Zakes Mda - The Madonna of Excelsior

“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?