Tandia (91 page)

Peekay grinned, 'That's all it took, you bastard, you saved it up special!'

Gideon laughed, 'I have not told you about this punch, from where it came. When I was very small, I was a herd boy and every morning we would go out and milk the cows and bring in the milk. I longed to grow up and come to the big city and be somebody. Every afternoon when it was time to bring the cattle in we would take them first to the river to drink and then we would have the competition for the boots.'

Gideon looked down at his shiny shoes and wiped a spot of dirt off his left toecap with a casual brush of his hand. 'There was an old man who worked in Durban and every year he would come back to his home on holiday for two weeks and he would bring a pair of boots. His baas would give him these old boots to wear on his holidays and he would give the herd boys the old boots the baas gave him to wear before, the last time he came. These boots they had done a lot of walking and there were big holes in the soles, but they were city boots, the guy among us who wore them, he was the king of the herd boys, if only for that day.

'Every night when we came to the river for the cattle to drink, we would put one of the boots up on a rock and count fifty steps and each boy would take two stones. The boy who hit the boot wore them home and all the next day until sunset, then we would come again to throw stones for the boots.

'All day, while I watched the cattle alone on the mountain, I would throw stones. I would put a small rock, the size of a boot, on a big rock and count fifty steps and throw at it.

When I could no longer lift my arm because it had become very, very sore I would start with my other hand. Always I would throw until I could not lift this arm also, then I would start on the other again. Soon I was the one who almost always wore the boots.

'I was very proud and all the other guys respected me because I always won fair and square. When I beat you, Peekay, for the title, that last punch, I had nothing left, but in my head I said, "My arms they are stronger than his, he has never thrown for the boots, he has already got the boots. I have one stone left, one last throw." That's what won the title for me.'

They sat in silence for a moment, two friends who knew each other well. Then Peekay cleared his throat. 'Gideon, there is something.'

Gideon replied softly, 'Haya, Peekay, yes, I can feel this thing, your heart is heavy, heavy! What is this something?'

'It's Tandia.'

Gideon chuckled. 'You are in love, I have known this thing a long time.'

Peekay looked shocked. 'I cannot deny this, Gideon. But I know it is impossible! You are my friend and even if I fought you for her, the law says I cannot have her.'

'The law cannot stop a man and a woman. The law of nature is stronger than the law of the
amaBhunu…
At the mission school when I was young, once the teacher was reading from the Bible. It was a hot afternoon and I was nearly asleep, but I remember the words so very well.' Gideon paused and then, almost as though he was a schoolboy again, started to recite: '''Show me the way of an eagle in the air, show me the way of a snake on the rock and show me the way of a man with a maid, when I know these three things, then all things are known unto me!'"

Peekay grinned, 'Thank you, Gideon, but I am not in the woman-stealing business. You quote from the Bible and I will quote you a Zulu proverb, "The heart is a hunter who does not seek permission from the herd to hunt." I think it means roughly the same thing but, nonetheless, unless Tandia herself decides otherwise she will, I'm sure, be waiting for you when you get back.'

Gideon shook his head. 'Peekay, I know Tandia- and I know Nguni. That Zulu, he was my manager since I was an
umfana.
Since I fought you that first time in Sophiatown. That man, he is a big pain, he would give a headache to an Aspro!'

Peekay laughed. Gideon was trying to put him at his ease and now he continued, 'I cannot be angry with Nguni, he is very greedy; to have a beautiful woman on your arm is good for business. The people they look at you and they know you are rich and have a lot of power, that's what a beautiful woman can do for a guy. I have done this also, but when the time comes I will take a woman from my own kraal, it is the Zulu way. A woman from another
isigodi
but from my own tribe who can give me sons, the sons of a chief. When I return, Tandia will not be waiting for me, that is for sure, my brother.'

Peekay had never heard Gideon speak like this before. It had never occurred to him that Gideon might take a village woman for his wife. Gideon had the potential to be a future leader of South Africa and Tandia, a beautiful and intelligent wife of mixed blood, would have been politically perfect as his partner. Peekay now realized that it was precisely Gideon's grass-roots personality that made him so effective as a leader. He had a foot in both camps; he was a sophisticated and highly successful urban African who had not forsaken his tribal roots. He could reach his people at any level without having to pretend to be anyone but himself.

