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BLACK DIAMOND
T H E A F R I C A L I S T
ZAKES MDA
BLACK DIAMOND
LONDON NEW YORK CALCUTTA
Sries Editor: Rosalind C. Morris
Seagull Books, 2014
© Zakes Mda, 2009
ISBN 978 0 85742 222 4
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset by Seagull Books, Calcutta, India
Printed and bound by Maple Press, York, Pennsylvania, USA
BLACK DIAMOND
1
FREE THE VISAGIE BROTHERS
No one will blame you if you think Kristin Uys is dressed
for a funeral. Not the black folks’ kind of funerals where
women give the dead a glorious send-off in the same
Versaces, Sun Goddesses and Givenchys that are a staple
at such horse-racing events as the Durban July Handicap
or the J&B Met. Not the joyful events where the living
crack jokes about the dead and get sloshed and dance to
loud music at those marathon parties known as ‘after-
tears’. But the sad and sombre affairs that pass for funer-
als in white communities. A calf-length black skirt, an
off-white blouse with frills that have gone tired and a
navy blue jacket that seems to be slightly oversized. The
black gown, however, will soon disabuse you of any
notions of bereavement and will place you squarely in a
courtroom. She is the magistrate. The gown is almost
threadbare, with bell-shaped sleeves and shoulder pieces
of scarlet. Her blonde hair is tied in an old-fashioned
schoolmarmish bun. But the austere look and the severe
dress code fail to disguise her fine features.
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She sits at the bench and looks sternly at the accused.
One glares back at her unflinchingly. He is Stevo Visagie,
the older of the two brothers in the dock. He is tiny and
wiry. What he lacks in stature he makes up for in his men-
acing look. His sharp features, leathery skin and pene-
trating eyes tell us at once that he is tough. The other one
hasn’t got the guts to return the magistrate’s gaze. He
lowers his eyes. He is Shortie Visagie, a young man with
the frame of a wrestler and a perpetually perplexed
expression. Although he is obviously as strong as an ele-
phant, he has an avuncular air about him. He may pre-
tend to be tough but he is really a teddy bear.
The magistrate did not expect this kind of temerity
from Stevo. She turns her gaze to the defence counsel. Mr
Krish Naidoo stands up to address the court. Before he
can utter a word, the magistrate says, ‘You are not
dressed, Mr Naidoo.’
‘I beg your pardon, your worship?’
‘Next time I will not allow you in my court in that
suit, Mr Naidoo.’
He should have known better than to wear a light
grey suit in Kristin Uys’ court. Everyone is well aware that
she is a stickler for courtroom decorum—a black suit, a
white shirt, a bib and a black robe. But sometimes a
lawyer forgets, especially because other magistrates are
quite lax about such things.
‘I expect such infringements from younger attor-
neys,’ she adds.
BLACK DIAMOND
5
The spectators in the gallery watch expectantly.
Prominent among them are four women in the garish
attire and exaggerated make-up of prostitutes. They are
huddled together and are paying close attention to the
proceedings.
Krish Naidoo suppresses his irritation and apolo-
gizes to the court. He then proceeds with his closing
remarks.
His clients, the Visagie Brothers, are on trial for run-
ning a brothel.
‘But the state has failed to make a case against them,’
he says. ‘Evidence given by their mother has shown that
the girls found on the Visagie property were their cousins
visiting from the platteland.’
The prostitutes in the gallery seem to enjoy this char-
acterization of their peers. They give the court what they
think are coquettish smiles. The magistrate has nothing
but disgust for them. All they need to do is give her the
slightest excuse and she will have them thrown out of the
courtroom. Just as she did this morning when she asked
Ma Visagie, the boys’ mother, to leave after she uttered
an exclamation of disagreement at something the prose-
cutor said. It was after she had given her evidence for the
defence, had been cross-examined by the state and had
taken a seat in the gallery.
Ma Visagie joined the demonstration in the parking
lot in front of the courthouse and took over from Aunt
Magda—who is really not anyone’s aunt—to lead the
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protesters. The scrawny but feisty matriarch sings with
gusto. The small group—consisting of five hookers, three
drag queens and about ten women in black who call
themselves the Society of Widows—is waving crude plac-
ards with bold letters: Free the Visagie Brothers! and Release
Shortie and Stevo!
