Zakes Mda - The Madonna of Excelsior

Excelsior needed a festival of its own, Popi argued. Why, even neighbouring Clocolan had an event that drew farmers from all over southern Africa: the Clocolan Tractor and Farm Implement Show. Excelsior must have its own festival.

“Of what?” asked Lizette de Vries. “What are we going to promote?”

“I don’t know,” said Popi. “We need to think of something.”

“Perhaps we should visit some of these festivals,” said Lizette de Vries. “We might get some ideas.”

When the time came, Popi Pule and Lizette de Vries took a casual drive in Lizette’s Isuzu bakkie to Clocolan, fifty-five kilometres on a shimmering bitumen road lined on both sides with cosmos of different colours. Among these grew yellow sunflowers that had adapted to a life of wildness. They had developed small heads as a result, in order not to appear bigger than the cosmos that were hosting them. Every year, the heads of these roadside sunflowers became smaller.

The Clocolan Tractor and Farm Implement Show was one of the highlights of the year for the eastern Free State farming community. The Show Grounds turned green, yellow and red with old and new tractors, ploughs and trailers on display. There were yellow Caterpillar Challenger tractors, red Massey Ferguson tractors and green John Deere tractors. There were also the newfangled Fiat and Volvo tractors that were smaller, and which were catching on fast with trendy farmers. Although there was also giant equipment on display, such as harvesters and irrigation equipment, the crowds were drawn more to the tractors. On this occasion, the showpiece was a 1930 John Deere Model D tractor. Popi and Lizette de Vries joined the crowd that surrounded the veteran John Deere.

“Since when have you become a farmer, Lizette?” asked a voice.

She turned quickly to find herself staring into the smiling eyes of Johannes Smit. She had not seen him for quite some time. He had not been socialising much with the likes of Adam de Vries and his wife, given that he believed that they belonged to the group of Afrikaners who had sold the Boere out to the communists. A group that had been misled by one F.W. de Klerk, who had capitulated to one Nelson Mandela as soon as the Afrikaners had elected the said de Klerk President of South Africa. Johannes Smit kept his distance from such Afrikaners. And immersed himself in his farming. Occasionally he visited Tjaart Cronje at his house or at the butchery to complain about how the affirmative action people were messing up Excelsior. Soon the town would be bankrupt, the two agreed. Sewerage would run in the streets. Everything would collapse. Things would be so bad that the Afrikaner would seize power again to put things in order. He was eagerly waiting for that moment. Perhaps the election of Lizette de Vries to the mayoral position, after the affirmative action people had failed to run the town efficiently, was a step in that direction.

“Johannes!” cried Lizette de Vries. “It is wonderful to see you.”

Johannes Smit looked at Popi for a long time. Until she began to fidget.

“This is Popi Pule,” said Lizette Vries. “She is the town councillor in charge of libraries.”

“Of course,” chuckled Johannes Smit. “But she won’t find any books here. Except for tractor manuals.”

“I am not looking for books here,” said Popi.

“Of course you wouldn’t be looking for books here,” said Johannes Smit coldly. “You look for them in the white library in town to take to your white elephant library in the township. You slash the budget of the library in town in order to stock the township library.”

“There is no white library in town,” said Popi, smiling condescendingly. “The library in town and the one in Mahlatswetsa Location both belong to all the people of Excelsior.”

Lizette de Vries laughed and commented that she would never have imagined the day when Johannes Smit would be interested in libraries and their budgets. Popi walked away to take a closer look at the showpiece.

“She is as feisty as her mother,” said Johannes Smit.

“You remember her mother, then?” asked Lizette de Vries.

“I would not have known she was Niki’s daughter. But you see, she looks like Stephanus Cronje. A beautiful version of Stephanus Cronje.”

Then he added as an afterthought, “When he died, he was more or less the age she is now.”

Popi made her way back to join them, and Lizette de Vries felt uncomfortable with the subject. She asked if Johannes Smit had anything on display. He led them to his brand-new John Deere six-cylinder turbo-charged green and yellow tractor. He insisted that Popi climb up onto the seat and showed her how to start the engine. She turned on the ignition and pressed the accelerator. The engine roared. She laughed the laughter of the peals of little bells. The second chin of the bald-headed round-bellied man with a sagging face shook with laughter. Lizette de Vries smiled and shook her head in wonder.

The next time Lizette de Vries and Popi met Johannes Smit was at the cherry festival in Ficksburg two months later. The two women were still exploring various festivals, hoping that a bright idea for the great Excelsior Festival would strike them. Although they were only at this festival for one day, they were able to sample some of the entertainment and to join tour groups to cherry and asparagus farms. Johannes Smit invited them to his stall and treated them to his cherry liqueur. An old black couple at a table nearby stared at them. The name of Stephanus Cronje and something about the Excelsior 19 escaped their lips. They thought they were whispering between themselves. But their whispers had the quality of stage whispers. They found their way to Johannes Smit’s stall, and to Popi’s ears.

Old people had a tendency to remember things that happened thirty years ago whenever they saw Popi. And to think of people she knew nothing about. For no one had ever given her any history lessons on the events that had shaped the town of Excelsior. She knew vaguely that there had been a scandal. Snippets of gossip about her origins had drifted her way throughout her twenty-nine years of existence. She never asked Niki anything about it and Niki never volunteered anything. Popi did not want to know. She was Pule’s child.

THEY SAY our mothers no longer want to talk about these things. Our mothers have learnt to live with themselves. Niki lives with the bees. She is immersed in them. She is immersed in serenity.

SOMEONE’S PORTRAIT. A much more naturalistic head in a battered black hat. Perhaps the trinity wants to show that his range extends beyond distorted figures. That he can paint real people. People who look like those we see in our daily lives. This face, however, is not likely to be seen in our daily lives. It belongs to the days of ox-wagons and trekkers. Although the man does not look at you directly, his eyes are deep and penetrating. The face is as weather-beaten as the hat, with deep furrows of wisdom roaming fervently across it. A black pipe hangs loosely over the white beard. A blue neckerchief appears above the collar of a heavy brown coat.

When Viliki was not immersed in the Seller of Songs, he visited Adam de Vries at his office to engage in what de Vries quaintly called “chewing the fat”.

Viliki walked into the reception room and looked at the portrait of the lawyer’s bearded ancestor that hung on the wall next to a flag of the old South Africa. He was a regular visitor to this office, yet he always wondered why de Vries displayed this painful flag when he professed to be of the new South Africa. In fact, he actually claimed that he had brought about the new South Africa. He often told Viliki about a congress he had once attended in 1982 in Marquard, another eastern Free State town thirty-four kilometers north of Clocolan. He had been one of the 260 delegates of the National Party. He could see the waves of the right-wing, he said. He had bravely stood up and told the congress that the government had no option but to negotiate with the Movement and unban it.