THERE IS A SUDDEN LOUD BANGING ON THE MAIN church doors and men’s muffled voices calling, ‘Let us in!’ and ‘We want to be in there too!’ Heads in the congregation swivel. The usher scurries to the doors and slams a heavy sliding bar across to lock them – a reflex action going back to times when castles were besieged.
The bishop stops reading and looks up from the lectern. ‘What is going on out there?’
Above even louder banging, the usher calls back, ‘Don’t know, Your Grace.’
‘Stand guard, then,’ the bishop blusters, unsure what else to say.
The mayor is never unsure. She rises and moves to the end of the VIP pew, ready to take control of the situation. Flashes glitter in the side aisles again as photographers hurry towards the disturbance. There is uneasy shuffling and shifting as people look around for emergency exits. The Sharks captain unwedges himself, stands up and edges past a row of burly knees.
The mayor heads for the arched doorway, calling in a powerful voice, ‘Ubani? Who is that?’
More banging and voices calling.
‘I am Mayor Thembi. Identify yourselves!’ Her command reverberates round the hushed church like the boom of the British cannons used against her people during the Zulu wars, then two decades later against the recalcitrant Boers.
The banging stops. Everyone in this city knows Mayor Thembi. People flock to her imbizos in the townships. Her face is in the newspapers almost daily. Women feel free to stop her in the street, asking for help and advice; men are polite and careful not to cross her.
A single angry voice shouts above the din, ‘We are war veterans. Let us in.’
Murmurs sprout among the congregation like noxious weeds. Unrest. Uprising. It’s a riot. MK. Are they armed? Still digging up AK47s. Old arms caches. Coming over the borders too. Hundreds. Thousands. You can buy them in any township. Toyi-toying in the streets. Land grabs. Mugabe. Xenophobia. Now it begins. Knew it would happen here. Inevitable. I thought MK were disbanded. What’s going on? Where are the bloody police when you need them?
The mayor surges towards the barred doors, demanding, ‘Why are you making all this noise?’ and orders the usher, ‘Open, please.’
He calls out, ‘Should I, Your Grace?’
‘I am asking here. You will open.’
‘But is it safe?’ He adds, ‘Will you be safe, madam?’
‘I am not your madam. And nobody touches Mayor Thembi.’
‘Force majeure,’ someone mutters.
The usher slides the locking bar back into its cuffs, pulls open the heavy doors, and Mayor Thembi stalks through. On the stone platform outside is a group of men who seem unlikely shouters and bangers, more like platteland farmers who meet at the pub for beers to grumble over drought losses and no more Land Bank loans. They wear tracksuits or khaki shorts, and shirts with blue or green pockets; some are on crutches; one has double hooks instead of hands.
The mayor surveys them. ‘Who speaks for you?’
‘Darius Groth.’ He has a naartjie-peel nose, and stands out among the crowd in a faded camouflage jacket the colours of gum tree bark; his boep hangs over his belt and his belligerent boots are firmly planted. ‘You know the name?’
A troublemaker: an ex-recce captain from the war in Angola who broadcasts bitter public complaints about disability pensions. He has been known to chain himself to the railings outside Parliament in Cape Town and the Union Buildings in Pretoria in his campaign against the ANC government’s favouring of struggle veterans. She says, ‘Yes, I know you. But now is not the time for talking.’
‘Now is the time. We have come to demand –’
‘Demand? This is a funeral service.’
‘So, what did this Kitching do that we haven’t done for our country? He volunteered. We were conscripted! Forced into the army. Forced to fight. We had no choice.’ His voice gets angrier as the others mutter agreement. ‘We want the same respect.’
‘Now is not the time,’ she repeats. ‘Come and see me in my office on Monday. There we can talk about your grievances. Not here.’
‘Right here, right now. We demand –’
‘Monday, okay? I promise I’ll help you.’
‘The hell you will.’ Rage suffuses his face. The men nudge each other, stirring up resentment. The televised funeral of a white war hero is an ideal opportunity for them to put their case to a national audience.
Summing up the situation, the mayor says, ‘Everybody knows that Mayor Thembi is very, very serious about her promises.’
‘Ja, right.’ Groth half-turns to face the bank of cameras. ‘It’s enough now! We’re treated like scum. We want justice. We want compensation for Angola. Also, the names of our dead on war memorials and in the Peace Park.’
She needs to deal with the disruption before it escalates and delays the service even further. She says, ‘Okay, Darius. Come inside then. Only you.’
‘All of us.’
‘There are not enough seats.’
‘All. We’re tired of being invisible. We are ready again for war.’
The mayor’s eyes move over the middle-aged men fidgeting behind him. Their expressions range from defiant to sheepish. She says, ‘War?’
‘You better believe it. There’s plenty more of us. We can raise commandos. We’ll raid the armouries. We were trained to fight dirty in the border war.’ He has taken her irony for doubt.
She hears the whirr-click of zoom lenses and the picketa-picketa-picketa of cameras on autodrive. If she doesn’t resolve the situation soon, there’ll be unwelcome headlines tomorrow. Bad publicity for eThekwini.
She says, ‘Eugène Terre’Blanche made threats like that.’
‘We’re not AWB. We fought for our country. We can fight again.’
‘Nobody wants a fight. You heard my invitation: come and join in the service as their leader, then I’ll meet you and these men on Monday.’
‘No ways. We stand together.’ He plants his boots far apart.
‘That’s the deal. And no more nonsense. When I go back inside with the press, the doors will not be opened again.’
‘Journalists stay with the real news,’ he scoffs.
‘And the real news is inside this church today. I urge you in the spirit of ubuntu to come and join us. Okay? Take it or leave it.’ There are noises in the church doorway and she turns to find it crowded with rugby players, all of them much younger than the veterans and ready for action after sitting for over an hour squashed in their pews. ‘You guys!’ she thunders, pointing a stern finger. ‘Go back. I don’t want any more trouble.’
‘Okay, ma’am,’ the Sharks captain says. ‘We just thought –’
‘Go back. Go back. The service must carry on.’ Ignoring the offending ‘ma’am’, the mayor herds the rugby players inside. As she disappears through the doorway, she calls over her shoulder, ‘Are you coming, Darius?’
‘No. We’ll stay here on the steps and talk to TV and the newspapers.’ The beard parts in a sneer. ‘Stalemate, Mayor Thembi.’
‘Your choice.’
She plunges into the church, followed by the cameras and journalists who are familiar with Groth’s ravings, and the great doors close behind them. The hayi khona speech is today’s hot news and they’re hoping for more.