Extract from Mnyamandawo: The Chronicles of Shalom Court

Allan Kolski Horwitz

CROSSING 1

Isaac Mogale is seven years old. The other boys in the flats play soccer in the street, but they don’t want him to play because he cries when they knock him down. Of course, being younger, he is smaller, not as strong, not as fast as them, but, hell, they are making life hard for a kid who is keen.

            On the day Isaac discovers the body of the mutilated woman, he is sitting on the pavement outside the mnyamandawo watching the ball as it is kicked up and down, bouncing high off the tarmac, then leaving careless feet and skewing off against walls and trees, sometimes even grazing a passing car. How he wants to join in the game! But the older boys won’t let him, certainly not after the last time.

That Burundian boy from the block near Stewart Park, is the star; he plays to win, and he is the one who said Isaac was a spoilt brat and a sissy, for crying. So that was that. It was hardly fair, but what can anyone say, even though they know he is an only child, and that only kids are usually a bit spoilt. So why be jealous if his mother and father are soon going to buy him a computer, and proper soccer boots, and a sixteen-speed bike? That’s what you get to sweeten being all alone, without a brother or sister to mess around with while the folks are watching TV or arguing about some nonsense.

            The game is still in full swing, even though Mohammed – the thirteen-year-old whose ball it is – has been called home for supper. As usual, Mohammed made the rest of the gang swear to bring it back when they stopped otherwise his dad would be very angry and accuse him of not looking after his things that cost so much money – then give him a beating. And he, Mohammed, was not joking, and would make them all pay for his sore buttocks because when his dad gave him a hiding, it was a real serious hiding. And now light is fading so they will have to hurry with the last moves. “Quick! Take this last throw in! Then we have to pack up and call it a day.’’

            Isaac is sitting on the kerb when the ball flies off and soars into the air. He raises his head: how high it is climbing! Then the ball curves and disappears over his shoulder, swallowed up by the darkening pillars and broken balconies of the ruin behind him. Yo, the ruin has been here forever. It chokes the street like a dying animal. People don’t go near, never mind inside where there are evil spirits and dirty, homeless people. And now the ball has gone and gotten itself lost in this broken-down mess!

            Suddenly it is very cold in Natal St. But how can they leave before finding the ball? Mohammed has to be obeyed: the ball is his kingdom and can prove to be his exile. Besides, they are all brothers, and they have made him a promise; and a promise is an oath no brother can break. And now the game is over, and it has to be found, so who is going to walk into that foul, smelly place? Only he who doesn’t mind being eaten alive by rats and drug addicts who talk to themselves and make fires at night; crazy people dressed in torn clothes with smudged faces who drag trolleys filled with junk.

            The boys stand about in the street. No one speaks.

            Then Xolani, who lives in the flat two doors down from Isaac, becomes the first traitor: “Magents, we’ll never find it now, it’s too dark. Let’s come back tomorrow. We’ll find it after school. I’m sure it will be safe.”  And he leaves.

            Then Kumbu, who lives in the backyard of a house in South St, calls out, “Yes, we’ll find it tomorrow!” And runs off. 

            Tsietsi, Jacob and Gwede look at each other. ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow . . . why not tomorrow? Everything can be done tomorrow! And, hey, why should anyone make a big fuss about a few klaps from your dad?’’

Like Xolani said, they will come back after school and find it. That’s for sure! They will still keep their promise!

            It is near dark. Isaac is the last. There he is, alone on the kerb. He kicks at a stone. It rolls and rolls, till it comes to a stop against an empty beer can. And at this moment, he knows what he must do: would a cry-baby dare enter that castle of filth? Would a soft, over-indulged ninny have the courage to face devils in darkness? No, no, no! But he will run home and fetch his flashlight and make his name forever ring with glory! As small and shy as he is, he will be the new king of Natal St!

            It is almost seven o’çlock; the new moon still struggling to rise over the blocks of flats, he fetches his torch and runs back to the ruin.

