Layout 1, page 13
the garage as well— The bitch must die!
As soon as he enters the magistrate yells at him,
‘What good is your presence here? What kind of a body-
guard are you?’
‘Calm down,’ says Don. ‘You don’t have to get hyster-
ical about it. Remember, you’re the one who told me you
don’t need a bodyguard.’
‘ Ja, man, but you’re supposed to look after my house.’
‘That’s not my brief, Ms Uys. I’m supposed to be your
bodyguard, to see to it that nothing harms you. From now
on I’m going to guard you and not your damn house. And
if you play the kind of trick you played this morning,
stealing away from the house, I’ll go to that courthouse
and sit right next to you on that bench.’
ZAKES MDA
134
‘Oh, no, I’ll not have you follow me around.’
‘I’m not asking for your permission. If something
happens to you on the way to and from work, they’re
going to ask me why. No one will ask you anything ’cause
you’ll be dead. And guess what—from now on I’m not
going to sit here and wait for things to happen. I’m going
after those Visagie Brothers. I’m going to confront the
one who is not in jail. He must know something about
this.’
The magistrate is relieved to hear this. At least that
is better than following her around like a puppy.
11
WIDOWS’ LONG MARCH TO FREEDOM
For the first time the magistrate and the bodyguard sit
down to discuss how they are going to work together. Of
course, she makes it obvious that if it were up to her, she
would have nothing to do with the bodyguard. He is
someone who has invaded her private world. But until
Stevo Visagie is put in his place, and is forced to stop his
childish games, she has no choice but to tolerate the
impudent presence of this man in her house.
This morning she will go to work and he will stay at
home and organize the removal of the red paint on the
wall. He can only hope nothing will happen to her on the
way to or from Roodepoort.
‘If you see anything suspicious, such as a car follow-
ing you, call me on my cellphone immediately,’ he says.
He orders three guards from VIP Protection Services
and in no time they have cleaned the walls and the garage
doors with a solution of turpentine. Before they get into
their armoured vehicle and return to the office, he asks
them to help him move the furniture. He is able to
vacuum places that have not been cleaned for a long time.
ZAKES MDA
136
Obviously the so-called maid who is supposed to come
once a week has not been doing a proper job of cleaning
the house. And the magistrate has not bothered to
inspect her handiwork. This week she didn’t come at all,
so Don has not met her. The magistrate doesn’t know if
she came last week. Or the week before. She vaguely
remembers getting a call from someone about a grand-
mother’s funeral in the Eastern Cape or something like
that. It is not one of the important things in her life; she
shouldn’t be expected to remember anything about it.
It is not that Don enjoys taking on the responsibility
of keeping the house clean. He just cannot live in a filthy
environment. If he has to stay here then he must clean at
least his room, the living room and the kitchen—the
spaces that he uses. Today there is help from the guards,
so he might as well get the whole house cleaned, begin-
ning with the magistrate’s bedroom.
It is locked. There are two other bedrooms and they
are locked too. Well, he cannot blame her. He is, after all,
a stranger and there is no reason why she should trust
him. He cannot deny that had the rooms been unlocked
he would surely snoop around. He is intrigued by this
woman, especially after reading all those things about
her in the magazines and newspapers. There is more to
her austere life than she is letting on.
He thanks the guards, gives them a tip and releases
them to their more important duty—that of guarding the
lives and property of affluent Johannesburgers. And of
BLACK DIAMOND
137
protecting their social events, private parties and music
festivals so that they may celebrate the new South Africa
without let or hindrance.
He is doing the finishing touches to the cleaning.
Everything is now spick and span and the living-room
furniture has been rearranged. The piles of dusty papers
and files on the coffee table and on every flat surface have
been packed neatly in boxes that he has stacked near the
bookcase. While he is removing the final specks of dust
on the display cabinet with a feather duster the magis-
trate arrives.
She is alarmed at what has been done to her living
room. For a while she is open-mouthed. Don stands there
like a showman who has just rendered a bravura perform-
ance, waiting for applause. But instead of showing
approval, the magistrate’s face displays anger.
‘Who said you could touch my things?’
Don looks amused. He is trying to understand why
she is angry. He just cannot take her seriously.
‘A simple “thank you” would have been in order, Ms
Uys,’ he says, still smiling.
‘You have no right to mess with my stuff.’
‘Mess? You call what I have done a mess?’
