Zakes Mda - The Madonna of Excelsior

Maria and Mmampe could not understand Niki’s attitude.

“Whatever did we do to your mother?” asked Mmampe when she next saw Popi. “I hear that she had a feast and didn’t even invite us.”

“It was not really a feast,” explained Popi. “It was just a small tea brought by the people of Thaba Nchu for the mothers of the church to celebrate my wearing the uniform of the Young Women’s Union.”

“So, because we are not mothers of the church, you did not even think of us,” said Mmampe, laughing. And then jokingly she added, “We who looked after you when you were a baby in the cells of Winburg.”

Popi did not know what she was talking about. She knew that she was a coloured girl because of some misdemeanour of her mother’s. But no one had ever told her about the case of the Excelsior 19, how she had spent a month in a police cell while her skin regained its complexion after she had been a truly coloured girl. Although she had no idea what Mmampe was talking about, she didn’t care to pursue the matter. Adults had a tendency to talk in riddles. It was their prerogative.

VILIKI GAME HOME some nights, but gave himself to the wandering land before dawn. He was always restless. While Niki seemed oblivious to his comings and goings, and sometimes addressed him even when he was not there, Popi worried about him. One day they might come and pick him up.

On the evenings when he was home, he sat with Popi by the brazier and roasted mielies. Popi cherished these moments. But she spoilt them by nagging him about absconding from school before completing matric in order to work for the Movement under the ground. To become a mole in the mountains of Lesotho. He responded that one day she would thank him for sacrificing his life for her and for the rest of South Africa.

Popi wondered how it had all started. What made her brother want to risk his life for the rest of South Africa, and what had brought him to the point where he cared more for the rest of South Africa than for his own safety and that of his mother and sister? How was the seed first planted in him? By whom? And where was Sekatle when this deadly seed was first planted? How did Sekatle and Viliki come to take such different directions when they had been such close friends? Why was Sekatle’s choice of direction proving to be so lucrative while Viliki’s was full of nothing but suffering?

Instead of answering her questions, Viliki taught Popi new songs that he had learnt in the mysterious underground. Many of these songs, he said, came from Zimbabwe. They were chimurenga songs. Songs of liberation. Zimbabwean guerrillas used to sing them when they were fighting for their liberation. They had since won it. And were ruled by a great leader who was going to take the country to great heights. Robert Mugabe. He would make Africa soar. It did not matter that the Movement had favoured another leader, Joshua Nkomo, who had been in a closer alliance with it. Robert Mugabe was the one who had been victorious in the elections. Robert Mugabe would do just as well. He too was a great African.

Then he told her about other struggles in Africa. Struggles that were inspiring the youth. Frelimo in Mozambique. Swapo in Namibia. The Polisario Front in Western Sahara. To Popi, these stories acquired the stature of folktales in her imagination. The animal tales that Niki used to tell her when she was still Niki. When they used to travel to Thaba Nchu to immerse themselves in the colourful world of the trinity. Before Niki began to hide herself inside herself.

Stories like folktales. Although folktales were better. They always had a happy ending. Viliki’s stories had no ending. Just people struggling under the ground. Struggling and struggling and struggling. And singing songs.

She loved that part. She learnt all the songs and sang them in her honey-coated voice. Viliki warned her never to sing the songs in the presence of other people. But what if Popi forgot and burst out into a chimurenga song in public? That did not worry Viliki too much. The songs were in the Shona language. A language of Zimbabwe. No one would know what they were about.

While Viliki was teaching Popi chimurenga songs, Tjaart was visiting his home in a blaze of glory. He was on a few days’ pass from the Tempe military base in Bloemfontein. Young boeremeisies called at the butchery and pretended to chat to Cornelia Cronje while eyeing Tjaart as he helped his mother at the meat grinder. Boeremeisies swooned and swooned. The deepest sighs were heard from the direction of Jacomina Bornman, the domi-nee’s daughter.

The elders of the church, led by the Reverend François Bornman, his marble eye gleaming, made a point of meeting Tjaart Cronje after the service on Sunday. They commended him for doing his bit for his country. He was a good Afrikaner whose vision had been shaped by Afrikaans newspapers and the Bible. And both these publications carried gospel truths: one about the secular world that the Afrikaner was trying to shape for his children and the other about the Kingdom that the Afrikaner was striving to enter and occupy in the hereafter.

“Remember always to obey the authorities,” said the Reverend François Bornman, “because their authority comes directly from God.”

The Afrikaner was in the middle of a war, which he had to win at all costs. It was the duty of heroes like Tjaart Cronje and his comrades in arms to destroy all the communists and terrorists who were bent on destroying the way of life for which the forebears had fought against the native tribes and (most importantly) against the British. The Afrikaner was fighting to preserve the laws of God, which were codified in South Africa into the set of laws that comprised apartheid. Apartheid was therefore prescribed by the Bible. The future of this land to which God had led the Afrikaner of old, and the future of civilisation in Africa, were in the hands of young men like Tjaart Cronje.

Adam de Vries agreed. He spoke on behalf of the ruling National Party to which God had granted the stewardship of the country. Young men like Tjaart Cronje should never be misled by impractical solutions such as those proffered by breakaway parties like the Herstigte Nasionale Party — to which scatterbrained Afrikaners like Johannes Smit belonged. The future of the country lay in the hands of Tjaart Cronje and his peers, under the leadership of the National Party. Young men must therefore vasbyt — hang in there — and defend their country from communists and terrorists.

All the while Tjaart Cronje was standing to attention, listening intently to the town fathers. Pride swelling in his chest. His late father, Stephanus Cronje, would have shared that pride. In memory of the departed, he was going to defend this country with his life.

HIS SUBJECTS ARE ordinary folk doing ordinary things. Yet God radiates from them. As He radiates from the man sitting on a blue kitchen chair. Ovaleyed man wearing a red beret and a brown overall. He holds a big blue cross close to his chest. Big man in big black miners’ boots sitting against a whitewashed wall with light blue smudges. Thick black outlines make him and the chair appear very robust. His head is slightly bowed in prayer.

After the prayer, Popi stood over the banana loaf cake on the “kitchen scheme” table. Tiny pink and blue candles burning on the brown cake. Four candles. They sang happy birthday to Niki. Forty years young. Yet she looked old and battered. Like a woman whose face had been exposed to many a thunderstorm. Floods had eroded it. And hydroquinone had caked it with scaly chubaba patches of black, purple and red. There was a slight suggestion of irritation in her eyes. All this unnecessary fuss!

“I told you, I don’t want any of this,” she said.