We Are Not Such Things (20 page)

Only one thing: she’d only sell to the right buyer. She was certain that all the people who had made offers, and there had been many, intended to buy the gorgeous old rambling home just outside the city center to tear it down, and she would never allow that. When I saw her a year after our first meeting, she was still furiously denying potential buyers for a variety of reasons, still reading the papers, still ranting about the state of the nation, and still talking about her imminent move to America.

That first meeting occurred in August 2012, a tense time in the country. Five days earlier, a group of striking black miners had been executed by government security forces in the rural northern town of Marikana, an event that came to be known as the Marikana Massacre. The thirty-four dead miners and their seventy-eight injured colleagues were poor, uneducated men, largely hailing from the stark, underdeveloped former homelands of the Eastern Cape—including at least one miner from Melvin Nofemela’s hometown of Lady Frere. They had been employed by a platinum mining conglomerate called Lonmin, headquartered in Johannesburg but listed on the London Stock Exchange. As in apartheid times, these migrants lived far from their families in grim dwellings, cooking on firewood and lighting their shacks with candles. Their murders, and their bleak living conditions, drew uncomfortable parallels between the oppressive tactics of the police under the new, black-led government and the old, white-supremacist government.

The photographs of dead black bodies, cut down in a hail of state-sanctioned bullets, reminded the country of Sharpeville and the days of strikes. Except now, instead of neatly dressed white government agents inspecting the corpses, neatly dressed black government agents inspected the corpses. In the old days, the largest and most famous strike was the 1987 National Union of Mineworkers strike, participated in by nearly a quarter million miners and led by a young firebrand lawyer named Cyril Ramaphosa, a socialist and later a favored acolyte of Mandela. By August 2012, Ramaphosa was estimated to be worth over $600 million and was a major shareholder in Lonmin (two years after I spoke to Rhoda, Ramaphosa would become deputy president of the country). The killings illuminated how, for all the promises of equality and freedom, brown-skinned laborers still marched deep into the land and drilled for the profit of a moneyed minority.

Our discussion quickly turned to the government of the day. “These people are so corrupt, they make apartheid look like a tea party,” Rhoda said, shaking her head. She had suspected, when she fought to end apartheid, that the formerly oppressed would make bad democrats; it was easy for one who was so systemically victimized to feel suddenly entitled to any and all of the available perks of power. The country had no political role models, no culture of fair governance for the people. Indeed, post-Mandela, the ruling party’s continuing electoral majority, despite corruption scandals that had seemingly become endemic, created an environment in which there was no accountability for corrupt wrongdoing. “What is the central theme of the ANC?” a South African friend once mused. “The central theme is: It’s our turn to eat.”

Mandela’s successor was Thabo Mbeki, a respected, charisma-free intellectual whose reign, from 1999 to 2008, was marred by AIDS denialism. Under the influence of fringe scientists (the most prominent was from California), Mbeki insisted that AIDS was caused by an immune system collapse, not a virus, and therefore could not be treated by expensive Western drugs but would rather be treated by alleviating poverty—a stubborn assertion that one research study associated with the death of 300,000 citizens. Mbeki gave way to Jacob Zuma. Zuma is a charming Zulu populist with little education, his main credentials being a stint on Robben Island and decades in the military command of the ANC in exile thereafter. Zuma, who practices polygamy, had his own brush with AIDS denialism when he was tried for the rape of an HIV-positive woman. He claimed the sex was consensual.

“You cannot leave a woman if she is already at that stage [of sexual arousal],” he insisted at his 2006 trial.

Zuma, formerly head of the South African AIDS council, also argued against scientific evidence, noting that while he hadn’t used protection, he reduced the risk of transmission by taking a shower. He was cleared of all charges and was elected president three years later.