Once more the magistrate surveys the room. It no
longer looks like her living room. It no longer feels like
the space she has known for years. The space over which
she had dominion. Her life is no longer her own but the
stranger’s.
ZAKES MDA
138
‘Put it back the way it was,’ she commands.
‘What? Are you serious?’
‘I want it exactly as it was.’
‘Tell you what, Ms Uys, you put it back the way it was
yourself. I’m not touching that stuff. If you want your
mess the way it was, then you do it yourself. I can’t live in
a messy house.’
‘Then don’t live in it. Go back to wherever you came
from.’
Don is really amused now.
‘I’m paid to look after you, Ms Uys. And I’m going to
do it whether you like it or not. You’re not going to get
rid of me that easily.’
She goes to her room in frustration. She is used to
having her orders obeyed. She does not know how to
handle this new situation. If she were in her court she
would know exactly what to do—cite the impertinent
upstart for contempt and summarily sentence him to a
term of imprisonment. No one has ever tried any bullshit
in her court. Until Stevo Visagie. And look where he is now.
In the evening she returns to the living room to
watch the news on SABC 3. Don is already watching the
news and occupying the sofa. He shifts to one side, cre-
ating space for her, but she ignores him and goes to the
sideboard for her room-temperature bottle of wine. She
also gets one glass from the display cabinet and sits in an
easy chair away from Don. She pours herself a glass of
wine. There is an uneasy silence between them.
BLACK DIAMOND
139
After a while Don says, ‘I do drink wine too, you
know.’
‘You are my bodyguard, not my friend,’ she says
sternly. ‘I have no obligation to accord you any hospitality.’
‘Accord me?’ Don asks, mocking her accent. ‘Well, I
never! Anyway, Ms Uys, I would not touch that wine if
you begged me to. I like mine chilled. And certainly not
from a bottle of plonk.’
She was going to respond but her attention is sud-
denly drawn to the screen. The Society of Widows, led by
Aunt Magda and Ma Visagie, is demonstrating at the
gates of Diepkloof Prison. Although this is a small ragtag
group of women, it has attracted the attention of the
media because Sun City is an odd place to demonstrate
when one has a grievance against any arm of the govern-
ment. No one remembers anyone demonstrating outside
the gates of the prison because that is not where the
authorities who run the justice system, or even the prison
system, are located.
Aunt Magda tells the television reporter that it was
her strategy to take the mass action, as she continues to
call it even though no masses are involved, to the gates
of Sun City because it is in that very hell that an innocent
man is being held. A man who is a friend of the widows
and all the suffering masses of South Africa.
‘We have a petition that has been signed by a hun-
dred people,’ says Aunt Magda. ‘People who have bene-
fited from the generosity of the Visagie family.’
ZAKES MDA
140
‘So, what do you intend to do with your petition?’
asks the reporter.
‘Give it to the man who runs this prison, of course,’
she says, as if the reporter has asked the dumbest ques-
tion ever.
‘But he’s not the person who has the power to free Mr
Visagie.’
‘He’s not?’ This is news to Aunt Magda. ‘No. It cannot
be. He is the man who is holding Stevo Visagie.’
‘Anyway, why is there so much interest in the release
of Mr Visagie? Some might say he’s just a petty criminal
who deserves to be in jail.’
‘They said that about Nelson Mandela too, didn’t
they? Yet he was fighting for the rights of the people.
The Visagie Brothers feed the poor. They are our Nelson
Mandela.’
Ma Visagie is not pleased that all the attention is on
Aunt Magda. It is Aunt Magda that people will be watch-
ing on television that evening, yet she is the one who car-
ried the hero in question in her womb. She will not allow
her to hog all the limelight. She grabs the microphone
from the reporter.
‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘And that magistrate who sent
my innocent baby to jail, she’s waging a war against the
Visagie family. She’s not satisfied that she sent my little
baby to jail for nothing—she went there to attack him
while he was in chains.’
BLACK DIAMOND
141
‘Are you saying the magistrate is waging some kind
of a vendetta against the Visagies? Why?’
‘A vend what? Whatever you call it, she’s not gonna
get away with it. My little boy is gonna come out of that
jail one day.’
The magistrate has heard enough. Her face displays
nothing but contempt. She reaches for the remote and
switches the television off. Once more there is an awk-
ward silence between her and Don for some time. After a
while he breaks it.
‘What are you going to do about it?’ he asks.
She will do nothing. She is the magistrate. Magis-
trates are not allowed to take pre-emptive action. They
are effective only after a crime has been committed.
