The Madonna of Excelsior (12 page)

The women looked at one another with eyes full of question marks. Maria's eyes had exclamation marks in addition to question marks. Her lover had failed in his bid to join Stephanus Cronje. The scoundrel was trying to escape responsibility. He had proved to be just as cowardly as Niki's lover.

“Today we shall only deal with bail matters and then adjourn,” announced the magistrate.

“Your Worship,” said Adam de Vries, “on the instructions of my clients, I have arranged that the bail of fifty rands set by this court be paid for each one of the women charged with my clients.”

Christiaan Calitz shook his head in wonder. Karel Bezuidenhout squinted his eyes and looked at Adam de Vries closely. Also in wonder.

Outside the courthouse, we saw journalists crowding around Adam de Vries. They were firing questions at him, all at once. Why did his clients pay bail for the women? Was it an admission on their part that they knew these women and had had intimate
relations with them? Why would they post bail for women who were allegedly framing them?

But Adam de Vries had a ready answer: “I arranged for their bail because I did not think it was fair that they should have to remain in custody because they did not have the money, while my clients were free because they could afford bail.”

“Is it not a coincidence that your clients are paying bail for the women only now that the women have indicated that they are withdrawing their admission of guilt and will not give evidence against the men?” asked one impertinent reporter.

“I do not know what you are talking about,” said Adam de Vries calmly.

“Dr Percy Yutar, the Attorney-General, reported that his office in Bloemfontein received a telephone call from Excelsior conveying the information that the women were no longer prepared to plead guilty, that they had briefed counsel and that they were to dispute the admissions,” said the reporter, with a flourish more typical of defence counsel.

“What are you insinuating?” asked Adam de Vries, finding the experience of being put on a witness stand by an upstart repugnant.

“It is not an insinuation, Mr de Vries,” said the persistent pest. “It is a question. Isn't it rather strange that the men post bail for the women soon after the women have declared that they are no longer prepared to give evidence against them? How are the women able to afford to brief counsel?”

“I am not going to tolerate this line of insolent crossexamination,” said Adam de Vries, pushing his way out of the circle of vermin.

We saw the women walking away from the courthouse, back to the freedom of Mahlatswetsa Location and the neighbouring farms. Babies strapped on their backs. Excited friends and relatives jumping about. Fawning. Like dogs at the return of the master after a journey of many days. But Niki was not among them. We
saw her being escorted to the police truck by a warder, Popi held close to her bosom. Nobody had paid any bail for her, as her lover had taken the easy way out. We saw Johannes Smit looking at her with a smirk on his face. And then giving her a silly wave. Rubbing it in that had she accepted his advances, she would have been walking home to Mahlatswetsa Location with the rest of the women. We saw Mmampe running to the truck as it drove away with Niki and Popi, shouting: “Don't worry Niki, I will look after Viliki!” We heard Niki shout back through the meshed window: “Please do! I cannot thank you enough, Mmampe.”

T
HAT NIGHT
, many families in Mahlatswetsa Location were celebrating the return of their daughters, wives and mothers. And of the light-skinned babies. But Niki's shack was deserted. It was not the only home that was deserted, however. Stephanus Cronje's home was deserted as well. A neighbour said that Mrs Cornelia Cronje and her son, Tjaart, were away. She did not know where they had gone. Maybe to her family in Zastron. A woman leaving the premises of Excelsior Slaghuis denied to the journalists that she was Mrs Cronje, and that she even knew her.

Cornelia Cronje disappeared immediately after the inquest. Soon after she gave evidence of how she had found the body of her husband upon returning home from work. She had testified that her husband had been released on bail after being charged with contravening the Immorality Act. He had driven her to the butchery the next morning and said goodbye normally before returning home. When she came back home that evening, she had found her husband's wallet on a table beside her bed. As this was unusual, she had gone to his bedroom and knocked. No one had answered. She had tried to open the door, but it had been locked. She had called the gardener, who had used a lever to dislodge the door from its hinges. She had stood aghast at the discovery of the body. Her husband's face was covered in blood and a shotgun was
clenched between his legs. She had run to the house of a friend nearby and the friend had telephoned the police.

After the inquest, Cornelia Cronje had gone underground. Obviously she needed to get some breathing space away from the newspaper and television hounds that had practically camped outside her house and also outside her butchery.

There was another home that was deserted that night. That of the Reverend François Bornman. He was at the Universitas Hospital in Bloemfontein. His right eye was wrapped in thick bandages. His loyal wife was at his bedside. They were joined by the elders of the church in their dark suits.

He was not in any physical pain, he told his visitors. His pain was the pain of the heart. The pain of knowing that he had betrayed those he loved and those who loved him. It was the work of the devil, he said. The devil had sent black women to tempt him and to move him away from the path of righteousness. The devil had always used the black female to tempt the Afrikaner. It was a battle that was raging within individual Afrikaner men. A battle between lust and loathing. A battle that the Afrikaner must win. The devil made the Afrikaner to covertly covet the black woman while publicly detesting her. It was his fault that he had not been strong enough to resist the temptation. The devil made him do it. The devil had weakened his heart, making it open to temptation. And he had made things worse for himself in the eyes of the Almighty by attempting to take his own life. He was therefore praying every hour that God should forgive him.