            Nothing moves. There isn’t a light or a fire burning. He can hear the swishing of rat tails as they scurry up and down the stairs. Now where could the ball have landed? Had it not flown as high as the fourth floor? Yes, that seems right. But the fourth floor is a long walk, and the shadows are deep as a double-thick milkshake. But yuck! It will be much easier to find if it had bounced somewhere inside, then dropped down into the yard. Yes, it must have flown up, then come down on the far side and bounced about before shooting off like a bullet – yo, that Xolani had a powerful right foot! That’s it, there’s no other way but he must run quick-quick into the hallway and out the other side into the yard. And in just a few seconds, he will find the scuffed white ball that will make him a hero!

            He walks very slowly into the building, then half- closing his eyes, dashes through the hallway and into the yard. But the ball isn’t there. The ball isn’t where it should have been! He takes a few more steps between the back wall and the last stair of the hallway, but there is so much junk and stuff that smells bad, that he stops in disgust. Has he gone too far? Has he missed it? Eish, how can anyone expect to find anything in this toilet?

            The building is quiet; very, very quiet. He breathes deeply. He must go on!

Isaac turns to the right; the concrete column that supports the staircase rises up above him. Maybe the ball is hidden from view in the stairwell? He makes his way as fast as he can towards the concrete column, but when he turns the corner, and looks around, there is still no round white ball beaming back in his flashlight.

But there is a noise behind him. Footsteps! Footsteps, and loud ones, big boot ones.

He must run! He must fly! He must fly up and over the ruin and get back to the street. Quick! There’s an open door on one side of the yard. He must jump out of sight before the footsteps come nearer. He must hide!

            Isaac runs and closes the door. He shines the torch. Stairs lead down into the darkness. The footsteps come closer. He runs down the stairs and before he reaches the bottom, the torchlight catches the shapes of horrible creatures. As he screams, he kicks against something, and it moves, oh my gosh, it moves, and when he looks down, he sees a hand . . .  a human hand. And he screams again, and again.

            Little Isaac Mogale is still screaming when the hand leads to a bloody jersey, and the bloody jersey leads to a head. It is a head, right? What’s left of a human head.

            Poor little Isaac. He vomits. And while he runs back up the stairs and out of that basement, he carries on vomiting through the hallway and into Natal St till he is back home and crying; crying worse than he used to cry when the boys in the street knocked him over and called him a sissy, and he can’t tell his mother why, and he can’t tell his father why.

            But after they wash his face and give him a cup of hot milk, he doesn’t stutter so much. And then, after each of them hugs him, and tells him how much they love him, and how whatever it was that has given him such a shock – so much fear and surprise – they would like to know who or what it was, but it is up to him to decide when to tell so in the meantime, he should get some sleep, and in the morning they will talk again and see how he feels, because they love him and are praying that nothing really bad had happened. But, yes, there can be problems with strangers and even other adults you know, and they are just praying that he will be alright, and thank God he doesn’t seem physically harmed, but you never know, and even so, there might be something that still harms him . . . in his mind, and, yes, its’s time to sleep.

Then before his eyes close, with his mother and father sitting beside him, Isaac tells them everything about the smashed, purple pulp at the top of the body. He tells them everything about the blood-caked jersey, and the twisted legs, and the white breast.

He tells them everything except the bit about the steps. And that’s maybe why Isaac Mogale, to this day, still hears those steps every night.

CROSSING 2 

Nothing is more spiritual than the lotus—it experiences immaculate conception every single day as it rises from the mud to embrace the heavens.

Mendel Guttman is reading aloud the advert he has placed in the North-East Tribune.

“’Two bed-roomed flat immediately available in Saunders St, Yeoville. Our humble Howarden Heights offers inspiration, quite apart from antique parquet floors, pressed ceilings and all the other features of the 1930’s style that make it such a desirable block in a once-proud suburb. Magnificent is the only word worthy of describing this structure that is the stuff of legends. Rental negotiable for those with integrity.”