‘But a crime has been committed. They vandalized
your walls and broke into your house and cooked rot-
ten tripe in your precious pot. That should be illegal,
shouldn’t it?’
‘We don’t know who did that,’ she says.
‘You should have called the police to investigate.’
‘Well, I didn’t.’
‘Both you and I know that the Visagie boy, the one
who’s not in jail, has something to do with it. He either
did it himself or got his henchmen to do it. The cops
would have made him sing like a bird. They have their
ways, even though torture is now illegal in South Africa.’
‘How stupid of me not to figure that out!’ Of course,
Don is aware that she is being sarcastic.
ZAKES MDA
142
Just now she looks so vulnerable. Don feels sorry for
her. He undertakes to do his own detective work. He is
going to do his damnedest to get new evidence of the
Visagie Brothers’ criminal activities, so that both Stevo
and Shortie face new charges before Stevo’s contempt of
court sentence is over. In that way he will stay in jail for
much longer and will give up on his mission to make the
magistrate’s life a living hell.
The magistrate smiles despite herself. She obviously
approves of this plan of action, although she is too proud
to say so.
‘Why do you want to do all that?’ she asks. ‘What’s in
it for you?’
‘So that I can go back home to my clean apartment,’
he says and laughs.
But she does not see the joke. She has become the ice
queen again, after the brief moment of weakness evi-
denced by the smile.
‘We are going to crush those Visagies once and for
all,’ says Don as he leaves for his room. ‘I’m going to start
with that Shortie Visagie. He’s obviously Stevo’s evil hand
in all this. I’m going to squeeze . . . well, if you were not a
lady I would tell you exactly what part of him I am going
to squeeze. This madness will come to an end.’
At that moment Shortie wouldn’t have been fazed by
Don Mateza’s Delphic pronouncements even if he knew
of them. He is sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by
the people he loves and who love him, in the form of Ma
BLACK DIAMOND
143
Visagie, Aunt Magda and three other women who are
members of the Society of Widows. This is Aunt Magda’s
war cabinet, and they are ‘strategizing the way forward’,
as she calls it. They have just watched the news and Aunt
Magda is telling them how satisfied she is with the way
she appeared on television. Of course, she would have
worn more make-up if she had known for sure that tele-
vision cameras would be present at the demonstration.
More shimmer blusher in flame. Vivid violet eyeshadow.
Hot rouge lipstick instead of the earthy brown she is
wearing today. The rouge makes her lips look more
sensuous, which is important for a woman who is now a
television star, even if her face is etched with the deep
furrows of age.
When she phoned the news tip line of the television
station at Auckland Park asking them to send a reporter
to Sun City because an earth-shattering event was going
to take place there, she had not reckoned that they would
take her seriously, although she hoped they would. One
never knows with news people. Sometimes they just send
a radio reporter, in which case it becomes a futile exercise
to look beautiful. But this is a good lesson for all of them.
And by all of them, she emphasizes, she means the lead-
ers of the movement. The rest of the members of the
Society of Widows must look destitute to prove the point
that without Stevo Visagie there is a lot of suffering in
Roodepoort. But it is imperative for her as a leader to look
presentable.
ZAKES MDA
144
As far as Ma Visagie is concerned Aunt Magda has
overstayed her welcome. The matriarch does not like the
idea of someone else calling the shots in her territory.
A quiet storm is raging in her as she sits at the kitchen
table listening to Aunt Magda prattling on about a long
march to freedom that the Society of Widows must
undertake. A long march is the only thing that will top
their demonstration at the gates of Sun City in so far as
attracting the media is concerned. Yes, they are going to
march to Pretoria, fifty-five kilometres away, straight to
the Union Buildings, and demand to see the president of
the republic.
‘I’m not going to walk to Pretoria,’ Ma Visagie bursts
out. ‘I’m not that crazy. If we must go to Pretoria at all why
not take a taxi?’
‘That’s the whole idea, Ma Visagie,’ says Aunt Magda
condescendingly. ‘The march is what is important in this
whole thing. Not just reaching Pretoria.’
Actually, Aunt Magda is beginning to get on
Shortie’s nerves too.
‘I think we must find out from Krish Naidoo first if
this is the right thing to do,’ he says.
Aunt Magda has nothing but contempt for such
reactionary thinking. She dismisses the idea out of hand.
After all, Naidoo is a lawyer and like all lawyers, he is
interested in making as much money as possible from
