We Are Not Such Things (55 page)

Two years later, when I had known the Nofemelas for a total of three years, I was finally granted access to Monks. I appealed to Wowo, who arranged for me to meet with Monks in the Ford the next day. At the agreed-upon time, Monks was lifted into the car. One of his brothers provided me with Monks’s water bottle and a towel with which I was to dab his sweat, and then Wowo shooed everyone away so we could have some peace and quiet.

Monks, reclining in the sun-drenched passenger seat, wore a constant, winning smile, and had clearly been a heartbreaker before his accident. Now he was a cheerful, quiet man, dressed in sports pants and a striped polo shirt. He had dropped out of high school, then dropped out of a computer course, and then dropped out of an electrician-training course. Finally, he’d gotten a job driving a bread truck, and then a job driving a truck for the post office. He and a girlfriend had a son. Then in 2009, he was in the accident.

“I don’t feel nothing,” he said of his condition, as his younger brother bent in to wipe his brow. “Because nothing can change.”

“Let me ask you about your involvement in politics,” I said.

“I was involve too much. I go early in the morning to learn about PAC and APLA. I believed in PAC, and I still believe. Land first, and all shall follow.”

Monks had been close friends with Ntobeko, who was his age—around eighteen—in 1993. He considered Ntobeko his leader, since both boys attended Langa Secondary School and Ntobeko had been the chairperson of the school’s PAC student organization. He remembered learning PAC theory from older militants. He remembered training with Ntobeko on the outskirts of Gugulethu in the night.

When Monks thought back to August 25, 1993, the day of Amy’s death, he remembered attending the rally and then toyi-toyi-ing through Langa. After the cops chased them, the boys boarded the train. Monks was together with Easy and Ntobeko, and they all hopped on Viveza’s bakkie. Monks did not recall Quinton, the neighbor, being there, just as, months earlier at our meeting at Mzoli’s, Quinton had not recalled Monks’s presence. Monks never mentioned going to a wholesaler with Viveza. But Monks’s memory was fuzzy twenty-one years on, so it was hard to tell when he was being purposely evasive and when he was simply forgetful.

As Monks recalled, he, Easy, and Ntobeko rode to NY1 on the bakkie and it was there that they saw Amy running down the street, pursued by a gang of young men. Monks had seen the APLA trio at the rally, but he didn’t see them among the crowd, he said.

“I just saw the lady already jumping out to the car. I saw a lot of guys chasing with the stones. I saw Amy was crossing from the church, then running across the road and after she cross the road, I saw Mongezi Manqina stabbing her.”

“Who else was there?”

“There was a lot of guys there,” he said. “I can’t know every guy’s name. They were from Langa and Khayelitsha and Gugulethu, but the other side of Gugulethu.” He claimed to recognize nobody in the mob, all of them from different areas whose residents were not familiar to him.

“Did you join?”

“No, no. I didn’t throw the stone because she is already bleeding. You can’t throw the stone because already she is bleeding and want to collapse because she haven’t got the power. Then the police come through and everybody going.”

“What did Easy and Ntobeko do during Amy’s attack?”

“I know Easy and Ntobeko said they throw the stone. But really, really, really serious, they didn’t throw the stone, because is already bleeding, Amy. Serious.”

“Why would a witness point to Easy and Ntobeko if they didn’t do anything?”

“Maybe was politics. I don’t know.”

“Well, why did Easy and Ntobeko themselves say they throw the stone if they didn’t do it?”

“You know, if you said to the TRC that you didn’t throw the stone, they will say, ‘No, you are lying’ and you can’t come out of prison.”

“What were you doing the morning of Amy’s death?” I asked Monks.

“Morning I was going to school.”

“But there was no school. There was a teachers’ strike.”

“Hmm,” Monks said.

“Did you take the train to Langa with Ntobeko and Easy that morning?”

“I was with Ntobeko, but Easy was not there.” Monks said that he had accompanied Ntobeko to help set up for the rally, and Easy had arrived later.