            Parvati, standing on the adjoining flat’s balcony, applauds, her one hand striking the railing, while the other hugs her baby. Caught in the late afternoon light, she tosses the avalanche of glossy, thick hair that frames her elegant, long face – both are the colour of soil where mangos are planted near the temple to Ganesh in Amritsar – and sings over, and over again, “A-O-U-I-Eeee . . . A-U-I-E-Oooo . . . A-E-O-I-Uuuu . . .”

            But the baby will not sleep, and after the umpteenth time, Mendel snaps, “Parva, you’re a danger to this child. It’s A-E-I-O-U. Where the hell did you go to crèche?”

            “I was only playing, but where do you think?”

            “Some funny little hokkie in Chatsworth with pink Indian elephants eating chilibites as they blow mud from the slimy green, Umgeni over the crocodiles painted on the wall.”

            “No, no, uncle. Just shows how backward you are. Me and my besties grew up with images of the great Karl, and Rosa, plastered all over that revolutionary pozzie. You always forget, my folks were redder than red.”

            Parvati had a burden to carry; her parents had once been ‘very progressive’. Indeed, they had once done their bit in the trade unions and other burgeoning organizations of the Mass Democratic Movement. But all that had died out by the mid-90’s, and they were now exemplars of business opportunism.

            Mendel blows his nose; winter colds are a drag. He flips his ponytail, grey strands of hair slipping over the collar of his old army jacket.

“Yes, they were ultras of the worst kind. Notorious. Especially your mom, may the supreme goddess, Kali, bless her. In national meetings she always ended up on the key committees. No need to enforce quotas for women when hers was the biggest, loudest mouth.”

            “Shut up you miserable misogynist! But heck, I shouldn’t complain. That’s why you let us, or should I say, me, have this flat.”

            “My darling, how could I refuse a request from the offspring of such an illustrious heroine? And, if I say so myself, you haven’t done too badly.”

            “No, we haven’t. It’s perfect. Even the unavoidable view of Ponte turns me on.”

            They both gaze into the distance at the fifty storey, cylindrical block of flats that is Joburg’s unintended phallic tribute to its pioneering founders. Parvati, still holding baby Mandla, thrusts her hips forward.

            “Yes, that smooth cylinder . . .’’ She assumes a dramatic voice. “Demonstrates the arrogance of us colonial off-shoots sticking a fat finger in God’s eye. And expecting Her to blink.”

            “That contradiction, my dear, is you to a T.”

            “I dreamed it up years ago when writing an essay on The Politics of Patriarchal Architecture.”

            “You trying to tell me that your dagga-diminished brain has managed to recall an ancient essay?”

            “Come on, Mend. How would your dagga-destroyed brain know the difference?” She shifts Mandla to her other hip. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist that, old man.” She blows him a kiss. “Hell, our concrete-clad tube reminds me of what’s inside the pants of every daddy who has ever walked these mean, gold-veined streets.”

            Mendel has gotten used to her raucous, teasing ways. And she is right: though only built in the 1970’s, Ponte had immediately become a key feature in Joburg’s skyline. Its smooth concrete-clad hips rising from a rocky hillside, symbolised the feverish hopes and energy of gold diggers come from all over southern Africa and beyond the seas. And then to extract tons of precious metal from a fabulous, still hidden reef and see it wangled into the pockets of monopolistic magnates backed by imperial Britain’s earth-scorching cannons, was surely as heart-breaking as witnessing how their ramshackle miners camp – having bypassed or isolated the remnants of Tswana villages – transmuted into an inland metropolis. And that it came to litter the once pristine highveld with a warren of slime dumps, housing estates, shopping malls, factories, offices blocks and a meandering network of streets and highways.

            Mendel looks over the balcony rail at her with a fond expression. Parvati Naidoo, Spho Mchunu, her partner, and their baby boy, Mandla, were just the couple the block needed to encourage the illusion of the rainbow nation. Besides, her flirtatious manner was a tonic – for a woman who had only recently given birth, quite apart from her strong, sensual features, her figure was still surprisingly curvaceous.

