Zakes Mda - The Heart of Redness

“To the Blue Flamingo Hotel,” says the elder.

“Jump in.”

The old man struggles to climb into the back of the bakkie. Even though Dalton is alone in the front seat, customs do not die easily. Dalton can see a hint of anger on the elder’s face. But he dismisses it as the natural anger of the Unbelievers.

On the road that branches off to the Blue Flamingo Dalton stops, and Bhonco jumps down. He stumbles a bit. Dalton is about to drive away when Bhonco shouts that he has left his stick and knobkerrie where he was sitting on the bakkie. He reaches for his weapons.

“Hawu! What now with the weapons?” asks Dalton.

“Because I am going to fight!” answers the angry elder.

“Oh, no! Not the war of the Believers and Unbelievers again. Will you people ever stop your silly wars of the past?”

“It is not the Believers I am going to fight, although after what you and they have done to stop the development of Qolorha, I would be happy to give all of you one or two bumps on your stupid heads.”

Bhonco explains that he is going to fight the white tourists at the Blue Flamingo Hotel. They insulted his wife. NoPetticoat came home from babysitting fuming that white people from England — a middle-aged couple and their three teenage children — made a monkey of her. They had what Dalton understood to be a camcorder, and took photographs of her. They all posed with her. She did not mind that. Tourists do that all the time. But that was not enough for these characters from the queen’s own country. They asked her to talk into the machine in her language. And say what? Anything. Any old thing as long as it is in the clicky language. She uttered some words which meant absolutely nothing. Then they asked her to sing. She sang a few notes into the machine, even though by this time she was feeling foolish. Fellow workers were looking at her, laughing. Then the tourists asked her to dance. Her dignity was hurt, but she had to do it since she didn’t want the hotel manager to accuse her of being rude to his guests.

“Can you believe it, son of Dalton. . making my wife look foolish like that?” asks Bhonco. “Do you think they would do that kind of thing to their own mothers?”

Although Dalton does not really understand what the fuss is about, he tries to calm the elder. It would not be a nice thing for the future of Qolorha if he went to fight tourists at the hotel. Is he not one of the people who want to attract more tourists to the region by building a gambling resort? How will tourists come when they hear that villagers go to hotels to attack them for no apparent reason?

“For no apparent reason?” bristles Bhonco. “Would you be happy if they did that to your wife?”

“Tat’uBhonco, your wife works at that hotel. In the evenings she sings izitibiri for the tourists. Why is she offended now?”

Dalton is referring to the concerts that are held in the bar of the Blue Flamingo. Saturdays are seafood nights at the hotel. Huge bedecked billiard tables heave with raw oysters and grilled prawns, langoustines, abalone, mussels, and line fish. These are served with garlic butter and chili sauce, and fried rice. When the tourists have stuffed themselves, they relax with wine and beer. The women who work as cleaners, babysitters, waitresses, and chefs’ assistants form themselves into a choir and sing izitibiri, the songs that are popular at school concerts and are also known as “sounds.” The workers clown around, entertaining tourists, who donate money in a plate that is passed around. At the end of the concert the workers share the proceeds of their weekly ventures into the world of showbiz.

“That is different!” protests Bhonco. “That is a concert where everyone sings and dances. It is not an attempt to ridicule my wife.”

To placate the elder, Dalton invites him over to his store. He promises him that they will sit down and explore other ways of solving the matter. After expressing his doubts about Dalton’s ability to solve anything, especially now that he is in cahoots with the enemies of progress, Bhonco jumps back into the back of the van. Dalton drives on to Vulindlela Trading Store.

He regrets this indiscretion as soon as they arrive at the store. Zim and Camagu are sitting on the wooden yokes bundled together on the verandah, waiting for him. A noisy group of herdboys is watching an ancient black-and-white movie on the television screen against the wall. Camagu wonders how they are able to follow the dialogue, which is all in English. And they laugh at the right places too. They egg the hero on and condemn the villain. They follow and understand every detail of the story. Then he remembers that he should not be surprised. As an urchin in the townships of Johannesburg, he used to be a regular in the dingy movie houses. He and his friends followed the exploits of Roy Rogers and Tex Ritter in all their intricacies, although none of them knew any English.

Zim’s face turns sour as soon as he sees Bhonco. Camagu smiles, stands up, and extends his hand to the elder. Bhonco ignores it.

“So it is true what they say,” says Bhonco sadly. “You have now joined the Believers.”

“It is not true, Tat’uBhonco. I do not belong to the Believers, in the same way that I do not belong to the Unbelievers. I am just a person. My ancestors were not here when these quarrels began with Prophetess Nongqawuse.”

“You see, he is a Believer!” exclaims Bhonco triumphantly. “He even calls her a prophetess. She was no prophetess. She was a fake. She was used by white people to colonize us.”

“I want you to understand this, both of you,” says Camagu firmly. “To me you are both respected elders. I do not care about your being Believers or Unbelievers. I respect you both in the same way. Please don’t drag me into your quarrels. Neither of you must expect me not to be friends with the other.”

Bhonco looks at Dalton, and whispers to him in exasperation, “And they say this is the boy who wants to marry my daughter. He can’t even stand like a man in support of the side of his future in-laws. He comes with all this learning from America. Yet he does not see the value of having more tourists come here.”

“Don’t you realize, Tat’uBhonco,” says Dalton patiently, “that the tourists who come to spend their money here. . they come precisely because the place is unspoiled?”

“Spend money on whom?” asks Bhonco. “On you, of course, because they buy food from your shop. You take them around in your van to see the places of our shame. You stand to benefit the most if things stay the way they are. And so do your friends who own the hotel.”

“We employ people from the village.”

“Exactly. Now these developments you are trying to stop will employ even more people. Everyone will benefit.”

Zim is looking up in the sky, humming a song, as if none of these matters concern him.

Then softly, as if to himself, he says, “I hear that some people depend on their daughters to build houses for them. Where were they when men were working for themselves?”

“If you are talking about me, why don’t you address me directly? What are you afraid of?” asks Bhonco. “Or are you jealous that my daughter can afford to build her father a house because she is the principal of a secondary school instead of cleaning after white people?”

Those, like Camagu, who do not follow village gossip closely learn for the first time that Xoliswa Ximiya has built her father a second house — a four-walled tin-roofed ixande — saving him from the ridicule of having only one pink rondavel at his compound. The Unbelievers see this as a wonderful gesture from a daughter who has obviously been brought up well. The Believers, on the other hand, think it is a shame that a man who should have worked for himself to fill his compound with many rondavels, hexagons, and at least one ixande has to depend on a girl to build him a house. The fact that the man is an Unbeliever, and Unbelievers are expected to be well off since they did not kill their cattle during the days of Nongqawuse, makes his relative penury even more remarkable. He must have led a careless life. Or his fathers before him were merciless in their feasting on Twin-Twin’s wealth during the Middle Generations. They devoured cattle that had escaped the cattle-killing frenzy without thinking of future generations.