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Before the Apostolic Faith Mission became the Apostolic Faith Mission Impact Church, the caretaker of the property was a man called Elias, a Zimbabwean with a dark complexion and a dark demeanor. His wife, Dorothy, appeared at my gate one day. She said she was a “good Christian woman” looking for domestic work. I took her on. Her Christian fervor spilled over into her work. She would pray in tongues over the ironing, sometimes weeping copiously.
Over time she began to speak to me about the difficulties of being a Zimbabwean in South Africa. She had several sons who were constantly making their way over the border and then being deported, only to return again a few weeks later.
Her marriage to Elias was an ongoing trial. The couple slept in the sacristy of the church (the small room leading off the main place of worship in a Christian church in which sacred objects such as vessels and vestments are kept) and often in the middle of the night, Dorothy would be banished to the cold dark pews of the church for the night. The light switch was in the sacristy and Elias would guard it and refuse to switch it on, forcing the poor woman to fumble around in the dark in the church.
He was particularly violent and abusive when Dorothy prayed in tongues during the night, or when she was menstruating.
After a night of sleeping on a wooden pew in the church (especially in winter), Dorothy would arrive for work with swollen eyes and a body heavy with grief and lack of sleep.
But as with so many abusive relationships, when she and Elias were getting on well, Dorothy’s face would glow with joy and fulfillment. All the ups in her marriage to Elias were attributed to Jesus and all the downs to Satan and although she would mutter her contempt for her husband from time to time, she did not want anyone to side with her and say anything bad about the wretched man.
One Saturday afternoon I went looking for Dorothy at the church. I had mislaid something I needed and thought she might know where it was. I found her in the kitchen leading off the church hall, preparing a huge meal for family members visiting from Zimbabwe. She was evidently not pleased to see me and with a grim expression made a clutching and wrenching gesture towards her neck and the sides of her head. It took me a few minutes to realize that she was wearing the only valuable necklace and earrings I possessed.
After a distressing weekend thinking how I would deal with the issue of the missing jewelry, I waited for Dorothy to arrive for work on Monday, imagining that she would explain why she had borrowed the necklace and earrings and return them, and everything would return to normal. But she never came back to work.
Elias said she had gone back to Zimbabwe but I see her in the streets of Bez Valley or at Darras Centre from time to time. Once, she waved.
*Not their real names.
I walk past the bottle store, up the escalator, florist on the right, biscuit shop on the left, pass the second hand cell phone shop and the dry cleaners, and into Pick ‘n Pay. Looking across the to the opposite side of the escalators and down to ground level, I see one, two, three, four, more empty shops with ‘To Let’ signs on the windows. According to The caretaker there are 17 empty shops at Darras Centre. “People haven't got money to pay rent... management is bad, and there is too much corruption”, he tells me.
Meanwhile, informal traders and small general stores and hairdressing salons are mushrooming in Bez Valley. Traders are generally not South Africans though some are from other provinces - Limpopo and Mpumalanga. They tell me they are from Rwanda, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, DRC, Nigeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