            She continues. “We really do appreciate what you’ve done, Mendelovich. We were pretty desperate. You’re a cool guy and Spho really likes you, and that, as you know, is unusual.”

            Spho has a reputation for being anti-white, and of making no effort to conceal this. The disdain also extends to middle class Indians and Coloureds, so when Parvati’s family had cut her off, their boorishness merely confirmed for him the unfailing racism of the professional class. With Spho’s family (his father, mother and three siblings) barely managing to cover their own basic expenses, the couple had gone flat hunting with only a portion of her university grant money to put down as a deposit. But Mendel, ‘In the name of the Past and Continuing Struggle for Human Emancipation’ and for the small amount he earned by helping his landlord-uncle screen applicants, had immediately put them at ease, and without too many questions, allowed them to sign the lease.

            He leans over to her side of the balcony.

“My darling, it was young Mandla who did it. With such a seriously cute little bugger, how could I leave you on the pavement? Now bring him closer so I can jab his little tummy and knock any wind out.”

            Parvati giggles, but her eyes grow dreamy. `

“You know, when I found out I was pregnant, I freaked out. It was outrageous. I was about to start my doctorate and I hadn’t even finalised the subject, never mind an abstract. And Spho was going through a rough time with his father over being kicked out of varsity on account of his Fees Must Fall work, but that was nothing compared to their outrage at his being charged with public violence. And to top it all, a whole lot of complicated stuff was happening between us. So when I told him I was going for an abortion, I couldn’t believe how he flipped out.”

She looks down at the drowsy baby, hefts him higher on her hip.

“Didn’t he, pumpkin? Didn’t daddy just freak out at the idea of scraping you out of mommy’s guts and leaving mommy all raw, bloody and miserable but free as a sea-faring bird.”

            Mendel snorts as the love pours out of her eyes. “God, Parva, don’t give me a decoy story. Don’t blame Spho for your descent into the prison of motherhood. You were looking for an excuse to bail out of writing another useless dissertation.” Just as he says this, he winces in pain. “Eish! Just give me a sec. My back is giving me hell again. I need to pull up a chair.”

            “Ok, old man. Go get a chair.” Parvati plays with the tips of her lustrous hair. “But for God’s sake, also go and have your fucking back seen to. And while you about it, bear in mind that bad mechanics will cripple you. That’s right, choose your scalpel very carefully. You can’t amputate and replace spines which makes it important they get it right the first time.’’ Mendel smiles as Mandla opens his eyes, blinks, then falls back asleep. “Now go lay yourself down. But before you collapse on that lumpy mattress you’re so proud of, let me tell you that my dissertation is merely on hold. I have no intention of letting the Indian petit-bourgeois off the hook. They disgust me. They’re just as bad as your Jews.”

            Mendel has to smile again. She is right. History boringly shows that given the chance, the ‘previously disadvantaged’ will coin it by exploiting anyone weaker.

            “I tell you, the man was raving at me about the sanctity of life, and how the ancestors would never forgive him. So what choice did I have? I loved him, and no matter what I said, and how much I protested about the impossible timing, he ignored me, absolutely bloody well ignored me. And then, under the guise of wanting to be completely certain that I was definitely pregnant, he manoeuvred me into going for a scan. And you know what happened while we were watching that screen at cute Dr du Preez’s surgery?”

            But Mendel is no longing listening: on the plastic balcony chair he had intended to sit on and rest his back, lies a crumpled edition of The Star. There, exposed to view on page five, is a photograph of a ruined block of flats – an elongated, four or maybe five, storey building with broken windows and burnt, graffitied walls. The caption reads: BODY OF BATTERED WOMAN FOUND IN ABANDONED BUILDING.

