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Stevo’s incarceration. The more the matter drags on and
Stevo remains in jail, the more money Naidoo will make
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since lawyers are paid by the hour. For every hour that
Stevo is in jail Naidoo is making money.
Shortie is not sure about this. It sounds rather
strange to him. He must find out from Krish Naidoo
because if it is true it will mean their bill by the time
Stevo is released will be so big that they will have to sell
their scrapyard business to pay him. And that’s not what
the lawyer told Ma Visagie when she first approached
him to defend her sons.
‘I’m still not walking to Pretoria,’ says Ma Visagie.
‘Those who want to see Stevo out of jail will walk,’
says Aunt Magda with the finality of the revolutionary
general she imagines she is.
Now, this is not the smartest thing to come out of
Aunt Magda’s mouth. Ma Visagie lets her know that she
will not tolerate anyone talking to her like that, especially
in her own house. Although Aunt Magda apologizes, ten-
sion remains between the two of them.
After the meeting, mother and son confer. They both
take a resolution that Aunt Magda must go. Tomorrow,
when they visit Stevo at Sun City, they will tell him that
they are sending Aunt Magda back to Athlone, even
though they know already that he won’t be pleased with
that.
They are right. Stevo Visagie objects.
‘Leave the poor bushie alone,’ he says. ‘She’s just
having fun.’
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Although bushie is a derogatory word for the
coloured people of South Africa, when they use it among
themselves it is acceptable. Although Stevo himself is not
coloured but a boertjie, as Aunt Magda used to call him,
he has always called her a bushie, and both of them
accepted boertjie and bushie as terms of endearment.
Shortie is not surprised to hear this. He knows how
attached Stevo has always been to Aunt Magda, ever since
she broke his virginity when he was only slightly older
than a tyke.
‘But, Stevo, she’s getting on my nerves,’ says Shortie.
‘Get on her nerves too, my china, and leave her alone,’
says Stevo.
‘She’s getting on Ma’s nerves too.’
Stevo finds this funny. So Ma has at last met her
match? It seems after all these years Aunt Magda has
returned from the Mother City a changed woman. Stevo
remembers that when she was their maid, Ma Visagie
used to boss her around no end, and she would confide
her frustrations to little Stevo. The two of them would
plot how they would kill Ma Visagie one day.
‘But as you can see,’ says Stevo still laughing, ‘we
never got to kill her.’
‘It’s not funny, Stevo. Ma is serious about it. Aunt
Magda must go.’
‘Listen, Shortie, instead of bothering with a poor
bushie from Cape Town who never did nothing bad to you
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except raise you, you should be doing what I asked you
to do. You know? About you-know-who?’
‘But I am doing something, Stevo.’
‘Writing threats on her wall? That helps, I suppose.
That keeps her on her toes. It reminds her that we are still
there and we are not going nowhere. But threats alone are
not enough for a woman like that. I need action, china.
The cat! The cat!’
After this prison visit Shortie is rather loose with his
tongue and Aunt Magda gets to know that there is a plot
to get rid of her. She feels betrayed by the family she has
worked for all these years, the family for which she left
her own in Athlone to come all the way to Johannesburg
to help them deal with a crisis they couldn’t handle on
their own.
‘You want to get rid of me after I have helped your
sons with mass action?’ she asks Ma Visagie with a
wounded look.
The march of the widows must nevertheless go on.
Aunt Magda gathers her troops. She boosts the small
group that has formed the core demonstrators so far—
joined by onlookers and layabouts who would participate
in any demonstration irrespective of the cause—with a
number of retired prostitutes. She has managed to track
down the ageing women who used to work for Ma Visagie
when she was still one of the top madams in the city, and
has promised them great rewards in future since mass
action will expand to deal with fund-raising to fight the
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poverty of the ‘widows’ of South Africa as soon as they
win their first battle—that of freeing Stevo Visagie.
On the N1 highway to Pretoria commuters’ attention
is drawn to a motley band of about fifty women in black,
marching with placards that read We Demand Justice for
the Visagie Family . . . Free Stevo Visagie! . . . and other messages to that effect. Some motorists honk and make
thumbs-up signs, even though they don’t know what the
protest is about. A protest is a protest and it must be sup-
ported. People are fascinated by the composition of this
group. Whoever thought that one day one would witness
protesters representing the racial make-up of South
Africa, including white women? These are some of the
wonders of the new South Africa. Like white women who
beg for alms at traffic lights.