“Did you see a white guy that morning?” I asked, wondering if anyone had any memory of the purported attack that Easy had told me took place on the morning of Amy’s murder.

“I didn’t see a white guy.”

“In a big truck?”

“Hmm, I remember that guy but I don’t remember what’s happening that guy. What is that guy doing there in that station?”

“He was there in a big truck. Two colored guys were helping to fix the electrical.”

“Oh God, I don’t remember. I don’t remember exactly what happened. But I remember now a white guy. I saw that guy. I did see him on the way to Langa. But I don’t remember more.”

“Did you see people attacking him?”

“That time I didn’t remember that. I know that guy but not more.”

“When you got to the school, was Easy there? Or did he come after? Or did he come with you?”

“He must come later. I don’t think was come that time doing the preparation.”

“What did you and Easy and Ntobeko do when you came home after witnessing Amy’s death?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Is there anyone around here who might remember that day in more detail?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You went to the TRC, right?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember the TRC?”

“TRC?” He smiled. “Okay, I was there. In the chairs.”

“When the camera came, you hid your face.”

He burst into laughter. “I remember that! I was shy! Also at the High Court this guy came with the camera and I said, ‘No, I will break you camera, don’t take a picture, please man.’ ”

“What do you think of Linda and Peter Biehl and their act of forgiveness?”

“I don’t think nothing.”

“Monks,” I said. “You don’t remember too much.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“How do you remember that Easy and Ntobeko didn’t throw stones at Amy?”

“I was there together with them. I was there on NY1. I saw that lady is already bleeding. Seriously, they didn’t throw the stone. I don’t know why they said to the court they throw the stone. Maybe is the lawyer or what, I don’t know. But that time, I was there, they didn’t throw the stone. Maybe that time I didn’t see clearly?” He paused and tried to access some old image, stored in the recesses of his brain. “
Ach
, no, man, I was standing there together with them. They didn’t throw the stone.”

Because she had directed us to shut up about the past, among other reasons, I had long avoided talking to Kiki. Of all the people I’d approached to interview—from convicted killers to members of the police force—Kiki was the person who most intimidated me, and it took me years to find the courage to speak with her. Maybe it was because she had never once engaged me in conversation and the only time she had ever looked happy to see me was on a single occasion when I brought her a large bag of Ethiopian coffee, which she grabbed, saying “Give me!” and then, almost as an afterthought, added, “Thank you.” The most attention she paid me was when she realized that Easy was in my car, and that I could therefore ferry him across the township to pick up groceries. Local cockroach taxis—low-lying jalopies that crept around the townships—cost at least $2 one way, and once in a while, skollies stole the taxis and then picked people up only to rob them. Kiki, in addition to not having a spare $2 and not wanting to get robbed, was also a homebody who didn’t even like leaving NY111.

Eventually, I would realize that Kiki, though indeed fundamentally suspicious of outsiders, didn’t want to speak to me mostly because she hated speaking English, a language she hadn’t come close to mastering, even as she raised three white children over twenty-five years in her capacity as a domestic worker. She spoke fluent Sotho and Xhosa, but English had proved elusive.

“Justine is coming and now is just English, English, English,” Kiki complained to her family.

Once I understood this, I was less daunted by the woman and one day I arrived at the house with a purpose. Outside, sprawled upon some lawn chairs, were Tiny and one of Easy’s sisters-in-law. They were complaining about their partners, Kiki, and their own moms.

“Justine, you have pimples,” the sister-in-law observed benevolently upon seeing me, and she pointed to a zit on my forehead. This was not meant to offend me. For Xhosa people, it wasn’t rude to exclaim, for example, “Wooh, you got
fat
!”

Wowo was fiddling with his Nissan bakkie, which was dripping water for some unknown reason. In the TV room, Monks and a neighbor were watching TV. Easy was lying on the couch hungover, complaining that his body didn’t “feel right.” One of Easy’s younger brothers was nonchalantly mopping the main room in his underpants.

