Charlize. Chris Karsten
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head, tied up with elastic bands adorned with bobbles. One bobble was clearly higher than the other, and that in an official school photograph! “When she sent me the photo, I noticed the lopsided bobbles immediately and I phoned to ask why Gerda had fixed the child’s hair so carelessly. Charlize told me her mother had been too busy before school that morning and so her father had brushed her hair and made the pigtails.”
Next Bettie showed me a typed letter and told me the story behind it. In 1983 Charles had bought a typewriter to take care of his business corre- spondence. Bettie happened to be visiting when Charles brought the typewriter to his office. He asked his mother to see that Charlize, then eight years old, didn’t play with the new typewriter. He was only too familiar with her busy little fingers. But he had scarcely left when grandmother and granddaughter hatched a plot. Charlize just couldn’t keep her hands off those alluring keys, so Grandma rolled a sheet of paper into the machine and stood guard at the door to warn Charlize if her father should approach. Charlize began to type:
A puppy oh a puppy I want for chrismas so that he can be on gard at nite and lie befor my bed I rite a letter to father chrismas to ask for a puppy oh a puppy to chase away the krooks
Chalize t
Oh, how she and Charlize had laughed at that letter, Bettie recalled. She had kept the typed letter, dated 4 June 1983 in Bettie’s handwriting, along with all the other letters Charlize had written in her neat, childish hand, lavishly decorated in coloured pencil with brightly coloured flowers and hearts. On 5 December 1984, aged nine, Charlize had written to her grandmother in Kuruman:
Granny I love you very much enjoy yourself in koereman. Love from Charlize
On July 17 (the year has been omitted, but by then Charlize was clearly a more skilled writer):
Dear Granny
How are you. We are well. I hope you’re not ill. Granny the flu has got me. Granny I’m going to dance again, but this time I’m going to do a tutu dance. My daddy’s beard is very long now and my mommy is letting her hair grow. Granny must write me a letter. Granny I have to say goodbye now. Granny I’m sorry that the letter is so short but next time I’ll write a longer letter. Remember I still love you very very much.
Regards from Charlize
To her own letters to Charlize after Charles’s death, even those sent to an address in Hollywood, Bettie never got any reply. “Things were never the same after that terrible night. I am still grieving for my son. And I grieve for my granddaughter who doesn’t want to know me. I’m glad she’s achieved so much, but I’m very sad that her father isn’t here to witness her success.”
Still, she keeps hoping to see her granddaughter again, Bettie said, or at least to hear her voice, because she doesn’t know how many birthdays she has left. “I don’t care whether she’s rich or famous, I just want to see her again.”
I took my leave and left her my cigarette lighter; hers had lit its last cigarette. And I couldn’t help thinking what Charlize is missing here at Kuruman, far removed from fame and wealth. How do Hollywood illusions measure up against an album and a tin box filled with genuine love and longing?
You can almost picture the scene on the plastic chairs at the back door: grandmother and granddaughter with their heads together, sharing their memories, the sound of Charlize’s famous belly laugh.
But when I got into my car, parked under the camel thorn, another image filled my mind, the one on the last photograph in the Charlize album. Slightly macabre, but probably a fitting remembrance of the two loved ones Bettie had lost in a single night: the photograph of Charles in his coffin, his eyes closed as if he were merely sleeping.
Benoni, 1991
At that point someone hammered on the kitchen door.
I told my mother that it was my father and that I was afraid of him.
Charlize in her statement to the police, 1991
Tragedy
In 1991 Rooi Rose (later rooi rose), a Johannesburg-based Afrikaans maga-zine chiefly aimed at female readers, held a competition for aspiring models. The winner would be given the opportunity to take part in an international modelling competition, New Model Today, in Italy. One of Rooi Rose’s conditions was that the winner had to be a model of stature, or one with great potential, as she would be required to represent South Africa abroad.
A life as a model is the dream of many a young girl, and with Charles and Gerda’s approval, the fifteen-year-old Charlize entered the competition.
By this time serious cracks were showing in her parents’ marriage and the family were aware of it, especially Charles’s sister Elsa Malan, who lived with her family only a few blocks from the Therons in Cloverdene.
The two sisters-in-law, Gerda and Elsa, had had a long and close friendship, and were almost like sisters. It went back to their young days in South-West Africa, when Gerda had left school and moved in with the Therons.
Today Elsa (divorced in the meantime) lives in George in the Southern Cape and, with her two sons, upholds the family tradition of hard work. They operate a successful family business, renting out heavy construction machinery, also to the mining industry up north. Elsa also has a daughter, now finished with school, who many people consider to be even more beautiful than her older cousin, Charlize. She has albums filled with newspaper clippings and photos of Charlize, and the cousins keep hoping that one day they will be reunited with Charlize.
In numerous conversations Elsa has talked openly about the lives and fates of the family, presenting me with a chronicle, warts and all. What hurts the family, what they don’t understand, is why Gerda and Charlize summarily cut their ties with the Therons. Moreover, why Charlize’s father was presented to the international media as an alcoholic and a scoundrel, initially even accused of assaulting his wife and daughter.
Elsa’s version of the domestic tragedy differs from that of Charlize, who had never mentioned it before 2000. Elsa remembers how she often used to lie on their bed with Charles and Gerda, chatting. Charles would read the paper, or sometimes peel oranges for them while they were talking. He liked to eat his oranges with salt. (In Hollywood Hills, Charlize likes to make freshly squeezed orange juice from the oranges that grow in her own garden.) But Elsa also admits that her brother, like other males in her family (even those related by marriage), liked to party around a bottle. And where there is drink, one can expect trouble.
As a prelude to the fatal events, Elsa goes back to Sunday, 16 June 1991. She and Gerda took their children to the church next to the primary school, as was their custom. After the service, Elsa and Gerda waited outside in the winter sun while their children attended Sunday school. Elsa knew that Gerda was worried about her marriage and asked whether it wouldn’t be better if she and Charles got divorced. Gerda replied that she felt she had to stay for Charlize’s sake, and, besides, she added, the finances of the business were too complicated.
The next Thursday, Charles attended an auction in Pretoria, where there was heavy machinery for sale. He ate two meat pies and arrived at his sister’s house with a fish – a snoek, as a matter of fact. He asked Elsa to give the fish to Gerda. Late in the afternoon Elsa drove to Gerda’s house with the fish. Gerda was unresponsive, didn’t want the fish, rejected Charles’s peace offering. That evening Charles dined in a restaurant with some business associates and his brother Danie.
The next afternoon, Friday, 21 June 1991, Gerda took Charlize to a studio in Johannesburg to have photographs taken for the portfolio she would need to enter the Rooi Rose modelling competition. Charles didn’t want to go along and chose to spend the afternoon at his sister’s house instead. His brother Danie and his wife, Engela, had come from Kuruman for a visit. When Danie came to visit, he always stayed with his sister Elsa, for he and Gerda did not get along.
Danie had bought a new pickup and he took Charles for a drive. On their way back they stopped at a bottle store in Rynfield for a 20-ml bottle of Underberg, a bitter herbal drink used as