The taxis, however, are impatient with the protest-
ers. They also honk, not in encouragement but in anger,
because the protesters are marching in the emergency
lane, which taxis to and from Pretoria seem to think is
meant for them instead of genuine emergencies. They
hurl insults and make rude gestures at the women. This
is the busiest highway in Africa and at any hour of
the day or night, there are thousands of cars in the mul-
tiple lanes. It is worse at peak times in the mornings and
afternoons when people who live in Johannesburg travel
to work in Pretoria and vice versa. Cars move at such a
slow pace that a journey that would normally be thirty
minutes takes more than two hours. That is why the
patience of the taxi drivers is tested to the limit by the
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demonstrators. After a few kilometres, two traffic police-
men on motorcycles are sent to make sure that the
women are not marching in the emergency lane but on
the side of the road. One rides behind the women and
another in front. A police escort, of course, lends dignity
to the protest march and makes Aunt Magda feel very
important.
The women are busy singing their garbled protests
songs and do not notice that for some time now a Saab
convertible has been following them, right behind the
traffic cop on his motorcycle.
It is Don Mateza.
He has negotiated his way through the lanes until he
reached the women. Now he drives slowly parallel to the
marchers and waves at them. They wave back, thinking
he is one of their supporters, and they walk on.
He learnt about this march when he was following
the magistrate’s Fiat Uno from her Weltevreden Park
home to the Roodepoort magistrate’s court. He was lis-
tening to Radio 702 and there was Aki Anastasiou with
the traffic report. The traffic to Pretoria was even slower
than usual because of what looked like a demonstration
of women, he reported. Their leader was carrying a plac-
ard that declared them to be the Society of Widows and
the other women’s placards were about some Visagie
family that had been treated unjustly. By the look of
things from the traffic helicopter, they were determined
to march to Pretoria, but some of them were beginning
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to straggle a bit, even though they were hardly halfway
to their destination.
Don knew immediately that they were the protesters
he saw on television a few days before. Even then, he had
been intrigued by their leader who seemed to love the
limelight and he wondered what she hoped to gain from
the protest. He decided to find this woman. Who knew?
There may be a chance of recruiting her to spy on the
Visagies. Of course, he would first have to determine her
commitment to the family and what drives it. And then,
he would size her up to see if she was the kind of person
who could be bought.
As soon as the magistrate got to court Don went to
his office across Dieperink Street to catch up on urgent
messages and to submit a progress report to Jim Baxter.
Fortunately he was not at work yet, so he wouldn’t delay
him with questions. He left the report on his desk and
rushed back to his car. He tore back to Ontdekkers Road
and then joined the N1 on 14th Avenue.
He patiently weaved his way through the slow traffic,
forcing his car from lane to lane whenever there was the
smallest opening. Drivers honked at him and gave him
the middle finger. He returned the favour and drove on
until he caught sight of the protesters. It was only then
that he moved to the emergency lane so that other cars
would not force him to drive past his quarry.
He waves again and opens the window. After catching
Aunt Magda’s attention he yells, ‘I want to talk to you.’
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‘Who are you?’ she asks.
He has to think fast. He has to lie.
‘I am a reporter,’ he says.
‘For what?’
‘A newspaper.’
‘I only talk to TV.’
‘I know TV people too. I work with them. I can get
you interviews on all the channels in South Africa. But
I’ve got to talk to you first.’
‘ Ja, but we can’t talk now. We are on the march.’
‘Listen, there’s a Shell garage a few kilometres ahead.
Please stop there just for a few minutes. I’ll buy you all
drinks and then we can arrange when my television
friends can interview you.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘Because I like you, and support what you stand for.’
He has slowed the traffic to walking pace in his lane
and the drivers behind him are all honking impatiently.
South Africa is famous for its road-rage incidents, so he
speeds up before someone gets the idea of getting out
of his car and blowing his head off with a gun or, if he
is lucky, shattering his side window with a jack and
leaving his head bleeding. He can only hope that when
the women get to the garage, they will take a detour for
refreshments.
He seems to wait for ever at the garage. The traffic
has thinned out on the highway and cars are racing by at
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high speed. But there is no sign of the women. He hopes
nothing bad has happened to them. Perhaps they got
tired. But there would be no point in turning back. Not
unless someone came to pick them up in a bus.
