Excelsior Magistrate’s Court. There were more strangers than us, the people of Excelsior. Strangers from Johannesburg and from as far afield as London and New York. Strangers with cameras and notebooks. Talking to us and asking us questions. Big television cameras that none of us had ever seen before. Taking pictures of Excelsior and sending them directly to the living rooms of England and America. Transmitting our lives through the big masts that had been erected outside our post office. Twenty television masts outside one little post office in a one-street town. Unfortunately, none of these pictures would be seen in South Africa. There was no television service in the country yet.

Busybodies spreading the shame of Excelsior to the world. Even invading decent volk working in their gardens. Bombarding them with inane questions.

“Leave us alone in our trouble,” we heard Oom Gys Uys screaming from his garden at one of these scandalmongers who had asked him what the community thought of its disgraced elite. “Don’t interfere with us!” warned Oom Gys as he turned his back and walked away.

We saw Adam de Vries walking from his black Chevrolet sedan towards the courtroom. He was holding a big black briefcase in one hand and a wedge of files in the other. He looked like a member of the Cape Town Parliament in his pinstriped suit and black Battersby hat. As soon as the vultures with cameras and notebooks saw him, they pounced on him, asking him questions all at once, shoving microphones into his face. Unlike Oom Gys Uys, he didn’t seem to be perturbed by all this attention. He seemed to be enjoying it. He could not spend too much time answering their questions, however, for two men from the British Broadcasting Corporation — one with a microphone in his hand and another with a camera on his shoulder — were waiting for him on the steps of the courthouse.

“Excelsior has become the best-known town in the world this week,” said the BBC man talking into the microphone and facing the camera. “The small farming community — population seven hundred — was rocked a few weeks ago when some of its prominent citizens were arrested with their black maids for contravening the Immorality Act. The white accused include the secretary of the local branch of the National Party and some of the wealthiest farmers in the district. Mr Adam de Vries is the lawyer representing the white men.”

By this time, Adam de Vries had reached the steps and was facing the camera with studied graveness.

“Mr de Vries,” said the BBC man, “what are your clients’ chances?”

“They are innocent,” said Adam de Vries. “We’ll show the court that they have been framed.”

“What about the babies? Surely those babies come from somewhere,” said the BBC man.

“Certainly not from my clients,” said Adam de Vries confidently. “The state has no case against my clients.”

Then he hurried into the courtroom, his face hardly betraying his inner joy at the prospect of being seen on the screens of faraway London.

These were days of glory for Adam de Vries.

They were days of shame and humiliation for Cornelia Cronje. We saw her walk unsteadily into the courtroom. A sad figure in the comforting company of Lizette, Adam de Vries’s wife. We had not expected to see her here so soon after the calamity that had befallen her family. Stephanus Cronje had shot himself dead only a few days ago. He had been released on bail of two hundred rands. The following morning, after leaving his wife at work, he had locked himself in the guest bedroom, to which Cornelia Cronje had exiled him while she slept alone in the master bedroom they used to share in happier times. They no longer shared a conjugal life since the exposure of his activities with Niki. When she returned from work that day, something made her suspect that all was not well with her husband. She had asked the gardener to break down the bedroom door. And there he was. Stephanus Cronje. Bloody-faced. A rivulet of blood tracing its way from his temple to the foot of the bed. The shotgun with which he used to threaten us lying between his legs.

If Cornelia Cronje had been one of our people, she would be sitting on a mattress in an unfurnished bedroom, weeping softly, and being comforted by female relatives. Even if betrayal had killed all her feelings for the deceased, she would still have been required to go through the regulatory mourning rituals. But the customs of her people did not include brooding in ceremony over death. Here she was, attending a court case, eyes full of undisguised anger. And loneliness. Scurrying away from photographers into the courtroom.

We saw the white men arriving. Dodging photographers. Five white men charged with indulging in stolen pleasures. They were all out on bail of two hundred rands each, while their partners in crime remained incarcerated in the fester that was Winburg police cells. Adam de Vries had had to battle to get the magistrate to grant one of the accused, Groot-Jan Lombard, bail. The prosecutor — imported all the way from Ladybrand — had opposed the bail application. He had submitted that Groot-Jan Lombard had been involved in a case of violence in which an African woman had been killed.

“He used violence on a previous occasion,” Christiaan Calitz, the prosecutor, had said, “and as a result he was convicted and given a suspended sentence.”

Adam de Vries had stood up in defence of his client.

“Mr Lombard has undergone a total personality change,” he had said. “Previously he had a violent temper. But now he is a different man. He suffers from heart trouble and cannot survive in a prison cell. Also, his farm cannot do without him.”

These had indeed been compelling reasons. The magistrate had released him on bail of one hundred and fifty rands.

“You cannot take photographs of these men,” said an exhausted policeman. “The law does not allow you to publish photographs of accused persons.”

“We aren’t publishing them in South Africa,” responded a Cockney accent.

First to arrive was Johannes Smit, punishing his grey suit by stretching it almost to bursting point. We really were not surprised that he was one of the accused. Among all the Afrikaners of Excelsior, we knew him as an openly lecherous man. Why, he even drove to Mahlatswetsa Location on occasion to hunt for his quarry. He was known to bribe little boys with bottles of milk from his Jersey cows to “organise” him their sisters. He was the only white man we had seen actually doing this.

Then followed Groot-Jan Lombard. Tottering with a walking stick. Supported by Liezl, Klein Jan Lombard’s sizeable wife. Groot-Jan Lombard did not hesitate to use his cantankerous stick to clear his way through the vermin that were pointing cameras at him.

“Sies!” exclaimed a white female spectator, attired in a Voortrekker costume with kappie and all. “This man was revered by all of us because he took part in the Great Trek commemoration of 1938. His name is there for all to see on the plaque at the church. But here he is, involved in this evil! The world is coming to an end!”