By 2013, Zuma was in the midst of refurbishing his rural homestead, situated in the impoverished village of Nkandla in KwaZulu Natal, to the tune of about $23 million in taxpayer money (in 2016, he agreed to pay back an undetermined amount). The episode, inevitably called Nkandla-gate, had led to statements from Zuma’s public works minister, who claimed that what appeared to be a new swimming pool was in fact a “fire pool,” since there were no fire stations in the area, and what the press had misunderstood to be an amphitheater was simply “a structure with steps.” Eventually, an inquiry by the constitutionally mandated public protector found that public funds had been used for luxury upgrades to his personal home, and recommended that Zuma repay the government a reasonable portion of non-security improvements. However, the president ignored this finding. By the time this book went to print, South Africa’s highest court ruled that in refusing to pay back the money, Zuma had “failed to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law of the land.” After the ruling, Linda Biehl’s friend and Mandela’s confidante and fellow prisoner Ahmed Kathrada joined a growing chorus of ANC veterans calling for Zuma to step down.

In the previous decade, two consecutive police commissioners had been fired for corruption. One minister under Zuma had visited a lover jailed in Switzerland under drug-related charges, spending $36,000 of federal funds on the luxurious trip. And these were only some of the headline-grabbing stories to emerge.

Connections paid dividends. In Pretoria, the ANC-aligned Gupta family—owners of computer, investment, and newspaper ventures, and the employers of two of Zuma’s kids—was allowed to land a chartered private plane at the capital’s high-security military base, intended only for diplomats, politicians, and the armed forces. They were on their way to the lavish, multimillion-dollar, four-day family wedding of a Gupta daughter, the guest list of which included several government heavyweights. As per tradition, the resulting scandal was called Gupta-gate.

Young black millionaires and celebrities followed suit, flaunting their wealth and connections, driving Hummers and Maseratis. One tycoon, an ex-convict, had dubbed himself the “sushi king” because his favorite pastime was eating pounds of sushi off the naked bodies of models, while a self-styled black “socialite” gave an interview in which she expressed disdain for the have-nots. “If they can’t put bread on their table, too bad, but I’m gonna have my croissant with my blue cheese in full public view,” she announced on a talk show.

Meanwhile, in Limpopo, the country’s poorest province, students went without textbooks for the 2012 school year after an intricate scandal involving crooked and incompetent officials and an unscrupulous bookmaker. And while the private medical care in South Africa remains excellent, the public system is in shambles. In a rural Eastern Cape government hospital, an otherwise healthy toddler died of pneumonia after the hospital’s oxygen supply ran out. The administrator had not bothered to order more, and an ambulance from a better-stocked hospital took hours to arrive. In Free State, the provincial health minister ordered a dying woman to be booted from her ICU bed in an underserved local hospital to make way for an ANC official. In Limpopo, a housewife dislocated her ankle, was operated on in a room that had lost electricity by a government doctor who insisted that he didn’t need to examine an X-ray in order to perform surgery. He botched her operation, forgot to prescribe her pain pills when he left for the weekend, and then ignored her for days as gangrene set in. Her leg was eventually amputated.

Rhoda had recently resigned from her professorship at Stellenbosch University. She claimed that she quit after an accomplished white professor lost out on the position of dean to a relatively unqualified black academic, and that the university had honored skin color and connections over capability and experience. This, Rhoda felt, was South Africa’s affirmative action policy at its worst, with students the ultimate losers.

“Until I know a black person is trained, I want my gynecologist to be white and my pilot to be white!” she yelled, throwing her finger in the air.

Rhoda thought back to the days of revolution, a “tantalizing time” in South Africa, when they were fighting the good fight. Then the country was the go-to spot for activists, liberals, do-gooders, charity workers, Africanists, journalists, and anyone serious about global politics. Of course, such a fiery moment in history brought with it your regular irritating lefty activists, who parachuted into the country in their trendy blue jeans. Rhoda was unimpressed by the international students in their Mandela T-shirts, so when she first saw Amy on campus, she rolled her eyes.

“My attitude was, ‘Fuck you, another American, a foreigner, just another pretty blond American.’ ”

But Amy tried to make a tangible contribution to the university where Rhoda served as the founder and director of the Gender Equity Unit. As one of the few students with a laptop, a rarity in 1993, Amy took notes at meetings and delved into her research on women’s rights. She made friends and connections, but she also struggled. The activists she had come to work with were often too busy or distracted to provide her with any guidance. One day, she appeared at Rhoda’s office door.

“I’m Amy,” she said hopefully. She held a pile of papers to her chest. Rhoda just looked at her. “I’m doing research on women in South Africa and nobody can help me.”

