The Brand (2 page)
Ugly Joe Vermuelen’s wealth could, at least
to a certain extent, be attributed to the Apartheid regime of the
1970s and 1980s, because the laws and conditions – social and
otherwise – prevailing in the country then had allowed White people
to prosper at the expense of the majority indigenous Black people.
Ugly Joe was a descendant of Dutch settlers who had ventured into
this part of Africa in the 1600s and decided the gold and diamond
reserves to be found beneath the vast land were too tempting to be
left alone. As time went on, the descendants of these Dutch
settlers would own vast tracts of farmland and mines, becoming
increasingly wealthy, while they pushed native Africans out of
fertile land into crowded reserves and restricted their movement by
employing oppressive tactics. By the 1900s, it was clear that White
people would be rich for life by virtue of the color of their skin
and being descendants of European settlers who had denied Blacks a
slice of the cake, and that being born Black would ensure poverty
for life. This state of affairs went on for so long that when
Apartheid eventually ended and the Afrikaner regime released Nelson
Mandela after 27 years of incarceration, the damage had been so
deep even subsequent Black governments could not fully redress
it.
During the 1970s and 1980s, when South Africa
was isolated by the international community because of its
Apartheid regime, there was need for the country to sustain itself
by manufacturing its own products and goods. There was more than
enough food to be produced on the country’s fertile land. Joe
Vermuelen came to prominence during this time by opening
food-processing plants across the country and selling his products
at his stores, first in Johannesburg and then later spreading
across the nation as profit margins soared. Because there was no
foreign competition, the Vermuelen retail stores grew to a
commanding position, monopolizing the market share, such that when
Isolation was over the Vermuelen brand was etched so deep into
South Africans’ psyche that foreign grocery store retail brands
found it difficult to crack it into the lucrative market.
As his wealth accrued, Vermuelen had
diversified his business interests, delving into wine making, gold
production, and opening new stores in African markets after the end
of Isolation. When he died in November 2010, following a fatal
cardiac arrest whilst engrossed in the pleasures of the flesh with
a busty young blonde woman, Joe Vermuelen was the fifth richest man
in South Africa. In Forbes’ list of the richest people in the world
for 2009, he had been ranked number 449. The
Daily Sun
, a ragtag national tabloid, liked to
classify him as The Ugliest Rich South African.
With the passage of time, generation after
generation that had descended from the Dutch settlers added new
words and meanings to the original language of their forbearers,
such that there existed today an evolved and bastardized version of
Dutch, known as Afrikaans. Although Hudson Vermuelen’s home
language was identified as Afrikaans when filling in tax return
forms, he was well-versed in the English language, owing to the
fact that his mother was a descendant of subjects of the old
British Empire. He had, however, polished on his Afrikaans at
school, and he could get fairly understood in the Netherlands.
However, Hudson considered himself a modern man, and as such deemed
English to be the preferred medium of exchange between the peoples
of the world, and hence he thought Afrikaans to be a useless
language because it could neither be spoken or understood anywhere
else but South Africa, except for Namibia – and Namibia was an
annex of South Africa anyway, only politicians refused to think
so.
He was married to a woman who also refused to
acknowledge her Afrikaner roots and had not bothered to learn the
language at all, instead taking up English, the language spoken by
her parents in order to understand each other. Her father was an
Afrikaner who spoke English with a hideously think accent, and her
mother was an Italian immigrant who had been lured into South
Africa in the 1980s by the promises of gold by a guileful man who
had disappeared into thin air upon their arrival on the African
continent, leaving her stranded. She had been rescued by a kind
policeman in a khaki uniform and oxide-brown knee-length boots, who
would later marry her and father Joelyn amongst four other
children. Even though her mother had lived thirty years in South
Africa, she still spoke her English with a thick Italian
accent.
Joelyn spoke neither Afrikaans nor
Italian. She was content with her English, which she spoke with the
rapid fluidity of a United Kingdom native. She was an anchor
on
SuperSport
, a
local subscription-only TV sports channel. She did the job for fun,
not to earn a living. Her main job was being married to the heir to
the Vermuelen billions, and it required lots of energy to be in a
position like that.