Now Gideon looked at Peekay and shrugged, 'Tandia too, she wants something from Nguni, she wants acceptance, the respect of the elders, it is important for her to climb into her black skin.' He looked up at Peekay, his eyes filled with concern for his friend. 'This time I am glad there is a bad law which says a black woman and a white man they cannot make love.' He paused again, biting his lower lip. 'Tandia cannot love a man, Peekay. Inside her something it has happened, I don't know what is this thing. Even if the law was not there, she is not the woman for you. She cannot make you happy, man!'

'Gideon, I can't think about her, but I also can't stop thinking about her; it is a nightmare and now there is something else.' Peekay took a deep breath and told Gideon what had transpired with Geldenhuis.

'…And then he showed me a statement, a piece of paper signed by Tandia when she was just a kid. Geldenhuis is in a perfect position to blackmail her, to ruin her life and therefore to force her to be an informer.'

Gideon looked at Peekay. He spoke quickly, but there was anger and hurt in his eyes. 'I don't want to hear this! Not from you, Peekay. If Tandia was a white woman, would you believe this? Because she is black, you think maybe…maybe that white policeman he is right?He made a fist and clenched his jaw. 'You believe this dog shit when he shows you a piece of paper!' By now Gideon was shouting, his shoulders shaking with rage.

Peekay was shocked. He put his hand on Gideon's shoulder but the black man knocked it away. He tried again, and again Gideon pushed Peekay's hand away. 'Please Gideon, listen to me! I…I don't know what to believe! I'm in love with Tandia, I'm a white man and if I fall in love with her I destroy her! Destroy everything! So it's simple.

"I'm a big boy, I know what to do. I can handle that. I
have
to handle it!' Peekay paused, catching his breath. 'In the end it concerns only me and I can learn to live with that. But now there is this thing, this statement. This isn't just me any more. This is everything I care about! You whom I love, Hymie whom I love, the things we are fighting for. Those people in Sharpeville who died. What do I do? Say nothing? Keep hoping it's all bullshit? Another Geldenhuis trap?' He paused again. 'But what if it isn't? If that bastard has got her nailed down? Tell me, what the fuck do I do? If I remained silent, said nothing and it all happened? What if Geldenhuis does have Tandia on a string?'

Gideon's voice was cold and angry and he spoke in Zulu. 'Every black woman is a whore in the eyes of people like Geldenhuis! Every little black girl ever born is supposed to be waiting to spread her legs the first time she gets near a white boy. That's what we're fighting. When it comes down to it, that's what apartheid is all about! This single, terrible fear within the white man's mind that the black whore will tempt his sons and destroy his bloodline.

'But what about temptation? Well, Afrikaners know all about temptation, they tell us all the time they are a deeply Christian people. Temptation is the work of the devil, temptation is evil. And what colour is evil?' Gideon gave Peekay' a bitter smile, 'Evil is black, of course. So when the white man feels his temptation, he knows it is the work of the devil! And when he rejects temptation, separates himself from it, what is that?' Gideon laughed scornfully, 'That is God's mercy. Separation…apartheid, is therefore the work of God!'

The anger had left Gideon's eyes, but now there was a sadness and his voice remained urgent. 'Can't you see, Peekay? Can't you see, what we're fighting is
your
fear. And when
you
think Tandia may be guilty, it is
your
own guilt you are feeling.' He stabbed his finger at Peekay, 'You say you love this woman? This black woman? What is it you love? Her body? Her long legs and nice tits? Her arse? Her beautiful face? Her smile? Or is it something else? Something that makes her Tandia? Her dedication to truth and honesty? Her courage? Her desire for fairness and justice for all of the people? Her ability to fight like a tiger for all of these things? Her determination to be better, stronger, quicker in her mind than those who oppress us? Even her hate? Sometimes you can even love a person's hate! Tandia is black.
She
knows
she
is not a white, she is not afraid of herself; that piece of paper she signed when she was a child, it is not
her
guilt on that piece of paper, it is the guilt of Geldenhuis. Geldenhuis is carrying his own guilt around on that piece of paper.' Gideon's voice grew suddenly strident again. 'It is not possible for him to use it against her, blackmail her, because, listen to me, Peekay, she is not guilty!'

