despite the Bible. I practise the old ways. I go to the townships to slaughter the animal, and if the ritual is very complicated then I will go to my ancestral village. I have my shrines and I worship there.”
He had a pair of rusting handcuffs on the wall behind him. Rusting, but not very old: I was sure they were there as a conversation piece, a token of the slavery he liked to talk about. He said he had bought the cuffs in a junk-shop. He took them down from the wall and began to play with them, as though he had made them harmless. He asked me, “Are these things older than you?” I examined the question, fearing a trap, but could find none, and then I said I didn’t know. It must have been the correct reply, because he gave up the subject and sought to re-affix the cuffs to the wall.
He continued to talk, making a leap from the cuffs to the fast-food chains of Johannesburg. He wondered why they didn’t do African fast food. He had exhausted his proper subjects and was now only speaking at random. The fast-food people and everybody else came to Africa only to make money, he said, and as a result Africa was “a quagmire of wars.” In the old days there used to be tribal wars, but they burnt themselves out very quickly. Now, when there was no tradition, and people had no idea where they came from, they had very little regard for the tombs of their kings, and things were generally deplorable. The ancient graves of the Zulu kings—buried in a sitting position and wrapped in a cowskin—were neglected.
He said, “I really feel we have paid a great deal for our freedom. Mandela let us down. He let the white people keep their wealth and lifestyle and walk into democracy. Rainbow nation is rubbish. Black people are still called kaffirs, and coloured people are nowhere. They have no heroes and are called ‘woolly hair.’ They had to endure the pencil test.”
It was becoming too random and glib. I felt it was time to go. He followed me into the yard.
He said, “I’ve always wanted to do this.”
I had no idea what he meant; and then he held the car door open for me. His followers—in jeans and tee shirt—were relaxed in the traffic-less street, in a cool mid-afternoon light. They could see us through the open gate; but he was so secure in their affection he could afford to do this clowning with the car door.
10
ON MY FIRST trip to Soweto (or through Soweto) I had seen the Mandela house, from the front and the side, and then, as the road had climbed, from the top. It had seemed to me impressive. It wasn’t small. It was in dark-red brick, with a fence of the same material, and it had an outer rock garden. This garden was an oddity in Soweto, and its purpose was no doubt to give additional privacy and protection to the people of the house.
Now an appointment had been made with Winnie Mandela, and on this Monday morning we were able to enter the Mandela yard from the front, through one of the two big gates. There were five or six security men in dark suits.
In the entrance to the house were many artefacts and photographs. They were laid out on the floor, as they might have been laid out on a display table. They partially blocked the doorway to what was furnished like a dining room. The photographs looked personal; they were of the family. The artefacts looked like official gifts. There were a surprising number of Indian pieces among them: modern versions of Indian deities, with faces and bodies much influenced by photographs and the cinema, all done with an artificial bronze-seeming finish. Among the photographs were big ones of Nelson Mandela, some in colour. He didn’t live in the house, but one felt that his was the guiding presence; and the house felt bereft of its master.
Just beyond the dining room was a big room with upholstered chairs: the sitting room, clearly. A sliding glass door was open, and a cool winter wind blew in. The glass door looked out on to the inside of the rock garden, where some men were weeding and some were using water-hoses. Without this watering the garden would have been dry, like the rest of Johannesburg.
We sat with the man who had arranged the