“If you don’t use these bees profitably,” Adam de Vries had once said, “thieves will come in the night and steal all your honey and sell it.”
But Niki did not respond. She did not seem to be worried. Perhaps she knew that none of us would ever be brave enough to go near her bees. Even those of us who had gained great expertise in harvesting wild honey in the veld and in the sunflower fields wouldn’t have dared steal from her apiary. We believed that she had a way of talking with the bees, and that she had the power to make them sting unwelcome intruders to death. Even though we knew that bees normally became dazed and foolish in the darkness of the night, the Bee Woman’s bees had powers that were beyond the understanding of any human, save the Bee Woman herself.
“You don’t have to sit here looking after bees all day long,” Adam de Vries said. “Bees can look after themselves. That’s the beauty of bee-keeping. You let them be and they create honey for you.”
“I do not look after the bees,” Niki replied. “They look after me.”
Adam de Vries did not know what she meant by this. But he did not give up. Every other week he went to the lone figure sitting on a white chair to talk about the Excelsior Development Trust. Sometimes he talked about Viliki. He was sad that Viliki was not part of the great movement for the development of the town. That he had chosen to walk the road with a coloured woman, idling at beer parties and leading a life of wantonness. It was very unlike Viliki, Adam de Vries said to Niki. And it was a very disappointing thing. Viliki used to be a dedicated community builder. But Niki did not respond to all this. She just smiled vaguely, as if she knew something that the rest of the world did not know.
Sometimes the itinerant musicians’ feet led them to Excelsior, where they would play in the street in front of Viliki’s RDP house. Word would be passed around and in no time the street would be dancing. Even the varkoore lilies and the weeds that had grown among them would sway to the sounds that filled the air. A hat would be passed around and soon it would be full of coins that would be offered to the creators of such merriment.
In the evening the Seller of Songs and Viliki would sweep out the dust that had piled up in their house during their weeks of absence. Although Viliki asked the neighbours to “put an eye” on his house, no one cleaned it.
The following day Viliki would visit Adam de Vries, who would express his regret that Niki and her children had taken a wayward path instead of working for the development of their town and their fellow Africans.
“Now all of a sudden you are a spokesman for the Africans, Meneer,” Viliki remarked mockingly. “It is good that now you people finally see yourselves as Africans.”
“I have always been an African,” said Adam de Vries passionately. “Long before anyone else called themselves Africans, my people called themselves Afrikaners. Africans. Unlike the English-speaking South African, the Afrikaner does not look to England or any European country as the mother country. His only point of reference is South Africa. He does not see South Africa as a colonial outpost. He is deeply rooted in the soil of South Africa. How dare you question my Africanness?”
Viliki laughed and remarked that Adam de Vries was the kind of African who viewed himself as superior to other Africans. Otherwise why had he perpetuated discrimination based on race?
“It was for the good of everyone,” screamed Adam de Vries. “Things just went wrong. But there was never any intention to hurt anyone. All we wanted to do was to guide the black man to civilisation.”
“Which is what you continue to do today, hey?” said Viliki sarcastically. “With your Excelsior Development Trust. Guide the natives to civilisation.”
“One can never win with you, Viliki,” said an exasperated Adam de Vries. “If we fold our arms and do nothing, you still blame us. You must admit it, Viliki. You need us. A black man’s way of thinking is that he cannot create a job for himself. He wants the white man to guide him. Or even create a job for him.”
Such debates always ended in deadlock. Viliki would walk away from Adam de Vries’s office fuming and vowing that he would never visit the stubborn old codger again. But of course the next time he was in Excelsior, he would go to Adam de Vries’s office again.
On the road with the Seller of Songs, Viliki admitted something he would never admit in the presence of Adam de Vries or any white man of Excelsior, lest it reinforce their I-told-you-so attitude. He told the Seller of Songs — who had very little recollection of the days of apartheid because she had been too young then — that those had been very bad days because people were oppressed.
“But at least Excelsior was clean,” he added. “Mahlatswetsa was clean. Gardens were neat. The town council even gave a prize for the best garden.”
We had heard this gripe about the lack of cleanliness before. It used to be Viliki’s daily song even before he took to the road with the Seller of Songs: that we didn’t care about beautiful gardens any more.
“Today people don’t care,” he lamented. “They are now free. Tall grass grows in front of their houses. They expect the government to come and clean their gardens for them. Why else did they fight for freedom if the government they elected will not remove the grass in front of their houses? People are free. They must enjoy their freedom. They must sit on their stoops all day long and the government must feed them. During the days of apartheid, they used to go out and look for work. Now they are free. The government must feed them. If Mahlatswetsa Location is filthy, it is the fault of the government. The government must clean Mahlatswetsa Location. Is that what freedom means to us?”
We observed that Viliki could afford to be critical now that he was no longer a town councillor. Didn’t the dirt begin during his tenure as mayor? Those days, of course, his garden used to be one of the very few that were clean and beautiful, with lilies of different types. Now he no longer had the right to pontificate about gardens because his own garden was as ugly as the rest. It had fallen into neglect since he took to the road.
Adam de Vries did not give up on Viliki. He knew that next time he came to Excelsior, Viliki would visit his office, and the old lawyer would try once more to convince him to stay and join the Excelsior Development Trust. He was proud of its achievements. It had established a mentoring programme that he hoped would change the face of agriculture in the eastern Free State. Under the auspices of this organisation, Adam de Vries had recruited a number of Afrikaner farmers to support emerging black farmers. He had even been able to convince Johannes Smit to join the programme and mentor some emerging farmers.
Like Tjaart Cronje, Johannes Smit still believed that the Afrikaners had been lied to by their leaders, who had assured the volk that they would not just hand over the government to the blacks without making certain that the Afrikaners would continue to wield their rightful power. Unlike Tjaart Cronje, Johannes Smit was resigned to the fact that the Afrikaners had been deceived and therefore had to make the best of the situation. After all, there were some benefits in getting into partnership with black farmers. Some affirmative action contracts and tenders would surely come his way, in the name of his protégés.
Tjaart Cronje was in his butchery when he first heard of Johannes Smit’s treachery. He was no longer a town councillor, as he had not stood in the local elections. He had decided to leave politics to the blacks, who would doubtlessly ruin the town and the rest of the country, making it possible for the Afrikaner to regain his power.