The demonstration is Aunt Magda’s brainchild—she
of the missing front teeth, like a lot of Cape Town people
of her generation. She came all the way from the Mother
City as soon as she got the message that her boys were in
jail. Although she retired two years ago from her long
service as the Visagie maid, she is still very attached to
the boys. After all, she brought them up from the time
they were babies and looked after them until they were
grown men. Stevo lost his virginity to her in his early
teens one drunken night. She even had a tryst with old
Meneer Visagie himself before cancer stole him away. She
returned to her beloved Athlone after her knees gave up
on her because of arthritis, although one can’t see any evi-
dence of that today judging from the toyi-toyi she is per-
forming outside the courthouse—a dance that has
mystified her fellow protesters, most of whom have only
seen it on television when workers’ unions are on strike
and are overturning dustbins.
Most of the women in the group of protesters are
community members who are beholden to the Visagie
family.
In the same way that mass action brought the
apartheid government to its knees, it was bound to bring
BLACK DIAMOND
7
the post-apartheid justice system to its senses. Aunt
Magda assured her supporters that she had studied the
methods used by the Release Mandela Committee of old
and would apply them to force the magistrate to free her
innocent boys. If mass action worked for Mandela, it
would surely work for the Visagies. The group has even
appropriated ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, the song by the ska
band Special AKA, as its anthem. Of course, they have
changed the words ‘Nelson Mandela’ to ‘Visagie Brothers’.
Ma Visagie does not understand anything about
demonstrations, mass actions and organizing commit-
tees. Her community was never part of that culture. But
she is willing to try anything to get her sons freed. If Aunt
Magda says people were released from jail through such
actions, then there is no reason why they will not be
effective now that those who were once prisoners are the
rulers of this country.
The Society of Widows is the culmination of Aunt
Magda’s organizing prowess. Some of its members are
indeed widows whose husbands or boyfriends may have
died in some car hijacking misadventure or armoured-
vehicle cash heist. Others are not necessarily widows in
the literal sense. They may be single mothers who have
benefited from the generosity of the Visagies or wives
whose husbands are useless layabouts. In the tradition of
South African criminals who have become folk heroes in
their communities, the Visagies often operate on a sem-
blance of the Robin Hood principle. When South African
criminals have been gunned down by the police in car
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chases, or by fellow gangsters in turf wars, you often hear
in funeral speeches how generous they were, and how
many young people in the community have achieved
their dreams of studying at universities, becoming
&nb
now lying in the coffin.
It is the same with Ma Visagie’s boys. That is why
Aunt Magda tells a newspaper reporter, ‘The government
has failed the widows of this country. The Visagie
Brothers have made big donations to our society. They
always help those in need. They even pay school fees for
kids from poor families.’
Ma Visagie, however, will not let Aunt Magda hog all
the limelight. She sings the loudest in her shaky voice.
After all, she is the mother of the heroes in question and
Aunt Magda was only their nanny.
But the demonstrators’ protest songs cannot pene-
trate the thick walls of the Roodepoort magistrate’s court,
and Kristin Uys presides over the case unperturbed.
In his summing-up Krish Naidoo dismisses the evi-
dence of the policeman who arrested his clients. The
policeman, he says, entrapped the girls after one of them
turned down his proposal. The Visagies are respectable
businessmen who own a scrapyard selling used car parts.
‘They are well known in the community for their
good deeds and charitable work,’ he adds.
‘You are wasting this court’s time with irrelevancies,
Mr Naidoo,’ says the magistrate. ‘The accused may be the
BLACK DIAMOND
9
reincarnation of Mother Teresa herself but that has noth-
ing to do with this case.’
The attorney is deflated. The court is adjourned to
the next day.
Outside the courthouse Ma Visagie is telling another
reporter, ‘My boys are innocent. They have been framed
by the police. They’re the most angelic children any
mother could wish to have.’
But at that time, the Visagie Brothers don’t look
angelic at all as they are led in handcuffs and leg irons
from the courtroom to the holding cells by two burly
policemen. One may think they are the deadliest crimi-
nals that the police have ever laid their hands on.
As the magistrate walks out of the building the
demonstrators sing even louder. They stop short of jeer-
ing at her though. She pays no attention to them and
walks to the parking lot.
Kristin Uys arrives home in her battered Fiat Uno.
She gets out of the car as the electronic gates close auto-
matically behind her. Hers is an average suburban house
that once knew glorious days but now looks neglected.