Mrs. Joelyn Vermuelen drove herself around
Gauteng, the province that contained Johannesburg, in a red BMW Z4.
The zappy hard-top convertible had personalized number plates that
read JOE V – GP (the GP stood for Gauteng Province). The car was a
present from her husband to celebrate her recent
26
th
birthday. For her
25
th
birthday, the year before, he
had bought her an Audi TT roadster.
She drove the Z4 from her Sandton apartment,
where she lived with her husband, towards Pretoria, her workplace.
Pretoria lies about 60km north of Johannesburg. There are people
who work in Johannesburg but prefer to live in Pretoria. What this
means is that these people have to endure heavy traffic congestion
on each day of the week to and from work, because the N1 highway
that connects Johannesburg to Pretoria is notoriously flooded with
traffic from Pretoria in the mornings and then traffic from
Johannesburg in the after-hours on weekdays throughout the year
except on public holidays. By a stark contrast, traffic flows
smoothly from Johannesburg to Pretoria in the mornings and also
Johannesburg from Pretoria in the evenings, owing to the fact that
very few Johannesburg citizens work in Pretoria. This situation
worked out well for Mrs. Vermuelen, who was impatient by
nature.
On this day, the 2
nd
of January 2011, South Africa and India would
begin the first day of a five-day cricket match traditionally known
as the New Year’s Test. It was the final of a three-match series,
to decide the victor, both sides having triumphed over the other in
the first two matches in Centurion and Durban respectively. The
last match would be played in Cape Town, but Joelyn was anchoring
for
SuperSport
fans
at the studios in Pretoria. The weather experts claimed that rain
would not be a factor in the five-day match, and Joelyn prayed that
was true. Rain would mean delays during the match, and more work
for her. While she thoroughly enjoyed her job, frankly today she
preferred as little appearance as possible in front of the TV
cameras. It was a day after New Year’s Day, for God’s sake! Only
insane people had to work on the second day of a new year. New
Year’s Eve had been a wild night out with partying with friends,
after which she had spent yesterday morning in bed, recuperating
from a severe headache and possible alcohol poisoning in her
bloodstream. And today she was driving herself to work, to spend
the day sitting on a chair and discussing a cricket match with the
station’s chosen analysts. Insane.
But Joelyn had struggled enough for survival
during her youth to know that some things in life are a blessing.
Having a job in the New South Africa was one of them. The New South
Africa is a term used locally to describe the South Africa after
multi-party, multi-racial elections of 1994 during which Nelson
Mandela was elected the first democratically-elected President of
South Africa and went on to declare South Africa a “rainbow
nation”, a nation comprised of people of all color and creed. This
new South Africa purported to give equal opportunities to all its
people, but due to racial imbalances in the societal setting, the
majority of White people in South Africa lead wealthy lifestyles by
local standards even today, while only a minority of Blacks live
comfortable lives. Efforts at Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) by
2010 had led to a minority of schemers and connivers reaping the
rewards of BEE for themselves, denying the rest of the population
even a tiny slice of the cake. There are White people emigrating
from South Africa to settle in far-flung areas of Europe and
Australia, citing as their reasons for leaving high levels of crime
and limited job opportunities due to the government’s Broad-Based
Black Economic Empowerment initiatives. While the crime issue is
justified, because, no matter how tactfully the government’s
spin-doctors try to play it down, national police statistics
indicated in 2010 that due to violent crime, South Africa was still
as dangerous a place to live in as it had been a decade previously.
The claim about limited job opportunities by White professionals
leaving South Africa was a dubious one, though, simply because
there is ample evidence across the globe to suggest that
better-educated people will always get better jobs than
less-educated people. Historically, White people in South Africa
have always had access to better schools than Blacks, and when it
comes to recruiting talented young professionals, companies always
find ways to skirt the BEE issue and get their man or woman.