The loyal wife grasped his hand tightly. The warmth of her grip transmitted her complete understanding and unreserved forgiveness. The elders assured him that God had forgiven him. Clearly God did not want him to die yet, for He had a bigger plan for him. He still needed him to be His messenger on earth. God had a greater purpose. That was why He was testing His flock with this scandal that had rocked the Afrikaner nation to its foundations. Men of little faith could not easily understand God's grand plan. It was an arduous road that God had set for His volk. And on the
journey, many good men would be lost. Already one good man had been lost. Stephanus Cronje. A stalwart of the National Party, whose father had trekked from Cape Town to the northern Transvaal in an ox-wagon in the wonderful 1938 commemoration of the Great Trek. Together with François Bornman's own father. And Groot-Jan Lombard. And Johannes Smit's father. Although Johannes Smit had rebelled against the political home that had nourished him, and was now counted among the provincial leaders of the ultra-right-wing Herstigte Nasionale Party. Be that as it may, he too remained a good person who had been led astray by the devil in the guise of black women.

The elders of the church bowed their heads and praised the Lord for His magnanimity.

T
HE ELDERS
of the church were right. The devil was on the loose in the Free State platteland. Grabbing upstanding volk by their genitalia and dragging them along a path strewn with the body parts of black women. Parts that had an existence independent of the women attached to them. Parts that were capable of sending even the most devout citizen into bouts of frenzied lust.

But wily as Lucifer might be, he was not going to succeed in his designs to consign the volk to eternal damnation. God always looked after His own.

These sins of our mothers happened in front of our eyes. Hence some of us became blind. And have remained so to this day. Those sins that we did not see with our own eyes, or that we did not hear about in places where we gathered to celebrate our lives, we read about in
The Friend
newspaper. Reports of wholesale miscegenation in the Free State platteland abounded. Tlotlo le wele makgwabane, the people said. A free-for-all. Open season. A feast of miscegenation.

The Friend
, 7 January 1971:

The first three of a number of persons who will be charged in the Regional Court, Bloemfontein, for offences under the Immorality Act appeared in court yesterday.

Anna Tsomela, a 36-year-old African woman with a lightskinned, fair-haired baby of three months in her arms who, she said, was the child of the White man arrested with her, was found guilty under the Act and sentenced to nine months' imprisonment, suspended for three years.

Constable Johannes David Grisel, of S.A. Police, Reddersburg, gave evidence of how the light delivery van in which she was travelling with a White man of Bloemfontein, Petrus François Smit, was trailed by him and how they were arrested on a lonely farm road near Reddersburg.

He said that as a result of information received, he followed the van when it left Reddersburg at about 7 p.m. on 1 October last year. About 16 km from Reddersburg on the road to Bloemfontein the vehicle turned off into a farm road leading to the farm Mierfontein. Constable Grisel was joined by another policeman working with him and they pursued the light delivery van with their police vehicle.

When the light delivery van left Reddersburg, Tsomela was sitting in the back of the vehicle and the White man was driving. When they stopped the van both were sitting in the front and the baby, obviously of mixed blood, was with them. Tsomela's breasts were bared and her dress was pulled up high. He arrested the couple.

Dr B.J.B. Faul, district surgeon at Reddersburg, said that he examined the child in court in October last year at the request of the police. It was obviously of mixed blood and if Tsomela, who was an African woman, was the mother, the father must have been a White man.

In her statement to the magistrate Tsomela said she started to work for the White man and his family on a farm near Virginia some years ago. After some time the man's wife moved to
Bloemfontein and she had to look after him on the farm. After they had been staying there alone for about two years, he started giving her some of the gin he drank and later they became intimate.

About a year ago she became pregnant. The White man then moved to Bloemfontein and, because there was no accommodation for her in the city, he took her to her sister in Wepener. From there she went to Lesotho where the baby was born and then she returned to her father who was in Reddersburg.

The White man obtained her address by writing to her sister and then also wrote to her. On 1 October he arrived there and told her that he had brought her something. He took her in his light delivery van to a spot on the farm road to Mierfontein where he stopped to show her what he had brought her. There were groceries, bread and meat which he showed her, but before he could show her everything the police arrived.

In her statement Tsomela also said that she had no complaints against the White man. He at least provided for his child. Her other four children she had to bring up on her own.

The magistrate said that Tsomela should realise the seriousness of her offence. She had been committing immorality with a White man over a long period and there had been miscegenation, which it was the purpose of the Act to prevent. The serious light in which the offence was seen by the legislature was indicated by the fact that the maximum sentence provided was seven years' imprisonment.

In view of the fact that she had made a clean breast of everything, that she had no previous convictions and that she was now saddled with the burden of another child to provide for, the magistrate said her sentence of nine months would be suspended for three years, however, on condition that she was not during that period found guilty of a similar offence and that she did not leave the Republic of South Africa before 15 February when she would be required to appear in court to give evidence against Petrus François Smit.

The Friend
, 7 January 1971:

In another court a young White man, Johannes J. Oosthuizen (26), of 9 Goddard Street, Bloemfontein, appeared together with a 16-year-old African woman before Mr P. Geldenbuys. No evidence was led and they were remanded until 16 February. Oosthuizen is on bail of R50. Bail of R50 was also allowed for the African girl, but has not yet been provided.

The Friend
, 23 January 1971:

A mother of three sat quietly with an arm around her young son outside the Bloemfontein Regional Court while a magistrate, Mr A.W. van Zyl, was told how her husband had put his hand under the dress of a 19-year-old African school teacher and then offered her R5 if she consented to have relations with him.