It is afternoon already and Jenny Crwys-Williams is
talking about the contents of her handbag on Radio 702.
He loves her irreverence and her laughter that is so full-
bodied you can touch it. Just like Tumi’s naughty giggles.
He remembers the kind of junk Tumi always keeps in her
handbag—things she would never use, that have accu-
mulated over the years. Yet she transfers them from
handbag to handbag.
Tumi. He wonders where she is at this moment and
what she is doing. He hasn’t seen her since the last time
they made love, though they talk on the phone every day.
He dreads her calls because she wants him to come back
home. There must be other ways of getting a promotion.
Don’t allow them to humiliate you any further. Come
home, Ma-Don-za, come home!
He is about to give up on the women and drive back
to the Roodepoort magistrate’s court when he sees them
straggling along in the distance. And, indeed, they
branch off to the garage where he is waiting.
All their enthusiasm has fizzled out and they are
complaining loudly of exhaustion.
‘Perhaps we should have listened to Ma Visagie,’
some are saying.
Aunt Magda is worried that her leadership is fast
losing credibility with this deflated lot.
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‘What is wrong with you?’ she yells in Afrikaans. ‘Do
you think the swart mense would be the rulers today if
they had given up their struggle? Mass action is not for
the faint-hearted, I tell you. But the rewards will be great.
Look at people like Molotov Mbungane who you see on
television every day. Do you think they would be billion-
aires today if they had given up on their mass action?’
But the pep talk doesn’t seem to help. The women
insist that they cannot walk any further. There must be
other ways of joining the ranks of Mr Mbungane than to
suffer in the sun like this. Aunt Magda does not argue.
She herself is bushed.
She admits to Don that they underestimated the long
walk and the state of their fitness to accomplish it. They
are giving up and will phone Shortie Visagie to fetch
them in a lorry, though she doubts Ma Visagie will let him
do so since she was against the march in the first place.
But Shortie has a heart. He will not abandon them in the
wilderness of Midrand. He will come for them even if he
has to make two trips.
Don learns that she genuinely loves the Visagie
boys—after all, she brought them up as if they were her
own children—though she is bitter at the treatment she
is receiving from Ma Visagie who has been plotting to
kick her out of the house.
He sees an opportunity here. If she is so aggrieved
with Ma Visagie, she may easily be used against the
family. She is obviously a mine of information about the
criminal goings-on there. A person like her, who depends
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solely on her government old-age pension for her liveli-
hood, will surely welcome the extra cash in exchange for
some titbits of information.
He buys everyone cold drinks and Marie biscuits on
a VIP Protection Services credit card. After swearing Aunt
Magda to secrecy, they exchange telephone numbers and
arrange to meet soon.
He drives back to the Roodepoort magistrate’s court
quite satisfied that he is on his way to nailing the Visagie
Brothers once and for all.
12
BLONDE BOMBSHELL
The magistrate is at her desk drafting her judgement for
a stock-theft case. A man stole a neighbour’s goat and
slaughtered it for a Sunday braai. What complicates the
case is that the neighbour was not supposed to be keep-
ing livestock within the city limits in any event. He
insists the goat was a pet and not livestock, even though
evidence was presented that in fact the neighbour has
been keeping a number of goats from time to time, which
he sells to township residents in Dobsonville for ancestral
sacrifices.
The magistrate shakes her head in wonderment at
how ‘these people’ still practise all this ‘superstitious
mumbo-jumbo’ in the twenty-first century. Nevertheless,
it is not her place to pass judgement on that particular
aspect of the case. Hers is to examine the evidence from
both sides and determine whether the man is guilty of
stock theft or not. She never thought that one day she
would be dealing with a stock-theft case in the middle of
Roodepoort.
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Such cases are a waste of her time. As are the petty
civil matters over which she has to preside. She would
rather be hitting her gavel hard on the heads of the
degenerates that have broken families and destroyed
the moral fibre of the community—the sex trade in all
its forms: the sleazy brothels and strip joints and so-
called escort services that have changed the face of Johan-
nesburg and its satellite towns, such as Roodepoort.
The phone rings and she reaches for it.
‘Hi, honey,’ says a strange voice on the line.
‘And . . . who are you?’ asks the magistrate.
‘Is that the Blonde Bombshell?’