He peers closer. Has he not seen this very building before? And as he examines the photograph, a vague, but familiar recollection comes to mind. But where? Must have been in a working class or semi-industrial area because the Metro authorities would never allow such a wreck to foul the vistas of an affluent suburb. So where could it have been? Bertrams? Doornfontein? Jeppestown? Where else could such a ruin be left to fester? Rosettenville? Selby? Along Jules St? Some side-alley in Fordsburg?

“Hey, you’ve stopped listening, uncle!’  

Parvati is still speaking and has raised her voice.

’’ Pay attention before I get angry and let Kali take command and destroy you. When I saw the fucking blob of a little heart beating on that screen, I was blown away. Ja, I was blown away, man. That little heartbeat was so . . . so . . . vulnerable. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the next step, how the next little organ would be formed, and the next. Then before you knew it, the kid would like, be fully formed, and who in their right mind could . . .”

            Mendel picks up the newspaper and turns it towards her. “Do you know this building?”

            “Decide to terminate this beautiful, bouncing, burpy . . .’’

            “Christ, did you hear me?”

            She stops, watches him wave the page up and down in front of her. 

            “Ok, no baby stories. Your loss, it’s a very beautiful tale of renewal.” She glances at the photograph. “Yo, that place looks like a real hell hole, must be lots of dirty stuff going on in there.” She peers closer. “Of course, I know it. It’s right at the end of our gracious thoroughfare, just before the last bend into De la Rey.”

            He looks at her in astonishment. “You mean at the end of Natal St?”

            “Ja, right down at the very end. It’s been fucked up for ages. Wait! What was the caption? Oh, yes! It makes sense. Perfect spot for a femicide.’’ She points a finger at him, “You guys are out of control.”

            Mendel sits down on the chair. “Dead right, sweetie. But let me tell you, men kill other men far more often than they kill women.” He goes back to studying the photograph. “Yes, you’re right. I’m surprised I didn’t recognise it immediately. There must be quite a story behind it. And as you so keenly observe, just imagine what other foul business has shaken those walls.’’ He groans and stretches his back. “Yeah, a natural focal point for all sorts of madness.”

But Parvati for all her vehemence regarding femicides has now shut him out and is totally absorbed in changing Mandla’s thoroughly soiled nappy.  

CROSSING 3 

With two great columns at the entrance, each supporting a plaster Lion of Judah, and sunroom style balconies rippling across its façade, Shalom Court was an imposing addition to the rental stock being created in 1950’s Johannesburg.

Located at the tail end of Natal St in that south-easterly section of Yeoville named Bellevue East,  and bordering on Observatory’s up-market Urania Village, the block was built by Abraham Spiegelman, a Yeoville resident, who starting out in the mid-1930’s, had judiciously expanded his portfolio from Orange Grove to Doornfontein, from Orchards to Kensington; indeed, Spiegelman Properties had with barely a pause over three decades acquired parcels of land and constructed houses and bigger and bigger blocks of flats as it fulfilled its creator’s ambitions.  

The situation for Jews in 1959 was more favourable than at any time since the start of their mass migration to South Africa in the 1880’s. Black-balling and baiting by British imperialists and past tensions with Afrikaner Nationalists – who even with their history of virulent anti-Semitism had won the 1948 election – had begun to ease. There was general stability among the white population as the Nationalists, whilst prioritising the upliftment of their own tribe, were intent on reaching an accommodation with the English-owned financial and mining company elite who controlled the economy, and whose ranks included a good number of wealthy Jews.

On the other hand, there was general white consensus, that, if they were to continue extracting maximum profit for and from their First World enterprises, inevitable and rising black demands for equality and political freedom would have to be suppressed, and if necessary, with unadorned force. As a result, Afrikaner refinement of existing British colonial policies regarding migrant labour, land confiscation, and denial of educational opportunities to black Africans, ensured that the interests of the mining monopolies and a newly emerging class of South African industrialists, manufacturers and retailers, were well served. In terms of these policies, exclusive residential rights for whites in Yeoville (and other residential neighbourhoods clustered around the inner city) were codified in law under the Group Areas Act, and hence applied to those tenants who could live in the fifty-eight flats making up Shalom Court.