Not dirty, just the worse for wear. Those who have lived
here for decades would say that the suburb itself—known
as Weltevreden Park, which means ‘well satisfied’—has
known glorious days as well. It used to be a paradise for
the Afrikaner white-collar workers. Those were the
good old days of apartheid, before the place was invaded
by the black professional classes, middle-management
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apparatchiks of big corporations and chief executives of
smaller corporations—chief executives and executive
chairpersons of the big multinationals are in Sandton
and Constantia Kloof. Now the suburb is completely non-
racial, though a passer-by wouldn’t notice since the res-
idents hide themselves behind high security walls. The
only vestiges of the pure Afrikaner past are the streets
that still bear the names of apartheid’s dead presidents
and prime ministers, such as Jim Fouché, John Vorster
and J. G. Strijdom.
A nondescript but well-fed cat purrs its welcome at
the door.
The furniture in the house is old and the walls are
bare of any pictures. There are papers, files and other
items strewn on the sofas, the floor and the coffee table.
Kristin Uys plays Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ on an
old-fashioned hi-fi. She draws a cork and pours herself a
drink from a wine bottle on a sideboard. She likes her
wine at room temperature. She sits on the sofa and the
cat jumps on her lap. She shuts her eyes while caressing
the cat and taking an occasional sip from the glass. The
cat purrs with contentment.
She continues to drink into the evening. Even as she
takes a bubble bath, she has a glass of wine. She looks at
herself in a hand-held mirror and kisses her image. She
is embarrassed by what she has just done and places
the mirror on the floor. She takes another sip of wine,
then places the glass on the floor next to the mirror. She
BLACK DIAMOND
11
examines herself. She is self-conscious about her tiny
breasts, she is almost flat-chested. In this private world
she seems unsure and uneasy, quite a contrast from the
brash and confident magistrate of the courtroom.
The cat is playing with a bottle of bath oil near the
tub. As it leaps at the bottle, it knocks the glass over and
the wine spills on the floor. She gets out of the bath,
wraps herself in a towel and wipes the wine from the floor
while the cat plays around with the cloth she is using,
frustrating her efforts. She laughs as she pushes the play-
ful cat away. So she can laugh, after all!
After nibbling at a ham sandwich she goes to bed.
The bedroom is a far cry from the living room. It is
decorated in garish pink and black. White lace predomi-
nates—it is on the curtains, on the lampshade and on the
cloth on the dressing table.
She is in bed in a delicate, frilly nightie that belies
the tough exterior we saw in court. She is reading a
book—Xaviera Hollander’s The Happy Hooker.
The cat is cuddled up on the comforter between
her legs.
2
COMRADES AND LOVERS
Don Mateza can hear Aunt Magda’s song seeping in
through the window: ‘Free . . . free . . . Visagie Brothers!’
Although she sounds drunk the voice has the breathiness
of the jazz singers he likes. From his office across
Dieperink Street he can see a small group of demonstra-
tors at the parking lot in front of the magistrate’s court.
He chuckles at the antics of one of the widows who
breaks into a silly jig, then turns his attention to his
client, an elderly white woman. He is demonstrating sur-
veillance equipment and enthusiastically assures her that
the camera is state-of-the-art and the price includes
installation. It will be mounted on the wall under the
eaves.
‘Oh, ja?’ says the customer. ‘Like the one the robbers
blasted with their guns before they broke into my house?’
‘That one, ma’am, was not installed by VIP Protection
Services. We disguise it, ma’am, so no one will know it’s
there. This is a weatherproof dome surveillance camera
. . . vandal proof! Once it’s up it stays up. And it’s high
resolution too.’
BLACK DIAMOND
13
The customer is impressed. Don explains how the
equipment can detect the slightest movement and
switches on the recording machine, and how it automat-
ically zooms to the intruder.
He is interrupted by the phone. It’s his boss.
‘Are you busy, Don?’
‘I’m with a client, Jim. Did you want something?’
‘Dr Mbungane is entertaining a few cabinet minis-
ters and visiting businessmen from the Congo. He needs
a number of bodyguards at his Sandhurst mansion.’
VIP Protection Services is short-staffed at the
moment, what with the increase in highway robberies
and the need for extra armed guards to accompany the
armoured vehicles transporting cash. But Molotov
Mbungane (the doctorates are honorary after a number
of South African universities fell over themselves dishing
out degrees to him when he became an overnight dollar
billionaire) is a very special client who must have what