Captain Geldenhuis was a hero to a great many of the white population after Sharpeville, where he exemplified for them the concept of
kragdadigheid,
the concept of white supremacy through punitive power. The knowledge that white people were represented by a government who would take no nonsense and were prepared to act against
die swart gevaar,
the black danger, brought them a great deal of comfort.

The Special Branch was usually portrayed by the press as a unit working against political targets, and a great many South Africans felt their methods were justified; they were, after all, matched against black activists, 'terrorists', and the end justified the means. In fact the great majority of their work was at a grass-roots level. Typical of everyday Special Branch work was the case of Katie Kembeni, a woman from Mofolo, a sub-division of Soweto, who had been killed when she refused to be endorsed out of her township home back to a so-called homeland. When the authorities arrived forcibly to remove her and her three small children, they arrested her husband on the spot, alleging a pass infringement. They. forced him to watch in the custody of two policemen as the family's possessions were loaded onto a truck and his three children dumped on top of them. His wife Katie fought them furiously and was physically restrained, handcuffed and dragged kicking to where her husband Alfred stood, his face wet with tears.

Katie broke loose just as the truck carrying her children started to move away. She ran to the front of the truck, blocking its way, whereupon the truck shot forward, knocking her down and only coming to a halt when its back wheel ran over her head. She lay on the road in front of her three small children, tyre-marks across her crushed skull, blood haemorrhaging from her mouth.

Of the fifty or more people who'd witnessed the entire episode only three could be persuaded to make statements and agree to appear as witnesses. Two of these withdrew after they'd both been severely beaten up by hired thugs who broke into their homes in the middle of the night. The third, a young boy of seventeen, had simply disappeared, 'gone bush' for fear of what might happen to him.

Geldenhuis was handling the case for the police in court and it was he who rose to cross-examine Alfred Kembeni, the women's husband. 'Is it true that you were a member of the ANC before it was outlawed?'

'No, baas, I am not a member.'

'Listen, man, I did not say you are a member. The ANC is now outlawed. I said you
were
a member.'

Tandia raised her hand, 'Objection, your honour, in the nomenclature of African spoken English my client's reply means the same thing.'

The magistrate looked up. 'I must remind you, Miss Patel' that because your client can't speak Afrikaans this court is already accommodating him in the English language. Now you want us to accommodate him in African English, whatever that is supposed to be!'

There was laughter in the court and the magistrate seemed pleased with his bon mot. Tandia replied, 'With the greatest respect, your honour, my client has not been accommodated, as you put it. If you were standing in the dock in his place and your case was being heard in the Sotho language you would be in the same situation as he now faces.'

This time there was a stunned silence in the court. Even the Africans present didn't dare to laugh. 'Counsel will refrain from addressing the bench in this matter and from attempting to make a mockery of accepted court procedure! Counsel will apologize to this court. Objection over-ruled.'

'Yes, your honour, I apologize.'

Geldenhuis grinned as he repeated the question to Alfred Kembeni. 'Were you a member of the ANC?'

'No, sir.'

Geldenhuis consulted a pad. 'Are you Alfred Kembeni of one thousand and three Motjuwadi Street, Mofolo?'

'No, sir.'

'We know this is your address, you hear?' Geldenhuis snapped, without addressing his remarks through the bench.

Tandia rose. 'Your honour, my client has been forcibly removed by the authorities from this address to a single man's hostel. He is correct in saying this is not his address.'

'Your honour, I have not got time to waste. We have a list of all past ANC members, his name is on this list!'

'Objection, your honour. The evidence please. May we see this list and the name of the plaintiff specified on it?'

Geldenhuis looked over at Tandia, his face expressionless.

'Your honour, counsel knows this information is classified.'

'In that case, your honour, I object to the accusation Captain Geldenhuis has made. He has no evidence he can show to this court which proves that the plaintiff was a member of the ANC.'

