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he wants when he wants it. Don Mateza will therefore
withdraw three guards from protecting other facilities
and will post them and himself at Comrade Capitalist’s
house—which is what Dr Molotov Mbungane’s com-
rades, with whom he fought in the guerrilla forces during
the liberation struggle, call him behind his back.
There was a time when Don resented such assign-
ments. You see, he used to be Molotov’s commander back
in the bush, until Molotov bungled a mission to bomb a
power station in Pretoria and was arrested and sent to
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14
Robben Island. There, of course, he met and befriended
the leaders of the struggle and got some university edu-
cation, while Don continued living in guerrilla camps in
Angola and Mozambique and leading expeditions of sab-
otage inside South Africa. Now Molotov is the richest
black man in South Africa and Don is middle manage-
ment at a security company—often becoming a foot sol-
dier when there are not enough bodyguards to go around.
Don returns to his client and shows her where to sign
on the contract forms.
‘Thanks for your business, ma’am. We’ll install the
equipment first thing tomorrow morning.’
When the happy customer departs, he dials Tumi at
her TM Modelling Agency. ‘Ah, Tumi, darling! How’s my
Tumza?’
‘Don’t you Tumza me, Don. You should have been
here by now. You know I don’t like to be late for gym.’
He has forgotten that Tumi’s Jaguar X-Type was in
for service today and that he had promised to take her to
the gym at Melrose Arch after work.
‘I’m sorry, Tumi, I have to do overtime.’
He does not tell her that the overtime involves stand-
ing guard at Comrade Capitalist’s private party. Whereas
Don has long accepted his menial status, Tumi has never
forgiven any of his former comrades for being successful
beneficiaries of the government’s Black Economic
Empowerment policy, or BEE as it is fashionably called,
while her fiancé has to work for a security company. It is
BLACK DIAMOND
15
a sore point with her that Don’s comrades forgot about
him when they reached Paradise, after he sacrificed so
much in exile fighting for the overthrow of the apartheid
state. He, a child of a single mother, sacrificed even his
mother who was tortured to death by the Boers in a vain
attempt to get at her son. His name lives on only in songs
that the youth sing at parades on such national holidays
as Freedom Day, Human Rights Day and Youth Day about
AK Bazooka and his battlefield exploits against the
enemy. None of the youth knows that AK Bazooka was in
fact Don Mateza’s nom de guerre, he who is today a security
guard at VIP Protection Services: Your Preferred Company for
Personal, Facility and Events Protection.
‘I’ll call Nomsa to give you a ride.’
‘I can call her myself,’ she says abruptly and hangs up.
She is angry but she can’t have it both ways, Don con-
cludes. She is the one who is always pushing him to work
harder and prove himself worthy of promotion. Jim
Baxter, who founded the company after he was hon-
ourably discharged from the South African Defence
Force of the old South Africa, will be retiring soon and
the board of directors is on the lookout for a new chief
executive. Tumi believes that if Don plays his cards well,
he can take over—not only as the man at the helm but as
a majority shareholder—and finally be on his way to
becoming a Black Diamond—as the fat-cat BEE benefici-
aries are called. For Tumi, ‘playing the cards well’ means
networking with the BEE dealmakers and using his lever-
age as an ex-guerrilla to outmanoeuvre any competition
ZAKES MDA
16
for the position. But the only way of ‘playing the cards
well’ that Don knows is working hard, even to the extent
of personally taking on tasks that Tumi deems demean-
ing, instead of assigning them to underlings.
She believes there is nothing more degrading than
having Don act as Comrade Capitalist’s bodyguard. She
became even more convinced of this last year when the
billionaire wanted to spend Christmas at his vineyard in
the Western Cape. He ordered a group of bodyguards
from VIP Protection Services and Jim Baxter could trust
no one but Don to lead the squad. This spoilt the couple’s
plan to spend Christmas in Soweto with Tumi’s parents.
‘Why you all the time?’ she had asked. ‘Surely a man
like Molotov has his own personal bodyguards who are
permanent staffers.’
‘He usually supplements his permanent bodyguards
with our men when he has more guests at his events.’
Tumi smarted for a while but ended up offering to
go to the Western Cape and booking in at a hotel so that
she could spend as much time as possible with Don
whenever he was free.