Joelyn Vermuelen, née Smit, was an exception.
She was a product of the New South Africa’s public education
system. Having been born in 1984, she was just six years old when
Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Being the daughter of a
policeman sealed the fate for her. For some reason one can never
quite understand, governments the world over notoriously underpay
police officers, which meant that life at home was a constant
struggle for survival for Joelyn and her four siblings. During her
earlier years, she had attended a primary school in Yeoville, while
her father had been stationed at the Yeoville Police Station. The
family lived in a 3-bedroomed house in Yeoville, a short distance
from the Johannesburg city center.
Later, her father’s promotion came and he was
shifted to Norwood Police Station, but the increase in salary did
nothing for the family as the new home in Orange Grove ate away a
large chunk of the Smits’ income by way of mortgage repayments.
Joelyn attended Maryvale Girls High school in Orange Grove. She was
a timid girl during her teenage years, keeping mostly to herself
and extremely devoted to her school books.
She passed her Matric examinations with three
distinctions, and a scholarship enabled her to study Media Studies
at Wits University, near Braamfontein, a short drive from the city
center. It was at Wits that Joelyn, for the first time living away
from home, allowed her extrovert character to emerge and fully
express itself. It was also here that she lost her virginity,
learned to drink hard liquor, and generally matured from a teenage
girl into a breathtakingly beautiful young woman. She had inherited
the blonde hair and piercing blue eyes from her father; the nose,
understated cheekbones and full, ripe lips were from her
mother.
When she went for an interview for
the
SuperSport
job
after graduating in 2005, her interviewers agreed in private that
they had found a rare gem – a beauty with brains. The next few
years had been a thrilling ride of little triumphs; she had been
featured in advertisements for household products, been on local
magazine covers, interviewed some of the world’s top sportsmen and
women, and covered matches during the 2010 Soccer World Cup,
organized and showcased in South Africa. In short, Joelyn was a
household name, and in hot demand with sponsors and advertisers
right now. Many a young man’s heart was broken when she married
Hudson Vermuelen.
Presently, Mrs. Vermuelen parked her car
at the
SuperSports
studios. She got out of the Z4 and stretched her back with
a groan. It was going to be a long day. She grabbed a brown paper
bag from the passenger seat and closed the door. The paper bag
contained two choc-chip muffins she had bought at a Mugg & Bean
outlet along the way. She was going to buy a Red Bull at the
studios’ cafeteria. God she needed the energy booster!
She made her way into the studio complex and
thought that life could have turned out worse. Yes, Joelyn lived a
charmed life as Mrs. Vermuelen, even though the Indian cricket
team’s December/January tour of South Africa had prevented her from
going along with her husband on his annual vacation. He had wanted
to visit Cyprus, the UK and Spain, but bad weather in Europe had
made him change his plans. He had gone to Mauritius instead.
A smile crept to her face as fond memories of
her husband came to her mind. She had absolutely no idea that
Hudson was planning to divorce her.
Hudson was not, as his wife thought, in
Mauritius. He had left that country on New Year’s Day and was
actually in an even smaller island, called La Réunion, situated
some miles to the east of Madagascar. La Réunion is a tiny island
that is governed by the Republic of France, and to visit it, one
needs a visa from the French government, which Hudson had obtained
from the French embassy in Pretoria. He was staying at the LUX Ile
de la Réunion hotel, a five-star facility with a magnificent
presidential suite that offered him and his companion exquisite
views of the Indian Ocean. Local girls littered the beaches wearing
skimpy bikinis that left little to the imagination. Were it not for
the fact that he had female companionship, he would have doubtless
been tempted to seek pleasure in one or two of the local females’
bodies. But he was content with the girl he had had the forethought
to order from one of Jo’burg’s top escort agencies. She was nothing
like his wife, but she would suffice as the attractive companion of
a travelling gentleman on an exotic island. Furthermore, she had
skills in bed that Joelyn had yet to learn.