The magistrate, a small bald man named Dreyer with over-large hornrimmed glasses, the heavy frames chosen, Tandia suspected, to give him an air of authority, looked at her now. 'I will sustain your objection on a point of law. But I must point out it has come to a sorry state of affairs when a senior police officer is virtually said to be telling a lie. Objection sustained!'

Tandia sighed. What the magistrate was telling her was that he accepted Geldenhuis's accusation that Alfred Kembeni was a past member of the ANC and so might be correctly described as a political agitator.

Later Tandia recalled Alfred Kembeni to the stand. 'Mr Kembeni, will you please tell the court what Sergeant Bronkhorst of the Special Branch shouted to Thomas Motlana, the driver of the removal truck, as your wife stood screaming directly in the path of the already moving truck?'

'He say, 'Petrol! Push the Petrol, down!'

'Thank you. Can you now point to the man who said this?'

Alfred Kembeni pointed to a medium-sized man with thinning hair and thick, wide sideburns down almost to the point of his chin. He was wearing civilian clothes, a cheap, greenish-coloured sports jacket with a large brown check running through it, a white shirt and a somewhat vulgar painted tie. The shirt was obviously too small for him and strained over a pronounced gut. Tandia had watched him during the morning when Geldenhuis had put him on the witness stand. He'd constantly touched and pulled at his tie until eventually he could tolerate It no longer and loosened the collar button, pulling the tie down away from it. He was obviously under instructions to wear a tie with his civilian clothes and was showing Geldenhuis that he couldn't be pushed around. Plain-clothes policemen are a special breed, accustomed to doing things their own way, and the gesture with the tie probably meant that the plain-clothes sergeant didn't take too kindly to instructions. He was the kind of independent-minded police witness she liked.

Bronkhorst appeared to be in his early forties, of florid complexion, with a flat nose and peculiar mud-coloured eyes, the whites of his eyes only two or three shades lighter then the flat brown centre. As Hymie might have put it, 'It is a face not to like.' But now, as the black man pointed to him, Bronkhorst. grinned, showing a mouth filled with gold dental work.

'Thank you, Mr Kembeni, you may step down.' Tandia turned to Dreyer. 'You honour, I request permission to return my client to the witness stand at a later time.'

'Permission granted.'

'And once again, your honour, I ask that the accused, Thomas Motlana, be excused from this court during the time I cross-examine Sergeant Bronkhorst, the second accused.'

The little magistrate looked over at Geldenhuis who nodded, agreeing. 'Would the sergeant of the court please temporarily remove the accused Thomas Motlani from this court!'

Thomas Motlana, your honour.' Tandia corrected. 'I now ask permission from this court to put Sergeant Bronkhorst on the stand?'

Tandia was used to the way white police officers stood in the witness box when she confronted them. As far as they were concerned she was a cheeky kaffir, a black bitch who had no right to be in a court of law, let alone to address questions to a white man. The contempt on their faces always gave her a nice warm feeling; a man trying to express his feelings outwardly tends not to listen as carefully as he ought and now the almost imperceptible sneer on the face of Bronkhorst brought an inward smile.

The clerk of the court produced the Bible and commenced to administer the oath to Sergeant Bronkhorst. Standing in front of the witness box Tandia paused for almost a minute, as though she was thinking. It was a technique she'd discovered which, for some reason, brought out the anger in white Afrikaner witnesses and it worked particularly well with members of the police force.

'Sergeant Bronkhorst,' Tandia said at last, 'tell the court what you were doing at the home of Alfred Kembeni on or around three o'clock in the afternoon of 5 December last year.'

'Ja, okay man, but you don't have to tell me the time and the date, I already know when it was.' Bronkhorst grinned and looked around the court expecting people to smile. Observing the hard-eyed look on the face of Jannie Geldenhuis, he brought a hand up to his tie knot and cleared his throat. 'We got a call from the B-A-D,' he spelt the letters out, the irony of the acronym long since lost on him, but then added, 'Bantu Administration and Development. They said this Bantu woman Katie Kembeni was endorsed out, but she was telling everyone around the place that she wasn't going to go, that there was no way she was going to the Transkei.'

'Did you arrive before Bad?'