Molotov organized a Christmas party for his staff and
Don went with Tumi. She found it ridiculous that both
Molotov and his white wife Cathy addressed the body-
guards as ‘comrade’ as if they were all equal, whereas the
bodyguards called him ‘chief ’. Previously she had only
seen him on television or read about him in the news-
papers and was struck by how he was such a jovial man
BLACK DIAMOND
17
who mixed freely with everyone, without the slightest air
of superiority or arrogance. She admired the way the man
carried himself. Until he hit on her, right there in the
reception hall while his wife was chatting away with the
other guests and Don was giving instructions on the
walkie-talkie to guards who were patrolling the sprawling
grounds with dogs. When Tumi expressed her shock,
Molotov said, ‘You were one of the top models in South
Africa and now you own a successful model agency. What
are you doing with a mantshingilane like Don?’
‘In other words, according to you, I have no taste in
men. How would that change if I went out with you?’
Tumi walked away without waiting for an answer.
What offended her most was his use of the demeaning
word for a security guard, often used to insult country-
bumpkin nightwatchmen. She vowed to herself that one
day Don would show everyone what he was really made
of—he was going to be a Black Diamond in his own right.
The next day she told Don she was flying back to
Johannesburg, without giving him any reasons. He put
it down to Tumi’s ever-changing moods. It is 2 a.m. The
security guard must be sleeping on the job. Don hoots,
but no one comes to open the gate. He can see through
the window of the gatehouse that there is no one there.
If the nightwatchman worked for VIP Protection
Services, he would long have been fired. Each resident of
the Three Oaks townhouse complex in North Riding is
given a code for opening the gate in the absence of the
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18
security guards. But Don always forgets it because
he rarely needs it. He will just have to call Tumi on his
cellphone.
‘Sorry to wake you up. What’s the damn code?’
‘I was not asleep. I was waiting for you, Don.’
She gives him the code. He punches it and the gate
opens. He parks his Saab convertible at its assigned
parking spot under the canopy next to Tumi’s spot. Her
Jaguar is still at the garage. He walks to Number 42.
The living room is expensively furnished, boasting
the extravagant trappings of new money. The walls
display a sgraffito by an accomplished artist and char-
coals and acrylics of township art. An exhausted Don
throws himself on the genuine black leather sofa, kicks
his shoes off and begins to relax. A big fluffy snow-white
Hima-layan cat leaps on to his lap and purrs happily. He
closes his eyes and begins to doze off as he strokes it.
Tumi walks out of the bedroom. She is alluring in a
skimpy nightie—her tall shapely figure and her catwalk
gait attest to the fact that she was indeed once a top
model. She perches herself on the arm of the couch.
‘So what was the overtime all about?’
‘Oh, just an assignment . . . you know . . . the usual
stuff.’
‘Ah, when you say that I know exactly what. Comrade
Capitalist!’
‘I cannot pick and choose the jobs I do, Tumi.
Anyway, what do you have against Molotov?’
BLACK DIAMOND
19
‘You wouldn’t want to know.’
‘I know . . . I know . . . I’ve heard it many times . . .’
She grabs him by the scruff of the neck and silences
him with a kiss. Then, like a magician who has just per-
formed a trick, she says with a flourish, ‘Ta . . . dah . . .!’
But Don does not see the magic trick.
‘Don’t be blind, Don. Look round you.’
For the first time Don notices a new chaise longue.
‘Hey, what did you do with my old chair?’
‘Like you say, it was old . . . too out of sync with my
lounge suite.’
He is not happy about this. That was his very special
La-Z-Boy recliner that he enjoyed particularly when he
was watching television. By way of furniture it was his
only contribution in the house.
‘You don’t like it?’
‘It’s nice, Tumi, but . . .’
‘Nice? Only nice? It’s from Bakos Brothers, Don.
From Bakos Brothers! And all you can say is nice?’
‘You know I don’t like it when you spend all this
money on me, Tumi. Unlike you, I worry about money.’
Once more she shuts him up with a kiss.
‘You gonna get that promotion, baby. You gonna be
the chief executive of VIP Protection Services. You’re a
Black Diamond, Don. You should learn to live like one.’
Don chuckles at this and says, ‘An aspiring one,
Tumi. An aspiring Black Diamond.’
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20
After all, real Black Diamonds are not behind with
instalments on a sports car they can’t afford. The car was
Tumi’s choice and she paid the deposit for it, and prom-
ised she would help whenever Don had problems with the
monthly payments. He didn’t tell her that he was having
difficulties and now gets threatening letters from
the finance company, which he hides from her. Black
Diamonds don’t live in their girlfriends’ one-bedroom
flats either!
‘With an attitude like that, you won’t get anywhere,
Don. Positive thinking! That’s what you need. I wouldn’t
be where I am now if it was not for positive thinking.