Rising up on a two hundred by seventy-five metre rectangle of land, neither flashy nor in the upper rental bracket, it was by any standard a solid building, and with red face brick, airy rooms and a long roof for hanging washing, the block was an attractive proposition for both middle and lower middle-class clerks, business and salesmen, hairdressers, florists, nurses and municipal employees. Managed from inception by Spiegelman Properties, the tenants, to their great satisfaction, rarely had maintenance complaints, nor when it came to financial issues, any need to report the landlord to the Rent Board for price gouging. In short, the company was never tarred by allegations of impropriety or sly behaviour, or any of the other nasty inclinations that landlords reputedly indulge.

“My son, you vant to make gelt, real gelt, dat means you gotta be on de ball, you gotta follow de news – in de papers and from friends in high places. Dey ask me to donate to de Nats even dough dey hate us. Dey say it’s insurance, dey say vee must be careful. Dere’s meetings, big, secret meetings mit big people in Pretoria – our own ganse knacke mit deir blockheads vot tinks dey is ganse knacke. And vy not? De yokke say dey only vont a fair share of de pie, dey don’t vont all de gold mines, but dey don’t vont de crumbs needer. Vos fair its fair. And dey vont to be lawyers, und doctors und professors – just like de Lord Muck -0n- Toast Inglish. Und dey don’t mind vot vee Yieden do so long vee control our schwartze und our schwartze-loving, commie lawyers. Mein zun, politics, shmoliticks – to fight mit der goyim don’t make business sense. Vee don’t haff to eat treif mit dem – just drink le’chaim ven de ink dries on de deal.” 

Flavoured with Yiddish and the self-deprecating, down-to-earth speech patterns of most Litvak Jews of that generation, this self-parodying, Polonious-style oration created by a well-known local Jewish stand-up comedian, could have been made by Abraham Spiegelman’s father who had been his inspiration and guiding force, just as it could have come from any number of Jewish businessmen. The world was opening up for the sons and daughters of once impoverished migrants. However, this idyll of upward mobility was temporarily disrupted when the suppression of black demands came to a head in 1960. The Sharpeville massacre on 21 March, followed by the banning of all Black political movements, caused an international furore, and was followed by a call for sanctions.

            In his youth, Spiegelman had been a member of the Hashomer Ha’Tzair (The Young Guard), a Zionist group with socialist leanings, and followed global political developments carefully. After Sharpeville, he sensed an uncertain future for white supremacy: how could a small minority, no matter how powerful economically and militarily, hold out indefinitely against such a massive majority?

But the gold price continued to rise, and in the face of growing financial pressure, the Nationalists controlled the outward flow of capital forcing the mining and banking bosses to invest locally and make white South Africa self-sufficient. As a result, business again boomed, and new options on plots of land came his way. Besides, his children were growing, he had even started to play golf and follow rugby, so it was only with the rout of the Portuguese in their southern African colonies and the Soweto youth uprising in 1976, that he began to make serious enquiries about emigration to the United States. And then, by diligently working the family angle, he uncovered a distant cousin (on his mother’s side) who owned a medium size real estate agency in New Jersey. The cousin was overjoyed to know he had relatives in Africa; and was ready to save kith and kin from the savages by offering him a partnership.

At this stage, having rebounded from negative political currents, the rand was stronger than the dollar, and Spiegelman could liquidate his assets and flash a very significant amount of money at the American immigration authorities. As a result, it took just a few months to process his papers, and on 18 December 1977, when the last of his buildings was sold, the South African edition of the Abraham Spiegelman property empire came to a negotiated close.

Abraham like his forefathers who fled drought in Canaan for the fleshpots of Egypt, flew off with his brood to Atlantic City. The buildings he had so scrupulously brought into being, were now scattered among several owners, and the continuing history of each was to reflect the temperaments and histories of these new custodians.

In this manner, clinching the final sale at a very reasonable price, Eddie (Edmond) Bull had acquired Shalom Court.