A profound nostalgia for the romantic days of the struggle attacked them. Days of sacrifice and death. Days of selfless service and hope.
“At least those days we were together fighting the same war as comrades in arms,” reminisced Viliki. “Sharing our suffering and moments of respite. Now others are up there and have forgotten about the rest. Survival of the fittest is the new ethos. Each one for himself or herself in the scramble for the accumulation of wealth.”
It had started like that in Zimbabwe too — a liberation struggle that had inspired Viliki and his comrades during the worst moments of their own oppression. As soon as the revolutionaries had got into power, Popi wailed, they had focused on accumulating farms and hotels for themselves. Ardent revolutionaries continued to use the rhetoric of socialism, while in behaviour and outlook they were born-again capitalists.
“Of course we live in a capitalist world. What do you expect them to do?” asked Viliki, who had sharp differences with his sister on the question of capitalism versus socialism, thanks to the library books she was no longer just caressing but reading as well. The same books that had exposed her to the world of the Flemish expressionists had also taken her to Cold War era debates on political and economic systems of the world. With the basic knowledge she had gleaned from these pages, she decided that socialism made more sense to her, while Viliki, ever the loyal and disciplined cadre of the Movement that had kicked him out, followed the national leaders to capitalism.
“I expect them to be honest,” said Popi. “They must not pretend that they are socialists. And they must not accumulate capital by looting the coffers of the state and by taking kickbacks from contractors.”
Viliki agreed that the Zimbabwean leaders had failed their people, and that to entrench themselves in power, they were now rendering their own country bankrupt and ungovernable. They were trampling on the human rights of their own people.
The Pule Siblings consoled themselves that at least in South Africa, democracy remained intact. The human rights culture was being entrenched every day. But Viliki expressed fear for the future. For how long would the Mandela legacy of tolerance last? Already he could see signs of the arrogance of power gradually turning into racial arrogance — even within the Movement, which had prided itself on being a non-racial party. This could be seen every day in Mahlatswetsa among the leadership of the Movement, who strutted around pretending that their blackness elevated them to the ranks of angels, while the fact that they were once oppressed made them into very special people who could never be criticised. Critics, however constructive they might be, were being labelled racists or lackeys of racists. It had become treacherous for a black person to point out the corruption of a fellow black.
People like Sekatle were turning into black Tjaart Cronjes. In Sekatle’s campaign for the local elections that were coming in a few months’ time, he never forgot to mention that the Pule Siblings had sold out to the whites. That Excelsior was cursed with a white mayor almost six years after liberation because of their vote. The perceived friendship between the Pule Siblings and the de Vries family was frowned upon, not because of the de Vries’ history and political pedigree, but because they were white. After all, Sekatle himself had a dubious history.
Niki sat on the bed in her shack and listened to her children moan about how things had turned out for them. She was happy that they had failed to take her children away. The nestlings — for they would remain nestlings for as long as she lived — had returned to the nest. She was happy that even though Viliki had his two RDP houses, and had the Seller of Songs, he still found time to visit the old shack, to sit around the fire with his sister, and to sing songs and tell stories.
Profound nostalgia was not the preserve of the Pule Siblings. Tjaart Cronje wallowed in it. So did Johannes Smit. They sat in the bar of Excelsior Hotel, drowning their troubles in Castle Lager, and looking back with sad fondness to the glorious days when the Afrikaner had ruled supreme, and the “kaffir” had known his place. They felt that their people were alienated from what was fashionably called “the Rainbow Nation”. The Afrikaner was an Afrikaner, and could never be part of a rainbow anything. Deep feelings of resentment and anger swelled in them with each gulp of the beer. They blamed the generation of Adam de Vries for deceiving the Afrikaner.
“Adam de Vries and his wife have melted quite comfortably into the new dispensation,” Johannes Smit lamented.
“We fought wars on their behalf,” agreed Tjaart Cronje. “After they had taught us that the very people they are now fraternising with were the enemy. Today we are suffering the consequences of the past that their generation shaped. My career in the army was destroyed by affirmative action. I would have been a major-general by now.”
“Now de Vries even has the gall to say that apartheid laws should never have been the laws of this country,” said Johannes Smit.
“Hypocrite!”
“Traitor!”
“Soon they will mess this country up,” Tjaart Cronje consoled his mate. “The country will be in a shambles and the Afrikaner will be called back to rescue it. The Afrikaner will regain his power.”
Johannes Smit nodded his agreement. Although he was self-employed as a farmer, affirmative action had taken its toll on him as well. He was no longer getting easy loans from the Land Bank, for which he had previously qualified solely by virtue of being an Afrikaner farmer. Land Bank loans were now open to everyone, even to peasants in the villages, and like everyone else, he had to wait his turn for his applications to be approved. He now had to motivate before he could get a loan, and account for it after getting it. And the people he was motivating and accounting to were the very affirmative action people who had taken over everything. Even such sacred institutions as the Land Bank.
These were tough times for the Afrikaner. Especially for the boer — the farmer. Johannes Smit had had to change to a tougher breed of cattle that could withstand the rigours and hardships to which the Afrikaner was being subjected. He had sold all his Brahmins and had bought Gelbviehs, a breed of cattle that could thrive under tough conditions with minimum attention and expenditure.
Tough times called for tough measures.
33. BETRAYAL BY THE ELDERS
IN THE STARK CLARITY of the Free State, a sleepy-eyed woman follows a sleepy-eyed man. Their purple faces are delicate, shaped by the music that is ringing in their heads. Their yellow ochre hats cover their ears so that the song of the wind cannot interfere with the song in their heads. He is in a purple jump suit and purple boots. She is in a purple coat, black shirt and red shoes. Over their shoulders they each carry a heavy bag. They choose their path carefully among giant yellow sunflowers. The wide-open skies are bright with purpleness.
Viliki took to the world with the Seller of Songs. They traversed the Free State, from one farm village to another, selling their songs at people’s feasts and parties. Word had spread that these two itinerant musicians, a delicately carved man and his delicately carved woman, were endowed with the power to turn the dullest of parties into torrid revelries of dance and laughter. Without the backing of the usual drums, his accordion breathed notes that set the carousers ablaze. Her flute wailed wantonly, weaving its way among the notes of the accordion. It was a combination we had never heard before, which meant that Viliki and the Seller of Songs were in greater demand than any other itinerant musicians. We invited them to play at our weddings and at the feasts honouring the ancestors. They travelled through all the districts of the eastern Free State. They spent their days walking in the fields among sunflowers, trekking to the next village, and their nights in sweaty hovels making people dance. They even crossed the Mo-hokare River into Lesotho, where they played at the all-night famo dance parties.