That’s one thing that people like Molotov Mbungane have
that you lack—positive thinking!’
Dr Mbungane’s name always comes up whenever
Tumi is giving Don what she believes is a pep talk. It used
to hurt Don but he has since learnt to accept it. He no
longer even bothers to argue with Tumi about Comrade
Molotov’s advantage over him because she always dis-
misses that as an excuse for Don’s failures.
Comrade Molotov does indeed have what Don
lacks—political capital. He was able to morph from a
poor kid growing up in the village of Engcobo in the
Eastern Cape to a Marxist guerrilla to a political prisoner
to a member of parliament and cabinet minister in the
first Mandela government. In the last stages of that
process he accumulated the political capital that he was
able to convert into financial capital and equity in some
BLACK DIAMOND
21
of the biggest corporations in the land as soon as he left
government service. It is the political capital that made
him palatable to white business. Banks plied him with
cash, until he became known as Comrade Deal-a-Minute
because he put together consortia that acquired huge
stakes in the mining industry. In less than five years, he
was the owner of some of the most lucrative diamond,
gold and platinum mines, and had interests in the bank-
ing, health care, wine and engineering industries. When
his former comrades gossip about him in the township
taverns, they say it didn’t hurt his palatability at all that
he was married to an Afrikaner woman. During their days
in political power the Afrikaners knew how to create
affirmative action for themselves. Now they are teaching
the art of accumulation to their son-in-law, Dr Molotov
Mbungane.
How can Don compete with that? His only training
is that of a guerrilla fighter and when he came back there
was no place for him in the government. He never got to
rub shoulders with the cream of the leadership of the
country. He therefore never acquired any political capital.
Tumi has no sympathy with this line of thinking.
Molotov played his cards well. Why couldn’t Don? After
all, Molotov had been his subordinate out there in the
bush. Don was the one who strategized, the one who
decided where and how the likes of Molotov would next
attack. He was the hero who acquitted himself well when
he was only in his mid-teens fighting alongside Zipra
forces against the Rhodesian Ian Smith. He is the one
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22
young people sing about even today. He is Comrade AK
Bazooka in person! Surely that should be political capital
enough? Surely if he went out there, put together a BEE
consortium, the white corporate world would recognize
his worth, and would give him a slice of the cake.
But Don realizes that he would be bringing nothing
to the corporate table since he has no political clout that
can be converted into capital. He returned from exile and
became one of the ex-combatants who spent their days
blomming— hanging out, that is—in the taverns of
Soweto. When he received his compensation from the
government he spent it on lawyers, fighting to get his
mother’s four-roomed house back from the family that
acquired it after she was killed. He lost the case, took to
drink, and was broke. He continued to blom at taverns
with his best friends and ex-combatants, Fontyo and
Bova. But thanks to the fact that he and his childhood
sweetheart Tumi rediscovered each other, he pulled him-
self together, got a job as a security guard and worked his
way up. Even then Tumi had high hopes and big plans for
him, and was determined to groom him, not only into the
clean, fresh and urbane man he is today but into a Black
Diamond. It is a determination that was reinforced by
such insults as we have heard at Comrade Molotov’s
Christmas party.
‘ Ja, positive thinking! That’s the only way out, Don,’
she says once more, her eyes daring him to argue with
that.
BLACK DIAMOND
23
The cat is rubbing against her legs. She screeches and
pushes it away with her foot. Don is horrified. He reaches
for the cat and caresses it.
‘You don’t need the damn cat, Don. We don’t have
mice in this townhouse.’
‘It’s not for catching mice, Tumi. Snowy is my very
special pet.’
‘You no longer need Snowy. You have me.’
Don does not respond. Instead he takes his cat and
walks to the bedroom, holding it like a baby.
3
AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL
Stevo and Shortie are back in the dock. Our prostitutes
are in the gallery as before. Kristin Uys is on the bench
and Krish Naidoo is seated at the table for the defence.
This time, he is properly attired in a dark suit and robe.
The magistrate takes a long disapproving look at the
prosecutor before asking him if he would like to rebut Mr
Naidoo’s closing remarks. He has no rebuttal.
‘Why am I not surprised?’ asks the magistrate,
giving him a smile that is both sarcastic and condescend-
ing. The prosecutor fidgets uneasily.
The magistrate thinks that the state has presented a
very shoddy case, and she says so. The state has failed to
prove its case against the Visagie Brothers and she has no
choice but to find them not guilty.
The prostitutes in the gallery applaud raucously.
‘This is a court of law, not a shebeen,’ says the mag-
