CHATTING UP WINNIE
VIGIE was built like a battleship. Kohled eyes, a bosom that walked in front and ankles delicately chiselled by Michelangelo. She was not born in a time of famine either.
Her continental shadow collapsed over the glass counter of Favourite Tea Room in the upper-class section of my beloved Bangladesh Market district in Chatsworth.
The neat rows of TV bars, kit kats and wholenuts stacked below melted. Few woman can bring eroticism to a broken blouse button.
“What you looking at?” she bellowed. With the self-confidence of a pastor at offering time, I pleaded: “You remind me of someone.”
A shy smile lifted her Chanelbronzed cheeks.
“Winnie Mandela,” I lied like a drunk at a roadblock.
The smiling Uncle Sam had packed her six plump snowballs, a sachet of Clover full cream and the Sunday Tribune in an illegal plastic bag. Her faux designer purse was rammed with pink fifties. One of the pile wended into Sam’s large paw, the one that was used to klap road boys who disturbed the customers.
I quickly paid for my newspaper and stepped outside into the safer threat of sunstroke.
Vigie tottered alongside in heels that looked fresh out of the early CRC service. “So you’re a politician, hey?” she ventured.
“Just an admirer of strong women,” I volunteered nonchalantly.
“Professor Meer brought her to unit 3 flats you know. She cried when she saw how our people were living.”
“Have you read any books about her?” She shook her “Hair by Ruby” bouffant. I glided her through the incisive Sisonke Msimang’s The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela. I summarised Winnie’s impassioned speech in her husband’s trial, the chapter on Tata Madiba, her 491 days of detention right up to the latter day armies of constipated haters and faithful disciples.
“I suppose I can find it at Adams at Musgrave?” she asked. Both our eyes dropped to the unforgiving concrete paving as I shared the news that yet another historic bookshop was closing. Durban’s book-selling legend, the effervescent Cedric
Sissing is distraught. “I’ll find you a copy,” I offered.
“I’ll buy you coffee then,” she mouthed over her shoulder as she walked to a waiting car and a delayed husband. That I knew was an invitation to trouble.