Rhoda gestured for the papers in Amy’s arms, and Amy handed them over. Rhoda started paging through them, making comments, crossing sentences out, directing Amy on whom to speak with, where to find sources and subjects. Amy edged into the office, taking copious, tidy notes in her red-and-black notebook. She never interrupted Rhoda. In fact, to Rhoda’s surprise, this attractive woman was the opposite of the arrogant American: rather, she was a modest intellectual, with excellent manners and a razor-sharp intellect. And Amy adored brash, outspoken Rhoda. Rhoda became Amy’s mentor and friend.

“She was so sweet and generous, and a good student,” Rhoda said. “She dressed well, she looked good, she was so smart. She played as hard as she worked. She partied, she did marathons, she was on the beach, she produced prolifically.”

Amy’s old friends remember her the same way. She worked hard at being happy, they said. She worked hard at everything. When she was sixteen, she wrote an entry in her journal, matter-of-factly outlining her goals in her tidy cursive hand. Her father read it out before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

I have had more homework this year than I have ever had before. In lots of ways this has helped me because I have been forced to get organized and really dig in. But I have also been forced to stay up until 11:30 or 12:00 each night, making me very cranky during the day. One thing that worries me is whether or not I will be able to keep this rigorous schedule up and still keep straight As. Every night after school, I have some activity to attend, be it diving, band, flute, or something else, and starting in November, I’ll be swimming every day. I hate it when people say you should cut down your schedule, you’re too busy, because I have already cut out several activities. I’m kind of addicted to exercise and get very bored if I am not constantly busy. School is very important to me but being active and well-rounded are necessary for me to be happy. I want to have a 4.0, but I also want to be an award-winning drum major, first chair flute, a State champion diver. As far as I’m concerned, why can’t I? I think I will be able to make it through this year. I am a very hard worker at everything I do, and as long as I know what I want, I can get it. Besides, getting 90% on a chemistry test makes staying up all night worth it.

Amy began to walk at nine months and to read at three years, unable to bear the fact that her older sister, Kim, could do something that she could not. After entering kindergarten, she vowed that she would attend Stanford. Linda told her that if she managed that, she’d buy her a Porsche. Thirteen years later, when Amy’s acceptance letter arrived, Linda bought her a chocolate bar in the shape of a sports car.

As a toddler with a bowl cut, Amy flew across the monkey bars. As a girl with her hair in tight pigtails, she competed in gymnastics tournaments, tumbling across the floor and twirling over the beam. In ninth grade at a new school, she scanned the lunchroom, her eyes homing in on a brown-haired girl.

“I met my new best friend,” she told her parents. “I just haven’t talked to her yet.” Within weeks, she and the brown-haired girl were inseparable. A decade later, they were roommates, sending out Christmas cards with a photo of them grinning, shoulder to shoulder, next to cartoon mistletoe.

Every day, Amy made a list of the things she wished to accomplish, and if she failed to do so, she simply switched the item to the next day’s list. When she didn’t understand a calculus problem, she stayed up all night, stomping around the kitchen, working the numbers in her head. Her memory was nearly photographic.

When she decided that swimming was her main passion, she ditched her other extracurriculars and trained privately with a much lauded local coach; but when she realized that an even better coach worked an hour away, she prevailed upon her mother to drive her the extra distance, and prevailed upon her less-dedicated sisters to join her.

Amy graduated to diving. She was drawn to heights, perhaps because she wanted to conquer that which daunted her. As soon as she could stand, she jumped out of her crib and broke her collarbone. Once, Linda turned away for a moment while at the playground and turned back to find eighteen-month-old Amy standing atop the highest slide, down which she had to be coaxed.

Diving is the ultimate perfectionist’s sport: to master a particular dive, an athlete must repeat the same sequence hundreds of times, hurtling alone toward the water, fitting a series of specific, tightly coordinated moves into a matter of seconds. Land on it wrong and the water is as hard and unforgiving as concrete. At Stanford, Amy became captain of her diving team. She often limped away from a practice, her body blooming with purple bruises. The next day, she would return and begin again. Her prize possession was a broad gold ring set with a red garnet, a token from her victory at the 1989 Women’s National Swimming Championships.