Kiki was washing dishes all alone. This was highly unusual: her various grandchildren were forever slumped on her, using her breasts as elbow rests, leaning on her shoulders, and lying on her lap. She was a fan of sugar, meat, fried foods, and soap operas, and her solid frame reflected this list of pleasures. She desired neither adventure nor novelty. She smiled rarely, commanded often, and liked to make her point by shouting orders at her family.

I sat down on a chair as she eyed me, the water running over the plate in her hand. I took a deep breath and decided to forgo pleasantries.

“Kiki, can you tell me about how you remember the Amy Biehl case?”

I expected her to dismiss me. Instead, she put down her soapy rag and faced me.

“My child not kill Amy Biehl,” she said.

“Why do you say that?”

“I know in my heart my child.”

Kiki began to recall, in halting English, Easy’s arrest. The officers crashing in and hauling her boy away. They knocked him in the face, she said. They slapped him. It was the middle of the night, and she was standing in her nightgown, confused, and her elder sons were itching to fight the cops, while Wowo was ordering everyone to stay calm. Then Easy was hauled off.

Kiki was hardly the first mother to see her kid marched away in cuffs, and she was hardly the first to believe her boy was innocent. In fact, a few of Kiki’s other sons had been in trouble with the law: a little robbery, a bit of fighting. But none of her family members had ever been charged with murder. And black people in South Africa knew that historically, when you killed a white person, you’d feel the full weight of the law come crashing down on you. For killing another black person, you might get a few years in jail, but for killing a white, you’d be hanged. So from that day on, Kiki lived in fear that Easy would be executed.

“My heart was sore.”

“Did Easy ever tell you anything about the case?”

“He say he don’t kill Amy, and me, I’m believe Easy. Me, I’m know Easy.”

“If you don’t think he killed anyone, why do you think he was arrested?”

“Yes, was there. Yes, was child of the PAC. Maybe is bad luck. But he no kill. Lot people was there. Why only four people go to jail? The people point Easy because they know Easy.”

Easy had always been a good son. He always did his chores. He rarely got in trouble. He loved people. He had a short temper but it was so easily quelled—the boy couldn’t hold a grudge. He was clever and sociable. And he liked to garden with her; how could a boy who liked to garden with his mom kill a woman?

Kiki stayed home from work for weeks after Easy’s arrest, “sick, sick, sick.” Pinky, Easy’s girlfriend at the time, brought her food and water. After his sentencing—and Kiki could not bear to attend the trial, a dubious honor that belonged to Wowo alone—she visited him at prison. Every weekend for five years, she took a bus to Tokai, or to Caledon, or to Paarl, depending on the prison in which he was kept, hours on public transport and expensive to boot. Once, when the bus broke down on the way to Caledon, she slept on the side of the road.

Though Easy boasted of “relaxing” in prison, and many claimed he had been a member of the 28s, Kiki remembered her son’s experience differently. He was so small and so scared, his face drawn and yellow behind the glass, she said. At the beginning, he was desperate to get out and had hatched a plan in which she need only to provide a fraudulent certificate to say he was a juvenile so he might be transferred to a less violent facility.

Kiki had been devastated that Easy was found guilty, but relieved that he wasn’t given the death sentence. Then the Truth and Reconciliation Commission came along, a process Kiki hardly understood. All she comprehended, really, was that Easy would perhaps be released from prison due to some political shifts and backroom deals, and indeed, even before she received the official news of his amnesty approval, she knew he was coming home. She was sitting in her living room when a bee flew around her head. Bees were, according to Kiki’s belief system, a sign of her ancestors, and the bee’s presence was a message: her son was on his way. She ran to prepare a bath with medicinal soap obtained from her sangoma, which would allow him to wash the stench and evil of prison from his body. He could start afresh. The next day, Easy was released.