Dreyer sat up suddenly and brought his gavel down. 'If counsel wishes to use an abbreviation for Bantu Administration and Development, a very senior government department, then you may do so by spelling out the initials, B-AD!' He turned to the court stenographer. 'You will write it down in full, the full title of this department, you hear?' He turned to Bronkhorst. 'You may give the court your answer.'

'Well no, that's not the procedure. In a case like this they send a removal truck and we come in it together.'

'Is that so that the Special Branch are not seen to be a component of the removal?' Tandia asked.

'Ja, that's right, when they think there might be trouble a plain-clothes man goes along just in case.' He paused and then added, 'In an EO, an Endorse Out,' he corrected, 'we try to keep the police presence low-key, a couple of Black Jacks, that's all. Mostly people co-operate with the authorities.'

'And the lorry, the removal truck, what sort of a lorry was this?'

Bronkhorst looked bemused and shrugged again. He was feeling safe and he'd undone his collar button again, inching his tie down. 'A Dodge I think. But what do you mean? Are you asking, was it a one ton, a
bakkie
or bigger? It was a big lorry, a three ton, like you would use for a removal.'

'I apologize, sergeant, I haven't made myself clear. To whom did this lorry belong.'

'Oh, I see what you mean now! It was a GG, a 'government garage', you know? It was a three-ton GG that belonged to B-A-D.'

'Used in an EO?' Tandia said quickly as the court erupted into laughter.

'Write that down fully again, Miss De Jager,' Dreyer instructed the stenographer, 'Government Garage, Bantu Administration and Development and Endorse Out!'

Tandia suddenly changed tack. 'Thank you, Sergeant Bronkhorst. I now want to take you to the point of departure after the deceased Mrs Katie Kembeni had been arrested and handcuffed, with her furniture and her children loaded onto the back of the lorry. I understand you were sitting in the front passenger seat?'

'Ja, that's right.'

'I want you to listen carefully to my question.' Tandia paused, one of her extra-long pauses. 'What were your exact words to the driver of the lorry as the vehicle was moving forward and you observed Mrs Kembeni standing screaming directly in front of it?'

'Objection!' Geldenhuis called, 'It has not been established that the accused saw this woman. In the noise and the confusion he could easily have been looking elsewhere.'

'Objection,' Tandia said. 'Counsel for the accused is attempting to put words into the mouth of this witness.' Dreyer brought his gavel down hard. 'Objection sustained on both counts. Both counsel will abstain from attempting to confuse or instruct the accused!'

'I am not confused, your honour,' Bronkhorst said. Tandia smiled. 'Let me put it another way then. When you shouted at the driver…'

'Objection!' Geldenhuis called.

Tandia sighed. 'When you spoke…you did speak to the driver?' Bronkhorst nodded. 'When you spoke to the driver, what were the exact words you used to him?'

'Ja, thank you, I'm glad you asked this question because it wasn't like he said, you know, like the Bantu witness Kembeni said. I didn't speak the way he said, I said it without raising my voice. I said, "Petrol. Push the petrol down." Bronkhorst looked around the courtroom as though addressing everyone present. 'This is not the same as saying,' he raised his voice and shouted, "Petrol! Push the petrol down!'" He paused after his shout and waited a moment before saying quietly, 'You see I was talking about the choke! I was asking him to push the choke in.'

There was a burst of disbelieving laughter from the court and Dreyer was forced to use his gavel and call for silence. Tandia smiled at Bronkhorst. 'I am not a mechanical person, sergeant. The choke? The petrol? What is the connection ?'

'Ja, okay, I will explain.' Bronkhorst, not in the least phased by the laughter, seemed to be enjoying himself. 'When it's cold, in the winter, you know in the mornings, and you want to start an engine you got to give it more petrol, you have to open the valve to the distributor more, so you've got what is called a choke. It's usually on the dashboard just under the steering wheel so you can pull it out, it's just a button on the end, a little lever, and you pull it out and when you start the engine you pump the accelerator a couple of times to pump more petrol which goes in the distributor and the engine starts and won't stall because it's getting extra petrol. That's why you call it the petrol because, you see, what you doing is feeding the engine more petrol. When I said, "Petrol. Push the petrol down," I meant for the driver to push in the choke.'